If you are a reader in the UK then please STOP READING THIS BLOG RIGHT NOW.
You must head to the polls and VOTE.
Vote as if your life depended on it.
Because if the Tories privatise [Commonwealth spelling this time … just for you] the NHS, then it will eventually come to that. We are all in this boiling pot together and must stick together in this adversity because in a privatised world…
There is nothing else but society.
Thank you.
Now, let’s let Mr. Brian Eno have the last word…
– 30 –
![Chris Cross: 1952-2024 [part 2]](https://i0.wp.com/postpunkmonk.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ultravox-cross.jpg?resize=200%2C200&ssl=1)
Post-Punk Monk 
It was still dark when I voted:)
Ironically I live in a constituency with (normally) a huge Labour majority.
It’s like living in a bubble…reality outside isn’t looking so good.
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SimonH – As someone who lives in Asheville, North Carolina, my wife and I discuss “The Asheville Bubble” all of the time. Inside the “Asheville Bubble” we find that: restaurants cost at least 30% more than anywhere else – art costs 150% more – housing costs 40% more. Outside the “Asheville Bubble” we find that: #45 is popular. The more impoverished the area, the worse the education levels, the greater the resentment of educated people with a higher standard of living, and the greater the popularity of #45. It’s a vicious cycle, fed by think tanks and billionaires bleeding this country dry.
Let’s hope that tomorrow will be a brighter day!
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Sounds familiar!
Our liar can’t even lie without smirking, good grief.
I haven’t given up hope, but the best we can hope for is a hung parliament.
Let’s see…
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SimonH – Well, Obama lied with a straight face. I like the “tell” better! It’s a dead giveaway to see if #45 is lying; his mouth is open.
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Where I live, Liverpool, Labour always get a huge majority. Unfortunately there are other areas that Labour normally get in that are under threat. There are people who would normally vote Labour but are thinking of voting Tory because they want Brexit to happen. Johnson has tried to make this an election about Brexit because it gives him the best chance of an election win. Another five years of Tory rule will be disastrous for so many people though!!
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Andy B – Still, it says reams that BJ was only PM for 4 months before an election was called! Isn’t that some sort of record?
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What a depressing result!! As bad as bad could be!!
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Andy B – I think it’s time to reflect on what Matt Johnson said in “Heartland” 33 years ago. People the world over can now be nostalgic for the oppression they grew up with two or more generations ago. The Eastern Bloc. Thatcher. Reagan. It felt better than out lot now. What’s worse, now we have invasive technology beyond Orwell’s wildest fears to solidify the power structure.
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And what Orwell never imagined is that this invasive technology has been packaged in a way to make it so appealing to people that they willingly give into it, become addicted to the sugar it is coated in, and at this point would be miserable without it.
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JT – Touché! Of all the internet, the one thing I like best is having this blog. I would miss that, but the rest could go away and I’d cope just fine. I don’t use social media. I sue a strong ad blocker. I’ve avoided Google products for almost a decade. I’ve used a proxy browser since 2010. It’s time for a VPN, if I can find “the best” one.
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Funny you mention this, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about if given the choice would I like, to not return as such, but exist without the internet in the world? Clearly the convenience is now woven into all our lives so no doubt there would be pain, but still I can’t say I’d refuse if offered. But we’re all addicts now!
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Social media has created the subatomic family, where individuals are zeroed in their feeds.
It’s actually changing the way we are wired and diminishing retrospective thought with an urge to see what the next thing is, and the thing after that, and the other thing that comes after that.
Most of which have no substance whatsoever.
Divide and conquer is a time tested strategy and we’re self-isolating ourselves (i.e. we’re doing the divide part of the equation for them).
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Tim, have you read the Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour? Highly recommended.
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I have not however I sincerely appreciate the suggestion. Right now am reading a bio of women who animated for Disney in the 30s and 40s, after that is a history of joint US/Soviet actions in WW2 and then this will be next.
I caught an interesting piece last summer on W(isconsin)PR where the author of a book talked at length about studies on how social media is changing how we think. He also talked about data mining and how there are companies out there that are harvesting and collating your internet activity and turning it into a saleable metric for things like applying for jobs. Say you go online and post a lot of progressive left of center type stuff, you may score a 4. Someone is looking to hire someone for a job and they want someone who’s ranking on these criteria is a 6. They can retain the use of this company and say, here’s our applicants, we only want the 6s, or we’ll consider 6s and those adjacent. Chilling stuff.
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Disturbing stuff, I think what worries me most is how we seem to have walked blithely into this relatively new world without much thought. The implications are only sporadically being brought to the surface but the results have already taken hold. It makes me want to go back and study sociology all over again, but to this time pay more attention:)
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Tim – You said a mouthful, there! Without collective strength our goose is cooked! Dominance can’t exist without submission. And we capitulate for the fix; whatever the drug.
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The struggling northern labour towns that voted Tory this time is like the turkey that voted for Christmas and just like those turkeys, well …. they’re stuffed.
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We’ve gone through the looking glass, not sure when we’ll return!
It’s pretty bleak.
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SimonH – There are some days when I still can’t believe what has happens in the US. My mind still refuses to come to grips with the truth. At least you have a Parliamentary government that isn’t tied down to the horrible 4-year election cycle; half of which qualifies for an active election! #45 even managed to obliterate that pathetic standard by having election rallies to stroke his ego from day one!
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I find the same difficulty in understanding how we (the world generally:)) got to the current state of play, it feels like a very bad dream.
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Scarier combo:
Reagan + Thatcher
or
Trump & Johnson
discuss.
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Tim – Trump/Johnson! By far! But Reagan/Thatcher definitely salted the earth to produce these stunted mutants. But they were normally awful in comparison. The kind of awful we were used to dealing with in our lives all along. This new breed of awful is off the map.
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Agreement Thatcher was bad but this is worse.
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Can you please elaborate in what way BJ is worse?
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How long have you got? :)
Many reasons, one just for starters, Johnson operates on pure self interest, Thatcher, in my view not so much.
Thatcher, of whom I have little good to say, would probably have been horrified at the likelihood of leaving the single market as she seemed to have some sense of common sense/pragmatism.
Just my view of course.
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SimonH – Reagan/Thatcher were ideologues who actually believed in their Libertarian world views; toxic as they were. We currently have sheer grifters and looters with their hands on the till; heaven help us! But the ideologues must come first by necessity. It would not work the other way around. Reagan/Thatcher soften up the population to point where they are content with less and then pretenses can be discarded and the real business of governance under that precept can be practiced openly as we now see.
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