Gender pay and gender anomaly

Subject: Gender pay and gender anomaly

This morning the BBC is releasing the pay of employees who earn more than £150.000 per year. This list of employees will include, apart from senior management, the small screen stars we see regularly on our television screens. Presenters such as Gary Lineker Chris's Evens and Graham Norton, all household names in the UK. News readers and news analysts John Humphrys, Kirsty Wark, Fiona Bruce, Laura Kuenssberg, all earning much more than £150.000, will contest the rating for who earns the most, which has come about by a call to make transparent the earnings and therefore the expenditure of this taxpayer funded organisation.
Listening and being sickened by the glee in the voices of the 'ITV' presenters as they reported this story this morning, protected themselves by the anonymity that working for a private company brings. It highlights the chasm between the rules brokered between public and private companies.
The BBC has to walk a much finer line when reflecting impartiality for fear of upsetting  their political masters the Government who's own impartiality is unbounded by parliamentary protection.
Sky and ITV have a Management Board and, lurking in the background their ownership by powerful people who have their own agenda when it comes to political persuasion.
One of the immediate criticisms to be aired is the ratio of the gender imbalance with two thirds of men earning above the £150.000 against only one third women. The call to balance the book on gender lines is now becoming quite shrill without a fair and rational assessment of why this can be.
Maybe it's the one thing that is uniquely gender specific, having babies.In the world of employment women are disadvantaged when they become pregnant and begin to involve themselves in a whole range of priorities which men are never faced with. This biological distinction ensures that from a purely rational standpoint, women are more likely to be 'less' committed to the working day. To want time off. To require of the boss special treatment than he/she gives to a man doing the same work. If this can be artificially accounted for in striving to find some sort of equality, all well and good but it has consequences particularly if as a result men are required to cover longer more socially inappropriate hours and woman excused because of a need to place her role as mother above all else.
The struggle to find this nirvana of 'gender equality' starts with a recognition that the needs of a woman with children are very different to a man
Mothering and fathering concern themselves with two distinctly different things obvious to all but the most driven feminist. The roles in parenthood whist interchangeable in certain things are largely exclusive in other aspects. The innate maternal patience a women brings to the needs of a child, apparently instinctive in a woman is often missing in men. Men can learn to be attentive but it's not innate.  Unfortunately the deep female psychological involvement with the child can lead to a sort of schizophrenia, a feeling of inadequacy unable to commit to both roles when they become embedded in the workplace. Wrecked with motherhood guilt, a guilt which a man rarely feels, means that women have a difficult time committing fully to their job, especially if the job requires that their 'default position' has to be in the workplace.
Is it any wonder that there is a gender differential in the workplace when a woman's mind is conflicted with what is going on at home. Women are greatly valued because they have the empathy and a child centred commitment a man sometimes lacks.
Even if the woman decides to return to work and the man becomes a 'stay at home dad' often her maternal instincts feel cheated and she resents not being close to the child as it grows up. I know this is stereotypical and does not fit a description of all women but it is sufficiently common for it to be statistically evident in the make up of the workplace.
The phrase "women want it all" is not completely off the mark when measured in their surety of family rights when divorce is enacted. The home, parental rights,  a claim on the man's estate and future earnings highlight the attitude in the court to the protection a woman with children gets. It seems that, come hell or high water they want equality in all but the one area in which a man is seriously disadvantaged and often is placed in great emotional pain regarding his having access to his children, pain and enormous frustration by the demands of an angry women.
So we should see the gender gap in the workplace more in the round and not be swayed by the powerful media lobby who represent a segment of show business that is not representative of the working environment as a whole.

Retirement

Subject: Retirement.

What right do we have to make predictions about our lives in a market driven economy.
By this I mean any sort of social contract where you pay instalments to obtain a financial sum of money at the end of the contract.
The years in which you pay a contribution on the assumption that a pension will be paid  on the anniversary of your 65th birthday has been changed. Last year due to people living longer the anniversary date was moved to 66, this morning the government announced a new date, 67 and who knows as they struggle to cover the books how long it will be before 68 is rung up, 69, 70, 71, perhaps in a few years 72 will be the date we can expect to retire and receive the state pension.
People who look forward to retirement and a pension to live on have a number of issues to face. 

Is retirement all that it is cracked up to be ?

Is work such a bad thing ?

Have we factored in the overall deterioration we undergo in the latter stages of our life?

The spectre of losing close friends and family and of course dying ourselves ?

