The journey

I think anyone who reaches three score years and ten asks many questions, not only of themselves but of much they take for granted around them.  Slowing down and not being part of the race to survive means that one can ask questions about the past and present.  The future is the difficult one since it doesn’t include us (at least sometime in the not too distant future it won’t) and we haven’t been brought up or conditioned to consider the on-going “life event” without us.

Religions handle the subject by hypothecating a life after death. Asian philosophies speak of continuous rebirth and atheists suggest that this is it, death - with no return.

Whichever it is, the “event” is like no other and we are not really able to quantify the effect the lead up to the "event" will have on our psyche.  There is no question that the belief in ourselves as sentient beings comes wrapped in the knowledge that we are alive. Not to be alive is a step too far and we can’t really go there.  We can imagine not being around in the sense that we no longer play a part in events but there is a part of us that lives on in the genes and therefore, in the future!!

Memories and artefacts stay for a while but then we are gone!

If we were young with all our faculties this would seem sad, unfair and leave us unfulfilled but it is undoubtedly true that with age comes infirmity, confusion, memory loss and often pain. Under these circumstances, death is a release and a fitting end to a journey.

If we have been lucky the journey has been a varied one in which our much of the path has been chosen and not dictated. The memories, good and bad now, seen from a distance have story to tell. One can see a picture emerging, an unfolding “sequence” made up of personality characteristics that define the outcomes.   

Character in other words defines so much of who we are and what we make of the journey. It affects motives, it affects success, it affects friendships.    All this from a genetic character trait of which we have no say!!!

So all the talk of good luck, bad luck, being in the right place etc. etc. has little merit, our lives were defined by chromosomes and the struggle, if struggle there was, was to no avail, it was written in the stars!!

Andy Capp

When I was growing up in Yorkshire Andy Capp was my hero. Those were the days before political correctness had disfigured our ability to hold opinions and express them.

He was quite dismissive of women at a time when they were recognised as coming from another planet, we didn't understand them and "why should we" ?

"They" often seemed to get in the way from our male bonding "in the pub" and had already started to lay down unjustifiable demands that we recognise their importance !!

Andy exemplified our concerns and of course reminded Flo, his wife, who was boss.

It was a tonic to see him verbalise so much of what we were afraid to say.

Of course "they got him" in the end and now we have the difficulty of defining the sexes since, short of giving birth, we are expected to do all the tasks "they" are clearly  better fitted to do, such as household work, cooking and the nappy change !!!!!

Bless his Yorkshire cotton socks !!!!!!!!!!     

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Strive to be an individual

What do we mean by the term walkabout and what stimulates the Aborigines to do it ?

In our modern way of living we are constrained by many things. We follow a regimented life, to conform and fit in to societies model of what "our" values should be.

The Aborigine on the other hand has a deep sense of his own destiny. His life is effected by the spirit world and the direct effect this "other world" has on him.
He communions with the past, his ancestors, provide a  connection to past events and confirm that his life is no more than short journey through a greater drama ?

When he goes walkabout he, in effect, disregards the conformities of life and sets off to find a deeper consolation with the spirit world within his ancestral home. A belief system will provide the fortitude and the conviction he needs to survive.

Anyone can go and trial himself by escaping the claustrophobic constrains that embed us all in seeking solace through conformity. Society constructs a web of rules to pacify its members and thereby control any outcome. The "individual" is judged an outsider, not a team player and is therefore suspect. 

The go it alone person is questioned as if there is something missing, don't they recognise the importance of belonging to the pack, of being recognised through comparison ?

How often in life we join something as if "membership" were the substance of who we are.   If we don't wish to join then we are unsubstantial, have no value and are therefore ignored.

To be sent to Coventry was a fate worse than death. You were ignored, workmates refused to speak to you and this rejection by your peers was harder to bear than being 

dead ? This then is the power of the psychological rejection by those around who count.  In essence the pressure to conform is tremendous and the strength needed to be an individual is profound !!!

         

Today's pressure to fit in, is greater than ever before. The media is on our case, every day by providing the image that the "power behind the scenes" uses to keep us digging into our pockets to buy into a lifestyle we are informed, is the lifestyle we should all attain to !!

In years gone by one had little peer group pressure to effect who we were. Our main control was within the family and they were proud of a child who showed initiative to plough their own furrow. 

