Redefining ourselves

How do we as human beings evaluate the effect others have on us, their proximity, their influence in terms of the daily interaction we have with them, the imposition of a qualifying effect on what we do and what we think.
Growing up we are constrained by our parents. Up to a certain stage we are oblivious of this since they, the parents, are our world and we have not formed any sense of our own independence. During our teenage years we sometimes overcompensate our own importance and clash continually with those who, up to now, have been the conduit through which we exist.

Moving away from home is our first attempt at self reliance and usually we stay closely in touch with our parents because they represent the strength of our childhood experience. 
Eventually if we are lucky we find the companionship of another and move in with that person under the same roof which eventually can lead to the start of ones own family and so the cycle repeats its self.
A common factor is the need to share our space with someone else.
The comfort we derive in sharing a flat with a friend or taking on a lodger is of a different magnitude to falling in love and committing ones self to a whole different ball game.
The intricacy of establishing a relationship in which the "significant other" is always in the loop and in essence a contributor to all your emotional and physical life, is an enormous step.
Few achieve a full and proper union. Some play around the edges by creating fields of interest which, whilst not excluding the other make it likely that for a few hours (other than time at work) a space is created and one can re-engage with ones old self.
The question of why and if this space is necessary and, more importantly, if this space becomes permanent through divorce or death, can one revert to being single ?
The insecurity that lies within many people can find solace in the companionship which a long relationship brings. It can be an important prop, often un-noticed and unappreciated but, like a foundation in a building, 'when called into question', can cause the structure to collapse.
The bond which is created when people live together (often subliminally) drives our everyday action and, through repetition, we become its slave. Like the slaves released from a lifetime of servitude they can not throw off, in a day, the sense of subservience which can remain often to the end.
Is it the tie of emotional love, or is it the many years of comfortable confinement which, like a prisoner, once released, finds it hard to exist on his own. The space and,most of all the silence is hard to cope with.
Relearning the confidence of ones youth is virtually impossible, the resilience and audacity are missing. The hunter is tamed and the essential "drive" is sublimated to a distant memory.
Of course once the genie is out of the bottle and a realignment with ones past self, especially if it is over many decades is fraught with problems.
The person you have become is shot through with conformity and self justification, these being the only armour one had to protect the 'original version' of who you think you are, from the "idealised individual", someone else had tried to fashion.
How to undo the the smooth exterior of so many contests and find the 'context' which got you through so many scrapes and near death experiences, when the only value you now have is the figure at the bottom of the insurance policy.

A cautionary tale.

I was thinking, as I began that slow drowsy descent into sleep, of the South African sunset, the rich colour as the fiery orb settled into the Indian Ocean and night rapidly descended.

The sounds of an African night, the cicadas, unseen but busy, the bullfrogs deeply resonant in the still warm air. The distant sound of an animal kill with its final scream and, if close to the shore line, the rhythmic crash of waves beating to a distant interminable drum. 


The night was always a time for caution a time to be weary, a time to check the locks and put the dog out. Night time is always instinctively a time when we feel at our most vulnerable. 
The dark holds potential danger, it provides natural cover for those who would do us harm and, in the politically ravaged society which is today's South Africa, harm is all around.
People turn to their beds their ears sensitive to the unusual, ready to respond, ready to press the alarm !! A nation in trauma which gets on with the business of living amidst the dying, unconsciously stressed with memories of a very different lifestyle not too long ago. We live in hope and deny the statistics, trapped in our past we become partially schizophrenic inhibiting a world of our own creation whilst reality is fraught with the unknown.
On waking there is the beautiful transformation of a new day. The air is cool and clear as the sun returns to bless the land, peeping above the horizon lighting the hazy clouds and transforming the earth, from the fear of the unseen to optimism as the world around is revealed once again and we still a part of it.
A busy day ahead the car nestles into the traffic and one is again confirmed of being a part of a rational system where we engage and trade our skills with others, talking of deals and projects and of the future ! Man,s inbuilt optimism competes against pessimism, offsetting the blight of depression, a scourge very prevalent within western secular society.
As the car wends its way home in the falling light the niggle of apprehension returns and the protective mind padlocks our reward for living in such a physically beautiful country which crass human stupidity has ruined for everyone.

Ever more wealthy, ever more powerful

It strikes me repeatedly these days how we are in the grip of a massive fraud.
Wealth,economic growth, full employment, ultra low inflation and a populous that is nearly schizophrenic with the constant adjustment it has to make, on an annual basis, regarding its own economic security.
People have long since given up on the concept of value and rather consider a purchase, any purchase as therapy to prove they are still functioning within the distortion we describe as society. We worship at the alter of the shopping mall where retail therapy is the solution to jangled nerves and a frayed conscience. We fully understand the consequences of buying in a rag trade where prices have little or no relationship to the cost of manufacture. We happily load our Supermarket trolley with milk that is offered at below the cost the farmer has to pay to fill his pail and, as a consequence we become part of a bankruptcy and sometimes a suicide !!
We know all that and yet we fixate on the glamour of the footballers and their wives who, focused on Gucci are to be seen parading across the magazines like some idiosyncratic adolescent out on the town with Daddy's credit card. Knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Our world is corrupt from top to bottom. The legal profession offers platitudes about the importance of a secure legal framework for society which is attainable and affordable to everyone but see laws which, if broken by the ordinary man in the street would mean a jail sentence but for the wealthy are broken with impunity because they are protected.
The taxation rules and regulations that pertain to ordinary people are flaunted by the the massive globalised companies which no one, not even the national government can effect.
Learning that 1% of the worlds population hold the key to 50% of the worlds wealth, is
unprecedented as we listen to the media doomsayers decrying the left wing take over of the government in Greece.
We are told that only the 'conservative financial establishment', with their political masters and the 'Market' (corruption writ large) with its Short selling, its Leverage, its Futures, and its Arbitrage, not to mention Derivatives can save the day, but save it for whom?
Only they can save us from unemployment, rapidly dwindling money in our pockets and a debt mountain that our children and their children will still be paying for 50 years from now.
This new wealth (sic) has mystically been created by a slight of hand.
The banks through their own corrupt practices began to loose confidence in their own 'contrived' value and so, to prevent them from going under "our" Governments printed trillions of dollars, pounds and soon to be euro's (a massive rearrangement in world wide asset manipulation benefiting the 1%) so the money could be handed back to the Banks to revalue their balance sheet with money borrowed from the very people they are trying to fleece.
We wait in vain for the intended industrial reinvestment initiated through the banks re-lending us the money we gave them !!!
 