With these amendments, has our keenness to retire been thought through properly or should we not count our blessings to be in work, being economically active in a remunerative sense, evolving those work based relationships which have been the substance of our lives for such a long time. The sense of our usefulness is bound up in those skills we honed over so many years at work. The achievements we gained and the emotional reward obtained whilst amongst our peers is not so easily replaced after retirement. The void is not easily filled by domestic chores and whilst voluntary work is to be admired it lacks the steely commitment of working for someone who expects a return on their investment.

An active, problem solving mind is one of the most cherished things as we go into old age. The mind can still run a 100yds in 10secs whilst the body is struggling to escape the clutches of the chair. Flights of fancy tempered by the constrict of practical reality are no substitute for the pleasure one gets from delivering the promised employment package of work, on time and under budget.

The triathlon

Subject: The triathlon

Sons checking moms and moms checking sons, dads looking out for friends, uncles cheering their nephews and nieces it's the London triathlon with over 30,000 contestants and the Excel arena is full of wannabe Brownlees.  

One of the guys who works with me has transformed his fitness and his confidence in the last 12 months by training for the triathlon. He used up to date technique of fitness training and using modern methodology measures his body's output energy wattage which when combined with careful heart rate monitoring ensures he never performs in the red. This, along with his strict diet affords him the opportunity to be a successful triathlon athlete. When he started he finished races towards the back of the field, now he is competing at the front but it comes at a cost. 

His bike cost him a small fortune and he spent money on a specialist to analyse his running style which fortuitously knocked minutes off his time.  It's all very high tech and far removed from my day where you simply blasted away on what ever bike you had, nutrition was based on fish and chips and the concept of riding within yourself, seemed plain daft.
Excel situated alongside the River Thames was swirling with like minded, fit,  optimistic athletes who came in all shapes and sizes.  Shepherded in to groups of a hundred they were encouraged into plunging into the unappetising dockland water, a cold wake up call if ever there was one. To the sound of a loud klaxon horn and they were off striking out towards the first buoy, heads bobbing up and down in the water as the organisers busied themselves organising another batch to follow. A day long procession, competitor group  after competitor group headed off, wet-suits on, wetsuits off, cycling shoes on, cycling she's off, and finally after pulling the running shoes on, set off on the 10k run.
The support and the camaraderie around the course was enthusiastic as friends and family cheered each athletes progress. It was a day to see the Brits at their best, combining, coming together under grey sky's, a community within the community doing what they feel important. From cyclists to walkers, from rock climbers to bird watchers, from amateur football to cricket people are out doing their thing and we undervalue a society if we only judge them on drug use or teenage crime.
Much of the vision we have of anything is the one produced in the news rooms and in the documentary producers mind. To sell it has to have shock as its therapy it has to make an impact such that the reader is moved to exclaim "that's not for me, what are we coming to"? The sense that there is a subculture and we are not part of it is grist to the mill for the journalist. From the rich and their lifestyle to the underclass and their benefit reliance are the stories we consume. The tragedies of war torn regions, the heart break of a child dying, the deceit of the political class and of course the road to Brexit.
These are the stories of a nations crisis not its success story. It makes us all feel uncomfortable, unsettled, scared and adds to the psychological gloom, as if our weather was not enough and whilst the media makes its money we suffer the depreciation of uncertainty.
On Sunday I saw a different largely unreported aspect to our psyche and benefited enormously.

Being offside for most of the game

Most of our lives are what could be termed 'ordinary'. Many lives are troubled with irritating everyday crisis, small crisis, often concerned with money, sometimes emotional conflict but never the less, a crisis. The difficulty in the small ordinary persons life is that they are just as full of pathos as are the famously important lives but not as visible. 

That's not to say that there aren't any successes, far from it.  Its the scale. Much of the success goes under the radar we don't pick up on the self-congratulatory smile or experience the glow of satisfaction when some one near and dear are successful in their  own lives.

Growing up in a working class society where the scale of celebratory success was rare and simple pleasures took the place of big ones, one became sensitive to an undercurrent of complacency as things just ticked along in time honoured fashion.

No man or woman is an island but in so many ways we learnt to isolate our emotions and kept them bottled up within. The thought that a man would produce tears when upset was an anathema, it was so contrary to our thoughts of masculinity. 

As the bard said :-

"It makes us bare the ills we have than fly to others we know not of.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and the native hue of resolution, is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought".

These days it's thought strange if a bloke can't shed a tear or two, even break down into an emotional weeping wreck as we are evermore diverted towards our feminine side. Today being outwardly distraught is thought to be a sign that we are 'human', when in fact it could simply be  a sign that we have lost that innate strength to shoulder our discomfort and carry on.

