Even my local zebra crossing has been politicised

This is not a well-researched thoughtpiece. It's babble. It's irked, scared, spur-of-the-moment low-grade babble and I just have to get it out but please don't read it if it's going to spoil your pleasant mood today.

Let me set the scene. I was waiting patiently for Otis to take his fifth impressively massive poo on our routine morning walk the other day, when my gaze happened to stray to the zebra crossing. With an internal Karen-level flush of outrage, I realised that the white lines had been vandalised with little red spray-painted crosses.

George Cross flags are everywhere in England at the moment, flying excessively from lamp-posts and houses, draped over statues and graffitied onto white road markings. Usually this kind of overt flag-flying only happens during big football games and I just ignore it because football, as much as it bores the pants off me, is something that brings many people in my country a huge amount of joy - and who am I to knock that?

However. To me and most people I know, the current flag mania doesn't feel like a joyful celebration of community and heritage…it feels like the early stages of a fascist uprising.

It just feels…off.

We know the right-wing Reform party is lurking like a heavy-breathing oddball-turned-serial-killer at the sidelines of the current government’s rather uninspiring performance, stoking the fire of public unrest to capture more Conservative and Labour votes in the next general election.

The source of all our problems, according to Reform, is the unstoppable influx of foreigners.

Struggling to make ends meet? It's because of all the refugees. Annoyed that you had to wait ages for a hospital appointment? It's because of all the refugees. The plummeting living standards we’re all experiencing couldn't possibly be a consequence of corporate greed.

It couldn't possibly be because the wealth gap is getting gappier. It couldn't possibly be because an elite few are hoarding resources and withholding them from everybody else.

No. It must be because of the handful of disenfranchised human beings who risk everything for a small shot at a better life because the countries they once called home have been exploited by colonialist, capitalist greed (not so quaint now, Britain) and left vulnerable to dangerous ideologies.

The truth is so obvious and so gut-wrenchingly, heart-breakingly, mind-blowingly damaging to humanity that I almost want to throw my hands up and say we’re a lost cause.

Case in point, the company I work for reported a net profit of over £28 million this year but they've just announced budget cuts of £2million, which we all know is code for ‘we’re going to fire a lot of you because AI is cheaper than people.’

In what world is a £28 million net profit not enough? Workers are tossed away like rubbish. Profits must increase year on year. Your value and essence as a unique being means nothing if it doesn't boost the bottom line.

The world has gone bananas. We have entered hyperreality. We have forgotten the original point. We are chasing a simulacrum. Soon the whole system will collapse because if AI takes all our jobs, who’s going to have any money to buy the stuff?

Humanity needs a good telling off. We collectively need a giant mother to descend from the sky with a wagging finger and a stern but loving face to say: ‘I’m not angry darlings, I'm just disappointed.’

Humans can be wonderful. Look at the Dodo on YouTube and try not to cry at people's kindness. Most of us…actually nearly all of us are fundamentally good people when it comes down to it.

Most early human communities were actually egalitarian: it's our natural state. It was only when we began farming and hoarding resources that competition and therefore violence and inequality ramped up.

I implore you to read Luke Kemp’s book ‘Goliath’s Curse’…or at least read the Guardian article about it.

My eyes are getting tired now and I want to stop babbling and play 26 rounds of Wordament until my thumbs hurt and I see lettered tiles on the backs of my eyelids when I close my eyes.

Next time I'll write about something joyful.

But for now let's agree to do our best in our respective corners of the world, shall we? The world has been presented to us in a certain way and I truly believe it's our responsibility to question it and fight corruption with kindness.

This is who we are.