When a government chooses virtue-signaling over rational cost-benefit analysis, there is something deeply wrong in the life-spirit of that country. The costs are obvious, and massaging the news with your own government mouthpiece (the BBC) can’t hide reality. The ugly, scowling face of Greta Thunberg reveals her not to be a saint, but a demonic sprite who seduces us with the prospect of guilt, sacrifice, and redemption. We, in the West, are to be thrown onto a pyre. Such ideas, the globalization of “empathy,” the fantasies of saving millions of the poor and oppressed, fantasies that replace the legitimate concerns of a representative government, well, then: one must sit up in bed and ask, “what the hell is going on?”

Many seemingly kindly gestures by government officials are, in fact, dereliction of duty to the citizenry. Britain’s elevation of humanitarian law above the country’s own ancient, well-honed legal system has materially harmed the country for the sake of an abstraction.

I suspect that John’s simple window-fit air conditioner costs more in the UK than in the USA because the British electrical grid has been mismanaged for decades, and there is no allowance for mass luxuries like air conditioning. The government’s involvement in social engineering like “Net Zero” causes hardship for those who can least afford it. The Labour Party has thrown the labourers into the dustbin. The working class has such unenlightened views. “Globalism” is the new religion and to dispute it courts heresy.