I can still vividly recall the the final moments in the life of
Karl Wallenda, when he tried to cross that Great Divide in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There came a time when the onslaught became just too much. Overwhelmed, he slowly sat down and slipped from this life and into the great unknown. It was March 22nd 1978 and the divide was then just under 91.5 metres!
Thirty-five years later, it came down to his great grandson to attempt to symbolise a truer crossing of the Great Divide! In sight of 'Utopian' unparallelled inequality, he took his life in his hands and veritably sprinted towards his goal! The Great Divide had grown to 426 metres.
Had the act not been merely a futile gesture, it might well have taken place over The Grand Canyon itself. Instead,
Nik Wallenda's feat was demoted to the Little Colorado River Gorge in Navajo National Park. Global leaders had sought to prevent Nik from unveiling the true scale of things. He managed the 426m on the 23rd June 2013.
Analogically writing Sir Michael Wilshaw, at the behest of his puppet-masters, would have been perched upon the far edge, frantically attempting to whip up those angry winds.
The Grand Divide,
Duncan Rawlinson
Back in the real world Sir Michael was recently busily condemning the UK's school populations to further lifetimes of underachievement. Sir Michael's words? We, "should be worried about a growing divide..." How closely the billowing arrogance of Sir Michael came to alluding to the truer picture. In his latest round of considered undermining he swiftly swept the mere mortal teachers off the table with a dismissive right forearm, preferring to dig his pearlies into high school management, citing the fact that 56 more schools have been placed in special measures than was the case one year ago. He also 'named and shamed' thirteen local authorities, where he disingenuously 'pointed out' that, "parents will rightly worry about poor performance." It seems that nothing in education is above criticism.
Except, of course, that it is! Assuming that he
really is attempting to trace this 'monumental failure' right back to its roots, Sir Michael has naturally forgotten to point his pudgy little finger in precisely the right direction. Perhaps in his red haze of indignation, perhaps as a nod to further self-interest, perhaps following a hidden agenda of immense yet secreted scale, he pointedly refused to accept his own role in this stated failure, or that of a number of particularly spiteful former Education Ministers.
Exquisite,
Mark Chadwick
Sir Michael chooses to note, perhaps, where the teacher fails to motivate the pupils but... well, I'm sure you get the drift. Appointed then, we might speculate, to assist with widening rather than healing the rift.
History's pages are bursting with dictators and liars and zealots but, in these times of optimised communication, one is left to ponder a world, or
a nation, whereby such people continue to rule the roost. It would almost appear that modernity has mustered
only the means by which the Grand Divide might continue to broaden its shoulders, rather than to challenge such abuse. The
trickle has ceased to do just that...
... to trickle, as we were once falsely promised, down to the ''less-deserving echelons. Perhaps some form of capillary-monetary-action is afoot, whereby the trickle has finally found a means of defying gravity altogether.
How dire must things be if the IMF itself is prepared to cite inequality- the Great Divide- as a drag on economic growth? Obviously this cannot be seen as any sort of
insight, more likely a
concern that uber-greed might somehow harm even the uber-greedy- twisted logic or what? But, let's stick with it, shall we, the differing views of coprophagic government and those of one of monetarism's many barbed tools, the IMF?
The
International Monetary Fund has picked through the data and concluded that those countries operating with smaller income differentials had expanded their economies more effectively. Thus- setting aside the valid issue that continued sustainable growth is neither universally beneficial, nor sustainable- we find that, even by its own flawed logic, the capitalist world is stalling. Clearly this has merely consolidated the case for working people, yet
so bad have things become that we have lurched and juddered to a state of affairs whereby even society's new-age deities are finally peripherally 'affected'- to boot purchasing power at the other end is just too weak to sustain the current growth in inequality. All the same, I'm prepared to predict continued denial for the foreseeable future. One wonders, 'What
will that 'nice' Mr Osborne have to say about it all?'
Exactly!
NASA's Marshall Space...
Where accelerating inequality is actively sought, as in the UK, the rise in food-bank-and-its -ilk usage has tripled in the last year. "A price worth paying," spat from the mouths of the Champions of Inequality, here is beyond beginning to sound strained. Even were we prepared to regard 'our' politicians as well-intentioned- which I would
strongly urge against- we must finally recognise that they are having to battle hard to just pretend that
they think otherwise.
So, the perverse position appears to be one of accepting the rise in food-bank usage, whilst appearing to take an opposing stance. Thus we currently have feather-nesting politicians 'stating' that the rise in food-bank usage is merely a consequence of the proliferation in food-banks, whilst continuing to entertain the 'need' for yet further public sector/welfare cuts. Whilst all the evidence implies that if the trickle actually trickled
Mr Tony and his ilk would surely have long since ceased accruing at
quite such an astronomical rate.
As suggested in recent
posts, Sir Bob Geldof would more likely dint Africa's problems if he were instead to devote his half-a-day-a-year to addressing inequality, rather than to asking the minions to dig deep yet again. Except, of course, that Bob also has his own vested interests to first consider.
Standing, as we are- most of us!- at the 'wrong' precipice of the vast and craggy Great Divide, armed also now with the concern that drug-resistant
superbugs may well be set to reap annually a further 10 million by 2050, we might afford ourselves a moment to marvel at the stark beauty of it all, the pristine arid perfection of the chasm. The merest concept of bridging the eighteen miles with a suitable cable may instantly be recognised as a feat far beyond the globe's greatest civil engineers. If the air is clear, the haze minimal, we might even steal a furtive peak at those ivory edifices of otherworldly resplendence. Oh, what might have been achieved,
if only? And, should the breeze slip round to the east, we might just strain our ears. Carried upon the Divide's lazy thermals, the ghosted sound of Champagne corks may just tease our senses. The antibiotics may yet hold the answer.
91.5 metres to 18 miles in 36 years, allegorically, as well as mathematically perfect!
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