Racism

One of the problems in the UK with our insistence on the value of having a multicultural society is that 'powers that be' have limited the ability for dissenters to put their views forward by branding such people as racist. The base line for a multicultural country in which many disparate groups of people from many varied cultures can be drawn together as one, is that we are all basically similar (each gods children) and that the interaction between people will create a new better hybrid with the best, coalescing to enrich the new society.    In the sense that irrespective of skin colour, we are all fundamentally the same, (as the saying goes "skin deep") and we should be able to bury our prejudice. 
The issue is our 'culture', that set of values which we learn and is re-enforced in a particular society as we grow up.
Cultural difference is much more rooted than the 'multiculturalists'  would have us believe.  
Culture is the peg many of us hang our psychological identity on. It's re-enforced by the family, by the expanded family and their families. 
This close knit group expanded further, called the tribe, has enormous influence on each individual, a far greater influence than the hopes and desires of the idealist who set themselves up as experts.
The so called 'Honour Killing' that occurred in Pakistan early this week is a case in point. The woman who was stoned to death by her father and brothers for marrying someone the family disapproved of, is beyond belief to members of our tribe but in Pakistan it is accepted. Even the police stood by as it happened. The street scene where the stoning took place showed what appeared to be masculine indifference, something had taken place which was in accordance with tribal custom, as simple as that and I am sure that wouldn't have understood our horror.
The root stock of this culture is now embedded in the social fabric of our own culture, with many stories of brutality afforded to the female members of the Pakistani community and its patriarchal structure.  Their tribal values are still strongly entrenched as new blood is brought in through immigration and the arranged marriage.
This is only one cultural sector of our multicultural experiment. 
Religion is another factor which can bring deeply held beliefs about the way we conduct our lives, each sect has a different vision of what is correct.  
It is akin to the period when we drew the boarders to represent newly created  nations. We were oblivious of the tribes and their differences, we knew best and our political agenda was more important than the facts on the ground. 
How poorly we are served by a closed minded Establishment determined to prove a point.   



                   

Demagoguery

I watched a You Tube recording of George Galloway having a debate with Christopher Hitchens about the invasion of Iraq by the Bush/Blair combo. The debate, held in the USA was interesting on a number of levels. Histrionics, that ability to emphasise

scantily clad truths with bluster and scantily clad untruths, was on show with the two protagonists of this so called debate. There was no love lost between them and they readily threw barbed slurs at each other in a way that our pseudo-dignified, toned down, political conversation which we have on the air-waves in this country appears like a kindergarten in comparison. The audience were in full throat baying for one contestant against the other, whipping up the atmosphere into a bear ring. Hitchens the ultra left wing Trotskyist of old had undergone a metamorphosis and was now supporting the invasion of Iraq under the premise that a murderous dictator had been removed and that Iraqi's could sleep safe in their beds. The infrastructure that the Allied Armies had produced roads and transport were all plus factors post the invasion. The thousands of deaths was a price to pay for the future stability of the country.
Galloway was his usual belligerent self, fixated in his opinion that the war was rigged and that American companies like Halliburton for whom Dick Cheney the very controversial Vice President under Bush became, over time Chairman of Halliburton were the real protagonist of the war and oil its main goal. He railed with venom and distaste over the so called objectives and warned of the dangers of disturbing a potential hornets nest of young jihadist across the world in their righteous claim to be under a brotherhood under attack.
Of course Galloway was proved neared the mark than Hitchens and history will show that in initially drawing arbitrary boundaries  in 1906, disregarding tribal affiliations we began the long process of alienation that finds root in our dis-established Muslim youth in Bury and Blackburn, Bradford and Birmingham.
Smoke is the weapon used to quieten the angry hornet, Lets all hope the smoke won't be the result of world wide conflagration.                     

