Care Homes

The issue of care homes has come into focus again as an undercover reporter has shot film in one of the largest care homes. The gist of the report is the poor treatment handed out to some of the oldies as they require dressing or changing when the old person makes a mess of themselves because of being incontinent.
The first thing to say is that sadly the warehousing of old people will I think lead to there being the occasional frustration and mistreatment of some of these people. We are far from our best when we get old, especially if we suffer from dementia and the normal functionality we would expect of our selves, in terms of body functions means that caring for these shadowy old people, who no longer represent what they were, must be extremely difficult.
We willingly accept the job, when caring for our own children, of changing nappies. Sometimes the nappy smells but generally, because of a child's diet the smell is well within our comfort zone and in any case we love the little mite and would do anything for them.
Scroll on 70/80 years and the same help is required, unfortunately not by a loving parent but by a hired hand who is paid the very minimum the employer can get away with. The old person sometimes delusional, sometimes quarrelsome sometimes incontinent, is not a lovely bouncing baby but a skeletal worn out body and a mind that can not see reason. Its no wonder that the undervalued care home nurse becomes oblivious to the human being residing in that bag of bones. Their day is a conveyor belt of unpleasant duties and its no use saying they shouldn't have gone into nursing. They are often 'auxiliaries' drawn from countries like the Philippines on zero hour contracts for whom the job is just that, a job.
Our undervaluing should not be laid at the door of the nurse but at the edifice that has become the Care Industry with its eye on the bottom line. And even more, we should blame ourselves for allowing the Government to farm out to private enterprise this important job. We, the public should be clamouring to pay an extra tax, ring fenced, so that all old people (of whom you will join their ranks sooner than later) can be cared for properly. Paid for out of the 'public purse' to provide what ever is needed when that need arises.
And just in case you youngsters think I am mad, that is how it used to be before the public's overall responsibility was weaned away my Margaret Thatcher.         

Counting our blessings

I have just watched a party political broadcast on behalf of the Scottish Nationalist Party regarding the up coming vote on whether to become independent from the UK. It was an interesting piece claiming various advantages if they freed themselves of Whitehall. The counter claims come from spokes people for the government and the English Establishment who for various reasons wish to keep the United Kingdom, united. The debate is highly civilised and the use of the ballot box and not the gun is without question much more desirable than the rioting on the streets of cities in the Ukraine.
There are numerous struggles going on all over the world, the amateur street video feeds a picture of conflict on all continents, with neighbour violently attacking neighbour and the police seeming ineffectual unless they decide to turn their guns on the crowd. It all seems a world away from the Scottish debate and brings one again to acknowledge that we have many blessings to be thankful for living here on these islands. One often becomes irritated with political decisions, decisions that seem unfair or unjust but we have the ace in our hands, we can reverse the decision at the next election if sufficient people think the same way and, turn out to vote.
People argue that your vote is a useless thing since the political parties proffer a manifesto to get our vote but the manifesto is not binding and, in part is dropped when the reigns of power are handed over.
This is true and I for one would make the manifesto promise binding but what ever happens we don't see the mayhem or the bloodshed that seems to accompany political struggles elsewhere and for that, we count our blessings !!!    

Cape Town

I have just been watching a World Triathlon race held in Cape Town. I had just got up and switched on the TV to be regaled by the light, warmth and beauty of Cape Town as a backdrop to an interesting race. A swim in the ocean, a bike ride up and down the hills on the Peninsular finished by a race through the streets of Sea Point. The mountain was on best behaviour with no South Easter blowing, looking majestic a clear defined profile sitting in judgement over the city at its feet. There were few spectators which contrasts with many of the other host cities for this world event where usually the streets are lined with spectators cheering the contestants on. I wonder why people didn't turn out to watch the race ?
I was certainly made to feel homesick (having spent 25 years in SA I think I can make some sort of claim for 'home') as I remembered the happy days when I first arrived in Cape Town on Christmas Eve, back in 1961.  My eyes were agog with this sunny country, a land of plenty, homes which looked like mansions and a people who were so warm and friendly. Of course it was a schizophrenic society trying to ignore the vast majority who were swept away out of sight after 6am into the townships, we were all to blame, going along with the Afrikaners attempt to ignore the political climate which arose after the war regarding the egalitarian nature of nations across the world.
My memories, as a 22 year old, were of the drop down gorgeous girls who lay on the beach amongst the boulders at Clifton Beach.The sumptuous steaks at Walters Grill in Sea Point, the welcoming warmth of my Aunt and Uncles home in Vrederhoek, their friends who were so unlike the closed relationships we have in the UK, they exuded  openness  and trust.
I was only in the town for 12 months before pushing off again this time to Australia but I would never again experience the strength of the bonds that were forged in those far off days in Cape Town.           