Society was far less concerned about the control, the need to exert pressure to consume, the need to confirm the text of Political Conformity, the need to deny ones own feelings about a range of subjects that the "Powers" have made their position known and everyone is expected to follow.  

Off we go !!

The extravagance was unfurled last night and now the commentary.
  I'm not one for the big show be it pageant or Glastonbury so when I tuned in to watch the show there was plenty of pessimism floating near the surface of my brain.
 
Danny Boyle had to develop a theme that told a story relevant to the nation. He couldn't match the precision and the scale of Beijing which was awesome but he had a extremely rich historical backdrop to plagiarise. Shakespeare and Dickens, The Industrial Revolution and Britain's early exposure to the very world who were watching and had come to the games. 

The pre-revolution green landscape was swept away by the rise of the factories and I thought the scene of the mill chimneys rising as if out of the earth was spectacular. The sense of the smog and pollution was well captured. As spectacular as anything Beijing offered.
I also thought the sight of molten metal running down to make one of the rings was terrific and so realistic. As was the sight of the five Olympic rings rising in the air illuminated with light.

The use of Mr Bean was genius, the link with the film Chariots of Fire and his playing in the orchestra was very funny. He represented the iconic, bumbly eccentric Englishman.            
It was disappointing,the use of a "stand in" for the Queen. If they had convinced her to jump out of the helicopter it might have produced a smile or two she is a curmudgeonly old thing and only smiles or comes alive at the races !!  

The show I thought had many highlights but lacked the drive to keep us engrossed the whole time, the focus on the progression / regression of the music produced in the UK was, I felt weak and didn't hold my attention. The  tableau's associated with this segment I thought messy with people rushing around with no perceptible concept on view.   I think he hoped the music would carry it through but it didn't.
In fact I began to drop off. When the official speeches started that was the clue for me to go to bed.
Sadly, I missed the lighting of the torch ceremony but having seen it this morning it was indeed a highlight.   I liked the common touch, with unknown youngsters paraded to start the process off.  The individual flames developed into what  become a massive fiery bowl, very impressive !!     

Well done Blighty

Having dropped off to sleep with the TV on I woke up suddenly to find the film had changed to "The Reader". 

The film was shot in 2008 with Kate Winslet playing, for me the important lead roll of Hanna a women in  her 40s who helps and then draws a young adolescent boy into a cooperative sexually based relationship with the trade being for him to read to her from a list of classics that the boy is studying.


She disappears and the film moves to the young man now a student of law sitting in on a trial of a number of female concentration camp guards, Hanna being one.



The shock of listening to Hanna demand, with "absolute compulsion" that her position as a "Guard" engrained and  overrode any sense of morality to reject the orders she received, was shocking. Yet, and this is no excuse, people
 can be indoctrinated to such an extent that their self respect or any previous ethical concept are substituted by the overpowering prejudice of those around you. The power of the cult is no different to the harm and the distortion of human values that the pack can bring upon the individual. "What would you have done", she asks the prosecutor, what indeed when threatened with the firing squad. How easy to judge when safe and secure !!


Throughout life we accept the roll presented to us, the roll which is contrived by society to ensure society works. Morality is not the pre-eminent drive, "law" and the way we conform to it is the bed rock on which we build our lives. Who makes the law. 



She compartmentalise the memories of the past, the bits she valued and the rest was binned until asked in the trial "why did you do it"? It was never a question she asked herself at the time, others did the thinking and events were sanitised by a compulsion to fit in to the camp and the horror of the experience.
The need to be read to was because she was illiterate but somewhere deep down in her make up she needed an alternative to this everyday horror.  

  

The pathos was that her last moments were to use the books (the stories she had loves and probably kept her sane) to build a platform from which to hang herself !





This commentary is made without any sort of self reference to the atrocities that went on but I think it too easy to follow today's sense of guilt for everything that went on years ago. Deeply felt prejudice was common and totally distorted the thought process, even the humanity we are supposed to have for each other?

One of the problems of living is the realisation that we are in fact dying.

This realisation can be quite depressing but often it galvanises us to be ultra active. We must use what time is left to us productively. 

The mantra, "I must always be doing something" is usually met in life by our need to work and earn a living. 