Man and 'his' values are part of an evolutionary process which, until the last 70 years were determined by his strength and guile to fight battles with a range of foes, to rise up when necessary and defend and support his family. In the years since the end of the Second World War there has been a huge shift in opinion regarding the role a man was required to fulfil.  His skills with his fists were demonised, his macho approach to virtually everything was lambasted as Neanderthal, he has had to redefine his purpose, even his presence in the conjugal bed has been technically usurped by science and I see in the latest findings his sperm count is plummeting.

He is deafened, morning noon and night by the cry of the feminist to be less combative, more accommodating and yet these words, do not mirror  the modern women. 

Jane Austen's characterisation of men and women, particularly women, bears no relationship with today's man or woman. And rightly so.

The traditionally submissive female has been taken over by by a more aggressive, "rights" consumed person, who has all the makings of a man on steroids. Their intellect and their sense of what is important makes them strong adversaries, if adversaries they seem to be.  Society and the civilising effect of potty training has meant we no longer use physical strength to define our wishes but rely rather on guile and subterfuge. These are skills a woman has in abundance. Having been subordinate to the raw power a man has at his disposal, she hones her subtle sexuality to make herself indispensable as he evolves from "taker" to "giver". 

Man he is simple too naive to consider implications which women evaluate instinctively. He is blind to the pitfalls because he believes he is not only player but the referee. 

It's only when the whistle is blown for the game to begin does he realise that the rules have changed and is continually blown up for being offside.

Boxing

Subject: Boxing

You have often heard how my day starts early with the radio alarm springing into action at 5am. Saturday mornings are special since the radio switches immediately into a program hosted by two well known boxing columnists Mike Costello and Steve Bunce.

The program reminisces about boxing, its fighters and the history of some of the gladiators or the ring past and present.
In today's world and the disdain people have for fighting, much of the glory two equally matched men have when they contest their skills to fight each other is couched in near revulsion by many who would like us to match our disagreement by using that famous description, "handbags at fifty paces". In other words ensure no one gets hurt.

I have railed often about the changes to our world brought on by opinions which lie in the minds of a certain type of person who asks that all conflict were resolved by dialogue. That a man's propensity to fight a physical battle as a means of resolution is an absolute anathema. I'm not sure this isn't yet another factor in the feminisation of the West but in my day a scrap in the school yard was a perfectly normal way of sorting out a disagreement.
Growing up in the 40s and 50s ones heroes, coming from Yorkshire were cricketers Len Hutton being our super hero. Leeds football team were ultra competitive with players like Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter known for taking no prisoners. It was an age when the forwards, the expensive goal scoring assets in a team could not, like today expect protection from the referee. Hard tackling was as much admired as was the silky skills of the centre forward and Leeds United were known for their robust play.
But the men who were most respected and glorified were the pugilists, the boxers drawn mainly from America but with some local home grown giants.
British Heavyweight champion Bruce Woodcock (a Yorkshire lad) and Don Cockell's brutal fight against Rocky Marciano in the 50s. Middleweights Randy Turpin and Freddy Mills these were our most admired sportsman as I listened to the fights on the radio with my Dad. Joe Louis the "Brown Bomber" and the cultural animosity in his fights with German Max Schmeling were fights when nationhood was on the line and white v black was uppermost in many people's minds.
Today's broadcast was of a later era, the era of the four Kings. Ruberto Duran, Tommy Hearns, Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard. Middleweight boxing at its best these men fought each other and then again in return bouts, fights never to be repeated in there guile or ferocity, in the sheer unknown as each fight produced a remarkable contest. I remember walking around Zoo Lake in Johannesburg discussing the fighters with a friend Mike Mills. Both of us recalling our thoughts and impressions, both of us in awe of what we had witnessed. The skill of Leonard, the punching power of Hearns, the ferocity of Hagler and the animal-ism of Duran. Who was best was a matter of conjecture and still is as today's radio broadcast showed. One thing was not in doubt as now in an age when men begin to doubt themselves, these were superheroes to us living in a time untainted by the complexity of a modern world when 'gender definition' seems to encompass whatever you wish to call it.

The unknowable becomes a reality

Subject: The unknowable becomes a reality.

Yesterday it was the news that the petrol/diesel engine car was heading for the scrap heap, today its the celebration by the LGBT community of a 50 years struggle for equality. People are still getting mugged both physically and financially and of course there is the early morning tweet from the White House to enliven us all.
The world proceeds on its erratic way, a reflection of the diversity of the people who populate it. News flood in on the media channels and through the internet, some of it genuine some of it false as certain people and nations strive to create an imbalance by spreading stories to incite emotions.

As Jeff Bezos now outranks Bill Gates as the richest man (91billion dollars) we might turn our minds to just what does 91 billion dollars mean to us as individuals, each with fiscal boundaries, as to what we can do today.