These Establishment figures, which in the case of Greece are touted as the only "safe pair of hands", are in contrast to the 'socially concerned' new government led by Alexis Tsipras, who almost universally is decried by the Worlds Establishment for saying "enough is enough". 
German led austerity has crippled his country, as it is doing in Spain and Ireland. Austerity will also deface this country but of course, it's austerity for the "underbelly" whilst the 1% grow ever more wealthy and ever more powerful.

Rational for going to war

One is struck by the potential repercussion arising in Greece, possibly in Spain, perhaps in Ireland as the conservative force the repression of the respective social structures in each country by the use of austerity and austerity alone for adjusting their respective balance sheets.
Syriza the Opposition Party in Greece seems set to win and become the new government in Greece. Their opposition to the German led austerity measures have been in force for five years and have led to massive deprivation within Greek society particularly amongst the poor.
The European Union led by Germany, is a bureaucratic system which is controlled by an unelected section of European society which smacks at old fashioned Feudalism, where everything was owned by a few and people were in hock to a small powerful oligarchy.
To overcome this "democracy" evolved to bring in the 'general populous' who were invited to vote and so effect their individual prospect. 

The global economy now over-rides the democratic principle, we have allowed an elite to brow-beat us with the principle of economic destruction if we don't coalesce in their grand scheme. One wonders if the wheels fell off the economic machine, prescribed by the Washington Consensus, whether the poor of this continent would be all that worse off. It's highly unlikely that the industrialists and the investors would take their toys home if the people voted for a dose of good old fashioned socialism again, socialism, a political view which puts the population at large back where it belongs, at the head of the agenda. 
But what about growth will be the cry from Davos. Growth, growth, the dreaded growth. Growth at any cost particularly the human cost since the concept of a 'trickle down economy' is well and truly shot to pieces as the top one percent (measured in thousands of people ) own fifty percent of the wealth whilst the other fifty percent is spread amongst the billions of us, the fall guys who are expendable.
In theory our vote is worth as much as anyone's vote. The multimillionaire carries no more clout than me into the ballot box. That vote is supposed to represent me and others, as to the type of representative government me chose to govern us. As we become poorer and have to rely on food banks and the seductive credit which subverts us essentially into being life long debtors, of having to sell their time and labour to who ever, irrespective of the individual strain on the fabric of family and inherently, society.
If we were to kick the habit bred into us of the short term, consumptive lifestyle and begin to construct our earning/spending function on other values such as the importance of having time to evaluate our passage through time and through the world at large, perhaps we would bring the economy back into "perspective", a perspective not seen from the boardroom but from a human perspective. 

From the human perspective

One is struck by the potential repercussion arising in Greece, possibly in Spain, perhaps in Ireland as the conservative force the repression of the respective social structures in each country by the use of austerity and austerity alone for adjusting their respective balance sheets.
Syriza the Opposition Party in Greece seems set to win and become the new government in Greece. Their opposition to the German led austerity measures have been in force for five years and have led to massive depravation within Greek society particularly amongst the poor.
The European Union led by Germany, is a bureaucratic system which is controlled by an unelected section of European society which smacks at old fashioned Feudalism, where everything was owned by a few and people were in hock to a small powerful oligarchy.
To overcome this "democracy" evolved to bring in the 'general populous' who were invited to vote and so effect their individual prospect.
The global economy now over-rides the democratic principle, we have allowed an elite to brow-beat us with the principle of economic destruction if we don't coalesce in their grand scheme. One wonders if the wheels fell off the economic machine, prescribed by the Washington Consensus, whether the poor of this continent would be all that worse off. It's highly unlikely that the industrialists and the investors would take their toys home if the people voted for a dose of good old fashioned socialism again, socialism, a political view which puts the population at large back where it belongs, at the head of the agenda.
But what about growth will be the cry from Davos. Growth, growth, the dreaded growth. Growth at any cost particularly the human cost since the concept of a 'trickle down economy' is well and truly shot to pieces as the top one percent (measured in thousands of people ) own fifty percent of the wealth whilst the other fifty percent is spread amongst the billions of us, the fall guys who are expendable.
In theory our vote is worth as much as anyone's vote. The multimillionaire carries no more clout than me into the ballot box. That vote is supposed to represent me and others, as to the type of representative government me chose to govern us. As we become poorer and have to rely on food banks and the seductive credit which subverts us essentially into being life long debtors, of having to sell their time and labour to who ever, irrespective of the individual strain on the fabric of family and inherently, society.
If we were to kick the habit bred into us of the short term, consumptive lifestyle and begin to construct our earning/spending function on other values such as the importance of having time to evaluate our passage through time and through the world at large, perhaps we would bring the economy back into "perspective", a perspective not seen from the boardroom but from a human perspective. 

Music on tap

 

I am listening to Ravels Bolero through my new Sonos toy. The music with its ratter-tat-tat snare drum background, the various instruments coming in, one after the other, repeating a haunting musical refrain. Slowly the volume increases, the sound swells until, as if in crisis, the shrill and dramatic cry from the strings plunges the whole orchestra into a torment, like an agonised animal in its last dying throes leaving a final crescendo of sound followed by an equally dramatic void when the music stops.
Jack Johnson's easy strolling lyrics, Maria Callas glissading up and down the scales with perfect pitch and sublime control, music on tap as never before.
One of the first records I chose was Enrico Caruso singing an aria from Puccini. The recording was old and you could hear on the track the scratches of the steel needles which were used in those days. It was the self same record I have upstairs, a vinyl 78 one of many, a precious memory of my Mother and Father and the music we played when I was young.
With a catalogue of thousands there isn't a song or piece that isn't available. 
Fore-instance I have just switched, between paragraphs, to Bluesology played by the fabulous Modern Jazz Quartet, how easy was that ? 

