Ever since Angela Raynor announced her decision to amalgamate councils into “super structures” which would see council members being responsible for a wider geographical area, I have been thinking about what it might mean for what’s left of our democracy.
Funnily enough, the Church of England immediately sprang to mind. Instead of individual parishes looking after the needs of local inhabitants, there sprang up team parishes and churches in the area were used on a rotating basis for services almost as soon as Welby took office. People who had gone to their local church for ages were now faced with it only holding services on a monthly basis if you were lucky. For the rest of the time, you had to travel. The team vicar lived in the vicarage adjoining the biggest part of the area and everyone had to go to them, or have an on
line meeting. Needless to say, the sense of local community around the church soon broke down and many smaller churches have been closed and sold off. This then reinforced the argument for the need for wider parishes in order for everyone who wants too, to access a church service and a priest, but only at the churches’ convenience.
Same with the NHS. The closure of cottage hospitals and the creation of super hospitals, specialising in particular problems, has not led to easy access of specialist help but has created a backlog in the country for things like cancer and heart problems. People, when they finally get into the system, are treated like packages to be moved through and individuality is low down on the list of priorities.
When this sort of change occurs, our leaders are quick to say that it is not about saving money, but about gathering the resources that people need in one place, so they get better service/treatment. However, when the Telegraph published a list of the best and worst hospitals for waiting, starting treatment, A&E times and ambulance waits, two hospitals near me came way down the list, even though one is a centre of excellence for heart problems and cancer treatment and another for pancreas and liver problems. Because they take patients from all over the country, waits are always higher than most local hospitals.
But back to local government, which is also not a cost saving exercise apparently. When I was a child, everyone, even the poorest, knew who at least one of their town councillors was. Indeed, several local people were probably related to them and many of them went to the same school. The local mayors were elected from the merchant classes of the area usually and people felt able to stop them in the street and give an opinion if they wanted too, about how things were going. This spontaneous local feedback was helpful in running the council and keeping people happy, as well as making sure money was spent on the things people in that area thought most important.
The point is that people knew each other in the sixties and seventies and because of this, their reputation with their fellow town or village people meant a great deal. Anyone new coming into the area had to settle down and understand how things went before they put in “their two bob” as my gran used to say. Yes, it had its problems at times with some people or families getting too uppity and sometimes downright shady or illegal, but on the whole, you knew who people were and how to tackle them if necessary.
People who became councillors at that time usually wanted to improve the area they actually lived in and perhaps enact some ideas of their own about how it could be done. To use a modern parlance, they had “skin in the game”. One of my great uncles became a local mayor and had some gardens named after him in recognition of his services. My great aunt never let us forget it; she was so proud of him because their “good standing” in the community was everything then.
Having skin in the game really became unfashionable when it became normal for people to be parachuted into safe seats by political parties at election time; even if there was a local candidate who wanted to and was qualified to do the job. This filtered down to county councils, leaving only parish councils to draw from local area talent.
Because parish councils have been all but stripped of any meaningful decision making, county councils and their political affiliates rule the roost. Those few local people left in county councils all have to toe the party line as much as any national politician and rarely mingle with their local populations except in the form of the much-vaunted focus groups.
What has made this even more disempowering, is the fact that we no longer have a settled population that grew up together in a particular area. Because immigration has jumped to stratospheric levels, all but small villages and hamlets have been totally disrupted by a large volume of either transient people, or those who come to establish themselves as an alternative to what they find when they get here. A lot of these people seem to be wilfully blind to the culture and history of the city or town they settle in and without any acknowledgment that something was there before them, set about changing things to their liking. Governments of all persuasions have steadfastly encouraged this from when Blair first decided that the country needed to be multi-cultural. The result is that the old ways of levels of control of how society is run and what its monies in the form of taxes collected are to be used on is gone.
People know the place they were born in nowadays, but it does not have any particular meaning for them over their lifespan. Whereas in the past, although there were always people who were “anywheres”, the majority used to be “somewheres” and it was their continuity that enabled the anywheres to recognise what they came back too, either to live, or to visit.
Now, to a greater or lesser degree we are all anywheres and interchangeable. Very few people are attached enough to their town or city to fight to preserve it and would rather move somewhere else than put themselves on the line to preserve their community and way of life.
