The National jersey just not good enough.

On Sunday I tuned in to BBC2 to watch the World Championship Road Race. There had been plenty of pre race chatter about the chances of Chris Froome, this years Tour de France winner, or the help of last years Tour winner Bradley Wiggins. 
With the Tour result under his belt and the Olympic Race also won, the nation rewarded Wiggins with a CBE (Commander of the British Empire). I'm afraid the Empire would have been still born if he had been one of its  Commanders!  He has shown himself to be flawed since the marvellous year of his great achievements, spectacularly in his fear of descending the mountains in this years Tour of Italy. He was scared and his comment "I descended like a girl" didn't endear him to the women cyclists who have done so much to put the UK on the cycling map. His general demeanour leaves a lot to be desired, self centred, egotistical may be part of the ingredient that makes a winner and he has certainly shown himself to be one of those but when the chips are down and he is asked to battle for the team or pulling on a national jersey, to represent the country, if there's nothing in it for Wiggins then he's not up for the task. Mark Cavandish is also a character who is known for his bluntness but he wears his heart on his chest when on a bike and during the race he buried himself with effort to carry Froome into the race. 
The weather was atrocious, the rain non stop making cornering a nightmare. You would have thought that riders from this country would have been, if not in their element at least not out of their depth but to a man they jacked it in and retired.
The "men" from the dry warm countries stayed the course and competed. Cancellara, Nbali, Sagan, Valverde and many others, having pulled on the national jersey were aware of their responsibilities, were aware of their fans and their countryman, they were there to compete and compete they did.
What does this say of our lads. Has the experiment of drilling out our sense of nationality in the rush to become multi-national, multi-ethnic actually worked and we no longer have a sense of unity and are rather the individualistic society that Mrs Thatcher so wanted us to be. You see it in many of the money corrupted sports like football where pulling on the national shirt was something to die for and on the field they gave there all. Today they have an eye on the bread and butter club team before giving their all and we are left with the sight of mediocrity.            

Its all in the adjective.

We have a program over here in the UK Watch Dog which highlights poor service offered by companies to customers in the UK. I don't usually watch it but having more time on my hands I watched an episode today. There were multiple instances where companies are not fulfilling their side of the bargain having taken the money, people were left high and dry waiting.
In many instances its a natural progression since today we shop on line and never meet the supplier and often have only a hazy knowledge of where the company is situated or have any history of who we are dealing with.
I remember describing in a previous blog the run around I had had ordering something from Amazon only to find that the company who purported to be in East London, at two addresses where on arriving to exchange a faulty part, the owners denied any knowledge of the company. Amazon were disinterested in my suggestion that they should vet their supplies and the customer must fend for themselves. A sign of the times we live in.
On the Watch Dog program the company under scrutiny were no fly-by-night East End firm but one of the iconic companies of our age, BMW. A number of customers had experienced failure with the cars power steering mechanism, during a journey, it had ceased to work causing a not inconsiderable panic to the person driving. We rely on power steering and have been conditioned to expect it to take the weight off the effort required when turning the wheel to go around a corner. BMW have turned a deaf ear to the potentially dangerous failure refusing to acknowledge that there is an inherent problem, well at least they do in the UK. In America and Canada the cars with this failure are recalled and fixed at BMWs expense but not in Britain. The Actor Hugh Grants daughter became embroiled in the problem, her car failing on the motorway had exposed her to danger but BMW were not interested until her famous father became involved when miraculously they suddenly agreed to repair at their expense and showered the party with flowers and words of anguish for their tardiness. Amazing the power of celebrity.
Our Road Safety organisation have very strict guide lines for the MOT Test regarding power steering. Any faults have to be sorted out otherwise its a failure and the car is not allowed on the road. This same organisation when approached by the many car owners who have experienced this defect with the BMW Mini have failed to take the matter up with BMW. Its as if we are in a duel universe, the citizen who has a second hand car is prevented from driving whilst the "wealthy", "powerful", "influential", motor car company is immune from any sort of stricture. I wonder if its something to do with any of those adjectives ?           

As winter draws in.

As winter draws down and the nights draw in we begin to hunker down into our burrows for warmth and light. The central heating is switched on and the curtains drawn, ever earlier. These seasons which effect us all seem more acute as one gets older, the cold gets into the bones and one feels the draught as the circulation struggles to reach the furthest points. But its in the head that the greatest damage is done. The lack of light, the long dark nights seem to bring  foreboding, the time drags and is not taken with active projects but reflections. The half full, half empty caricature prevails and brings to mind ones susceptibility to look on the gloomy side of life, if life is not full of deflective activity.
For most of our lives we are propped up by events often outside of our control but events which have to be countered with something we have to do. The constant doing is what enriches our lives and prevents too much self analysis. Self analysis of course can be good for one but it has to be carried out within a healthy environment otherwise the result can become depressive. The recognition that we are in essence alone is a sobering reflection since much of our joy comes from people and events that happen around us. We feed off these interactions and in a way, make them our own when in fact they are no such thing. It is in our own mind that we should find peace and contentment, the satisfaction we find in knowing ourselves, recognising our strengths and weakness, not being troubled by other peoples evaluation of who we are.
But no man is an island as the saying goes and so we reach out to others in an attempt to find similar common ground to confirm our prejudice.              