City Life

The city can be a formidable place for a whole list of reasons. the pace the frenetic life style the crush of humanity the danger of being injured in traffic or by walking into the wrong pub. The most damaging aspect of living in a big city is the loss of identity the loss of connection to others around you the confusion as to your own identity in the myriad identities around you and in your absorption to be, one of them.
From waking to going to sleep we are constantly changing our identity as we role play the circumstance we find ourselves in. From a husband/father having breakfast with the family to the commuter on the train or bus to the face we put on when we enter the office to the one we display after work in a pub.  Chameleon like, we change, and in part that change is due to the influence of images which are posted in our everyday life, on the TV or the advertising hoarding. Images of success and what it takes not only to be successful but also accepted by a particular group, the group you wish to belong to at that particular moment.
Where is the real self in all this competition. Dare we display our real feelings or shall we constrain ourselves to the politically correct view. Will being an outsider damage our chances of acceptance within management and socially. There are so many pressures in the city to conform and yet at other times, to be a none conformist, a trend setter, an eye catcher. Pity the dull grey man sitting in the corner but be aware of what you say in a crowd might get back to hurt you.
And so we move throughout our day, carefully stepping on the stepping stones, afraid a false step will not only give us a ducking but that we may never make it to the shore !!     

God Bless America,but not all of it.

There is a move enunciated by John Kerry to diminish the reporting of RT (the Russian external news service) because of its questioning the American point of view. In the White House Press Briefing the reporter from RT gets short shift from the American Press Secretary addressing the press by refusing to answer RT's questions.
Of course there is no equivalent of a free press in Russia and Putin has blood on his hands in the way he deals with any opposition.
But two wrongs don't make a right and the way the American Administration, seeped in its own quagmire of deceit and obfuscation. The leader of a supposed free West, built on openness and justice. A country that on the one hand prides its self on the openness of its Court's and a Constitution that most countries in the world would die for and yet has a very dark side in the CIA and other government special agencies, not to mention the abomination of Guantanamo Bay.
We, the public have, for the first time the opportunity to pick and choose our news source and form our own opinions. The internet and the smart phone give us instant access to the good and the bad things that are happening each minute around the globe. Its a phenomenon that world leaders hate, their story questioned by their electorate and we see the result. The White House instructing the American people to ignore the reporting of a foreign news service because it conflicts with the message the American Administration wishes to proclaim as the truth.
I know they have become more evangelical in their self belief but this borders on religiosity.
From my early years I was taught to sample from as many sources as you could before making up your mind about anything and then be prepared to change your mind as new information arises.
God bless America but save us from their pompous politicians and the self justification that President Bush's war on terror has induced on a good country.              

An old age,age old problem

I'm listening to a radio program regarding the care of elderly people when they can't care for themselves.   Its  chilling to listen to the pathos of an increasing dilemma in 2014.
People are living longer, by quite a number of years which of course means that old people are becoming much more frail than in generations when, conveniently we died in our late sixties.
A report out this week describes the situation that by 2017 the people needing care outstrip the family members who could offer, in all except the final stages, care for their parents. The trend, to house the old in 'care homes' has become, apart from anything else, horrendously expensive, £900 per week.  It also questions our guilt, or otherwise, for not keeping the 'oldies' under our care. The argument runs, the parent looked after the children throughout their childhood when they were in need, why not look after the parent in their time of need ?
The calls to the program were a mixture. Some admitting they couldn't cope, or didn't feel they should have to cope and calls, largely from the Muslim society who said it was their 'responsibility' to care for their parents and that was the end of the matter !      
One of the disadvantages of modern living in the fast lane  is that as we max our credit we have to keep running to stand still. The thought of giving up our time to unpaid work is impossible to consider, our time is defined by our debt and we simply have to hope others will take up this care responsibility. Even the word, responsibility has little meaning for many, their lives have been absorbed in 'self' to such an extent that to look outside that particular box is unthinkable.
I myself have enormous guilt towards the way I treated my own Mother. After my Dad died she was shattered. I was there in the early stages to help, even though my family were in South Africa. I brought her over to us to live with us in Jo'burg and  tried to negotiate a situation where she would stay with us. With no blame attached it didn't work out and I was forced to see her return to her home in Bradford. Why I didn't rent a flat for her in Joburg and provide the proper support, still racks me to this day but this is only one man's story of the difficulty in resolving these sort of family orientated, age old, care related problems.                