That this is happening to the white population first, is because the past history of this island is connected to them, and they are the majority. Other groups are only being supported in order to make sure that the history of the white British is well and truly stamped out, rather than as a search for another culture to replace it, in the cause of global interchangeability. Why do I say this?
Because the systems that attacked the English, have now turned their malignant gaze on the Welsh, Scottish and Irish cultures. The goal is to detach the settled population from any emotional attachment to their historical lands and the quickest way to do this is to use another rigid historical culture to run interference and disruption and then forbid any fighting back.
The way the councils and other organs of state were first organised, meant that it was bottom driven from the general population, through the parish council up through the district council all the way to parliament. This usually meant that most domestic policy decisions did not come as a great surprise to most people and even if they disagreed; at least they felt they had taken a meaningful part in the process.
In dismantling this and turning it into a large mega outfit that deals strategically across a larger and more diverse area, it precludes local opportunities for engagement by its size alone if nothing else, unless you are part of an approved pressure group.
But what about the non-white population who seem to be actively encouraged not to adapt to the culture they have joined? They too may well be seen as interchangeable as the remains of the white population eventually. The land, or real estate as it is probably viewed by our rulers will be allocated and used as they see fit and the majority view will no longer be required.
It will not matter who is on the local council as they will exist only to make sure that the population in a sector is following the strategic plan.
If this, or something similar is the overall goal, then democracy started to decline from the start of Blair’s first term in office, but we didn’t see it then.
There are so many questions to be asked about what is happening at the moment. Far too many for this article and even with the likes of Trump, Farage and Musk in the ascendant, it is still difficult to see how a permanent reversal is possible, but I hope I’m wrong. If Reform get in and don’t start doing a Trump by reversing things from day one, the public will not need to be prised away form the remnants of democracy, they will let go voluntarily because there will be no one left to represent them.
However, there is one question which is pertinent to this discussion. If the plan is to make the world’s population stateless, cultureless (except for approved outward signs) and interchangeable at will, where will our new Gods rule from?
Well, I wonder if that is what the drive for big tech and AI is about? I would imagine that they would not want to be all in one place as by that time, there would be an awful lot of people wanting to have a word with them. Best to stay in the shadows online and maybe meet up once or twice a year.
It is the destruction of an analogue interconnected view of the world for a digital interconnective world where all your experiences and views are constructed for you and accessible and controllable online that is most damaging. Younger generations are already showing signs of this happening.
Lack of social skills when physically interacting with others, fear of using the phone to speak to people in the fourteen to twenty age group, sexual gratification online, rather than with a partner in real time, using the same sites obsessively to reinforce beliefs (operant conditioning), lack of imagination and reluctance to explore and research things for themselves.
The biggest marker of all is acute anxiety and rage towards people who interrupt their world view with alternative explanations.
Going back to the old ways, people would take their lead and the way they thought about things from those around them that they knew, either arguing their point if against, or agreeing if for.
There are always people with varying views in a mixed community and the ability to test your thoughts face to face. Now, it is the latest online “influencer” that calls the tune; especially for the young and there is no further discussion needed. I do believe that one of the main reasons a lot of people don’t want to go back to the office is they have lost the ability to be with others and feel real anxiety about spending 7.5 hours a day with them in case the world inside their heads is disrupted in some way.
Democracy has been slowly dismantled in front of us without the majority even realising it was happening as they retreated into their own versions of reality. The younger generations from the millennials onward are all autistic now it seems. The young are prevented from respecting and learning from the old by the generations being set against each other, so there is no real time challenge to this in most families.
What’s my solution? It may seem drastic but the only way to really effect permanent change is to destroy the World Wide Web and go back to what we should be; a collection of souls facing the physical and emotional aspects of the world in real time, using digital technology and AI to service our power supplies and other important services but not for personal use. Unfortunately, it probably won’t happen as I’m sure our masters have got it well and truly protected for now.
However, if we lose the capacity to generate enough power to keep things going, well, it could happen then; so Miliband’s net zero could have an upside by enabling a resetting effect on the function of the human brain. However, the physical hardships that would accompany this means that it would be too disastrous on the general population to do it that way. People need to realise how dehumanised we have become in the eyes of our rulers and how impatient they are with our silly bleating about the effect on our individual lives.
Someone, I forget who, said that there are only fourteen thousand “real people” in the world; the rest are no more important than a herd of buffalo. Our politicians’ sole ambition is to fight for a place in this group.
We would do well to remember that.