There was, however, something real and general in his trouble, something that is as old as the mastodon, and older, but something that has increasingly attacked our post-war world. It is the disease of homelessness. Very many of us seem today to belong to no place, no purpose, scarcely to ourselves.
Hugh Walpole - John Cornelius (1937)
A perennial pondering is this. If we don’t attach ourselves to a place, then maybe we have to attach ourselves to a fake place. A social class perhaps. Known people, known tastes, known culture.
This overlaps with a sense of place because that too involves people, tastes and culture, but when a sense of place is absent, what is left? A sense of purpose perhaps, but a sense of purpose tied to what?
Seems old hat now, but our political class and media pundits seem to belong to no place, no purpose. As landowners the aristocracy down to the local squire had a sense of place, but people from our cosmopolitan upper middle class? Probably not and these are the people now running things.
This is the impression Boris Johnson gives - a powerful impression that he is not grounded in anything but his social class and his personal ambition. Based on his current performance, he appears to be poorly equipped for the role of Prime Minister. Unfortunately we no longer produce people who are.
Seems old hat now, but our political class and media pundits seem to belong to no place, no purpose. As landowners the aristocracy down to the local squire had a sense of place, but people from our cosmopolitan upper middle class? Probably not and these are the people now running things.
This is the impression Boris Johnson gives - a powerful impression that he is not grounded in anything but his social class and his personal ambition. Based on his current performance, he appears to be poorly equipped for the role of Prime Minister. Unfortunately we no longer produce people who are.
3 comments:
Agreed. And you could say exactly the same of Cameron, May, Clegg, and Blair. They all seem to be an alien species, with little binding them to the country they are desperate to govern.
That's an interesting - and accurate - view. They all want the power and the money but fail to understand that with them come responsibilites to those who pay their wages. That and the lack of frontbenchers with a spine or a worthwhile opposition have landed us in the state we're in.
Another thought came to me - so many of the seat occupiers in Wastemonster are PPE graduates with no real qualifications or experience in work that they're all messing themselves at the thought of being binned and having to get a proper job. They daren't speak up.
Sam - yes, in a political sense they are an alien species and voters should probably be more wary of voting for them because they probably see voters in a similar light.
Jannie - that's right, they seem to have no sense of responsibility to those who pay their wages. They may absorb that attitude from the civil service too. It's also experience they seem to lack, as if MPs need to be older before they can even think of becoming an MP.
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