I remember going to the St George's Hall in Bradford to sit enraptured as those jazz giants performed on stage. Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie all our American heroes in the flesh and only a 'trolley bus' ride away !!
Now at the tap of a computer key the sound floods out from the speaker. Missing of course is the excitement of sitting 10 rows back and being carried along with the enthusiasm of the ones fellow acolytes but then you can not have everything and anyway a glass of wine at the elbow and not having to queue in the wet draughty street for the last bus home has something to recommend it.

The Holocaust

 

This weeks debate on BQ was "is the Holocaust still relevant".
This is a subject that many people shy away from because it is so emotive and has remained so because of the ability of the main group, the Jews who were persecuted, to gain media attention and remind us of the terrible things which happened under the Nazi's.
In so far as the parallel attempt to exterminate other groups of people, the Homosexuals, the Disabled, the Gypsy's, the Slav's, do not quite fit the memorial memory we have on behalf of the Jews and the special place Jewish people claim to have.
This is not to deny the terrible trauma but an attempt to gain perspective.
Of course to hear the description of the mechanised murder, to hear the description of walking skeletons in Belsen, substantiated by the horrific pictures taken when the concentration camps were liberated. Of the so called 'scientific experimentation' and the empty eyed horror in the eyes of the subject as the ice bath reduced the body temperature below what a human can withstand
Was this a different, a greater sense of depravity ?
There are always sadists on hand to carry out the act. People who turned the screw on the rack during the Spanish Inquisition. People who would 'draw and quarter' in this country during the Middle Ages. Mentally disturbed people who relish inflicting pain.
The people gathered to debate the matter were largely Jewish and perhaps it was a measure of the Establishments sensitivity not to line up the 'usual people' who would try to deny the Jewish case. Not, I must add, to project 'Holocaust Denial', but to ask why the Jewish diaspora insist that their loss, their disfigurement as a group, their place in the history is special when the Hutu genocidal mass slaughter of the Tutsi or Pol Pots massacres. Mao Zedong purges killing millions, Stalin's totalitarian murder on an even more massive scale. The question is "why should the Holocaust be special" ?
 
>

I protest you ruminate too much

Questions, questions, questions. Living on ones own with only limited opportunity to have conversations about the events that can fill the day one is left to ponder many things to which there are no answers.

What is the meaning of life is good for starters, closely followed by the meaning of death. How inextricably we are tied up in trying to put answers to these questions especially if one is well advanced in the one, and coming ever closer to the second.
Our concept of life and our passage through it, depends on, can we persuade ourselves that the outcomes along the way were at least meaningful, by which I mean our memories of the people we knew and loved still can make us smile and be happily nostalgic.
Nostalgia is a mental comfort when we remember times and events which gave us real pleasure. Of course the actors in our personal drama have moved on, moved away, become alien to our current situation.
As Frank Sinatra sang how great it would be to turn the clock back and "do it all again".
Perhaps life has been, as most lives are, full of ups and downs but on the whole you hopefully have few regrets. It would also be nice to meet up with the characters in our play to see how they have done in their own drama and perhaps hopefully, they too would show some interest in you ?
The "shuffling off this mortal coil" bit is the most difficult part.


If you are religious you have convinced yourself that there is a heaven and that life has another destination. 
If you believe in reincarnation then this too is at least an 'extension' and inherent in it, the consolation or massaging of the frightening "finality" which death brings.
If you believe in the Spirit world then again the destination lays outside our bodies in a contrivance of the mind and it's separation from body. As the body dies the mind somehow escapes and continues to exist.
Of course if you are an Atheist and are convinced that the death of the body is the end of the individual full stop then one has to find a way of coming to terms with this. Perhaps if you die in your sleep whilst still relatively healthy or you die unexpectedly then this is the best way to go. If at the other end of the scale you are in great pain then death comes as a release.
Normally though it's a phase to go through best with other people, people who care for you and can give you support. Sadly most people who have themselves held the hand of their loved one are alone when their time comes.
It's a conundrum which thankfully only reveals its self when one becomes aware of "the time in hand" and how, try as we might, we find it difficult to find better things to do than ruminate.  

What odds do you offer Mr Blankfien

Once more the markets are in disarray with the fall in the oil price and now, the fall in copper.
In times past it would have been thought a good thing to see the price of oil falling. Oil is a constituent in the price of so many things and to see it fall is now apparently a foreboding of bad news.
Of course for the producers and the men and women who work in the industry, these are troubling times but one would have thought for the world of commerce at large and particularly for the consumers of products that are falling in price, this is very good news particularly when wages have been held low for a number of years and disposable income is squeezed.
But no the economists, at least the ones employed by the Banks are wringing their hands portraying an implied crisis of deflation and stagnation where the economy doesn't grow no matter what stimulus you apply, including, printing billions of pounds, artificially propping up the your own Bond market (IOUs placed against the assets you hold in the country ) by buying your own paper with the money you just printed.
There was a time when growth was not worshiped on the high alter of finance.
Growth was a constituent of industry and based of increasing the volume of people you could sell your goods to which, in turn made you more profitable, improving your image (if you were a public company) on the Stock Market for investors to buy shares to share in the success of your company. It was the basis of Capitalism.
Today we have an 'industry' which is separate from the normal industries which produce widgets.
An industry which produces nothing, and rely on making a profit by increasing the volume in the units of exchange (Money) and the volatility of the transaction of this commodity which we measure our wealth, "money".
It's called Investment Banking.
Some of the best brains, fresh out of university work and contrive to build schemes to ever increase the multiples which flow from a transaction, extending the opportunities to which gambling, will distort and move the currency (or it's hedged position) so that a bet on the position this way or that will provide a profit and a corresponding loss for those engaged.
Using money as the main source of "economic activity" leads, as anyone will agree who has extensively gambled, to an unstable life style with unpredictable highs and lows such as we now experience in the financial market.
The bet has replaced the old rational based decision regarding stocks and shares, a transparent balance sheet, allowed you to buy, long term in support of a company producing actual things to trade and sell.
Will the fly walk higher or will it turn lower, what odds will you offer Mr Blankfein ? 

