The Cynical View

James McFarlane

Article of Cynicism

20 March 2026

The Cynical View

Living in post Brexit Britain, “being baked”

A view of working class Britain (or more aptly ‘Not working’ class Britain)

Star date :2026

Operation : Survive the week ( don’t get emotionally battered, by anyone from

a small business that wants the big society back) hoping for a cor don Blau that

isn’t £700 quid per head.

Have you ever heard the phrase “ being baked” or “Juiced”

Imagine not being able to get a paid job with all the experience in the world

and not being able to upskill as theres no money in the economy and no bursary

adapted to your situation. No funding available. You fill out the arts council

funding application and then watch it deleted before your very eyes due to a

technical glitch, absolute nightmare scenario.

No hope no justice, no time to re write. What are people playing at these

days.

Who the hell writes the code for that website? Are they complicit in torture..

Shawkan would understand I expect ..holly Jesus above, can a man work ?!

With out disrespectful nonsense fudging the ointment. Man alive!

CYNICAL 1

And your not able to form a band because every musician is having kids at

home with the wife Orr talking to social services. And! On top of that theres a low

frequency hum that radiates through the apartment when ever you pick up a paint

brush or try out a new idea on the guitar or in your sketch book. Emotionally

you’re stressed out “baked” fenced in, victimised, “juiced” out of energy due to

physical noise and feeling powerless after years of reports, you know its stopping

you from working but no one cares, and the noise just continues 1am 4am 2pm

endless hun and drone buzzing in your mind..intrusion and physical vibration right

in your eardrum kissing you on the cheek..like a stranger in your bed on you pillow,

awful low freq noise, terrible, illegal noise.

All that you can create is hard irritated pissed off moaning drawl that is from

the blurred perpetrator, who becomes villainesqu In character after years of

failing to be reasonable in resolving the matter. That is violation of individual

privacy and thats a statutory nuisance thats against the law and regulations of

business . Please someone have the decency to uphold the law in a small satellite

market town, then maybe they’ll do the same abroad. If this is the democracy we

are upholding and protecting then I’m moving to India.

The law is the law.

But no the law it seems is subjective

Both on my doorstep and on the TV. When will it change? When will the law

be managed effectively. Welcome to the pissed off cynical view of reality. Where

real law only happens if you can pay for it or if you’re in the natural law toting large

gang. Please have some positivism. Have some charm, have some style, have some

respect for your neighbour who minds his own business…realise you’re not at

school, take the time an energy to build a relationship… like an adult human being .

Earn it. Understand it.

CYNICAL 2

During the pandemic noise complaints reached 1000 per day to local

government, in 2026 the average number of noise complaints per full time

equivalent professional increased from 299 to 633 indicating that staff are

managing a much higher case load, and the NHS help to manage the psychological

impact. The problem is evident, society is oblivious… the Cinderella pollutants

must stop and abatements must ensue…. It’s deliberate!

So… i , we , they , you, have to , resort to… street terms, sub culture, rough

justice, all these spring to mind, and quite often when living in satellite town rural

digital mish mash culture big society Britain, post Covid, post brexecution , post

apocalypse on the news every night. Wondering, will we ever find solutions? It’s

not rocket science… What will the following half decade bring,? will the 2030s be

art deco castle in the sky chic who knows? the pastiche of digital meets pragmatic

meets rural life spurs me on to succeed in work life. Ear plugs cast aside.

But! Hang on a minute , no ones got any Money or should that be Monet.

(Art gripe) perhaps spent on rocket science !

No one is hiring, , is this the change they were voting for, all the people in jobs

seem to say “ oh dear its a tough market”…but is is really,?

Or is it it just a procurement issue thats just been miss managed like every

other aspect of society(trifle down theory ;), when will the people in power, come

out from behind their autocues and their digital screens and grasp the cybernetic

exploitation that is coded out in business plan after business plan , security, money

and fiscal stimulation wont imagine themselves into existence, and bombing the

international market place wont increase productivity…Ammo anyone? £2000

please ta,

CYNICAL 3

So 25 years work experience, a uni degree, a diploma, a management and

Supervision certificate paid for by the film industry regulator the offer of a place at

Cambridge, if only i could pay the fees or fund the study, and an international

network full of respected artists and musicians, yet here i am, baked and juiced like

i never existed and the whole experience was a plan to throw me on the scrap heap

at 46, some how I think mistakes have been made elsewhere that shadow this

effect..what is this? the Labour patience effect?…we all know change is coming..its

on the way, yes it is…I believe it…it’ll be here soon, in positive form..like a ballistic

missile…change will appear and save us all..it wont be small , no it’ll be large, large

change… like a blimp on the skyline.

Are these the words of the unemployable man?

A job, A family, A life, this is not the holly grail..

( or maybe it is.. like the Greco ,Agony in the Garden’ yearning for fiscal

stimulus and at least a percentage of what that paintings worth…Jesus please)

After uni graduation i would frequently hear from govt staff, “you need more

experience, from an employer, or a company.. work for free, find experience”

Now i have 25 years experience and nothing has changed, i still need to

upskill my experience and get through the employment interview process, its clear

I’m a hard worker, its clear i want to earn a living, now please let me get on with it, i

can do anything i put my mind to with the correct guidance and you dam well

know it.. so have a heart and stop holding me accountable for the schoolboy

nonsense from 30 years ago, i only spa with supermodels not troll ogres from log

forest ug leatherneck bootboysville…. Now lets get to work. Oh brother of

democracy.

