I’ve only just gotten back and already I’m not even sure if I can still call it home. I have lived in London on and off for nearly ten years and never so much have I felt it moving away from me. I remember clearly the day of the London Bombing on the 7th of July. They were horrific for sure but London and I felt England, just got on with it. The feel of the people was one not of fear but of confidence in their city and their country. People were upset but not paranoid. Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, flew down to London from his conference in Scotland and spent the day in London, sending a message of calms not of fear and hate unlike Bush’s reactions a few years prior.
I now sit in London having arrived three days ago and feel my adopted land is not quite my own anymore. I feel fear and distrust. Tonight I watched an English film called ‘The Edge of Love’. I would not recommend it but there was one line I’d like to paraphrase. ‘I’m fighting this war so that the fear will not have to be lived with’. He was talking about the Second World War That fear that his character fought against is alive and well so far as I can see inside the walls of this island.
Sitting in my in-laws house in Brighton the TV blared on about knife crime. Apparently one person a week dies in London because of a knife. If I think about one in twenty million I don’t feel I should be afraid. If anything it seems like a low number from me. They were selling this story everywhere continually. All this does is make people paranoid. It’s ridiculous, it’s not that the news stations actually care, but this news sells, it gets people nervous and probably incites some to carry knives as ‘protection’ when they normally never would. Certainly if you have a knife or weapon on you you’re more apt to use it, no statistic will show otherwise. I have no interest in living or taking part in a society that is afraid of its own shadow. Afraid nations are ones controlled and anything but free, just look at America, especially post WTC Bombings.
I will leave England in less than two months time. I know I will return, but at this moment I don’t know if I will ever live here again, and that saddens me. When people become so afraid, as most Westerners are it makes me sad. When one no longer trusts their neighbour, or thinks they are constantly at risk of being mugged, killed, robed or anything of that nature then something is going wrong. I would like to ask all of you how many of you actually know someone that’s been robed, killed, anything that the media spreads, has any of these ‘content and rising issues’ ever happened to you?
It was interesting, talking to my friend in Madrid a few weeks ago I mentioned Gypsies. In England they don’t seem to affect us as much as on the continent. I had read a very good article in The Economist on the Gypsies of Europe and mentioned it to them. He immediately mentioned that he didn’t like them, so I asked why. His phrase was that he’d been robbed by one. I had to investigate further: when he was ten years old a Gypsy walked into his fathers shop. She then walked out holding a case of cigarettes. She was walking so casually with it that they figured this normally very heavy box must be empty. Upon checking the inventory, as each box contained about 200 cartons, his father discovered that they were a box short. They’d been robbed by a woman believed to be a Gypsy. For this incident twenty five years prior he distrusted and disliked Gypsies. It’s a great example of blind fear which always leads to hatred.
As I see the media and government turning England into a nation of afraid people it scares me. I have lived and walked the streets of London since I was a child without feeling or seeing harm. This city I love has moved away from me for many of my own personal reasons, the least being crime.
Have the lessons of a war fought seventy years ago been forgotten? I’m about to move back to Asia. The West is not afraid of Asia just yet, but in my lifetime they will be. A larger more powerful China and India will create conflict and turmoil that may or may not affect Europe. Certainly it will affect America which will likely rub off on England. One day I will have a family of my own. I don’t know the environment they will grow up in, and I’m not particularly afraid for them; but I believe it’s my responsibility as a parent to teach them not to be afraid. I wish corporate media felt the same way I do.
