Embrace Anglofuturism: we can jolt Britain out of its stupor
It’s September 2034. You are gently awoken by the light streaming in through your sash windows, which were recently made legal again. Leaving your Georgian mansion block, you pluck an apple off a heaving bough, and you make a breakfast of it. Today you will be jetting off from the super-spaceport in Avalon, which is the name of the Wales-sized artificial island in the North Sea. To get there, you step aboard a gleaming HS24 train that whisks you past soaring urban skylines. Nobody is playing TikTok videos in the quiet carriage.
You spend an enjoyable day overseeing AI-enhanced chemical engineering in the microgravity of HMSS Beagle, Britain’s rotating, drum-shaped space station. Then it’s back home for lab-grown toad-in-the-hole, which you share with your children, whom you can afford, and your parents, who are long-lived and able-bodied. Another glorious day of Anglofuturism.
In reality, of course, the Britain of 2034 will house you in an ugly little flat, miles from anywhere, if you’re lucky. It will not enable you to work in biotech, because the industry isn’t allowed to build lab space. You won’t have kids, because you can’t afford them, and your parents will be decrepit, because the NHS is unfit for purpose. Everything in supermarkets will be behind locked cupboard doors, and train carriages will be overrun by anti-social oafs. In short, the Britain of 2034 is not likely to be much different from the Britain of 2024.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that although we recently voted Stupor, 2034 doesn't have to be a version of 2024.
And it's a fine evening.
8 comments:
Naaaah - never work here!
The dog or the burglar alarm will see off the lefties before you can say Armageddon!
Hey, that was me!
I'm not anonymous - yet...!
2034? If we ever get there.
Anon - I agree, it's beyond us. Optimism is worthwhile though, as a way to highlight how bad it is.
Anon - are you sure? Could be someone else.
James - some of us won't. Better not dwell on it.
It's possible, of course, but the real danger is that various malign forces will combine to make our decline unstoppable. The bit about building for future generations is interesting. Politicians seem unable to see beyond the next election. Either we will need some constitutional changes, or it will be huge corporations that get things moving again. Elon Musk certainly seems to be the only effective UK opposition these days.
Sam - yes, Elon Musk does seem to be the only effective opposition and the huge corporations could be another because they need their millions of customers. As if lockdown showed us an evolving something we aren't quite grasping properly, but government isn't evolving with it.
Our future generations have buggered off abroad. We would have done that too, years ago, but alas when a job offer that I fancied came from Western Australia I had just fallen terribly ill. Similarly my parents had been obstructed from their plan of fleeing the postwar Labour government by emigrating to British Columbia.
dearieme - some members of my family moved abroad too. There are stories now about more people planning to leave and although I haven't seen numbers, those who can pack up and go are bound to consider it.
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