This Too will Pass – patterns of decline

The beauty of doing a series of posts is that it gives you a chance to consider them with a critical eye – with what we might call “peripheral vision”! - and to see how they might be made more “rounded”. That’s what I’ve been doing with this last series – producing a 30 page paper which incorporates material I had written previously about both Brexit and the issue of Decline which, sadly, has become rather fashionable.

The result is a paper entitled This Too will Pass – patterns of decline

update; I thought I had completed this paper (about UK decline) but found myself drafting a conclusion  reflecting on the frenetic nature of change which took me onto "accelerationism" and then the 2015 book "Inventing the Future - postcapitalism and a world without work" which I had dismissed when I first tried to read it but now find a good read.

The updating has allowed me to argue that there are several elephants in the room in any attempt to understand the current malaise of the UK. One of these is the state of the British Labour Party with another being the way that party has been portrayed by the ideologues who own the british press Just three companies controlled 90% of the UK newspaper market in 2021 – up from 70% in 2015. How can the UK call itself a democracy in such a condition?

Further Update; John Harris is one of the few UK  journalists to break out of the "Westminster bubble" to focus on what people outside London are feeling and saying. He's also the host of the "Politics Weekly" podcast. Here he is in Grimsby recently reporting on the calamity of life in that town   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/vieo/2022/oct/31/the-town-where-brexit-died-but-hope-survives-video