Our own brand of thought control

With the latest news of the abduction of the young girls who have been captured and held hostage by Boko Haram in Nigeria, the latest in a long list of violent acts by groups linked to the Muslim faithful we obviously have to reflect on the religion and those who follow it.
We who live outside the Muslim faith, (as I am sure are the majority of Muslims), are incredulous at the way the faith can be interpreted in such a way that young men and women can be worked up to commit murder in the name of a Holy War. To give their own lives in the belief that they will gain Paradise by killing the Infidel.
The definition of an infidel includes the Shi'as interpretation of the Sunni and visa versa, both Muslim, each with a different historical relationship to Mohammed and each hated because of that difference.
Religion has always baffled the none religious person, how the surety of belief can turn the concept of "loving mankind", on its head by fanatics.
Of course one gets fanatics in every turn of life, people who are consumed by their cause, political, environmental who risk everything to promote their concept of the ideal. Most conflicts in history have been disfigured by people who turn on another group because they have been brain washed into seeing what is not there.
After the War the Ukrainians massacred the Poles in Volhynia. People who had been neighbours for generations turned on each other in an attempt to exterminate the weaker group, in this case the Poles. No one was spared, men women and children, people known on first name terms, going to school together were killed in an orgy of revenge.
The term revenge is indeed a terrible one. We see it in the divorce court we see it in the bomb planted outside a particular congregation, aimed to exact revenge for a historical slight that is only alight because someone kept it so. These quasi personal vendettas are usually limited to the tribal situation where the enmity is relatively limited and however horrible, is played out in a relatively constrained area.
The Muslim extremist seems to exist on an altogether broader canvas, world wide in fact. Its a growing problem. In modern times it was limited to largely Al Qaed in Afghanistan but like the mythological Hydra it seems to be growing heads everywhere. Is this a genuine desire to expand  the faith. There have been many historical surges in history by religions to capture the high ground and with our instantaneous news, we are made more aware of their activities. 
We are also governed in our response by the outward manifestation of the brotherhood (manifest in any religion) but particularly in our plural society, by a dress code which has the effect of alienating the local population. If you accentuate the difference rather than try to assimilate people, as we have done progressively in terms of race, gender and sexual difference its difficult to accept that another group who are not indigenous to our way of life should seek to impose their own brand of exclusivity.
The case of the schools in Birmingham where the curricula has been adjusted to suit the faith and adopt the principles of Sharia Law is a bridge too far and we have to ask whether as a nation we should insist on our own brand of thought control ?                     

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/

Knowing where to look

'A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich', a story written by Alexander Solnzhenityn deals with the extremely harsh existence and survival in a Soviet gulag. It set me thinking about 'time' and how we divide our time, the minutes,hours and days to identify the passage of this precious commodity, much of which we waste and fritter away.

The British government has this week provided its citizens with a 'ready reckoner' a way of calculating when an individual is supposed to die. The reason for this piece of macabre is the change in the pension act whereby one can now cash in your pension pot (the money you have saved for a pension over the years) on retirement day and not, as in the past purchase a retirement annuity.
The return on annuities has been scandalously poor and the pension industry is aghast that their sacred cash cow has been removed. You can still opt for the annuity route but some people will now have to either re-invest their money or perhaps go for broke and spend it whilst they have some breath in their bodies to enjoy the money. Hence the tool to work out how long you, as a member of an actuarial profile can expect to live.
The question of course is played out in black and white, you only have so much time left. For Ivan every day was a bitter struggle but one he accepted since life was all he had.  This of course presumes the importance he could attach to life given the almost impossible conditions he had to live in.
'Time on my hands' was seen as some sort of dissolute condition unfit for a healthy mind with our 'must keep busy attitude', a bygone from our Presbyterian past. But time can be filled in so many ways and not all have to be physically energetic. The part behind the eyes can be as energetic as the forearm and give as much back as the hike up a mountain path, its all a matter of preference.   
The situation, common where a partner is left behind, is for the person to pine away. The days without companionship are empty of content and they waste away in no time, but the creativity of the mind can launch new projects that confirm "life goes on" until it doesn't !!
What is it that we fill our lives with after we are handed the key to do with our time what we will, monetary considerations apart. That's a conundrum which is personal. It relies on ones ability to judge what one can do as a living, thinking person who is once more cast on ones own resources, just as we were in our early years. In those times we made it up, it was all new and we were confident enough to try anything. We need another dose of confidence to spark another project, in part our creativity can bear fruit on past experience. It might lack the thrill of the unknown but it will have the objectivity of knowing where to look ?        

The Popes Easter Massage.

