Brave New World

Yeah, we get it. So what? 03/10/2025

I have noticed recently that I have become increasingly disengaged from the news. More specifically, I choose to turn away from the most important development, or “story”, of my lifetime- namely the advance of authoritarianism and its existential threat to liberal democracy. Perhaps it’s a sign of battle fatigue that is most acutely seen in the United States in the second Trump term. The outrage and protest, on the streets and on the thousands of column inches across most US media, is now muted if not altogether absent compared to 8 years ago, although in the case of the media that comes from naked self-interest rather than exhaustion. However, tiredness doesn’t cover precisely why I am shunning my liberal outrage podcasts- Quiet Riot, Behind the Lines- of this world now. I am beginning to feel that focusing on this is now just a colossal waste of time.

Most people are not into politics. My recent foray into Premier League football, cricket and- weirdly- golf has opened my eyes to the amount of time and thought that goes into commentary from millions of my fellow countrymen into sport. By contrast, politics only engages about 10% of the population. Either Plato or Aristotle pointed this out using roughly this percentage. Instinctively, this seems a little on the high end, and I honestly believe this historic level of engagement took a dip in the 1990s and never recovered. When there is no longer an existential threat to the world- a situation peculiar to the 1990s- and the economy is more or less OK, why bother? I was deeply frustrated in those days as I believed then and have been proved right since that it is important for every citizen’s duty to be politically engaged, otherwise the institutions that form the backbone of our civilization weaken.

By 9/11 too many citizens’ muscle memory had weakened or had never had the chance to fully form. Howard Stern side-kick Robin Quivers said that event drove her to lose weight and be fitter- at the time she reflected that she would not have been physically capably of walking down the stairs of the Twin Towers if her life depended on it. Unfortunately, no-one took the other lesson- one that I dearly hoped at the time- that people would be driven to understand the geopolitical world a little better. There was no chance of that happening, particularly in the US, as the Bush administration drove through a war march against Iraq. No time for thought, reflection, analysis- just red meat Us versus Them rhetoric and bomb, baby bomb. Fear, reaction, disillusionment from left and right about the war, following by the global economic heartattack of the 2008 GFC smothered any chance of becoming interest in world events, other than through the prism of doom.

In the meantime, those of us who have been fascinated by geopolitics have a had our plate full of historical, game changing events. Although almost relentlessly negative, we have been glued to this TV program, too far in to not see it through its (gulp) conclusion. Like the TV show Lost- non-watchers, most of whom gave up after Season 1, think us weird obsessives should get a life as the thickening plot is absurd and is cranking its remaining watchers’ stress levels up to new highs. We have so many access points to commentary, analysis, with the added benefit that we are in a permanent series of weeks where decades happen (HT Lenin). The result has been that the gap between followers and disengaged has never been greater. As events are no longer fun to cover, and the future looks really fucking terrifying, we hyper informed political obsessives are being primed for the arrival of a potential catastrophe. But we are left only talking to each other and we are too small is numbers to stop what could easily happen. We need the disengaged but have forgotten how to talk to them, and they have long since forgotten how to listen. Even more worryingly, it is the far right who have figured out the language to deploy to engage them.

Browsing through my podcast feed I thought to myself, “I really don’t need to listen to Anne Applebaum or David Frum warning that the US has entered authoritarianism” or Andrew Harrison warning that Farage could easily destroy UK democracy. I know that to death. I know it backwards. I could sit down and write in one go an entire book about how we came to reach this destination and how dreadful it would be if Farage gets in in 2028, along with a Trump third term! What difference does it make if most people shrug their shoulders, say the world’s gone mad and you can’t trust any institutions any more. Me listening to more of the same Cassandras isn’t going to change anything. Nothing I have done in the last nine years has.

Testing 25/09/2025

Do I still own this domain? Only one way to find out

Where are we now? 02/03/2021

A year ago today Boris Johnson attended his first COBRA (Civil Contingencies) meeting to discuss the threat of COVID 19, having missed the previous five meetings. A year ago yesterday Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds announced their engagement and her pregnancy. This personal news is perhaps the last demonstration our Prime Minister could give of frivolous dead cat news before the impact of the global pandemic was unavoidable. As I write this, we have just experienced a glorious spell of spring sunshine, chilly but cloudless and reminiscent of the eerily perfect weather the UK enjoyed for two months from the start of the first lockdown in mid March. This recent spell marked the end for many the most tedious, gut-wrenching, gloomy, scary winter any of us can remember. After an additional 80,000 COVID deaths in the UK, occurring from November and peaking at 1,500 a day in January, the announcement of a roadmap completely ending of lockdown restrictions culminating in late June has combined with the serotonin of the first strength of spring sun to lighten everyone’s mood.

What a year it has been. As I haven’t posted anything in a while, and my writing skills are rusty- to put it kindly- I am not about to provide a chapter and verse review of the year. I may in subsequent posts. There are a number of societal factors, such as income inequality, the digital divide, and the role of ethnicity in the pandemic I would like to deal with separately. Similarly, other political factors- such as the dissolution of the British identity and the inevitable break up of the UK, have been accelerated by COVID, which I’d like to analyse. Brexit, the politicisation of central banks, and the return of inflation- issues and trends that were well on their way before the pandemic- will also be covered separately. Almost nothing in society has been unscathed by COVID. Now that, god willing, the immediate health crisis looks to be ending the collateral damage and permanent change in society will become is increasingly apparent. How will we respond? Are the 2020s a decade of much needed hope and recovery. I hope so, as the last decade has not been one of the best- the last five have been a complete horror show. The darkest hour precedes the dawn? I used that sentence back in May and look where it got me.

