The Road to Utopia

When I was a child I thought that Utopia was a real place, perhaps in Tibet or Nepal, shrouded in mist, hidden by mountains and great passes and only discovered after surviving many impossible trails and trials. Few people ever entered, nobody ever left. I was of course confusing it with Shangri-la but I didn't care, I just liked the idea of such a place existing*. I presumed the fountain of youth was there along with eternal life, peaceful serenity, no conflict or pain. I saw it in comic strip colours and inks, bold and bright. I wondered if some stray helicopter or aircraft might find it and it's discovery broadcast on the TV news, in 425 lines in grainy black and white. Who would be the first to tell the story? The ever resolute BBC I imagined, with Richard Dimbleby providing a dry and well informed commentary as the special program ran. 

It never did happen. What nobody knew (well me mostly) in those pre-whatever years was that this country, whilst not a Utopia could actually be a pretty good place with a lot of potential. Then along came the villains, the greedies and the serially corrupt. They didn't really have the same dream, they just wanted disruption and a kind unfair simplicity where privilege and nepotism could quietly gain and maintain the upper hand, even more so than before, and it worked. We're now living in their Uptopia, made in their image and we still don't own a single piece of it. That's because it's all theirs and it always was. We're displaced people.

A final word to the "middle classes": you don't exist. The media and some potted history created you a while ago. You act as a deluded buffer for the ruling minority, in place as an ignorant bullwark against the "working class". You think you have something to lose and a lot to defend, but you're just doing their dirty work by craning your neck to see how far above you those lords of the stratosphere are actually flying with all their twinkling resources; shining as a faint spectacle beyond their own armoured ceiling. You'll never join them. Yup, it's all a big sham, numbers on bits of paper and blips in digital vaults. Enjoy.

*I do relish a good vacuous splurge sometimes, just to clear out the passages.