A day at the seaside

The day was perfect. A blue sky a warm day and the sea a hive of activity as the board riders and the dingy sailors launch into a light swell. The children poking about in the rocks hunting for crabs and other shoreline creatures waiting the tide to turn, were excited as much by their freedom to roam, without the parental precautionary warning, relieving Mom and Dad of some of their fears.
Dogs are in the ascendancy. Short ones, tall ones, fat ones, slim ones, - and these are only the "owners" !! Loving and adorable they  gaze into the eyes of their alter ego, instinctively awaiting the next move in this ballet of subjugation.
Seen from the dogs point of view its simply "where is the next meal coming from ?        
The semicircular sweep of the bay, partly ringed by brightly painted beach huts which, in years gone by the  the bathing belles of their day would emerge in their swimwear, dip a toe in the water and then retire again to the security of the hut.  Now-a-days the huts are part of the English obsession  with exclusivity which the ownership of a postage stamp sized piece of real-estate brings. 
A common currency throughout our land, we look "up", they look "down". The commoner on the commoners path, the privileged, in their quaint way, maintaining that essential exclusivity which a metre or two and a privet fence can bring.
The cliff path is dotted with people out enjoying the late season sunshine. The professional hiker with his rucksack water-bottle and boots strides the path, head down counting the miles as he ticks off another achievement, 20 miles today. The 'oldies' mark their scent in terms of a couple of hundred yds, with a pit stop on a bench every 50 !!   Young lovers gaze not at the scenery but into each others eyes revealing more beauty in that suggestive impassioned stare than all the wave strewn rocks and sand and sea could ever conjure. Its humanity in all its splendour.      

Handing on the baton

The art of politics, so different to the art of business, is hugely effected by sentiment and emotion.
The Scottish Referendum has come and gone. The excitement and the fears are now behind us as we relax back into the status quo. Like the proverbial rabbit back in its familiar burrow we look at the family portraits and seeing them in place we assume that nothing has changed.
Firstly the individuals that rose to the hour to make a difference. Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown exuded that important characteristic, 'commitment' to the particular belief which they were advocating. Its a feature of parliamentary politics that the advocacy of a view-point when stated from the benches in Westminster or the more modern arrangements in the Parliaments of Edinburgh and Cardiff is seen as pedestrian and without real commitment.
Both Brown and Salmond came onto our screens, much as the old politicians in the pre and post war era were projected in meetings held throughout the country they were excited to right wrongs, they struck a cord with the people that they really cared. 
Political pontification, sometimes read from a script, usually by a man in a suit seemed to be purely an act of theatre, but with Salmond and Brown you got conviction in spades.
Of course the issues, those of handing power to others is a difficult problem both to any parent or authority. As the son or daughter demand more scope to make their own decisions, the inherent parental belief is that not only do they (the parent) know best but that their offspring have things to learn.
Of course there is truth in this, one doesn't want them to experience the hardship, but life and the optimism for reinvention lies with the youth, lies with new people and new concepts,  which values will make the new generation different from the old.             

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

Another one bites the dust.

Why is it that women always feel badly done by ? 

The feminising of society has been progressing steadily over the last 20 years as we consider their special dispensation in an overwhelming number of situations. Boardrooms are only one target in the call to enlist women in areas which in the past has seen few women moving into positions of power. The selective election of women to parliament and the call, recently to ensure that if a man becomes Prime Minister that it was essential that a women hold the post of Deputy Prime Minister is all part of a trend.
Of course the women's critical role not only in giving birth but in the early raising of the young child lends the child's ear to a feminine philosophy from the very start of the child,s education.     Its enhanced by the fact that 95% of the teachers in the primary school system are women and the children now grow up with little male input.
Of course it is argued that there is no difference between the sexes, other than physiological, and that any role can be carried out equally well by either male or female.
The impact has been to emphasise the needs of women and their special place in society, often to the detriment of the man and having brought forward the first batch of specially raised feminised males the race is on to promote not only the rights of the woman but the wholesale surrender of a meaningful gender role for men. As the functions at work, now more than ever akin to those of a typist, it seems the redundancy of the male to a bit part is now almost complete.
The sheer bloody minded insistence about equality has today brought that bastion of male bonding, the golf club, completely into the female obit having won their case to be includes in the previously "male only" Royal & Ancient. They insisted that their exclusion was somehow against "their rights" and that men wishing to be together only with other men and without the female in attendance was seen as sociologically not in keeping with the trend of the 21st century.   
The profusion of segregated, "women only" establishments was glossed over as necessary to protect their innate sensitivity from testosterone loaded males but the argument that man equally needed protection from the shrill cacophony of a women's voice was missed altogether !!!        