When one retires, a whole different scenario is presented, we have to find things to do and keep occupied. We feel guilty, as the days fly past, of not being active or filling the day adequately. It reminds me of the A P Herbert or was it John Betjemans  refrain, - "thank goodness the sun isn't shining today and I don't have to go out and enjoy it"?

The pursuit of an even longer "stint at the wicket" requires so much precious time spent in trying to keep at bay the ravages of time. People get onto a vigorous treadmill, devoting each morning to hours of mindless activity. 

When young, exercise is good, it develops the young body and encourages healthy competition but trying to stay young by pounding the streets in a lycra shirt and shorts seems to demean the term, "growing old gracefully". 

How do we make sense of growing old. 

If we are comfortable with the end, how can we fill in the time between. Should we now devote the time in trying to understand our "passage" to date and more importantly the implications of the "end game" and how we come to terms with not being a part of all we know any more.

The study by the mind, of how we "imagine" and "create" so much of our own personality from raw beginnings, means that at the end we realise there is more to who we are than the skin and bone that others recognise as, the me !!

If this is true then the composite me continues in so many ways not least in the good and the bad of past actions.

Religion has a strong hold on the belief that millions hold of life's outcome. The problem is that instead of a rational set of postpositions, one has, at the end of a perfectly well argued way to live ones life, (according to moral and ethical precepts), to indulge in a massive leap of faith to believe in Judgement Day.

Philosophical arguments on the other hand make much of ones  mental capacity, to grasp the importance of reflection and the ability to dig behind what we take for granted.

Philosophically based belief systems can help bridge the gap without need to resort to a leap of faith. 

The teaching is rooted in a series of questions about ourselves, it require us to tone down our consumption led lives, our acquisitiveness and ask the question do we gain true measurable happiness or are we supplanting another human condition, "suffering", with a short time fix. If our lives are built on the wrong foundations can we, through turning inward, construct another foundation which takes in everything around us and "integrates" us all.

Only the mind has the power to grasp and realign who we are. Only the mind has the power to put into perspective the condition we are in. Only the mind can imagine, "living and dying" and treat these two imposters as the same !!!                          

  

The Clan

I hadn’t thought until the other day how different we have become in our striving to develop into  a nation of universality, man becoming a creature of infinite compassion to all other men, we all bleed the same type of blood ( a strand of genetic immutability ) so to speak.

 We tie ourselves in knots smoothing over the substantial differences between the  nations  and cultures that have developed throughout the world.   It has of course created a tremendous strain on the ordinary man in the street, people who are the chaff in these sociological experiments.

Why we ask ourselves cannot the people of  Libya or the Balkans not  forget their past and instead recognise their  common thread.

Of course we have little inkling of our history, we don’t understand the importance of “clan” in the web of human relationship that made up our past and made us stand out from the surroundings in which we lived.

The Clan was a living, interlinking system of brotherhood. Your membership could not be bought and relied solely on paternal links. Father, son, brother, uncle, nephews, in laws,  these were the constituents of the clan and everything  “other”  was outside, “ the enemy”!!

The reason there is such enmity between the clans has much to do with tradition and history, the fighting and slaughter between peoples who lived within a  small compass, was part of their survival  and self-preservation which still lies just beneath the veneer of the “nation state”.

Strong and often brutal leaders were needed to keep  the clans at  peace with one another but now, as we plough on with our desire to sell democracy to all and sundry, we are in danger of unleashing all kinds of pent up animosity.   

The "Under Class"

It has been an event in the making and we have ignored the signs at our peril. 

Much of what we witness today has its roots back in 1947 when the Attlie government, for economic reasons dressed up an immigration scheme with the lofty ideals of a "thank you" to the countries of the Empire for the effort and the sacrifice they, through their people, had made in the war against Hitler.

Economics  was the actual driving force. So many men had been lost and industry needed labour. 

Australia had a similar problem and instituted a £10 package to emigrate. It was mainly directed at the UK, the Mother Country,  as she was known then and it drew on a stock of people who had close links with the people already there and was therefore largely successful.  Discontented Pommies who would hark back to the way we did things "back home" were given short shift and told "to go back home then". Not many did !!

Of course this dialogue would be in English, or at least a branch of the language that was understandable.

A far cry from the immigration to these shores. The new immigrants circumstances in the land they came from was vastly different.