Of course there is the tragedy of the young couple who right now know that the life support for their baby boy is being turned off by doctors and that their public critique of doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital for not allowing them to take their baby boy to America for treatment has rung many bells in the public psyche.
Hierarchy has many objections to much we see as our right. Their Governance of our impulses has always been in their best interest and sadly there is little or no governance of the hierarchy.
David Davis did a workmanlike job of explaining to the House of Lords committee how things were proceeding in our exit out of the EU only for us to be confused by the EUs Chief negotiator Mr Barnier who has poured cold water on the progress.
The implications of our exit are banded around amongst the doom mangers and the ever optimistic Brexiteers,  like an interminably long service game at Wimbledon. We wait on the sidelines hearts in our mouth as shot after shot seems a winner only to be returned by a better deceit from the other side.

The weather seems to have generated a whole new descriptive expression as we seem to have done away with clear sky's and sunshine or it alternative, overcast and rain. We now describe the patches of fleeting blue sky mixed between the soggy clouds as an intermittent weather pattern which has little sense of predictability. Weather of course was always understood to be unpredictable since the predictability is bound up in a mathematical chaos equation where different starting points in the prediction lead to wildly different outcomes.
Prediction has hit the buffers in quantum physics since the sub atomic schizophrenic particle is predicted in one place but the moment we turn to observe it it relocates to another position which is totally unpredictable. The basis of Newtonian science is thrown on its head and the concept of the unknowable becomes a reality.

Refusing to be left behind

Subject: Refusing to be left behind.

I see the gender war is still alive and well.
The advertising industry is implementing guide lines to prevent gender stereotyping. The sort of thing where a woman is seen handling the washing whilst the man handles the tv control. Quite right, many of you will exclaim, its wrong that women should be expected to do the housework and change the baby's nappy whilst men swan down to the pub.
Traditional definitions to describe what a man and a woman should do is clearly out of kilter in a world where there is more than one bread winner and the domestic strains of sharing the space of a house and a home have to be born by both sexes. In fact the term sex is loosing relevance as we discover a whole panoply of gender conditions which seem to throw up more and more sexual diversity each generation.
The gender specific role has seen its sell by date and now we don't blink an eye when we see women fighting on the front line whilst men compete to establish their feminine side. The roles which used to identify us as men and women are swept aside in the rush to prove we are all the same.

And yet are we. There is no earthly reason why a woman can't be a plumber and men have been in the kitchen for generations, who are the five star chefs but men. Women are not inclined towards the really dirty work or descend down a coal mine to hack at the coal face for eight hours a day, generally they have more sense and would rather work in an office. Their instincts for child rearing and the pivotal part they play in carrying the unborn child makes their claim to having special privileges in this area generally uncontested but as men are drawn closer into the home and the workings therein then this feminising has to give claim to more rights for the male when it comes to children and the access they have to their sons and daughters.

Of course as we embark on the road of surrogacy and designer babies, as we contemplate the act of conception merely as the fertilisation of an egg and not the result of a relationship between a man and a woman. If conception becomes so deterministic that it becomes a hedonistic lifestyle choice then there is no need to define the gender and gender becomes almost completely interchangeable.
Orwell's fertile brain has spawned a whole new way of considering the future. The interplay of humans on this planet over Millennia will be called into question as women take a chromosome tablet to start the process of cell division and men find ways of replicating the womb so as not to be left behind.

Tour de France

Subject: The Tour de France.

The sporting scene has been growing full blast this weekend with Wimbledon, the Silverstone GP and crucial stages in the Tour de France.
My first love was cycling if for no other reason than I did so much of it as a teenager. The bicycle was the means of getting around outside the normal commute. Today the assumption is a car, then a car was far beyond the means of an apprentice wage. Most weekends were spent on the bike in the company of one cycling club friends.  Meeting at the park gates at 8.00am we were off in a crocodile of pairs, two abreast chatting about the events of Saturday night or the anticipation of today as we rolled along the road out of suburbia and into the Yorkshire Dales. We had been blessed to be born near the Dales with all its profundity of landscape and seasons. The quaint villages nestling in the valleys, each isolated from the next by steep hills, each developing its own character through this isolation.
It was a time of relatively insignificant traffic and into the Dales we had the roads pretty much to ourselves. The motorist then were much more laid back, much less in a rush to be somewhere else, much more inclined to give the lads and lasses on their bikes the time and space for all to enjoy the countryside and the pleasure being of 'out and about'.
The muscle throwing climbs and the exhilarating descents were the order of the day but nothing compared to Chris Froome's race saving slow, painstaking claw back of the distance lost from his main rival after suffering a mechanical failure whilst riding in the peloton. As soon as his bike broke the other General classification contenders were off sensing a race turning moment as the yellow jersey clad Froome was left at the side of the road waiting for a replacement bike. It says so much for the mental strength of Froome that he never panicked but proceeded to grind away or rather in his style, to twiddle a low gear up the impossibly steep gradient, clawing back metre by metre the space between him and the pack. A herculean effort and one for which he deserves the Tour.
The Tour de France is a remarkable feat of endurance. An athletic Mount Everest, where for three weeks the riders have to contest the contours of France.

