There is something extremely sad and disturbing about the thought that people are turning to UKIP to give them back their country.
Which country is that exactly?
I was born before the NHS had been established.
Before the Kingdom of Bevan had been established.
I was born into a grey and forbidding country where there was rationing, privation and where my childhood sleep was disturbed by the sound of Mill Workers Clogs on the cobbles outside our house, as they headed to the Medlock Mill to begin their morning shift.
My old man was not a dustman, as Lonnie Donegan's was, but my Maternal Grandfather was.
My Paternal Grandfather had died before I was born, probably as a result of having been gassed in the trenches in France, meaning that my father had to leave school at 14 to become the family breadwinner, and that later his sister had to care for my Grandfather who ended her days in a bed in my Aunt's living room because ill and immobile as she was their was little or no public provision for the care of the elderly.
In my first school I was given sheets of scrap paper to write on and was told that I would be given an exercise book when my handwriting was good enough.
I left that school without ever receiving an exercise book.
Just a couple of personal examples which make me clear that that is a country I do not want back.
Not for myself and not for my children and grandchildren.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be.
But what are these nostalgic people recalling about the country of the past that makes them think that UKIP can return it to them?
When I walked home from school with friends we tried to imagine the future.
The jobs that we might have.
The income that we might earn.
In the 1950's we set the bar at £1000 a year.
If we could find a job paying £20 a week then we would surely have a comfortable life?
As I type this blog on a lap top, which corrects my spelling as I go along, I can reflect that I am fortunate that I don't need an exercise book.
If I order a book that I have seen reviewed and which I think I might like to read I can order it on-line, a concept unimaginable in the 1950's, and it will be delivered tomorrow.
If I want to listen to a particular piece of music I can listen to it immediately.
These are relatively simple, almost trivial, examples of the transformations that have happened in our social and community lives in the past seventy years, but there are countless other examples some more important, some essential.
Low cost air travel making for affordable holidays. Dramatic improvements in diet. The shelves of the supermarkets filled with goods. Health care provided free at the point of need.
Sadly of course we have it within our gift to ensure that each and every one of us can benefit from these improvements but choose not to do that.
Indeed the current Government continues to wage a war of attrition on those who rely on public support in the form of welfare whilst offering what appear to be unfunded tax cuts to those they choose to call 'hardworking'.
The rise and rise of Arturo Ui suggests that amongst some people nostalgia is mistaking the past for a pleasant land and decrying the achievements of the present.
What no-one appears able to explain is how UKIP will at one and the same time give people their country back whilst ensuring that all the benefits of life in the present are maintained.
UKIP will never form a Government, almost all of its policy proposals are either unfunded or unaffordable, whilst the policies themselves are contradictory.
And none of this is to mention the most significant achievement since 1945, the continued commitment of the nations of Europe to work together to ensure that the two wars which tore Europe apart in the past will never happen again, apart from its role as an economic community the EEC is a project for peace and as such is crucial to our continued well being as a community of nations.
The other issue which bedevils our public life and seems central to this myopic vision of the country of the past, immigration, has been addressed fairly and squarely in the USA by President Obama, in according residence rights to those who have settled without papers.
America of course was built on immigration.
In the past of course ours was a nation of emigration as the economically dispossessed or the convicted left to start new lives in New Worlds and as they did so the colours of the world map reflected British colonial expansion, now reflected in what we call a Commonwealth of Nations.
What UKIP cannot understand, it seems, is that immigration makes a powerful contribution to the continued 'commonwealth' of our developing and enriching way of life as our contemporary cultural and economic wealth continues to increase as we become renewed and energised reinventing ourselves along the way as a Global Nation.
It has become a cliche but perhaps the best response to the challenge of UKIP and those who offer it comfort at the Ballot Box is a gentle reminder of the perils of nostalgia:
The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift that is why it's called the present.
Which country is that exactly?
I was born before the NHS had been established.
Before the Kingdom of Bevan had been established.
I was born into a grey and forbidding country where there was rationing, privation and where my childhood sleep was disturbed by the sound of Mill Workers Clogs on the cobbles outside our house, as they headed to the Medlock Mill to begin their morning shift.
My old man was not a dustman, as Lonnie Donegan's was, but my Maternal Grandfather was.
My Paternal Grandfather had died before I was born, probably as a result of having been gassed in the trenches in France, meaning that my father had to leave school at 14 to become the family breadwinner, and that later his sister had to care for my Grandfather who ended her days in a bed in my Aunt's living room because ill and immobile as she was their was little or no public provision for the care of the elderly.
In my first school I was given sheets of scrap paper to write on and was told that I would be given an exercise book when my handwriting was good enough.
I left that school without ever receiving an exercise book.
Just a couple of personal examples which make me clear that that is a country I do not want back.
Not for myself and not for my children and grandchildren.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be.
But what are these nostalgic people recalling about the country of the past that makes them think that UKIP can return it to them?
When I walked home from school with friends we tried to imagine the future.
The jobs that we might have.
The income that we might earn.
In the 1950's we set the bar at £1000 a year.
If we could find a job paying £20 a week then we would surely have a comfortable life?
As I type this blog on a lap top, which corrects my spelling as I go along, I can reflect that I am fortunate that I don't need an exercise book.
If I order a book that I have seen reviewed and which I think I might like to read I can order it on-line, a concept unimaginable in the 1950's, and it will be delivered tomorrow.
If I want to listen to a particular piece of music I can listen to it immediately.
These are relatively simple, almost trivial, examples of the transformations that have happened in our social and community lives in the past seventy years, but there are countless other examples some more important, some essential.
Low cost air travel making for affordable holidays. Dramatic improvements in diet. The shelves of the supermarkets filled with goods. Health care provided free at the point of need.
Sadly of course we have it within our gift to ensure that each and every one of us can benefit from these improvements but choose not to do that.
Indeed the current Government continues to wage a war of attrition on those who rely on public support in the form of welfare whilst offering what appear to be unfunded tax cuts to those they choose to call 'hardworking'.
The rise and rise of Arturo Ui suggests that amongst some people nostalgia is mistaking the past for a pleasant land and decrying the achievements of the present.
What no-one appears able to explain is how UKIP will at one and the same time give people their country back whilst ensuring that all the benefits of life in the present are maintained.
UKIP will never form a Government, almost all of its policy proposals are either unfunded or unaffordable, whilst the policies themselves are contradictory.
And none of this is to mention the most significant achievement since 1945, the continued commitment of the nations of Europe to work together to ensure that the two wars which tore Europe apart in the past will never happen again, apart from its role as an economic community the EEC is a project for peace and as such is crucial to our continued well being as a community of nations.
The other issue which bedevils our public life and seems central to this myopic vision of the country of the past, immigration, has been addressed fairly and squarely in the USA by President Obama, in according residence rights to those who have settled without papers.
America of course was built on immigration.
In the past of course ours was a nation of emigration as the economically dispossessed or the convicted left to start new lives in New Worlds and as they did so the colours of the world map reflected British colonial expansion, now reflected in what we call a Commonwealth of Nations.
What UKIP cannot understand, it seems, is that immigration makes a powerful contribution to the continued 'commonwealth' of our developing and enriching way of life as our contemporary cultural and economic wealth continues to increase as we become renewed and energised reinventing ourselves along the way as a Global Nation.
It has become a cliche but perhaps the best response to the challenge of UKIP and those who offer it comfort at the Ballot Box is a gentle reminder of the perils of nostalgia:
The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift that is why it's called the present.
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