Strange times or perhaps maybe not

It is difficult to avoid the view that we live in interesting times, but then in reality all times are ‘interesting’, irrespective of whether they appear to be hosting a bigger number of earth-shattering or iconic events that one might normally expect.

Right now we’re approaching getting the result of the Labour leadership election between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith.

The continuing fall-out arguments between Remainers and Brexiters seem destined to go on for years not months, as meanwhile the rest of us haven’t got the slightest clue as to what is going on.

In defiance of every UN resolution going, North Korea has tested a nuclear bomb and in preparatory retaliation South Korea military sources have threatened to obliterate Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, if North Korea should ever pose a viable nuclear threat.

Mr Putin’s Russia is sitting in the Crimea and in Ukraine, and now supposedly teaming up with the USA in order to impose a ceasefire in Syria and mount joint-missions against ISIS.

Mrs May is going to introduce a programme of building more grammar schools, thus over-turning several decades’ worth of a convention within Whitehall that this will not happen.

The US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – neither of whom seem to appeal strongly to US voters in terms of respect and likeability – are apparently now virtually neck-and-neck in the polls, which is extremely worrying for the rest of the world, never mind America. After repeated insinuations from Mr Trump that she’s not medically ‘up to scratch’ and therefore fit enough to be president, Mrs Clinton also appeared to collapse yesterday at a ceremony marking the fifteen anniversary of 9/11 and has been pronounced by her doctor to be suffering from pneumonia.

The grandees of the NHS are now saying that it is over-stretched, financially going down the pan despite the supposedly extra £8 billion that their chief asked for – and allegedly received commitment for from the Government – eighteen months ago, and wholly incapable of providing a 7-day service (which the juniors doctors have been saying throughout their dispute in trying to deflect accusation that actually all they’re really after is more money).

It all makes for pretty grim reading, doesn’t it?

For anyone like me who generally takes a pretty fatalistic and hard-nosed view of politics and the world, when it comes to the UK’s educational system (or do I mean just that of England and Wales?) and the NHS, the problems seem both never-ending and insurmountable.

Not that this stops politicians of every party and every successive generation from trying to interfere and ‘make a difference’ of course.

It must be exceedingly frustrating for any well-meaning politician to contemplate admitting that some things are just not capable of ever being turned around, improved and/or resolved to the public advantage.

Take education, or rather put it in its widest context.

Life is a jungle out there and surviving – and indeed prospering, right through to realising one’s wildest ambitions and dreams – is largely a matter of any and/or all of the following: opportunity, upbringing, application and hard work, determination to succeed, intelligence, skills, personality (including club-ability), coincidence, chance and drive.

Life is also unfair, but then every species, plant, volcano and extreme weather disaster instinctively knows that. It so happens that in life, there are winners and there are losers.

In Western societies, as long as there exits freedom, individuals and families will use theirs to advance the causes of those closest to them – i.e. by getting their offspring the best educations they can, associating (and networking) with those they aspire to have as their peers, just generally securing for themselves the best possible lives and futures they can.

By the same token, nobody could seriously take umbrage at the notion that some form of meritocracy is a good thing. In an ideal world, those with the greatest intelligence and capacity to go furthest should be identified and given the opportunity to do so (for the common good). Equally, those less fortunate in either the genes department, the family upbringing department, or indeed any other, should still be encouraged to ‘go as far as they can’.

Not everyone can become a multi-millionaire playing Number 9 for Manchester City and England, but that’s no reason to declare that nobody should be allowed to.

There has to be a ‘safety net’ of some kind for those who are born into an impoverished (in any sense) life – whether that means family background, disability, or sheer apparent lack of opportunity – but the truth is that millions of Britons are destined to live pretty mundane lives.

And would be, irrespective of whether the United Kingdom was run by a government consisting of Tories, Labour, the Greens, a Coalition or even a ‘Big Brother’ Stalinist communistic junta.

My point is, however, that even under a government of any of the above, those so inclined, whether instinctively or by carefully-considered design, would find some way of ‘scrabbling to the top’, whatever that top was and however lucrative (or not) it turned out to be.

That’s why at the moment I fail to ‘get’ the reasons and intent behind the Prime Minister’s current policy (as announced) upon grammar schools. I cannot see that it is going to make much (any) difference to the general complaint that all the credible indicators are pointing to the fact that social mobility in the UK is going backwards not – as might have been expected (given the size and strength of the PC industry generally) – improving.

It’s not an easy subject because there’s a degree to which, even if you sent every kid in the land to a top public school, and then Oxbridge, and then gave them a job in a City merchant bank, statistically [I’m grabbing a figure from the air here] a penny to a pound say that 85% of them would still end up barely extending themselves and working for an hourly rate in a factory or else living on welfare. Because that is all they expect hope – or perhaps want – out of life.

I certainly don’t have the answer to the unending problems of the NHS. It seems to me that it’s a public sector sacred cow far too big and powerful for any politician to reform or improve. However, there must surely be an alternative than simply pouring an infinite amount of taxpayers’ money down the plug-hole simply to keep it going.

The government likes to make a great deal of its recent pledge of another £8 billion of funding for the NHS – this on top of what it is currently pouring into it every year. They might as well have pledged an extra £80 billion or even £800 billion per annum – because, without something radical happening, one day soon that’s how much extra it’s going to take simply to keep it running.