The barren glory

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Ours has become a world particularly well suited to a constantly growing and evolving swamp of bureaucracy which attracts and sucks in those its makes its own. The Swamp as it is sometimes called – it’s a good modern name for a not so modern evil.

Should Mrs H and I wish to extend our house beyond certain official limits we’ll have to acquire official approval. The other day I topped up the AdBlue tank in our car, a bureaucrat’s answer to a bureaucrat’s problem. The whole car is a complex web of manufacturer’s responses to bureaucratic interference. Now we have the EV, a bureaucrat’s car. A Swamp car perhaps, to be powered by Swamp electricity – but not when the wind doesn’t blow. There is no Swamp wind.

Senior politicians, senior members of the permanent administration, international bureaucrats, senior members of the judiciary, NGO and Quango executives, senior media people, major journalists, politically active celebrities and many others could be considered as a loose caste with one particular interest in common – support the Swamp, grow the Swamp.

We are stuck in a highly evolved bureaucratic Swamp where we cannot vote for anything but more bureaucracy, more Swamp, more Swamp people, more Swamp-related business. We are entangled with a whole caste of Swamp people who can’t do anything but Swamp-work. Even the UK monarchy joins in.

Nothing escapes Swamp-people. They have their Swampy fingers in everything from the corner shop to the local school, from light bulbs to the road network, from paint to social media, from petrol to sausages, from coffee to missiles to Swamp health, Swamp hectoring. Nothing escapes completely and nothing avoids being sucked in further, decade by decade.

The Road to Serfdom was a warning we failed to heed and now we are faced with our destiny – Swamp Serfs. We were warned and warned again, but still we voted Swamp.

Besides that, a wave of regimentation is sweeping the world—standardized schooling, like everything else out of a tin, is cheaper, easier, and certainly safer than my sort of venture. In the educational sense, as well as every other, individual effort is going to be swamped.

Dorothy Bowers – Fear for Miss Betony (1941)