Is Civilisation to be weighed against the dividend return

There is no doubt that your facts are correct and that our concept of African government, corrupt, riddled with nepotism is the template for much if not all of Africa. The problem as I see it is that as with everything we think about we judge every one and everything through the prism of our own up-bringing. We grew up about 400 miles apart as the crow flies but our background flavours every bit of our thinking and although we would agree in a general sense, there would be be many refinements to our actual view on any subject purely due to the way we have been influenced by our environment. Many things we in the West take for granted.  Parliament, rule of law, our definition of what is right and wrong is not set in stone but is learnt or absorbed from the society around us. Democracy is a fairly recent concept designed to reduce the power of a monarch and share it with the nobles, it has refined its-self to different degrees in different countries. In some countries there is no democracy and yet tradition has developed a way of ruling and sharing that is perfectly acceptable. Power of course corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely but there are signs of this in mature democracies if the Party elected wins a large majority. Unopposed we are in the hands of a few and dependant on the quality of the few.
SA has seen an enormous revolution, a complete flip flop in the ruling class and the people who are now the electorate. The hand over of power and the writing of a powerful constitution, the avoidance of blood letting that we see in Syria between the different sects, the demand from the electorate for change not micro change as we have in the West but fundamental change, for things that had been withheld, things that any citizen would demand in Europe and had to be built up from scratch. All this pressure counterbalanced by the pressure and the demands from the Market for a retention of the dividend and business as usual. The back ground of virtually all of the people who were thrust into power was that of servant to master and now they had to learn what the master actually did. Yes we have seen a fall in the Rand value, and the efficiency of the Rand Lords to exploit the pool of cheap labour is constricted by union representation, even by the Constitution so that gold production has to evaluate the living conditions and the wages of those who go underground. Is it so bad that these men now have at least some protection. Can any industrial process be immune from the people employed and the conditions of their employment. Is Civilisation to be weighed against unit output and dividend return.                 

The business of living

Funerals are so symbolic they have a prescribed rhythm  and solemnity that sets them apart from practically every other function we carry out in life. Only in death do we formalise to such an extent. Floating around in the background someone has died and we wish to show our respects in this final display of parting, but in the performance the main character gets left behind, subordinated to a bit part by the professionals. Their large shiny black cars, the coffin decked out with flowers, the sombre faces attendants, the top hatted master of ceremonies walking in a majestic manner ahead of the hearse, his staff of authority swinging like a metronome before him. The slow ponderous journey through the busy streets lights burning on each vehicle to mark the corsage and the special status it demanded. No car never mind the urgency of work will overtake, no car will butt in at an intersection everyone draws back and acknowledges this journey as special. Today the crematorium is fast becoming the most sort-after way of delivering the end rite. Societies functional clearing up process, as we come to the end of our usefulness is efficient, our remains are simply ashes like those at the end of a barbecue to be spread on the garden. No calling back the spirit of the deceased, their memory suffused in the drinks at the party afterwards, as we get on with the business of living !!                 

Baruch HaShem.

Morning has broken, like a new morning. Songbirds are singing, like the new dawn.
A lovely even haunting refrain celebrating a new day and rebirth calling on aur optimism for life and the opportunity it offers.  Each individual settles into his pattern for the day, his agenda, that hopefully isn't completely driven by someone else's need, reviewed and checked against the clock. Time to go.
Yet for some, this slavish outside world of activity is alien. Their world exists within the head, and concerns thoughts and reflections, prayers and advice, a world where "form" is absolute where perception is everything to the society they live in.
I have been reading a novel set in and about Jewish observance and of Jewish family life in Golders Green. It is a fascinating read, a book full of Hebrew phrases that link the community in a discourse that seems strange and out of date with our own individualistic society and "its" lack of "form" as we continually seek to reinvent our selves in new clothes.

