What do they see that we don’t in this island where ecologically dead rivers run with sewage, three in 10 children live in poverty and 1 million experience destitution? A Ukrainian woman returned to her “very dangerous” war-torn home town to access adequate dental treatment. It’s not like our problems are well-hidden. Surely Parker read the New Yorker’s depressingly comprehensive recent piece about 2024 Britain: the “worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic wars”; stalled life expectancy; the return of rickets. How can you be “deeply in love” with that?
Because it's my country right or wrong, Emma.
It’s easy to be charmed by difference, I suppose. When my American friend visited, she got the full baptism of British fire: LNER trains, weather, heart-in-mouth driving on rough, single-lane roads, a bizarre encounter with some Richard III, erm, eccentrics and unwelcoming pubs peopled with ominously silent men. She loved it (except our road collision with a “garbage can”).
What a pity you can't. Or won't.
Crucially, too, A-list anglophiles can live in a perfect British bubble they have the means to maintain: Ted Lasso’s London of charming stuccoed houses and chirpy pub-goers; country idylls in Cornwall or the Cotswolds. Their 1% experience has little – basically nothing – in common with life for households on the UK’s average income of £32,500.
We are truly in the pit of national despair, understandably, and I wonder if it’s helpful to see through their eyes that there are good bits of Britain: Rob Delaney calling the NHS “the pinnacle of human achievement”, say, or Parker being thrilled by London’s diversity.
I think personally I'd choose very different 'good bits' to those.
It’s hard not to fixate on how awful everything is, so I appreciate being reminded that there are still things worth fighting for, if only because that is a more productive feeling than hopelessness.
It seems you like to wallow in hopelessness, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Unburden yourself here: