https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/15/spare-existential-angst-ineluctable-decline-west/
There we were, two years ago, fretting about the onset of what was already described as a pandemic but which had yet to take a grip. By and large, things were not that bad at all. The racing fraternity had gathered en masse at Cheltenham for the great National Hunt annual meeting, mostly oblivious to the public health calamity that was about to ensue.
Two years ago today we were still a week away from a total lockdown, a delay for which Boris Johnson continues to be lambasted, even though all the evidence shows it made no difference.
Britain’s excess fatalities for the period are no worse than most similar countries and yet at the time we were encouraged to believe this was a uniquely British disaster. We were “Plague Island” and yet it turns out that UK the death toll was below average for western Europe.
This propensity for doing ourselves down has grown over time. When I
was young, the narrative of national exceptionalism was strong. Empire,
victory in war and epic tales of great adventurers were celebrated not
condemned. Patriotism was a virtue not a sin.
Men were men and women were women and no one had any difficulty telling which was which. Over the decades, as prosperity has grown, life spans have been extended and we have become used to comfort and plenty, another disease has eaten into the body politic, that of declinism.
In Britain, this led to our joining the Common Market in a belief that, without pooling sovereignty with our continental neighbours, we were doomed to perpetual weakness. The establishment was obsessed with the idea of joining this club, even if it meant cutting our close ties with countries with which we had more in common, both culturally and emotionally, such as Australia and Canada.
The point is that there is always something to cause anguish and collective heartache, but what is important is to react in a proportionate way. We are currently in an extended bout of dread-filled angst that began with the financial crash of 2008 when it looked like the entire global banking system would fall over.
events
There we were, two years ago, fretting about the onset of what was already described as a pandemic but which had yet to take a grip. By and large, things were not that bad at all. The racing fraternity had gathered en masse at Cheltenham for the great National Hunt annual meeting, mostly oblivious to the public health calamity that was about to ensue.
That event was subsequently seen as a great seeder of Covid, as was Liverpool’s Champions League match with Atlético Madrid around the same time. Back then we called them “super-spreader” episodes because it stood to reason that thousands of people milling together must pass on easily transmissible illnesses.
But while that is demonstrably true, the pandemic would have happened even if Cheltenham had been cancelled. The virus was already here, brought in by visitors and skiers returning from the Alpine slopes.
Two years ago today we were still a week away from a total lockdown, a delay for which Boris Johnson continues to be lambasted, even though all the evidence shows it made no difference.
Britain’s excess fatalities for the period are no worse than most similar countries and yet at the time we were encouraged to believe this was a uniquely British disaster. We were “Plague Island” and yet it turns out that UK the death toll was below average for western Europe.
This propensity for doing ourselves down has grown over time. When I was young, the narrative of national exceptionalism was strong. Empire, victory in war and epic tales of great adventurers were celebrated not condemned. Patriotism was a virtue not a sin.
Men were men and women were women and no one had any difficulty telling which was which. Over the decades, as prosperity has grown, life spans have been extended and we have become used to comfort and plenty, another disease has eaten into the body politic, that of declinism.
In Britain, this led to our joining the Common Market in a belief that, without pooling sovereignty with our continental neighbours, we were doomed to perpetual weakness. The establishment was obsessed with the idea of joining this club, even if it meant cutting our close ties with countries with which we had more in common, both culturally and emotionally, such as Australia and Canada.
The point is that there is always something to cause anguish and collective heartache, but what is important is to react in a proportionate way. We are currently in an extended bout of dread-filled angst that began with the financial crash of 2008 when it looked like the entire global banking system would fall over.
I thought we would be pushing our belongings around some dystopian world in a shopping trolley like the father in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It didn’t happen, although we came close.
Then came Brexit, which half the country was convinced would lead to economic collapse, a run on the pound, the diminution of the UK as an influential world power and a permanent severing of our links with Europe. None of these happened either, nor were they ever likely to, but exaggeration is another character trait we find hard to avoid.