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

2 days to go,

One of the worrying things about a 'referendum vote' is that it is often based on sentiment and desperation. That the existing status quo, which seems to many not to hear their social dilemma, where politics seem far off, is conducted in a different part of society with very little relevance to them.
The chance to give the ruling class a good kicking, even if it is only for a minute or two can blind rational thought leaving the  emotion of the moment to forget the hang-over tomorrow.
Scotland receives, through the Barnet formula. This system which distributes spending throughout the United Kingdom is not on an equal basis but is weighted depending which country is the recipient. Northern Island receives the best deal of any Union member followed by Scotland, Wales and last is England. This generally reflect the special needs of a country and of course if Scotland become independent they will have to fund all their social spending out of their own tax base. With oil from the North Sea being proportionally a high source of fundamental revenue it begs the question, what happens if the price on the international oil market falls and what happens when this finite resource is used up. Where does the income come from to fund the pensions, the schools, the social dependency.
Any resourceful well educated country can evolve the skills to create the industries to compete and sell their products on the world stage but the financial backing from the investment and money markets may not lend at a preferential rate of return and a county can struggle to balance its books.
These are not issues that the emotional call to independence deals with.
Their claim that they are in a better position to decide what to spend their income on, that they would naturally have a more empathetic view for their own specific population, than a bunch of millionaire politicians in Westminster is hard to deny.       

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

Butterfly Wings

The sound of butterfly wings in my ears. Just one of the concepts of a mind shattering book, dictated by the flick of an eyelid from a body locked in on its self because of paralysis brought on by a massive stroke.
The book and the story it tells is famous, I understand a film was made of it, but as in most things in life it was a chance event for me as I hunted around in a strange house for something to read.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby.
The point of the book is that in his enormously, tedious time consuming  attempt to communicate, one letter at a time he finds a reason for living even though to most people he would be considered dead.
The butterfly in his mind is alive and well but needs the fertilizer of communication to flower and as laborious as it is he has to release the images and the thoughts they produce to other human beings.
We take so much for granted, the walk to the shop, turning the page of a book saying hi to the person next to you. If all this and more is taken away from you in the moment of paralysis what is left other than memories. Today's events like yesterday's have virtually nothing to report nothing to differentiate, one from the other and the mind must eventually atrophy destroying its self through lack of nourishment. Only through the use of memory and the creative thoughts which need an outlet of some sort can sanity continue.
Writing a blog is my way of dealing with events, what's yours ?      

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

What if ?

What if ? What if Scotland gains independence why will such a change be so earth shaking as the politicians in England seem to describe.
The country's we know as Scotland and England will not change enormously there will be changes at the periphery, perhaps head offices will need to be relocated, perhaps the currency question is the most thorny but it is one that can be worked out over a number of years and should not beyond the whit of man to sort out. The industries in Scotland that have shareholders in England are no different to the industries we own across the world, the people from either country will continue to work and live where they choose and in so many ways things will go on as before.
Of course there will be bruised egos, particularly within the English Establishment which has established fiefdoms in both countries and who traditionally have complicated interlinking family shareholdings within both countries.
One important element is that currently the populations are united and vote for political parties that are represented in Westminster, the seat of power in both countries. The make up of the Scottish population leads it to vote for the Labour Party and the state of the Westminster Labour Party is going to be crucially effected by loosing these votes which of course will be a gain to the Conservative Party and in a finely balanced House of Commons it could produce a swing that will ensure Tory hegemony for years to come. 
What ever happens it will not be as earth shattering as the usual members of the chattering classes who appear on our screens each night, project.
For no other reason, when I see the Westminster bubble types up in arms I, perhaps perversely, feel that a shattering of the established view, warning us of "dower implications"  which will lead to irrevocable damage, one is ever more reminded of the extremely poor standing of politicians in Westminster and of how we have simply lost faith in them.

The referendum.

How our present is caught in its past. Often in a fast moving and developing society the past is irrelevant, particularly to the young who are the motivating force for any society. A society struggling to reinvent its-self in the face of unprecedented technological change, hoping to cope with the electorates ability to research opinions from a much wider spectrum of information and question the drip fed established line.
Our heads of state and the organisational structure which allows them to manipulate society, (government and the civil service), is extracted from an exclusive branch of society who were taught to believe "we are born to rule". Through exclusive and expensive selective schools, a class of people are bred to seek out their own as the future play-makers within the boardroom and the Establishment its self. 
It is only when you have the opportunity to break this self perpetuating mould can you forge a new system which encompasses a larger more representative section of the existing society. What we are witnessing in Scotland is a dignified example of true democracy at work.
"One man one vote" is the call of Westminster, Washington and in most countries of Western Europe but we know from experience that Western "Democracy" is a mirage made up of vested interests, where money plays the all important role.
It is only when you have a referendum with a single question, each citizen having one vote, not asked to consider the party ramifications but rather an issue that they feel, one way or the other has an answer that it is theirs personally to give and theirs alone.

