Masters and servants

What sad times we live in.
As a statement it lacks the perspective of history. 70 years ago we were in such a mess and our citizens knew it first hand. Rationing, being bombed, the insecurity of being in a world war, all this was far more traumatic than anything we experience today. And yet today we are in a deeper hole having lost confidence in our politicians as we question many decisions made on our behalf.
It all hinges on the information we now receive about much that in the past was hidden. Our "Betters" knew better and we sort of, accepted it.
Today the conflicts unfold all around us, we have instant replay of the best sort, the sort that can not be denied, as thousands of mobile phone cameras provides a front row picture of what is actually happening. How inconvenient that the public can make up their own minds and not have to rely on the prism of a diplomatic despatch. How absolutely inconvenient that whistle blowers have the impertinence to reveal what underhand business our leaders are up to, how our trust in them is misplaced and they have embarked on a massive surveillance of every one of us.
The implicit integrity of the link between the people and their democratically elected "management", people who have been placed to run the country, has been irreparably damaged. 

The sight of an authoritative American Government pursuing the whistle blower across the globe, in pursuance of a vindictive crack down on someone who had the audacity to reveal the dirty mechanism of government. 

Its not as we would wish, or have been led to believe, a government, of the people, for the people, by the people but rather, it is, as it always was, a government by the elite for the elite, full stop. The image that because of the need for "security" they can do anything, they can rewrite the rule book, if necessary throw it away since they know what is best for us. 
How we need to inform these masters of the universe, that we are the masters and they the servants.                      

The Clegg Farage debate

We have just seen the second debate about whether we should be in Europe or not.
There is in this country what is called a Westminster Bubble a group of people who are isolated from the public in nearly every way.  Not only the politicians who continuously engage in the high school debate but also the bulk of the media commentators and pundits who refuse to acknowledge that there is a massive disillusionment with the political system and even the system we call democracy is at risk. The ordinary man and woman on the street has seen the Global Economy focus more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The agenda of the ideologues and the fund managers has little to do with the needs of society, (people at large) and slowly you see outright opposition through the only way left to them physical violence.
The debate tonight was not about violence.  We had, on the one hand, the 'political establishment' in the guise of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg with his establishment voice repeating ad nauseam the benefits of completely restructuring the way are lives are controlled and the opportunities that the new structure brings to the lives of ordinary people. On the other side, the maverick politician Nigel Farage who cuts to the chase and repeats the questions that the ordinary voter asks with his solutions.
Now you might not agree with his solutions but it is amazingly refreshing to hear some one articulate the things that are on ordinary voters minds, he appears to be one of us and far removed from the bland talking shop parliamentarian

The debate came to an end and the polls went out to a selected number of people who returned a resounding win for the maverick, Farage, by 70% of the vote to 30% for the Establishment. What was to me the most stomach churning sight of the evening was watching and listening to Danny Alexander the Deputy Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeating over and over what was obviously a pre scripted response, applauding his boss saying he thought that Clegg had won the debate and refusing to acknowledge that they had lost the popular opinion by a massive margin.
Talk about a head in the sand syndrome.          

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

D day

The day was bright the cloudless sky brought out the sharp contrast between the rememberers and the remembered, the young and the old, the people who had benefited from 70 years of peace and the old solderers who had helped make that peace possible. Truly on their last legs these late 80 early 90 year old men were probably celebrating and commiserating their last rally with their comrades before their own personal last post is played. 

Its hard for us who have never known the threat of war on our doorstep to imagine the emotions of that time. The German war machine was thought to be too powerful for any other European nation and it was only the devastating events on the Russian front and the incoming freshly equipped Americans that sealed the Germans fate. 
The people on this island were in poor shape even leading up to the outbreak of the war and in this the leadership of Churchill, his rhetoric, broadcast to the nation, a nation of people who were more inclined to accept leadership and believe what their leaders said was important.
The bombing including thousands of V1 and V11 rocket powered missiles on targeted cities, brought death and destruction to ordinary men women and children, the equal of that experienced by the solderers and of course there were the terrible casualties amongst civilians on the Eastern Front running into many, many millions. Sadly we have no memorial to them.            

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

A sea of veterans

A sea of veterans matching on to the sound of the band, on to the swirl of the pipes, on to a distant memory of fallen comrades. The bands play the well worn soldiers songs who respond with one voice singing the songs they sang when moving down the road leading to the trenches. 

A deep bond built into and between them, born of fear and tribulation a fellowship which can not be broken, an alliance of the living for the dead.
 It's a funny thing the past. It holds our memories of the actual life we lived, along with memories and aspirations of the life we wished to have lived. The people we knew and thought we knew the dreams of attainment the attachment and the dis entanglement of relationships, these are all the province of the mature citizen and whilst today the spotlight is on the fighting men and latterly women, their memories dismembered by the acute strain put on these people, people who were asked to risk their lives, but who came from a class of people, the amateur, out of character since these men were largely conscripted from civilian life.
 The act of living is the act of dying and between these two posts our memories are the fabric of who we are. They reflect our passage and, if we are sufficiently at ease with them they amount to who we are and the standards we hold, therefore memories are important.
Maturity has, of right, plenty to draw on. Youth, still girding its loins, will fight the battles and gain the experience which will, in the end, identify that person.
One of the reasons we ask our youth to wait and harness its time and energy is that 'improvisation' is not enough to run anything. 

New faces

One of the interesting revelations which has come out of this election, has been the projection of non parliamentary people onto our screens representing the minor parties. The comparison of these "ordinary" people to the professional politician is remarkable. One can recognise them as people we know in the street whilst the politicians seem to be from another place who we can't recognise. The endless obfuscation, ducking answers simply lying with a straight face to the public. If one were to engage in a conversation with someone who constantly told porkies about every subject to simply pull the wool over my eyes so that they would give me their vote.