As I read  I was continually seeking out the meaning of these Jewish words, trying to find out their context within Jewish life. As I said it was a fascinating and insightful look into the the ultra orthodox world.  Men, rocking back and forward as they recited passages from the Torah, their hair falling in ringlets from beneath the ever present hat. The white shirt,the black suite, long coat all part of their inter-recognition,  signalling a segregation from the surrounding "goy". The mysticism of the "sheitel" to prevent other males from seeing your wife's hair. The ritual "mikveh" and the "niddah" which signifies the death of fertility and the acceptance that a women's role was, first and foremost procreation. If nature ruled that out, abstinence was a duty.  The fact that unmarried women are not allowed to touch a man (shomer nageah), even a hand shake is forbidden is amazing in our anything goes society. The whole arrangement of boy meets girl is a quagmire of arrangement, The "shadhan", the matchmaker who knows the matches, who belongs in the premier league and who doesn't. The introduction of two young people who don't know each other but are expected to make a choice based wholly on pedigree and certainly, no touching !!! The bazarre segregation of men and women not only in the congregation within the synagogue but in a general social gathering where the males dance together whilst at the other side of a partition called a "mechitzah" the women dance and congregate out of sight. Has veh Sholem
Yes its a rum old world this ultra orthodox Jewish quasi apartheid fraternity and makes one mindful of the pogroms  brought down on the head of Jews, stretching back to time immemorial.
Baruch HaShem.
               

People loosing trust

 I have been very remiss in not commenting about South Africa particularly its politics. 

After the election in 1994 a carefully constructed constitution which set down the checks and balances that society needs was put in place.
In this country we muddle along on a set of values called the Magna Carta in which the Kings relationship with his Barons was written down. Over the centuries through civil wars and confrontation, the rules were modified but never properly codified in a Constitution and the result is ad hock with laws which were promulgated hundreds of years ago at a time when society was very different.
South Africa's judicial backbone was the inherent strength in the countries transition to one person one vote.
Of course Politics is also about powerful men who find any impediment to their rule a blockage which has to be removed and so they attempt to amend the laws, except that a Constitution requires a majority to pass the amendment.

Jacob Zuma has used the legal mechanism of "injunction" to delay his appearance in court to answer charges of corruption prior to his election. The delaying tactic continues to this day but it would seem that information which has been denied an opportunity to be judged in court is slowly leaking out into the media. Whether, in the hot house of so many instances of corruption which are the daily diet of South African politics, if these revelations will bring Zuma to book is questionable. 

The cast, many include names I remember,  and many who have risen to prominence, post Apartheid.    Leonard McCarthy (Scorpions boss) George Baloyi(Prosecutor), Billy Downer (Prosecutor), Hofmeyr, Breitenbach, Wim Trengove the list goes on.     

E tolls to come after the election (what's new). 

SA troops fighting in the Congo (not Rhodesia). Big Business riding rough shod over the citizens of Mokopane. Local chiefs siphoning off the compensation paid for the destruction mining exploration brings.

The return of Staggie, the feared and powerful Cape gang boss who it is suggested organised the hit on Chantelle Knight in the Cape Flatlands. She had been instrumental in putting him behind bars.

70% "Happy News" on the SABC and the buying up of independent outlets in the Media, by government proxies such as Sekunjalo. 
The Chinese have also bought a large stake in the Independent Media Group. Why ? 

The society is a pawn in the game, a game played out across the world but in the fragile environment of post apartheid South Africa, with people still trying to adjust to new roles and new relationships, if the structure of government and leadership is compromised then people loose trust in all aspects of the life they lead.    

The grit in the oyster

What to do when there's nothing to do. Do you create "to do's"  even if normally you wouldn't do so ? You do get my drift don't you.
You know my predilection to creating an "effort free zone" where, doing something comes out of "the left field " as they say in baseball. 


Some people would crave a deserted beach, to chill out and recharge the batteries. Others would love a wild party to cram as many people and as many possibilities into a nights entertainment. The opportunity to catch a flight, land in a foreign speaking community, moving one out of ones comfort zone, heightening the thrill and unpredictability.



Perhaps another sort of thrill, launching off the top of a mountain in harness to a sky divers parachute. 
Offering to run with the bulls or spending a week trekking some hideously hot, insect ridden gorge. Each a possibility on the to do list - but why ? 



Its all a question of resolving the ticking clock, a clock which only becomes evident when the time at ones disposal becomes an issue and you gain the freedom to spend it as you wish. 
Time is now so valuable that we can become obsessed with it and, like the books you still would like to read. Each action has a reflective tag attached to it, since one is clearly not immortal. "What was it all for", comes to mind and given the chance would one do it any differently. 
Did the "mistakes" you made, make or break you, or were they the grit that formed in the oyster to create the pearl ?            

Death and despondency all around.

Tragedy is all around us if we stare through the lens of the international camera. 


