Memories of 2006
"Faith in your leaders or anyone will get you killed."
Bruce Springsteen, Wembley Stadium 1985
When I was growing up I went through my angry young man phase. Puzzled as much as angry, puzzled as to why, with all the evidence available, my Grandparents generation had allowed the rise of Fascism to go unchecked for nearly a decade in Germany, then I was angry with my parents generation for allowing the situation in Northern Ireland to get out of hand and angry that the breakdown of political talks over the Falklands had left the Thatcher government with a way of redeeming itself near the end of its first term.
Now I can be angry with myself, angry with my generation for allowing us, you, me and our loved ones to become potential targets in the war on terror, the war on fundamentalism. Of course I might die tomorrow as I step out of the newsagents and somebody who enjoyed too many pre-Christmas drinks could drive onto the pavement - but at least I'll see my killer coming - the bomb on the tube, the train or the bus won't be so obvious.
We've been here before though haven't we, and we carry on regardless because that's the British way, stiff upper lip, don't show Jerry/Paddy/Abdul that they are winning the propaganda war.
The 5Live Uk News board this year was the place for the most vile, misguided, xenophobic rubbish I have read since the Daily Mail printed a front page in 1936 telling the great British public that they must resist any government moves to allow persecuted Jews into the country from Germany on the basis that "Jews are filthy and carry disease." Oh yes, we've really moved on in seventy years haven't we, really have grown up as a nation.
People are right to be scared, right to voice their concerns and right to worry that not enough is being done in their names to secure their future but Muslims have been blamed for everything this year from earning too much money, to wearing veils to carrying placards in protests. If you dare to challenge sound of the ill-founded nonsense you are met with the usual response, you're a PC, liberal, tree hugging, make your own yoghurt loony. In the anti-propaganda war everybody was invoked from Richard Coeur de lion (lovely irony that), Cromwell, Churchill and even Bomber Harris.
I might not be a Christian but I reserve the right to (mis) quote from the bible and "just as you sow you shall reap," wasn't just a line from a song by Big Country in the eighties. Having sold arms to all and sundry during the eighties and then trained, used and ditched various groups for their own ends the British and American governments are being paid back big time. The problem is that the governments themselves are dying daily on the streets of Baghdad, Basra or on the Left Bank - we are now suffering from number blindness and number numbness. More than a hundred people have died this week in Iraq, did you notice?
We have become weary. In the age of 24/7 news coverage, wall to wall reporting, twenty four hour radio the announcement of a car bomb in Baghdad fits neatly between fog at Heathrow and Shane Warne retiring. Think about that. The single biggest political fuck-up in my lifetime gets thirty seconds between disgruntled holidaymakers and somebody who propels a ball just over sixty feet for a living.
"Things Can Only Get Better"
( D:Ream) - used by Labour Party in 1997
It wasn't all bad news on the political front in 2006. P.W.Botha and General Pinochet both died, both proving the old theory: fascist dicatators don't die, they just become honorary members of the Conservative party, to be a lie.
2 comments:
We all have some tendencies that probably would not be allowed by law if we spoke outside and not in the privacy of friends and family, you cannot lose all the negative side of human nature by issuing law after law but I still think the mass population are fair and decent and OK I'm biased but we all come from different social classes, genres, creeds, faiths(or lack of them)ages but we still get on.
But as you say the boards we left do seem to attract the most bizarre contributors and are very extreme in many views passed and if that was what I thought was classed as the normal guy in the street I'd be worried. Either because they are the future? Or I am out of step with everyone else. And if I was in such situation I think I would be happy to remain so.
I often quote what Peter Dealy said on one of his phone ins...you have the extremists who take a view whether left or right in politics and religion and those are who you will hear often either demonstarting or interviewed by the media but the mass public fall in the middle and probably are rarely heard as all they want is a quiet and peaceful existance but because they remain unheard, usually the extremists will win or get their way because the many remain silent.
Peter Dealy - there's a name from the past Gildy. He was right, I sometimes think there is a groundswell of public opinion that doesn't find its way out through normal channels. I also think that those who shout loudest tend to get there own way in the short term but in the long run the considered view usually wins through.
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