THIS ISNT ENGLAND

THIS ISNT ENGLAND

Flying cars. A computer in every home. A society of evolved humans in harmony with each other and nature. A dazzling marriage of technology, peace, love and culture. That’s what I imagined the future to be when I was a kid.

So here we are in the burbs. In a drive-through food outlet in a retail park. So tired and hungry we can just about order this fill-a-hole junk. Thousands of years of evolution, the rennaissance, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, modernism. I'll have the chicken dips with barbecue sauce and a Macflurry please. For breakfast.

So here we are in liberal North London where the white middle classes also start to reveal themselves as racists. Or navel-gazing, doing-their-bit, virtue signalling supporters of inane traffic calming measures that force those who have to drive for a living to sit in grid-lock on arterial routes, further poisoning their lungs. White people witter on about turning their parking spaces into astroturfed, pot-plant-prettified pop-up "parklets" while, 100 metres away, three black boys are killed in a shooting. How's that for a foundation for derealization?

So here we are in the countryside, where, on Saturday night, the towns are the wild west of love island spray-on outfits and false lashes for the poor, while the well-heeled cower behind the sofa in houses worth six or seven times what those hairdressers and plumbers can ever dream of buying, and pray those kids wont ever wake up to the possibility of revolution.

So here we are: energy providers going bust, empty supermarket shelves, data hackers on our social feed, mindless repetition on our TV screens, and blame, blame, blame as everyone queues for petrol just to make sure they can get to Ikea this Sunday to buy more stuff they don’t need to replace the stuff they already have they didn’t need.

Once this was the land of jubilee bunting and jellied eels, and the children of the ration-book era swore they wouldn’t put that junk in their bodies and dress so dourly. Yet here we are: Peppa Pig balloons and McDonalds drive in. The 1950s austere tradition of one suit for the week and a second suit for Sunday has been replaced by cargo pants, fleece, flip flops and a faux hipster T shirt from Sainsburys.

Our propaganda is a perpetually daytime TV narrative of baking and gardening as we “stand up to Cancer” with endless mawkish stories of brave loved ones and personal rediscovery through moving to the country. I’ve lost people to cancer. It isn’t brave and no one stands up. It is death and it is ugly, and – even though we supposedly found a vaccine to a pandemic in less than twelve months, 50+ years on and however many millions of charitable donations and research we are no nearer to finding a cure for cancer. But it’s a good story right? Warms your heart, right? And it is the same every week. Every week.

Our narratives and style and culture have remained uncomplicated, tedious, comprehensible to a halfwit, without depth or subtext beyond some vague notion of Blighty and Hope. That James Corden is one of our most successful exports ought to be enough shame alone for us all to change nationality on our passports. But we don’t. We are resigned. We queue.

So here we are in the provinces, in local shops that groan under the weight of indigestible fatty carbohydrates, frowning all-white bungalow-owners queue up to buy their tabloids and magazines, despite the wealth of real news and information available to them on their phones. They may be over 50, but they’re still entitled to the bedtime story of Sovereignty every day right? It is still 1975. Still no one appears to have worked out that “the economy” has failed, just as they never appeared to have worked out - or be troubled by – the fact that “the economy” was built on a foundation of exploitation and slavery that has now turned itself on its own people.

“Looks like rain”, they mutter, as if every day in England DIDN’T LOOK LIKE RAIN.

So here we are in every house in the country. Waiting for things that don’t materialise. Your next day purchase, your gas, your petrol, your human rights. Maybe you complain. You get an apology and wonder if you can pay the bills with apologies. Because still you haven’t got the thing. A stranger emails you asking for a discount for no reason other than they want it. You try to hire people and find most of them expect to be paid twice what they would be worth if they ever learned to do their actual work properly. “Outsource to East Europe”, says a friend. Because exploiting hungry poor people is cool, right? But no, it isn’t. They’ve had enough of our BS too. You give up arguing with people because the irony - that those with no education and who despise socialism expect to be treated as equals - is too unbearable.

You watch a documentary on climate change. It will be followed, without irony, by a series about holidaying in a camper van and another about flying to France and renovating a chateau. “There is still hope” intones the presenter. Really? Based on exactly what? Galvanising a population - so mired in their own ignorance, entitlement and complete lack of self-inspection that they can STILL boast about voting for Brexit – into making revolutionary change? People are still reading their tabloid “news” from a rag made of actual paper. We had twelve years. Now we have nine. Sure, I know, what I wrote isnt funny at all is it. Except, that this notion there could be any hope is hilarious. Apocalypse? Bring it on. We've earned it. This couldn’t possibly be how the world really is.

This isn’t England.

It just couldn’t be.