Family Silver

I am disappointed and that disappointed feeling is fast becoming a way of life for me. A bit like Charlie Dickens I always had great expectations. Which someone would always come along and dash. However, when it comes to life on the cut - positive expectations are not something to encourage. I'm not sure if its a thing with the English in general. Then again how do you define Englishness. After all it's only some of the English and their quaint ways that annoy me. 

Dapper, that's another word oft bandied about about the English and depending how dapper you are you might make it all the way to being a quintessential English. I like to think I have been around and seen it and done most of it. Yet, even now I look around me and I see a world that I don't understand any more.  Once we were a great nation that stamped out authority on much of the world. Then someone must have put something in the water. because today, we have lost the plot.

The home of an early democracy and the rich history that started with self governance based upon Magna Carta. Today I look around and I see a political culture where the average bloke in the street has no idea of how well, some right wing political classes are taking the money out of his pocket to line theirs. Time after time Mr Bloke fails to vote and the thing that upsets him is when his local pub closes down or he has to stand outside for a smoke. A pub that has been remodelled to the corporate standard.

Newspapers that thundered real news from around the world. Have been emasculated to being filled with 'celebrity news' which is drip fed to the mindless masses. Along with the occasional picture of some tart flashing her thrupenny bits. Investigative journalism is now hacking the cellphones of the celeb-cretins or those people like the Dowlers who's child being murdered is now considered to be fair game to journalist without a conscience.  It has gotten to the point where newspapers tell their pavlovian readership how to vote. The people have now spoken and the words they used were given to them by the newspaper proprietor.

Now the NHS is about to be dismantled and sold off to make a profit. Another asset or bit of family silver to be sold. Yet another publicly owned item off to join the long list including British Aerospace, British Telecom, British Airways, British Steel and British Shipbuilders, British Airports Authority and British Rail. Thatcher privatised no fewer than 50 state-owned assets. This means we could see another large traunch of formerly state-owned asset, and all the future profits that will come from it, being sold to foreign owned companies.

Going under the hammer – with fat fees for the merchant banks who steer their sale. Going to join the water, the gas and the electricity. It was ours, we owned it and we allowed it to be sold off. The money used to give tax cuts in the form of pennies to the people and billions to the wealthy. Now, there is no attempt at hiding the sell off. Undervalued such as Royal Mail and the sale of Qinetiq, the Ministry of Defence inventions arm whose sale handed millions of pounds of value to company directors.

All of these assets were sold of on the understanding that you would get a better more efficient and therefore cheaper service. Electricity prices and gas prices subject to the vagaries of a twitchy market went through the roof in the winter. Cheap as chips now its warmer. Wonder what will happen next winter when demand outstrips supply. 

Thanks to the Conservatives for having me.

Read more: Short Story: The Knowledge | Shortbread