Tag Archives: Meh

The Meh Society

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Today, Ed Miliband gave his accep­tance speech to the Labour party con­fer­ence, and hav­ing watched it, I caught myself acci­den­tally feel­ing cau­tiously opti­mistic. Have no fear, that feel­ing was quickly despatched and I remain my nor­mal cyn­i­cal self.

One par­tic­u­lar term he used which grated hor­ri­bly for me was “the good soci­ety”. The Good Soci­ety, really? Was the Tories’ equiv­a­lent not annoy­ing enough already?

The thing about “the Big Soci­ety” and “the Good Soci­ety” is that they’re sound­bites and they don’t mean any­thing, and that for some rea­son annoys me more than it ought to.

We’re just about com­ing to under­stand that Cameron’s “Big Soci­ety” is about par­ents build­ing schools and get­ting char­i­ties to pick up the bill for things the gov­ern­ment can’t afford to fix. It seems to be a par­tial removal of the state’s abstrac­tion layer: instead of want­ing schools, pay­ing taxes and let­ting some­one qual­i­fied turn one into the other, you’re now encour­aged to take on that over­head your­selves so that they can sack half the pub­lic sec­tor workers.

Wait, this wasn’t sup­posed to be a rant about that Society.

No, the “Good Soci­ety” is even more neb­u­lous, and I hope it doesn’t become a buzz­word like its alter ego. What is it sup­posed to entail? Us being vaguely nice to each other and hop­ing it all works out?

For all the catchy phrases that politi­cians throw around, the major­ity of the pub­lic are com­mit­ted mem­bers of the “Meh Soci­ety”. We want to pay taxes at a rea­son­able level, and get good pub­lic ser­vices as a result. And in the main we’re nice peo­ple, but we’re also pretty cyn­i­cal about pol­i­tics, and being declared part of “the Good Soci­ety” or “the Big Soci­ety” just doesn’t entrhrall us as much as those in par­lia­ment would like to believe.

Life Out of Rhythm

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With Joseph now spend­ing a week and a half at his grand­par­ents’ house, our lives are even more bereft of the enforced rou­tine of being par­ents to a tod­dler. It’s not that I miss this rou­tine — god knows, I hate rou­tine more than most — but how strange it feels when it’s no longer present.

Eric, who’s been at home all day, now sits in the cor­ner read­ing a book, lis­ten­ing to music that my brain parses as depress­ing regard­less of its actual con­tent. She’s not hun­gry, I’m not really hun­gry, as the clock ticks onwards long past what would have been Joseph’s din­ner time. I was instructed not to buy food for din­ner on the way home, so we don’t have enough ingre­di­ents to make an actual meal — not that I can be both­ered to cook any­way. I con­tem­plate going out for fish and chips, though I can’t really afford it and can’t even be both­ered to stand up from the sofa.

A four-day week­end and a frag­men­tary rem­i­nis­cence of Uni­ver­sity life have thrown my work life askew as well, and it feels odd to be there, like it’s a tran­sient thing.

For all that I nor­mally yearn to be free from the yoke of par­ent­hood, it sure as hell feels weird when I tem­porar­ily achieve it, as if I’m no longer adapted to a child-free life.