Mountain passes with majestic names, Mont Ventoux, (21 kilometres of climbing where the British cyclist Tommy Simpson died whilst pushing too hard on the mountain), Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees where previous heroes of the race had cemented their strength and fitness on everyone else. Fifteen days in the saddle, riding on average 200 k each day stages with sometimes inhuman mountain climbs up which no normal cyclist could even ride never mind race. The fans choking the narrow road, waving their flags, urging their favourites along almost hysterical with the frenzy of the moment.

When Mo Farah does his wonderful thing over the 5000m or 10,000m we wonder at his stamina and understand that between races he needs a couple of rest days. For the Tour riders there are virtually no rest days. Each morning brings another long day in the saddle with average speeds of 40 kph and average put into perspective when you consider the speed on the mountain stages plummets to 10kph and lower.
Professional cycling has obtained a bad name for drug use but it's hardly surprising when the stimulant is not to give an edge over a competitor but used to provide a resilience to the pain and fatigue this race of races brings to the human frame.

Breathing hope

Subject: Breathing hope.

How my life would have been different if I had swallowed my catechism or become a Buddhist, taken up Mohamed or drifted into the realm of Joseph Smith. On such things life turns and who is to know or decry the penance for living when it is wrought by belief.
The Sunday walk with my Mother  to our village church in Esholt, Evensong or it morning equivalent, the songs I can still remember, the sermon, the pomp and circumstance of the vicar in his robes, the friendly women and the secure community to which, through their faith they belonged.
One element in this childhood pageant which was missing was my Dad. He was missing in dispatches. Not for him this worthy ritual, he was not to become a hypocrite to his reasoned atheism even for the sake of family unity. I remember eventually following his practice after being encouraged along to the Catholic Church for family prayers where I thought it provident to support my wife in her duty to introduce the children to the mysteries of God but could only hear the drone of a closed mind the Irish preacher who's grasp on life was limited by his profession.

Eventually I found excuses not to go as I sat in my pew and mulled over the words and the ritual. There was no light emitted, no Divine revelation nor to my mind even much sense, other than the humanism "that we should love one another".
Religion is a defining act in our lives. We might live without religion by much the same rules regarding our interaction with others but our reasoning is different. It could be argued that the atheist is more altruistic in his actions toward others since there is no reward in heaven or in rebirth, the atheist simply follows the tenants of good behaviour because he/she has an understanding of himself in relation to others and not to some obscure revelation. His revelation is formed by his noticing how rewarding it is to give of oneself by being friendly and helpful and inevitably receive the same empathy back.
It's not difficult, it doesn't need complex sermons or gilded buildings, all you have to do is look around and see human beings like yourself and know that within most of them breaths the same breath of hope.

Reinstating the mono hull

 Subject: Reinstating the mono hull.

