Tuesday 12th Aug 2008

I was driving home from work which is only about 3 miles but I was struck by how polarised even a small town like Darwen is becoming. 5pm sees the rush from work to home and most of the cars crawling along are quite new, quite flash (well apart from the odd old wreck like mine.) Along the pavements walk those, who I guess have to walk and I wonder how far this can go. Seems like every week we are slipping back to a past that everyone thought had gone forever. A world for most people lived with low wages, scarce jobs and higher outgoings. How many will have cars 10 years from now and more importantly, how will the have-not’s be reacting to a future of subtle control through welfare payments, technology and cheap addictive avenues out of desperation. How did we come to make a society with such a greedy disposition? Where inequality is alright as long as you're the one standing on someone to lift you up (and after all the poor they deserve all they get don’t they?) Or so think the very people running around saving the environment but forgetting to save the people living in it with them.

So pause just for a little and think how unreasonable optimism probably is when set against the behaviour of the haves through long millennia.

It’s still raining too...torrential at times today. So you didn’t expect anything cheerful did you.