Oh, by the way, his compensation (I suppose compensation for him having to leave home each morning) in 2007 was $53,965,418, so you might have to wait in line for the profit to be adjudicated.

Ignorance is indeed bliss

I understand the technicalities but the ease of dropping in on other cultures at the touch of screen is truly amazing.
I've just connected my Hi Fi amplifier up to my iPad through a Sonos wireless WiFi piece of gear and am listing, as I type this to a Cuban radio station carried on Tunein Radio. 

The scope of the stations and the type of program seems endless. 
Classical, Folk, Jazz, Opera, stations broadcasting their own cultural music, Talk Shows, Current Affairs , Two man stations in Alice Springs talking about farming, Bolivians talking about a change in the price of Hashish, its a world laid bare in all its complexity.
The Internet of course is the medium for detailing what is going on, what we should see and what we shouldn't. It puts my puritanical old fashioned up bringing, listening to the crackle of Radio Luxembourg, the whistling, in and out signal strength with loads of atmospherics on short wave radio from my faithful companion, the Nordmende Globetrotter portable radio into perspective.
The BBC had 3 program's The Light Program, The Home Service and a Classical Program and that was it. TV was represented by one program, BBC 1 and it went off air at 10.30, 11.00 pm although if you were keen the Test Card was on for another hour. As the program's closed down for the night we listened to 'God Save the Queen', being in your own home you were at liberty to stand or sit depending how much of a royalist you were !
Simple times when effort was required to play a record and you had to actually get out of the chair to turn the record over to play the other side.
Were we happy. Did the simplicity reflect our 'individuality' and being individual we had the space to see ourselves and count our actions as special.
Today we are part collective we all feed from the same trough. We shop at the Supermarket and use the Credit Card to hide our true worth.
We cram the Airports and accept the ignominy of the security search as we proceed on a Package Holiday where everything is pre-paid and resembles being at home.
The TV channels are full of Market Segmented crap repeated at the same time on at least 4 other channel spots as part of a program spectrum,sold as a hundred channels but actually probably twenty showing marginally different shows.
Twenty four hour news which, like a loop is replicated every hour. The editors having decided what we should know repeat and repeat the same old guff whilst real stories, real tragedies are left to be reported on other media.

Perhaps simplicity and with it our ignorance was indeed bliss !!

The great debate

It's "The Big Question Time" again and if I can keep you all from falling asleep or before you do, the question this week was "can science provide enough evidence to prove that there is no foundation for region" ?
Gathered together were a group of well meaning intelligent people who were poles apart in their conclusions but gives me hope to be able to listen to people with genuine belief.
There's that word again, belief.
On one side belief is packed with partially conclusive facts derived through scientific and experimental observation.
Belief by the other group is based on a philosophical and an emotion approach that all things can not be answered by science and the parts that cannot are part of the religious ferment in which God had a hand.
One of the distinguishing features of the scientific tribe is their lack of compassion to people who have and live by religion. They are overtly sceptical, it's as if they are afraid to take on board the fact that they can not and may never know all the facts and therefore are entrenched in a belief system that has no fall back, no sense of forgiveness, no empathy with scripture that places such an importance on love for loves sake. They have to be right since the empirical logic of their reasoning has to deny the mystical nature of God.
On the other hand those who believed in a god were short of evidence. They postulated the idea that we do not know the nuts and bolts of our universal existence but with so many unanswered questions why not project another one and call it the Creator. In this way we always have a solution to any unanswerable question, it's God will.
There is always a tendency to judge the absolute correctness of human endeavour, to presume "there is an answer" !
Perhaps, as with chaos theory and the unpredictability of the sub atomic structure, truth, ultimate truth, is unknowable and the comfort many human beings get from a religious belief system, what ever form it might take, is that the human mind has constructed a sensible "fall back" position on this unknowability which, plagues the intellectual mind searching for answers but finds contentment to those, happy to believe in an all powerful God.

Your country doesn't need you

People smuggling is big business.
£5000 for the trip across the Med' x 1000 people = 5 million pounds in pocket !
With the Syrian crisis there are millions waiting to escape the turmoil of Syria and there are millions behind them in the African queue. The world has changed and it's another Mafia controlled money making scheme which trades turmoil for the possibility to escape and a new life.

Europe is the beacon with its relatively settled economy, politically tranquil, it has a legal system which guarantees stability, three of the many things missing in their lives.
Given that the urge to escape is so strong can it, should it be opposed ?
Will all our lives be transformed if this wave of humanity arrives looking for a job ?
When I was growing up boarders meant just that. They were true demarcation lines between nations and to cross from one into another meant intrusive checking. It was accepted that nations had the right to ask questions and to turn away people it wished to. There was no moral opprobrium between nations it was accepted that it was your business who you allowed in and who you wished to exclude.
And then the Global Consensus boys got to work. A global economy had to have two things, free movement of goods and free movement of labour, boarders were an obstruction to this philosophy and had to come down. One way to change is to alter the 'mind set' of the people with a panoply of goodies since, like children we can be swayed with the concept of a treat.
Free movement of people became, the ease of getting around on holiday, just as the global economy meant, cheap goods and jobs abroad ? The down side that ones own job might be cheapened and that ones own industries priced out of the market was never mentioned except by people who were described as cranks or stick in the mud individuals who had failed to see the opportunities.
If you showed concern about the scale of the influx of labour and its effect on services such as schools, hospitals and housing you were charged with being racist.
As our hospital system now grinds to a halt, as our schools swell to bursting, as the market price for housing takes advantage of massive shortages the doom- sayer has been shown to be true.
Meanwhile the 'Changers' who ushered in cheap labour and a highly unstable, easily manipulated work force, ideal for the economy makers (Goldman Sachs) but far less so for the ordinary citizen who has to adjust to a life of lowering of living standards, the Changers have become the Masters of the Universe !
It was all predictable but the masses just like the poor buggers who marched away for Queen and Country and Lord Kitchener's call, "Your Country Needs You" must now face the fact that the reverse is true, "Your Country Doesn't Need You" !!!
 