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

The King

Every era has its greats, sportsmen and women, entertainers, singers, musicians and as we grow up through our formative years we developed a mentality especially to the musical fraternity, the singers and the instrumentalists. Tonight I have been watching a program on the life of Nat King Cole.
His  era was brim full of marvellous talent, Sinatra, Oscar Peterson, the fantastic bands of the period and yet the sound of Nat Cole singing those love songs, syncopated rhythm and perfect timing was, 'is' haunting.
Everyone must feel that their 'time' was special but the giants who blossomed in the 1920s 30s and immediately after the war will never be repeated. Coles silky phrasing and relaxed delivery can not be created in our current climate, his diction revealed for us every word, his sensitivity moved us and heightened the mood of each song which, to this day those of us who lived with these songs as a background to our adolescence will still stir a deep and fundimental memory          

Political beauty contest

Politics, or at least the "face of politics" and therefore inevitably a major disproportionate draw card for a political agenda, has been the charisma of their leader. Kennedy, Regan, Clinton, and Obama (as the first black man) in the, media driven politics of the US whilst we have Thatcher(the first women), Blair and now Farage. 

Does this indicate an inherent weakness, both in us and the democratic process ?
If we can be won over by style rather than substance, putting the vote in our hands becomes a shallow lottery.   Of course the performer always is there to convince his audience, be it in the theatre and the fictional part he plays, or in the pulpit of a church or the hustings of a political meeting. We are all swayed by a good performance and the message is as much a work of art than a series of propitiations, worked through in detail about matters concerning our public well being.
Democracy survives if we believe that the political establishment have our best interests at heart and that a particular party are best able to provide for us but if we simply vote for a person with charisma, paying little heed to the argument and debate, then democracy is little more than a beauty contest.       

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

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rage at close of day
Rage rage against the dying of the light.
A Dylan poem about the image of his father dying, so much pain and anguish expressed in his genius,  his ability to describe through prose the deep story of the human condition. In Under Milk Wood he described a day in the life of a Welsh town . The stories of the individuals associated with the town, the inhabitants their lives and the rhythm of their lives through one of the greatest English speaking poems.Its not an easy read but taken in parts or, listen to Richard Burton reciting the poem in his rich, deep timbre voice, cantering along, words flowing under the hoof like pebbles thrown up in the air, each a crafted syllable, point and counterpoint, - genius. 

To being in at the beginning.
It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobblestones silent and the hunched, courtiers and rabbits wood limping invisible down the sloeblack, slow black, crow black, fishing boat bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snowting, velvet dingles)  or blind as captain' Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows weeds And all the people of the lulled and dumbfounded town are sleeping now.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobblers, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman the webfoot cocklewoman and the tidy wives. .....................As I said its not an easy read but it sounded mystically beautiful when read by Richard Burton, the power of his voice the rhythm of his delivery are one of life's pleasures.
Dylan Thomas was a flawed genius of course his riotous relationship with the love of his life, Caitlin. The deep animosity particularly on her side, bred through argument and continuous rowing, his apparent indifference, a defence mechanism to her hostility led to their separation and his move away from Wales to the well heeled poetry speaking circuit in the US of A.
His womanising and heavy drinking ruined not only his health but his relationship with people who truly cared for him and he died with his genius still burning deep like a sulphurous fire.   

    

River Stort

Line ahead the ducks paddle in sequence, mother at the head dad acting rear gunner the six downy signets struggling to keep up as they headed for home. Its 6pm the end of a lovely day and I decided to walk along the river bank to the Aldi Shop for a few groceries. Having written my blog about the scarcity of food in my fridge I thought, bugger it, couple of sausages between a slice of bread and a nice mug of sweet tea would be just what the Dr ordered. I consult two doctors these days, Dr John and Dr Andrew, each has a view and today John won out.
This is the time of year when England looks its best. Spring has worked its miracle and the trees and hedge rows are resplendent in green, not just any old green but every green in the book. The riverbank is lined with undergrowth the midges and dragon fly skimming the surface of the water, a world far away from the busy street and the daily commute, a world where time stands still as you relax to a new rhythm. A walker coming towards me said Good Morning and I thought of the shock he was in for as the tow path took him into real time.
The narrow boats and a couple of Dutch barges were scattered around just below the lock gate. The cabin tops a blaze of colour, of potted plants tenderly cared for by the boat owners. These boaties are a special breed as they move with care slowly about their boats, their world shrunk to 70 x9, they have no need to hurry, no need to fuss, their minds cast off, like the boat from the main stream hubble and bubble.
Messing about in boats has been the dream of many, few of us have the courage to step off the land onto a self contained world where the clock slows and the bunk at night is awake to the sounds of another world slopping against the hull of the boat the wind rustling its own tune through the trees, the shrieking  sound of a kill as the business of survival demands that everyone is someone's dinner.         