Talk about second hand car dealers these guys and girls would sell their grandmothers !

No it is refreshing to listen to people who are not of the Westminster political class.
The issues that describe the British life and the problems of living here are addressed from all kind of ideological positions with possible solutions. The main parties bat the same ball between each other as if it's a game and of course to the incumbents of a paid job in Parliament it is a job rather than deeply held belief which should be the impetus driving people into politics to alter the system and benefit people at large.

The other India

I've been reading a book about, amongst other things, the incompleteness of our lives how the jumble of unexpected events make up our day and continue to exaggerate the  disconnect between what we plan and what occurs.
The book ( A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry ) is set in the turmoil of Indira Gandhi's India and the Emergency Legislation Period, as she attempted to modernise the mammoth that was the everyday India with its myriad layers of humanity. The heavy hand of bureaucracy, the vicious control measures designed to effect change but which only brought misery to the ordinary people. It's a story of ordinary people. How that phrase is so incomplete when describing India's layered composition of humanity with its religious mix and the iniquitous caste apartheid delivering to people at birth, a preconditioned straightjacketed existence, for some, opportunity for others simple none.

The book captures you by befriending you to the characters who's individual torment, which is accepted by the people in the story as part of life's tapestry, becomes your own as you struggle, looking with Western eyes for a good ending. There is no good ending only the rites of a predetermined subservience, an inevitable mourning from the moment you recognised your position and of having to endure a life of pain and disdain in equal measure. 

One wonders at the complexity of the political dynasty's which have ruled the country and the undiluted rage meted out to the Sikhs after the Sikh bodyguards were accused of assassinating Gandhi.
One wonders at the totalitarian methods used to produce birth control. The mutilation of the beggar  community and the system of bribes used at all levels to get things done.
Sitting in my armchair I am transported into a world of demons, not of their own making but of a need to survive, be it on the pavement or in an alleyway. Structure there is, too much of it, but where is the humanity.
With a 'civilisation' stretching back long before we in the West had cast off our rudimentary lives, with religions like Hinduism which preaches tolerance and understanding, how can it have escaped the intellectually driven establishment that such huge social disparity is morally wrong and in this modern world of internet transparency, is unacceptable !!

Mother nature

Nepal has been the scene of an unmitigated disaster. When we first heard of the earthquake that had hit Kathmandu we thought how lucky we had been for Angela to have spent a month there and returned home only two weeks beforehand. Life is a throw of the dice when you move away from the security of your home surroundings and having taken all the foreseeable precautions one can still be tripped up by an event no one predicted.
Every day the death toll rises and it is only now do we see the devastation further down the Kathmandu Valley. Whole villages smashed by the systemic shaking, people crushed under the rubble. And now with water in short supply and food running out the Nepalese authorities are out of their depth trying to cope.

In years gone by we in the West would not have known of the disaster, weeks would have elapsed before the full extent of the trouble revealed its self and still longer before help could have reached them. At least in these days of Internet connection,the same connection I was happily chatting to my daughter over as she arrived amidst the problems of the plane which had run off the runway in Kathmandu and had caused her to be holed up in Delhi, this same internet now brings us the reality and the extent of the disaster.

These so called natural disasters are a reminder of the fragility of the world we live in and make us aware of how vulnerable people are to nature. Climate change is predicted, temperatures set to rise only a few percent but sufficient to alter the natural climate patterns which, apart from causing the ice cap to melt pushing the sea levels up, also will make areas that grow certain crops unable to produce, forcing whole societies to have to search for alternatives.
Governments of the emerging industrial nations still argue and post the claim that, because the Industrial World of the 20th century, largely Europe and the USA had a hand in the creation of the pollution that led to the 'green house gas effect' they can continue to pollute until they are on a par !!! What sort of a crazy notion is that when their grandchildren will be the ones to suffer equally. There are no winners, as the earthquake in Nepal showed when Mother Nature shows her hand and reminds us of how puny we are !!!

Justice

What is Justice. 
Is it a term describing something which can be defined and identified or is it a philosophical term defining a sense of the wish in a society to conceptualise good from bad, right from wrong, is it in other words a moral term.

When a judge wrestles with a case trying to determine who is guilty of breaking some law he is merely referring the act of an individual to a set of common law experience. If it fits a previous case law testimony of a misdemeanour, he pronounces the person guilty. But is justice achieved.
Is Justice set in stone or does it change with both the passage of time and the evolution of the society it is attempting to judge.
Is Justice merely a concept adapted and passed down to control people since it seems to vary depending on who is being tried. Of course it may be that the mechanism of the law and the performance of the trial do not reflect the philosophical meaning of Justice. The trial has two components, the Prosecution and the Defence, each striving for different ends and each interpreting justice for their client differently.
Do the "Ten Commandments" give us a template for justice. "Thou shalt not" is a direct instruction from God and therefore carries weight at least for the believer and interestingly, for the non -believer also. Most law abiding citizens would agree (a)'thou shalt not kill, (b) thou shalt not steal, (c) thou shall not covert, maybe even (d) thou shalt not bear false witness, but (e) honour your mother and father (particularly in a single parent arrangement or the surrogate parent or the genetically adapted parent, and heaven knows where we go from here) ? (f) You shall have no other God but me is a no no in this agnostic society, (g) you shall not make idols (is money and assets included), (h) you shall not take the Lords name in vain (ditto agnostic) and finally, (i) remember the Sabbath (Tesco put paid to that concept)
No the concept of Justice goes deeper than that, it lies at the very essence of what we value as human beings. It's an attempt to describe how we interrelate as human beings and emotionally provides us with an image of how we should behave towards each other.
"Do as you would be done by" is the essence of it, a set of rules that give us guidance in our affairs with others.
Is this concept universal or do we value others differently in other societies. If that's the case then our concept of justice is bound by our concept of others which as we know differs in other societies. Therefore do our judgements on justice have to be weighed against a whole range of considerations and the surety we have to judge anyone has a serious flaw.
The specific case law is peculiar to the society it was compiled in, can it be used as a totem for other people who have different values 'intrinseque' to their society.
So we are back to the question does Justice have a definition that is good for all societies ?Plato's concept of "The Theory of Forms, that real mind independent entities exist, things like Justice, Good, Beauty, the Triangle, Blue they exist, they are timeless, stable, perfect, unchanging, intelligible things. "Forms" or hooks to hang our knowledge on. We build our everyday commerce both business and social on these fundamentals but other than we believe there is such a thing as Justice how can we define its root.