Way before my time when we were a maritime nation we used to compete for the America Cup. A yachting competition originally between Britain and America it was won and held by America until the Aussies won the cup in 1983.
Anyway it was an event for the big boys with deep, deep pockets. Huge beautifully crafted mono hulls, some up to 95 ft in length (the j class) with secretive shapes below the waterline, particularly around the keel were often the deciding factor along with the Herculean efforts of the crew to work the winches to haul the gigantic sails up and down as the yacht changed tack. Speed through the water relied on the kinetic energy built up in the yacht as she sailed through each sail change. Beautiful to watch these Formula One boats were horrendously expensive and we, as one of the European nations competing against the Americans found it just too expensive. Queens of the ocean, they slowly became the plaything of only the ultra,ultra rich, the Swiss and the oil rich Middle East seemed destined to be the only ones to compete against the mighty Yanks.
The Aussies took on the challenge in 1962, 1964, 1967 but were unsuccessful until 1983 when they  were the unexpected winners. It was hard to imagine a small nation like Australia taking on the Americans at such an expensive sport but they did and it says much for them as a nation that they could muster the technical and financial clout when supposedly wealthier nations in Europe were left floundering in their wake.
And then out of left field as it were emerged a nation famed more for its rugby, not outwardly a rich nation, a nation which would have been called parochial, a farming nation not a ship building nation, New Zealand, a nation glorifying that 'extinct bird', the dodo which adding insult to injury, couldn't fly.
Well if their bird couldn't fly their America Cup yachts certainly could.
In 1988 we watched the absorbing sight of seeing a contest between the last of the huge 90ft mono hulls ( a Kiwi boat) and the new boys on the block the catamaran introduced by the Americans exploiting  the rules which hadn't envisaged multi hull craft competing in the race. It was fascinating as at each tack the weight and energy stored in the mono hull carried the boat through the water as the wind took hold of the newly set sail on the new tack. The cat as she tacked came virtually to a grinding halt having little weight to carry her forward with no wind. Suddenly she was off skimming along, a sort of cat and mouse event the one leading and then being hauled back until the next tack. The multi hull won convincingly
The Kiwi won their greatest victory against the Americans yesterday after a series which also saw a British team competing for the first time for quite a while.
The size and the effectiveness of the New Zealand victory, 7 races to 1 was as humbling to the Americans as they have ever experienced.  They were trounced in every aspect in keeping these hybrid catamarans "aloft" rather than afloat (something of a misnomer)
Yes that's the name of the game these days, keeping the craft aloft as the boats actually skim the water rather than sailing through the water. Hydrofoils who's only contact with the water was a blade of fibre glass which hangs down below the hull and adds some sort of stability and excludes the boat being described as a "kite"
To watch these boats today as they skittishly drift at speeds of 40 knots across the water tacking and then, playing chicken with each other, as at high speed they approach on the opposite tack missing contact by inches.
The sails are no longer run up and down the mast seem fixed. Instead the foils below the water line are tilted to shift direction and the huge men who were required to work the grinders, the method by which the lines running to control the sails are now engaged in grinding to keep up the hydraulic pressure which is used to trim the foils.
It's still exciting as one watches the helmsman's tactical nous used to find the wind, or his split second decision making, to stay within the rules which govern what a boat must do to avoid a collision.
There is talk that the Kiwi's, having regained the cup and able to dictate where and how the next contest will be run, they may reinstate the mono hull ?

Justice

Subject: Justice

Shooting yourself in the foot seems to be par for the course for Mrs May.
She has just appointed a retired judge, Sir Martin Moore-Bick to undertake a review of events surrounding the Grenfell Tower fire.
The problem with his appointment is his history pertaining to the sort of people who are closest effected the tenants of the burnt out flats. He was castigated by the Supreme Court in 2014 for a decision he made to relocate a Congolese refugee from Westminster where she was living, to Milton Keynes 50 miles away. The decision was flawed.  To have a decision turned on its head, not because it was a question of legal interpretation but because the Senior Court in the Land thought his decision had not taken the Congolese woman's situation, (she had five school going children and a web of relatives close by in Westminster), into consideration.
Just the sort of empathetic Etonian to decide on the fate of who is to blame for the fire and what are the rights of the tenants in terms of rehousing.
He was accused of "social cleansing" in terms of the case in 2014, how on earth can a man with this pedigree be placed in charge of such a socially sensitive case. The whole weight of argument levied against the authorities who controlled the Borough of  Kensington and Chelsea was that they were indifferent to the plight of the type of people who lived in Grenfell Tower, people who cast the same shadow as the Congolese women over whom he had ruled so unsympathetically.
It's as if Mrs May and her adviser's have a death wish, or perhaps the truth is they just don't care. 

His remit has largely been commercial cases, shipping and the like. Perhaps his expertise is to be used to find wiggle room to get the council off a claim of Culpable Homicide by blinding us with a complicated regulation agenda, losing sight of the plight of the human beings who lost their lives and the ones who survived but will be scarred for ever by events that need not have happened.
Justice is a valuable thing it's the glue which holds society together and if it loses traction in sections of our society then we are in for a rocky uncomfortable journey.

The art of the whitewash

  

Subject: The art of the whitewash.

And so now we know. The investigation into the Grenfell Tower will not have the remit to look at the causes of how but only at the why the building went up in flames so quickly.
It will be a technical exercise in cladding and why the cladding burst into flames. It will not concern itself with how the regulation were watered down, "a bonfire of regulations" as David Cameron proudly claimed as he gave business the Green light to cut corners and massage their bottom line.
There will be no investigation of how under Tony Blair the regulatory responsibility for fire regulation and its compliance was removed from the fire service and given to a quango which was much more sympathetic to the building industry.
It will not have as its remit the power to investigate the cruel disregard of Kensington and Chelsea towards the tenants after the fire nor their lack of response to the claims by the tenants in the two years leading up to the fire.
This investigation which will be long and expensive has been hobbled from the start by Mrs May and her cohorts to ensure that the guilt will be well away from the real source and instead will be carried by the greed of a contractor who saw an opportunity but never the the real crime, the political crime of allowing the greed of a contractor to do what he did in the first place.
All points covered, let's begin and spend money deflecting where the true causes in the demise in our society lie.
Make sure the fire retardant barriers are up around the usual suspects and we can start the usual whitewash that Whitehall is so famous for.