Sottish Referendum

As we crawl, some would say hurtle towards the Scottish Referendum, the likelihood of a major shake up between Scotland and England, which ever way the outcome falls, is inevitable. With the vote likely to be knife- edged what ever way it goes, 50% of the Scottish people will be dissatisfied and plainly ready for more confrontation.
The main argument was always that Scotland would be better governed by Scots, putting  Scotland's interests at the forefront of their actions.
In terms of the way we have become used to our Establishment running our country at the behest of a class oriented, elitist hierarchy , often at odds with the needs of the bulk of the population, the English are beguiled by a political system that has so few of them at their heart.
Scotland on being granted a Parliament separate from Westminster discovered that the intrigue which is at the heart of English politics (nobles oblige) and runs deep through our governance, was at odds for the people of Scotland much as it is for the majority in England. Its just that we have not yet figured a way of releasing ourselves from the bondage which is our history.   

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

The why and the wherefore.

One of the distinct and most disturbing features of the ISIS phenomenon is that it is not unique and has many offshoots around the area of the Middle East spreading down into Africa.
A common denominator is that it flies under the Jihadist wing of extreme Muslim orthodoxy and attracts the young from many disparate, disadvantaged communities who feel dis-empowered and unable to carry any weight within their own society.
Historically its been a claim, of any working class section in any society and could have made down through the ages but it is  brought into focus these days by the ease of enhanced communication.
The internet binds people in many ways and one of the claims made against the internet is that individuals doesn't communicate any more with the person closest to them but instead, with people who share opinions, (often diametrically at odds with people in ones own close group, including family), opinions which dissemble the unity which rubbing shoulders with one-another brings. 
The issue I feel, which has alienated many people, young and old is the effect that 'globalisation' has had on all of us.
Its potential to bi-pass 'national economies' to the detriment of those in the local economy. 
Its potential to discriminate against the local work force, fielding out employment to low cost societies in other parts of the world, removing the jobs and the opportunities within the local economy, effecting the youth who see a life long cul de sac ahead of them and therefore become desperate.
The cement which binds some of these people, other than their financial plight is the religious argument.  The major global player, America, is, seen by many Muslims to have interfered in conflicts specific to Muslim countries therefore the harm done is shared amongst all Muslims.
The marginalised, alienated youth rise to the call of Jihad and we should be very concerned as these extreme movement spreads through corrupt, ill ruled, elitist societies that are so prevalent in Africa.
With such an extensive base they could reek havoc on everyone.           

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

Jabberwocky

Having travelled to Wales this week its as close as I have been to the "circus" that travels with the mighty who rule us.
On each bridge crossing the highway are armed police, on the roads vehicles are pulled over and searched we are in shut down mode all because the so called democratically elected leaders of the Western World need to come together to have talks about the future of that other part of the world that they don't represent. The cost and the need to go to such ends to protect these people is yet evidence of the crazy situation where our representatives have to be segregated from the people they represent.
There was a time, when I was young when one Bobby (policeman) would stand on Downing Street whilst people like my Dad and I would walk up to the front door of the Prime Ministers residence and pose for photos. Today its gates, no go zones and flack jackets on our policemen.
The security and accommodation, the disruption of peoples lives, the loss of income as the goons take over and all in the name of yet another conference to talk of many things - of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax of cabbages and kings ! Jabberwocky seems a fitting phrase.

And all this as we see the ridiculous scenario of the UK police issuing an arrest warrant to a couple who had "legally" removed their child who was suffering from a brain tumour from a British Hospital who could not offer the treatment he needed and  there was no hospital in the UK who could afford the Proton Beam equipment. Apparently Prague in the Czech Republic can afford to have the equipment and so the family travelled to Europe to make the treatment available to their son.
We had the unedifying scene of the parents being separated from the very sick boy and thrown in a Spanish jail on a warrant issued by the Hampshire Constabulary.
How crass how stupefyingly banal of the authorities in this country, both medical and the police to try to justify their actions with "there is no evidence that he would benefit from the treatment" to "we were acting in accordance with medical advice".   Not a scintilla of rational common sense amongst any of the authorities in which we are supposed to have respect.  
But and here is the crux of the matter, how many Proton Beam Machines, (which we say we can't afford) could we install for the cost of one Jabberwocky. Lewis Carroll wrote the poem as a nonsense verse but we seem to have inherited it lock stock and barrel into the every day world of politics.