Previous Message

in the form of badly-erected flags being cable tied to lampposts by hotel shouters and roundabout painters, the sight of that grifting little thug Yaxley-Lennon alongside Hatey Katie at the match in London yesterday was too much to bear. I am doing a social media detox now (obvs this place doesn't count), I'm sick of seeing that kind of shite on my feed (been a bit of an eye-opener as to what some of my "friends" really think) and it's bad for mental health generally I think.

Can't ignore what's going on in the world but having constant reminders of how shit things are getting is draining.

I notice the march had no clearly defined message (other than Starmer being a wanker, which is hard to disagree with) - this seems a little odd at first until you realise the organisers want to draw from as large a pool as possible, so I don't think all 100k+ of the marchers were necessarily hardcore racists - but a significant proportion were, and their aim is to suck in others who may be basically decent (if maybe slightly ignorant) on issues like immigration, plummeting living standards and government incompetence/corruption. It's a short step then to join the dots from (correctly) pointing out that immigration has rocketed - ironically in large part due to Brexit and the Johnson government's policies aimed at ameliorating the exodus of EU citizens - the asylum system is broken and that life is getting worse for most of us to a position of scapegoating migrants, aider and abetted by "do gooder lefty lawyers who hate Britain". It's a very easy connection to make in peoples' minds and if the lines between refugees, legal and illegal migrants can be blurred, so much the better. Once that's done, it's only a short hop over to white replacement conspiracy theories.

It's genuinely disturbing me and I can't see any scenario in which things improve in the short term. Just the opposite.

At home we're talking about emigrating and starting to put plans in place. I still have some convincing to do with the other half and I know it would be a big upheaval but I genuinely fear for my children's futures growing up in this version of the UK. For a number of reasons. Not that life would be a bed of roses elsewhere but there are significant and deep rooted problems in this country now. To me it feels significantly worse than at any other time in my lifetime in many ways, and the trajectory is downwards - I'd love to believe that this is an overly pessimistic take but I think it's the reality.