I’m told people have stopped listening/watching the news in Britain because it is too depressing. Well, there’s no question about the gloomy nature of the World today so, I suppose, we can’t blame people for wanting to look away from so many serious issues. The problem is, dare I say, that people not just here in Britain, are not watching the news because they are frightened of the truth and are looking for solutions from populist politicians who are saying everything is easy – trust me, I’m an ordinary guy just like you. The trouble is, in our democracies, these ordinary guys might just get elected with their easily digested and simplistic answers to complex questions. In Britain this might happen next May just at a time when the country and the world needs politicians who can see beyond easy answers and who refuse to pander to the emotions of an anxious electorate looking for solutions in  single issue politics.

Here in Britain, we have the phenomenon that is Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party.  His simple political solution to the world’s problems is for this small island to leave the European Union and to close the borders. It is simple, no question, but it is also balefully wrong and, let’s face it, it won’t work.

The trouble is that he is very persuasive and is seen as an attractive alternative to Britain’s ‘main’ political leaders. It is easy to hate our politicians and all of us can come up with easy reasons why ‘the economy isn’t working’, ‘foreign immigrants are taking all our jobs,’ ‘Europe is the cause of all our problems,’ etc. etc. etc. We can all come up with other catch phrases over a pint of beer with the friendly Mr. Farage. He is so persuasive that he has Britain’s political leaders on the back foot.

Prime Minister, David Cameron, is tearing up his old ‘liberal’ speeches and looking for ways of sounding electable and acceptable to an electorate looking for scape goats.  Every day we are being fed new ‘back of an envelope’ policies from his ‘think tank’ and, increasingly, he is being pushed to the right and now he is alienating Britain’s European partners and worrying the United States. He knows, but daren’t admit it, that Farageing the Conservative party is a road to disaster.

Poor much got-at Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party, is on the run too. He is only just holding on to a slender lead in the polls and is egg-splatteringly unpopular in the country. He is having to react to the Farage phenomenon too. Miracle-seeking Labour voters too are looking for happy endings in Mr Farage’s saloon bar politics.  Mr Cameron and Mr Milliband are not fools even if they are unloved – their sin will be ignoring what their intelligence tells them about British and international affairs and ducking their responsibility to inform the British electorate that next May’s general election is grown up time.

This is serious folks – like it or not. By ignoring the news, we ignore the developing problems in Europe and beyond – problems that Britain should be helping to resolve for all our sakes. All of us folk lucky enough to have a vote need to open our eyes and look.

President Hollande of France isn’t laughing , he’s made mistakes for sure and he too is deeply unpopular in his own land, but France should be our friend when we have enemies watching us with hatred in their eyes.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the great survivor but even she is beginning to look rattled by the future  and not just by the economics. She is much more Britain’s friend then Britain realises and she is depressed by Britain’s growing isolationism.

President Obama too is having a bumpy time. He is facing the Mid-Term elections in a country where the people there too have stopped watching the news because it is depressing. Ebola, a potential catastrophe for some African countries, has turned into an American nightmare, a symbol of fear and a stick with which to hit their politicians, both Democrats and Republicans alike. Everywhere in the Western democracies, people are looking for simple solutions to complex problems and distrusting their politicians.

They are looking for simple solutions in some of the most troubled parts of the Middle East too. When the news is bad at home in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia or Yemen, their young men look to ISIS for their own naively imagined happy ending and flock, along with European and American ‘Jihadists’, to Syria and Iraq. The result doesn’t need repeating – even if we don’t watch the news, we all know about the horrors that the world has ignored for too long.

So, ignore the news if you want but, please, don’t think the solution to these many crises will be solved over a pint with the dangerous Mr Farage. I say it again, wake up Britain, it’s Grown Up Time.

The post It’s Grown Up Time: We won’t save the World by turning off the News and looking for salvation in Nigel Farage. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

So God’s done it again. Thousands of years after he got fed up with human sin and decided to flood the World, he’s decided that enough is enough and that’s why Britain got those floods over Christmas. Odd time to choose, I thought, Christmas Day floods, surely, a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, God.

It was quite a thing the first time, when the only people saved were Noah and his family along with pairs of breeding animals that went in two by two on to Noah’s cunning DIY ark.

When God had drowned all the sinners (everyone that is, except Noah and his family) the water subsided and the ark landed on the top of Mount Arafat with all the human and animal passengers safe.

With all the sinners drowned,  God decided that enough was enough and he promised not to do it again and as a sign of his promise he stuck a rainbow in the sky.

