When I was young, we got the news at 9 o’clock on the BBC.
It lasted 30 minutes and that was it, that’s all you got.
Now there is so much news, it’s impossible to keep up.
And the news is dark.
As we, seemingly and hopefully, emerge from the pandemic which was the worst thing that had ever happened to anybody ever, so we emerge into a new world order with battle lines drawn, military spending increasing, the increased threat of a thermonuclear war and inflation the likes of which nobody under the age of 35 has ever comprehended.
Fuel bills are about to go through the roof and home energy bills are not far behind.
As a result of fuel bills and other issues including fertilisers, the price of food is about to go the same way.
Wage demands will quickly follow, followed by price increases to match the wage demands to allow people to buy the food at the higher prices which will almost certainly go further up which will almost certainly lead to wage demands which will almost certainly lead to higher prices etc etc etc.
Pretty soon the interest in your mortgage will be 10%.
Many things will happen here and some of the worst to the least well able to cope in society.
As we all get poorer together so the poorest get poorer still.
It seems like we will change our energy requirements and our supply from Russia will reduce (increasing prices even more) and Russia will not be able to get rid of its oil or its gas because they can’t pump it fast enough to China because the pipes aren’t wide enough.
In the 20 years it will take China and Russia to build a new pipeline the world will be a different place again.
But there is perhaps some silver lining at the edges of this cloud.
There’s not a lot of people in the middle class in the UK who couldn’t do without losing a bit of weight.
There’s certainly a lot of people in the middle class who could do with drinking a bit less and particularly expensive ‘prosecco’.
The UK has an extraordinary opportunity to be the European central for renewable energy, so it just has to grasp the nettle, get everybody onboard and get done with that.
As soon as a litre of petrol reaches £2.50 you might walk a bit more or cycle a little bit more or god forbid buy an electric scooter that you charged off your solar panels (after you got your solar panels that is) and so the world will pivot and change like it did through the pandemic and like it will through this crisis.
Yes, there might be a thermonuclear war, but it won’t entirely wipe out the human race and there will be some of us left who are able to start again with the knowledge that we have.
Through it all we sit here making a meaningless difference with no real influence over anything that occurs anywhere outside of about 3 miles of us, let alone in our country, let alone the world or even the universe but of course it doesn’t matter and none of that matters.
All that matters is that when you wake up tomorrow, we get to choose to try to make it a little better or make it a little worse.
There are billions of people who get to make that choice every day, but there is only one of you that can make it for you tomorrow.
Blog Post Number - 3032