David Levy – How Little Choice leads to Apathy – Mar 24

Very shortly we will be contemplating elections and a new government, and frankly what little choice we have when making those decisions. Where does that leave us? In reality it leaves us in despair, self- absorbed, and focused on gratuitous moments to escape reality – that would be my guess.

I have watched as even the public outrage over the Post Office scandal has been met by stonewalling and a deliberate policy of paying-out as slowly as possible. Accountability and compensation over Grenfell Tower, in London, is another such case. Days go by, and the number of people owed compensation decreases as some pass away and bring the number down. I for one decry this attitude and its callous bureaucracy. It is very un-English, and somehow we have lost our way.

Looking next at our choices in the General Election, I draw your attention to the calibre of the politicians who put themselves forward. Most have risen through their party ranks by being ‘Yes men/women’ and they are incapable of ploughing their own furrow. This is equally so in both of the major parties. So, what choice do we have?

Try looking at the Greens or Lib-Dems . . . . once again there appears little or no choice. They tend to focus on irrelevancies, and when the Lib-Dems held power they were unable to deliver on their policy of tackling student fees, a main plank of their manifesto. Again, it’s all untrustworthy.

I personally blame poor investigative journalism for not holding the politicians to account through public media programmes. Take just one example:

The BBC’s local and national reporting on the pollution of the River Wye, where community groups took on the task of raising awareness of the pollution caused by the agricultural run-off into the river from factory farms. This subject was recently covered in a half-hour programme reporting on a local farmer who has been using the waste from his intensive poultry farm to produce electricity, and then dried the waste for use as a fertilizer which he was selling on the open market. Poultry waste from other nearby intensive farms wasn’t being used in this way however, so its pollution was quickly turning the river into a contaminated hotspot.

The question that should have been asked by the programme was: Why isn’t the fertilizer industry involved in doing exactly the same thing as this farmer, but on a larger scale?

Fertilizer production is currently in a poor position – low stocks, and shortfalls in supply due to the boycott of Russian chemicals. So there is a need for this poultry waste as a fertilizer, especially in the arable farming parts of Britain.

Questions such as these were never asked, so the potential solution to both the severe pollution and the fertilizer shortage was totally missed by the programme’s producers and the presenters.

It appears as if the same apathy pervades all aspects of life in 21st Century UK. News lasts for a fleeting moment in time, and those who should know better and are accountable have learnt to ride-out the moment. They can do so because accountability is non-existent. This has to change, and it will only happen when apathy is replaced by civic action.

XR / Extinction Rebellion nearly got it right, but failed us when they left the door open to Anarchy.

David Levy