The opportunity to be enthralled

We all have a need to project ourselves in a way in which we feel will bolster our image. Some do it by buying a flash car or move to an address that others will think swanky. Some do it in the bar with outrageous hospitality buying drinks for everyone and generally being loud with their money. Others, who have a talent can express themselves through performing on stage, singing or playing an instrument, acting or dancing they are all forms of expression, of our need to communicate our special skills and aptitude, to enhance our ego and make people take note of who we are. This need for recognition is deep seated "no man is an island" and we all feel the desire to be praised for something we do well.
Sitting in a pub the other night I listened to a band who had formed around a music teacher who teaches percussion in one of the local schools. Slim with waist length, jet black hair he looked a throw back to the 60s Woodstock scene and one could only think what a heart throb he must be amongst the girls in the school. His songs full of meaningful lyricism were his own message to the audience about the issues that trouble him.
Songs are a way of storytelling, enhanced by the music, the words take on an imaginary image of life's pathos.
The Earl King sung by the great Russian Bass Feodor Chaliapin, a song of a father, his young son in his arms riding horse-back through the night the boy is dying and cries out "Oh Father, oh Father the Earl King is near " the father afraid, tries to calm the boy as he gallops on, the scene is heightened by the piano depicting the urgency and the dark forces swirling around the couple as they rush through the darkness. The last line as they reach home "but the little boy was dead" came as a vocal shock that I can remember to this day.
As a young lad, sitting in our tiny living room in front of the wind up record player with its large acoustic horn, like the ones seen on the His Masters Voice records with the dog listening close to the horn,  steel needles which had to be sharpened,  brittle shellac records. These were the ipods of our day.
Madam Butterfly, the haunting aria as Butterfly awaits Pinkerton, her American GI to return, knowing in her heart he was gone. The sound was full of crackles, the voice of Callas or Melba came through like a conduit into a world so far removed from our home, it was mystical. Arthur Rubinstein playing the piano, The Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan, this was our evenings pleasure, Dad and Mum and I sitting and listening, enthralled.
The pace of it all, a record at a time, no shifting around like a flea searching tracks, no TV to disturb the moment, only the radio and the record player, we were contented and felt enlightened, special that we had the opportunity to be enthralled !!!     

An alternate view

Do the alternative media channels which David Cameron decried as distorting the truth have anything to say about the events in the Ukraine, events on the streets of American and European cities, events in which segments of the population are rising up against the governments in South America ?
The business of Information Dissemination, of convincing populations of the "truth", is a high tech' game. Millions are spent in assembling and manipulating the news to support a political agenda, Gobbles did it, Churchill did it and now everyone is at it.
RT the Russian service decried by the West is for many as shiny and as convincing as CCN or the BBC. It has its its shapely presenters and fact primed analysts, it has its links to correspondents around the world and it spends a great deal of time discussing with knowledgeable people in Washington and London. Many of these people are senior members of various universities based in the West who are corralled to present a pro Moscow line.
The question has to be asked, is this opinion based  on the facts as they see them or, are they part of a political agenda, acting as placement men and women in our universities to support the anti Western line.
Of course the Universities were always the breeding ground for dissent towards the Establishment, particularly when
they formulated their hatred of the Capitalist System and turned to Communism by acting as spies in the 50s. 
The problem in the West is our disenchantment with our politicians and our belief that they lie as part of a political game from which we are excluded.
The power of global capitalism and the inability of national governments to effect any bulwark against this power makes us feel helpless and we accept the view that our politicians are men of straw and their utterances meaningless.    

Are zero hour contracts ethical

Emblematic of the insecurity felt in our society is the concept of people working to provide for their families whilst having to accept zero hour contracts. The 'zero hour contract' which prays on a pool of labour that is dormant in our society, part the result of poor education, part the inflow of people from the poor parts of Europe and part due to the cut backs and down sizing that has gone on since the financial collapse in 2008.
Employers use the argument that these contracts are something people want. Examples are cited of students, or people in that transient phase when their children are very young  but we also see the growing use of these contracts, across the board. The employer has, on tap a workforce but avoids not only the responsibility of a contractual wage but also no pension or sick-pay responsibilities,  its a win win situation.
This intermittent employment offers no security but ties the job seeker down to presenting himself for work via a call the day before or if no work is available they have to wait by the phone on the off chance.
The employee is in a state of suspended animation and its a hideous way of trying to meet the bills and act responsibly towards ones family.
As the world hurtles down the slope of, 'them and us', once again, we see the hard won  gains made for social justice cast aside in a celebration of a free, flexible market place where apples and oranges are marketed alongside human capital.           