Answers in a no more than 500 word email please !!

The credibility gap.

Society has lost its faith in so many institutions.
Politicians have been falling down in the credibility stakes for a number of years now, largely due I think to the ever narrowing gap between the main parties since Tony Blair corrupted the Labour Party with his centrist New Labour.
The Media along with the News  Papers have joined forces with the politicians in 'manufacturing' opinion rather than reporting it and we loose faith in their impartiality.
The Law has come under more and more scrutiny as Judges are seen to be amenable to political pressure particularly when chairing investigations which involve the high and the mighty.
The Police have been uncovered over the years to have either turned a blind eye on unlawful actions especially when the rich and influential are involved.
The Charities who bombard us with pitiful scenes of suffering repeatedly ask for donations whilst hiding the cost of their own administration and the large salaries paid to senior management, all of which comes out of the donation.
A Hospital System that rations drugs and treatment according to a postcode lottery.
Doctors who hide behind patient anonymity laws to prevent families from learning about their off spring when the family is probably the only safe haven when the child is ill.
Religions who supply a dogma which is far from inclusive.

I could go on and on but the net result is that we have very few places to turn to for honesty !

Fear mongering

Why is the Tory party gathering so much attention in its claim that that a Labour Party win would usher in the Scottish Nationalist Party to have a controlling vote in Westminster. 

The way the polls are pointing it will be either the Conservatives  aligned  with Liberals (plus possibly the UKIP vote) versus New Labour, the SNP, the Greens and Plaid Cymru of Wales plus perhaps the DUP of Northern Ireland. The fear in the Westminster Establishment is that power then shifts out of the hands of the predictable, centralised clique where it has sat within its own bubble ever since parliament came into being. 

The strength of the SNP has been its appeal not only to Scottish Independence with all the attraction that has for many Scots but also the make up of the political animal is very different from the London centric power house of Westminster where the rules of the "game" has been to pass the parcel of upper and middle class interests leaving the social heart of the working class to find little or no representation. 

New Labour the child of Tony Blair was designed to appease the powerful middle class and cater more to the needs of The City. To win an election they decided that the blue collar worker could be persuaded through the mighty press machine to accept his diminutive roll and stay in awe of the rich and powerful as they were "born to rule". 

Increasingly the poor have become trapped in their dead end jobs which, since the Bankers Crash in 2008 have undergone a ever tightening economic decline in disposable income, manifest the food banks and the top up many people now depend on to support their living standards as we trend towards part time work and the minimum wage becoming the norm.

This at a time and over a period when Britain's richest have doubled their wealth in the last 10 years.

No party has properly articulated their plight until the rise of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party. 

New Labour skirted around the issues worried that they would loose Middle Class votes and upset The City. Westminster incubated a world where politics was a matter of trade offs and the real ideological questions of fairness and respect equality and protection were ignored.

This new breed of political awareness, an awareness that society at large must include everyone and as we manage our political affairs, include the disadvantaged from birth (for that is where the basic underlying inequality comes from) and a schooling system which promotes only 2% of the population into the top decision making careers. 

These new politicians from across our boarders to the North and the West were a refreshing alternative to the stale air of Westminster and like gate crashers to a posh party must be kept out at all costs !!!

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is a well engrained belief in our society but it has come under pressure because of the need to meld together the much more diverse group we have become.
When the Nations culture was relatively easy to define and most people were descended from a common thread of ancestry the opportunity to discuss and write about virtually any subject was taken for granted. We are now in very different territory with ever more subjects becoming taboo and the writer having to negotiate the myriad sensitivities like a bomb disposal team moving through the battlefield.
As a statement of fact this is correct but as a statement of a confused and over complicated national dilemma it is also true and one we should be wary of.

I have been reading of the multi layered, multi ethnic, multi cultured society that exists on the sub continent of India.Given it calls itself the largest democracy in the world, it is anything but democratic, given the not so subtle human grading system within its vast population. Birth determines everything in India. From Brahmin at the top to Dalits (untouchables) at the bottom the structure is so complete so unassailable that no amount of discussion can breach the fortifications of caste.

The unswerving religious observance within the Muslim faith is another un-breachable fortification that the native on these shores has to navigate if he is to try to make sense of the new paradigm that describes being British. If we are to describe the above as a racial subject, add gender issues which have distorted our naive view of normality, and then consider promiscuity and the minefield of sexuality norms, one has to ask of oneself, what is left that is safe to write about without being banished.
In this complex mish mash of competing agendas people are scared to hold views other than the most benign, to avoid exciting the cultural gatekeepers who will pounce on any whiff of political in-correctness. It seems that to hold a view and keep it to yourself (1984 is still some way off) is ok but one can only discuss your opinion within four walls and amongst friends. The moment you address a wider audience you are in danger of being in disagreement with someone and,in some way, this "new world" is incapable of coping with healthy disagreement.
Has our socially complex society become too complex too sensitive, has the individual parts become too aware of their own fragility that they need the support of the thought police who as always are only too willing to step I with a bit of crowd control.

