Missing the point?

This was written about ten days ago, so interpret paragraph four accordingly, please!

Sitting with tears in my eyes I listen to a few stories of individuals whose lives have been turned upside down by the continuing saga of Brexit; this off the BBC website on my computer, while thousands of miles away from Britain. Am I just a sentimental, soppy old man or what? For whom the tears?

The whole sorry mess that remains unresolved three and a half years after David Cameron's ill-thought out and badly executed referendum is a blight on many ordinary people's lives, has created huge uncertainty and generated a lot, a LOT, of nastiness and negativity aimed left, right and centre at whoever appears to be a legitimate target.

Politicians deal in concepts and grand ideas, deep-sounding and calculated to move their audience in the utterer's desired direction. They either don't think of the results on real folks, the living, breathing people that populate our planet or - much worse but equally probable - they don't care so long as they achieve their target. Emotional manipulation is their stock-in-trade, no thought given to those hurt.

Boris Johnson has received his reward for his treacherous behaviour over Brexit and has become Prime Minister of the UK on the basis of what, exactly? His performance as Foreign Secretary was hardly distinguished, his demeanour is shifty and unstatesmanlike, his private behaviour poor - were it not for the fact that his main opponent in the forthcoming election (Jeremy Corbyn) is an old-style communist who dreams of returning the UK to the 1970s, even publicly stating that life was good then, BoJo would have been laughed at and given a drubbing.

Worst of all, Mr. Johnson and his ilk care not at all for the people whose lives they are playing with: not just the EU throng working hard in the UK to keep things like agriculture and the NHS afloat, but all the Brits living elsewhere in Europe, soon to be disenfranchised from their environment, lame duck victims of political games. This is not just about slogans like 'taking back control', nebulous and untruthful, it is about people, individuals, you and me and all the others.

I have a friend who dreams of returning Athens to its ancient city state condition, demolishing the monstrosities of the modern world and strolling around the unspoilt environment of two and a half thousand years ago, subject to the ancient Greek ideals. Of course he knows this is a pipe dream, that time does not flow backwards, that life flows ever onwards, and smiles when tackled, but preserves his dream of the ideal world in his mind. Still, going around the Athens of today he uses the modern tools available to him now.

For reasons that I cannot quite understand we are bringing back nationalistic, jingoistic behaviour and  a mode of thinking and behaving that we thought had been discarded after WWII. The victims then were countless individuals sacrificed on the altar of perverse ideology, of systems, of central control, of horror; this is not a scenario the world should be considering revisiting for any reason at all. Look to the individuals, hear their stories, make their lives better and the whole benefits, we all gain in the long term.

Duh!