Dismantling of Great Britain

Dismantling of Great Britain.

One may have a kaleidoscope of different opinions that stem from personal perspectives cosseted, or not, from backgrounds of security and reassurance but however one has been elevated from the womb it will have been eventually in the enmeshed culture with an identity of ‘place’. Over time within this experiential environment is inculcated additional personal experience of social interactions, emotional ordeals, contemplations of issues and absorbing memes (for ease of thought compaction) all to shape the individuals ideas and personality. Although it is inevitable that some influences will engender ineffective apathy on the basis that some things are too complex to distil into short or comprehensive debatable considerations, particularly when ones personal influence to impress a modification on an issue is negligible; the fact is that when the emotional response to issues is ramped up, an opinion however constructed is forced out and others on the receiving end of their attitudes have usually no idea on the basic thinking process used to express their impassive views  without resorting to historical indicators, knowledge, facts, trend, etc. This does little to elucidate what has to be accepted as just an illustration of diverse opinions. 

Just so that anyone, that who cares to drop in and spend a little time in pursuing this polemic is aware, this is one opinion constructed over time with some acquired knowledge and only offered to mark a passing phase of history which in the future one may (amongst others) have cause to regret, regret for the seeming majority mindlessness that is directing a course to a future potentially more dysfunctional than an ability to adjust too that has gone before in any living memory to date. This is not a participation at rolling in some nostalgic days of yore with whatever rosy gloss one may construe; what’s done is gone but one should not be able to, in ignorance, say in the future, why was ‘it’ not seen, how was ‘it’ allowed to happen?

There are some people that are really disenchanted at the way the GB is slowly falling into decline, a decline that is clearly obvious even hanging onto the illusion of still being a principle actor in world interest. It could have been avoided but due to the lack of a revolution that might have shattered the arrogance of the still pervading class structure that is yet today being played out on the political and economic arguments, imbued with the current financial repression, that is coming into an unimagined reality with the bundling of the expanding cant of “Brexit means Brexit”, “Strong and Stable” “Building a better future” and other sounds of hypocrisy dribbled out with hardly disguised pitiful (in)sincerity. But we are where we are thanks to some 80 MP’s desire for Brexit at whatever cost, print media funded by self serving malignant owners and the blatant lies laid out to the consuming public persuaded to acquiesce to their own impoverishment being lauded now as “the will of the people”, they have spoken. This was based on:-

A majority democratic decision of a 72.20% turnout (33m) of the 46.5m eligible voters, with 'leavers' of 51.9% (17,410742m) against 48.1 % ‘remains’ (16,141241m) and on the thin margin of just 1,269501m ‘leavers’ it cannot be said to be a healthy persuasive sign of unanimity when also 28% (13m) took no part’. The vociferous affirmed simplistic rigid position of leavers, unmoved by the complexity of disentangling from the EU or the political, social, trading dissolution weakness becomes even more fraught with irresolvable border issues when Scotland, N. Ireland and Gibraltar voters, supported remain! If anything this shows the prevalent little Englander mindset that has strained the will of the people to display its ineptitude. 

This position and the debacle of the continuing incompetence by the conservative government, that for solely internal political reasons instigated the rejection of the EU, highlights the restriction over any movement on achieving an acceptable negotiated foundation for the separation from the EU. This is just the latest historical setting which is to be seen as a major influence on the making or breaking of GB. That this separation is the forerunner of ‘the shape of thing to come’ may be a bit glib to offer with any beneficial certainly but one can say with absolute confidence it will be fraught with danger and high financial cost to be borne by “the will of the people”.

In reaching this perilous current position, that has not come about in just isolation from the decision of the 23.6.16, important though that date will be in shaping the future history of GB; it is difficult to point to a particular past period in which one might say was the point at which GB took a similar wonton conclusive path to global irrelevance. There have of course been historical incidents that marked high and low points in arriving at the current predicament however from the perspective of looking at situations that gave GB its confidence on a world platform, one might alight on formative periods that fall into: - the wealth derived from the slave trade, industrial revolution, the grasping of the empire (and eventual loss) and of greater importance the two major conflicts taken on, primarily alone, by GB, and the dismal post war years that followed and up to the essential commitment to join the EEC in 1.1.1973, giving 44yrs of stability and growth to 2007. All based on secure access to energy sources.  

That one may believe that the current phase in the history of the GB is of an order potentially more destabilising than at any time of the past 200 years, may be a matter of opaque perspective curtailed by the mellowing of time and now (for many) inconsequential history for which those disinterested in historic impacts will not appreciate, after all, everything that is manifest today, just is; it is accepted through the lens of what is experienced in their own living memory with little regard to how or why everything they have around them, came about. Even reflecting on a shorter period of time and give note to some of the building blocks that shaped GB one would be hard pushed to override the apathy that is displayed on the consequences of the acts of recent history.

