As the saga of Flight 370 is played out with money and resources thrown into the search one learns more and more about the ineffectual grasp the bodies who govern our affairs have.  How poorly served we are by these well paid honcho's sitting on agencies such as the Airlines Supervisory Body people who are gifted the job of keeping us safe when we fly. 

The Air France plane which went down much like this one and which took 2 years to find the black box resulted in a whole raft of suggestions to avoid a similar occurrence.Suggestions such as, enlarge the batteries on the black box transmitter, change the frequency to a lower one giving a much wider range of signal, develop the box to break free of the wreckage so it can float to the surface. Sensible recommendations but with the inertia of the establishment, nothing was done to modify anything and we once again struggle for answers. 

I wonder if these quango type organisations, laying outside of the public domain and therefore immune to scrutiny are not just the sticking plaster politicians put in place and claim "not on my patch Gov", when anything goes wrong.       

To the girl in transit

To the 'Girl in transit'

Why do we portray the "white van man" with such disdain, likening him to a 21st century equivalent of a 19th century pirate on the high sea. His high handed disregard for other road users as he fills your rear view mirror with his radiator grill flashing his lights to hurry you out of the way, must have had a similar effect to seeing the sails of a Caribbean adventurer sail into view, his focus clearly on your ship.
The cocky sometimes 'rude boy' image is redolent of a person who would prefer the physical approach to solving a problem rather than a measured discourse about alternatives. His vehicle, the Transit Van is seen around the metropolis as a symbol of the pugnacious attitude of the owner, dangerous and vindictive in most situations and not to be taken likely.
What is it then, (since the van its self is inanimate) about the people who own these vehicles which makes them behave to type. What is the drug that inflames them to behave in an aggressive way. Is it the hight of the cab which allows them to peer down on the lesser mortals in the car ahead, is it the impossible deadline to be in two places at once, or is it, like owning a pit bull, encased in the aphrodisiac of untrammelled power to making your presence felt.

Actually all bluff as always there are many exceptions to the rule and you are one of them.    

A marginal life

The shore line defines two worlds. For the mariner on his boat the land is a place to get away from, (apart from the dangers to his boat), its complexities and subterfuge, making living difficult when compared to the relatively isolationist world of living afloat. With a deep respect of the sea people who live and make voyages, even short hauls around the coast have a freedom that land folk can never achieve. The sea is simply an enormous force of nature which can only be understood if the rules dictated by conditions are followed to the letter. The compass of any voyage is limited only by the provisions on board and the knowledge of how to and when to sail. 

For the land based person the shore is a dividing line between the hubbub of the free-way, city and suburban life and the incomprehensible space of the ocean stretching to the horizon. People who live in this space on the edge of the water try to avoid convention, building their home on the edge of the beach looking out across the water into the distance. The sea with a life and a rhythm of its own, the bewitching sound of the waves rolling in, one after the other to dump on the beach reminds us of a force far removed from the relatively petty problems we carry with us, it reminds us of our mortality and how inconsequential we are. 

The beach is a marginal zone where marginal people tend to gravitate where respectable people tend to behave in marginal and eccentric ways, where even the occasional day tripper loses his inhibition and behaves out of character. Does the sea speak to him or her in a language that we all hold deep inside of us, a wish to free ourselves of conformity, to travel to the distant unknown, over the horizon, to find a new life and rid ourselves of the drop down dead weight of our own circumstance.          

Hitch hikers galaxy

The weekend had arrived and not too soon. Rushing home from work on a Friday night, released from the conformity

of the workshops discipline and the foreman's jaundice eye, we were free to explore our own proclivities for a couple of days. Having changed we said cheerio to our parents, puzzled as always about our coming and going but happy for our opportunity. 

The bus to Bingley brought us to a popular pub, especially Friday nights when the boys and girls start their ghostly

promenade to see who will score. Its always struck me as strange that the girls, certainly in those days of the mini

skirt and tight clinging sweater who convention, backed up by the law, placed a do not touch sign over their sexuality and yet went out of their way to invite one in !! 

Anyway we were inoculated from them as we sat next to our rucksacks, precious coils of rope laid across the sack. Our clothing was as far removed from the smart Burton suits milling around on the periphery of the girls, we had our boots and three quarter length alpine style climbing cords on whilst the top half was encased in a thick greasy, egg stained jumper. A small group of eight guys, 18 years old, full of anticipation for the couple of days ahead we amplified the distance between ourselves and the night outers, we were on an expedition and felt superior. 