Ode to the gall balader

Its so sad. The sound of bacon and eggs cooking, the marvellous smell wafting through the kitchen have all been banished for ever in a fight against the dreaded acid stomach. Its been a battle slowly unfurling, from the day they whipped out the faithful gallbladder the system has been groaning under the weight of in-balance. Too much of this too little of that and the mixture fails to rise, in my case, it rises too much. Slowly the type of food that is deemed good diminishes to rabbit food whilst the good old stalwarts like bacon and egg are verboten.
What this does for ones own mental well being need investigation.
Is the remedy worth the pain and the emotional mis-location as one pads around the kitchen in search of a healthy breakfast.
The foods one can eat are un-appertising, lacking taste and have no smell. The extravaganza of a fry-up with fried bread is a memory, clouded with the discomfort of dyspepsia, its a no go but the alternatives are so bland as to make one forget to eat !!        

Impermanence

Impermanence what does it mean and how does it effect us.
In the book The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche (a great read)  the concept of impermanence, of how everything lacks permanence and our obsession in believing that what we see and who we are, is somehow permanent, carried forwarded as an entity throughout life is false.
Given that the past is past and the future is unknown we are left with the present. The present, under these circumstances is a moment in time devoid of the past and the present, it is the now.
In our lives we conflate ourselves into believing we can effect our lives and are continually planning for the future, as if the future were a forgone conclusion, just join up the dots and we are there.
Part of our anguish in life comes from the discovery that no matter how hard we try, the end result is often not what we wished for. In fact if we could relinquish the idea that we have control over the things which will happen in the future, we should then not be surprised when the future turns out differently. The idea that our actions guarantee the outcome is, for all of us, clearly not true and we can recall many hopes and desires built on the false premise that if I do this then that follows.
If we introduce the concept of "impermanence" as the crucial element in what controls, or in this case doesn't allow control of events, we have to accept the fact that we are wrong to base our lives on the assumption that our lives are a conveyor belt of our input to guaranteed rewards. The disillusionment when the outcome is less, or totally different to what we had planned leads to a life of disenchantment and often great unhappiness. We may bolster our feelings with banter but deep down the failure hurts.
In some ways our lives could be described as a succession of hurts, some inconsequential but some the scars are deep and we never get over them. Imagine if instead of listing these failures we accepted that success or failure are out of our control and that forces, other than those we control, are responsible.
If we could imagine ourselves as  inconsequential to the flow of events around us but very much involved in our personal analysis of our own real existence, the existence we display moment on moment, understanding that each moment is impermanent, it dies as it is born, that the sense of self we create is a delusion and that our final death will be nothing more than another moment in time.
One can obviously see the advantage in reassessing our blind surety in the future, being able to deal with failure in a different way.
For most of us hooked on the material possessions accumulated over the years this must all seem a bit far fetched, a bit too intellectual. Yet when we come close to dying and we are scared witless, having to contemplate letting go of all the things and people we value. Having to contemplate a nothingness, no future which, when we were fit and healthy had made us feel who we "thought" we were.
Perhaps a second look at how we value life and seek security could ease us through this inevitable ending of our journey ?                     

People power.

The elections that have just been held in the Eastern Ukraine have revealed a 90% resolution for self determination. The West is scrambling to answer the result with the claim that the ballot was hastily arranged and therefore open to corruption. The usual call for democracy seems to be hedged in with a problem when the result was known. It indicated that on the ground the people in the East of Ukraine wanted to disengage from what they see as a corrupt none - representative government in Kiev and given the opportunity to vote said, yes.
One of the issues in the use of the ballot box is, "can you trust the people to vote in the way we want them to". Can we leave in the hands of the people such issues as whether we stay or leave the EU. Can we trust in their common sense to vote the way we want them to regarding Scottish Independence ?
The power of the people at the ballot box is a leap of faith in their having the common sense to act rationally and cast their vote after considering all the possible outcomes or do we trust them not to behave like a herd and follow the piper of Fleet Street, taking the first headline they read as gospel and slavishly tearing up the existing status quo for something they know not of.
Its a dilemma which comes around every 4 years when we vote for the party to form a government. What ever way the result goes there there will be roughly half the population who are happy and 50% who are wondering how the other 50% could be so stupid. Given the result, we muddle through, the world doesn't come to an end and we accommodate change. Its as if the result of the ballot was an exercise in some sort of slight of hand with the same magicians still holding centre stage.       