Part of a process.

Listening to the House of Lords debating a bill passing through the House regarding helping or assisting terminally ill patients to die.
The House is doing what we expect it to do which is to take the bill, sentence by sentence and examine it for its full meaning. The House is full of learned people, legal, medical, and people who have spent their lives in high responsible positions.
Given this forensic background there is a tendency to loose sight of the general purpose of a bill because of their quest to uncover blemishes, if there are any blemishes in the wording or intent of the bill. 


They were questioning the use of the words "assisted dying"and were suggesting the word assisted suicide be used. One argument was that because the bill would amend the legal status on suicide, it should be called so. A counter argument contended that 'assisted dying' was not the same as suicide and we were reminded that there was a wide variance between a person who wishes to take their life, because they are depressed, and a person who is terminally ill and in distress due to pain and wished to end their life. 
We have also seen the terrible condition of patients who have for instance, motor neurone disease or the locked in syndrome but in so far as I read the position, their terrible condition would not be covered by the phrase "terminally ill" which this bill is designed to cover.
When life becomes 'unbearable' is the condition attached and the bill states there has to be two doctors plus the agreement of the next of kin. Finally the drug administered has to be administered by the patient themselves.
The question of having two doctors to attend the final act brings into focus the anomaly we have today that few people can say they know their doctor. When I was growing up our doctor knew the family and did when required house calls. A far cry from today when you are nothing more than a statistic on the doctors list, in no way do they know you, you have your allotted time in front of them 8/9 minutes and then it's "next please". The concept of the doctor knowing your history, other than what is on the computer screen is facetious and the 'cautionary over site we would expect from "our" doctor is misplaced.
As in abortion there are a body of doctors who wouldn't take part in abortion, other than if the life of the mother was at risk so there are doctors willing for hire to assist in abortion. Would we not run into the same dilemma and that doctors who would assist in the process of assisting someone to die would assist on the basis as they would see it of fulfilling a medical necessity and see it all as part of a 'process'.
When it becomes 'a process' we must all worry since excruciating pain will be only one of many reasons to assist the person out of this life.
 

Politically correct

Listening to a discussion on RT between the Russian interviewer and a French women in Paris, a journalist writing for the Telegraph one was struck by the influence of each persons background on how they viewed the the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which was attacked a number of days ago.
Russia has been very strong in its handing out the retaliatory fist, for instance in Chechnya where the Muslim population were crushed. So whilst they are by no means soft on the Muslim population they are not favoured with the idea of free speech. As a conservative nation, well used to oppression of the individual they are concerned about the idea that free 'speech is sacrosanct'.
The women in Paris followed the French philosophical approach. People were free to criticise anything, there are no subjects off limits and that opinions were secured by the rule of law.
There is of course something that smacks of hypocrisy, of double standards in that racism has clearly set up a demarcation as to what you and can't say, in fact it's carried to ridiculous ends with terms that are innocuous but may upset someone's sensibility, these terms are banned even from speech, whilst depicting Mohammed in a sexual act is deemed part of free speech.
It doesn't make sense even if, a secularist would have religion on a parr with mysticism and therefore not of this world, religion and the characters in the religious story are real to the believer.
If the law against being critical towards a racial group or towards a group with a sexual orientation is there to prevent disharmony then surely being disrespectful to another group is equally bad.
Of course what flows from this is that we will tie ourselves up in knots if we restrict ourselves to being concerned about the feelings other people. We may be misguided, we may be wrong but we have a right to hold that opinion so long as we do not intend harm. Now the very nature of satire is to poke fun, but it's a close call as to whether it does harm.
If a Muslim is asked to turn the other cheek and not get upset why can't we ask the same of the other groups, currently protected by law and and by Political Correctness.
Freedoms of speech means just that and we have in my opinion currently got ourselves in a right old muddle as people are confused and bullied by "another minority group", the dreaded PC Brigade.
 

Of course, what time.

One of the pleasures, believe it or not, as one drives through the wet streets of East London is that with all the activity going on around one feels a part of the huge machinery that is humanity going about its daily life.

The comfort one feels to be inside this bubble and not outside is palpable and is a relief from the feeling of insularity that retirement brings. The camaraderie of being amongst work mates and the office environment in general is a rich balm to the insecurity of being alone. The problems and the solutions of the day make being awake meaningful since they are shared with others. This constant interaction is something we take for granted throughout our lives and only when we are penned out to pasture does the view over the fence seems like another world which is getting on, just fine without us. We make so much of our own work related environment the one into which we were contributing so much effort and hard work that it is nearly impossible to imagine how the world of work is managing to get on without us. But they do and we are soon forgotten. 

Perhaps we should remember this when we sacrifice so much life to the alter of our job unable to distinguish the importance of someone else's priority, from the one we perhaps should have been attuned to closer to home. But without our sense of our own self importance, without the job title, without the boost to our ego we would not grow. The pressure of someone else's time scale and their power to inflict pain if we don't perform. The ability to stay ahead of that ultimate conflict, "your fired" leads to quite a lot of satisfaction similar to winning a race, or staying alive on the battlefield. Adrenalin is mankind's aphrodisiac it pumps the little grey cells into happy action without which we are virtually dead.
So when I get a call on the phone, "can you look at doing a job for us next week", I am happy to reply "of course, what time"!!!

Political correctness

Listening to a discussion on RT between the Russian interviewer and a French women in Paris, a journalist writing for the Telegraph one was struck by the influence of each persons background on how they viewed the the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which was attacked a number of days ago.

