I am in England, on business.

It is raining.

I had forgotten how grey it can be.

The government is as incompetent as ours is back in DC, although on a much smaller scale, so the whole affair seems to be rather amateur. In truth, ever since John Major capitulated to Brussels, HMG has been pretty irrelevant. A backwater of the irrelevant EU, playing games on the global stage but totally lacking in ambition.

Regrettably, the USA is also lacking in ambition, determined to collapse under the weight of $trillions of debt, entitlement and self-obsession.

They used to say that to see Britain’s future, look to America. Americans would look to California for their future, but I think Americans should look at Britain to see what happens to countries that apologise for and abandon their central mission.

California has a drought, brought on itself by eco-politics and self-obsession. The public spirit that built California’s irrigation and drinking water distribution systems (and so much else that was great, like education) has been replaced with a pseudo-religious guilt complex which would make the Vatican green with envy. Water systems have been allowed to atrophy. Reservoirs are unbuilt. California is returning to its natural state, but now with a population attracted by 80 years of abundance.

Meanwhile, in England, that same eco-politics has for the past 40 years neglected the lessons of the previous 1000 years. England truly is a man-made country.  Beautifully constructed in harmony with nature, this land, this realm, this sceptered isle etc etc has been abandoned to nature.

Undredged rivers, built-upon flood plains; infrastructure built for 40 million of “this happy breed” has been neglected through ignorance and stupidity, whilst mass immigration and a bloated welfare state drives the population ever upwards to and beyond 60, 70 million people. Chaos.

We have been turning out generations of semi-educated people. If we have any visionaries, their myopia is limited to destroying the gains of the mid 20th century in a misguided romantic quest to rebuild Eden.

Pol Pot took Route One. The destination is the same, and I can’t see the populations of The Golden State and New Jerusalem managing to run a subsistence economy for long. Nor will they keep the land, for it is far too attractive (when managed correctly) to other, envious eyes.