I’m glad that my daughters are older now and have a better understanding of the world and that my granddaughter is too young to be aware. Otherwise I would have to look them in the eye and explain to them how, over the last few years, the liars and cheats have won.
‘But that is not fair’ they would have said, ‘the good guys are supposed to win.’ But life is not fair I would mutter.
In my heart, the country in which I was born and have lived all of my life has changed for the worse.
I have been watching the political story unfold, one of arrogance, corruption, incompetence, populism and blind nationalism and it has got me down. I strongly believe that there is evil in this government, too many things are done that are uncaring, inhumane and inciting to be the product of chance.
Yet I am not abandoning hope. It feels as if we are at the midpoint of the story, you know, when our hero is just about to give up, can’t go on but is persuaded to make one last effort. The pendulum will swing back and a better reality will be restored.
Already I can see signs of it returning. The crazy events in the USA are perhaps the death throes of its dalliance with populism and here chickens are coming home to roost, with ever closer ties to Europe seeming inevitable.
My hope and belief is that democracy will be restored and the UK, or what remains of it, will be a better and fairer place, not for an elite few but for the majority.
It is said that ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’, while Edmund Burke noted that ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’
I am saying then that the only thing necessary for the triumph of good is for good people to do something. However small, do something to turn the tide and bring us back from the edge of insanity.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 