“Most British people don’t have the first inkling of what a crisis is. They think it’s a political thing. “Government in crisis”, and so on. Whatever happens at the top, life will go on as ever. There will be food in the shops, medical supplies in the hospitals, water in the taps and order on the streets (as much as there usually is).”
So says David Bennun. But that’s about to change. Apparently.
“The idea that we’re protected, we’re exceptional, is not articulated or usually even conscious. But it’s there. That this is who we are. Disaster – mass, national disaster – happens to other people, in other places.”
There’s a lot of ‘we’s’ there, David.
“…if you’ve ever lived in one of those other places, chances are you will have seen how quickly what you thought was an orderly society can disintegrate under pressure.”
Why would anyone want to live in ‘one of those places’?
“If you’ve never known gunfire and mobs on the streets, or empty taps and empty shelves, or power that’s off more than it’s on, or morgues full of the victims of racial, political or tribal violence, you don’t have a clue how easily that can happen.”
Yes, we’ve never known gunfire and mobs on the streets, or empty taps and empty shelves, or power that’s off more than it’s on, or morgues full of the victims of racial, political or tribal violence, clearly…
“I experienced all these things when I was growing up in Kenya.”
Ah. Well, despite the best efforts of you progressive types, Britain isn’t Kenya. Although some parts of London may as well be Ghana.
“All the talk about the “Blitz spirit” comes from people who have never known what it is to truly fear everything crashing down around you.”
No, it comes from the people who actually experienced the Blitz, you moron. When the ‘things crashing down around you’ were houses & infrastructure. Not WH Smith running out of Walkers crisps.
“We’re not special. If, in a deluded fit of national self-harm that ever more resembles the drift into war in 1914, we allow ourselves to wreck the complicated machinery that underpins our everyday lives without us ever having to think much about it, nobody will be coming to rescue us. Cassandra, as Cassandras are always ready to remind you, was right.”
Cassandra was a fictional character. And not the one you most closely resemble.
