Broken Land

A feary tale is like a fairy tale only scary and all too real.

Sometimes, one of life’s greatest challenges is to stand up and speak out.

Even if one believes in healing and conciliation, the UK is breaking and lacks effective leadership.

In this piece, there is anger, yet the challenge always remains to put such energy to constructive use.

Feary Tale about a Once-Innocent Land

Once-upon-a time there was a land surrounded by sea. The people trusted the Powerful to look after their interests, educate their children, help them stay healthy and keep them safe from dangerous predators. One day, things changed.

…there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours.” Margaret Thatcher

CleverWitch She thought society was a concept. She loved gold and power above all. She waved her wand, cast a greedy spell and made people think they’d be rich.

Trust in Gold

Entranced, many of the citizens followed her. For a while things seemed to get better and better. She fought against traditional ways of doing things which she believed wasteful; sometimes she was right, but not always. She thought she was always right anyway.

She created a new magical aristocracy, the Notha greed is good and wanted wealth and status. In fact most Notha didn’t need to do common work like the people. They could go to school, university and even become a Spurius

Boris Johnson has launched a bold bid to claim the mantle of Margaret Thatcher by declaring that inequality is essential to fostering “the spirit of envy” and hailed greed as a “valuable spur to economic activity”. The Guardian November, 2013

Fruits of Evil

The Notha enjoyed the fruits of their mendacity. Yet there was only one real difference between them and the people: the Notha managed to create mountains of real gold for themselves and the people didn’t. They also generated hatred between people as a way to keep pressure off themselves and avoid reality … most of the time.
The Notha and the Spurii hired the worm-like WordSpinners who hid the truth and manufactured exciting lies that the people believed were true. Through CleverWitch’s enchantment, the people though they were getting gold too. Under the spell of the WordSpinners they thought their wealth was real. Thus the people spent lots of gold that didn’t exist which they’d have to pay back one day. So although the people felt good, they lived in a land being slowly filched from under their noses.

CleverWitch convinced citizens that suppressing the UnderPeople was a good thing. It’s always best to have an enemy, especially a weak one.

The UnderPeople believed they worked hard to look after the country: it’s castles, roads, hospitals and many useful dirty-jobs like digging coal. Their guilds were fairly combative, but they couldn’t withstand CleverWitch and her familiars.

A Twist from the WordSpinners

Unlike some politicians, I can admit to a mistake.” Nelson Mandela

As instructed, the WordSpinners suggested the UnderPeople were troublesome and needed putting in their place. Many changes took place in the land. The Notha pretended to make improvements but actually made more gold for themselves while creating empty coffers for the people to fill … for many generations to come.

If people complained or argued they would be destroyed by WordSpinners and the Notha would throw them out or, if pushed, give them real gold to go away.

Some of the people came to realise that the leadership of the Notha was not nearly as good as it sounded. They were all talk and hot air. Except for a few, the Notha didn’t care.

Grey-Gnome fights Powerful-Wizard

After many years, the CleverWitch of the Notha lost her power and the GreyGnome took her place. GreyGnome was very much like CleverWitch until he, a nondescript Spurius, lost power to PowerfulWizard and his clever familiar. PowerfulWizard seemed good. He had a lovely smile and promised to make the people happy and treat them well. His golden words convinced most of the people until they at last discovered he was a Spurius in disguise and every bit as wicked as  CleverWitch.

One day PowerfulWizard fought a battle with AwesomeScotus, Scrotum of the North, who defeated him. The story repeated itself. By then people had forgotten what proper leadership was like, how to do things and why the UnderPeople had lost their way. More than half the leaders and magical aristocracy were Notha any way. Every single Spurius believed that if they thrashed and bullied the UnderPeople, things would get better. To make sure, they put guilds of Notha in charge.

Disenchantment Breaks the Spell

As time passed, more and more people became free of the spell of the Notha and WordSpinners. The land became full of unhappy and disillusioned people. Most realised things weren’t right. Almost all the gold was gone. The Notha who had been around when CleverWitch arrived were all gone. The new leaders were not all Notha (although most were) and had no experience of the real world because they had never known it.

What misery there was when the Notha clung to power, getting gold by fair means or foul. One day the gold vanished, to where no one knows (some say to PanaMania), whatever, the coffers were empty. The Notha and their WordSpinners tried hard to convince the people they knew what to do, but they didn’t and still don’t

The skills and knowledge to fix things were nearly lost. But even if found, the Notha would never allow the righting of great wrongs, protection of the Land or strengthening of the UnderPeople. Powerful UnderPeople would mean the Notha and Spurius couldn’t do whatever they liked.

The biggest sadness of all was that the Notha did not understand how evil they were. Like many of the PowerfulPeople they thought they were good and the only ones with right answers; even though they had shown time after time they didn’t have many, if any, good spells.

Old Ones

Things started to look so terribly bleak and dark, it made many people cry out in pain and anger. One day, the demon Brexit nearly broke the land. Some even blamed the OldOnes and YoungOnes and the Northern and the Druids for the evil.

Across the land, something crackled and with a sound of energy and focus. It was all the people breaking free of the spell. The OldOnes, who could vaguely remember the spells and right-action found the YoungOnes and all the others, did know what to do. They stood as a single person with  very loud voice, confronted the Notha and made them do right … please God!

Mac Logan

related posts Stay or Go, creed of greed, short term culture long term problems, If the Panama Hat fits, Flogging the Jewels,

first posted August 2015