Communicating with the tribe

Language, accents, history, idiosyncrasy's are all the mental food we need when we make a phone call to an old friend especially if that friend is from back home. Its amazing how we seem to plug into some sort of special glucose which feeds our persona when we talk to one of our own tribe. The tribal affiliation is at its strongest when you are far from the tribe, when an accent or a piece of shared tribal humour triggers warm memories and melts the normal barriers we erect to people in general.
I have just come off the phone speaking to a 91 year old lady in Yorkshire. We didn't talk about things of high consequence but we had an instinctive trust in each other to enjoy the experience in a way that, outside the tribe one rarely feels. It seems to me that this none educational collegiate experience is so rich in what it tells us about our personalities, the way we familiarise ourselves with people from our own background. What this does is to open up the dialogue, make the innuendo acceptable, clarifies a figure of speech as a password both to background and culture. Relax and reminisce, the words and memories tumble out enriching our limited social vocabulary into a familiar sense of belonging.             

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

         

Constantly reminded

The media world has, once again, been up in arms about Jeremy Clarkson. Now a BBC disc jockey, playing a record
(a jokey, George Formby type song) by The Ambrose Orchestra in which the lyrics use a word which has been discarded by society.
I use the word society with care of course since there is a whole segment of society who would no longer identify themselves with that PC segment of society, than a supporter of Man U would shout for Chelsea. Over the years there has been pressure applied from the Establishment to protect what are called minority segments in the society from coarse remarks which often had their origin in history or from a time when the law had a different view as to their legality.
You can see the reasoning behind banning certain expressions if the use of the expression is hurtful.   Of course the old rhyme, "sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will never hurt me" comes to mind and of course like that other expression, when walking down the street and you stumble on a raised paving stone, I would say "I should have watched where I was putting my feet" instead of casting around for someone else to blame.
It seems we are heading, head first into a centrally controlled mind set which if you don't comply you are cast out and castigated. The individual is no longer respected for his/her individuality, conformity is the main issue.
As we unearth words and phrases that could be thought to upset others we also unearth commentary from people who feel marginalised and become another pressure group towards the centre. As a person of the centre I feel obligated to resist this pressure and question whether we are better off to be constantly reminded of the words that used to be used in ignorance and now have the potential of an exocet missile. Is there more harm done to inter-community relations to be always worried about the use of words irrespective of intent. How does a Historian relate to his job, how do we discuss the factors of race, sex, gender difference without our delving into history.
The search for neutrality where the colour, gender, sexual proclivity have been placed off field and make much of our opinion about human experience out of bounds, which not only diminishes our unique singularity but makes us more aware of the potential to upset others and therefore less inclined to join in with the diversity in our society.                  

Faith

Following on from my last blog on Living and Dying (for those who bother to read it), it seemed important to consider the question of Faith.
The underlying essence of Belief Systems is the individuals faith in its story. Faith is also the main constituent for virtually everything we do in that, without it why would we. So is there a difference between the faith with a small f and Faith as a concomitant part of the religious process.
Well the one can be based on the evidence of cause and action, I have faith in a certain medicine to alleviate my symptom, I have faith in the transport mechanism I choose rail, road or air because of the statistical information that nearly all journeys are completed safely. In these circumstances I can substitute hard experience for blind faith and congratulate myself for having faith in the outcome.
Religious faith is an altogether different type of faith except that the faithful would say its similar if not the same. If you believe in something it usually takes hard facts, well argued to persuade you that you were wrong in your belief. The assumption of a new belief is fortified by the newly acquired facts. Religious belief is based wholly on faith. The facts are chronicles taken down over 2000 years ago and the messages handed down over the millennia require one to have faith in their veracity, even as the stories have become exposed as the fables to illustrate Gods word to the Prophet and have taken on, under modern clinical scientific analysis, a sense of apothecary. The genuine faith people have seems to withstand the analysis of time-scale and conflicting storytelling, remains true to a genuine belief in God and the stories told become of less relevance.
This type of faith is handy to have in a world of uncertainty, especially so at the time of ones death. There is no gainsaying this subjugation to believing in the untried and unknown and for all the jovial intellect of the non-faith sect who, whilst denying the existence of a life after death, are left with cold supposition.

