Like everyone, I enjoy pondering Covid insights. We’ve known for years, that growing numbers of the elderly (like myself) would overwhelm health care; without serious new taxation, Covid offers a gloomy preview of our future NHS. Also, our attitudes to employment have changed over the last 18 months; I discern a more empowered (choosy) future workforce, which frequently changes occupations. Also, record public spending has revealed the potential power of the state to shape economies; a trillion dollars means a thousand billion! The amount already dispersed to households and businesses could fund revolutionary social change; this opens new horizons. Also the pandemic intersects with two ongoing global crises: climate change which threatens the biosphere; the hostility between China and the US which threatens world peace.
We live in turbulent times, and have understandably devised our individual mental health survival plans; my garden is the alternative world where I exercise some control – find some predictability. The sweetpea crop this year was the worst I can remember, but the geraniums and the cornflowers flourished – now winding down. September’s a bit early, but in Sunday’s autumnal sunshine, I started potting spring bulbs; a six year-old (mum visiting next door) clearly wants to help, so I give ‘Stella’ a trough to prepare and plant 16 daffodil bulbs. I’ll probably have to re-do it but the wee one is totally captivated by her task. It’s the same for me, of course; the issue is not how productive we are, but how absorbed.
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The 1987 American film, Ironweed, made a big impression on me; Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson are homeless alcoholics, roaming the streets, running out of options. For no reason, this week, I recall the scene where Streep expresses concern about ‘surviving another winter’; I may be more anxious than I realise. This rather bleak article, by an economic expert, speculates that things could unravel in the UK in the coming months: full hospitals, disrupted food and energy supplies, rising prices and interest rates…… What I need is a new project to lift my mood over the dark months; preferably it would require that I locate on one of the Canary Isles.
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Thatcher’s privatisation of the energy sector has failed, along with the suppliers who gambled with gas and oil prices. How this connects to the manufacture of fertilizer and the humane slaughter of animals is explained in this Conversation piece. A re-nationalised energy supply would protect households from the shenanigans of free market speculation
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The urgent work of the brain after a traumatic event is to suppress it – but the body doesn’t forget – lasting physiological changes occur. Good Zoe Williams piece in the Guardian about a 2014 book, enjoying a widespread revival: The Body Keeps the Score by psychiatrist Bessel Van der Kolk. Important insight.
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Even those of us who despise Boris Johnson’ values, acknowledge with concern his killer political instinct – currently pointed at Britain’s broadcasting media. Channel 4 is threatened, and ‘impartiality’ is up for grabs, but Will Hutton in the Observer argues that the Tories would be foolish to take this on – that we Brits cherish our public service broadcasting.
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I have fond reflections about the life of Sir Clive Sinclair who has died aged 81. I admire that his astonishing creativity included as many ‘failures’. I admire that he put his ideas and inventions ‘out there’ for everyone – personal wealth was not important. This is a tribute to him from the UK games industry – enabled by his early affordable computers.
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Robert Burns’ ‘A Man’s a Man For a’ That’ was sung at the opening of the Scottish Parliament; compare with the message of Rule Britannia.
“Is there for honest Poverty that hings his head, an’ a’ that; the coward slave – we pass him by, we dare be poor for a’ that! For a’ that, an’ a’ that. Our toils obscure an’ a’ that, the rank is but the guinea’s stamp, the Man’s the gowd for a’ that. What though on hamely fare we dine, wear hodden grey, an’ a that; gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that. For a’ that, and a’ that, their tinsel show, an’ a’ that; The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, Is king o’ men for a’ that. Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord, wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that; tho’ hundreds worship at his word, he’s but a coof for a’ that: For a’ that, an’ a’ that, his ribband, star, an’ a’ that: The man o’ independent mind he looks an’ laughs at a’ that… “