Russia has been very strong in its handing out the retaliatory fist, for instance in Chechen where the Muslim population were crushed. So whilst they are by no means soft on the Muslim population they are not favoured with the idea of free speech. As a conservative nation, well used to oppression of the individual they are concerned about the idea that free 'speech is sacrosanct'.
The women in Paris followed the French philosophical approach. People were free to criticise anything, there are no subjects off limits and that opinions were secured by the rule of law.
There is of course something that smacks of hypocrisy, of double standards in that racism has clearly set up a demarcation as to what you and can't say, in fact it's carried to ridiculous ends with terms that are innocuous but may upset someone's sensibility, these terms are banned even from speech, whilst depicting Mohammed in a sexual act is deemed part of free speech.
It doesn't make sense even if, a secularist would have religion on a par with mysticism and therefore not of this world, religion and the characters in the religious story are real to the believer.
If the law against being critical towards a racial group or towards a group with a sexual orientation is there to prevent disharmony then surely being disrespectful to another group is equally bad.
Of course what flows from this is that we will tie ourselves up in knots if we restrict ourselves to being concerned about the feelings other people. We may be misguided, we may be wrong but we have a right to hold that opinion so long as we do not intend harm. Now the very nature of satire is to poke fun, but it's a close call as to whether it does harm.
If a Muslim is asked to turn the other cheek and not get upset why can't we ask the same of the other groups, currently protected by law and and by Political Correctness.
Freedoms of speech means just that and we have in my opinion currently got ourselves in a right old muddle as people are confused and bullied by "another minority group", the dreaded PC Brigade.

Differences

I have been watching a program on Al Jazeera about the history of the White Australia Policy. The leaders in Australia in the post war period of the late 40s, 50s and 60s Arthur Calwell and Bob Menzies,both Prime Ministers who were worried about the future make up of Australian Society, tried to ensure the Anglophile content was retained.
It brings into perspective the question of who we feel we are. 

As we look in the mirror each morning do we see a white face or a black face do we see Asian eyes or the high cheekbones of a person born in Bolivia. 
On the radio and in the media we are constantly asked to be something else for the sake of the the constituency we call the Global constituency. A Multi cultural concept that helps the mix which the Global economy has produced when it demolished boarders to fit an economic desire to have free movement of labour to fulfil an economic priority.
If I have a black face the person behind the face is as cogent as I about who they think they are, they are far more than their skin colour, their background and the environment they grew up in is far more important as an element which form their character. Their colour like mine only becomes relevant if an outside influence makes it important, either for good or bad and we all have memories when the colour of ones skin was a disadvantage. In the race riots in Newark in the 60s my skin was the topic of, shall we say interest.
People in this era would say it was prejudice which made me the focus of comment but I think it was something deeper. Tribal, and defensive of our perceived sense of belonging to a particular segment of humanity, we colonise our thoughts around the identity of who we recognise as being the same or similar. Where we were born and necessarily the structure, not only our evolutionary make up, (including colour), but also the myriad points of view flowing from a specific background of experience.
The attempt to minimise our differences by the people behind the Global experiment has created both good and bad.
In making us realise our commonality such as wishing to have the same safeguards within the society we choose to live, is common and must be respected but the attempt to homogenise our thoughts and exclude the powerful differences and strengths which belong to our tribe would suggest we are all the same, and this is fundamentally bad !!!
 

Home again.

I moved back home today.

A house is many faceted place it has, under its roof many functions each separate, each identified by a room or a space. The kitchen is self evident although it can also double for a community centre when the house is lucky enough to have a family staying in it. It's a gathering place where whilst food is prepared conversations are had in this non formal space, a space which elsewhere the conversations would assume a different sort of gravitas. The chat, whilst the kettle is boiling can lead to to open commentary which when seated in the lounge (sitting room room the lads and lasses up North) would invite a more serious response.
The lounge is the open face a sort of exterior to family life, a place where visitors are seated and entertained, where normally resides the television, and where when the TV is peaceful the HiFi gets a chance to play and reminisce.
There are the rooms where the function is very private and one in which the day starts its routine by washing the sleep away and getting today's face into shape.
But for me the main room has been my bedroom. A place to withdraw and hide, to pull up the sheets and burrow away until sleep removes one, for a few hours at least before the whole saga starts again.
I had been forced out of this holy of holies by a leak which had sprung whilst away over Christmas. The water had dripped out of the cistern tank and seeped into the carpet and down onto the lounge ceiling. To get to everything meant decanting the room of my bookcases and books, plus the bed, and lifting the carpet to blow hot air under the carpet to dry it out. Floorboards came up and hot air also blown onto the damp ceiling below which I think will have to be re -plastered. 

But tonight after several spent in another bedroom I'm back, secure amongst my things, happy to be home and sure of a good nights sleep !!!

Hands on.

Sitting in the garage office waiting for my car to be processed through its annual MOT one listens to the banter of the mechanics and their mates who come around to spin their time. This is not your usual 'garage chain' with its "please take a seat sir" front end smoothy. This is what the trade used to be like, a 'one man band', with skills and experience that was not learned through an Apprenticeship but rather through, initially a hands on interest in cars and then the employment by a car trader through who's books came cars of all kinds of make and complexity. Instead of being an expert in one specific brand and a specific instruction manual one became a fault / solution finder imbued by the massive store of 'what we did previously and remembering the same model we had in last month 'the clips down there somewhere'.

The scope of this self taught knowledge always amazes me given the complexity of the car and the enormous scope for designers to invent their own peculiar way of doing something.
The MOT is, like most bureaucratic events a mixture of a good idea, to keep the stock of cars on the road up to some sort of mechanical standard, especially from a safety point of view but it can in the hands of some just be a method of teasing out of Joe public hard earned cash with the MOT pass sometimes obtained by the age old method of leaving it to the next time when perhaps the car will have been sold on.
The garage trade has become more exclusive and the cars more complicated. In line with this the specialised expertise in the form of knowledge about the electronic system now controlling the functions within the car, and a need for knowledge of the equipment needed to interrogate the program's that drive the electronics. Specialisation has not meant a saving to the motorist through self diagnostic fault finding but a reason to charge over the top rates by the mechanic because he can !!