Not only language but culture and religion divided the new comer from the people living here. No wonder the people arriving were drawn into their own ghettos where their ethnicity was a comfort to them but a challenge to the people living amongst them. Bradford, Birmingham, and of course London were the focus and are now the focus of the riots.

The people who made the decisions made them on economic terms.  The people who had to make it work on a day to day basis, the existing working class, living in the towns and cities were given no help and there began the the distrust and disillusion we saw in the riots of London.

As a society we are poorly served by the class structured establishment that makes up and delivers the decision making process. 

They have no need to evaluate in depth the consequences of their actions and decisions.

There is and always has been a disconnect between the "People" and their "Rulers" and whilst the Englishman and Women are patient and docile the new breed of "Englishman and Women are not and so disquiet becomes violence.

In the push to strip the young male of his "hunter gatherer" masculinity, feminise him and  blend him into the docile mix that the Establishment desires, the tensions of a subjugated, undervalued, gender specific sect emerge and we wonder why and what went wrong.      

Oil and Water

Ones character stems from ones background, Mothers and Fathers project a set of ideals which become instinctively, our own.  As life goes by we set out trying to convince others of what have become, in our eyes, self evident truths. In fact they were only ideas and not truths.

The struggle between father and son or mother and daughter signals the emergence of an independence which starts to question those early ideals. The conflict becomes acute as time and custom move on. The old cling to their routine the young invent new ways to do old things. With the confusing tools that the internet brings there seems an ever widening gap between the age groups with a disinclination to find common ground. For the old there is the apprehension of being left behind and a sense of loosing relevance. In the young there is the realisation that technology has provided a weapon to confuse and mystify !!       

Like the mixture of oil and water in the bilge, neither of much use, either as fuel or fit to drink. Like setting cement. Up to a stage in the process one can affect the outcome but after time, any attempt to disturb the process weakens the end result.

Do we the oldies continue to strive to maintain our pre-eminence or do we take the easy way out, sipping our sun downers, and applauding the beauty of the hydrangea.  

Of course the famous concept of the "now" ( "past" and "future" of no relevance).  

A moment in time, an event on the ups and downs of a curve. The point by point plot of our progress through life. A series of experiences that form who we are.  

Its like the process of "differentiation"  in calculus where one represents any event by an equation which correspond to the event, as a point on a curve. Each subsequent point is depicted by another equation and so on and so on.  Joining the points (integral calculus) reveals a curve which represents the whole event. The life cycle from beginning to end, from birth to death. 

If one can determine the equation (the detailed description) of the moment through self analysis one can effect subsequent moments and therefore the shape of the curve and ones path in life.    
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A comfort zone

I'm not sure whether to rate my bed as more in the comfort zone than my armchair in reach of the TV control.

Out of the front door, the car, is another zone of comfort with an added advantage, it offers mobility too.

A comfort zone is a zone where one is not only physically comfortable but also has a psychological aspect too. 

It is invariably the "mental component" which can cause the most trouble as we get older.  For instance in a foreign country, with a lot of unknowns there is the problem with our inability to ask for directions or get information, there is the lack of any familiarity which effects the minds normal "referencing system"  hindering us and making it difficult to recognise where we are.

  

When young, confidence is high but eventually this confidence begins to wain and our experience teaches that danger lurks all around.

Accommodation, communication, problems with transport and even money, these things seem to weigh heavily on the mind as one ponders the "what if" game. Experience should provide a shield but the sublime ignorance of youth wins every time.    

Of course I am not talking about the package holiday where one is shepherded from place to place and meal time, to meal time. I am talking of the free spirit who sets off without a fixed itinerary, drifting with the swell to see where the current takes them !!!

The modern holiday begins on the internet and a trawl of the area you wish to visit. Google maps take one virtually into the hotel room and one can book from the armchair the flight, the train,the hotel and with a hole in the wall just around the corner, a connection to your bank !!!

My own trip a few years ago to the continent was very ad hoc.  Andrew dropped me at the ferry in Harwich.  In the Hook of Holland I wandered across to the local railway station, rucksack on the back, and caught a train to Rotterdam. The ticket office in main station in Rotterdam was the next hurdle buying a ticket to Wuppertal in Germany. The train was due to arrived at Wuppertal at 11.15pm.

