Dear Dirty America

MICHAEL J BLAIR
Perthshire, Scotland

The clouds of political confusion haven’t begun to lift.

I would doubt if they ever will, even after whatever ugly compromise is eventually agreed by the fractured political parties at Westminster.

Such is the mess created, these clouds will hang over the UK for a generation. I mean an entire generation, not the mini generation which the SNP Independence Cult seems to be talking about.

There is no respect for politicians and after the last few years, I doubt there ever will be again.

When I was growing up, people looked up to their Member of Parliament. Our MP lived in the Old Manse in the village, where his children were taught in the local school. They had a live-in nanny, but none of us found this odd.

We lived in a place where we were surrounded by large estates, owned by the great and the good. Almost all these people were decent human beings who didn’t look down on others.

There were a few of them, mostly the people who had married “up”, who had “side”. This was a description of snobbery.

As I recall, I was never aware of feeling like a second class person. We all respected that there were social differences, but otherwise we all got on.

We grew up with the children of the estate owners, and looked forward to the arrival of them when their schools were on holiday. Of course they were all at public school, but they were just regarded as friends. There was no envy of the lives they had. We all got on with each other.

This may seem like a convoluted way of getting back to the original direction of this piece, but I used it as an example of how socially diverse people can deal with life, respecting our differences and using our similarities to good effect.

Had this model, which was the norm for large parts of the country, been adopted throughout the UK, I believe an awful lot of the political shambles which has been going on for decades, could have been avoided.

Envy is a cancer which has taken root in all areas of our lives. It has caused war and the deaths of millions of people across the globe.

Governments worldwide have brought this culture of fear and envy to people who in the past had managed to get along with their neighbours for generations, without too much trouble.

When a government decides it wants something another country has, it will find a way of taking it regardless of the consequences.

We then see this attitude filter down to the bottom of the pile, where upon seeing someone who has something they want, they simply resort to violence to take whatever they want.

The dreadful violence we see on the streets of most cities is a direct result of this envy.

Of course, when people see the huge divide between those who have and themselves, who haven’t, they will keep using violence.

The upsurge in knife crime is the result of decades of rampant greed. This has produced the underclass we now have to face.

Unless politicians can bring the gap between the rich and the rest of the population under control, this current crisis of violence will only get worse.

Unfortunately, I see no sign of this happening due to the ongoing greed which has infected millions of people.

We, the average sort of people are always going to be stuck in the middle, having to deal with the greed of the political classes and the desperation of the new underclass.

At no time can I remember seeing so many people sitting on the streets, begging for the tiny amounts of money, which is dwindling rapidly, handed over by the public.

Rough sleeping has risen dramatically in the last ten years.

This is utterly disgusting and disgraceful at the end of the second decade of the 21st century. We hear the usual platitudes from the usual twisted politicians. But absolutely nothing changes.

There are people who live in the UK who, out of their own pockets, could afford to build enough housing for every single homeless person, without missing the money.

I’m far from being an envious socialist, and I don’t want billionaires’ money.

I just think that their conscience should make them want to help their fellow citizens.

Unfortunately this isn’t going to happen, so we’re stuck with the faint hope that politicians will try to make life fairer for the less fortunate.

I feel that if the present situation isn’t changed, there will be serious social unrest, which once begun, will be impossible to halt.

Politicians should heed the lessons of history, but I don’t think they will. There’s no recognition of the severity of the problem.

And when they eventually pay attention, it will be too late.

[header photo of confused man courtesy of Ion Chibzii, Wikimedia Commons]