The most dangerous moment so far 13/05/2020

I’m old enough to remember when time progressed in a broadly linear fashion. It was pretty easy remember the day of the week, if not necessarily the day- the opposite applied once a year between Christmas and New Year. The spacetime continuum ruptured in mid March with the lockdown. Britain’s favourite manic depressive Stephen Fry was asked at the start of the lockdown what would be the greatest change people would notice. He said that time would take on a new dimension. He was absolutely right. Time has never been the same since. The last two weeks in March seemed like an eternity. April lasted three days.

It is incredible to think that it was less than two weeks ago when we looked on in horror at the prospect of many US states ending the lockdown without any significant fall in deaths or cases. What kind of death cult had taken over such a previously stable functioning democracy that would lead to governors willing to sacrifice the lives of their citizens to restart the economy or worse- a tweet of approval from Trump? I heard reports of a type of peer pressure one associates with school about being bold, strong and needing to shed paranoia about a virus everyone was sicking of hearing about.

Fast forward to to this week and the UK finds itself in a semi-lifting of a mild lockdown while death rates remain stubbornly high. Criminally confusing messages by Johnson on Sunday 10th May in an address to the nation, and then a statement in the Commons the following day was series of contradictory messages about easing, but with the main message: if you cannot work from home, you need to go to work. Shops are opening, business are back and while there is serious unease about the lack of clarity from the Government about what is permissible there is a palpable sense of relief that “we are all returning back to normal”. Reception year pupils are due to return to school on 1 June, and rightwing newspaper columnists are rounding on “lazy school teachers” voicing concerns about their public safety. You can feel the mood is a lot closer to the US mood of elation and frustration with people who were still acting like this was, oh I don’t know, the most terrifying public health emergency we have faced in a century. I am largely shielded from this, as my company has made clear that we will most likely be working from home for many months yet. Most of my friends are in the same boat. Our youngest daughter will not be returning to school under any circumstances until the next academic year and we will continue to shield ourselves, particular against an almost inevitable stronger and more deadly second wave in the next month or so. We are lucky to be in our socio-economic group. Many many others are not. An avoidable massacre looks like to take place, with the casualties disproportionately made up of the poorer and more vulnerable in society.

God bless the NHS 26/03/2020

At 8pm this evening thousands of people across the UK stood outside their doors and clapped to show their support for NHS workers. This comes after over 500,000 people volunteered to act as a support for the NHS, in ancillary activities professionals do not have the resources to focus on, as hospitals are now facing a “tsunami” of COVID-19 cases in hospitals in London- about a week ahead of there rest of the country. Nicky stood outside applauding while I was finishing hearing Chapter’s 1 to 3 of Eva’s story she had written.

I am feeling a rollercoaster of emotions this week. Utter fear on Monday, followed by feeling upbeat on Tuesday, geopolitical despair yesterday with Trump’s attempted politicitsation of the pandemic yesterday. Today I am feeling more personally confident that I have a chance of missing contracting the virus, good news from our supermarket where panic buying seems to be subsiding (it still feels eery and uncomfortably tense there) and I have nice problems to deal with at work. This is mixed with a growing sense that our economy and society has been radically altered forever.

The impact on society, with not only a devastating economic impact on the vast percentage of the population. I have heard anecdotal reports of terrible personal psychological sacrifices and problems resulting from the lockdown. The idea that this will last for months, which it looks like it needs to, is scary in terms of its long term effect. Of chief concern is the United States, where an increasingly transparent psychopath as President is pushing his country towards a health suicide. I am not sure if the US will survive this- it looks like its President is prepared to take that risk in a gamble to seek reelection in November.

My girls are in good form, although when we told Eva during our daily walk that we couldn’t go to her favourite cafe, shouted in front of a number of people, “I hate this stupid virus, and want it to go away forever”. We are all with you, Eva

The End of the Beginning or the Beginning of the End? 23/02/2018

Too much has happened in the space of time since my last post for a retrospective. There has been too much procrastination from me trying to account and analyse the cataclysmic events that have piled on top of each other in the last two years. I just need to get started again and provide a write a daily post on “the thing”- Brexit, Trump and the enormous and potentially terminal changes in world geopolitics and society.

As I write, Trump is addressing the CPAC convention in Washington- having suggested arming teachers in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting. This comes in an atmosphere of utter poison in the US, with death threats being made on traumatised school students who dared to speak up for gun control. I have long believed that America has been heading for a civil war. Until now I thought this would largely be a “cold war”, largely fought on social media and segregation and sectarianism similar to Northern Ireland. I now realise that moment has been with us for a number of years and we could be about to enter an actual, violent civil war going forward, with a complete breakdown in government. Russia will be delighted- an astonished- by how successful its cyber campaign to teat America apart is going. There is much much more to write about this, but my prediction is that the US is now on an irretrievable path to destruction. And it breaks my heart.

Meanwhile in the UK, 20 months after the Brexit referendum, the Government has finally agreed its position on the relationship with the EU- to negotiate a free trade agreement similar to the EU-Canada deal, but then try to embellish it by securing better access to the single market for goods and services through close regulatory co-operation- in other words, have its cake and eat it. The UK is heading for disorderly No Deal Brexit and is providing strong competition with the US as country heading towards dystopia.

All of this ties in with the hugely disruptive, distorting and dangerous effects of social media and tech.

All in all it feels, in February 2018, to be a very dangerous time to be alive. I hope we make it- it seems like we’re going to need all the luck we can get.

Testing One, Two, Three 06/06/2013

It’s been a long time. So much has happened in the last three years. Will be back up soon.