A lovely sunny day in Rome to celebrate the Popes Easter Blessing given from the Vatican balcony overlooking the people gathered in the square below. Thousands gather, millions are tuned in all over the world as the faith in Christ and his message is repeated through this ceremony. The pious and the sight seer come together to listen to a script that is full of angels and arch-angles, the virgin birth and the liturgy of Catholicism with its sense of priestly guidance for the flock. 
Religion has the power of good who can argue with the Commandments, a touch stone for the way we should respect each other and work in harmony throughout our lives irrespective of belief. The humanist would argue that much is innate within mankind and that we have a moral and ethical compass to guide us between right and wrong.
I was listening the other day to a talk in show where a young man in his early twenties was questioning the use of the law to fine people who were caught using the train without a ticket. He was articulate in expressing his opinion that it was not the person who was fare dodging that was the problem but the lack of facilities provided by the rail companies to monitor the passengers where the fault lay. This shifting of responsibility for ones own actions to a third party is just such a situation that the church, through its teachings is meant to address and it is in the decline of attendance at church especially in the early stage of a young persons intellectual formation that we see the modern mind set appearing.
Of course good parenting is an even better counter but the church would say without the divine instruction we wouldn't have a base to work from.
If mankind needs to take on board the immensely complex and labyrinth storytelling of the Old Testament through to the New Testament with its miracles, virgin birth and the story of the resurrection to emphasise the weight of damnation for not following the  Commandments, then the Humanist gets my vote every time.  

Easter and the Church

When asked what does Good Friday and Easter Sunday represent, many people hadn't a clue. Its a far cry from the period when I grew up as a child in a village where the Church and the tiny Church School were the centre of the social fabric.
Evensong the Sunday service in the church was a congregation in which most of the villages belonged if for no other reason, for social acceptance. The trail from home to the church, with its bells tolling the believers to the service was predominantly, mothers and children filing in to the pews with the bible and hymn book held in the rack behind the pew in front. The children had impressed upon them the solemnity of the occasion, although given the chance they would prefer to be elsewhere, Mom settled any squabbling with an icy stare and a promise to tell Dad.
The congregation settled down and the choir, followed by the vicar swinging his incense burner, passed between the parishioners, chanting a prayer, his dress and the ceremony setting the church apart from the congregation, a message from an arm of the Establishment that we could be saved if we paid our dues.
The hymns, the reading from the bible and the sermon were all part of established function, as was the plate to put our shilling for the church upkeep. Periodic rituals, highlighted by Easter which was the most important, representing Christ's crucifixion and return from the dead on Easter Sunday. For a believer the two events were the climax of Gods message that he had sent his son to die for us and through the resurrection he provided mankind with a route to heaven.
As we kids wandered away from the Church on our way home we understood that we had been included in a process of grown up contemplation and that for a moment the family had drawn together under the guise of a great unknown, the faith which stirs mankind and gives question to our singularity.         .     

Books

I always begin to slow down as I near the end of a good book.
Its like the approach of a parting, from a friend,(they are emigrating) the end of an opportunity for direct interaction which, once arrived at will change the relationship .
Good books, fiction or none fiction are companions with whom the relationship is both stimulating and a two way event. The information or the story told weaves its way into your make up, into who you are as we absorb experiences that strike a note in our own experience and substantiate our opinion. The profound pleasure of reading is in this melding of our own memories or opinion into the narrative, we are not alone and are rewarded by the camaraderie.
The books on my shelves form the backbone of who I am in so far as they track my interests down through the years. They still speak to me as they did years ago and on opening a book one is, like Alice drawn into another world.
Reading brings another persons perspective, you might not agree with it but you learn from it and if for no other reason, it enlightens you to the fact that your 'fact' is only one of many. How we fall into the surety of our own opinions and prejudice how resilient we are to argument against our way of thinking.
One of the pleasures of doing a blog is that my own thoughts, however inadequate are placed on a page for others to consider. I thought that writing a blog would release from others their own opinions even their inner conviction but its surprising how few have the time or inclination to take up the pen. I believe writing is cathartic it allows one to vent off the frustration that we sometimes feel because of our inability to effect change.
We are becoming more and more ineffectual as the globalisation of our lives means that decisions taken have little local relevance and we are cast into the turbulence of 21st century,short termism  with little or no reference to our own way of living.
Only through expressing ones own feelings or reading literature which resonates with our own experience can we find a footing in this pressured life we lead.        

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

Memories light the corners of my mind

Memories light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolour memories of the way we were.
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind
smiles we gave to one another
for the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then
or has time rewritten every line.
If we had the chance to do it all again
tell me would we, could we.
Memories may be beautiful and yet
what's too painful to remember
we simply choose to forget.
So its the laughter, we will remember,
whenever we remember
the way we were.

