INDEX	July 12, 2025
A life sentence?
I'm 72 and I've lived in exciting times. I'm sure my parents would say nothing to compare with the Second World War. But they have seemed wild to me. The dictators and despots of yesteryear have been replaced by infinitely worse characters: Pol Pot, Tony Blair, Netanayu, George W Bush, Idi Amin and so many others. All vile vile characters. But we also had the Beatles, punk, pop festivals, multi channel colour tv, computers, the internet and colour films. It's been quite a ride. But even years when history seemed to come to an end: like the assassination of JFK can not compare with 2025. We have had genocides before but nothing like Gaza which just goes on and on. We have had dummy PMs, Alec Douglas Hume, but nothing like the corrupt, compromised and clearly out of their depth government we have in the UK now. We have had stupid American presidents like Reagan who could not remember if he had armed the Contras after being told not to by Congress. But nothing to compare with Trump who gets elected by campaigning to open the Epstein files and now tells us there aren't any. So many times our broadcasters have been accused of bias by people who wish them no good but today even the best friends of the BBC say it is hopelessly biased and compromised. The internet shows us things that only a science fiction writer would have imagined a few years ago: a Chinese army made of robots, trains that travel faster than planes, software that can create videos, medical treatments that can reverse ageing, making the desert bloom and so many other things. And that's not to mention the multiple volcanoes and the real possibility that the Earth's polarity will flip. T S Eliot wrote "I am old, I am old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled." But he was a teenager at the time.
INDEX Jonathan Brind	July 12, 2025