On the mess in Britain, some words that cover it nicely

From the book Quartered Safe Out Here:
Still, the Britain they see in their old age is hardly “the land fit for heroes” that they envisaged – if that land existed in their imaginations, it was probably a place where the pre-war values co-existed with decent wages and housing. It was a reasonable, perfectly possible dream, and for a time it existed, more or less. And then it changed, in the name of progress and improvement and enlightenment, which meant the destruction of much that they had fought for and held dear, and the betrayal of familiar things that they had loved. Some of them, to superficial minds, will seem terribly trivial, even ludicrously so – things like county names, and shillings and pence, and the King James Version, and yards and feet and inches – yet they matter to a nation.

They did not fight for a Britain which would be dishonestly railroaded into Europe against the people’s will; they did not fight for a Britain where successive governments, by their weakness and folly, would encourage crime and violence on an unprecedented scale; they did not fight for a Britain where thugs and psychopaths could murder and maim and torture and never have a finger laid on them for it; they did not fight for a Britain whose leaders would be too cowardly to declare war on terrorism; they did not fight for a Britain whose Parliament would, time and again, betray its trust by legislating against the wishes of the country; they did not fight for a Britain where children could be snatched from their homes and parents by night on nothing more than the good old Inquisition principle of secret information; they did not fight for a Britain whose Churches and schools would be undermined by fashionable reformers; they did not fight for a Britain where free choice could be anathematised as “discriminisation”; they did not fight for a Britain where to hold by truths and values which have been thought good and worthy for a thousand years would be to run the risk of being called “fascist” – that, really, is the greatest and most pitiful irony of all."

Now, part of the current bullshit:
A farmer has been ordered to pay out £3,500 in costs after a neighbour secretly filmed him riding a tractor with his grandchild in the cab. Video footage taken by a neighbour captured the moment Howard Walters, 78, allowed one of his grandchildren to illegally ride in his tractor.

He was spotted with the pre-teen child in the tractor cab in January 2021 as he fed cattle on his farm in South Wales.

Mr Walters had already been issued with a prohibition notice by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) after admitting to inspectors he allowed his grandchildren to ride in his tractor.

However, just two months later, he was filmed by his neighbour breaching the terms of that notice.

A HSE inspector who investigated Mr Walters said the law was 'very clear', as children under 13 are specifically prohibited from driving or riding on or in any agricultural machine, including the tractor cab.
Jeez.
And let's not talk about this nasty little Stasi-informer neighbor, good little bastard he is.

(formerly Great)Britain is so screwed...