No sooner was Brexit “done”, than news came through from China of a novel coronavirus with the potential to spread rapidly from person to person. Not that the Chinese admitted as much at the time, any more than they were upfront about its provenance, which is increasingly believed to have been a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Then, as the pandemic abated and restrictions were finally removed – with February 20 dubbed “Freedom Day” here in England – that ominous noise we could hear from a far-off land was of Vladimir Putin’s tanks rumbling towards Ukraine. Just when it seemed like life was getting back on an even keel, Covid is beginning to look like a walk in the park.
Now the worry that keeps us awake at night is not just the plight of the poor Ukrainians or the wider economic consequences of the war, but the renewed threat of Armageddon. The shadow of the nuclear bomb, under which we lived during the Cold War, has returned to cast a pall over all of our lives.
A friend said to me the other day that he had never felt so depressed about events, which made me think that, in reality, we had lived through a golden age. Our parents had been bombed in the war and grown up when diseases like polio and diphtheria were still rife. Their fathers had been conscripted to fight in the “war to end all wars’’ which it turned out not to be. If they were shot or otherwise wounded, they had to endure the risk of infection long before the discovery of penicillin.
There has hardly been any time in history that has offered as benign an existence as that enjoyed by those of us born in the late 1950s and 1960s into a stable, democratic country like ours. We were not even called up to do National Service, let alone required to fight in a war. This applies not just to Baby Boomers who subsequent generations think got all the breaks. Those born since have had a few, too.
Most of us who have grown up since the Second World War have come to expect a steady state of prosperity, stability and contentment beyond the imagination of previous generations. We have lost a sense of historical perspective by overreacting to events precisely because life has, by and large, been good for most people most of the time.
The Hobbesian reality is that, for the greater part of man’s existence, wars, famines, pestilence and disaster were the norm just as they still are in some parts of the world. Across Europe and Asia, people happily minding their own business have for centuries suddenly had their worlds snuffed out by Romans or Saxons or Vikings or Normans or Mongols or a succession of Continental armies.
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events
There we were, two years ago, fretting about the onset of what was already described as a pandemic but which had yet to take a grip. By and large, things were not that bad at all. The racing fraternity had gathered en masse at Cheltenham for the great National Hunt annual meeting, mostly oblivious to the public health calamity that was about to ensue.
That event was subsequently seen as a great seeder of Covid, as was Liverpool’s Champions League match with Atlético Madrid around the same time. Back then we called them “super-spreader” episodes because it stood to reason that thousands of people milling together must pass on easily transmissible illnesses.
But while that is demonstrably true, the pandemic would have happened even if Cheltenham had been cancelled. The virus was already here, brought in by visitors and skiers returning from the Alpine slopes.
Two years ago today we were still a week away from a total lockdown, a delay for which Boris Johnson continues to be lambasted, even though all the evidence shows it made no difference.
Britain’s excess fatalities for the period are no worse than most similar countries and yet at the time we were encouraged to believe this was a uniquely British disaster. We were “Plague Island” and yet it turns out that UK the death toll was below average for western Europe.
This propensity for doing ourselves down has grown over time. When I was young, the narrative of national exceptionalism was strong. Empire, victory in war and epic tales of great adventurers were celebrated not condemned. Patriotism was a virtue not a sin.
Men were men and women were women and no one had any difficulty telling which was which. Over the decades, as prosperity has grown, life spans have been extended and we have become used to comfort and plenty, another disease has eaten into the body politic, that of declinism.
In Britain, this led to our joining the Common Market in a belief that, without pooling sovereignty with our continental neighbours, we were doomed to perpetual weakness. The establishment was obsessed with the idea of joining this club, even if it meant cutting our close ties with countries with which we had more in common, both culturally and emotionally, such as Australia and Canada.
The point is that there is always something to cause anguish and collective heartache, but what is important is to react in a proportionate way. We are currently in an extended bout of dread-filled angst that began with the financial crash of 2008 when it looked like the entire global banking system would fall over.
I thought we would be pushing our belongings around some dystopian world in a shopping trolley like the father in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It didn’t happen, although we came close.
