The "Time Line".

It's strange isn't it that we go on pursuing and accumulating knowledge right up until the time we die. It's as if we can take the stuff with us ! A more sensible arrangement would have been to bequeath every new born with all the knowledge they could possibly acquire and then throughout their lives, like a bucket with a hole in it, the knowledge slowly drips away so that at the end the bucket is dry ! I suppose senility is the equivalent of a dry bucket but up until we tip over the edge we continue to strive to fathom the unfathomable.
I suppose it's what makes us unique in the animal kingdom, this need to know and understand a whole set of things which really have no significant purpose in our lives. Our emotions are always to the fore setting new boundaries as we progress or even regress through life, and it's the feelings which are brought into focus by the change of circumstance which mark each passing year. If we are of a mind to we embark on a journey of not only self discovery but also begin to turn over a few stones which we had avoided.
A busy life is a life of sacrifice and more than anything we sacrifice our time in the pursuit for someone else's dream. It's only when we have spent much of allotted span do we begin to judge the importance of many other things and so, the rush to gather knowledge in the hopeless task of ever understanding !!!

Coping

You are only as happy as your unhappiest child.
This is such a powerful statement, awash with pathos but also a sense of human opportunity which is clear, listening to a group of women who cope with their troubles by being together and sharing their experiences whilst walking through the countryside.
When we have children we assume that such and such will happen and we will be like guide dogs adjusting their direction every so often but trying to hold back so they learn by experience. But these women are faced with a range of difficulties that blind our tiny ups and downs and make one feel so blessed with our wonderful but very personal experience.
The range of disabilities seems unending and listening to these parents trying to cope with their child's needs seems unending. It's a total emotional commitment as well as a physically demanding one.
24/7, one has to adjust ones life around these little people who didn't ask to be born into such a world but who need, particularly the mothers love, in bucket loads to compensate for their inability to perform the simple tasks we have to perform as human beings every minute of every day.

 Walking and talking is cathartic it releases the thoughts of being singled out, and the chance of feeling a victim. The real victims are the children but in many cases the child doesn't yet know since they have no reference point other than their own specific experience. For the parent of a seriously disadvantaged child there is a constant reference, the healthy children all around and one must query the magnanimity of a creative process which produces such bitterly disadvantaged human beings ? I suppose, like life's journey, the obstacles are the testing points which give us perspective but it seem a cruel way to design a course which produces so much pain in an effort to teach us a lesson !

By the way this small reflection on the lives of others, so far removed from my own was brought on by the BBC.
Broadcast on the radio at 6 am it brought my attention to the people, out and about doing their human best to stay the course. It was programmed by a team of people who care to bring to us just one story in thousands about rambling in and through our marvellous countryside. The "only for profit outfits" wouldn't spend their money on such a storyline there's not enough blood and guts in it, too much humanity not enough innuendo !!
As I have mentioned in a previous blog, they have their dirty little "profit motivated" knives out for this institution we take for granted at our peril.

The real meaning of inequity

How do we managed to live in such a duel world.  Watching a program discussing various bits of news brought up the fact that the rail strike had been called off. These shows are packed with minor celebs to give us their opinion on matters of importance. Today we listened how the workers were threatening to strike (how dare they inconvenience us) was for an extra £500 bonus payment at the end of the year.

That converts to £10 per week or £2 per day. The incredulous celebrities, each earning probably four times that amount to appear on the one hour show, didn't seem to understand the irony but that is how we educate our populous these days with innuendo from those newly out of nappies and who have little or no experience of real life.

They followed their scathing assessment of the wrongs which "unionism" can inflict on society (as if the members who are being represented are not part of society) with a diatribe on the increase which the rail companies had imposed on the travelling public in higher fares. 

It didn't seem to impinge on their woolly brains that perhaps the people who really get them from A to B, the drivers and the attendant workers, asking for this "outrageous" £2 a day (25p an hour) are last in the queue to benefit from any revenue garnered from a ticket price increase, rather the fare increase flow into the pockets of the investors of the rail companies and the executive who fund their own annual bonus without recourse to any third party, other than a minute in the boardroom minutes.

