BAH HUMBUG!

I have been increasingly aware of how querulous the general mood seems to be at present. What thrilled me about the Scottish Referendum was the lack of apathy, look at that extraordinary turnout, and whilst the level of debate was certainly passionate people were at least arguing cogently about something that really mattered. What I hated was the sub-racist pro-Englishness that accompanied the victory for “no”. It smacked of football thuggery. “….’ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go…..”

People just seem not overly fond of people. We are retreating into grumpy tribes. We don’t like the Scots, we don’t like the government, we don’t like our jobs - there’s just a lot of “don’t like” flying around - especially in the Tory party. What is wrong with them? They seem to dislike each other even more than they dislike Labour. They are unhappy and they want to hurt someone, anyone…”ere we go”.

The idea should be to get the best out the assets we have. So we want to create the most productive alliance with all of our allies, harnessing the genius in Scotland with our engineering brilliance all over the country, with our creative fecundity in the arts and media, with our financial firepower in the City of London and if we can mobilise that with the best of the EU instead of balefully lamenting their foreignness then collectively we might get somewhere and create a world to be proud of.

Hey, how rose tinted are my spectacles?

The querulous thread came up in a conversation last week about increasing the number of women in key roles. Not because that would be fairer (although it would) but because it would strengthen us, because it would activate talent we are currently wasting. Why are we spending so much time living in the past rather than recognising that the new generations (what we call generations Y and Z) are different. They’re bemused by the xenophobia, selfishness and misogyny that exist and they won’t accept them.

Someone said “we used to rule the world - so what the hell went wrong?” So did Venice, Persia, Greece, Rome and Egypt in their time. Domination is a male concept. What we want to do surely is not rule but help create. Our influence for good is still enormous and if instead of getting cross, territorial and  thinking of life as a zero-sum-game we formed teams and groups to solve problems and uncover opportunities then we might be better off.

I was not always a fan of Bill Clinton but here’s what he said in a speech at Yale in 2010:

“A lot of these whacko things that are happening in … politics today are not really what they seem, they’re just people screaming — stop the world, I want to get off. The problem is you can’t stop it and you can’t get off. And since we’re all stuck, we better make it better together.”

Right on Bill. Right on.