What! I can’t write that, why not? oh i need Ai training to do that oh i see,

CYNICAL 4

Ai training in an Ai bubble, great that’ll last a while then, No offence to any

super Ai minded genius but i did get the Ai tattoo when i was 19, paid for by my

English teacher, to ward off evil spirits, i think it actually attracted at least 46, so i

did. See this happening back at high school, this must account for something, i

have the tattoo to prove it, Oh the romance of high school, Holden Caulfield, and

the field of dreams, twinkling in the sunlight, of the Asylum window…

Although preferably I’d take Kathryn Hepburn or my other English teacher

who was actually French strangely, interestingly, i think I was put in the wrong form

actually, when i think back, cash for classes I expect. Que the investigation..

Now, thinking about class is interesting especially when it comes to upskilling,

in Ai and the online revolution of online courses, that seem to have flourished

since the pandemic,

The overview of courses range in price from £500 to £10000in cost.

Online learning has expanded 900% since 2000 with global revenue

projected at $221.7billion USD in 2026 . Education educational education

Hang on I already have a degree .

The crassness is celebrated

The politicisation of the course prices and branding is evident especially in

the fact that there is no generic funding to support you into a course of your

choice if L7 and if cert, an un awarded, the govt will choose for you, or chaperone

you into a bootcamp, pre selected so you avoid Cambridge or the veil of

outsourced courses masquerading as high end university’s we can all dream of

studying at Oxford or Cambridge, now you actually can with 30 years experience a

uni degree and £800000000 quid !!

One can pray and dream of decent skill training. And a memory that works.

CYNICAL 5

This arrangement that has some how slipped in to an obvious class divide

somehow looks like a new political front with which political parties can fight an

economic proxy war, if you’re a Tory bit coin genius you can go to Oxford and

Cambridge whilst the rest of us are left to boot camps that teach us what we

already know, the last govt knew, or theirs govt is too slow, either way all i need is

the bursary and all is forgiven so where is the tailored generic funding we require

to create the dream labour future.. on the boot camp battle field I expect, perfect

headspace for studying Ai and re defining British culture into some credible again

after Boris tore off the cooling system of the economy and watched it melt down

into funding withdraw destruction.. we must enable change with fiscal stimulus

and rewards for hard work and experience.

I don’t think of ‘pocket change’ when we as a country read the slogan on the

red podium, yet thats all I’ve been able to save recently in my bank account. Is

someone have a laugh i think they do. And all that can save me is online course

upskill community culture, lovely, machine code hexadecimal heaven. The best.

This evident crypto class divide might just be in my cynical imagination

however it is a plausible idea with evidence. Is this the future bedrock of our

culture society.

Ai or no Ai it seems control features are managed into class dived cybernetic

ally and ingrained into advertising, marketing, finance funding and procurement ,

even social dynamics and community and if not worked around it can lock people

like me into a world where we can have the experience we can have the network

but we are still unable to step up to achieve the next level. Even with the equivalent

gateway experience and work rate. Why is that? It’s not because I didn’t work hard

enough , its because some one wanted to engineer the status quo around society.

Illegally and now the veil is off, this is not an old boys club, if you want to control

CYNICAL 6

my future you better be qualified, in a cynical view you better be qualified, and

seriously get the semantics right because its just creating a false economy,

Let’s unlock the funding and let our creative people flourish after after all

thats what democracy is all about, freedom of choice and expression, otherwise

what are all the soldiers fighting for , the right to poison ones self on a Friday night

with putrid un pasteurised beer that tastes like a rats arse, I’m beginning to think

all the violence in the world is because people are afraid of their own

humanity..you’ve heard of telly addicts now we’ve got power addicts, and control

freaks new creatures of the political landscape..just because you hit something

doesn’t mean you own it…when will people learn!!!! It’s poison!! Cynically, no

wonder your party are on the rise.

In true poetic fashion i shall end at the beginning please re read, answers on a

postcard:

Have you ever heard the phrase “ being baked” or “Juiced”

Imagine not being able to get a paid job with all the experience in the world

and not being able to upskill as theres no money in the economy and no bursary

adapted to your situation. No funding available. You fill out the arts council

funding application and then watch it deleted before your very eyes due to a

technical glitch, absolute night mare scenario.

No hope, no justice, no time to re write. What are people playing at these

days.

Who the hell writes the code for that website? Are they complicit in torture..

CYNICAL 7

Shawkan would understand I expect ..holly Jesus above, can a man work ?!

With out disrespectful nonsense fudging the ointment. Man alive!

And your not able to form a band because every musician is having kids at

home with the wife Orr talking to social services. And! On top of that theres a low

frequency hum that radiates through the apartment when ever you pick up a paint

brush or try out a new idea on the guitar or in your sketch book. Emotionally

you’re stressed out “baked” fenced in, victimised, juiced out of energy due to

physical noise and feeling powerless after years of reports, you know its stopping

you from working but no one cares, and the noise just continues 1am 4am 2pm

endless hun and drone buzzing in your mind..intrusion and physical vibration right

in your eardrum kissing you on the cheek..like a stranger in your bed on you pillow,

awful low freq noise. I wont mention the effect on my libido!!

All that you can create is hard irritated pissed off moaning drawl that is from

the blurred perpetrator, who becomes villainesqu In character after years of

failing to be reasonable in resolving the matter. That is violation of individual

privacy and thats a statutory nuisance thats against the law and regulations of

business . Please someone have the decency to uphold the law in a small satellite

market town, then maybe they’ll do the same abroad. If this is the democracy we

are upholding and protecting then I’m moving to India.

The law is the law.

Now cynically obey !

CYNICAL