The Monday Mix (19/09/2022)
Hi friends,
Today was the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, which was probably the biggest event in the UK since her coronation in 1953. While I didn’t watch it, I did watch a shortened version on the news and there’s a profound sense of a country that’s going to struggle to come to terms with its new reality.
The country is going to be thrown headfirst into raging economic and political waters in the next few months with a new King and PM. Not everyone agreed with the idea of monarchy, but almost everyone respected the Queen, including myself. I’m not sure that will hold now that she has passed away.
For myself, I’ve actually rowed back on my previous view which was that the monarchy should be abolished. Would removing the monarchy and having an elected head of state improve the country? I don’t think it would. There are more pressing issues in the country than this and I’d be happy if the monarchy was slimmed down and had a bit less influence.
It’s been a weird few weeks and will probably continue to be so until the country adjusts. It’s always bizarre to realise you’re living through history but that’s what the past few days have felt like. I plan to spend some time this week writing about what the Queen’s death might mean for Britain, hopefully, I can share that and my reading list for August this week.
Here’s what I want to share with you:
Funeral of King George V
This showed up on my YouTube feed today, almost like the algorithm knew something was going on… It’s incredible to watch the funeral for several reasons, one is how similar it was to what took place today. The sheer size of the crowd is incredible. At one point the procession struggles to get through such is the number of people in the crowd. Also bizarre to see people holding what look like phones in the air at what point only to realise they’re mirrors so they can see the procession. George V was the Queen’s grandfather and what’s remarkable about the funeral is that the new King, Edward VIII had abdicated within a year due to his desire to wed an American divorcee, Wallis Simpson.
The Last Time Democracy Almost Died
The article might be two years old but it’s still relevant to the present moment. The far right came second in an election in Sweden last week, while it looks the Brothers of Italy, another far-right party, will lead the next government in Italy if opinion polls are accurate. We tend to think that history and justice are linear progressing to an improved endpoint, but this might not be true. History is cyclical in many ways. While we learn from the past we also tend to repeat many of the mistakes from it. The wreckage of Fascism from the 1930s scarred Europe, yet it’s slowly gaining influence again. It’s likely that as the past fades ever farther away that we neglect to think we are as likely to make the same mistakes our predecessors did. as Jill Lepore shows in this piece, the price of freedom is constant vigilance.
The Booming Premier League
A bit of a different piece now that looks at the world of football and the Premier League, in particular. I’m a big Liverpool fan and go to as many of the home matches as I can, but I’ve felt more ambivalent towards football in recent times, despite the success my club has had. The money in football is insane and is only getting more so. That money is making competitions less competitive, with the same teams winning almost every year. Look at the past winners of most European leagues and you will see this trend. Almost the only way to break the trend is for nation states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, or hedge funds to buy clubs.
I don’t think this is sustainable in the long run. The Premier League will just become more powerful sucking in all the money and best players to the detriment of the game elsewhere. I have no idea what the solution is. A reorganisation of competitions and redistribution of money to help leagues catch up, especially those in Eastern Europe. There are people much cleverer than me who will surely find solutions, but if they don’t, I fear football will become less and less of a competition the longer the current state of affairs is allowed to continue.
Book I’m reading - The Train Was On Time by Heinrich Boll
A powerful book in the fantastic Penguin European Writers series about a soldier in Nazi Germany who has a premonition about his death in five days while on a train to the Eastern Front. It’s a profound book that grips you from the outset and makes you question many things life, mortality and the morality of war.
Quote I’m pondering: “Elegance is inferior to virtue.” – Mary Shelley
That’s all for this week.
Until next time,
Tom