Tradition

  

It's the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing and the representatives of the troops who fought that ill  thought out battle for the heights around Gallipoli are parading down Whitehall. Gallipoli a tragedy in the making, the presumption by our General Staff and the Politicians of the day that Johnny Turk, who in those days represented the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, would succumb to a navel bombardment and allow the troops to scale the cliffs rising sheer from sea.

The troops were from all parts of the Empire. The Anzacs, Australia and New Zealand are famous for their valour and tenacity in trying to scale the heights but also a Sikhs regiment who were literally wiped out in the attack, the Gurkhas, the South Africans the Canadians and of course the British. In terms of the death toll over 35,000 British, and over 10,000 Anzac troops were the main ones to fall but heroism knows no national boarder and the troops who are doing the parade  today are unique.

Watching the men, we see the medals and the different uniforms worn proudly as a tribal badge, the headgear symbolic, the Boy Scout type hat worn by the Canadians, the Australian bush hat, they all commemorate a tradition. 

Tradition that scorned word in this era of no boarder Globalisation where all these people seen today are simply units of consumption, part of a boardroom spreadsheet, part of someone's bottom line. As the marketeers spread their products into every corner of the globe and we all become homogenised into a bland sameness it's so refreshing to see these proud symbols, each unique, each representing a marker to say we are not all the same.

Questions to the minister

Duplicitous, deceitful, devious, disingenuous and these are only the Ds.

One of the most frustrating thing about this political campaign and the political merry go round that is enacted on our screen every day is the confrontational performance of Andrew Neil.

Politicians we know are slippery customers answering direct questions with replies that avoid giving a direct answer. The questioner has to keep probing and sometimes it's his job to make the politician look less than honest.

Politics has become a media circus with the powerful stars of media becoming the main presenters of policy by the tactic of dismantling, dissembling and smearing a manifesto and in turn each of the politicians with bucketfuls of scepticism. The insidious sniping at the personalities who are wheeled into the studio to explain their position on how to run the country is relatively easy. It is always much easier to take pot shots at someone rather than engage in a proper discussion and an examination of why they feel there are better ways to run a country.
There's no real money in politics. Even as an MP you only earn a salary equivalent to middle management and whilst the pension and perks boost the monetary value and the appendage, MP has kudos, it doesn't even get close to the interviewer with their teams of researches out digging the dirt, all the interviewer has to do is ask questions. Add an extra £500.000 on top of MPs pay and he is the aggressive star of the 'show', for that is what the political interview has become, "a show". The interviewer has lost sight of his role in the proceedings and we the audience, wanting to know what the politician thinks are treated to a disgraceful display of bulling.
It seems as if the politicians are scared of reacting to the bully, they prefer to eat humble pie as the interviewer try's to humiliate them since to be seen to be rattled is in the eyes of the audience is to admit failure.
Recently I saw a young woman from the Labour Party, not an MP but an assistant stand up to Neil and get the better of him. She refused to allow him to intervene and talk over her as she was answering  a question. She took him on and like any bully he backed down !!!

The Opposition.

Slowly we are getting there. Tonight it was described as a debate between the 'Opposition Parties'. Labour, SNP The Scotish National Party, The Green Party, UKIP The United Kingdom Independence Party, and Plaid Cymru the Welsh Nationalist Party. Neither of the Coalition Parties forming the present Government were there, the Conservatives had ruled out attending and put pressure on the Media hosts for the Liberals not to be asked to attend

The political set up was interesting. The establishment was in this case represented by Labour with Ed Miliband being the only person on the stage who could seriously be in line to become the next Prime Minister. The rest, other than the the SNPs Nicola Sturgeon who is currently the First Minister in Scotland (equivalent of the Prime Minister in Scotland but without the power) have only a small political base and could therefore promise the moon without the promise coming back to haunt them.
In theory you had the Westminster view (Miliband) challenged by the rest, two Nationalists and one Green all who purport to represent the Political Left, and the Political Right represented by Nigel Farage.
It was illuminating to see and hear how raw politics has become in the Westminster circles 'a set of clichés'. How the professional politician Ed Miliband measured his every word whilst the rest were arguing from the heart for there own particular political contrivance.
I for one wanted to applaud, (what would be viewed inside the cosy Westminster bubble) the audacious views from the small in some cases, yet to be elected participants in tonight's debate challenging and articulating with passion the plight of the ordinary person in the street. One is used to the platitudes of the main parties as they kick the political football around and one has become bored and extremely sceptical of the MPs who seems more and more to resemble some sort of automated, wind up, party apparatchik speaking to a script and searching for the leverage of a sound bite.
One had the feeling that this was the politics of the old days when ideological passion drove people into politics and people believed in the moral cause !! You believed and worked for a political end because it was the right thing to do regarding the electorate who you were there to serve.
The Market, the Bankers, the Industrialists (if you can find any over here) are all well able to look after themselves, they have their confederations and guilds, they have their lobbyists and behind the scenes fixers, its the man in the street, in this financially distorted Globalised World, who needs representing and it's the constancy MPs job to do that in Parliament.
One had the feeling that any or all of the so called "minority parties" on show tonight, including UKIP would breath a breath of fresh air into the stale, same old, same old in Westminster.

Good Morning

Good morning. Wakey wakey rise and shine, stretch those tired aching bodies, clear the cobwebs and drink some water to distil the Merlo you drank last night.