Our first beer finished was the sign for the two to leave the pub moving out onto the wet street to begin to hitch hike to our destination The Lake District. Roughly 60 miles away we relied entirely on the charity of any motorist heading up towards the Lakes and it is a measure of the generosity and the spirit of those times that within an hour we would all be on or way. Cramped up in the back of Ford Popular or laid back in the spaciousness of a Humber Snipe we chatted to the driver,"where were we going what were we going to do, what he did and his plans for the weekend". The miles rolled away in pleasantries or in-depth conversation,was he going as far as Kendal, no only to Settle. Out at Settle we waited again for another good Samaritan to keep us on track. Sometimes a car would pass with a shout and a cheer it was the last of our friends luckier with a ride all the way there. Occasionally the cars break lights would come on and we would hurry up the road to squeeze in with our mates. I often wonder about the nature of the generosity of the drivers in those days to accommodate the young people like ourselves and enter into the adventure. 

Within a few years things had changed the hitch-hiker had become demonised simply because of the sheer numbers turning out on the road side. The Channel Ports had que's of young people, Hippy Types all trying to get a lift somewhere and it was the scale that put the motorist off. We were so lucky to be the forerunners, our oddness made us interesting, people wanted to chat and find out where this stream of nonconformists were from and where they were going. 

Much of my life has been as if I was on the lip of a wave ploughing my own furrow just enough ahead of the crowd to be acknowledged as an individual and not cast as a menace.                       

A sandwich and a cup of tea

Its 7.30 am on a Sunday morning. Darkness has given way to light as I open the back door and walk down the short path to the coal house where the bike is suspended from a hook, like a dead carcass waiting, like a dog to be taken out.  Sunday was cycling day and I lifted my most prizes possession down full of anticipation for the day ahead. 

The coal house was flanked by its replica, the outside toilet, both rather grim and utilitarian. Breakfast had been a simple affair and I was eager to get off for a day with my pal's at the cycling club. Foot in the peddle I swung onto the bike turning right and right again into the road, past the twelve houses connected to each other in a so called terrace, down Park Road and onto the main road to Shipley and Bradford. 

Our meeting place was always outside the Lister Park Gates. The road Manningham Lane was the route to the dales, it led through the small towns of Bingley, Keithley and on to Skipton where the Dales started their patterned work of fields and open moorland, criss-crossed by dry stonewalls each following the contour of the hills and valleys, enclosures, built back in time by the farmers to stipulate which belonged to who and regulate the livestock. 

Which ever way you looked these walls snaked up and down dale, disappearing into the mist,a marvellous creation of man's endeavour, each stone fitted with rough symmetry into each other without need for cement or any other binding element save the interlocking strength and weight of each stone. The people who constructed these walls bare no recognition for their labour but we all owe them thanks, for it is the stone walling which identifies the Dales as much as the land and the scenery. 

The wait whilst the cycling group (Bradford Elite Cycling Club) assembled was enlivened by the jaunty tales of the night before. Perhaps at the Mecca Dance Emporium where those of us who could, danced the Quickstep or the Foxtrot to some of the best big dance bands the world has ever heard Joe Loss was my favourite when they could be enticed away from the Hammersmith Palais in London. The opening phrase of "In The Mood" still has the juices

flowing and the ageing bones willing a step or two. 

With the club assembled we set off at about 8.30 swinging easily onto the bike, stretching down to tighten the toe strap securing the cycling shoe onto the peddle, we loosened our limbs for a days exercise and healthy conversation. The road swung right and left up and down as we entered the lanes and country roads which wheedled their way through the valleys and over the top into new valleys. The farmers hamlets, built out of the same stone as the walls, spotted the landscape and as we crossed a bridge (the same stone) a village a centre for the farmland around came into sight. Whirling our way through these villages in the early morning we felt alive with our own fitness and the conviviality and friendship around us. 

At one of these villages about lunch time we would stop to have a mug of tea (or a beer from the local pub) and eat our sandwiches. What's on yours, fish-paste ug, Mums put ham in mine, jam, yes I prefer jam ! 

None of your high carbohydrate meals and vitamin enriched drinks for us. We survived on a packet of home-made sandwiches and a cup of tea.                 

