the brilliantly leaping gazelle

The thing that has amazed me about all of the politician’s responses to the flooding in Doncaster is that whilst they are quite happy to blame other politicians for cutting this and that or not doing the other, no one is – and I might be wrong here – calling out the guilty party. Us. All of us. Collectively, we as a society have presumed that whatever consequences might arise from a globalised, just in time, low cost, low wage, market place would happen somewhere else. If the flooding happened in Bangladesh or somewhere far enough away for Orla Guerin to report on it, then yes, we’d feel bad, but it’d have no tangible effect on us whatsoever.

Yes, of course, the flooding in Doncaster is on an individual level a devastating tragedy, but it’s the price we pay for wanting things like unseasonal fruit an exotic vegetables –  like strawberries in March, avocado’s in November  – cheaper food, cheaper everything, things that’s grown or made using elsewhere and flown here, in part they’re the reason for the floods. People having children, producing more consumers who themselves will have children, endlessly creating unsustainable population levels. We have to fundamentally re-orientate our notion capitalism, and realise that our planet is our capital and we’re letting it slip through our fingers. Possibly, it’s already too late and possibly that’s a good thing. As I’ve consistently argued on this blog, humanity has had a wholly detrimental effect to life on this planet, we’ve known this, and when we could’ve done something about it, we didn’t. Well not you and me, the people with the power to make the necessary changes. Change is going to come anyway and the price will have to be paid.

But enough of this nay-saying doom-mongerism! Lets just think of what a wonderful Christmas we’re going to have instead and fiddle while Rome burns. Well, not Rome, at least not yet anyway but parts of Australia, but that’s very far away, isn’t it?