Its all a matter of scale

 To many people the past is much the same as the present, nothing much has changed and life goes on much as before. Most of us follow a path set out by providence be it fate, destiny prudence or foresight we arrive at where we are by largely following the herd. This is true whether it be the young chap now grown old who set off in his fathers footsteps to gain an education and join "the firm" or the person who bobbed about from job to job, satisfied to be amongst the images of his youth, the places he knew then and which have changed little and therefore are a source of support as he grows old.

It's strange how this map of our lives, the 1"x 1 mile, close proximity, he never moved far, knows each bump and wrinkle and has a common denominator which describes most of our lives. 

A few used a different scale and wandered off over the horizon to lose themselves in foreign countries. Here everything was different nothing familiar it was  a learning process as one coped to understand the new local norms.
For them the convenience of familiarity, the strong bonds one builds between friends which provide great strength as people move through our lives is missing. The knowledge of the culture and the part you play in it, which makes for another form of familiarity and carries the population along a similar path by which you recognise each other, is also missing.
Some people in a later stretch in ones life swap the large scale for the small on the assumption that the old and familiar are still there and one can re-plug as if you had never been away.
It's an illusion since nothing stands still, including ourselves and the close personal space is lost to intervening experience.
Of course we are all simply "the cast" of a moving drama called life. Once the star of the show slowly we take on diminutive rolls just to remain noticed and then, as the curtain descends for the last time, someone deletes us completely !!

Sent from my iPad

A true polygot

What is this narrative of opinions based on skin colour. How and why do we differentiate against people of a different skin colour to our own.
Well of course prejudice comes in many guises. The way you speak, the way you hold your knife and fork, which school you attended, or simply whether you were brought up in another part of the country, all contrive to bias an opinion and to prejudge the person relying on your own set of convictions that such and such and so and so indicate a lower, lesser status.
And there it is this damming, defining, inevitably social construct called status !!  It seems that the sketch played by the "Two Ronnie's", involving each party to the sketch demanding his separation and exclusiveness from the other (a brilliant piece of comedy) is and has been always with us. It seems to be part of ones self survival kit, to believe you are superior or at the very least on a par with people and can hold your head up in the social mix.

Where do we get this prejudice. Is it in our continuing attempt to match the images we receive from the world at large with our opinion of our own set of values, values if we are honest are learnt and have no "absolute" status. One man's values are usually specific to his or her upbringing and environment. The belief system (non religious) by which we coalesce to form a workable whole is learnt and we differer at our peril of being thought "strange".

And so in this social melting pot we still call England, perhaps sometime in the future we will have to re-brand the place to better reflect its new make up, we continue to categorise in the forlorn hope that our categories mean anything any more.
Perhaps after my generation have passed out of sight and maybe the next, we will have forgotten the differences and become a true polyglot.

Tripping around the air waves

I'm doing my world tour via the Internet radio again. It's fascinating how the different languages influence ones impression of the country and the people.

Listening to a woman speaking in Chinese from the centre of the country I was impressed by the beauty and the soft sound of her voice, very sexy. In comparison moving to Japan, the Japanese language was much more aggressive, more clipped and staccato, not as attractive. 

It was also interesting to see the countries who do not transmit to the world. Nothing in Laos or Cambodia whilst there was one in Vietnam and one in Thailand. Does that represent a political position or an economic one ?  
Nothing in Sierra Leone or Liberia nothing in Sudan or Eritrea. I was surprised to see Hong Kong does not have a station but Alice Springs does !
It's also fascinating to slide with the sun across the planet, some countries chirpy rising to a new day, others a little under the weather as the evening drags on and home beckons.
The English language stations illustrate the temperament of the station often a barometer of the national character. The laid back Aussie in the Outback only partially ameliorated by the output from the big cities. One feels even in Sydney the bush hat is never far away.
The stations in South Africa always have a fascination having lived there so long. The country has changed since I lived there and the conversations on programs like 702 are a mix of tribal interests and to my ear colloquial. It seems to have drawn in on its self but then when I lived there the Apartheid system had caused the nation to look inward and maybe by ear was less attuned.
The U.S. Has always had such a wide mix from the folksy South to the razor sharp East Coast.
I love the deep resonance of the late night jazz announcers, you can taste the Bourbon, less so the high pitched babble of the female trying to sell me something.
Having returned home but still having a deep affinity for other parts of the world I realise the depth of professionalism which the BBC offers us 24/7.
The range and the quality is phenomenal its a beacon for which the "Pom"  can feel proud. Measured debate, programming to cover all tastes, its a companion and like many of our companions in life, we don't pay enough recognition to it whilst we have it !!
We must protect Aunty and through protecting her, protect ourselves from the disparaging talk of the "privateers" who only see Dollar signs and to whom any talk of sustaining the nation through sustaining our cultural heritage, is an anathema.

