More Of The Same

'Tis late at night and any sane individual would have hit the sack by now. Still, no-one has ever accused me of being sane. I'm thinking about earthquakes and deaths and how these are reported. Does it ever seem petty to focus on the few Brits that may have been caught up in this nightmare when several hundreds, if not thousands, of other souls have also perished or been injured? For those that did not die outright there is the subsequent devastation, the loss of family members and friends, houses, schools, offices destroyed, livelihoods lost and treasured belongings buried. And yet it seems our red tops constantly miss the bigger picture either centering their attention on some trivial local banality, or bypassing the greater tragedy to focus on a tiny few. It is these indications of introspective selfishness I find worrying, the Little Britain mentality. Pretending nothing much happened to anyone but a few unfortunate Britons trivialises these major events in the worst possible way.
Sorry, not much humour in this post, but somehow sarcasm seems a little inappropriate just now.

Election Ennui

After a break of some few years I've decided to pick up the keyboard and let my random musings loose on the world once more. Time has moved on since my previous posts and if anything I am more Unsapient now than I ever was. In the midst of the most monumentally boring general election the UK has ever seen, where the frightening likelihood of the SNP being the power broker is too close to reality, shining a cold cold light of cynicism, sarcasm on this dismal process is probably my only relief short of euthanising myself.
Why boring? I hear the screams of the political classes clamouring about how close the polls are, how exciting the counts will be. The teetering of the Swing-o-meter, or whatever they use these days to show the balance of party power, will have you gripping the edge of your seats and grinding your teeth in anticipation. Or, perhaps not. There is not single policy that excites, austerity measures necessarily hold sway and any party that ends up being prime will be stealing from Peter to pay Paul or vice versa. There are no winners, except in the figments of the febrile imaginations of the final occupants of the House of Commons and the press hounds sniffing around their random droppings.
Too bad then that this battle between Cameron, Miliband, Sturgeon, Farage and Clegg has no real meaning. The illusion of having any power over the destiny of this country is no more sane than the delirious ravings of a drunk believing he is dodging the faeries as he staggers down the street. Global industries, global markets, global investment, global poverty, global pollution are what really matter. And, without this global view, any insular attempt to resolve the problems of an economy so dependent upon the rest of the world for any semblance of stability is doomed to fail. It is precisely this global perspective that our candidates and parties appear to be missing. And so, this election is a mere sideshow on a sideshow on the global stage.