Then came Brexit, which half the country was convinced would lead to economic collapse, a run on the pound, the diminution of the UK as an influential world power and a permanent severing of our links with Europe. None of these happened either, nor were they ever likely to, but exaggeration is another character trait we find hard to avoid.
No sooner was Brexit “done”, than news came through from China of a novel coronavirus with the potential to spread rapidly from person to person. Not that the Chinese admitted as much at the time, any more than they were upfront about its provenance, which is increasingly believed to have been a leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Then, as the pandemic abated and restrictions were finally removed – with February 20 dubbed “Freedom Day” here in England – that ominous noise we could hear from a far-off land was of Vladimir Putin’s tanks rumbling towards Ukraine. Just when it seemed like life was getting back on an even keel, Covid is beginning to look like a walk in the park.
Now the worry that keeps us awake at night is not just the plight of the poor Ukrainians or the wider economic consequences of the war, but the renewed threat of Armageddon. The shadow of the nuclear bomb, under which we lived during the Cold War, has returned to cast a pall over all of our lives.
A friend said to me the other day that he had never felt so depressed about events, which made me think that, in reality, we had lived through a golden age. Our parents had been bombed in the war and grown up when diseases like polio and diphtheria were still rife. Their fathers had been conscripted to fight in the “war to end all wars’’ which it turned out not to be. If they were shot or otherwise wounded, they had to endure the risk of infection long before the discovery of penicillin.
There has hardly been any time in history that has offered as benign an existence as that enjoyed by those of us born in the late 1950s and 1960s into a stable, democratic country like ours. We were not even called up to do National Service, let alone required to fight in a war. This applies not just to Baby Boomers who subsequent generations think got all the breaks. Those born since have had a few, too.
Most of us who have grown up since the Second World War have come to expect a steady state of prosperity, stability and contentment beyond the imagination of previous generations. We have lost a sense of historical perspective by overreacting to events precisely because life has, by and large, been good for most people most of the time.
The Hobbesian reality is that, for the greater part of man’s existence, wars, famines, pestilence and disaster were the norm just as they still are in some parts of the world. Across Europe and Asia, people happily minding their own business have for centuries suddenly had their worlds snuffed out by Romans or Saxons or Vikings or Normans or Mongols or a succession of Continental armies.
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Just look at the 'madness' that's been gathering pace over the last 20 years or so. A judicial system that no longer punishes crime, man made climate change nonsense that's being used as an imaginary excuse to impoverish us and make us vulnerable to hostile foreign players, mass uncontrolled 3rd world immigration that's still gathering pace despite our protestations, the bowing of authority to anarchist organisations intent in destroying our way of life, critical race theory being taught in schools, the lionising of all things LGBT and gender dysphoria and for the last 2 years, lies, cohesion, censorship of the media and trashing of civil liberties and world economy for a 'virus' which kills no one but the extremely vulnerable. Anyone who things all this is happening because of government incompetence needs to give their head a good shake.
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Then the counter argument is why worry yourself about something that was only a possibility and not appreciate and enjoy this 'Golden Age' until it came to an inevitable but unpredictable end? In fact that is precisely what we have been doing and is human nature.
I have always pointed out in discussion with others that in the 80's CND and other assorted malcontents tried to brow beat us all into the same manufactured and continuous trauma they assumed for themselves about nuclear winters. Today their offspring are trying the same thing only using the climate as the weapon of choice even though the nuclear threat is still around and only now is something to be concerned about unlike in the 80s
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The Cheltenham "super spreader" event was a great example of the hysterical lies propagated throughout the crisis by people desperate to sensationalise and exploit a medical emergency for political ends.
Cheltenham drew over a hundred thousand visitors. Some of them contracted Covid, some of them probably contracted it at Cheltenham. However the Covid case data for Cheltenham and Gloucestershire more generally showed nothing exceptional during the early stages of the pandemic. Indeed during the First Wave the whole area was generally underrepresented vs Covid hotspots with London and other big cities such as Manchester being the epicentre of infections.