The cause of poor productivity.

There is a silence in the media about the Governor of the Bank of England's comments yesterday about the poor efficiency of the British workforce. 

Not a silence on his pronouncement but a silence as to the proper causes of the poor returns or as the jargon goes, the "unit of production".

It is obviously a factor regarding our competitiveness and is crucial for our growth which, within the system, produces the tax returns to pay for the services the state provides.

In the discussions, play is made that much of our growth has been in low paid jobs jobs which, on the one hand escape much of the'tax take' because they they fall outside the sphere of HMRC  and also, in these circumstances the nature of the work is not very stimulating. Stimulation, either  in monetarism terms or the creative juice, both are missing in this type of work and it's no wonder that efficiencies are missing.

Another issue is "high immigration" which it is claimed, due to the nature of their life style, drags down wages. Single immigrants have all types of aims and aspirations, many without, at this stage in their lives, the cost of needing to be established and the amount of money in the form of wages which they need to cover their bills is far less than someone with a family and a mortgage.

The main problem it seems to me is that our national productivity problem comes from, yes a lack of efficiency but an efficiency which comes from the "tools" you have to complete the task. 

If there is a lack of investment and with it, a long term view as to the security of the market into which you wish to sell your product, if this is missing then it's hardly likely that the people around doing those tasks will be enthusiastic or, efficient.

In this country our poor record in terms of investment and even worse, our obsession with "short term returns". It seems in pretty poor taste, to blame the productivity of the worker.

An antidote to provincialism

The haunting symbolism of music coming from Baghdad

, the Arabic language calling from the muezzin tower, the rippling masculine vocal tones inciting the believers to prayer. The staccato phrases interceded by poignant silences broken again by another flurry, another entirety,another series of sounds alien to my ear but fascinating as I contemplate their origin whilst sitting in my home fed the normal western, "mass produced" studio compilations that seem worlds away from what this Arabic singer is performing.
One is often guilty of not remembering the age of the civilisations that produced this culture. Whilst we were running around in skins they were devising the science of astronomy and devising algebra to describe ways of expressing their advanced interpretation of the world as they knew it.
The culture of the Egyptians and the settlement around the Euphrates and the Tigress rivers in Mesopotamia 8000 BC were the beginning of what we understand as settled civilised communities. The great Persian Empire 550 BC. The Ottoman Empire, each established a collective view to society whilst we were still extremely primitive.
This plaintive yet powerful sound of the Arabic music telling it's story of historical provenance, is another attempt on my part to expand my mind in an attempt not to be so provincial !!

Don McLean

The legacy of Don McLean's Starry Starry Night, and American Pie, songs which underlined the rebellion against the System of Corporate America and the political corruption which took America to war. If you sit and listen to the lyrics played against a fascinating rhythmic accompaniment which have held fans of McLean in thrall.
If you are of my age they signal many historical moments in ones own life as we tried to understand the Vietnam war and the later period of Reaganism with his encouragement of raw corporate power and its effect on America.
Sitting in a darkened room, a glass of vintage cognac close to hand, the hypnotism and the soulfulness of "Starry Starry Night" as it plots the sad genius of Vincent Van Gogh's life, has a heart warming humanity to it.  It strikes a note in all of us as he describes so well, the torment of a person who's talent has been acknowledged by all subsequent generations but who suffered the mental malaise of depression and paranoia. 

I think, as the music washes over us we warm to the sensitivity expressed towards this great artist. Its a moment of musical expression which hits one with an ocean of sentimental reflection about, not least, ones own life and ones own dreams which have been unrequited.

Where it all went wrong.