Barbara Streisands beautiful rendering of this haunting refrain struck me as I looked at some photos of yesteryear. Captured as an instant in time when the scene and the moment was so strong that one felt the need to hold it for a future . How little at that moment did we realise we are always moving on, adapting to new landscapes and new friends. Where are those people in the album,what has become of them, how have their lives turned out.
Perhaps as you turn your page, are they turning theirs and asking the same question of you ?

The Irish diaspora

The Irish President Michael Higgins has been a welcome relief from the icy tones of the Martin  McGuinness or the combative Ian Paisley. The Irish diaspora in London are gathered in the Albert Hall to celebrate their tenacity for survival as a nation, away from home, joined as a people knowing their history and the personalised romance of their heroes. They have a unique blend of humour and pathos, of mythology and music, one minute calling out the demons  the next throwing off the gloom with the twirling skirt of a pretty waif, tapping her clog shorn feet to the exciting sound of a ceili.
The audience were up for the party, they were loyalists not afraid, as we have become with our multiculturalism   to shout allegiance to their history, to tell the world of their love for their past, warts and all. The symbolism of Yeats, of James Joyce, Bram Stoker, the words of the protest songs sprang from this cosmopolitan audience, the words were their words and they felt no hesitation to sing and identify with the cause.
How I wish we hadn't been indoctrinated to feel afraid of our shadow, the need to repeatedly apologise for the past. The past was a place inhabited by a different agenda when we were confident and sure of our motives. Today we shrink from any sort of suggestion that we made an effort to be even handed in our affairs or that making mistakes, as we did, is a judgement coloured by contemporary history. Our society has lost its centre, its median, its belief in what it stands for as it vacillates one way and the other, trying to be one thing to all people irrespective of 'their' multiple histories.        

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/

A dilema

We all have a story to tell but its only when you listen and watch human stories from countries in central and eastern Europe such as the one I have been watching of one man's

life. A Tatar from the Crimea, a life full of labour camps first under the Germans and then, after the war under the Russians do we realise how lucky we have been.His whole life caught up in the turmoil that was Europe in the 20s 30s 40s even the 50s a flow of political events that caught him and swept him away for the major part of his life.
How we take for granted our ability to choose as if its a birth right. Our world would come crashing down if we were conscripted without a by-your-leave without recourse to say yay or nay, stripped from family and friends herded onto trucks and shipped thousands of moles away to be brutalized by a totalitarian regime who considered you as less than human. Thousands, millions of people mostly men were used as part of labour intensive  schemes in which they were not recognised as human beings, only units of labour.
Mankind is always on the cusp of some program to create for the instigator untold wealth and power which on the drawing board, humans become microscopically insignificant. Their lives coming to an end they walk the dusty roads, surrounded by simple two room houses empty of all but the barest necessities, bent of back, bowed of limb they continue to shuffle along indefatigable.
With our cars and ipods, our holidays in Ibitha and our throw away culture, how remote from societies who now send their young to work on the building sites in London. Its when you meet and talk to these young men who's command of English is excellent, who's skills and work ethic are commendable and who, as you speak to them, in my case employ them, find you are left with a lot of respect and quiet admiration for their tenacity.               

Who is the bully

A little while ago in one of my blogs I mentioned my fear of the Russian tanks starting up their engines and moving into the Ukraine. The Russian segment of the population in Crimea wanted reunification with Russia and the segment was in the majority. Now we have other segments of Russian speaking Ukrainians also calling for reunification and they are ably abetted by those well armed and disciplined bands of armed men who, in the Crimea,  were recognisable detachments of the Russian Army and are generally accepted as the same.
Provocation is as old as mankind. Its seen in the school playground first as a verbal insult, then a push, leading to a fight. Often the participants had no pre- determined aim to fight but were led by each subsequent event into a full blown conflict. Only the school bully sets out to convert his strength into a fight believing the inevitability of the outcome, he thinks he has nothing to loose. Every so often, Smith of the lower 5th stands up and is prepared to fight back and equally often the bully who has started to believe his hyperbole is forced to reconsider.
I believe that America become just such a bully and since the end of the Cold War has rubbed the Russian nose in the economic defeat that culminated with the Regan years of the nuclear arms race. What ever you think of the Russian they have a history of unfathomable tenacity, for subjecting themselves to incredible hardship and a belief in their historical importance. After a succession of leaders through whom the country tried to westernise its self by bringing its own brand of market led capitalism which turned into oligarch fiefdoms, run like mini old style collectives, without much of the trickle down effect filtering to the population as a whole. The lifestyle and the opportunity for middle class enhancement has been minimal, it is this huge under-valued mass of people who 'long' for strong leadership,(echo's of Stalin) the sort of leadership that President Putin brings to the table.
The Americans (CIA) pushed by assisting in the  ousting of the Ukraine President Viktor Yanucovych. The Russians pushed back by annexing the Crimea and are now stirring trouble in Eastern Ukraine. When will real fighting break out or has the bully learnt a lesson ?        