As the train moved through the darkening landscape I wondered if I would have difficulty finding a hotel room, the train ploughed on into what was now a pitch black night. The station for West Wuppertal loomed up out of the darkness and I got off. This is strange I thought, it didn't fit my assumption of the city and looking at my watch I saw it was only 11.07. This can't be it - get back on board !!!      German "punctuality" has many blessings ?

It was beginning to rain as I crossed the empty square outside the railway station and headed towards the lights. At this time of night one is acutely aware of the potential danger from the type of late night characters that come alive in the city streets of most towns and cities. I found a hotel, on reflection, a hotel which seemed to attract a preponderance of friendly  men !! I decided the best place would be my room and slept soundly. 

In the morning I heading for my destination, a village about 12 miles away, a bus would take me there but which bus and who to ask ?

On the way home I bought a ticket to Amsterdam to visit an old friend and after that the final train journey back to the ferry terminal and across the Channel and home. 

Finding a route,solving the incidents that emerged on the way this was the grist to my mill when I was young, wandering from but now I seem more exposed and unsure. Age it seems opens the imagination to all kinds of dread !!!                  

Reflections

Did you ever realise how dangerous it would become if I had too much time on my hands.

The email is an ideal format for booring ones friends and family. I don't even have to spell the text backwards to get a result !!!

Have you noticed how many influential bodies are now asking the question, how did we get suckered into a blanket “ground all European flights” scenario. There were so many variables to question the actual danger to aircraft being contaminated by the ash cloud.
A good dose of common- sense would have brought a much more sensible response.

One of the major problem we have in the world at large, especially here in Europe is the lack of value put on an individuals judgement in these and matters.
Our society, is continually in fear of being sued. A state of mind (borrowed from the Americans) which freezes logic and makes cowards of strong, clear minded people.
You see this fear, spread by the strength of the Political Correct lobby. The limits put on free speech in the name of not upsetting minorities, gagging the majority with the race card. Words such as homophobe are thrown at anyone who does not conform to the views of the apologists for, “anything goes” !

The State wants to get in on all aspects of life, from child raising (no smacking) to whether its proper to end ones life painlessly when ones integrity is invaded by the technicians (called doctors) who can, with their machines, prolong life far beyond its usefulness.
A placid, conforming, proletariat is what government wants and that’s what it now has. Up to the eyeball in debt, the population is drawn to consume by advertisements fed, not under the door but down a wire and into the lounge, with you at all times - “the television”


We need danger !!! We need risk !!! We need cowboys !!! ( oh yes, I will be in trouble, we need cowgirls !!! ).

We are having our election in about a week and of course the Lib Dems have made it the first 3 party election in 80 years.

This has drawn every ones attention on how crazy our electoral set up is.
With a first past the post system the winner often comes with a minority of votes.
In the last Parliament the Lib Dems had roughly one third of the votes but only a handful of seats in Parliament. This is due to the way the constituency boundaries are drawn but it all leaves a sour taste.

Proportional representation has always been a no no when there were only two parties contesting the win but now the unfairness has come into the spot-light and something will have to be reformed.

I have always hated the way the Poms will not look around them and see what others do. The argument that PR does not provide strong government and the need to seek consensus from the other parties, is a weakness, in my opinion is flawed.
The winner takes all usually means that at each election the two parties who are ideologically at opposite end of the spectrum bring wide swings in policy. There is no continuity of policy and the country is the plaything of the Right or the Left. Each dismembers the previous 4 years with abandon and leaves the country as a whole weaker.

Why don’t we make voting compulsory.
They complain that the numbers turning up to vote is now so low that it brings into question the legitimacy of the process.

Why don’t we insist on some sort of “compulsory pension insurance” paid by every one.
We have the crazy set up whereby the current pensioners are paid by today’s taxpayer but with the swelling and longer living oldies there’s not enough income from tax receipts.
This is particularly true since the (Thatch rite ) aversion to society paying a reasonable percentage of their earnings into the tax pot and the sympathy given to the wealthy not to tax them for fear they will leave these shores.

When I left the UK the top rate of tax was nineteen shillings and six pence in the pound if your income was above £150,000pa. The argument was that after earning so much (remember the working man was on £5,000pa) you hardly needed the sixpence!
When I came back the working man paid 23% on his income (drawn straight from gross earnings) whilst the wealthy were supposed to pay 40% on their income ( but of course the accountants made sure that they didn’t ) The boss paid less, as a percentage than his cleaner.)

