House Call

Children are the future – I’ve been hearing this particularly trite aphorism since at least the eighties. It’s trotted out whenever the future is being discussed, regardless of whether or not the issues under discussion have any direct effect on children. But what utter, disingenuous tripe this all is. That crayon-covered child there, the one licking that window, is that the future? Or the one busily tying fireworks to a cat; is it him? How about the one who, at the age of three has been encouraged to self-identify as non-binary gender? Maybe that’s where we’re headed?

I heard this phrase yet again this morning and it made me think; it seems to stand for something, taken at face value, but it dissolves under analysis into a mushy, shapeless puffery of meaningless sounds. Who was the future when your grandparents were children? And to how much future are we referring; is it the future as in tomorrow, or the day after, or next week/month/year? Is it when these children are adults (in which case are they no longer ‘the future’) and if so, how old? Twenties? Forties? Eighties? It’s a moving goalpost whereby those who have built the world we live in are discounted as irrelevant in favour of an unknown hereafter.

To take a currently topical political figure, Hitler was once a child, as were Pol Pot and Mao, Stalin and Peter Sutcliffe. So, also, were Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Beethoven and Sir Clive Woodward. What does this any of this prove? The future will happen whether or not the upcoming generation are up to the challenge, but by constantly pandering to the culture of youth we seem to be determined to ensure they are not. Education, behavioural standards, entitlement, privilege, and an absurd set of unrealistic beliefs in spurious ‘equalities ‘which will never be realised; all the ‘investment’ in this future strikes me as counter-productive.

Anyway, I thought we had given away their future with the Brexit, so where does that leave us? Cue the superannuated, dribbling crybabies of the House of Lords as they struggle to grasp the concept of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill 2016-17 which has only one purpose. It is a bill ‘to confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU’.

The EU, in the form of once-was-the-future Angela Merkel, has already refused to offer reciprocal rights to UK citizens in the EU, or indeed discuss any future arrangements, until after Article 50 has been invoked. All the oh-so-noble Lords have done is foment further uncertainty, one can only presume to prolong the very uncertainties they accuse Brexit voters of causing. It’s been this way since 24^th June last year; having failed to vote the way they were told, the plebs must be punished.

Remember when this idiot child was the future?

The only way to secure any certainty for the future is to push ahead with the process of leaving the sclerotic European Union. That’s what grown-ups would do, that’s what most of us want to do, but the supposed senior chamber has concerned itself, as children do, with meaningless sloganizing about ‘bargaining chips’. All this action has done is to bring their status and privilege under scrutiny. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? But I know a certain unelected House of Cronies who may want to consider their future.