Outsourcing seems a benign phrase. It means that having won a contract you subcontract the work to others.
The structure of securing a contract and here we often mean the running of what used to be an arm of government in providing services to the public, services which used to be directly the responsibility of a Whitehall department and therefore the responsibility of a government minister who themselves are responsible to Parliament. By outsourcing the work to theoretically large companies, it begins to water down and disseminate the chain of responsibility. When things go wrong, the phrase "not on my watch gov" comes to mind since the dissemination does not stop with the company securing the contract. Having secured the work, the work is then sub contracted to other smaller companies who then further subcontract the work until responsibility is lost totally. The people suffering of course are the ones expecting some level of service and often they are the most disadvantaged in society.
My Home Care a company who do what it says on the tin, they visit people in their home to help usually the old and disabled in their home are being questioned for a number of cases which are just now being brought to our notice.
The root problem seems to be the age old one of profit.
The people at the top of the main organisation set the standards and the schedules their aim is to get the best use of the labour under their control and so maximise the unit cost of each social service visit.
By employing people below the minimum wage, not paying them whilst they move from one client to another, insisting that the time spent in the individuals home is strictly limited, irrespective of the needs of the person being visited, all this panders to the need to streamline the service to make it profitable. The stories of feeding the person whilst they were using the toilet, the horrible image of being told "not to help someone" who they discover has fallen and injured themselves, rather that they call an ambulance (nothing wrong with that) but then leave to go to the next job with the only caveat that they leave the door open so the injured person on the floor could be seen by the ambulance crew when they arrived.
Where is the humanity in this, where is the decency, where is the respect we should all have for one another ?
Well by the very act of "privatising" what was before a social service which we, as the general public, thought could be entrusted to the Government we elect, privatising the work involves evaluating each call from a monetary point of view and eliciting a profit from what was initially a civilised humanitarian service which the "strong" offer the "weak" in our society. Paring the time down to the bone like some "time and motion" function in a factory goes against the very ethos of of this type of work and also who we should be and how we prioritise ourselves as a caring society.
As we plough on becoming more and more like America one can hear the call, "please enter your PIN number" ringing down the hall as the dementia enfeebled oldie wonders where it all went wrong ?

The knives are out for the BBC

So the knives are out.  

We were worried about the NHS, perhaps large cuts in welfare but we never thought of the BBC.

The new Media Minister has let slip (and they never let anything slip) that he wishes to make changes to the way the BBC is funded.
It's a glittering prize for the City who have long had their sights set on this Jewel in the Crown of what is left of the old Britain. The country has changed enormously in terms of its demographic and listening to some of the people who phoned in to a talk show they ranged from people who don't find the program's the BBC offers interesting, others who rely on the Internet and have no sense of what the BBC stands for, for people of my generation.
It's hard to fully put into words the value of a broadcaster of the breadth and scope which the BBC offers. For a cost of £3 a week you receive such a plethora of programming, programs made by the BBC and costing large sums of money but programs which set the bar right across the world.
The world of nature was revealed in a series of tremendous programs showing a marvellous symbiosis which exists in the environment between land, sea, and air.  No other organisation has the skill base or organisation to come close to Aunty.
672 hours of television programming and at least as much on radio for £3 per week !!! 
What is there to complain about.
If you wish to compare the BBCs program output with that of Sky's subscription or ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 which is funded solely by advertising.  I once counted the minutes in an hour taken up by advertising. Between 20 and 25 minutes are spent each hour watching, not the material you have paid for, (if you support the subscription, £16 to £20 per week), but a repeated bombardment of puerile sycophantic trash to make us open our wallets and buy things we never knew we needed. To have to pay for this rubbish is bad enough but what it does to our brains to be treated like one of Pavlov's dogs with repeated commands, buy me, buy me ,buy me !!! 

It probably a mental health question and it says a lot about how contrived our lives have become to accept this mental imposition as if it were normal.
Anyway the dear old Tories true to form have burst out of the traps with the mouth watering concept of the eventual privatisation of the BBC with the equally distasteful concept of subscription. They won't be happy until they have Americanised us both in health and recreation.

I wonder what the Europeans think of Perfidious Albion as she throws out "Aunty" for Fox and the NHS for, "can I see your credit card first sir before we start treatment" health service !!
The problem with democracy is perhaps, the fools who are given the vote !