It's a new day with problems to be sorted, the occasional new opportunity to be exploited but remember, your alive.
Will they miss me when I'm gone, well you better make sure they know your around whilst your here. Make that phone call, say sorry if you must, make the effort whilst the breath is in your body for one day sooner than you think it won't be there any more. The noise you could have made will be the questions you could have answered and will go unanswered, you will become nothing more than a memory. Make sure that memory is warm, full of happy moments and pleasant thoughts, it's never too late.
Life is a string of "what ifs". What if I had done this or that. But it's also a string of things you have done. Things that should carry more weight by the fact that they are real and explain the sub-story of your life.
If you are a planner and the plan went wrong imagine the opportunity a wrong turning brings, of new unexpected experiences. If you are laid back and used to stumbling from one thing to another, think of the rich diversity that life has brought you, the unforeseen some -times scary events which have added to your sum total.

In the eyes of the beholder.

I was thinking about the conundrum we have, or sometimes find we have with the business of seeking some sort of equilibrium in our personnel relationships.
We are often torn between two positions. That of needing to be able to communicate and to feel the presence of another human being or alternatively of wanting ones space to do things alone.

The presence around the house of someone to say Hi and to share many of the daily events with to is comforting. 
The inability to do anything without asking the other person if they want to join in or at least not mind if you do, can be debilitating.
Much of our lives is, in many ways a compromise and was so from the start. As a child we were protected and cosseted to avoid hurting ourselves. As a young person many of our hopes and desires were thwarted either by others or by a turn of event of which we had no control.
As we matured and began to form relationships outside of the family the topsy turvy nature of of our internal mental world with the internal world of others meant that we were at best, poor judges of that "others" world and we are bound to make many mistakes along the way.
As if to make it more difficult we ourselves are constantly changing in our needs and priorities and so, with so many moving targets is it any wonder we constantly miss the target.
Of course you have to decide what the target is. Is it security, is it having a good time, is it knowledge about the world around and probably more important about yourself. Does it require the close affinity with another person or is it the case of when allowing someone to get too close it becomes claustrophobic.
In any relationship where sharing is presumed normal, the inter flow of information is important as you attempt to meld your personalities into one. The danger in these close arrangements is that although they are to be desired and when achieved lead to a great deal of happiness and contentment it can also produce a tendency in one or both individuals, to want to change the person to something more like some sort of "ideal" which you had grown up thinking was the "ideal".
The tussle between people, one trying to create something different and the other resenting any thought of change because they were happy with who they are often leads to a massive disconnect and unhappiness, particularly for the person who is set on the change.
It's crazy in so many ways to expect any other person on the planet to think like you do with your unique background. Even if you find someone who you jell with, its only peripheral, there is so much compromising going on as each searches for an understanding of what the other wants which at best is a guess and often wide of the mark.
Your compromise means that not only can you be heading in the wrong direction to what the other person wants but you are certainly moving away from what you ideally want.
The perfect compromise is where no one gets what they want and one is continually feeling frustrated.
Of course the antidote is not to seek companionship and see the world through your own self centred spectacles. Isolated you are not in any danger of feeling the rough edge of someone's tongue and only your own sense of what is right or wrong is important. In the silence of your own universe the answers to all questions are yours to discover but there is one gigantic failing, you never have the pleasure of sharing your discovery with anyone else !!!

Through the prism of discontent

It's strange how the the world is now seen through the camera of the smart phone.
Photography is an art form and when the professional photographer sets about his task of portraying a scene his photographic intellect gets in the way. He contrives the angles and makes the most out of the scene he is trying to capture. Like a still life painting he follows the norms of etiquette and good manners in his portrayal of his fellow human being. 


The amateur in contrast who captures today's footage in the field of battle or some catastrophe that has just happened is not the remote professional insulated from the scene but rather someone who belongs in the scene and just happens to have a phone with him. The difference is dramatic and we get the real time effect of the carnage and feel for person there taking the shots.
Usually the scenes are in the process of being destroyed and it would take a hard person not to reflect how lucky we are to be watching from the comfort of our armchair. The armchair and our living room remain our sanctuary.
I remember watching the Twin Towers being attacked and watching the awful event in which thousands were dying in front of our eyes, watching it as if we were at the cinema and this was a Hollywood blockbuster.
It's similar when I watched last night scenes from down town Johannesburg and Durban. The burnt out shops and buildings the people picking their way past the scenes of violence as the indigenous South African rose in frustration at his exposure to immigration and the effect it has had on his tenuous hold on life and his living standards.
The image of the stark buildings, many of them utilitarian, functional but not pretty are a reminder what living in a city does to the human psyche when people are used as a unit of production or alternatively, part of governments machinery to codify our lives in some way or other. Aesthetics are not part of the planners mind set or in the architects brief and its this disregard for the humans who work and live within these Orwellian inner city landscapes which breeds the contempt for his fellows around him.

One community one vote.

 One of the main items on the list which at election time the politicians have to address is immigration. 
The main parties are engaged in outbidding each other as to how to wrest back control of who comes here and who stays. The statistics used each seem to be from a totally different spectrum of the science and yet, as with economist there seems as many opinions as there are practitioners. The ordinary man simply wants an answer, even if unpalatable so that knowing the scale of the issue one can put into place solutions.