 The sight of refugees on the borders of Syria, hauling the few belongings they have managed to throw into a bag, dragging them for miles through a hot hostile environment, heading for who knows where and who knows what. Women and children make up the bulk of the dispossessed they walk and walk for mile on end, their homes behind, probably never to return. The determination to keep going and to keep their flock together, to provide some sort of guidance, some sort of protection, to instil some sort of hope in the mind of the severely confused children. Survival is a massive drive but if opportunities are limited and food scarce then the contest between families for the scraps of what is available is another problem for these nuggety individuals. 


In contrast is the passivity of the starving people we see in places like Somali. Their children are already marked for death through malnutrition and it is the same malnutrition that has reduced the women, who have little  or no hope for their families to give up hope themselves. 




We can't possibly imagine what it is like to live in these hellish conditions, we can't imagine the trauma of trying to protect our children or survive ourselves with so much death and despondency all around.         

We are in for a bumpy ride

When men wish to go to war their rhetoric works its self up to some of the finest or in others the most infamous, Churchillian or the bombast of Hitler. The case is made based on our ideals, our values,  our morals, for our credibility. The issues are bound up in words that imply a wider implication if we act or a potentially unforeseen destruction of the values we applaud, if we vote for inaction.
The game, it is often a game, of politics is played out by powerful men behind who sit, very powerful lobbies.
These men meet and stand around in groups, sometimes laughing at a private joke, shaking hands, hugging political rivals who normally they hold in deep repulsion, carrying on in way that suggests a farce, not a meeting of minds.
The mighty American military machine is pawing the ground. The search for words which have been crafted to wring the call to patriotism from the men and women of the nation, mixed in with this "bully pulpit" call to all nations of the strength of America, of the resolve of America, of an almost messianic mission to teach us all what is good, what is bad.  Unlike our modern repulsion to laying hands on anyone, always falling back on the authorities to handle all situations for us. But what happens when the Authorities seek vengeance when they want to use force to make their opponents yield and submit, what is our moral position when innocent lives will be lost in the next days and weeks. As the groundswell of hostility rises in the Middle East and other potentially dangerous nations rise to oppose what they will inevitably see as foreign interference, will the cost of lives lost through the gassing of people in Syria been seen in hindsight to have been an over reach.
Kerry the Vice President came across as less than satisfactory in his verbal grasp of the implication of what he proposes and one casts ones mind back to the Vice President Cheney in the Bush years and the mess that the invasion of Iraq brought. Kerry was flanked by the senior military man and both were far from clear about the limits that would be imposed or if mission creep was totally out of the question. We are in for a bumpy ride             

The English Pub

The English Pub is an institution. Its a convivial meeting place for all kinds of people to come together and enjoy each others company. The richness is in the wide spectrum of people from many varied backgrounds, each bringing their own perspective and therefore enriching the conversation and the points of view that come up. It is a composite of the Englishman and his make up. The fact that a pint or two loosens any inhibition to talk is a plus.  The words tumble out and the enthusiasm for emphasising long held views or descriptions of ones experience make the pub a valuable and enjoyable experience.
Of course there are pubs and pubs. The age group and the general maturity of the people drinking in the pub make the visit enjoyable but of course only enjoyable for those looking for this type of companionship. There are pubs that cater for the young, for the sporting, for the perpetually inebriate, so you take your pick. Mine is a small country pub in the village of Allen's Green. It sells "real ale", straight fom the barrel, a prize winning Camra pub that makes a speciality of using small private brewery's rather than the large bulk sale units. Each beer has its own unique taste and strength, the beer tasting events which are held regularly are taken very seriously by the Anoraks. Its a lovely English anachronism this beer evaluation ritual and the low level seriousness that surrounds it.
Today's conversation started with the owner of an immaculate V12 EType that was parked outside, his car and how he came to buy it. Steam trains, golf, setting up the speaker system in Trafalgar Square yesterday for a protest rally and a conversation about keeping donkeys and the telepathic ability of dogs to signal to his wife that he was in the neighbourhood on his way to the pub after working in London !! Trivia yes but its the trivia that makes us laugh and helps the world go around.            

Moving into First Class

I have only had the opportunity to fly first when flying on business and someone else was paying. Having to pay for the pleasure ones self its a different thing. Being a lad from Yorkshire I have to question paying another £6000 for a trip of 24/25 hrs,  I think perhaps I would need more than a special plate of food from the stewardess.?
It is, if nothing else, an example of the extremes in our actual life style where a section of society would pay virtually anything to feel exclusive. In any human being, the ego is pampered as one feels the eyes of the crowd turn towards one as you arrive at the arrival desk of First Class.
The term its self says it all. You are "first", an example for others to follow and achieve. First, in it being affordable to you. First in the queue, ushered through formalities, to become first on board. And so it goes on. Brimming with self confidence, you look around and see the other Firsts, the other achievers and you begin to wonder what they do to have also achieved this high honour, this acknowledgement, this club. I think that's so and so from what's it called.    Champaign sir ? 

Y