A cultural polyglot

Settling down to try to make sense of the menu is a common event these days. In the 50s menu's were short and to the point. Roast Lamb or Beef. brussel sprouts and carrots with gravy and Yorkshire Pudding or fish and chips Hake or Cod with mushy pees. Today we wade through foreign dishes that are as remote from our memory bank "yes I enjoyed that" as the man in the moon. There are so many of them, its impossible to remember which you had last time and you resort to sticking the proverbial pin in and hoping for the best. Conversation has been enlightened by having so many varied backgrounds around the table. Topics can swing from South Asia to Tottenham, religion to customs and there is a healthy spirit to learn and to inform. 

Religions were formed mostly in the Middle East and the sub continent of India at a time when people and customs were different from today. And yet the seed corn of all human relationships were then as now based on the inter-relationship between men protecting their women and the women protecting their offspring. 

Based on these twin fundamentals, societies from the past to the present weave an intricate similarity which are mimiced by the laws which religious teaching preaches to group you happen to belong to. There is much in common and they all have their society at heart. The difficulty arises when like tribalism people take sides putting weight on one religious group to the disadvantage of another.  

A foreigner at home !

He had blown in on a wind that had raised its origins in a country far away. His homecoming was not so much a whim as a deep seated nostalgic memory that was fertilised by childhood events, events that had formed his ideas of who he was. In his new land he adapted to meet the contingencies of a foreign way of life living amongst people with different criteria and different horizons. He grew to meet the disadvantages of not having much of a back up in terms of a nodding agreements based on generations of folklore and the crowds acceptance. He used his new environment to grow another protective skin and enjoy his new surroundings. 

As the years rolled by and circumstances changed the thought of home, the home of his upbringing surfaced. The memory as always played tricks, the pitfalls and rough edges  were air brushed out and he was full of optimism for his homecoming and as the plane touched down he looked around for something he could remember as home. His strongest memory was of the people, particularly the ones who had grown up in his parents neighbourhood whilst he had been away. That was where the greatest shock hit him since over time he had changed and the language on which we rely to converse had change. It was not that he didn't understand, they were talking English after all, it was the mental

comprehension that got in the way. We were operating from a different script, a script developed by the environment in which we live and which, to the home comer was now foreign.   It would take a number of years to assimilate but the experience gained whilst away would forever colour his native perception, he has become a foreigner in more than one home.            

No one is happy.

I was on my way to the shop, walking through the park when I overheard a couple of women discussing a toy and whether it was appropriate for a boy or a girl. There has been a strong movement to blur gender weighted toys and to encourage boys to receive things that in the past would be the preserve of girls and visa versa. In this

ideologically driven mood we are determined to mix and match like sweets in a bag, the genders, so that encouraging boys to play with dolls and girls to push a truck around will develop a society in which out of work poorly educated males will recognise their role ,and make an ideal house husband.  

When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, the gender identification was clear. It was based on a society which assumed that men went out to work and women prepared for marriage and to have children. This was not a bad contract for the bulk of people and whilst not written in stone. Many women rejected the stereotype and ploughed their own furrow by becoming part of the full time workforce, competing for a piece of the proverbial pie, by often deciding not have a family. Many accepting that they couldn't do justice to being a mother and a full time member of the workforce. 

Then came the evolution of the Welfare State.     It becoming a surrogate husband, providing an income stream which

meant that the role of the male began to diminish. 

Resentment has come, interestingly, not from the male side but rather from the female as they became a media talking point. Feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of having to be a a person in their own right on the job promotional ladder whist raising children they sought both more state aid and demanded that their partner (if they had one) played a much more intensive role in child rearing. 

The pressure of living beyond ones means is a cruel dilemma, wanting it all is a human failing and some how we have landed in such a mess that no one is happy !!!     

Mark Carney

Watching as you do (?) the the Select Committee having a hearing from the Governor of the Bank of England,

Mark Carney, and are asking questions about rate fixing in the Bank. 

Often one is swayed by personality, in this case of the Canadian born Governor and I was impressed and convinced that not only is he on top of the job but that he is as, open a book as one can be in this important job. 

The last Governor, Mervyn King, was a member of our Establishment, one of the old school, who one always felt behaved as if he was above the parliamentary committee and therefore seemed to be condescending in his reply's. 

He was a master in obfuscation and batted questions away with the qualification of "a need to know what is the Banks business". 

The new Governor is not old school, he is clear, although guarded because of the importance of what he says and gives confidence in his answers. 

