Nimbyism Is Something Only Other People Do

I remember the party politics and domestic life
in the England of the 1970's. It was most remarkable
how the fear of a shortage, once broadcast on television,
begat the very shortage feared of, as housewives,
on hearing the threat, attacked the supermarket shelves
as if they were lady locusts going to war for their families.

I also remember how with the spreading fear of recession
many government ministers advised each another in public
about how other ministers ought to cut their budgets
for everyone's needs to be met. Naturally no minister
ever publicly admitted to living out the advice they gave to others.
The media, three television channels and mostly BBC radio,
had their field day but the public (who were broadly apolitical anyway)
tuned in to light entertainment instead.

The gridlock multiplied into discontent
when nobody accepted change or liked lectures.
The public execution of the mining industry in 1984
was the hangover after the party that everyone denied
was coming at the time. If we could have learnt
from Mahatma Ghandi on individuation it could have been very different;
 'You must be the change you wish to see in the world'.