The argument goes "ahh but all the racegoers were outsiders who mixed with each other and went home to spread it in their own communities". Aside from there not being the slightest evidence of serious outbreaks across the country (and Ireland) being seeded by Cheltenham racegoers it also makes no sense.
Cheltenham is a four day festival that sees tens of thousands of visitors descending on pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels, B&Bs and shops around the town of Cheltenham and surrounds (not just the racecourse). Plenty of local people attend the Festival and many more enjoy the bars and pubs over the week.
it is simply not credible that the 2020 Festival could have been a super spreader event and there be no significant signal in the local Covid data.
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Its only the spoilt middle class young and media types. Most people I know are happily getting on with life, enjoying friends and family and making the most of the time we have
My nieces and nephews, and the children of my comfortable off friends seem determined to tells us we're all hideous, phobic hateful people responsible for all the ills through out history.
No wonder they're so miserable
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Western society probably reached its zenith on September the 10th 2001. A terrorist attack in New York the following day threw the entire World into an over-reaction and it has been steadily downhill since then.
Our basic freedoms have been cut and curtailed bit by bit, to the extent that we cannot travel without being security checked at every turn, we cannot socialise if the government thinks we might be infectious and we cannot think whatever we might want to think without the police being sent round to charge us with some ludicrous crime.
And I genuinely believe that the BBC's role in sensationalising the news and highlighting the victims of any and every event has done more to accelerate this downward spiral than any other institution in this country.
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Nukes would make it different, and Putin has openly made that threat more than once in the last 14 days. Nuclear war would be a serious game changer that some nuclear armed nations would have some difficulty in staying out of.
The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction depends on you firing your warheads before your opponent has a chance to launch his at you.
If a single tactical nuke of the type currently deployed by Russia was detonated in this increasingly desperate conflict, the world might collectively holds its breath and wait for the second shoe to drop. We might be able to call it a terrible mistake and perhaps even using it as an excuse to end the invasion.
But the doctrine relies on getting missiles off the ground as soon as possible. Would the less stable regimes want to launch their missiles and get their retaliation in first?
Iran, North Korea, India and Pakistan are all very volatile nuclear armed countries where heated covert wars have been ongoing for years. If they saw the flag had gone up, would they want to risk not using their deadly toys before their hated opponent?
As a species we seem to lurch from crisis to crisis redistributing resources after major conflict but would there be much left to redistribute amongst the nuclear wastelands?
Johnston has been fiddling as Rome burned. Yes Mr Johnston, let's all stay buried in our tittytainment - we will own nothing and be happy®!
"we will own nothing and be happy®! " Most people who go on about this statement don't seem to have read the rest of it, so have no context. As far as I could see, it's supposed to be a generally good thing. Many people, especially the young, don't really want the responsibility of owning things. It seems strange to me, but look, for instance, how many people lease a car and never really own it. They pay a load of money; they pay a load more money every month to be able to use the vehicle, and at the end if they want to own it, they pay yet more money. Yet many of them don't bother with the last part, they prefer to start again with a new one. The fact that they never own it is evidenced by the fact that they have to hand it back in pristine condition, so someone else can buy it. It just doesn't bother them. And plenty of people would be quite happy with an automated on-demand taxi service. Lots more people don't buy music any more, not even as a download. They just pay to be able to listen to it when they want. They don't buy a lawnmower, they hire a gardener. They don't buy tools, they hire a handyman. I'm too old to subscribe to these ideas, but a lot of people seem to think they're great.
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The issue is that pretty much all the "west" have been living with corrupted establishments for 20 years - first visible with the dotcom crash when GWB dropped interest rates rather than raising them, preserving his crony businesses through market manipulation, then 2008, where the UK and US blatantly paraded their privatising of profits and socialising of losses, shoving all the poison into the Bonds Market via QE. They even bragged, repeatedly, on the MSM that people would not understand what al the bond market stuff would mean. Then to fawning over international wealth, selling the country to allcomers and breaking the Nation with mass migration.
