But that's no surprise.Britain is a country with big ideas which are generally well above its station;
the only claims to stardom remaining are a lost Empire, the beating of Germany
in a couple of World Wars, one, 1966, World Cup and an ability to kick s--t out
of a teenage, conscript army which had the audacity to raise their flag on a
small, unwanted island off South America.
Britain may indeed have the potential to be great again but it fails miserably
in its attempts to be so. Its great scientific advances are never developed,
being left to the foreign markets to capitalise upon. Its manufacturing
industries are nearing collapse and the National Health Service remains in
crisis. Its work force is at the
bottom end of the European tables when it comes to salaries, working hours,
holidays and standards of living. Poverty is on the increase, as are major
illnesses, and we're still not really sure if we should even eat our own beef
and genetically modified produce.
So its not surprising that, as we enter the year 2000, Britain can't even
manage to get its, fake, millennium celebrations into order.
On the 31st of December, 1999, which is cutting it pretty close to the start of
the year 2000 by anyone's standards, it was nonchantly announced that the
Millennium Wheel, British Airway's London Eye, would not be carrying passengers
on its opening as one of the 32 passenger capsules had failed its safety tests.
The promised, inaugral, trip of a lifetime for some 250 specially selected
guests, VIP's, competition winners and journalists would be postponed.
Undoubtedly a great disappointment to those who were hoping to enter 2000
celebrating a great British engineering achievement but its probably a greater
disappointment to Tony Blair who will be opening the ride and will be making
a grand speech beforehand.
For those of us who have seen through the political spiel; it was hardly
surprising, and sadly, not unexpected.
How Tony is going to keep a straight face, whilst telling us, and the rest of
the world, that the Millennium Wheel represents all that is great about Great
Britain is beyond me, as the Wheel begins to spin, bereft of all passengers for
fear of their safety. A truly great moment, lost.
Perhaps he'll expand his speech to cover, not just the Wheel, but the great
Millennium Dome built on a patch of industrially polluted, wasteland near
Greenwich, cleaned up by the government without the cost of a penny to those
who polluted the land in the first place.
This great, temporary, monument, enigmatically noticeable for its ability to
appear larger the further away one is from it, both physically and
metaphorically, represents the ability of great British organisational
skills to pull together a circus event in record time.
Providing he skips over the fact that 3,000 or so of the 10,000 invited for the
opening bash didn't receive their tickets and dismisses the fiasco, as
the New Millennium Experience Committee has, as unimportant then he should do
okay.
And he can take comfort in the fact that the Jubilee Line extension is
in place and people can at least get to the Dome, from London and suburbia
anyway.
For a government which has turned the outside lane of the M4, the busiest
motorway into London, into a near empty bus lane, this can indeed be seen as a
genuine achievement, but applause may need to be held off until we examine
what it is that has been created.
The line may well be open but only just. Stations are still half complete,
safety equipment is missing, emergency and information points are inactive and
there's a big question mark hanging over exactly what has been achieved.
The overriding need for the Jubilee Line extension was to get people to the
infernal Millennium Dome which was built in one of the most inaccessible parts
of London.
Whilst it is undoubtedly a useful line, providing an extremely quick link
from the North to the South of London, and into the Dockland's business area,
how well it is going to cater for the delivery of the billions of passengers per
minute the government expects to see visit the Dome remains a mystery.
Whether people flock to visit the Dome remains to be seen. Tickets seem to be
selling particularly poorly North of Brighton, despite The Sun proclaiming
that one million tickets were sold in a week before Christmas; a story which
was greeted with an almost universal cry of, "Oh yeah ? Who paid for that story
then ?", or just plain, incredulous disbelief.
If the crowds do rush to see the Dome, which is in essence nothing more than
a 758 million GBP, un-heated, canvas tent, and visit its, as yet, rather poorly
publicised internal attractions, then how they will cope is difficult to say.
Whilst the new Jubilee Line stations are incredibly spacious, although rather
more derogatory terms could be applied to their architectural form,
platform access to trains is still pretty limited but the worst of the design is
held back until the excited passenger disembarks at North Greenwich to enter
the mouth of the Dome.
Great British design has proclaimed that there should be just one up and one
down escalator. Well, actually there is an additional down escalator, a set of
stairs and a couple of lifts from the surface level but it still looks like
we're talking about major congestion issues.
Cramped, congested, uncomfortable journeys and station access may be something
Londoner's have come to terms with in central London, it's rather difficult to
modify anything like the London Underground, so outdated and constrained by
later developments, but one doesn't expect the same of new stations where such
limitations no longer apply.
Perhaps everything will be okay; perhaps very few people will visit the Dome and
there won't be a problem or maybe it will be able to cater with the expected
throngs; only time will tell, and the greatest British minds have undoubtedly
been at work analysing the issue.
Hopefully there won't be a rush of people to the other side of the River Thames
to see how the Dome looks from afar; getting people to the Dome may have been
planned, but getting them to a vantage point across river definitely hasn't.
Those who wish to travel to such a vantage point will soon realise just how
desolate the North Thames across from Greenwich is. Just how poor the local
transport infrastructure is. Just how superficial the Dome creation has become.
For the great majority of British folk, whose cultural claims to fame are real
ale, chips, mushy peas and deep-fried Mars bars, the Millennium Dome and Wheel
are seen, not so much as greatness, but a complete irrelevance.
For most people, the sentiment seems to be that the money would have been better
spent on building hospitals, improving education, working and living conditions.
Tony Blair, his cabinet, and the Tory administration before, may see the Dome
and Wheel as symbols of British greatness, they may exult these as icons of
a new Great Britain, but to the average man in the street it's humbug.
As an empty Millennium Wheel turns, retailers worry over HSBC transaction
terminals terminated due to Y2K bugs, millions flock to the Thames, hoping that
they will have no need of a non-existent intensive care bed, on New Years Eve
and Blair repeats rhetoric which no one is listening to nor believes in, no
claim that Britain is great once again will mean anything.
Greatness comes from the abilities and actions of the people. Mere words will
not make Britain great, only intentions and actions will.
Fanciful, temporary, structures and extensive corporate expenditure may light
up the night sky for a short while, true commitment and mobilisation is needed
to make a long lasting change.
Greatness in Britain is not about jingoistic or nationalist pride, nor is it a
celebration of knocking up a couple of interesting structures, it is a state
of mind, a state of nation.
To build Britain up we need real change, real focus, real encouragement, help
and commitment.
Greatness may be achieved but it will take a great deal more effort than has
been made over the last few years.
Monuments, no matter how short lived, make a fine statement about how a country
feels about itself, but not when they proclaim a false reality.
