Reflections 23rd October.

On my mind this week.

I am sensing a feeling in the air of the end of something similar to a "phoney war." Like most real conflicts, the pandemic had been on the cards for some time but sidelined because it was so inconvenient. It was challenging to talk about when what was wanted was short periods of political popularity following an embarrassing self-inflicted injury in the form of Brexit and our political weapons of mass deception. Of course, on cue, it then erupted when we were least prepared. 

We reacted by using the playbook we have used, in one form or another, over a century of genuine, rather than manufactured conflict. Instead of people, or ideologies we cast a non-sentient organism as a dastardly villain full of evil intent. It ignored the lessons of the previous two decades of the crassness of declaring war on an abstract noun, terror, and the demonising of the flawed but positive construct that is the EU. Of course, it has its faults, duplicitous politicians and grasping bu…