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The European Song Contest

The epitome of scripted comment has to be the European Song Contest.
The UK in the past has relied on the cryptic  commentary of Terry Wogan and now, the darling of the air waves Graham Norton. They both bless the show with so called witty remarks about the contestants which do little service to the overall underlying commitment to a unified, but disparate collection of cultures and viewpoints and presentation.
If we could for a moment forget our 'special relationship' Americana and remember we are not a crone of the American production system and have truly home grown talent. Different and uniquely pertinent to the culture, to the area in which the song was born, we should then understand that what the European Song Contest is about, its a to show case of our special difference whilst at the same time upholding the unity so specially forged after WW2.
We mock the other participants at our peril.
Listening tonight we were no better than a host of others and yet the commentator sang the UKs praises to the point of ignorance. Why do we degrade our neighbours why do we feel so superior why can't we get into our heads that we should celebrate our difference and encompass the diversity. We ave certainly seen diversity in the choice of Europe, of a transvestite from Austria, a man dressed as a woman with a beard. What does it say for our obsession with minorities our obsession with the off key, with our determination to vote against the norm. The singer was not out of the ordinary what was out of the ordinary was the sight of a man in a tight fitting woman's dress singing in a falsetto voice. Like a freak show it was popular but there were acts more deserving and it says much for the general public that they could not distinguish vaudeville from real talent.       
      

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

Living and dying

Our debate today is Living and Dying.
Probably the most important topics that present its self in our lives and which so little thought is given by the practitioners. Taken for granted, we assume the one and ignore the other.
From the moment of individual creation we are a marvellous example of evolution as egg and sperm begin the process of cell division and organ growth. We enter the various stages of our development from embryo to baby, to child to teenager and onwards. At about 21 we stop growing, we stop the general development of our bodies and we begin the long slow process of dying. The replacement of our cells slow down and we go into decline, our organs now fully developed are free to function for as long as they can but will no longer be significantly redeveloped and renewed. The fact is, we are dying from the moment of conception and yet we seek to ignore the relevance of being dead.
Given that our lives, three score years and ten are not even worth a second on the galaxial scale of time and the fact that we often quote time and distance in billions of years, its surprising that we don't reflect more often on the short time scale we have, especially since we promote ourselves, and our importance as a species.
The fact of dying is brushed under the proverbial carpet until we reach a certain age and then, like staring down the barrel of a gun, the the reality hits us.
Of course Religion comes to our aid as a palliative in that the concept of God and a life after death allows the faithful to believe that "it" is taken care of through ascendancy to heaven or paradise and so long as we follow the particular teachings, we are assured of life beyond death. This of course is comforting since it suggests that death is no more than a continuance of life but with a 5 star booking.
The Buddhists take a more pragmatic view. They believe that it is in "your hands" that death can be handled and understood as a process of life and that only by the continuous paring down of our fundamental self, in analysis and reanalysis can we prepare ourselves for death, not as an end but as a rebirth.
There is of course a theme running through all of this. It is the unpalatable fact that death is for all of us and until we die we do not know.           

    

Discombobulated

How do we make sense of what is around us as we go about our everyday passage through the 24 hours which make up our day. To many the day is so full of event that they are swept along by a current not quite of their own making, borrowed from the desire of others.
In a sense they are the lucky ones, life is hectic and in the sense of box ticking supportive. Going to bed at night aglow with the satisfaction that you achieved so much and have a diary full for tomorrow. Of course one could argue that the quality of your life and the achievements are nebulous in so far as touching your own needs, if of course you recognise what those needs are. Is life a blur of preordained targets that we pick up from somewhere, goals to achieve in our insatiable desire to please. 
A far cry from the person, the family who have been left behind at the starting gate,  who struggle to visualise anything other than hunger, both in their stomach and in their stunted personalities for something different. Across the world the vast majority of people go to bed hungry in one way or another.
Perhaps the simpler more egalitarian  type of society based on an earthy tradition of integrated respect has the fall back position which lacking worldly goods, they have each other.
Its in the New World that one sees the blight brought on by a lack of so called success. The dumbing down of compassion, even suggesting compassion is a weakness and that under achievement is the result of fecklessness and stupidity. Imagine 24 hours in the life of one of life's hobos, people often through no fault of their own (loss of job, divorce, injury) thrown on life's scrap-heap terrified of the next encounter with authority. Their day an excursion into the baazar, not an infinite choice of destiny but a curtailment of any chance to be accepted.        





