Next!

I was reading with sardonic interest about Dominic Cummings 'comeback tour'. He reckons that he still has the key to unlock whatever the problem is with society as we currently know it. Really? I somehow doubt it based on what we've seen hitherto. The problem with being bright and a bit chippy about your background - lower middle class in Cumming's case - is that you can get a little beyond in your thinking, imagining that your wish list of objectives is, in fact, a plan. Of course, most often this is simply not the case. Most of us have had some scheme or other crushed into the sand, despite our absolute belief in its truth of purpose. And most of us will simply turn and face another pressing issue to solve, leaving our grand scheme for someone else to worrit over. We all go through an 'omnipotent' era in our lives - the 'invincible' years of youth. The mark of of a grown-up is recognising the limitations of one's capabilities and talents, and voicing them loud and clear. 

We're all only young once, and if we squander that brief window of opportunity to make a real difference, then it's better that we enter discourse with society, rather than bang on about a potential revolution in a history that we can no longer truthfully comprehend. Dominic - stow it - you are no longer in touch, if you ever were. I can comment on affairs and bemoan the state of the world as it is, but I also am no longer as truly in touch as I would prefer to be at my age: I comprehend much, but from the rather jaded perspective of an old man who has seen the cycle of crap go round too many times to actually form any cogent sense of a response, let alone an answer to it all. The weird thing is, that the weight of knowledge I have that fuels my cynicism, is exactly the weight of knowledge that would have transformed a teenage me into the most fearsome of activists. Youth is not so much wasted on the young, rather than knowledge and experience in the old goes unused, unnoticed or simply ignored as the grumblings of the irrelevant...