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

Conflicting story lines

What is truth what is fiction. We rely on the media for virtually all of our information and of course this places the media in an extremely powerful position to influence us, not only on the fact or fiction of what is happening in the world but on our opinions in general.
When I was growing up the Establishment paper was The Times, before Rupert Murdock got his grubby hands on the paper and it was symbolic of our faith in the integrity of our "betters" that we believed what ever The Times printed. The correspondents in the field perhaps in some far flung country would ring their story through on a dickey line through the local exchange full of whistles and crackles for it to be deciphered by the person in head office in Fleet Street to be sub' edited and fitted into the papers format for printing. Sometimes days elapsed before the story hit the street and events had moved on but we held the printed word on the page as gospel.
Today we are fed a diet of almost instantaneous news, shown on the television by a plethora of news channels, each competing for the sensational tit bits and each stretching the actual event for all it is worth. The amateur video scenes shot at the site of a story embellish the event with its own piquancy and we are asked to believe what our eyes tell us. Of course what our eyes tell us is not the same, there is no universal "us" our eyes feed the event into the brain and we interpret what we wish to conclude from what we see.
The BBC, ITV. SKY, CNN are part of the western club and like any club its members are assumed to 'belong'.
Down the road is another relatively young media hound Al Jazeera and further down the road still is RT the Russian, English language service.
Watching world events on the 'local media' can at times be quite bland as they focus on events close to home with a strong domestic content. CNN are the glitzy side of the news presentation where emphasis is places as much on the news caster as a celebrity as on the news they project. The Arab world is well handled by Al Jazeera especially their human stories of the plight of the poor.  RT is a strange mixture. It is generally anti American and marginally less so of the nations of the European Union. In differing from our home grown media news it is an interesting source of counter information and on many occasions one learns of events, usually violent street protests that some how never make it to the pages of our media.
The debates are interesting because they have the contra voices of people, often academics from the American and British universities who decry the Establishment agenda and it is refreshing to hear views which are not party political but fundamental Political formulations of opinion that need to be heard for "us" the people to form our own opinion.
What is refreshing is the knowledge that these Academics can flourish in our Western societies and are free to broadcast their opinion without fear of reprisal.  RT rarely broadcast pro-western views from the Russian academic society which indicates either they have no dissenting views or the dissenters are too scared to raise their voices. You take your pick !!

Oscar Pistorius continued

We all have had preconceived ideas about the guilt or otherwise of Oscar Pistorius
us and as the trial has progressed I have listened to the media which seems largely to supported the prosecutions case.
I was chatting this morning to Andrew in Australia, as you do and he was watching the case live, streamed on Channel 4 TV. He sent me the link and so, for the first time I listened in detail to the flow of question and answer without the any media commentary to distract me. The advocate for the prosecution Nel was badgering Pistorius for details of the event which struck me that even the most clear headed person would have had difficulty recalling. As is his right and indeed his task Nel sought to demean the answers with caustic comment and even hilarity, for which he was admonished by the Judge. I had to ask myself how could someone who claims they were in fear of their life, screaming out of control, finally letting a fusillade of shots  into the toilet door, how could they be expected to recall and relate the detail of events especially since the detail is in part the contrivance of the Prosecution after many hours of mental forensic reasoning in the cold light of the day. Its Nels job to dismantle the character of the accused but in my short exposure to the hearing today I have to give Pistorius the benefit of the doubt, a turn around for me from my previous opinion, based on short media led snippets.           

Oscar Pristorius

I, along with half the globe, are tuned into the Oscar Pistorius trial, listening to his emotional voice pleading his case.
I fully understand the enormity of Pistorius' task trying to explain how anyone could blast away through the bathroom door at what he claims were strangers who had broken in and potentially were a considerable danger to him. Of course in a society such as the UK where firearms are generally banned and even the police have to jump through all kind of hoops if they are required to discharge their weapons, we are miles away from the gun toting society South Africa has been for many years. Fear of personal attack has always been high and is not getting better.
The Pistorius case is symptomatic of the fear of violence, not the violence of a street fight but the use of weapons to kill without much thought for the victim.
The court room scenes are strikingly South African. The un-plastered brickwork of a government building shorn of any decoration. The physically frail judge who seems a little out of place. The way the accused when responding has to address his answers to "My Lady" rather than the Barrister asking the question. The heavily accented leaders of both the Defence and Prosecution jar against ear and somehow diminish the solemnity of the court. Finally there is Pistorius himself a clearly damaged individual with his broken voice and uncontrollable emotional delivery which seems unmanly as he gives us no rest from his supposed anguish.
How can a man who has armed himself and is marginally secure behind his gun still discharge shot after shot through a door at someone he believes has broken into his house. There was no confrontation, no call to come out of the bathroom I have a gun pointing at you, no phone to the police just a fusillade of shots, the act of a coward.
As I listened to his pleading I wondered for his mental health and could well imagine his fragile psych peeved at his girlfriends response tipping him over the edge in frustration, a frustration that probably has its root in his deformity             