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

African paythos

I suppose you are all trembling with excitement at the prospect of voting tomorrow ?
Can it be 20 years since the Wood family struggled on board the aircraft, destined for our future in the UK. Like the homeless and dispossessed we carried the overflow that couldn't fit in the suitcase in an assortment of bags to find what ever space we could in so called hand luggage. It was a period when the authorities were much more relaxed, no security check, no handing over of loose change or hoping your trousers wouldn't fall down as one is now required to take off ones belt and remove shoes to add to the indignity of air travel these days.
We had dallied in our farewells in the departure lounge and, slightly the worse for that final drink we mounted the aircraft steps to a waiting aircraft that had been delayed by this wide eyed and slightly disorganised family. Gushing our apologies we settled into our seats and gazed forlornly out of the port hole at the airport building and the slowly receding landscape of our home. We often are invoked these days to embrace our kids in what is going on but if truth be told we were as vague as to the why and the wherefore as they were.For them it was a journey, like many journeys held in cocoon of blind trust in 'parent knows best' but did we, we were gambling on an outcome which we thought we could control but which, in the immediate months ahead became a roller coaster of highs and lows. 
You also have been on a roller coaster. From the heady days of the first election in 94, the optimism generated
by dialogue, a dialogue which was new to South Africans but seemed so much more civilised than the brandishing of a gun.  Mandela had the charisma to win both sides over and one wonders what would have happened if he had been a younger man with plenty of energy to guide the country to a balanced democracy.
So tomorrow can only be a protest vote, a shot across the bows of the juggernaut that is the ANC. The view through the porthole will look much like before as the plane banks across the sky. The veldt stretching away into the distance, the country merging into the huge African landscape which from 30.000ft looses any sense of the human pathos that is played out each day.            

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

The search for answers

Astronomy, the collection of light is a science that boggles the mind in its evaluation and complexity.
The scope of exploration, the size and expense of the arrays of multi million pound high altitude telescopes that collect not only the wavelength of observable light but also the specialities of X ray, Gamma rays, Infra Red, Ultra Violet, the whole gambit of radiation which is emitted by stars in their various stages of birth and decay. The overlay of these captured images placed one on the other reveal a vivid ultra complex picture of the force of the earliest events in the history of the universe
The sub atomic world of the Neutrino and other strange particles which are there but not there, here but not here, are not observable but leave a footprint like a thief in the flower bed, the arrest is imminent but still needs identification. Another source of the energy that was manifest at the beginning of time.
Mankind, who can do the most crass things  particularly to other humans, a history littered with stupendous stupidity, has another side to its chequered history based on scientific achievement and philosophical reasoning.
We are too quick to despise the dark side of human nature and cast history as a succession of blunders and cold hearted power play but on the other side of the coin, mankind has been magnificent in the continuing search for answers.               

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

The importance of the blog and the blogger.