Immigration started on an industrial scale back in the 40s when, as an acknowledgement of the debt we owed other members of the Commonwealth for helping fight Fascism.At the same time immigration plugging an employment gap which arose because so many of our employable men had been lost in the war.
For too long as a country we have been tiptoeing around the issue of immigration.
The Establishment describing the advantages of which there are no doubt many but failing to listen to the man in the street who looks at immigration as a negative measure when set against the problem of limited resources such as school places and hospital waiting lists.
As a Bradfordian I witnessed the arrival of the Pakistani diaspora into the city and the literal ghettoisation of an area above Manningham Lane where immigrants from Pakistan congregated.
There was little attempt to integrate socially  by the established community the Muslim women stayed at home and weren't encouraged to learn the English because the men wished to segregate them from the local influence.
The numbers living in a house swelled many times the local norm as newcomers joined relatives already here. Their dress and their observance to a religion that was totally foreign to the English all contributed to massive feeling of resentment, a resentment which is still held by a large swath of the local population.
Fast forward 65 years and Bradford now has the title of "Little Pakistani". The Town Council is controlled by people who trace their origins back to those early settlers because voting has a powerful element of religious cohesion.  People vote not on Political lines but on Racial/ Cultural/ and Religious lines and today their cultural vote carries all before it.
In a microcosm Bradford is what the White non Muslim person fears. The intrinsic force of a culturally homogeneous group within the larger group who, for all kinds of reasons are sufficiently autonomous to be identified as separate and different from the established majority.
Separatism has long bedevilled nation states but when it rears its head within a nation state one has a potential powder keg !!

Laos

I have just watched a program on the BBC depicting Sue Perkins (not one of my favourite TV personalities) who has also joined the growing list of minor celebs wandering the world with camera crew in tow giving their peculiar take on distant exotic places like Luang Prabang in Laos.

"Laos is a state of mind" with its communities tied to the river and the harvest which the river brings, it has its own pulse its own rhythm. 
With the advent of billions of Yuan sloshing around the Chinese are building a series of Hydro Electric Dams on the Mekong to electrify the countries circling Laos.  Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Electricity will change and consumerise the region but who are we to deny others what we take for granted.Of course it will destroy the simplicity even the integrity of life there but the "march of progress" can enhance and at the same time, destroy much of the social fabric developed over millennia. Whilst the young adapt to the opportunities offered, the old practices which determined the identity of a people are lost and to a large extent the people with them.
As these delicate tribal communities become consumers they join the Global community and become slaves, as we are, to a set of values based on money and on what money buys.
They loose the rhythm of a different way of life where it was sufficient to put food on the table whilst respecting the natural world around them of which they, and their lives were an integral part.
It's a debatable point whether anyone, other than the employer gains in this acquisitive, never enough hours in the day, two and three jobs, credit fuelled environment we call 'normality' has been an advance from the homespun village environment I grew up in.
Not having something was "normal" and therefore we were 'not' continually comparing ourselves with others. To be poor was not a social affliction and amongst the poorest communities (at least outside the cities) the social glue was very strong and resilient.
The film traced the lifeblood of the Mekong and the communities living on its shores. It was another reminder of the fast disappearing world that the jet plane has propelled into our gaze and like the sub atomic world of the "quark" the moment we set eyes on it we start to contaminate it !

South African Migrants

I think I have heard the most convoluted argument ever to explain why South African Black Africans are rejecting the influx of Black Africans from countries to the north.

A professor, Chris Landburg from one of the universities in Johannesburg propounded the argument that "because of the Apartheid years" and the categorisation of people into groups with the White at the top, followed by the Indian and then Coloured people leaving the Black person, institutionally at the bottom of the pile. This segregation has continued to attached it's self in the Black Africans psyche as he or she, looks around for someone less able, they fix on the Black immigrant from the North as being an even lesser person and an easy outlet to vent his anger.

No mention of the economic situation or the local jobless person fearing that every extra immigrant dilutes the available work even more. 
Of course to do this would ask questions of the current government, much easer to raise the spectre of Apartheid as a 'back stop' for all the countries ills.
 

Marikarna

I am truly shock this evening after seeing a full length documentary on AlJazeera of the massacre at Marikarna. The indiscriminate shooting of the striking miners as they began to leave their sit-in protest for wages and better condition at this Lonmin owned mine.

It wasn't far short of the dreadful sight of man's inhumanity to man when they opened the gates of the Belson concentration camp. The horror of the camp was contextually completely different but modus was similar, the aim of the authorities was to kill and exterminate as many people as possible.


It was like a cattle run only the cattle were people, herded and corralled into areas where they were trapped and shot down like animals.
The strike had becomes deadlocked with the management refusing to negotiate before the workers returned to work. The miners initially negotiated through their Union the NUM but had lost faith in the union believing them too close to management.
The sit in was on national TV with opinion divided on whether the miners had right on their side or should the economic argument produced by the Lonmin management carry the day.
In the lead up to the massacre a number of people had been killed, including two policemen a move which meant that the Police Commissioner made it clear on the day of the killing, "the sit in would end today no mater what the miners did". To back up her announcement she assembled a force of 650 police, numerous police semi armoured vehicles, rolls of barbed wire and over 4000 rounds of ammunition.
As daybreak broke, the police cordoned off all escape routes with barbed wire and blocked the exits with armoured police vans. The miners having been addressed passionately by one of the NUM reps begging them to move away and return home began to move peacefully from the koppie. Disengaging from any confrontation they showing no sign of rebellion or posed a threat to the police but as they slowly passed the parked vehicles the police opened fire.
The sight of heavily armed police shooting repeatedly into the crowed mass of people who were sitting ducks waiting to be mown down was terrible. The police were in a killing frenzy, no fire was returned and yet they continued to shoot. Some of the miners escaped into the surrounding koppies (small hills) where they were pursued like game to be shot. No mercy was shown.
This was not a white, ideologically warped Apartheid police force dealing with a so called inferior class of people as in the days of Sharpville but a black on black state led violence which was sickening to watch. Round after round fired into the tightly packed group of human beings struggling to get away from the bullets, hoping to stay alive, in a panic, full of fear.
I'm not sure whether this footage and the unfurling story was shown in South Africa but no one was found culpable, no one was charged, no heads rolled other than the miners on that black day in South Africa.