He was accompanied by a man, one of the old school and the contrast was palpable. The old school, squirm and search for ways around the question avoiding any suggestion that they can, at a later date be pinned down. Its a debating game and not an attempt to find a resolution. 

I was impressed by Carney and felt he was on our side by which I mean he was not a club member saying one thing to the watching public whilst reserving the truth for the club members. 

Its a characteristic of this country that a very high proportion of the countries Prime Minister come from one school, as do the bulk of the other members of the Party in Government. We are a 'class ridden' society and even given the suggestion that we have opened up some of the 'command positions' to others from lower back-grounds, we still contrive to accept that our betters know better. 

It was refreshing to hear a man who, whilst very clever, had not been born with the disadvantage of growing up in the "hot house of exclusivity".        

Hope and gullibility

A good book is a gift to the soul. It becomes a companion as your read the text and the story unfolds bit by bit, character by character each struggling to make contact with your mind.Through the eyes, we have a lifeline to explore the world around us, in the case of the reader a world we haven't visited but is made no less real by the craft of the writer. Some writers have a gift to inspire, others are simply wordsmiths. Occasionally one comes across an author who so captures your mood he or she become, in a sense, interwoven with your ideas about things in general and you walk in their footsteps all the way. 

One such writer, Jonathan Raban has for me been a voyage of discovery. Angela bought me his book 'Coasting', and I wrote a blog describing my appreciation of not only the story but the story behind the story which was, in some ways my own.  Many of my thoughts and emotions were captured in the book and seeing the images on paper, so well crafted is like having a good conversation, its a pleasure you savor for a long time afterwards. 

I am currently reading his book Bad Lands a story of the immigrants to America who were cajoled by some of the finest ad-man's craft, to move out West into the Prairies and settle on the land. He describes the type of person coming from all corners of the earth drawn by a pamphlet so alluring so filled with promise that from the stunted life in the cities of Europe, Europe was such a poor second that it was no contest. As with all prospectus the problems lay in the small print or were not mentioned at all and it was only with the tenacity that human beings finding themselves in a predicament find solutions. The size of these vast stretches of land, rolling out as far as the eye could see with no identifying features to hang a mental perspective on must have been mind blowing to the cramped imagination of the European. 

The author retraces the steps of the rail road, The Great Western Pacific as it pushed its way across the prairie

giving birth to small towns with improbable names, spawning clusters of humanity to develop some sort of viability. 

His journey now is one of a ghost finder, the homesteads gone, the ruins merging back into the soil, each a dream unfulfilled and a perfect example of the mist that creative story telling in the form of the copywriters art brings and finds its epoch in today's 'consumer society'.  

The Ghosts are everywhere but their story is rich in hope and endeavour, a monument to mankind even if tinged by his gullibility!!          

A democratic decision

So now we inch forward to an economic freeze between the West and Russia with all the implications for everyone. The financial health of the western world is still precarious and requires a great deal of confidence between nations to allow the huge interlinking deficits, held by mostly western banks to work themselves through over time. 

This sort of potentially seismic spike in the financial world will be difficult to contain, given the fragile condition of the banks and the linked economies can the ideological positions on both sides take into consideration the overall picture.  

As with so much of our past, national boundaries have been drawn as part of a quid pro quo,  a quirk of of back room deals or a wider consideration and not a reflection of the actual needs or the ethnic make up of the land to be partitioned. 

The Crimea was a part of Russia until handed to the Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in the 50s.    It has a predominantly Russian speaking population and in yesterdays referendum it naturally chose to belong to Russia. 

This seems to me to be a perfectly "democratic" outcome arising from the threat by the Ukrainian government in Kiev to make the Russian language, in Crimea the second language of what in effect are Russian people. The bulk of the people rejected the move, particularly from a government that its self had come into power by ousting the sitting President, ostensibly by a right wing putsch supported by the West, the President having chosen Russia as its benefactor not the EU. 

The blatant policy of the US to interfere with sovereign nations where ever they are and particularly in its containment of Russia by the encroachment of NATO forces around the boarders of Russia has at last produced a backlash from the Russians. I have little or no sympathy with President Putin, he has been guilty of outright suppression in his own country throwing opposition into jail and worse. He is a throw back to the type of politician that ran the old USSR and yet the ordinary Russian respects strong autocratic leadership, its built into their history perhaps their genes.          