People ask me why I spend time blogging. What is the purpose of railing against the powers that be, be they political or big business. Why not relax and spend ones energy on the things that I can effect like choosing events to go to, shopping for things I convince myself I might need, ring fencing my mind around the 'me' factor and isolate the issues that effect us all, to the margins. The thrusting nature of the news as it floods our screens with potential catastrophe around the world can be ignored  we should switch to a game show or a wildlife documentary, cops and robbers or a romantic drama.  
The bulk of the people who inhabit western type homes have largely decided that the stories coming in, are outside their ambit of influence and therefore why get worked up about them. There is also the element of distrust that has accompanied global power where massive organisations can bend and manipulate a story to fit a corporate agenda and anyone going up against them is threatened with the might of the corporate law suite and the deep pockets of the corporate lobby.
One such story was of Dole Food Company based in California and their attempt to quash a documentary film made by the Swedish film maker,Fredrik Gertten depicting the conditions in the Nicaraguan banana plantations where insecticide was infecting the plantation workers. The documentary was due to be shown at a film festival in Los Angeles when Dole threatened a law suite on the organisers and eventually on the makers of the film. The multinational company had an image problem to solve and they did this by threats and innuendo placed in the main media. The weight of the lobbying both corporate and in government and the fear of the financial consequences if a case was presented in court was a massive disincentive to air what the documentary makers had filmed, first hand and believed to be a true representation of the facts. It was only due to the faithful backing of the Swedish Political System (there is no chance of the British doing the same) which refused to back down to American Corporate pressure that the film was shown first in Sweden and eventually in the US its self. After a great deal of filibuster and costly delay a US Court found the film to be perfectly acceptable and Dole withdrew its affidavit.
The reason for my writing this is that a turning point in the run up to the case going to court was a 'blogger' who raised the issue on his blog and got people, outside the mainstream media, talking. The power of the internet brought the case to the public's attention and they voted with their feet to get the supermarkets to take the Dole products off their shelves and the rest, as they say is history !!!     

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

Is it rational to believe in God.

'The Big Question', one of my favourite programs has been debating the topic, "is it rational to believe in God". Emotion, culture all play a part in rational decisions but can there ever be a rational answer to some thing so unusual as God. The scope of the question and how we try to rationalise our answers to such huge questions, is as difficult to understand, as is what the religions teach about the creation.
Our mind is the one really marvellous thing which defines us within the animal kingdom.
Belief on the other hand comes from a well, deep within us based, I would suggest on the environment we grew up in and substantiated by the type of questions we all ask ourselves as we progress through life.
The question of how the universe came into being. The question of how mankind came into being and man's so called special relationship with the creator. The question of death and is there a life beyond.
Science has come on in leaps and bounds from the era when the major religions came into being and published their independent manifestos, their books and proclamations based on faith. The argument that science hasn't answered the question of, "what created the beginning", other than the 'big bang', which in religious terms, could also be described as a moment of creation, but is a far cry from the image of Adam & Eve and the creation story.
The God Gap, the gap where gaps in scientific knowledge are characterised as the fault line in the atheists reasoning  has become a stop gap for religion  We can not know the answer, and therefore we turn to the supernatural.
Is religion nothing more than an abstract concept based on the idea of family and a healthy dose of paternalism, with its base now on the margins in areas where science has not presented a rational explanation.
Can the immensity of the universe be explained in an earth bound, parochial story revealed 2000 years ago.  

Equality

It is interesting how at all levels of society there is corruption or special pleading to make the case for exception to what some would call, the norm.
Berni Ecclestone has reputedly short changed the tax man in this country of over 2 billion pounds and has been charged with bribery. His labyrinth tax avoidance schemes, trust funds make the likelihood of him having to pay extremely unlikely. 
Patrick Mercer was caught on camera offering for a fee £500 to introduce a question in Parliament and has simply resigned from Parliament with no further questions asked .
Maria Miller obtained by false means, through her Parliamentary expenses over £40 000 which was deemed not illegal because of the wide remit we provide our MPs, she was ordered to repay £4000 when her parliamentary colleagues decided that she only had to return 10% and could keep the rest. 
The Benefit segment of society is handed prison sentences and fined for fiddling £2000.
The person who has a spare bedroom and can't downsize because there is no accommodation for them is charged for the room, roughly £14pw on a benefit income of roughly £65 a week.
The Barristers are refusing to take on cases of Legal Aid because their fees are not met and so a Judge ruled this week that the defendants, in a financial dispute would not get proper legal representation and so he dismissed the case. The Government insist that the Legal Aid Fee structure remunerates the barrister the equivalent of £100 000 pa with his junior on £60 000 pa.
Ordinary workers have generally not had an increase for over 3 years and the average pay £26 000 pa hides the many who are on £6.68ph with a 'no fixed hours contract' whereby they are signed up to an employer but have no guarantee that they will be given any work (nicely resembling our feudalist past).
And then of course there are those encouraged to work for nothing to gain work experience.
As the Prime Minister said, "we are all in this together" !!!