I do skim the news from time to time, although my view of things is somewhat larger than most people’s. I was unwittingly trained from quite an early age to think of things in centuries rather than years, since WW2 was last month as far as my parents were concerned. (I was blessed with a double generation gap) I then chose to study history over about 11 centuries all over the world because I was interested in how the overall machine works, what it looks like and how to tweak it effectively. Economic game designers who understand this are thin on the ground, and it is rare that we actually get to do much work.
This is why I find Conservative history a fairly small project. It is a subset of a subset, and not much trouble at all.
I think many of the current problems stem from a notion of togetherness. I am sure Boris will completely understand when I say that Conservative philosophy is not about togetherness. It is about separateness, the morality of gain and relying on a rather outdated veneer of respectability and responsibility. Britain votes Labour when Britain can afford to vote Labour, and the rest of the time they bring in the Conservatives, who, whilst obsessed with self, are at least better at doing sums.
That, broadly, is the English population’s understanding of politics and economics. When the school runs riot, vote for the prefects. When things are safer, then improve things for the kids.
I do not mean here to single out the English population, because I found in recent years that the Scottish population, whilst slightly better in median terms, was also pretty low grade in terms of awareness of politics as a debate.
The ‘form a team and win win win’ mentality is something we seem to be adopting in an effort to dumb the British population to the level of the American population, where aggression and verbal abuse takes the place of anything approaching discussion.
This may be helpful for increasing and maintaining social control, but it is not helpful at all for improving the nation for the future. I plan, in the course of the project, to be discussing this with fake Boris, who is alas still languishing in my kitchen awaiting eyelashes. (this week has been unusually harsh due to my inability to sleep whilst starting my new job) As promised, I will be doing this in interpretive dance.
For the moment, it might be an idea to return to positivity towards other nations, and moving the focus away from European and Russian issues. Easier said than done due to the media, but perhaps thinking about the personal PR might create something happier for people to focus on rather than not getting to play football for whatever reason. You have to remember, that no matter how childlike you are, everybody else is considerably more infantile, even the ones with eyebags and sore feet.
Of course, you might prefer to relax and paint cheese boxes. I wouldn’t blame you at all, but if you can hang in there for another five weeks or so, I should be in a position to at least start doing some work.
It is all a bit creatively intense in terms of the presentation for the moment, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Might be an idea to learn semaphore.
Much affection,
Ina