Spring is sprung

Its been a lovely warm sunny day today, perhaps Spring is sprung and we can look forward to the marvel which happens each year, natures rebirth is all around. 

The trees are in bud, opening to display their subtle often vivid colours, attracting the insects to help pollination. 

The apparently dead plants throw off their winter gloom and find new life with the warmth of the sun. The fish pond is alive again with frogs croaking and copulating madly in the seasonal reaffirmation of the life cycle, the need to procreate the species and boy do they procreate !! I have always wondered where do the frogs that now populate my fish pond go in winter.There must be 20 or more fully grown frogs in the pond each busy and yet each year, after they have spawned I gather them in a large bucket to take them down to the river and release them. The frog spawn become tadpoles and the tadpoles become breakfast for my fish and yet each year at this time they are back, like homing pidgins to start all over again. 

The birds are also returning their song a rich communication, revealing their identity and position, calling for a mate to continue this 'maintenance plan of who they are and what, at its very basic, life is about. 

We as humans loose this perspective, we build our shelters to make the climate inconsequential, our food is produced by others and the procreation aspect is usually a short sprint whilst we make plans for other things !!!!       

Not giving way to adversity

Disability is a term we use to describe people who have perhaps lost their sight, an arm or a leg, we say they are disabled when compared to ordinary people, we imply that ordinary folk are more able. 

You would think this a reasonable assumption, people with impaired sight have many extra hurdles to get over when they cross a room or a road and much of what we take for granted is to the unsighted person a maze of complications. Having only one leg or one arm means the many of the places and exercises they might like to visit and do would be impossible or at least very difficult. 

I have just finished watching the Paralympics skiing finals at Sochi and I feel truly humbled watching the disabled athletes hurtle down the slopes at breakneck speed. 

First it was someone with one leg on a single ski swishing left and right through the gates at a speed that seemed every bit as fast as a normal person. I use the word normal in the sense that they would describe themselves normal whilst I think they are crazy to skim over ice and snow apparently so close to losing control, being on a knife edge of success and disaster, a line crossed far too easily. 

To do all this on one leg well, I was fascinated. The next person had not only one leg but, if this wasn't enough, she only had one arm !! Down she went at breakneck speed changing direction this way and that moving her weight to push the ski one way and another to negotiate the the gates.  

Disability not a bit of it just another example of the remarkable tenacity some humans have of reinventing themselves and not giving way to adversity.  

Bob Crow

The death of the union leader Bob Crow has made front page news and rightly so. He seemed at times to be a caricature of an an age where unionism was represented by men from the shop floor who had worked their way into a leadership role but retained their working class roots. There were parliamentarians in the same mould, some of the best people in Clement Attlee's, post war government were from the shop floor and had not been enticed by the mahogany of the boardroom to forget what they were there to do. To represent the interests of there electorate. Oh if only the people making up the benches of Parliament today had even an inkling of that concept. 

Bob Crow was a big man in many ways. He was not afraid to be himself and, at all times to remember who put him there around the table negotiating with the powerful. His vision was simple. A living wage, proper working conditions and some sort of security for each of his members. 

Our society has been fed with a diet of gloom and doom about the global society, how we are but pawns in a larger game and can no longer expect to keep pace with the world unless we become more like the Asian who sadly seem, through poverty and numbers willing to work 14 hours a day for a pittance just to say alive. 

Bob Crow would have none of this and year on year secured wage increases for the men working on the underground. Of course he couldn't match the banking industry or the boardroom increases but they knew they were dealing with a man of his word and the loyalty of his members when push came to shove. Thatcher emasculated the miners with the strong arm tactics of the police, some say the army in police clothing. The pits closed and we now wait to see if Russia will keep us supplied with gas, what a stupid position to be in. Its as if the lunatic asylum had been making the decisions, lets choose our long standing enemy and give him the keys to the castle. 

Bob Crow was asking for a fair deal for the men and women who run this mammoth transport system. It's often trotted out the importance and the losses when the tube members go on strike. If the importance of the Tube is such then surely the people running the thing have to have a part of that value, they have to be worth something. 

Its the question of the Bankers Bonus all over again. We are told they have to be paid in the millions because they are worth it, look at the investment earnings to the country. Well as they travel to Canary Wharf in their Bentley's then the thousands of workers, who keep the lights burning for these Masters of the Universe to play their crooked game flood in on the transport system and are needed, just as the train operative is needed each playing a part and each entitled to a piece of the pie !!!                     