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

Ming would be smiling

A tiny Ming Dynasty tea cup has just fetched $36 million. One has to wonder about the disconnect in the global society when people can afford these huge sums of money whilst people within the same society earn $1 a day for working 12 hours and more. 
Its hideously disproportionate and mirrors the crazy wages paid to our footballers in this country whilst our Government chase people on Benefits or have an empty bedroom and therefore have either to move to a smaller house (of which there aren't any) or pay an extra rent for the room. Our papers are full of grim stories about the unpleasant, work shy underbelly of our society, people who do not work and claim roughly £60 a week to support their families.
A picture is painted by our media of the unhealthy benefit scrounger, as it whip's  up public opinion to castigate their fellow citizen and cast the benefit culture as the reason for all our financial woes.
1. It would be thought improper to shine a light on the person who can afford $36 million on a trinket. 
2. The way he has accumulated such wealth or if he has paid his full tax contribution to the society. 
 Perhaps being able to employ people on a $1 a day contributes in no small way to his accumulation  but since we are all in hock to places like China the questions are not asked, the unrepresented poor are a much easier whipping boy 

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

The days are but a handful

As I sit reading a book or composing this blog I have the uneasy fear at the back of my mind I should be doing something else, something more conventionally productive, like cutting the lawn of painting the bedroom. Why is this ? 
Our lives for the most part are at the behest of others. If married, our wife's have a plan for today and you often seem to play a large part in effecting the plan. If in the workplace we are part of the bosses plan, as he is for his boss we are therefore only a proverbial cog in the mechanism.
Time, the hours in a day at which we can be productive is no different from the time we have when we are retired from paid work and yet the time, or the days seem to fly in a way which they didn't when we were working.
Perhaps working to someone else's plan places one in a continuum, "a sequence where the adjacent elements are not perceptibly different to each other". It is this continuous sequence, each day merging into the other that makes time stand still with only the weekend standing out as an event to set aside.
When retired there is no continuum, little planning and only time to fill. Of course the lawn needs cutting and the house needs maintaining but the pressure from outside (other than ones wife) is not there and we can see perhaps for the first time the minutes tick by in a day, a week, a year, our time on earth is finite and we are at the wrong end of the sequence. We have squandered the years on the assumption that there is more to come but when you are down to your last four maybe five, relatively healthy years then the days are but a handful.         

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/        

Out of Africa

I have just been watching, 'again', the marvellous piece of cinematography made in the 1985,  'Out of Africa'.
I'm sure there are not many of you who haven't seen the film a beautiful story of a strong woman, her love of Africa and her love of an idealistic loner, fiercely independent but equally immersed in the mystic of Africa.
The film was beautifully shot. Long distant views over the savannah, human beings, minuscule in the scale, moving through the landscape the animals majestic in their natural background the concept that we are simple only one of the players in this life and death struggle. Mixed in with this drama was the drama of this woman's love for a difficult man and her connection to the African tribe who worked her farm and the close relationship she formed with her man-servant. The symbolism of the Masai as an proud independent observer of the white man's tomfoolery was only one of the themes to come through the film. The stuffy colonial structure of Kenya, the prejudice of the male orientated governance. The hope of financial rescue through a good harvest, devastated by fire, the question of the future of the native people left behind when their employer and benefactor returned to Denmark. Played by Meryl Streep in one of her better roles, I felt she brought a strange symbiotic relationship towards mother Africa and her rural peoples but mixed with loneliness for comfort within her her own tribe. She moved me in the life's desperate conundrum to find love, to be acknowledged for the gift of relinquishing ones independence for a stronger communion. 
Well worth a second viewing.                    

Three bad boys.