      

As an example and one that should be of greater interest to the so called baby boomers of ill repute today; consider the important epoch shaping period of the 20th century starting with the 1914.18 European wars leading onto the 1939 - 45 war. Between these dates there is just 21 years of separation. People born in 1918 will have seen and have been affected by the destruction of the 1st conflict only to be actively involved in the next one in 1939. Those two episodes came at great debilitating economic cost that lingers today but the social and cultural reordering came from a reluctant recognition that administrative management of the economy had to have guiding control and from the influence of a stronger demonstrative work force may have come the drive to have a change to the distribution of the wealth of the nation. There may have been engendered, unwittingly from the parents of the ’baby boomers’, a certain optimism that thing can and should be better for future generation, a drive to offer a better future, which the war vets and baby boomer had a hand in shaping. Now, unusually, after 70 years of European peace, the baby boomers generations that have had the benefits of ‘social cooperative’ endeavours have created their own off spring generations, which with their own families, cannot today look forward to a future were things can only get better!. How can these septuagenarians, octogenarians and their younger X,Y, and Z maligned “snowflake” offspring’s have allowed their children’s 21st century financial futures to be fraudulently stripped from them?

Where GB is now, is the rolling out of formative events, many of which get lost in the mist of time and overridden by the exigency of a particular governmental moment. A moment that seems more insistent, hyped on by the potential loss of political ‘capital’ being caught out from insipid responses to media driven public ‘concerns’ and is often approached belatedly reactive. These media over amplified event too are of passing worth yet some actions do have a connected and profound long term impact on the state of the nation. In this interpretation, one may display a degree of historical prejudice however it is inadequately disputable that there have been major events that still resonate and are a contributory factor in the misguided pomposity of the preoccupation that GB has of itself, scarcely alleviating the angst of its diminished world power status nor willing to face up to the change mercantile economic order or its measured decline but look back to reclaim some imaginary golden era.

The turning point for the decline in GB is one that may start at what is without doubt for many, as its effect is still in minds, the dislocating vast expenditure of all resources pumped into the two wars. From the end of the 1946 it became patently obvious that the whole economy was in dire straits, private investment in the infrastructures had largely ceased with little confidence to acquire investment debt. At this time the nationalisation programme was instigated with banking, coal, railways, steel, gas, water, electrics and telecoms taken under government control to inject the investment required to rebuild. It was a massive financial undertaking on top of the lease lends cost for the war efforts. These strategic investment were permutations of the props to the building of the wealth of the nation. An addition support was the eventual application of Oil and Gas industry1950/65 which over 45 years provide £330bn of revenue tax to the treasury. Some would later suggest this financed the dismantling of the industrial sectors in the 1970/90 but it was also wasted with the lack of strategic foresight and rolling control with the selling of the GB equity interest of this sector in 1980 at a lost opportunity cost of some £400bn when compared with the ongoing state holding fund, held by Norway. 

Compounding this situation, was implemented a series of dogma driven reactions to the impact and strength of the productive and manufacturing sectors of the 60/90 then fraught with labour / union discontent, challenging government actions. The solution was from 1979 the beginning of the sell off to ‘privatisation’ of national assets. Everything that had a state holding was to be sold off at was eventually recognise a knock down price, effectively a defrauding of the nation’s wealth and at the same time deliberately standing back from a rapid destruction of the whole industrial sectors and forgoing any strategy for industrial technical regeneration believing the service and financial sectors were a better sustainable future without the handicap of organised disruptive labour. 

Although it was proclaimed in late 1956 by Macmillan ‘you have never had it so good’  it was a over optimistic meme that had much to do with GB’s slow resurgence after the war but by late sixty/seventies it was apparent that the industrial and commercial strength of GB was in some difficulty. Bad and out of touch management, under investment, poor trading figures with high inflation, crippling higher national debt, disinvestment, asset stripping and the start of the European project were all factors undermining the nation’s wealth. Global trading options were becoming much more competitive against GB, there was little choice but to seek a future within the greater Europe market in 1973. Within the above mix and although not really paid too much attention to was the serious consideration by the government in 1982 when the cabinet tried to press an agenda aimed at cutting back the state funding of hospitals and schools to promote private subscription. The idea was buried as being extraordinary regressive and untimely however as a result of seeking the ideological imposition of personal self determination and accountability, the (eventually) discredited poll tax or the term used officially “the community charge” was forcible enacted onto the population with the intent of off loading responsibility to the local council to take the blame for diminishing central funding resources to the regions.