The days when a young chap, and it was always young men, could pull an engine apart, bore out the cylinder head and fit a twin carburettor to boost the engine output. To soup up a car or add stronger suspension springs to firm up the ride and was a right of passage in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Cars had relatively simple combustion engines which fundamentally hadn't changed much over the years and with a set of spanners and the trusty manual one felt confident to tackle the job. It was part of growing up and endowed a sense of it being a bridge between childhood and adulthood since it often involved working with ones dad or an elder brother and inherently acknowledged your being taken on board as a junior member of the tribe.
To turn the ignition key after assembling everything, listen to the roar from the specially tuned exhaust system and wheel the car out onto the highway for a trip to ones mates to show off how clever you had been.

Its in the cloud

What a mad world we live in and again it's the religious extremists, this time the ultra orthodox Jewish brigade who have seen fit to attempt to mould the world to their image.

The picture of European leaders marching through Paris a couple of days ago upset the mad fringe of Jewish orthodoxy because it included females. The figures of Mrs Merkel, Denmark's Thorning-Shimidt and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo were all air brushed out of the picture in their newspaper in Israel so as not to upset the orthodox Jew who see his women folk as belonging to the home !

Is it something to do with "Abraham" ? 
Both this Jewish fringe and the Muslim believe in keeping their women at home, out of sight.  Abraham is the connective biblical link between the faiths so the connection to this mad miscellany of ideas is yet again a religious one.
Once more we have to question the whole basis of mankind's obsession with seeking an extension to this life through religious dogma, a solution to the unpalatable knowledge that death awaits all of us and this persona which we have created in our minds over the years is nothing but a bag of air, rapidly deteriorating.
When the moment comes we, as in the self image I have of me, will cease to exist and only memories people might perhaps have of me will remain.
Oh of course I was forgetting there will be, in the cloud, my blog and what it has to say about me and the people I knew.

A man's man.

Why are we so mawkish about certain events portrayed by the media who control the way we think these days.
Australia is playing a Cricket Test Match in Sydney today and so when the news bulletin switched to reading some of the sports results they immediately reminded us about the death of the young Australian cricketer who was hit on the head by the ball. The report concentrated on the fact that this was the first time since the sad event that the national team were returning to play at the ground. This need to remind us and focus our attention on something which had been reported over and over was now brought back once again with no doubt calls for a minute or more of silence before the match starts plus the eulogies about the player.
The call for remembrance has become sort of statutory, as if we need to display our emotions and, if we don't, we are not 'carey', 'touchy', or 'feely' in this age of femininity, we are admonished for not  absorbing the female input into our psyche which is seen to represent the modern man.
When one thinks of the death and destruction in both World Wars or the ongoing horror of living in one of those parts of the world where death is common through lack of nourishment or the conflict of religious or political ideology one wonders how this 'feline dandy' with his bath oils and hair gels, ever the eye on fashion, always preened much the same as his female counterpart would survive a stint in the trenches.
Perhaps the uni-sexing project has succeeded with men claiming their right to maternity leave and queuing up to take on more and more of the household chores.
If the generation after this attains full full blown interchangeability in all but carrying the baby until birth, and if the growth in gay people, confused with their sexuality, continues to expand then the sight of what used to be called "a man's man" will be rare.

A trickle down that never happened.

In the Reagan and Thatcher years the concept took hold of limiting, as much as politically possible, the taxes paid by the rich 1 percent who hold 75 percent of the total wealth in the country. The economic argument was that there would be a 'trickle down' effect where the money now preserved by the wealthy would be reinvested in the expansion of the entrepreneurial gift these people had to create more jobs. In this way we would all benefit from the undoubted benefit that the wealthy would receive when not asked to pay tax. 

London became and has continued to be the tax dodgers capital. The money flowing in from the new rich in Russia, China, India, the so called Brick countries plus the Arabian oil money has meant that assets in the form of accommodation is being built and has been snapped up by this desperate, "must place my money somewhere and not pay tax on it society" group. 70 percent of the new build accommodation is for foreign occupation, well not occupation actually since much of the property is not occupied but bought as an asset. Unoccupied these immensely expensive homes never hear the patter of tiny feet only the boot of the security team keeping an eye on things. 
This at a time when the indigenous population (what ever that means) is staved of a place to buy since the stock being built is primarily well out of what they can afford. This is how unfettered Markets can skew the economy and screw the people at the same time.
You would think the government who through the voting system are supposed to be our proxy would do something to remedy the inequality and the hardship of its own people but no, these super rich foreigners with money are the prime concern, their equity, like the swinging pendent used by the hypnotist to put us to sleep has beguiled our leaders who are now slaves to the global overlords. It will trickle down, we will all prosper "they" know how to generate wealth and it's wealth that we need isn't it.
As the one percent roar ahead, apparently unstoppable, and we sit without a pay rise for five and more years, do we really still believe this bull shit !!!

A bloody nose.

Faith can move mountains is an expression. It describes the power of faith to over-ride obstacles by focusing on a perceived truth as the reason for trying to move the mountain in the first place.
Mankind has developed, alongside its faith a set of philosophical tests to question many subjects that are fundamental to the knowledge of ourselves and the way we think and do things. The questions of what is morality, what is truth, how do we with thought deduce logic. Religion and metaphysics are intertwined and questions pertaining to "free will" are debated without being substantially resolved. 