Please use the trade man's entrance

Is it correct and proper that any human being who holds opinions and beliefs about virtually any matter, and project themselves to others with these beliefs, (unless they have a change of heart), are they being deceitful if they then dress themselves in the guise of someone or something else, just to gain an advantage no matter what. In such a case you would normally be deemed crass and dishonest, but in politics it seems to be de rigueur 
After their demise where do the true Liberals and people who are concerned with climate change and the thrust of global economics such as The Greens, what becomes of them. 
Where do the caring humanitarian go whilst the Tories flail around cutting away at the Welfare State, at what they see is an unnecessary social contract with the ordinary man in the street.
The Tory failure to understand that a civilised community is not only made up of highly successful entrepreneurs but has amid its ranks many disadvantaged people ( one could argue, disadvantaged by birth, education and opportunity, which in many ways is in the hands of the very people doing the judging ! ). The great experiment from 1947 onwards will close to all extent and purposes as the accountants determine and ration what's on offer.
We must of course keep Trident, we can't afford to upset the Americans and anyway it maintains the great bluff perpetuated since the end of the war that we carry some clout in the forums of world politics through our 'deterrent potential'.  It's more important to play the part even if our clothes have become tatty and ill fitting.
As I open the business pagers of the Telegraphy or the Times, or if I read the political pundits in the Sun or the Mail I feel their grin bearing out at me. "You silly buggers", it says, "we've done it again, we've conned you". "When will you learn that our pages talk of a different world to yours and whilst we hoodwink you and mesmerise you with "inclusive talk" please don't call again for another 5 years, and next time you call, use the trade-man's entrance"

The morning after

Waking up this morning the day after the the election of the Conservatives,  the leaders of the Labour, Liberal and the United Kingdom Independence Party's who, on defeat, have fallen on their swords in an unprecedented display of public Hari Kari.

As I wake to another day, these three men, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage have a massive change to cope with, as the frenetic pace of the job they had become used to is pulled away within 24 hours !!

How do they cope having spent so many years pulling themselves up to the pinnacle of your respective party to find, at the stroke of a pen you are out of a job but worse than that there is no other job which could compare to the one you leave. It's sad to see such able people now lost to the business of politics

Has the psyche of the public changed ?
Can "issues", left of centre, which are understood in Scotland and reflect the huge popularity of the SNP, will these "issues" find a meaningful voice if the society have little truck with the weak and needy. My conversation in the pubs and amongst the workers within the offices reveal a disconnect with caring about others who are not as successful.
The yardstick is success and without that talisman "people"  are not valued.

Will we ever have a Labour Government again or will the appetite of the English for only fiscal solutions, an appetite to see the society in economic terms rather than as a common humanity issue, will we continue with "Tory values" as the solution to our form of government.
Will the "Boundary Changes" which the last Government wanted to bring in but which  the Liberals blocked, will these changes establish a new electoral composition across the country, a change in the way of the way voting blocks are formed so that Tory hegemony is always maintained, mixing Labour wards with stronger Conservative wards thereby cancelling out the effective Labour Opposition in most of the country for ever.
Any chance of "proportional representation" which would establish a much fairer, much more egalitarian and representational Parliament has little chance now. Why should it when the Establishment have it in their hands to control us for ever !!
People in this country vote as they are told to vote and the 'organs' through which the telling is most effectively done are :-
Sky TV, The Sun, The Times The Sunday Times The Mail,The Express, and The Daily Telegraph. Quite an influential block of news dissemination which can win the hearts and minds of the ordinary man in the street and, over time convince him Back is White.
This is the new or existing landscape and we have to live with it.

One of the main issues, as we prognosticate the future of the Labour Party has been the sensible reflection, by people who should have been the bedrock of the old party, on the cause of Labours failure and brought to bare by the Conservatives as Labour incompetence :-

1. When the economy was robust in the Blair years they should have replenished the housing stock which Mrs Thatcher had sold off in her sale of existing houses to the people who rented them.

2. They, should have considered the implication of allowing so many people into the country, from such divergent backgrounds all over the globe, believing that integration would proceed naturally.

3. In conjunction with immigration was the belief that "multiculturalism would be accepted by the population as a whole. They didn't engage in any sort of dialog before inflicting the drastic social mix which has made some cities unrecognisable pre 1950.