Notice the changes over time - don't pretend things are the same, because they aren't, these are profound and irreversible material changes to this country, and they are pretty much all adverse and comprised corruption - we have been hollowed out, with the wealth extracted transferred to the already wealthy. The British People are in for serious decline whilst the Upper class and other monied parties restore their stranglehold on power.
For the past twenty years, it has been about ramping private and public debt, transferring the borrowings to the rich - call a spade a spade, they have stolen the future.
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I have seen a lot of terrifying existential crises come and go. They don't seem to stop the relentless progress of the western world.
More to the point in every crisis - the Cold War, the stock market crashes, Chernobyl, the Y2K bug, 9/11, COVID - there are loud voices claiming that 'things are different this time' yet they almost never are.
On the other hand that can breed complacency. At some point they will genuinely be different. In July 1914 there were doubtless lots of intelligent people writing articles like this one saying 'there's nothing to worry about, it will blow over, it always does'. How wrong they were.
We can't know whether the Western world is in meltdown but there are some genuinely worrying signs. The madness of the COVID lockdowns is just one shock wave of many. The rise of social media, trolling, cancel culture, fake news and identity politics is a cancer eating the heart out of democracy.
Worse than either of these is the emerging dominance of a view that it is a basic human right to live beyond one's means and that the job of governments is to allow people to do so. The 4 day week (being introduced in Spain), the right to 'shirk' from home - soon to be enshrined in UK law surely - public sector pensions that no state can ever finance, social care for the elderly that leaves their private estates untouched....this is a road to ruin.
Best not to worry too much though. It might all blow over.
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‘Cancelled’, the 1804 train with supposed links to slavery
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/15/steam-trains-latest-victim-cancel-culture-national-museum-wales/
National Museum Wales gives first steam-powered locomotive an ‘absurd’ new context as part of ‘decolonisation’ of its collection
Trains could face a new kind of “cancellation”, as National Museum Wales reviews steam-powered technology over claims it was linked to the slave trade.
Richard Trevithick unveiled the first steam-powered locomotive in Wales in 1804, but National Museum Wales (NMW) displays covering his revolutionary invention face being altered as part of a process of “decolonising the collection”.
Trevithick had no links to slavery, but the museum has claimed that the steam power he harnessed helped drive an imperial British economy that was tied to the slave trade.
A replica of the Trevithick locomotive used in the first steam-powered rail journey faces being relabeled by NMW to include information on these claimed links between industrial technology and colonialism, as curators audit displays “rooted in colonialism and racism”.
A statement from the museum said: “Although there might not be direct links between the Trevithick locomotive and the slave trade, we acknowledge the reality that links to slavery are woven into the warp and weft of Welsh society.
“Trade and colonial exploitation were embedded in Wales’ economy and society and were fundamental to Wales’ development as an industrialised nation.
“As we continue to audit the collection, we will explore how the slave trade linked and fed into the development of the steam and railway infrastructure in Wales.”
Cornishman Trevithick adapted technology used in high-pressure mine pumps for use in powering early locomotives, and tested his invention in the world’s first steam-powered rail journey, which took place at the Penydarren Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil.
NMW owns a life-sized replica of this locomotive - housed at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea - and has indicated that any future labelling for the engine’s display will outline the connection between steam technology and slavery.
It has previously been argued by the National Railway Museum that steam-powered machinery drove sugar mills on plantations and cotton gins in industrial cities, while railways aided colonial expansion.
It has also been argued that many early financiers of the rail network had investments in the slave trade, although it is not claimed that Trevithick had any such backing.
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Looking for slavery connections only applies to figures in British history.
English Heritage jumped on the bandwagon and commissioned a project to celebrate the contribution of black people to our heritage. They paid an artist to paint the African Roman emperor Severus. This man has been declared "black" because he was born in Libya of Italian and Punic (Syrian) descent, but must have had some sub-saharan African blood somewhere in his ancestry, surely? He came to Britain with the largest land army ever to campaign in Britain. English Heritage think they should spend thousands of pounds to celebrate him doing some repair work on Hadrian's wall and we should be impressed.