At some point the question of 'faith' intervenes. Faith a leap in the dark where 'accurate justification' is set aside by the decision, often emotional that something exists which can not be proved but is believed non the less. Religion is the house wherein these faiths reside and because the wish to set aside much of everything we think we stand for is the process of 'believing', it is such a powerful emotional force and we find that discussions about religious belief quite difficult.
The best outcomes are when there is a polite commeradic, "let's agree to differ" parting of the ways but of course what we are doing is shelving a very human debate which in all honesty can only have one answer.
Both sets of views shouldn't exist side by side but of course for harmony we fudge it and attempt to do just that.
In most situations other than an academic test we can get over this hurdle by being decent towards each other and acknowledging that hostility is bad and love is good.  Here though we have the nub of the problem. Faith to the believer is as true and factual as a well trodden thesis is to a non believer and when faith is presented with insult it goes to the core of the belief a person has about their god and it becomes infinitely personal.
If the response is to avenge the insult, no 'rational' can convince the person who has been insulted that there is any justification in what has been done or said and for a minority, revenge is the only answer.
To be honest, perhaps the Jihadist is in the better position since he does not have to swallow the ignominy but rather respond, as used to be traditional, with an act of retribution, "an eye for an eye".
I have often thought that in this PC world which has been thrust upon us we do ourselves no favours by delaying action on a slight, of being forced to allow the slight to go unanswered since all that happens is it festers. If we were sure a bloody nose will defiantly result from our actions then it might make us think twice. 

Religion out of context

With the news from France of the attack on a satirical magazine which had upset the militant fringe element of the Muslim religion by lampooning Muhammad, the militants arrived at the headquarters of the magazine and killed up to 12 people. It's interesting that the front page of the magazines current issue has an unsavoury story of something to do with Virgin Mary and the Christian story.
One has to ask the question is Religion a thing for good or evil.
Does the undoubted 'cruelty' to people of other faiths, including non religious people, in the name of God mean anything other than religious belief seems to screw up.
The Catholic faith has to its name a repugnant period when the 'Inquisition' was practised to drive out heresy. The Crusaders were a group bent on religious score settling against the Muslim and had no mercy when dealing with people outside their own faith.
Faith is not the only driver of mayhem. Long periods when the tribes ran amok killing and raping, the ideological crusades of Pol Pot in Cambodia Mao Zedong, Stalin or Hitler, although these latter were driven by individuals not a collective faith movement.
Mankind has always had its fears and the need to explain the unknown.
From the superstitions of the cave dwellers and their fear of Spirits to the ancient religions of India through to Judaism and the interlinking faiths of Christianity and Islamism. The belief in a 'Father' figure to protect us is as relevant today as it was then but it's methodology has divided the faiths in a way their founders would abhor.
The teaching of Christianity has become largely benign with a reliance on the 'individuals' link to their faith and one in which one constantly relays on forgiveness through the act of contrition.
Judaism relays on a very tight tribal knit where belonging is not individual but a collective issue and where the members keep an eye on each other.
The Muslim faith is based on the conversations Muhammad had with Allah and the bloody struggle Muhammad had to entrench his teaching.
Christianity is pacifist, Islam is much more aggressive in the directives to its adherents and has as it's base a collective identity with a period and a traditional culture long gone. A period when it's survival was a matter of life and death a sinister echo of what we saw early today.
Then There is over-weaning entrenched position of the male and the inherent subservience of many of the females sheltering in Muslim families. A fact that societies such as ours and across Europe generally have chosen to ignore in the blind hope that education and the proximity to other cultures would over time change for a more lenient view.
We all have parroted the phrases "the Muslims I know are good people and wouldn't condone what the extremists do". This of course is true but lying behind our relationship with our Muslim friend is the fact that really do we get to hear or see the wives of these friends. In my own experience the wives are kept at home and if one had need to call on a Muslim friends home the women were kept in the background hidden away as it were from our eyes.
This isn't right but yet for the sake of cultural harmony we acquiesce, we turn a blind eye to the strange goings on in the Muslim household.
This is not to say the European way is correct but at least it 'conforms rights' across the continent and has a pretty solid basis in law. Yet the rights of man and women and many other entrenched values are disregarded by a swelling group of people within our midst. From this flows the separatism that is showing its ugly head on both sides. It could be argued that under the guise of Religion a culture that is alien to the values of Europe is growing up and that the attacks from so called extremist groups are secretly, both feared but also emotionally supported by the rank and file of the group who see themselves alienated.
If the religious group can not modify, as the Christians have learnt to do then perhaps there is no place for the Muslim religion in the West ?

Where to put your cross

What do we put first. Peoples needs, peoples wrongs or do we ignore such things and in effect wait to see how the cull improves the figures in the balance sheet.
The general election in the UK in four months time will, and is already being fought over this issue. Our balance sheet is in disrepair even after four years of austerity and one solution is to cut even more reducing the State and it's dealings with its people to a minimum. Like the Republican Party in the US, the concept is of a small government concerned largely with Defence and Foreign Affairs and it has taken hold of the Conservative Party who would place Internal Affairs, in the hands of the Market Place to be evaluated solely by the Profit and Loss Account. 

People, the general public, are seen more and more as a drain on the Exchequer, how much easier to import cheap labour when and where required rather than find ways of training the indigenous stock who, because of what they perceive as their birthright make unjustified demands on resources. 
The concept of a cull is attractive when one is fed a diet of fat unemployable people clogging up our A&E with self induced alcohol inflicted problems. A cull of the unintelligent, bone idle Benefit Seekers would address the borrowing we have to inflict on the Exchequer each month and put the balance sheet in a far better light. Culling is effective, as in the attack on the TB infected Badgers or on the cattle with Mad Cows Decease culling, although admittedly heavy handed sorts out the wheat from the chaff and as with any short term drastic solution it has its converts. There are many people in this country, as there were in Germany in the 30s who have little sympathy for people who they would not recognise as belonging to their own group or class and if you can convince yourself that they, like Johnny Foreigner belong elsewhere then the games up and you know where to place your cross at voting time.
A much more difficult political solution is the one which tells you the cull is not "civilised" and no matter how difficult, all human beings have the same value. The issue is how you tackle the incontrovertible issues raised by generations of poorly educated people and develop them to be fully paid up members of the human race.
The headline grabbing turgid stories of how the dregs of humanity stick two fingers up to us all has to be put into perspective and like people who are ill we have to understand their illness and find ways to treat them. Now you know where I am putting my cross !!