It's funny how I don't get more right wing as I get older. Most people do, you see. Or at least, that's how the theory goes. I find myself becoming more and more socialist as I get older. By the time I die I imagine I will essentially be Lenin. Although being Lenin on your deathbed would be fairly handy: they could just turn your bedroom into a mausoleum. I would quite like people to file past my body when I'm dead. Especially if they had to or else they'd put your children in a gulag.
What I've come to realise this weekend is that I essentially hate almost every single institution in Britain. I love this country. I have in fact never left it, and have never even wanted to for a single day in my life (apart from when I saw that documentary about dancehall parties in Jamaica on BBC4). But it's a fucking shithole, rotten from bottom to top and, more importantly, from top to bottom. And I increasingly find myself feeling nothing but disgust at the whole wretched writhing mass.
I'm particularly fed up with the stupid things we accept without thinking, when even the most basic analysis could bring the whole thing crashing down.
It's a long story, and one which is none of your business, but I have had cause to think about marriage recently. I personally think that marriage is the most offensive, anachronistic institution in society today. The sad fact is, the country is still set up in such a way that for countless administrative and financial reasons it is a prudent step. But it shouldn't be. When it works, it adds nothing to a relationship. And when it doesn't, it just makes life much more uncomfortable and complicated.
I know this bloke. He obviously read his Book of Common Prayer very carefully and decided that marriage was a contract that signed his wife over to him like a slave. Any vague attempts at love or mutual respect that had been used in the run-up to the whole thing could therefore be abandoned at once. The title "husband" itself was enough to imply love, even though there was none. Only dismal, pathetic dependence and unreasonable expectations. Needless to say this marriage did not work. Needless to say he dealt with it with the amount of intellect and equanimity as he'd brought to the whole union in the first place.
Oh, but if it had worked. Oh the tax breaks. No explaining "oh yes well we're not married but..." When a society is set up so that it's easier for the fucking lawyers to do their job, that society is not worth preserving.
Speaking of things not worth preserving, it's Jubilee Weekend here in Blighty. It's rather quaint and jaunty, having all Queens and Kings and Princes and Princesses living in castles, what what? Brings the tourists in! No it doesn't. Britain brings the tourists in. Britain is a beautiful land, with as rich and varied a social history as any country on earth. For several centuries our country was the hub of the entire world. It just was. Plague pits and The Great Fire of London and Jack the Ripper also bring the tourists in, and no-one is seriously arguing that it would be good if we could bring them back. Maybe Jack the Ripper could work on a system of inheritance, like the Royal Family. The Ripper is dead, long live the Ripper, look out whores.
The entire Royal Family is an obscenity, when people can't afford to feed their children properly or to receive adequate healthcare, despite working several jobs. In this country we force people to work for nothing, just for a pittance of money from the State every week, whilst retaining and maintaining a Royal Family. I'm continually staggered just how many people who are exactly the people worst served by this inequality who are the most devoted and dedicated to the Royal Family as an institution. Given half a chance, they would harvest your children's organs. They would. They'd take both their kidneys, just in case the first one itched. They probably don't even eat Monster Munch. I suppose that it's hard to cry rape when you don't even realise you're being fucked.
The biggest problem of the lot: I've written this. This is what I'm going to do about it. Because I am British and that's what we do. Nothing. Fuck all. Just roll on.
I'm angry today. Hello.
4 comments:
http://blog.cgpgrey.com/the-true-cost-of-the-royal-family/
That is all.
Bloody socialists and their shallow thinking. I shit 'em.
Shut up, Manley.
When you find a utopian alternative, let me know. I'm eager to expat from the United States Of Welfare... where attempts at "socialism" just become a reward system of enabling.
I have to say I am ambivalent about the royal family. I doubt they stretch the national coffers any more than a president would (who would still need special security and transport arrangements). They pay for the upkeep of their own private residences and some of them even pay tax. The amount of money they have, while obscene, pales in comparison to the amount other private UK citizens possess. So whether we have them or not is irrelevant, though I bet a few people made a few bob off the bunting sales.
I think you need to get some perspective on the country you love/hate. Take a trip abroad and see what it looks like from somewhere else. That way you will see that every country has it's shower of nobheads that bring the rest down, as well as lots of ace people as well.
I don't think socialism will ever work until it factors in nobheads.
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