The tax shortfall was made up by VAT. A tax drawn, as was intended, disproportion- ally from the lower paid which of course was massively unfair but with a society that denies that “society” exists, (Thatcher believed in the individual) it was allowed to grow leaving the inequality of direct taxation un-touchable.

The Bankers, what can I say about them.

It seems to me that, as with various religious sects, they are untouchable.
Why is it that they have escaped the legal ramifications of unfair trading, selling products that were clearly not what they were purported to be.
AAA rated bonds, but mix the good quality bonds with A minus and BBB. ( the badge said Rolls Royse but under the bonnet sat a Ford gearbox and a Vauxhall breaking system ) and what do you get , four letters beginning with S
If a manufacturer had done this with his product and sold it to the public he would be in jail !!! The Bankers like the Pope are infallible, beyond the law.

Enough, enough
There must be some meat in their to chew upon , come on chew and lets hear from you.

Memories

Following on from my comment in my last email about the importance of leaving time to view a bit of TV, I tuned in today to watch the Formula One Grand Prix at Monte Carlo. I also kept an eye on the World Super-bike race held at Kyalami.
 
I don’t suppose you could have got a wider comparison between the two venues.
Monte Carlo the established capital of the old money, massive yachts, elegant hotels beautiful women, powerful men, the stars of our acquisitive world.
 
Kyalami set in the dusty open country of the East Rand, the buildings typically South African, a mixture of terracotta and plaster, ordinary men and women supping their beer and briaing their meat on the open fires
 
My early remembrance of Monte Carlo was as a 16 year old cycling down from my home in Yorkshire, through Northern France, through the Midi and finally zig -zagging up the final miles of the Maritime Alps, to view, at last, the Mediterranean. 
Below lay La Napoule and in the distance Cannes. My friend and I rode the twisting decent into La Napoule where we set up our tent and unloaded the massively overloaded panniers with which we had toiled the hot miles down the centre of France.
With bikes now so light we had difficulty not falling off we set off to ride around the shore line to Canne and on to Monte Carlo and into Italy.
 
I remember in Monte Carlo being fascinated watching a huge Mac truck, very slowly pulling up a steep hill with the driver, in his sweat stained singlet, walking alongside the truck and occasionally jumping up to adjust the steering wheel to stay on course.
 
Bureaucracy, Health and Safety and all the do-gooders who tell us what is best would have wet themselves but in those days the individual was valued and the picture has stayed with me. 
 
There are more billionaires in Monte Carlo than any where else and one is struck by the shear opulence, the huge yachts, lined up like taxies, the men and women climbing in and out of their Bentleys. 
 
This all seemed remote from Kyalami and my memories of the driving to see friends and family living around there.
I had been to one of the F1 events way back in the days of Anglo American Life. Wined and dined with a good view of the race, the only tricky part was negotiating my way home through the traffic clogged roads having generously exceeded the liquor limit !!
 
I remember a thatched pub which stood on the road at the top side of the track. It was pretty basic with, shall we call them, characters noisily enjoying themselves. Guns were occasionally flashed as tempers got out of hand but it was all part of the South African tapestry in the 70s / 80s.
 
Today’s race was crowded with happy noisy supporters and the British TV commentators were very supportive of Kyalami as a race venue which I understand is under threat by the withdrawal of Provincial funds.

Justice

Slowly but surely we begin to pull off the quay with another letter from Old-Blighty. The envelope, weighed down with stamps, ensuring her Majesty has her "dues", even for the words we create in our own time and our own volition.  Well that's how it used to be.  The mail train to the docks, the ship off to its destination. Dark men swarming all over lifting, carrying,  uniformed officials in white shorts (sometimes a comb in the sock) keeping an eye (no more) on things. Everything in place.  Back in the cool of his office Cecil played an even greater roll in ensuring each letter was pigeon holed to its destination, men with  white pith helmets and a bicycle completed the journey and the letter plopped into box at the garden gate.
 
What a journey that was.   Now all I do is press "send" and within a second or two its nestling in your email providers server ready to be read.  
 