Dress code

Dressing gown and slippers are the fast route to somewhere we would rather not be !! At least that is if they are slipped on and into for longer than it takes to shower and brush ones teeth. Descending the stairs not dressed to meet the Mayor is a mistake, it places one halfway between the bed and the office, a nowhere place to disintegrate into and become the household bum, drifting in and out of the kitchen with a plate in hand. 

Its funny how we are the sum of our actions. There seems to be no substance in the basic self, we have to dress to maintain an image but who's image.Society has a set of norms and woe betide anyone who kicks at the traces, we are therefore the sum of all the prejudice that our fellow mankind has accumulated over the centuries. 

What a sad thought !!!!      

Coasting

Its not often that someone buys you a present that is, 'just what the doctor ordered', a perfect gift that is savoured for each evocative sentence, marvelled at for the crafted nature of the writing.  I  think it reflects much of me in that it glorify's the pleasure of being a loner, looking in, observing yet not quite wanting to join. This sort of knowledge can only come from someone who has taken the time to observe and learn, in essence someone who loves me for who I am. 

The book, it had to be a book, is by Jonathan Raban and is called Coasting. Its a tale of travelling around the coast of  Britain in a small boat but its not a book about sailing its a book about a man's relationship with the country he is circumnavigating, its about his observing from a distance of a mile or two the island he grew up in and of the idiosyncrasies of the people living there. 

Its sad in that it charts change. Change from a product that had intrinsic value to one that has become more of a Theme Park of fakery than a country of substance. The book is not nostalgic rather it is deeply factual in a relatively cheerful way. Behind every lace curtain there is a tale to tell a life to read in the tea-leaf, adjustments made, responsibilities honoured and dreams as yet to be hatched. 

His rich descriptions of living on the turn of the tide and the constant attention to the weather forecast, the

myriad vagrancies of the sea and the wind, the snug shelter of a harbour cove whilst the storm blew over to reveal,  a hundred yds away a land of complacency where life was taken care of by the State and recourse to sue. 

The self imposed isolation of societies who, for protection from ridicule and exploitation put up near impenetrable  walls. 

Raised the son of a vicar in itself isolated him other children with moves from parish to parish, the vicarage a remote, large house, under maintained and rarely visited by people other than from the dwindling congregation. He delves deeply into the physic of the people living on the Isle of Man. Their term for anyone not a Manx man, "Comeovers" says it all and its this self imposed isolationism that people erect in their defences which makes the grim bearable ! 

His description of the boat, his environment, a world outside the bustle and indifference of those living on the land played many sympathetic cord in my ear. The boat (pre Copernicus) was standing still, the land its self moving slowly to Port on its own journey, a separate existence from the observer who revelled in his isolation.                     

The doctors dilemma

Sitting in the Doctors waiting room is an opportunity to see the people in the raw, a mycoplasma of disease, old age, pain and insecurity mixed with hope and the assurance that this is the place that can help.    Mothers and fathers holding

toddlers for their first immunisation or more worryingly a nasty cough that the little guy can't shift. The middle age man obviously in pain not knowing where to put himself as he waits to be called. Children and adults waiting to be seen by the one person society still put its faith into when all other societal linchpins have fallen into disrespect. Of course as Doctoring becomes less of a calling and more of a business, as their choices towards patient care become twisted by financial complications "can the practice afford this" we may have to revise our faith ?  

A riff and a spliff

Words are like the paint on a painters pallet, as you mix them the picture they paint is altered, developed into a different image telling a different story. Having been invited out to the pub by my daughter Angela I was drawn from my comfort zone, the warmth of the chair and the laptop into a noisy community of wild Welsh men and women out to enjoy themselves irrespective of cost or consequence. They were up for a party, the Welsh rugby team had thrashed the French and whilst I tried to be impartial, well perhaps I engaged in a little light hearted French partisanship the win certainly whipped the locals up for party time.

 Most people in a pub do not go there to engage in the minutia  of the game they are hedonistically out to press the character they identify themselves with, the good looking, drop down gorgeous, witty, laugh a minute personality that they have convinced themselves they are. The noise ratchets up a decibel or two with each passing pint and the few of us who are keen on the game struggle to follow it. 

