I’m conscious of John of Gaunt’s pride in his country, and find myself thinking what can I be proud of in today’s England (or Britain)? I’m proud of the NHS, battered and constrained as it is, and hope it endures to look after me in my final years. I feel a great sense of loyalty to it: my mother trained as a children’s nurse as it came into existence, and made sure we had all that it offered to keep us healthy as children, all the jabs, the free orange juice and rose hip syrup and codliver oil.
My father was an exile from Poland, and after the war ended nobody wanted him and his comrades any more: they were foreigners, taking away jobs from the British etc etc – where have we heard that one recently? Reluctantly he and his mates were allowed to remain, all sorts of obstacles were put in their way, they were used and exploited. Nevertheless he was loyal to his adoptive country and eventually took British nationality.
My memories of my younger days are of a country that provided work for almost everyone, benefits (paltry, perhaps) for those that needed them, grants for students rather than loans, and offered supplementary benefits, as they were called back then, even to students who did not find work in the holidays. There were very few people living on the streets and no foodbanks. There was unemployment and poverty, but not the outright misery and destitution as we see nowadays.
Although I regarded it as my right, I had eight years of state support through my studies, and I recognise the value of what the country invested in me; equally, I can see that I paid it all back over the years through taxation and through service as a teacher.
Back in the past housing was affordable and rents were controlled: one income would support a family, even my father’s meagre wages, supplemented by overtime and some moonlighting. And although he always loathed them, trade unions were able to defend the working people and ensure a reasonable standard of wages, working conditions and pensions.
I remember grand projects: Concorde, Intercity 125 trains, the struggle to join the Common Market which became the European Community and then the European Union. All of my travel as a student was made so much easier by our membership, and I was glad of the new-found freedom, and the ability to encounter other peoples and cultures.
Like any old codger, I’m waxing lyrical about the days of my youth. But I lived through the Cuban missile crisis and Reagan’s cruise missiles and I did not feel as endangered then as I do now under the rule of incompetent liars. I lived through the so-called winter of discontent in 1978-9; it wasn’t that bad and there certainly wasn’t the feeling of impending doom that many of us are currently fighting off.
I have seen so much that was not perfect but that was decent enough, and certainly far better than we have now, deliberately demolished, destroyed and sold off to other countries through the greed and rapaciousness started by Thatcher and her cronies. I don’t need to ponder why there is a housing crisis, a shortage of homes: I remember what she did. I don’t need to bother my head with whether Johnson or Truss was a worse prime minister, as Thatcher scoops all the awards there.
There are many good things in the history of our country and these islands; there are as many dark pages, and the difference between us and a country like Germany, for instance, is that we do not wish to confront and recognise that dark past; we are waylaid and misled by those who think that our past glories mean we are automatically entitled to a glorious future… We are a small island off the coast of Europe, that Europe can ignore without too great a loss; it’s not the same the other way round.
More than anything I have an image of a country with its head in the sand, ruled by an aristocracy which has embedded itself deep in our national psyche over a millennium; we invented a form of democracy a couple of centuries back and think it’s still fit for purpose; we are collectively unwilling to face the challenges of the future, whether they are economic or meteorological, and we allow rich and vested interests shamelessly to play to the darkest sides of people in order to hang on to their privilege.
I have very mixed feelings about England and Britain. It’s my home, for better or worse. There are things I have been grateful for; there are things I love, but increasingly there are things I truly despair about.
On The Guardian or, freedom of the press?
November 8, 2022I’ve been a loyal and dutiful Guardian reader for more than half a century now. That statement immediately places me in a certain age category, and I need to remind myself that times have moved on. But I do wonder what is happening to the newspaper I’ve known and loved for so long.
I read it because it’s liberal/ social democrat/ vaguely left-leaning, and is the only such newspaper we’ve got in this godforsaken country. I won’t give Murdoch’s press a penny because of the bastard that he is, and the braindead and mouldering columnists of the Torygraph don’t bear thinking about (though you do need to know what the enemy is thinking), the Indy is in hock to the Saudis…only the Guardian finances itself. But did it make the right choice in aiming to be free-to-all rather than paywall itself like the Times, relying on advertising and moving into the US and Australian markets to shore up its finances? It used to be able to boast about its European credentials, but coverage of our near neighbours is pretty thin at the moment.
It’s become a lot more trivial and lifestyle focused, like most of the press nowadays, as if being well-informed about the world is too much like hard work; there are too many vapid columns of comment and twaddle: do I really need 250 words on why someone has cut up their supermarket loyalty card? At a quid a word (or more) it’s money for old rope; then I learnt that the writer is actually the husband of the editor. I mean, can’t they manage on her £400,000+ salary?
Now, let’s get a little more serious: comments by readers. This was an interesting idea when it was first dreamt up, and then trolls discovered they could make hay. But there did use to be a decent enough standard of commenting on articles which appeared in the Guardian. But, increasingly, certain articles are never open for comment, and I find myself wondering why. Larry Elliott is an interesting economics journalist, but also a pro-Brexit headbanger, and when he goes on about Brexit still being a good idea, we can never comment. Simon Tisdall I now regard as their warmonger-in-chief with his crazed articles about the situation in Ukraine, demanding ever more intervention, weaponry and I don’t know what else; again, we’re not allowed to comment on this madness. Why not?
And then there’s the gender debate. There seems to be some sort of actual censorship going on at the paper, as far as I can make out from snippets which have appeared in other media, and the disappearance of interesting (women) columnists who have packed their bags for elsewhere, because apparently the Guardian will not allow gender-critical commentary. Although I also find it strange that such writers, after years at the Guardian, can then go off and take Murdoch’s (or Harmsworth’s) tainted shilling. This is just plain weird, to this long-time reader who has followed umpteen complex feminist debates with interest in the columns of the paper over the decades. What is the Guardian afraid of?
If there were an alternative, I wouldn’t be so worried. I’d just read another paper. But there isn’t, and when progressive readers are driven to wondering what is happening with the only vaguely progressive newspaper we have, we are in trouble. We need to stick together, and it’s getting harder… I’ll carry on reading, and paying for the crosswords. Social media as a source of news is a very worrying concept, as is the idea of whole generations not bothering with serious news at all. The way is wide open for distortion and manipulation, and it’s going on before our eyes.
Rant over; I’ll go any lie down now.
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Tags: censorship, commenting on articles in the press, freedom of speech, gender-critical, newspapers, The Guardian