Its often the case as one flicks over the T V channels one inadvertently lands on something that captures the attention to such an extent that one is absorbed for a long time.
It could be a play or a film, it could be a wildlife feature or a sporting event but for me yesterday it was a 5 hour session of one of the parliamentary committees that are broadcast over here.
They were dealing with a bill which is supposed to effect the process of a Defamation Claim as it proceeds through the court. Many questions were raised about the circumventing of justice and free speech as well as  a lack of transparency.  The use of money and privilege to block, through the courts, anyone who has a disparaging tale to tell.
 
The committee drew on the views of various people who were concerned or connected.
 
Tom Bower the author was vitriolic in his dismissal of the courts to be even handed in their judgment.  He has written many books damming the behaviour of the rich and famous, Jonathan Aitkin
Robert Maxwell, Richard Desmond to name a few.  Injunctions to prevent publication, highly paid lawyers to sieve through each paragraph comma and full stop to redefine "meaning".
The beauty and the devil lies within the English language with words that have more than one meaning and are therefore exposed to argument in court at whether malice was intended.
He was damming of some  high court judges virtually levelling the charge that they were in bed so to speak with the rich and famous.  Drawn from the same pool, same school, same club, same old, he sighted the case where the judge had been directed twice from the court of appeal but had ignored their decision and found for the wealthy litigant in refusing to allow publication. He claimed that his only recourse to justice was through the jury system where the judge is helpless in deciding the verdict.
It is in fact the "jury system" that is under threat as the Government wants, in this bill, to do away with jury's and try the cases by a judge only. 
As ever more we slide down the slope of equal representation into a world where the rich increasingly run roughshod over much of society and national politics bends and is subservient to a world  driven by financiers and the IMF, we are heading for a very sad time. 
Austerity is the only game in town, well it is for some. Those who now command the financial heights must be excused, no fault, no fine and certainly no pain !!!
 
At the point of going on to be a pain, I will sign off and give your eyes a rest.
 

A lack of investment

With the chinese in town and our PM waffling on with grand phrases one has to ask, what we can export to them. What do we have to sell !!
 
Apparently we do a fine line in scrap metal. The Chinese sell us the washing machine,we use it and then scrap it, sell them the scrap which they turn into another washing machine to sell back to us. The profit is all theirs of course, not only in the added value to the scrap but in the creation of jobs to make the washing machine.
Now we all know what the underdeveloped nations  felt, as the West  stripped them of their raw material to produce finished products  to sell back to them with that phrase "added value" ringing in their ears !
    
This monumental turnover has happened in only the last decade but had its seed sown in the complacency British Business has shown since the war.
 
The reluctance to keep on investing, using the profits that were there in those days, trading on our unique position, having had an Empire and having been the bed rock of so much of the worlds trade structure, thrown away.  
 
The Germans of course didn't squander their money on dividends and immediate self-gratification they kept reinvesting, re-modernising, re-training their staff and in effect,  staying ahead of the game !!!
 
It has been this "Nations" mantra that the "work force" and the "unions" were mainly to blame for our failures.   
 
I put it to you, most of the blame lies with  the Owners and the Management of business.      Not only in their inability to re-invest but in their unwillingness to understand the importance of their workforce in maintaining the business.  
Treat your workforce as equal collaborators, keep giving them new skills and new equipment and you will have a German outcome.    You will then sell the Rolls and the Bentley to the Chinese, (as the Germans do) and re-use the profit to keep innovating to stay ahead.     
 
We are in such a mess and will have to rely on the Chinese to buy up what is left of us, and bring the "techniques" that are clearly not learnt at  Eton.

The early night

It’s funny how the body develops protective calluses over inflamed and sensitive wounds.   Similarly, psychologically we also protect ourselves from unpleasant sights and sounds by a system of shifting the minds scenery as it were, to develop our own more comforting scenario and come  to terms with whatever it is that could disturb us.

Looking out of the window its a dark winters evening, the trees gaunt against the sky, the rain swooping between the house with a sound like a malicious whisper. Inside we are warm and well fed, the central heating is set at 20 and the lights on Christmas tree send out a warm message to the people wrapped up on their way to the shop or pub.    