Of lingering importance to this idea of “shrinking the states” involvement in all things, curtailing expectation of what the state will provide as a means of withdrawing revenue and lower taxation, the governments were oblivious (although warned) to the extraordinary huge corruption taking place in the financial sectors that culminated in the 2007/8 liquidity crises. Upon this came the opportunity to have a retry of the 1982 hidden agenda to shrink all social provisions, reduces the power of local authority and democracy, to push government unconstructive causative actions onto a Local authority without the funding resources to accommodate the degradation becoming more evident today(re austerity pogrom).

On the political and democratic scene, unravelling the unity of the nation, there has been a move for more localised representation particularly in the provinces; Scotland, with the rapid rise of SNP largely as a result of the disingenuous attitude that governments had displayed towards Scottish concerns and being stung by the trial run of the poll tax, Wales with the lack of investment, and N. Ireland a political and sectarian block that again holds the government to ransom for its parliamentary support. This has all led to devolvement of powers to the regions. The inevitable consequences of this will be a systematic process that will lead to eventual independence for the provinces and with N. Ireland the logical extension that has to come about, to a united Ireland.

The above periods where just events, events that a country has to adapt to, which it generally can, with resource time and a range of stability factors and a formulated direction to vision; a future vision that benefits and elevates the whole population and support civil infrastructures. Regrettably there has never been a shared vision. Politicians have proven themselves to be incompetent, dishonest in governments and that governments consistently progresses with dogma and ill conceived ideology, primarily at the behest of attainment for short term party tributes to retain power and pander to existing and illusionary aspiring party supplicants. They are self serving, bending to the power of the party whips generally unresponsive to the democratic process relating to their electorate, are cosseted and disconnect from the actuality of the proletariat and are held in some contempt because of it. Uniquely the one and only very rare time people have forced Politian to hear and feel the ground of reality shift was the quake of the 23.6.16.

On this date the country may have been overtaken by a delusional zeitgeist, a sort of acquired indoctrinated prejudice built on the three strands of the strap line memes (NHS, Immigration, Sovereignty or trade) that had attached to them no effective qualitative analysis and has created a mood sufficient to generate emotive reaction against any knowledgeable rejoinder. Also given the personal attacks levelled at political opponent, the judiciary and others that offer a different view to the thoughtlessness of the ongoing implication of the quake is like recalling the similar unconcealed psychosis that had afflicted participants in countries, in conflicts, like Germany, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Israel, Iraq, and Syria with two (or more) diametrically opposed views culminating in wars. Conflicts have grown out of obscuration of pertinent qualified facts and a miscalculation of construed intent, raising a form of an insanitary of populism gestalt, focusing on the derogation of ‘others’ points of view to favour one’s own principle demands to win and if it involves; the relinquishing of resources, dispute borders, unresolved impasses, then war is easy to fire up. 

It cannot be any comfort to think that GB, being ‘civilised’ is unlikely to fall into actual war, there are obvious internal conflicts however that are already in play. They are afflicted with circumstances where one could say there is an obvious disconnects between the political establishment and the expectations of a multitude of people. This detachment is most likely to find expression somehow in the future; at best with an affirmation in a wholly rejuvenated educational instilled democratic process, preferably on a proportional representational base. Brexit may fortuitously provide more benefits than what has gone before for restoration of the common weal (unlikely?) or fall for draconian financial repression to bribe trade and a drift towards and elected administrative dictatorship. More likely is the dismembering of the GB i.e. losing the Great in GB and verification of what is already obviously underway, the dismantling of the UK into its component parts. This will leave the little englanders to their inconsequential place in a world that is moving on from their hankered after glory that was England of GB.

Well all right, one may be over exaggeration the trends of the times but bear in mind that events are a nuisance of which there have been many in the past to be contended with but one might think none that has had the ability to affect a abrupt profound change, this change taken deliberately by the populace, to cause a systemic economic alteration to a country for decades to follow. Events have an upsetting way of interfering with the preferred outlook for all participants so as a visitor and just passing through, to gauge a scope of the history on the phase now in, one might find it illumination to direct a glance at two sources that took a view of the country that was Great Britain:-

The Pax Britannica Trilogy: by Jan Morris, (covers the British Empire.)

And

The History of Modern Britain: by Andrew Marr, (does what it says.)

© Renot

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Referendum Final Results.

England             

Turnout      Leave    Votes          Remain    Votes            Differences

 73.0%:      53.4%    15,188,406. 46.6%      13,266,996    1,921,410 Leave

                           

N. Ireland            

Turnout

62.7%:       44.2%     349,442.       55.8%         440,707         91,265 Remain

Scotland             

Turnout

67.2%:       38.0%     1,018,322.     62.0%     1,661,191      642,869 Remain

Wales                

Turnout

71.7%:      52.5%          854,572.    47.5%        772,347          82,225 Leave 

Nett votes for leave 1,269,501