Fortress Britain

Our nation's current government would have us believe we we are assailed by potential invaders from all sides. 'Migrants' crowd at our edges, determined to stream in and rob us of all our jobs, homes and wealth, Europe wants to turn us into a satellite state of a 'United States of Europe' and take away our sovereign powers, the poor, disabled and elderly of our own population are contributing nothing to the bank accounts of our nation and their lazy expectation of being supported by our hard working families is draining the nation's wealth.

What unspeakable tosh!  What is actually draining the nation's wealth is a bunch of greedy so-called business people who have no idea whatsoever how to run a long term, healthy business and are asset stripping the country for the short term gain of themselves and their mates. As Britain discovered during the war, being able to supply your own country with the basics of survival is very important, exports are great to provide extra income, but if you rely on imports for the basics, you are soon in deep trouble if an emergency arises. On our trip to the seaside today, I noticed a new 'solar farm' being erected near Bristol - great, for our energy independence and ecology, not so great, when you realise it is being erected on good farming land, that could be grazing animals or growing fruit or vegetables.  Why are we importing low quality, tasteless food from abroad (which is superficially 'cheap' but of dubious nutritional, environmental and taste quality) when we have fed ourselves well, and deliciously, from our own farms for centuries, until very recently? Because it's not profitable for those who are already so financially wealthy they've lost all contact with reality, that's why.

Some of our greatest British companies, such as Cadbury, Fry, Rowntree, now, sadly asset stripped to multinationals for the benefit of said wealthy fools, started out, not to garner wealth, but to benefit the people of this country. All those famous 'chocolate' names were companies started by Quakers, to try and create an alternative to alcohol and pubs, in a time when alcohol had become just as serious a problem, if not worse, than 'binge drinking' today. The intent was to create places to meet and socialise without alcohol, and to make chocolate fashionable instead! They treated their workers well, valuing their contribution to the business to the extent of building top quality housing and communities for them, with schools etc, rather than the squalid 'back to backs' most of the other workers of the industrial revolution were stuck in. These employers also cared for their elderly workers, instead of tossing them into the workhouse. These business methods created multinational businesses, only when they ceased to be family businesses, cleaving to moral principles did they deteriorate into mere money creators.

Our worldwide economies today are run by gamblers, playing with other people's money and lives to generate short term profits for themselves - the losses always fall on those whose money they have been gambling with, never their own. This isn't just bankers, this is the many multinationals on the stock market - they are gambling with the money and lives of their workers and customers, not their shareholders, the shareholders are pulling the strings. Only when we cease to buy the ideas, values and goods of the merely financially wealthy and greedy will we change this set up - and it IS a set up, and we are the fall guys.

If they won't think long term, and they won't, for our own sakes WE must. We cannot have a 'fortress' at all when we have sold vast swathes of it to China, America and heaven knows where else. We have sold of most of our independence already, willy nilly, because those running our country are financial and social illiterates. We, the people, need to take our country back, by being VERY conscious of where the money we spend goes, by supporting small, local businesses, by building community.  If we have community, and stand together, we are greater than those who would harvest us as 'Stock' (yes, that's how the DWP, for instance, refer to us, the citizens of this country)

Early history

On Christmas Eve 1951, my father was lost at sea off the Welsh coast in Cardigan Bay.  I was 4 and a half years old, and my mother had just discovered she was expecting what turned out to be my little sister.  This event left my mother destitute, as my father was a handsome, charming man, loving and a joyous companion, but prone to borrowing and putting bills behind the clock on the mantelpiece, metaphorically speaking, and never actually getting round to paying them! He left debts of over £3000, an enormous sum at that time.

We travelled wherever Mummy could find live in work, until my father's father also died, and left money in trust for my sister and I. My father's brothers bought a little terraced Victorian house in Canterbury (almost the exact twin of the house we rent now) for £500, and spent a further £500 gutting it, restructuring it and fitting it out to a modern standard.  That left a further £1000 to be invested to provide a little income, and gives a reasonable idea of the scale of my father's debt!