4. There should have been a greater understanding of the countries social dynamic by refusing to leave the business of politics solely to the "student of politics", as if politics was a "business studies" project. The connection with the common man was lost and no amount of ideological prep work can place an Oxbridge educated man or women in the working class districts of any major city. This disconnect, established over the Blair years and continued with Miliband, produced a dichotomy  which made for great misunderstand, one for the other.

A night of the dark forces

So it seems that there will be no change or perhaps a huge one, the Tories will rule unimpeded !
David Cameron is on his way into London, triumphant and vindicated with not only his electioneering campaign but with the direction of travel during the last 5 years.
Many ordinary people will be waking to the realisation that George Osborn has been given a clear hand to get on and purge the Welfare State of much of its humanity.
Perhaps being compassionate and humane towards ones common man is an condition which can not be afforded, perhaps it has finally been driven out of the English psyche following the famous claim by Mrs Thatcher that there is no such thing as "society" and we consolidate the individualism of the Middle Class.
The near totality of the swing to nationalist politics in Scotland's, with a block vote in Parliament of over 50 votes. The expectation was that the two major parties would be neck and neck and the SNP would be the power broker, the Scottish dog wagging the large English poodle. This was thought to be extremely dangerous, a danger exploited by the Tories as the spectre of a political party, which wishes to break away from the Parliament, would be a the power to demand policies of Labour who hoped to form a government. Now this is completely changed and whilst the Scots voted to a man and a women for the SNP to be in power, with the Tory's in charge of the government "they will have no power" in Westminster. What the ramifications of that situation will be given the enormous mandate from the people for change when as a country who has had to be subservient to their powerful southern cousin for 300 years, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't another Referendum in Scotland for full independence very soon.
So many of the old faces gone. People who were part of the political structure, Liberal Party Ministers in the last Government Danny Alexander and Vince Cable banished from their political day job, no longer with the appendage MP ! The Liberal Party have paid a terrible price for that sunny morning in No 10s Rose Garden when Nick Clegg joined hands to work together with David Cameron to form a coalition. Virtually all the backlash against the austerity measures that particularly George Osborn has brought into being (with many more to come) the backlash has been directed at the Liberals.
It's difficult to know why, there is no rational explanation to explain it but they got a kicking.
Ed Balls, Labours number two (the Shadow Chancellor) has lost his seat, a really big blow to the Labour Party. He was perhaps a victim of the Gordon Brown era where Ed Balls was the power in the Treasury, a period which has received a great deal of condemnation by the Tories as a major contributor to our budget deficit. Of course the building of much needed schools and hospitals were a part of that debt, a debt successfully vilified by the right wing press and swallowed hook line and sinker by the electorate. They would obviously prefer not to have the schools and the hospitals since the "national debt", (an ogre created by the national press) is more important and has punished the Labour Party for its historical hand in creating part of the debt whilst they,the electorate, max out their credit cards.
It's worth noting that the "national debt" has continued to rise under the last government because whilst we parade "growth" of 2 to 3% the tax receipts are falling and we continue to spend more than we earn.
Finally, the system of "First Past the Post" is once again shown to be the "bad guy". The number of voters in Scotland, about 4 million, produced 56 parliamentary seats . The same number of voters across the country voted UKIP but only produced 1 seat !!! That can't be right and bears no reflection of what a democratic system should look like.

Leverage

It's called leverage.
The early forecasted seats make the Conservatives the largest party of the 2015 election. Against the polls which indicated a neck and neck contest, the exit polls suggest that the Conservatives have captured a number of marginal seats which have opened the gap between them and Labour.
Of course for a Labour supporter like myself it is disappointing and in my view describes a mind set that I have said in the past characterises, particularly the English.
The outgoing coalition government has been very strident as to where the economic problems lie in our country. Repeatedly the claim is made that the huge Welfare bill particularly the Benefit bill is such a fiscal drag that we have to slay the Welfare/Benefit dragon before we can move on.