They have neglected to mention Roman historians records that Severus had captured the Parthian capital and took 100,000 into slavery just before he came over here; that rather tenuous connection to slavery is easily missed by current diligent researchers. They have though employed someone to trawl through all the accounts for one of their stately homes to look for any investments that could be linked to slavery.
EH have also missed the Roman historical record of his genocide of a British tribe called the Maeatae. Severus was so upset with their continued resistance that he ordered his men to "let none escape destruction. Not even the babe in the womb" He wiped the entire tribe from our history, depopulated and devastated the area between Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall and it took the area 100 years to recover. After many letters to them they have conceded that Severus was "hard" on the Maeatae. The genocidal maniac wiped them out! But hey ho what's not to like about the man voted the 25th greatest black Briton?
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Uncomfortable facts:
By 1848 we had spent £20million buying the freedom of slaves; £28million on naval operations to stop slave trading by the rest of the world; £1.5million on provisions and safe havens for freed slaves and continued this for another 60 years. The entire rest of the world didn't come close to matching the time, money and lives we spent stopping them from slave trading and engaging in slavery.
African slavery of Africans involved regular religious and cultural sacrifice of humans . British missions to the interior to ask Africans to trade palm oil instead of slaves, were mocked and came back "disgusted beyond description" at the barbaric slaughter and mutilation they witnessed. The Oba of Benin, lauded by St Paul's Cathedral to contextualize the capture of Benin city, murdered 12 slaves on the anniversary of his Dad's death; one at his annual wealth count; and one, usually a woman, murdered and hung in a crucifixion tree whenever it rained too much or too little. He even asked from his prison cell, if he could send out men to capture Urhobo people to sacrifice to his rain God and the despicable British wouldn't let him, the colonial oppressive b#st*rds.
Africans had so little regard for the lives of slaves that when transporting to the East coast they were rarely fed or watered and all slaves not considered worth the Zanzibar customs dues would be discarded into the sea before entering Zanzibar harbour.
In 1998 Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, told an audience including Bill Clinton: "African chiefs were the ones waging war on each other and capturing their own people and selling them. If anyone should apologise it should be the African chiefs. We still have those traitors here even today."
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We must look at this from their point of view.
It wasn't invented in Africa and despite years of research by the correct "historians" there are no tenuous links that can be made up to make it look as though it was - therefore must be disparaged as a clear symbol of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial oppression.
A white man from Cornwall invented something that was so useful and clever - therefore must be disparaged as a clear symbol of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial oppression.
It was used to move the world into a modern, mechanized age that contributed to raising living standards world wide; but it benefited the Welsh - therefore it must be identified as a clear symbol of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial oppression.
Steam engines were not used in the Atlantic slave trade; but were used to stop the Atlantic slave trade; and to stop the East African slave trade; and to stop the overland African slave trade - uncomfortable British History; can't mention that.
Trains were not used until after we had abolished the slave trade and we were expending huge sums of money to stop the rest of the world from trading in slaves; the most costly international humanitarian action in modern history and not matched by the rest of the world - uncomfortable British History; can't mention that.
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This sort of thing has gone far beyond madness. It would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous. Think, people! Where do you keep your brains, if you have any? You're supposed to be historians. It was the social, political and economic momentum initiated and then pursued (along with colonialism) by the British that ultimately gave us western civilization and the free world. Until quite recently, slavery was the norm in practically every part of the planet. It was practiced throughout Africa, the pre-European Americas, the Middle East and Asia. North Africans raided Europe for slaves as far as Ireland. It was the White nations of the New World and Europe that were the first to abolish slavery but it remains firmly established to this day in many other places.
Britain and her cultural derivatives have been consistent leaders in the advancement of human rights, freedoms and prosperity. Does anyone look for such advancements to China, Russia, North Korea or the nations of Africa? When people decide to migrate, where do they choose going? We all know. They clamour to get into Britain, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or parts of Europe sharing the values of those "colonial" outposts. They know better than to beat for succor on the gates of Beijing, Moscow, Juba or Jeddah. The NMW and others like it ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, repent the gross ignorance and stupidity of their ways and study some of the history they claim to curate.
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