A SUMMER OF DISCONTENT

The confidence we have in ourselves and in the communities in which we live underlies the whole scheme of the life in which we exist. It is born from the confidence that people have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in planning their collective futures. And when we speak of each other or of the place we live in, town or country we talk about "my" friends or colleagues or about "our" town or "my" country we are all naturally possessive in language and also in our souls, it's the reason we feel pride when acknowledging the sporting achievements of those who we see as representing us and why we sometimes without understanding shed a tear for people we have never met before but feel attached to through our common endeavours and community links.

So just what have we got as a nation to feel proud about at present? OK the Jubilee and the Olympics for those so minded offer a maybe welcome diversion from the stark realities of our everyday lives, but they are little more than hollow escape from our real troubles, and these are stacking up by the bucket load.

So let's look at the levels of integrity and honesty of those who impact heavily on our lives and also on the confidence we have in those who rule us or control our economic and material futures. Let us put under the microscope that unholy alliance of MP's, Bankers and Journalists who impose their decisions, views and labours upon us.

Well for a start our MP's are hardly in a fit state to preach to us much at present are they? Soiled and sullied by the expenses scandals with many of their number now doing time for fiddling the books they have diminished our confidence and respect in their profession down to an all time low, and that's saying something given Parliaments already chequered history. Membership of the three political parties is now at an all time low less than 500,000 members nationwide between all three of them down from a high of 5,000,000 50 years ago they now have many time less members than most of our registered charities, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for example has more members than all three parties put together and the few left to raise their parties standards do so against a background of an untrusting and disinterested electorate who express their opinion in the main by either not voting or voting for none of the above. But still they win access to the corridors of power usually on the support tiny percentages of the constituencies, national or local that they represent. Local Government is now also a farce played out by very poor actors pretending to be all powerful whilst all of their authority and decision making powers have been taken off of them by an officer class truly irritated by their presence. SO LETS NOT LOOK TO OUR POLITICIANS FOR ANY ANSWERS UNLESS THE QUESTIONS ARE OF PERSONAL NATURE OR OF POLITICAL INTEREST TO THEM.

But what about the giants of Britain's media and the journalistic world, surely the press will step up to the plate and be our vanguard for good against evil in these troubled times? Tell us all in heavy print where the country is going wrong and cast an Independent eye over those ruling us, Sorry guys but they are equally and perhaps even deeper in the doghouse. The Levesson enquiry rolls on exposing day by day the darker practices of their craft and more and more of their number are then arrested, bailed and their futures left in abeyance, what's more worrying is that they are taking a large number of Knacker of the Yards boys with them, all intertwined in a bowl of rotten noodle soup made up of illegal activity, back door payments and illicit practices devised to sell tittle tattle gossip at the expense of people's privacy and rights, whilst ignoring the fault lines really dragging Britain down SO DON'T LOOK TO THE NATIONAL MEDIA TO SAVE US THEY ARE TOO BUSY TRYING TO SAVE THEMSELVES AND THE SICKENING WORLD THEY INHABIT.

So if our politicians and our press are as corrupt as each other then we must fall back on the professional classes for comfort and sound advice to see us through the mire. Let's all give three cheers for the Bankers! Then again let's not, a bigger bunch of lying cheating greedy and corrupt individuals you are unlikely to find anywhere in humankind. Having created the Banking crisis which led to the worlds deepest depression since the 1930's they collectively stand outside the worlds government houses with their hands held out asking for the politicians to spare them some loose change in order to save their own skins "if we go down then you will fall just as fast as we do they all say" The politicians in response do what they do best, they look after themselves and throw more and more of our money at them in the hope of salvation. The trouble here though is that this Banking Monster is so greedy that no amount of cash, even if we print it anew will satisfy their greed and desire, so they cheat and they manipulate and they fiddle the figures to make themselves even more money, to wrap themselves up against the cold of the recession cutting deep through the bones of the masses. "The Libor rate", they say, "no one understands that so lets tweak the figures here and there, we can make billions and the home owners and the small businesses can pay the price in higher mortgage and loan costs". So expect another Judge led inquiry and eventually another round of arrests. SO LETS NOT LOOK TO THE CITY TO BRING US ANY RELIEF AS THEY ARE TOO BUSY RELIEVING THEMSELVES ALL OVER US AS WE LAY IN THE GUTTER BENEATH THEM.

With all of the above in deep and deserved trouble of their own making we will soon be in a position when our prisons are populated more by the professional classes than the traditional criminal classes, old lags will soon start moaning that they have to share their cells with individuals far more unpalatable than the murderers and sex offenders that they are used to bunking up with. And meanwhile, we, us, the British people will stop talking of "our" country and "my" nation as a new age of "them and us" returns with a flourish not seen since the 1600's. "We are all in this together" says the Prime Minister wishful thinking on his part I think, and soon exposed as a cruel and wicked lie as the cuts hit hardest at the poor whilst the uberrich count out the sum totals of their tax cuts and find ever more cunning schemes and dodges to avoid paying their fair share of taxes in the first place. Meanwhile a women wearing a £1m hat takes a horse drawn golden carriage ride to Westminster to give a speech about austerity and tell us all how hard times really are and how her government will ensure we all pay for the mess we are now in

I predicted on this blog before prior to the summer riots of 2011 that trouble was ahead of us, I took no comfort from being proven right, and now we have the irresponsible bleatings of County Chief Police Officers across the Country telling the press that they will not be able to police the streets in coming weeks and months in the face of any such disturbances due to their numbers being depleted by both Olympic duty and cuts to police numbers. What an utterly stupid thing to say. Their predictions of unchecked unrest were thankfully only read by an uninterested few and now by the relatively small number of regular readers of this blog (around 2000 worldwide if your interested) but if their self fulfilling prophecies come true then I am sure that they will soon gloss over their previously expressed inflammatory comments.

So think less of an Arab Spring and more of a Summer of the Disenfranchised. I hope as always that they are wrong, it is the weak and the innocent who always suffer at such times and it will make life on our streets far more difficult to live in not less, but when you take away a nations hope, when the governed feel that their government no longer have a mandate, when locally and nationally all you see and hear about is cuts to services whilst at the same time see the rich shoving as much of our cash into their own pockets whilst shirking their own responsibility to pay their share of the bills whilst we are still paying ours, then I am afraid unrest is at some point inevitable.

Britain is now more than ever morally and economically bankrupt and whilst it is hardly a new analogy it has to be said that once more it's the same the whole world over, it's the poor what gets the blame, it's the rich what takes the pleasure, ain't it all a bleeding shame.