For years program makers on the TV and certain newspapers have depicted the poor in a bad light. They are the scrounges, the usurpers of common decency, the dregs within a civilised society. Week in week out this picture is sown to produce a backlash against the poor and disadvantaged and it has worked in a way that the message we had projected,in 2008 and since against the Bankers didn't. When a poor man or women become a drain on our financial resources we have at our means the tools to do something about them. When the Banking Industry received many billions of pounds more than the sum total of the Benefit bill (and remember the main recipients of the benefit pay out are the "Pensioners") of taxpayers money the opprobrium is muted and we have to simply grin and bare it since they are too big and important to fail.
Anyway before I get side tracked.
If a Tory led government is re-elected then the squeeze on, not only the Welfare State but the cherished institutions such as the NHS will progress unimpeded. Our country will more closely resemble the USA and less like a country with European traditions.
Will this be a bad thing. Well it will please those ideologically driven institutions, the IMF and the World Bank both operatives of American fiscal policy. The hegemony of a world elite running a Global Economy will be stronger.
As the results come in and based on predictions, the name of the politics in this country will be the skill in forming alliances with other parties to progress bills through Parliament. Strange bedfellows will emerge but as with all bed sharing there will be a price to pay.
In some ways this is not before time. The focus and the wealth in Britain has been in the South of England and Westminster has needed to only throw the occasional bone to the other regions to keep them quiet. With a potentially hung parliament the horse trading for votes means that the fiscal pot will have more snouts feeding from it and so the United Kingdom as a whole will have more clout as the SNP in Scotland and the DUP in Northern Island extract their price for following the largest party into the voting lobby. It's called leverage !!

More of the same

Having watched the results coming in from Scotland. They have trashed the Labour Party in a spectacular way with some swings, an unprecedented 30 plus percent.

This defeat is not normal. It is not due to an examination of a manifesto or a political parties promises but rather it is due to nationalism !
The Scots see themselves as poor cousins in the Mother of Parliaments in London. The Establishment in the guise of the Conservatives, control the purse and have in the past treated the populations in other parts of the UK, including Scotland with some disdain. The Scots having united in their thrust for "independence", carried this unity into this electoral vote which in my opinion explains the enormous swing.
Does the wish of the ordinary man in the street in England to re-elect a Conservative government carry some sort of social masochism? Having experienced a fall in living standards due to the lack of any improvement in wages for the last 5 years. 

The growth of Food Banks. The growth in the manipulation of the workforce using unstructured, unprotected employment arrangements where the workers "contract" does not stipulate any responsibility from the employer towards his workforce. Massive cuts to the Welfare State, with more promised in the next Conservative Government. The continued Privatisation of the NHS with all the implications for this cherished remnant of the great Social Experiment, initiated by the post war Labour Government. All this against a background of a doubling of the wealth of the richest in the same period that the poorest have been under the total onslaught of the very government they have now voted into power.

Masochistic or plain bloody stupid ?

Out early, milk anyone ?

 A world without cars, or at least putting distance between them, I descended past the suburban houses down a narrow path into open parkland. It's 7.00am, I had forgotten the milk and not wishing to make my guests any more crotchety I set off to walk to the shop.
I don't know what a collective of dog walkers is called but they were out in force, walking together, meeting to compare the current history of their canine companions. "Has he had his injection, what did the Vet say" ? They are a happy bunch, not able to wag their tails they chatter and wish you good morning, a far cry from the piercing gaze of the people in the cars as they swish by on their way to an appointment, no time to dwell, no time for anything but the starting clock within some office building in the city. The worry on their faces as they contemplate a motorway full to bursting, that hidden agenda over which they have no control but which their colleagues have no sympathy.
The dog walkers are oblivious of this, their clock is governed by the whistle of the kettle and the early morning tea. Walkie's !  Rusty stirs himself out of his warm basket, are these humans mad or simply obsessed. Anyway it will be good for some canine chat and I might get a chance to nip that bully boy Sam in the behind he's getting too big for his boots.
The early morning, sun is out and the birds are in full throat seeking to establish their existence by calling out their distinctive song. And what a chorus it is, the clear piercing notes of the blackbird, the rhythmic cooing of the doves the tiny cheep cheep of the wren. An orchestra that starts as the first light begins to chase the darkness away, as if the dangers of the night need to be suspended by the sound of "I'm all right". "I'm all right".
It's voting day and the schools have metamorphosed overnight into polling stations.
The busy political clique, optimistic that this will be their day are out manning the stations, sitting behind their tables lists in front, "name please".
There was for me, always something symbolic about turning up to vote. I suppose it was a bug I caught from my Dad who was a political animal. Voting was an opportunity and a responsibility, voting mattered, it was part of the social contract. How could you complain about Government if you couldn't be bothered to vote and try to influence events with your vote. The sense of the importance of this day was never lost on me although in the many years I lived outside this country I never had a vote and I remember the occasion of my first election since coming home I felt reunited by the functionality of casting my preference.
I'm home now and the sleeping beauties are oblivious of my errand of mercy (mercy to myself, they might have killed me otherwise). They haven't digested the sights and sounds of my walk nor the tip tap of writing my impressions to you all but soon I must break the tranquillity for the rough and tumble of family life !!!