Hi, I'm still here

Subject: Hi, I'm still here.

It's Saturday morning.
Saturdays even when you are retired and each day has no particular prominence over another, somewhere deep inside, Saturday is different. It's instinctive, the weekend has arrived. Perhaps it seeps in from the street where instead of the sound of motor cars setting off early to work, the street is still quiet.
Perhaps it's the laid back quality of the day or the anticipation of some sporting contest, today it's the 2nd Lions v New Zealand test, perhaps for some it's Saturday shopping and breakfast out at the cafe bistro which has become popular. What ever it is Saturday is different.
Different again from Sunday where through years of symbiosis the tone of the day is tuned down and is more reflective. You don't have to be religious to sense the religiosity of the day. You don't have to go to church to hear the bells calling the brethren to service, you don't have to be religious to glimpse out of the corner of your eye the folk who are religious and for them, the day is special. Their observance is like a reminder of an unanswered question which was put in our minds when young and hangs about unanswered until we reach a stage when the answer becomes more relevant.
Monday of course still has that dull ring to it, the start of a working week, the call to serve others and their agenda and not your own flight of fancy. Even though you are retired and can turn over and nod off to sleep again you hear the cars starting up and reverse into the street. A little later you hear the school kids chattering on their way to school or the really young children scuttling back a few yards ahead of Mum or Dad tethered by an invisible line of exploring how far they can explore their own world until the call of "don't go too" far reminds them that someone is looking out for them.
You feel a little pang, a little lonely pang of being left out, of not being included, of becoming irrelevant and invisible. As the street quietens and you are left alone with only breakfast and morning TV to drag you out of bed. No ow you begin to understand how my blogs are often written early in the morning. It's a prop, it's a substitute for that early morning catch up conversation around the coffee/tea machine in the office. It's about saying "Hi I'm still here alive and well", and "what are you doing today".
The routine of the week and the meaning given to each day, how Tuesday is so different to Friday how the rhythm of the week is up and down, all this is largely missing for the retiree. The fact that you really can put off today for tomorrow and nothing is amiss other than the Presbyterian ethos which makes you uncomfortable what ever you do.
Hi I'm still here !!!

Territorial rugby style and the red bits on maps of the world.

Subject: Territory rugby style and the red bits on a map of the world.

So now we know if you want to penalise the All Blacks you have to send off at least two men when a penalty is called. Sending one off only makes them mad, only makes them dig deeper into their skills toolbox to craft the basics of territory and minor penalties. With 14 men competing against 15 they kept the Lions at bay. They snaffled points by keeping the play in Lions territory and in the first twenty minutes of the second half were easing their way to a mammoth victory being so unevenly matched. Then somewhat against the run of the play, two Lions tries, good tries which pulled the game level. Playing at last in territory where penalty kicks count the Kiwis were deemed to have taken a man out whilst in the air. A decision which, according to the rules protect the players from injury and had to be awarded but which I thought harsh and it sealed the game.

It was a moment when fate rewarded the people who had travelled 12.000 miles to watch their composite team the Lions win and level the series. For them it was worth the win, to go back to their hotel and still hope for a win next Saturday.  To hold their heads up high and dream to spin a story of having been there  when 'our boys' beat the All Blacks on their own territory in a windy wet Wellington.

The Kiwis are also right to be proud of their team. They are a nation which seems to have got it right in amalgamating the indigenous with the newcomer. Not an easy task and not replicated in too many other countries.
The Hakka seems to have been used within the schools to emphasise the unique make of their society. They use it as a talisman teaching the boys the significance of this cultural tool to unite New Zealanders into one nation and it seems to work. Not known for their flamboyance, these down to earth folk understand their heritage and seem to have become cooperative in being good at what they do. Raising sheep, to building world beating yachts the empathy they have for admiring people who are hard working and level headed. Keeping their feet on the ground, of seeing the country as belonging to them and not some elitist establishment group who own everything money can buy. Land on each side of a river in New Zealand is for common use. Fishing rights for instance are not the domain of the landowner and are held as common for all people who live there. Scenic beauty of which the county abounds, has not been sold off as some sort of theme park attraction where the gentry/speculator can prospect off some natural phenomenon. The heritage of the common man, not tainted by exploitative money interests.
I hope we the Lions win the final test but I take my hat off to this nation which has fashioned a way of life and a respect for its citizens as a whole, which goes against the trend in so much in so many of the countries which used to be shown, in my childhood as red on a world map.

