Another double header- are the wheels coming off this “blog about what it feels like to live in the ‘end times’” project, would anyone notice or care? And isn’t it interesting that one of the go-to images (i.e. cliches) that our brains turn to is of a wheeled vehicle, presumably travelling at speed. Did we talk about ‘the wheels falling off’ before the coming of the car and the infernal combustion engine? It’s an answerable question that I will google one day if I can be bothered.
So, I think I will go for a series of moments rather than anything particularly coherent.
Moment one was about 20 minutes ago. Radio 4 Today programme. For those of you not familiar, it runs from 6 to 9 and sorta sets (but also responds to) the “news agenda” for the day. And they had a story about how today the Met Office was going to announce that it had been the warmest June in the UK since records began. They talked about how wildlife charities were pointing to dead fish and knock on effects on the things that eat the fish/ are eaten by the fish. And did they say “scientists agree that these temperature records falling over themselves are exactly what they’ve been warning about for three and a half decades (actually, longer) if we kept using the atmosphere as a sewer for our fossil fuel emissions.”?
Did they heck. Of course they didn’t. That would be “political”. That would be “ediotrialising”. This is the same BBC that has always been – notwithstanding some good science and environment journos (Richard Black, Roger Harrabin, many others whose names escape me) a bit rubbish on the biggest story of the 21st century (what could be bigger than “some humans are trashing the planet and dooming all humans and all other species to Hell on Earth?”
This is not individual laziness/stupidity/cowardice (there’s plenty of that too, of course). This is an institutional problem. The BBC is a state broadcaster, and it’s not just that it’s under the thumb of the government of the day (I could digress about Blair, about Thatcher, but I won’t), but as a state broadcaster it does the broader bidding of “the state” – in the Gramscian/Jessop way of thinking. Secure the conditions for social reproduction, accumulation of capital. So much jargon, but in essence this – it’s going to rely on “official statements” from powerful bodies – state actors but also corporates (and when it comes to certain aspects of our lives – especially energy systems – it’s often very difficult to tell where the state ends and the corporate sector begins).
So, look, I like to believe I am not “naive” about what to expect from the BBC, but still, it bloody pissed me off. Silly really, given that this is who they are – you might as well expect a dog to speak Swahili. I guess if your house is being invaded you at least expect your watchdog to do more than whimper in the corner? The word “your” is operative there. The BBC does not belong to the licence-fee payers in any meaningful sense…
Sigh.
Next up, I felt awe and thanks to Stewart Lee. I had watched the same thing he did – Jonny Bairstow carrying a Just Stop Oil protestor off the pitch – on Wednesday, but did not express myself in the clear and funny way he did. But then, Stewart Lee’s day job, of 25 years, is to be clear and funny, and he is very very good at it. I urge you to read the whole piece, but (spoilers!) here’s the end of it, which I put on Twitter and got an aggravating number of likes (compared to almost anything I ever write).
Imagine, if instead of carrying that bold dust-chucker off the cricket field to the cheers of the foolish crowd, idly accepting the collective suicide of their species and the death-by-negligence of their planet, the cricketer Jonny Bairstow had made a different choice at this sliding-doors moment of his life. What if the athlete had had the intelligence to take the protester’s hand, present them to the audience, and invite the world to applaud them for their courage? Then he could have made a difference. But instead Bairstow, like so many others, missed his moment, his chance to help. And one day the cricket player’s own children, as they watch the world die in real time around them, will curse his terrible error of judgment, his unwitting role as the unpaid enforcer for big oil and the climate crisis denialists, the worst people on earth.
But never mind. Somewhere, someone didn’t identify as a cat, and the front pages roll forward and the pundits step up to their microphones, with endless comment on something unimportant that didn’t even happen. And as the world of tomorrow burns, when the image of Bairstow carrying a Just Stop Oil protester away from the cricket competition is reflected upon by the dying, only one hero will emerge from the picture. And it absolutely won’t be Jonny Bairstow.
This is the thing – it won’t be “future generations”. It will be the ten year older versions of ourselves. This shituation is terminal, (please refer to my first blog post, where I said I hope to be able to look back on this series and laugh at how apocalyptic I had allowed myself to become). And most people know it, whether they can say it or even admit it to ourselves. Or maybe I am wrong? How do you test a collective unconscious??
Another thing, about JSO – well, I will just quote from a tweet yesterday about an article on the five JSO protestors who were arrested for briefly delaying the Pride festival –
“Okay, this is interesting – Just Stop Oil is entirely focused on London, despite having willing-to-be-charged/convicted folks from all around the country. Makes “sense” in that JSO is abt changing one policy, controlled by central Govn. Bigger problem is what abt rest of UK?”
The five who were arrested are from the rest of England, and it’s classic “biographical availability” – they’re in their early 20s or retired.
Where are the vibrant local groups? I got the XR North email yesterday and it was utterly silent on Manchester – it’s almost as if the whole thing went up like a rocket and came down like a stick. But then, so did other groups, that said they wouldnt, that tried to build skills and infrastructure but failed.
It is almost as if we as humans cannot face our mortality, fragility and powerlessness in the face of tragic trajectories, in the face of murderous momentum and iniquitious inertia.
And asinine alliteration, abviously.
Final thing – while listening to the Test match yesterday I dug around in some digital archives and came up with more stunning stuff, which I had better turn into academic and other articles before the apocalypse… Watch this space.
marchudson.net 
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