Altruism and the Like.

It’s been another depressingly dark, wet day in the Shire again, but at least my proposal to build a hydroelectric power plant at the bottom of the lane retreated back into the realms of the imaginative. The lane beyond my garden was very wet, but at least it didn’t flow because I’ve cleared the road drains seven or eight times over the past few weeks.

What might be considered notable, however, is that I was often passed by traffic while I was doing the work, and not a single person ever stopped to express appreciation. I gather some of the parents on the school run complained vociferously about the state of the road before I began clearing it, and they often passed me while I was out there – sometimes in the pouring rain – armed with spade, rake and broom. And yet none of them stopped for a few brief seconds to say ‘thank you, Mr Beazley, for saving us the inconvenience of driving through a shallow but raging torrent in order to ferry our little ones to their place of education and enlightenment.’ (And ‘ferry’ would have been a most apposite term in the circumstances.)

Not that it matters, of course. I didn’t do it for the sake of the parents or general denizens of the Shire. My view on such matters is simple: if a job needs doing and the lot falls to you, pick it up and get on with it. And so I do. What’s more, I feel no need of approbation because all that matters is that the job got done. And even if I were mindful of the need for reward, I would take the old maxim to heart and be content that virtue is its own.

*  *  *

Which brings me to today’s General Election. I have little doubt that Mr Johnson and his Conservative cohorts will still be running the country tomorrow and fair-minded people like me will be saddled with another five years of Tory administration.

Altruism has always been notably lacking in Tory ideology, and I see no reason why it should change now. No doubt the rich will continue to get richer and the poor will continue to languish in poverty. Food banks will continue to flourish, children will continue to go to school unfed, the unemployed will still be treated like criminals, those on inadequate incomes will continue to be evicted from their homes, and the countless number of people living on the streets will carry on shivering – and in some cases dying – through several more winters yet.

But that’s what the people will have voted for, and at least Britain will leave the EU without the same people having the chance to change their minds now that they know what’s involved. It seems that democracy is an odd sort of creature which changes its coat at the whim of self-serving politicians. I suppose it was ever thus.