Decay

The UK was the first country to be industrialized, and we have been at the vanguard of the modern world ever since. We were first or near the front of every major development that makes life appear civilized. That goes for developments such as properly surfaced roads, railways, central heating, powered shipping, radio, television, computer, radar, airplanes and hey, it was a great British person, Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web and other Brits who designed such modern marvels as Apple’s recent generations of products, the Dyson vacuum cleaner and the entire concept of Formula One racing cars, the world renowned Open University and a little thing called the National Health Service.

This should all be put within a context that makes matters clear and easy to evaluate. The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, ever. It still has huge overseas investments, and riches beyond measure. So why is everything falling apart?

We have grid lock on many of our roads, it is estimated that it was faster to traverse the centre of London a hundred years ago, on a horse, than it is today, during rush hour traffic. Our sewerage system, once the envy of engineers around the world, is creaking at the seams. Train travel is a travesty. The National Health service, previously the model that, the rest of the world copied slavishly, is now not clean enough in certain of its hospitals to trust. You can go in well and come out of a British hospital dead because of the germs you can be infected with. Educationally we have certainly stopped going forward, and appear to be going backwards in the core subject curriculum in comparison with the emerging economic powerhouses.

In the last few days Britain’s top Muslim, Asian police officer, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, who serves in the Metropolitan Police, has accused his immediate boss, the Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, of racism. When the third most powerful police officer in London accuses his number one like this what chance is there for the rest of us? It’s difficult to find a good word to say about either of these gentlemen who spend their time fiddling while our new Rome burns with feral youths committing crime in every direction you look.

The British authorities repeatedly tell us that crime is going down, so why does everyone you talk with share the view that the opposite is true, and that it’s going up? Perhaps, as if with many other things in our cockeyed country, it’s really the peculiar way our leaders have of counting.

One of the present current problems in the UK is the sheer proliferation of laws that come out of the maw of Parliament in an unending stream of politically correct rubbish. There have never been such a huge number of new laws, regulations and proposals in our history. One that has been proposed, that I do support is the idea that all forms of ageism be legally banned.

Ageism is as iniquitous as any other form of discrimination. It permeates employment opportunities, financial matters and insurance issues, particularly those regarding health insurance. It’s obvious that private health insurers put up the rates for older people so that the effect is to allow the health insurance companies to edit out anyone who’s considered too risky because of their actuarial age, unless they’re very rich.

Local councils in Britain have the power to snoop on their local inhabitants by using surveillance powers that were originally reserved for judicial control by the police and security services. Before David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, changed the law, there were 9 state bodies then allowed to use such rights to spy on citizens, now that number has risen to 790 organizations. This is insanity and must be stopped before the issue gets even worse. Do we want to go down the same road as the total power to spy on their citizens found in China? We now have anti terrorism laws in the UK being used to stop local residents over filling their dustbins. This is a totally inappropriate use of power.

There was a by election last night in Henley. This is a beautiful part of England hard by the River Thames, formerly represented in Parliament by the newly elected London mayor, Boris Johnson. His party, the Conservatives won by a huge majority as expected. More shocking for the government of Gordon Brown was that their candidate didn’t even come third after the Liberal Democrats, no they limped into fifth place, behind the Greens and the British National Party, making Labour the new fringe party of British politics. They even lost their deposit which is the price every party has to pay for entry into a Parliamentary election, which is supposed to guarantee you’re candidature is serious. Do you think the Prime Minister will learn anything from this? No, I expect he’s sitting at his breakfast in Number 10 Downing Street this morning saying to anyone who will listen, “ Why can’t everyone understand how right I am?”

This week the same British government finally saw fit to remove President Mugabe’s honorary knighthood. This is another example of their total lack of backbone and judgment. After all, how could they have waited until now? Never mind, as the saying goes, better late than ever. Also, I’m happy and relieved to report, Nelson Mandela, did, as many others and I had asked, and finally made a statement about Mugabe. In it he said, “We watch with sadness the continuing tragedy in Darfur. Nearer to home we have seen the outbreak of violence against fellow Africans in our own country and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighboring Zimbabwe.” It wasn’t much to say Nelson, but it’s a great deal more than the deafening silence we’d heard so far from Africa’s moral giant.

The common theme of these stories is that they demonstrate the total lack of vision of our leadership. On the first anniversary of Gordon Brown being Prime Minister I offer up the fervent prayer for our country that he is gone before he does too much more damage. There is a saying that a country gets the government it deserves; but what did Britain do that was so bad?