Filby, Burgess and McLean names that anyone born in the 1930s and 40s would remember, they represented a massive Faux pas in the history of our clandestine dealings in espionage by MI6.
All three with impeccable public school and university backgrounds, the pool from which it was automatically assumed any senior member of the Civil Service, through to the Prime Minister would be drawn and which 90% of Oxbridge places would assume and move seamlessly into our boardrooms on a wink and a nod but who were also the  soft ideological underbelly in our society who, through the rigour of "logic and ethics" found much wanting in the system of capital and market forces and were easy recruits to the Communist cause. Their reasoning was that of total conflict to Western Capitalism, a concept of letting market forces have their head irrespective of the damage to ordinary people, people who it must be remembered had recently  fought two world wars at an enormous cost to human life.
The graduates disillusionment with the status quo led to the extreme, they became spies for the communists and did enormous harm to the to the West. Their infiltration took them into the highest positions in counter espionage (MI6). Their acceptance and rapid rise was made possible through their connections, the old boy network (which still exists to this day and shackles us to the conformity of mediocrity which has been the bane of the English establishment structure even as I write).
These men, well mannered, cut glass accents the highest credentials of schooling and birth-right were willingly accepted and rapidly promoted to positions where the information coming in from the field agents about sympathisers in the countries under the Soviet yoke were passed to Filby and Co, who immediately informed the Russians and sealed the fate of the people who had broken ranks in the USSR. Their ethical and moral code did not stretch to the dire end of thousands of brave agents in the field. It has always seemed strange how schizophrenic we are when we become inflamed by ideological matters.                      

Golden oldies

There has just been a program on BBC 4  about a guitarist singer songwriter, Les Cousins (Mark Pavey). It struck me as I watched these fairly elderly performers strutting their stuff how I wished I had kept up the guitar lessons. 

Each person in his or her way was identified as a contributor, no mean claim when one reaches the age of otherwise invisibility. Music is an extension of the person, the lyrics are real for the singer who hopefully can convince the audience of its sincerity. We the audience get lost in the rhythm and the artistry we feel indebted to the musician who can dig out of our inner self, that emotive side to our character which youth nurtured and old age forgot. They keep on performing, the artist forever young and we, the none musician are in quiet awe of this reincarnation of spirit and assuredness. 

You don't have to be a virtuoso they are the trades men and women of their art but the ability to identify with the art of music sets them on a pedestal which we instinctively look up to and admire. To be acknowledged let alone admired is an accomplishment.   

The luckiest people of all

I was watching TV, a film of a young girl in Africa struggling to manoeuvre a large plastic container, full of water onto her back and then to toil up the hilly path and home. 

The water hole was nothing more than a small puddle of water fed, contaminated with feces, a hole filled with dirty water completely unfit for human consumption. Yet as I write, this girl and others like her will set out on the 3 mile trek to the spring and the 3 mile struggle home. 

It is almost impossible to imagine a life like this as I fill the kettle from the tap in the kitchen it is almost unimaginable  to equate our lives, to find any way of comprehending her existence. 

The luck of the draw, a right of birth and yet we the privileged few still feel unhappy, discontented, down on our luck. 

If our health is holding out and we have at least minimal finances to cover the basics we should be happy that our parents, had parents who had parents who started the long journey to sufficiency and we, the beneficiaries are, as the song goes :- 

"the luckiest people of all"    

Urban growth

There are a few cities that are iconic with a natural splendour, an image which everyone carries in their head as an exciting place to visit. 

Cape Town with its magnificent mountain backdrop and twisty coastal roads leading one around the Peninsular. Skirting pristine, bleach white beaches the road clinging's to the edge of a cliff face which plunges straight into the sea, waves breaking and pummelling the rocks below as the power of the ocean transforms its self into exasperated columns of sea and spray. 

Sydney is no less iconic. Its mountain is the harbour, the city has enclosed this inland stretch of water and cove with its own blend of iconic shape. The Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and on the Harbour its self, the ever busy ferry's, yachts and power boats scurrying around on the water. 

Rio de Janeiro has the Sugar Loaf Mountain as a backdrop, the Copacabana Beach and the beautiful half clad South American women to remind you of what perfection is all about.

Most of us living our urban existence, live in far less prepossessing surroundings. The growth of many of our cities is the result of commerce and manufacturing with what appears little planning and, when there is planning, there seems little thought about the people who are asked to live their lives there.    

Coming a generation or two ago from villages or small market towns where we knew most of our neighbours, the scale was right and we communicated continuously because we had so much in common. People migrated to the city urban landscape where everyone is a stranger and we have little nothing in common. 

The urban planner was complicit in not treating the human condition with warmth and understanding. Instead they designed accommodation around the tower block. 

The street which had always been the meeting place for all the family, from the kids playing together to the older generation gossiping over the garden wall, is many miles away from the High Rise concept where the architectural

drawing of the structure is peopled by the decorative stick person, an afterthought to the construct. 

There is no sense of shared space where people can get to know each other and form friendships, in fact the opposite occurs with people not only not knowing their neighbours but fearing them and isolating themselves even further. This isolation is magnified in the urban sprawl, the crowded street of strangers, the tube journey where eye contact is avoided it all dehumanises mankind and breeds the schizophrenic society we see in the city today.