The weight of a political promise

Subject: The weight of a political promise.

I suppose none of us can imagine what it is like to have escaped from a burning building by the skin of our teeth, losing everything we possessed, including many of our friends and perhaps relatives. The experience of trying to get out, the panic, the smoke, the terror which is transported between frightened people.
Then to be faced by the incompetence of the council and slowly have revealed the true story of why the fire took over so quickly and reflect on the inadequacy of the Fire systems in the building, the inadequacy of escape routes, the lack of maintenance which led to a failure of emergency lighting in the stairwells.
The failure to treat the people as a composite group, people who collectively suffered the same problems and needed to be consoled as a group.
The people who survived have been given many hours of prime time TV to express themselves, the interviewers have been openly shocked at the grief of families who have not only lost their families but are faced with the harrowing image that their remains are so badly burnt and consumed by the fire identification will be impossible.
The apparent distancing from the fire and its consequences by the senior members of the Council was another sickening experience for the residents and all of us, as we witnessed the divide in society which allows people to judge segments within society differently.
Having said all this and having judged the incompetence of response from not only the councillors of Kensington and Chelsea but also the government of the day especially the cack-handed way the prime minister responded when she eventually visited the site to thank the emergency services but failed to see the need to make herself available to the residents. One could go on and on cataloguing the missed opportunities, not only in the lead up to the fire but the events afterwards and its afterwards that we now see the schisms  emerging.
The residents, human beings were mainly from countries of the war torn Middle East. Some no doubt illegal and a symbol of clusters of people living in crowded conditions in many of our cities. They are terrified of authority since they are the very people who live in that grey area between acceptance and being rejects, who are used to getting by, who bring up large families where having large families is a function of being who they are, or at least who they have been taught who they are by their husbands. These cultural assumptions house children, many children brought up, possibly better than in our western culture where having children can be assumed as a drag. The institution of the family and its emotional collective, its sibling responsibility, its gender hierarchy clustered under one roof, gathered into limited space, brings its own message.
But what we are now seeing is the resistance born of living in a country which for all its faults is a far cry from the homeland of the survivors. Countries where the sight of a burnt out shell of a building is common place, hundreds of burnt out building litter the landscape and no help is on offer for the people living there.  And so when the demands are made, when social services are not enough, when accommodation offered is not to their liking we begin to hold up our hands and question.
Of course they are seared with the experience, many suffering post dramatic stress, temporally unhinged and readily open to suggestion. The agent provocateur works amongst them stirring dissent where rightfully dissent should exist but also along side the rationale that it will take time to resolve this horrible situation and making demands on a nation which is failing to address its own indigenous people's needs, then the sympathy will begin to ebb away.
The problem is lack of trust. With memories of how their concerns regarding safety in the block were ignored by the very type of people,(the authorities) who  are now promising to sort things out.  Their instinct tells them, these are just words, just political promises and we all know the weight of a political promise.   

Everyone is right

Subject: Everyone is right.

Why is it white people contrive a world which is what they wish it to be and not what it is. Why do white people intellectualise, fictionalised perhaps even a fantasise on the basis of something they desire to be true, ignoring the experience of people who's actual experience, day to day, is what it is.
Is it one of having been largely in control of history or at least the events of history on the world stage for the last thousand years, that it's an administrative habit to believe they are right and therefore instinctively understand the reasons for non white people not understanding.
Watching a program in which the recent case of middle eastern parents who were told by an adoption agency that their wish to adopt a white child would not be in the interests of the child and that a child from an ethnic background, closer to their own would be more desirable.
This has been echoing around the media and the upsetting 'those who know better'.
How could we they reasoned, in the 21st century living on this tiny island in the midst of this multi cultural, multi ethnic experiment, be so crass as not to understand that racism is a thing of the past.
The wish list of 'best intentions' was questioned by the very people who are most likely to know, the black and mixed ethnicity people, who told their story of reaching a stage in their lives where they had to discover their ethnic clan and to establish that side of what they thought missing whilst growing up. Two members who appeared as representative experts, both black people emphasised the importance their ethnicity meant to them but the one academic who was white and said it was of no importance and that we were now living in a totally pluralistic society where the colour of your skin and the implied hegemony of the group bore no relevance. He became quite shrill and exasperated when both the non white people disagreed with him and it was left to another white person to sit on the fence and say 'everyone' was right.