Mediocre, at best

 Haven’t you just had enough of mediocrity? Strive hard, practice, and keep on going when all is against you. “If you want to be the best, if you want to beat the rest” Roy Castle sang on Record Breakers as he tap-danced and played a multitude of musical instruments to enter the hallowed pages of the Guiness Book. Athletes, actors, musicians, authors… all must have the winning formula of talent backed up by knock-down-surmounting resilience and stick-at-it-ness to succeed.

Architects, engineers, carpenters, bricklayers, and as many other occupations as you can mention have to go through training and assessment, gaining qualifications and experience. And still, in order to do well, they have to care deeply enough to maintain their standards, compete for work and stay ahead of the herd. Hell, even the mugs auditioning for reality shows or hosting Tik-Tok channels have to bring something to the table which holds value for the clientele.

But not so much for politicians. Where have the big beasts gone? Where are the supposed representatives of the electorate to be found? Why is there not one single ‘name’ in British politics who can be admired, rather than just endured? Sunak is just a tight-trousered lightweight, Hunt is lacklustre and uninspiring. Starmer is a man full of adenoidal rhetoric but absent a single policy, likewise his partner in Crime, Gromit, I mean Wallace… I mean Reeves. Rayner? Don’t make me vomit. And William Wragge? The snidey little poove suddenly embodies all the feebleness of the current Tories.

Michael-fucking-Gove has become a dribbling imbecile, embarked on a mission to inflict misery on the very people Thatcher would have lauded. And David-sodding Cameron has this very week been licking the anus of the orange gorilla over the pond. Everywhere, politics is infested with gutless cowards, aimless imbeciles and parachuted-in ‘safe’ candidates who understand nothing, do nothing and stand for nothing. What are they good for?

Eat up your greens, sit up straight, practise until you can, then practise some more until you’re good at it. The message from every decent parent to their offspring is as it always was; work hard, stay decent, grow, work, save… and plan to amount to something. What must the ageing parents of our current crop of trough-swilling political fucktards think of their legacy? Meanwhile other parents see a bleak future for their progeny: home ownership a distant dream, secure employment a virtual impossibility. As for retirement, death may soon be the only reliable way to ending your working life.

Well, I have had about enough of all this. I’ve had my ups and downs, but I have always got back up, dusted myself down and fought on and upwards. But what’s the point now; what is there left to work for the next generations? What is the purpose of this country now we can no longer feed ourselves, fight for ourselves or even reasonably order ourselves without fear of censure, or worse, from those who rule from on high?

What example has been set by modern governance? Incompetent by design, they pretend to stand on manifestos they have no intention of honouring, they cheat and lie and then elevate themselves to the upper house with a slap on the back and a pension for life. They disgrace themselves then utter scripted non-apologies and carry on, barely feeling that bump in the road, all the time in thrall to loftier interpretations of their purpose.

For many decades people have said of their politicians, “They are only in it for themselves,” and few MPs have even attempted to deny this or demonstrate otherwise. Hiding behind the diktats of higher powers – the EU for two whole generations – they claim that nothing can be done, and they ignore the entreaties of the jobless, the homeless, the sick. Even if you are in work and have a roof over your head your security is perilous, yet still some get ever richer on the proceeds of causing all of this to happen.

Nobody is looking out for you any more, as they once were. Nobody with the nominal power to change anything has any intention of doing so. All that matters, it seems, is to appear to fall in line with ‘International Law’ and supranational consensus. But it is neither the consensus nor the will of the people to do follow those lines. I honestly think that a seismic shift in the national ambition is needed and that it cannot possibly come, any longer, from above. It is either every man for himself – anarchy – or bloody revolution and a new republic. Anything to rid us of the sheer awfulness of the mundane.