Being a reinvented virgin in the night out stakes I watched the party boil up into a witches brew as the participants etched out a position for later on, whilst my attention was turned to a local jazz group warming up as the game finished. I'v mentioned in past blogs that Swansea is awash with pubs hosting jazz and blues bands its as if the town was a final settling spot for aged musicians still wishing to strut their stuff and good stuff it is too. 

How I wish I had the gift to play like they do, ageing is of no consequence if you can role back the years with a riff and maybe a spliff.       

US Foreign Policy

When will we learn and understand that the logic we hold is not universal. 

The Americans, largely isolationist for years took on the role of the world policeman after finding its self confronted with the insular politics of the old world. 

Believing its own hype about democracy establishing an even, common political landscape in which people would find their own equilibrium, through the mechanism of free elections, (their holy grail), they set about educating the world at large. 

But as we see, when people like Snowdon break ranks and the Internet and the smart phone captures and transmits

around the world in seconds the incidents that government would rather see covered up we receive a very different education. When the democracy which America projects is corrupted on its own soil by the smell of money, when its belief in the rule of law is ignored in the medieval attitude it exhibits to its own prison population and the ignominy

of Guantanamo Bay. They like the British before them, meddle in other peoples affairs and make a bad situation far worse. Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, Syria and now the Ukraine have all felt the moralising of the US trying to effect events according to a Western recipe cooked up in a political assembly that bears no reference to the world at large. The events that bubble up in the far flung corners of the world are far too complex to boil down to one prescription. Dictators often hold together disparate conflicting tribes in a way that freedom to elect your leader is aced by the sight of a Kalashnikov !!!    

Promises, promises

What will happen in the Ukraine now the Russian Bear has started up the engines of the tanks on the countries border. The Russians don't mess around, remember Georgia they simply rolled into the country and settled the issue of a Georgian nationalist uprising by cracking the whip. The tension in the Ukraine was on our screens every night and one wondered why the army were not called in and Marshal Law proclaimed. The ultimate force is always held by the

government no unarmed or disorganised group can take on the State and for some reason they never called on the police or the army to resist the onslaught of bricks or the violent use of staves to beat the police lines. 

The police did not retaliate and simply absorbed the violence behind their shields with many of their men sustaining serious injury. 

It brings to mind the so called Arab Spring revolt in Libya and Egypt. The public resorting to violence in Brazil and Venezuela, in Thailand and Pakistan its all a far cry from sleepy old UK. 

One wonders, as the financial industry draws down on the global society and we all have to pay for the crass and some would say illegal activity of the Banks who collectively broke every trading rule in the book but interestingly, were not judged illegal by the banking fraternity and didn't promote one arrest by the authorities of any banking executive. 

The damage to the financial fabric, (which we all depend on), is virtually irretrievable and has only been sustained by massive quantitative easing, printing money, devaluing currency, what ever you want to call it. It will deform much of society for decades to come. 

Nationalism, tribalism, separatism are becoming attractive to populations across the globe as they see the inadequacy of the old order and the sham promises that democracy and the parliamentary system made to ordinary people !!!                        

Under threat

The question of identity is a confusing issue. In this country we have been bombarded with multiculturalism and the need to be inclusive by merging our nationality and now our sexuality with all and sundry. The utopia of a oneness a collective brotherhood/sisterhood so that we ignore our differences and focus on our commonality within the tent of humanity. 

Of course the ideal is rarely achieved and in trying

to achieve this utopia we, by necessity exclude those who differ from our aim for what ever reason. As we are fed the picture of a dislocated world in all its violent image we have to recognise that the ideological mission of our 'Politically Correct Thought Police' who strive to keep the status quo in line with their teaching and have to be blind to actual reality.

Unity seems to be a rare commodity except in the religious world where the guiding hand of a book based on faith binds the community. Internationally the Muslim faith has come on in leap and bounds to establish its self as a recognised alternative not only to home grown faith but also as a political alternative through its unity established across national boundaries. As with any 'force majeure' there has to be the ability to recognise other members of the clan, to know who is with you and who is outside the tent. Dress is important as it gives credence to belief, through common identity, facial hair, in common with ultra active religious groups such as the Jews is a way of differentiating who is who. The importance of the attendance at the Mosque or the ritual of the Jewish holy day are strong binding elements to signify who I am and what I stand for. 

The independent agnostic has no such symbolism, they are on their own to battle life as an individual, isolated in their belief, aghast at the way their concepts are under threat.