About 18 months after we moved into the house, I was sent to boarding school, just before my 8th birthday in 1955. My father's aunts had discovered that because he was a Merchant Navy Master Mariner, we were entitled to free education at the Merchant Navy School, which meant that my mother did not have to house, feed or clothe me for 2 thirds of the year - saving a fortune. So, in the spring, off I went to Bexhill, on the south coast,  near Hastings.

Let's gloss over how I felt, which was pretty bloody awful, to be frank. I knew this was taking an enormous load from my mother's shoulders at the time, and have only understood more deeply as the years have gone by - she was doing the very best she could for me, painful though it was for a frightened, lonely and bereaved little girl. I was fed and clothed for 10 years, better than I could ever have been at home, and taught to think.

That education was an enormous, incalculable gift - because it truly was an education, rather than mere processing through a schooling system. I met some extraordinary people, both fellow pupils, and fascinating and dedicated staff members. In the post war years there were still many British service families posted residentially all over the world, sending their children back to Britain for their education, and many of my peers only saw their parents for the summer holidays.

Many of the staff, too, were still in recovery from their experiences in the war, seeking out their way forward in the peace time world, emotionally  and physically battered by their war time lives. However, with few exceptions they cared deeply for the children in their care, and we were lucky. I remember the first few weeks of my first term, when I, and a couple of other little girls, were desperately homesick, the head master came to tuck us up at night, chat to us and sing us to sleep!

I was a funny little scrap, desperately short sighted, but not yet with spectacles, so I couldn't see the blackboard, and buck teeth to put a rabbit to shame. I was also desperately shy and unconfident - a bully's dream! It was a mixed school, unusually for boarding schools of the day, and the boys got much entertainment, for much of my school life, from pressing my buttons.

I was taught to have an open mind, to ask questions, and to understand,  rather than merely store information, and do/be what was expected of me. I was taught to respect others, but that respect needed to be earned, too. I had an education, while most of my contemporaries got schooling. I shall always be grateful for that.

Changes.

Life has gone through many changes since I last blogged (on Mwmyn's Makes) and so have my preoccupations.  Now I no longer am busy making and selling bears, I have more time to think of other things, and I have been particularly exercised by the state of our society, the levels of poverty and deprivation, and the links of these to the appalling attitudes to our habitat and financial wealth that have become more and more toxic since my childhood.

We are lucky enough to live on the only planet that, as far as we know, supports and nurtures organic life.  The diversity of that life, evolved over millenia, is mind boggling in its variety and beauty, from miniscule bacteria to to mighty whales and elephants - and yet we take it for granted.  We treat this glorious wonder as it were no more than an ever renewing, limitless resource for us to plunder at will, without thought for the consequences.  Any one who who has done basic physics will tell you that every action has it's equal, and opposite reaction - yet we behave as though physics will not fulfill this law with equal and opposite reactions to how behave, to the changes we make to the planet.

Clearly this is illogical (and extremely stupid) so we have built up an enormous debt of consequences over several centuries, and over the last century, in particular, that debt has increased exponentially as our technical and technological abilities have increased - but our consideration of consequences has not.  This is a sword of Damocles that is already starting to fall, as can be seen in increasingly phenomenal weather events, resulting in droughts, wildfires, flooding and other destructive storms. The oceans and atmosphere are warming, changing living conditions for many life forms, to the point of extinction in many cases, and these events are building to a cascade of change that is probably already unstoppable.

Human beings became such a dominant species not because they are so clever/intelligent/strong, but because they adapt so quickly to changing circumstances - yet now we are unwilling, to a suicidal extent, to adapt to the changing state of our habitat (for which we are largely responsible) because we have become so selfish, greedy and, yes, stupid.  Only those who can adapt rapidly, and survive with minimal technology, will survive the coming changes.

The vast cocktail of chemicals with which we have flooded the planet is having far reaching effects on everything, from the soil, water and plants, to all life forms' abilities to breed and perpetuate their species. We may have researched the effects of individual components of this cocktail - but we have absolutely no idea of their combined effects, let alone their long term consequences.

If we are to survive, we have to stop competing and start working together