There are many ways that a society constructs its habits to suit the surroundings and cope. The further North we go into Scandinavia or, the wider Russian landscape, we find the people taut, serious, and more intense and of course this reflects the landscape surrounding them.    They were known for their heavy drinking and conversely the value put on the society which they form a part.    Communism and Socialism are inherently possible because of the trials and tribulations that these people suffer in the normal way they are forced to live their lives.

From the idealism of Lenin, to the brutality of Stalin. From the corruption of the modern Russian state with its flirtation with capitalism, to the emergence of a morally corrupt society, from the very top, through the oligarchs to the con artists that now run what is called Russian society? This is one example. The other is the overarching social umbrella set out in Sweden,Norway and Denmark, -  laced with booze they concern themselves unendingly with each other!! 

As the temperature and the surrounding landscape soften, the ties between people loosen.     

We are each surrounded by good and bad.    In a way, they complement each other by balancing the acceptable and the unacceptable by colouring everything grey, making the contrasts less harsh.       We balance our mental equilibrium by sifting the “real events” which happen around us,   -  we compromise!!

I love Radio 4 and the BBC as a broadcast medium.  The “quality newspapers” offer an insight to what we think we should know.  The scale of the place means that, in general we are not exposed in the way that one can be, in less mature societies. Living here can be like sitting through a classical recital, not a rock concert!!       

Of course we have the best of both, not 30miles away!!

Yet the exciting “edge” is missing, the risk, the exposure to danger that feeds the body’s chemistry and puts us on a different level, like being in love for the first time.    Remember when we were young, the uncertainty of each day as it unfurled. Remember the anticipation of a new restaurant or a date, the fun of a bunch of friends hanging out together, a trip to a new country and a new adventure unwinding!!

Old age and the search for security now capture so much of our innate energy and ties us to a life of inactivity and the proverbial, “early night”!!  

Happy New Year to you all.

Globalisation

There is a school of thought that suggests that the "me" is a composite of the "mind" and that the body is a far less important element of who I am. The Buddhists for instance believe that through meditation one can clear out the noise of the thoughts that jangle in the head, the conflicts, the confusion so that one attains a state of singularity, a peace, where the real you is to be  found.

Clearing out that "noise" which distracts us is very rewarding. It allows us to evaluate everything for what is really worth. It creates a whole different perspective on what we value.

The economy.  Well clearly through "Bank Globalisation" and the experiment to dissolve debt into so many packages more easily digestible to the global economy as a whole, has come a cropper because it  lost that vital element,"confidence".  Confidence made the bad look good and now we are back in the real world where bad is, what it always was - bad !! 

Easy credit made people take what ever common sense they had and bin it for the Ponzi scam that the financial world sold us.

The debt mountain is now so large that without wholesale devaluation and with it, the pain of substantial inflation, I can't see how the Western Capitalistic System can survive.  Unemployment will balloon as companies close and Welfare will probably fail as the taxable income needed to support Welfare wither away. Social unrest will become the norm and we will degenerate as a society.

This of course is not the message the media are putting across. They suggest that the Politicians pumping new money into the financial environment will sort out the problem but it is a sticking plaster covering a wound that is still infected.

The Banks don't trust each other and therefore won't lend to each other and the system freezes. Debt cutting by the Americans and Europeans means that unemployment rises and tax revenues fall. Growth needs the credit system to be re stimulated but that was the cause of our dilemma so how do we feed the financial monster to keep it happy without sowing more eventual destruction.

They created a monster and I doubt if there is any way they can put it back in the bottle !!! 

Three years on.  

The streets are dirty with rubbish not collected. The roads,  full of potholes and cars , evermore abandoned through lack of fuel. Shops are boarded up with only the occasional cheap tat, (anything for a pound) place surviving.

People roam the streets looking for work or food despairing and afraid to return home to those accusative eyes.

Planes are grounded, the airport empty as are the hotels and guest houses. People are weary of travel, the stories of deep poverty on the continent and the inherent danger of setting out to see the ruin's,  but then everything is a ruin now !! 

The young have become feral, having no future they wander around in gangs intent on ravaging what ever has value.          

The wealthy, largely those who work or used to work in the Banking industry now sit behind their high walls, a protection from the rabble, to continue living in  pockets of "the way things were".

TV  switched off because it serves only a diet of despair and despondency and reflects the inherent rage of a population who were fed a rotten hand !! 

Be happy !!