A GRUMPY OLD WOMAN WRITES: R.I.P. Great Britain. It was good to have known you.
Written by Frederica
I am in mourning. I am mourning the Country that I used to call ‘home’. The Country that I grew up in, received an education from – a proper education, not one that simply provides State Indoctrination in how to be a ‘woke’ clone; worked and paid my taxes in; raised my children in; looked after parents in their older age in.
It was a wonderful Country to be alive in. Looking back it seems like a positive Utopia when compared with the situation I find myself observing today.
We were not well-off. Every penny had to be accounted for. Consumer goods were expensive (as they are today) but one saved carefully for the things that one desired to own and appreciated them all the more when the goal was reached.
Computers were non-existent and TV did not appear in our house until I was well into my teens. But we children were free to play outside – we mostly inhabited the local park across the road. We formed cliques, fell out, made up again and generally behaved just like normal children do. We made up a lot of games of our own, got in people’s way sometimes and pretty much had a good time.
There were concerns that vaguely appeared upon our horizons such as the ‘cold war’ and the nuclear bomb. But that was for the grown-ups to worry about. We just concentrated on having a free and easy life.
When education ended and a working life appeared upon the scene, it came as a shock to find that we were suddenly required to pay towards the upkeep of the Country! Deductions from our wages seemed a bit harsh but everyone had to succumb so we became accustomed, eventually.
We even learned to take an interest in how things were being done by those who were ‘in government’, especially when ‘budget day’ rolled around. Tax rises were more prevalent than tax cuts of course, but just occasionally I remember hearing that we (the Country) had accrued a ‘surplus’ so that income tax would fall by 1d in the £ (or whatever it was). At that time taxes were worked out using tax codes and calculation books so it took several weeks for a ‘refund of overpaid tax’ to appear in the wage packet. It is all done differently now that the ‘miracle’ of computers has taken the hard work out of calculation of wages for the accounts departments!
University was not ‘for everyone’ in those days. University for most was a financial impossibility even if you were bright enough to pass the entrance exam for grammar school and get the necessary certificates of education. Getting married, finding a home and bringing up the children was the ‘norm’ for most folks. It was something that we took for granted would be our destiny. Some were lucky enough to be ‘Stay-at-Home’ mums but most mums I knew did some sort of part-time work – usually factory, field work or cleaning jobs where you could fit in with school hours or get neighbours to mind the children for an hour or two a day!
It was a bit ‘hand-to-mouth’ but it worked reasonably well. And I don’t remember many children in my area suffering from neglect or malnutrition! My mother did part-time work so if I got home from school before she arrived home I either went next door or sat on the front steps playing a game of ‘jacks’ or ‘solitaire’ to while away the waiting time. No-one bothered me and I did not feel deprived.
We were free to live our lives as well as we possibly could. We felt a sense of ‘community’. There was no sense of oppression or concern about the way in which we were governed. On the odd occasions when some kind of scandal arose, it seemed remote and was usually soon settled by a few resignations and by-elections to clear the air. General Elections usually provided some little excitement if the government of the day had been seen to be profligate with our tax money or had been caught out in a bit of ’cronyism’.
Then there was a change of administration, acrimonious accusations of wrongdoing from the incoming party against the outgoing but pretty soon it all settled back into the same old groove. But, at least there was ‘change’. There was no suggestion then of ‘voting fraud’. Nor was there any suggestion of boundary rigging to manipulate the voting share. There were always ‘safe seats’ but these were usually in the extremely well-off areas or, conversely the ‘poorer, working class areas, where unions were strong.
We were proud of our history, proud of our old Empire – quickly morphing into the commonwealth. We were fiercely patriotic and protective of our reputation for having the ‘Mother of Parliaments’, a reputation for fair play in sport and in our dealings with the World.
Now, all is changed. In a frighteningly short pace of time, we have descended into a fearful, chimeric chaos. We are no longer sure that our enemies are beyond our borders. It begins to seem more and more as though the enemies of the Nation have breached our defences and are now inside the Citadel. Worse still, it appears that those enemies are almost entirely ‘home-grown’.
The behaviour of the political ‘class’ has become terrifyingly threatening towards the people they pledged to serve. Watching the way they have abdicated their responsibilities towards us, their attempts to reduce us to mere pawns on their self-interested path to total control and intimidation – the sight of a once-free and free-thinking people being cowed into complete and abject submission through a climate of threats and fearfulness is something that appears to have no parallel in the history that most of us remember.
I feel totally bereaved. I fear that my state of mourning will be of very long duration.
