There's a picture circulating on Facebook, showing red paint daubed on a memorial (in Downing Street) to "The Women Of World War Two". The red paint says "Tory scum". It was added to the memorial in the course of a demonstration against the result of the General Election; said demonstration happened to coincide with the anniversary celebrations for VE Day.
Turnout in the election was 66.1%, although 100% did have the opportunity to voice their opinions through the ballot box, given that the election was democratic. 33.9% either didn't feel strongly enough, or didn't care which party won, or decided that electing the same or a different set of politicians wouldn't make much difference. Or something else. Who knows?
On second thoughts, I'm not going to write about this. Everything is subject to discussion these days, it seems. Everything in today's democratic politics attracts an equal and opposite reaction via the TV studio or the radio interview or social media, or whatever. It's easy to forget that "civilisation", whatever we think we mean by that, rests on a set of shared principles.
Either we understand - without debate - that some things are just plain wrong, or the disintegration of the United (sic) Kingdom is as inevitable as was (with hindsight) the collapse of the Soviet Union. I would like to live in a civilisation where (for example) protesters against an election result just step round some memorials, and daub their red paint elsewhere.
Those Women fought fascism under a coalition government, and then they were part of an electorate that brought in the Attlee government and thus the NHS. History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but if we're going to pre-judge today's post-coalition government, let's not do it with red paint.
Turnout in the election was 66.1%, although 100% did have the opportunity to voice their opinions through the ballot box, given that the election was democratic. 33.9% either didn't feel strongly enough, or didn't care which party won, or decided that electing the same or a different set of politicians wouldn't make much difference. Or something else. Who knows?
On second thoughts, I'm not going to write about this. Everything is subject to discussion these days, it seems. Everything in today's democratic politics attracts an equal and opposite reaction via the TV studio or the radio interview or social media, or whatever. It's easy to forget that "civilisation", whatever we think we mean by that, rests on a set of shared principles.
Either we understand - without debate - that some things are just plain wrong, or the disintegration of the United (sic) Kingdom is as inevitable as was (with hindsight) the collapse of the Soviet Union. I would like to live in a civilisation where (for example) protesters against an election result just step round some memorials, and daub their red paint elsewhere.
Those Women fought fascism under a coalition government, and then they were part of an electorate that brought in the Attlee government and thus the NHS. History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but if we're going to pre-judge today's post-coalition government, let's not do it with red paint.