[image error]“To bee or not to bee?”

I didn’t say that out loud, its a plot title to a short story, set in an isolated valley in the future, in a small farm in a miserable future, a future where there are no bees, a future where people have to pollenate crops by hand, but the story is about a single farmer, and she is determined to bring bees back from extinction. I am thinking of calling her Jack McDonald. Like I said though I didn’t say it out loud, I was just rolling the plot around in my mind, picturing the grey green valley merging with the clouded sky whilst grey haired Jack struggled to hatch the larvae. Its one of a lot of plots though and who knows I may even write it one day. The cafe was small and quite cozy so with the long warm winter nights closing in I leant back in my chair watching people walking past through the window, opposite me a couple of young women sat chatting inanimately, blankly as generationally generic as the rest of us are, what with conformity being a critical social component of the human condition you may even be able to theorise the individuality out of us. With one look I could tell that both had been costed out existence by the world of capitalism, individuality doesn’t thrive when you can only quote celebs and you tubers, and sometimes I do feel that our entertainment like the internet is reducing the human experience to a grey scale screen measurement. When the best future you can see is grey, secure and dull, I guess that does sum modern homo sapiens society up, ultimately reducing everything to a secure grey scale statistical life. I wasn’t even in a bad mood and wondered briefly where the thoughts had come from, like where the fuck in my subconscious did this bland logic downer originate? Both looked bored to death and had not reached there 20’s yet. Being a logic bomb on a good day I tend to wake up every morning with the same mantra.

“There is everything left to play for.”

Knowing human history reasonably well I often wonder what our hunter gathering ancestors would make of us. I may have been reacting to the darkness of the day, seriously all photographers are solar powered but The light was in absentia, as if London had become St Petersburg, the Coronavirus outbreak popped up in their chatter and when people are in the dark about a potential threat I listened as the two of them filled the chasm of ignorance with a darker potential than any virus could have. I know a fair bit about that subject and could’ve interjected but with Daily Mail pushing the Armageddon angle reality would’ve been an act of futility. Oh yeah reality. Thinking on it we can ignore millions of premature deaths because of poor air quality every year, which helps the virus a lot if the latest research on the side effects is anything to go by, reducing our immune systems but also our intelligence, and our cognitive abilities, is ignorable but the virus exploiting it isn’t. Modern Humans are really good at ignoring reality and embracing all number of fantasies though. I gazed out of the window and a man strolled brokenly passed, his hat emblazoned with the words. “Make America Great Again.” The irony that the British extreme right wing are more comfortable with the Stars and Stripes flag is almost unfathomable, but as an observation it may be an acute symptom of a nationwide inferiority complex.

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Zoning the Wuhan Coronavirus strain out of my mind I started to think about the events of this grand Brexit exit day. It may come as a shock to anyone beyond the British isles, but we have become desensitised to the racists and neo nazis that seem to be camping in Westminster now, screaming speeches about the “dangers of the muslim” if the rhetoric used to raise eyebrows it doesn’t anymore, even the local pubs that have been caught up in this racial division are creating a no-go zone of a sorts, the journalists hide out in the Old Shades pub, they do a good cup of coffee but I couldn’t even set foot in the others in the vicinity of trafalgar square. Even the private security of the Wetherspoons Lord Of The Moon pub opposite the old shades glare at the camera people and journalists that walk past the right wings new HQ, its a racist friendly bigot friendly dump of a pub and personally I pity the hapless tourist who fancies a traditional British beer there. I could say this is Whitehall, like the centre of power in the UK but when politicians spew polite racisms that will get expressed very differently down our social food chain, safe in the knowledge they can deflect any blame away from themselves our politicals almost openly encourage racism with their wordgames, they can shrug and say with democracy you get what the majority voted for. Yet Whitehall on the weekends seems to be the most divided place in the country, no go pubs are the tip of the iceberg. None of which you will ever read in a newspaper.

Oh yeah newspapers, stuck objectively up their owners arses as they are, they seem to have forgotten journalism in favour of propaganda. Which explains why a lot of serious issues are largely ignored. The chanting extremists are now a normal everyday site around Parliament, almost as omnipresent as the police are, yet in victory these phantoms of racism have become noisier, emboldened by their saviour Boris Johnson and emboldened by the new definitions of racism that are being experimented with by the political elites globally. Every time I walk away from Westminster my mind needs a bath, as the chanting sticks to my head like some kind of perverse glue. A small group of remainers were protesting, and then the leavers screaming and chanting started. “Traitors!” “Losers!” “Paedo lovers!” Were as if a warm up as the righteously angered racists focussed their angst upon the other groups. Then the singing started almost football match style. “We love you Boris we do!” And “Your not British, your not British, your not British anymore, oh your not British anymore!” Or, “Bye bye E U bye bye EU bye bye!” Saving the best till last I watched racists chanting “Nazi scum off our streets!” Which is not even ironic when the remainers are now labelled Nazis. Racists are not the problem the I are. Just as an additional note they had tried to burn a fireproofed EU flag before all of this, but I found myself in a precarious frame of mind as I watched it.

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So I left. Went to the Cafe and started to write this. Its taken 3 days, which for a blog piece is ridiculous. However the conclusions are not.

If the Govt has no control of the immediate area around Parliament what does that say about the rest of the country. Where Nigel Farages social experiment ends is beyond me or you to figure out. When racists can corrupt a political process then become a regular feature in the identity of the country by default, then any illusion of social cohesion is shredded. As stupefying as this is we have normalised racism, its an endemic part of our society, where anyone can spew the most insane ideas and claim freedom of speech. I used to believe freedom of speech came with a personal responsibility but lets face it decades of fantastical political nonsenses have taken there toll on the countries mindset, a mindset shaped by extremists. With leadership in absentia the English politicians have lost control of their dogs, granting every muslim hating, jew hating colour hating extremist a voice, leaving my definition of freedom of speech in tatters. Racism is now normal. Lost within the grey scale fabric of British, English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irelands new national psyches. Yeah we left Europe the other day but what I saw had nothing to do with it. Having just given up being European am I now required to give up being British? The chanting of the right wingers suggests so. As to healing the country, well that would require willpower, which seems in very short supply of late. We may even have to rewrite the Bible as the version we are using is too European, and with that in mind when it comes to Britain’s exit from the European Union I can only say.

“Blessed are the Bigots for they shall inherit the Earth.”

Steve Merrick 2020

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