Pork comes first

The advent of police brutality in America comes to our notice through the use of Video footage which is available to anyone to shoot with a mobile phone. The film showing the man running away from a policeman and the policeman firing 8 shots into the fleeing man has forced the police to charge the policeman with murder. Without the Video footage it is very doubtful whether the policeman would have been charged let alone cautioned. There are many videos showing police brutality, the attendant comment from the police officer that he feared for his life is enough in a society awash with guns.

Of course we never see the brutality of the Russian authorities or those in Pakistan, Iran, Burma, Colombia or Brazil. Across the world authoritative power corrupts and only now, when there is positive proof will the authorities take any self restraining action.
Don't get me wrong the police officers lot is a difficult one. He spends much of his time confronting the cities low life who instinctively are dangerous and who would lease off a shot or more in his direction if given the chance !
The Wild West epitomised the sharp shooter, getting his shot in first or dying in the process. With so many of the criminal and rowdy sections of the population high on drugs, momentarily at least they are mentally unstable and the police officer is continually exposed to serious harm, if not death, with only his gun between him and the unknown. The police are between a rock and a hard place.
Yet still there are unacceptable actions such as shooting someone in the back whilst they were running away or repeatedly punching a pregnant women while cuffing her. These are the result of a poorly trained police force who have forgotten that,in general, the public are not the enemy.
The gun and the uniform should not be seen as a privilege to use excessive force when and where ever but in countries where the criminal has equal access to enough weaponry to start a war the police never know when a situation will turn nasty.
The root cause of every killing lies not only with the perpetrator but with the Politicians who are are persuaded or bought by the lucrative gun lobby in Congress. Even limited attempts to rein in the use and ownership of guns by the current President was thwarted. Even after the mass murder of children in school which shocked the nation didn't affect the policy makers, there was too much "pork" at stake. What sort of a society puts money before children's lives. An American on apparently !!!

Another star is born.

The Masters at Augusta has just finished with the young 21 year old Texan, Jordan Spieth coming away a clear winner. 


He led from start to finish playing near perfect golf and shared with Tiger Woods the best collective score for all 4 days 18 under.

It got me thinking of South Africa in the old days where despite the enforced isolation from the rest of the world the golfers as individuals, not representing the country could play on the international stage.
Of course Gary Player was the outstanding South African player of his generation, playing alongside Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer. Everything in those days was seen through the prism of Apartheid and the first million dollar tournament played at Sun City had us all glued to the television. The Masters meant a late night early morning viewing schedule but it was always a moment when we felt we were once again reconnected to the outside world.
One has to ask yourself, how you would have reacted to walking up the 18th green to the roar and the clapping of the huge crowd gathered to watch the final put at only 21 years of age. Jordan Spieth the clean cut kid from Texas, showed a maturity way beyond his years as he methodically went about his business showing little emotion. I suppose that's what it's all about the culmination of hours, months, years practising the strokes needed to suite each and every occasion out on the course. You can't live a normal childhood or enjoy those teenage years when you are so fixated on practicing your skills with one purpose, winning.
I have never had a focus such as his. My life, like most of us was far too laid back to see too far into the future or gather and hone the tools of my trade to such an extent.
His reward, one million dollars for 4 days work is only the horderve. From now on he will begin to cash in on all those hours on the driving range as he enters the record books, starting on a par with Tiger.
At least he seems more amiable than Tiger Woods who was always so self absorbed and remote as a human being.
It will be interesting to see if he is a flash in the pan, perhaps we are in for some great battles in the future with Rory Mcilroy ?

And so the debate droans on.

It's funny how people build up a shell in which to hide their ability to call on their common sense when issues of an ideological nature impinge their sensibilities. The world is full of "goodies" and "baddies" and we tend to line up behind one or the other. Once we are in the queue it's difficult to see outside the specific bubble.

So we have the genuine pacifists complaining about the use of Drones to bomb and cause the inevitable death of innocent civilians without fearing the very people who are the target of the drone attacks. To them the issue is that the civilised world has little or no leeway when it commits itself to taking on the bad guy. The superstition is that the world is potentially a good place and if only everyone believed what the pacifist believed, that there is no place for violence.
The other side have a more gung ho attitude to solving problems. Their concern or lack of concern about the euphemism, collateral damage is exemplified in their hatred of the opposition to their steady state world and the satisfaction they get for living in it. The drone is the perfect vehicle for keeping the status quo in place since it exposes no one to any danger, other than the people who incidentally look and have similar surnames to the bad guys.

How do we equate the people killed by a drone, which is an attack on the people who also kill innocent people, when they commit placing a bomb around the body of some brainwashed child to explode it in a busy market place.
It's not even an eye for an eye since the bulk of those who die are oblivious to the causes which are being played out on either side.
Much of this is lost on the debaters since seeing the other side is an ideological anathema.
 

The men from the ministry.

Clever men are not necessarily intelligent. Listening to one of the Parliamentary Committees one is astounded to hear one of the leading people in the Civil Service clearly not understanding basic common sense. That when a student applies for a grant which has a sliding monitory value and has to be assessed, that the "person assessing should not the same person as the person who receives the benefit from the value of that assessment".

The size of the grant depends, in monitory terms, on the assessment and the "dome headed man" who heads up the service could not see the link.
The route into the civil service is usually from the private school, often with a wink and a nod from Pater to a friend in the Service. Once in, it's a job for life with a substantial pension age 55 which perhaps explains how leisurely this particular Civil Servant approached his job.


