"For, being green, there is great hope" (quote from Shakespeare's HENRY VI PART 2, ACT 3 SCENE 1)

Some people are angry that Just Stop Oil threw coloured cornflour at Stonehenge. Because the structure is old? A symbol of how humans have survived for thousands of years? How we are capable of working togather to achieve something that must have seemed unachievable to many?

As unachievable as a Green Revolution?

No one, now, knows the purpose of Stonehenge. New examples of the intelligence of those distant minds who dreamed it up continues to come to light, many ways of mapping the movements of stars into the future.

We can see into the future, but we choose not to. We can see that climate change is happening in the floods and heatwaves. We know how to stop it becoming unstoppable

but we choose not to.

We say, smugly, the Younger generation, our children, they will fix it.

The younger generation we imprisoned in their bedrooms during Covid. The ones whose chances of work are being honed down and down to Amazon warehouses and waitressing. The ones who have worse mental health than ever before, who have suicide as one of the leading causes of death.

Or maybe they are already too old. Maybe the ones at preschool now? Those innocent ones who sit infront of their screens with the sole purpose of keeping them quiet. We used to watch stuff when we were their age, didn't we? Carefully crafted, magical programs we remember even now. The internet must have far more examples from all over the world for children to watch and be stimulated by, guiding them into being curious about life, stimulating their imaginations, introducing ideas of ethics and responsibility, of trust and kindness.  

But there are so many, many more hours of screentime to fill these days as parents have to work longer and longer hours and are more and more tired. How to make all these extra much needed programs without increasing licence fees or asking for subscriptions? AI of course! Adults might notice the difference, the lack of coherence, the UNHUMANNESS, but little children, they won't. And though AI produced content doesn't need the work of human writers, actors, animators, musicians, those who take the trouble to put it online need a living, which is where advertising comes in. Beautiful, expensive, carefully contructed advertisements aimed at guiding children into trusting a brand, stimulating their imagination  that they could be happy if only they could have that one enticing product. And the next, and the next.

There is to be an election. The other day, in an interview, someone was asked about education. He mentioned with pride how many children go on to Further education - did not mention how funding for further education has been cut and cut, resulting in much of the equipment at the college my son goes to being irrelevent to current practices, or broken; nor how the last months before the end of term more and more days the college has been closed while their tutors strike for more pay, leaving modules untought. Compared to the Health service, "Our" National Health, it is not a priority (even in the Health service there is inequality - some children have waited over half their lives for an operation)

My son is old enough to vote, but he won't. He cannot see the point as no one cares about his generation, no one will care for decades.

This is what happens when there is no opportunity for creative expression in schools, when childen are not given the tools to express their hopes and fears, to explore their imaginations, to make dreams come alive on paper. 

Perhaps that was the point of all the changes to education, to make it all about grammar and report writing, all about still life in art and playing other people's music. 

Teaching children passively to watch success in other people's lives and know it is as unobtainable as the toys they could not have as little children because their parents were not paid a decent living. Teaching them not to expect to own a home, be healed when they are sick, breathe fresh air, safely drink water from the tap....

Those in Power shout warnings about the Right and the Left, shout with anger at anything they see as a threat to the past

while taking away the Future.

I don't know what Stonehenge was for, but an edifice that took so much time and  effort to create must have had importance, must have commanded respect,  attention. Maybe offerings were made on its stones to ask for a good harvest, for healthy families, for making the right decision

perhaps human sacrifices?

Orange coloured cornflour seems tame compared to all the deaths that climate change will bring, the sacrifice we seem willing to make to keep using oil to manufacture plastic, fertilizer, deisel, electricity.

If we do not take climate change seriously, continue to rely on fossil fuels, only stones will survive

and our disposable plastic of course