It could be an election year coming up.

It's pretty certain that 2024 is going to be a General election year. Normally, as a politics geek, it's something that I'd look forward to. But, at the moment, I'm not. Perhaps it's my age, perhaps it's a reflection on the general state of affairs but I’m having politics fatigue. Or, to be more specific, arguing-about-politics fatigue. It's not that I’ve run out of enthusiasm for my perspective, but there is a particular stumbling block I keep running into when trying to reach across the proverbial aisle and have those “difficult conversations” that I know I should be having. It's just that I no longer have the patience, and energy, to explain to someone why they should care about other people. I just can’t be arsed to waste time on those whose minds are made up anyway.

Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 10 percent on my café bill if it means the person making the meal for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over another 25p for a scone and tea, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.

I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward state schools, even though we no longer have children in school, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.

If I have to pay more tax to ensure my fellow citizens can access health care, sign me up. Poverty should not be a death sentence in, or so we are constantly being told, one of the richest countries in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.

I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I really cannot stomach one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically means nothing to them. I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.

There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every UK citizen can access decent health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable). But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

I can’t debate with someone into caring about what happens to their fellow human beings. The fact that such detached cruelty is so normalised in the political discourse of many is at once infuriating and depressing. The “I’ve got mine, so screw you,” attitude has been oozing from our right wing for decades (How we laughed at Harry Enfield’s character, Loadsamoney) but this still gleeful exuberance in pushing legislation that will immediately hurt the most vulnerable among us is chilling. But it has always been like this with the Tories so it’s not as if I’m just waking up to their unimaginable callousness. Maybe the emergence of social media has just made this heinous tendency more visible; seeing hundreds of accounts spring to the defense of policies that will almost certainly make their lives more difficult is incredible to behold. Turkeys do vote from Xmas - time and time again.

I don’t know what’s changed ― or indeed, if anything has ― and I don’t have any easy answers. But I do know I’m done trying to convince these hordes of selfish, cruel people to look beyond themselves. A pox on all of them.

I could end there but Ukraine has happened and locally, as all over the country, people are doing amazing, inspiring, humbling things. Why, oh, why, can’t we show such generosity of spirit and empathy all of the time? The efforts of so many individuals, groups, organisations shows me that, despite my jaundiced views above, there is a strong core of decency and humanity in many (most?) people. All we have to is to persuade them to trot it out in everyday living and not just for special occasions. Maybe it would be worth engaging with some of them - again. Maybe they are not beyond redemption. Maybe the effort would be worth it. So.................