Public money is being wasted on a lavish scale but since it's not coming out of a private pocket, other than it is in the sense that each taxpayer is a private individual, rather the pain is spread and like a pain killer the focus of the pain is dispersed.
For many of these Civil Servants their ability lies in the use language to defuse issues rather than to think and plan the area for which they are responsible. It's a game of words and pithy comment, with a shiny car, an impressive office and a remuneration package the man or women in the street would die for.

The American dilemma

There are many commentators who describe the Middle East as a basket case. The different factions at each other's throat are often tribal who's animosity stretches back over generations. Tough, often despotic rulers, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein to name but two, kept them in their place by cruelly suppressing their freedom. The argument for the West to send troops was the "oppression suffered by the people in each country" and the need for regime change. It was spiced up by the suggestion that there were weapons of mass destruction, weapons which were never found and have been pretty much agreed, were the shady work of the Bush/Blair administration prodded by Donald Rumsfeld and his oil interests.

The question of the American financial colonisation of the world with is policy of intervention and destabilisation has to be faced. It's difficult to see our cousins from across the pond in anything other than a collaborative light. They speak like us, many of their institutions were borrowed from us and then developed by them. The gloss of open elections and their support for a legal underpinning of society has much of our own system of values in it but it is never the less substantially different from anything seen in Europe.
Under laying this underpinning the American democratic system is the enormous part played my money. Not only in the election process but in the promotion of virtually every piece of Congressional legislation. Also the support for repressive governments right across the world where a financial advantage can be obtained, is well documented.
How much of the current mess in the world comes from their meddling ?
Should "local" balance of power issues be allowed to be fought out, irrespective of the outcome, on the time old premise that the strong will always come out on top.
Should their financial colonisation project be supported or should we admit that the Washington Consensus's is as foreign to us as is the Kremlins method of dealing with their troublesome opposition. Perhaps we should be more like the French renowned for their political independence irrespective of the cost. 

Heathrow

Easter Monday and I'm waiting patently for flight V109 coming in from New Deli.

It's always tricky timing your arrival at any airport trying to estimate how long it will take for custom clearance and the time it takes to pick up baggage. Most busy airports have to allow for stacking the incoming planes and another delay but you would hate to be late to meet who ever is flying in so you err on the side of extra time rather than not be there when they walk through.
The parking went well, I was close to the bridge that carries pedestrians over the busy road and emerged not more than 20yds from Arrivals.
Usually Heathrow is a frenetic place with people rushing around like stressed, headless chickens.

In Departures there is the anticipation of a long, often uncomfortable flight, (gone the days when you searched for your cabin to settle down to a three week voyage). The strain of saying goodby and remaining stoic whilst knowing your relationship may never be the same again as perhaps a family member goes off to make a new life on the other side of the world. In Arrivals on the other hand, there is the happy anticipation of a reunion as people scan the incoming passengers for friend or family (not I hasten to add exclusive). There is the tension burst when the friend is seen and they rush forward to hug and welcome them back. How was the flight, are you tired, shall we eat. 
Airports tend to reflect the country they are in despite the attempt to internationalise them. Some like Heathrow are usually frenetic and a bit jaded others like The ones in the Emirates are a huge sprawling concourse build on the open desert, space no problem.
Johannesburg is quite modern but in an African way as the posh shops compete with the 'hustlers' selling a ride into town or the must have local sim card. It's a mixture of a need to trade to exist, the entrepreneurial energy to make a sale against the iconic top end goods that a man or a women with a few bob in their pocket might need.
The Indian subcontinent struggles with the disparity between the cultural and social clash when East meets West. The heat and the disconnect between offering a service and scoring an advantage is always present in this land of the ragged but alert entrepreneur. A land of massive disparity. A huge democracy where nothing gets done to meet the needs of the electorate and the bribe is the only route to 'quick service'.
Sydney is at its interrogatory best as it scours the luggage for bugs. The laconic, semi friendly semi "your in Aussie now mate and I'm King here" official wants to know what's in that package? People outside in Arrivals fretting, "will they let him in" and, armed with a rule book as large as an encyclopaedia the official face of Australia scrutinises every incomer.
Today Heathrow was at its best, not snowed under with business traffic, the Arrival hall is polished and clean, the shops and the passenger service providers are alert and willing, the mechanism which drives this place has everything under control and, for a change I'm quite proud to be British !!

Easter Sunday

Messiahs of the poor. Who are the messiahs of the poor or has their plight become simply a sideshow for middle class society who, busy climbing the slippery pole of accreditation and consumerism are blind to the condition of others around them.
Once there were political movements with the broad aim of guiding society at large in such a way that the poor were part of the collective thought. 

Today like the Victorian Peep Show, the poor in all their guises are simply something to gawk at, part of a documentary or worse, part of the stereotyping as the camera follows the lives of the disenfranchised and illiterate, washed up at 18 Not disenfranchised in terms of a vote but in terms of an education and the emotional stability to make their way through life.
We have become so convinced that given the right, 'get up and go', anyone can achieve some measure of success and if they don't they have only themselves to blame.
There are newspapers and media outlets that spend much of their time demonising the poor, trying to convince and warn us that if we don't follow the Milton Friedman plan we too will end up on the scrap heap.
Well sometimes it's a different scrap heap that awaits us, a scrap heap where we think we have everything but in fact we have nothing.
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".  This biblical saying has wide philosophical meaning and need not tie us down to the religious connotation.
Fulfilment is more than having obtained riches. Life has a human component which asks us to include everyone and to consider everyone as equal members of the human race, or to use another biblical quotation "do unto others as you would do unto yourself".
It is after all, Easter Sunday !