Now God has been at it again but this time, apparently, He just targeted Britain and,  no arks this time, just unpleasant floods in various parts of the UK, including Henley-On-Thames. Anyway there wasn’t enough warning for one David Silvester, our modern day Noah, to build an ark or to round up breeding pairs of our animals but luckily the devastation didn’t wipe out the entire country and all life this time. We don’t have that many wild animals in the UK any more so it wouldn’t have taken David that long to find couples of foxes, badgers, water voles, rats, moles, mice, sand lizards, frogs, toads and newts etc. plus the farm animals of course. I suppose if he had built that ark, he’d be shipwrecked now somewhere near Gravesend.

David Silvester, a United Kingdom Party (UKIP) councillor from Henley-on-Thames, may not have sailed off to Mount Arafat or Gravesend but he knows all about God’s flooding intentions. According to David, God is angry with Prime Minister David Cameron for allowing the recent Same Sex Marriage Bill to go through Parliament. Apparently this is the most sinful act since Noah – or before the flood as they say. Looking at the flood damage in Henley, I suspect God might be slightly less angry this time round.

I was relieved and surprized to discover that Mr Silvester’s cranky antediluvian beliefs are too ridiculous even for the United Kingdom Party (UKIP) and he has been suspended from the party just as, last year, the UKIP MEP (Member of European Parliament), Godfrey Bloom was sacked for describing the countries where Britain sent aid as Bongo-Bongo Land. The UKIP leader, Nigel Farage,  has now said that he will vet the party to make sure there are no “extremist, barmy or nasty” views. At this rate there’ll be no one left, Nigel. Maybe he could build them an ark and send them off somewhere over the rainbow.

The rainbow, however, remains a sign of hope after the deluge – so maybe God isn’t so annoyed about same-sex marriages after-all.

Even if David Silvester is right about the causes of the 2013 Henley-on-Thames floods, I wonder if he has an explanation for why God flooded Henley-on-Thames in 2012 too.

Now that Mr Silvester isn’t quite so busy, maybe he should just sit back and enjoy a sing-a-long about the ark. What puzzles me is that when all those animals went in two by two, how come Noah even got those giant pandas to breed?

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My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

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Most people in the UK had a drink or two over this sunny May bank holiday weekend, I hope there aren’t too many queasy hang-overs today. I’m sure that pint tasted good for Nigel Farage, the jovial leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party. If he couldn’t celebrate after his party took nearly a quarter of the vote in last week’s local elections, then when could he? Next year, I suppose, if his party rises to its big moment at the elections for the European parliament when some predict an overwhelming UKIP resurgence. We will have to wait and see but Mr Farage seems to have found a way of tempting large numbers of British people to his seductive saloon bar Utopia where there are comfortingly easy answers to Britain’s complex problems in this disconcerting time of national insecurity. With each new round of intoxicating drinks served up in Nigel’s bar, his followers feel that things don’t have to be so bad for Britain after-all. Inside his olde worlde tavern,  nicotine-stained nostalgia burgeons in smokey rooms where political manifestos are scribbled on soggy beer mats and where sober reality is banned from the club.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, may well scratch his head. He thought he was holding a nostalgia party until Nigel Farage jollied his way onto the scene. If things were looking bad for his chances of re-election, they have got a whole lot worse now that he has been party-pooped by so many of his traditional supporters, old-style Rule Britannia types, a coalition of tweedy suburban dreamers and abrasive Ford Mondeo-drivers who share the late Margaret Thatcher’s distrust of foreigners especially ones who don’t speak English and who see politics as an intellectual debate. David Cameron can hear the confident laughter coming from Nigel Farage’s bar down the road while he tries to humour the dwindling numbers of restless guests at his low key wine and cheese party.

Talking of coalitions, the Liberal-Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, is still at David Cameron’s party, he even chose the classy French wine and his own supply of Camembert cheese supplementing the David’s mature English cheddar, but he is not happy. He too can hear the laughter from Nigel’s bar and fears that David may soon have to roll out a barrel of old English ale and a hearty supply of pork scratchings. After those local elections, Nick knows that he can’t keep the party going on his own. No one has gone for his guacamole canapes and his Camembert has started to sweat. Maybe he should look for another party, I hear the Labour leader, Ed Milliband, is going to have a bar-b-que if the weather stays fine. Nick, just bring an 8-pack of beers, in case the wine runs out. This morning I heard my first cuckoo. Cheers everyone in the UK, hope you enjoyed the party.

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