When is a sheet not a duvet

When is a sheet not a duvet, when it's a sheet !! That's obvious isn't it ?
My little world was invaded by aliens at roughly one thirty this morning when a contingent of the Welsh light infantry (with some heavier detachments) arrived on my doorstep.
They came like waifs and strays, creeping out of the dark, without a knock, (they had their own key) to disturb my tranquillity. One was disorientated as she made her unsteady way towards the front door, the advance party having reconnoitred the way ahead and secured the lounge went back to find the missing detachment. There had obviously been some murmuring in the ranks on the way over from Wales but this was nothing unusual since the battalion had only recently been formed and discipline was weak.
The corporal in charge soon established control with a few homilies whilst blinking into the light came the main detachment heading, as always, for the toilet ! A little abashed at this early hour but soon finding her feet, looking for promotion and the sergeants stripes she quickly did the rounds.
The corporal meanwhile after establishing base and having fed the horses was not to be usurped and quickly did her own appraisal of the site for the nights bivouac. A place to obtain food (the fridge was full) a place to cook and wash and most important given the hour, a place to get their head down. My own part in this onslaught was of a rabbit caught in the headlights, impressed by the near military efficiency but startled by the near silence as the takeover was carried out.
King of my castle one moment I was soon reduced to that of a servant offering tea, sorry no milk (bad oversight) and a sandwich,( no thanks we carry our own provisions). Still there had been, until then no outright condemnation of the Quartermaster or the accommodation but this was early times and after the usual pleasantries a more detailed inspection of the barracks revealed a major problem, the sheet was not a sheet but a duvet cover and all hell broke out. How could one possibly make a mistake like that ? The opprobrium deepened with reference to ignorance and stupidity as a search broke out to find a sheet.
The flowers by the bedside were forgotten, the freshly washed towels laid neatly on the bed like a 5 star hotel were ignored for the missing sheets. For people so tired after such a long journey one could only wonder at such trivia but then any Achilles Heel in provisions  is useful to establish supremacy.
I can only quake at the thought of breakfast !!!

A funny old game

It's a funny old game, politics !
Who would have thought that a Scottish Nationalist Party would be a major cause of keeping the SNPs arch rivals in power in Westminster.
The Conservatives don't miss a trick and have been pumping the airwaves with the spectre of the Labour Party needing the SNPs vote to get through some of their bills in Parliament. The idea that a political party, who's raison d'etra is to break away from the very parliament it will have a say in controlling, is an anathema to many.
Removing the nationality issue, the SNP should have a natural affiliation to a proper Labour Party but of course the Labour Party often resembles a watered down version of the Conservative Party.

The SNPs manifesto and the urgings of Nicola Sturgeon resemble something of the Labour Party, pre Blair with proper socialist pretensions and one would have thought that Ed Miliband with his claim to be left of centre would have found some common ground with Sturgeon.

Never mind the rational, always a casualty in the political maelstrom of half truths and down right lies, the spectre of those pesky Sots having a say in in "how we run our old school tie business is not on old boy" ! The fact that for 300 years we have run theirs is of no consequence, the fact that with 45 seats they can not force any bill through that the rest of the House doesn't want is of no interest. All you have to do in this country is shout fire and everyone runs.
Any jingoistic claim is amplified by the bulk of the press who just happen to be owned by exceedingly wealthy people.  Mr and Mrs Pleb swallow what they read and shriek. The very parties that go out to bat for them are the ones they turn on, it's as if Alice was down the rabbit hole and everything is made surreal. It's as if by voting for the exclusive upper class party the working man believes he is joined to the wealthy by symbiosis and becomes one of them !!!
I give up !!!

the power of the blog

The power of the blog was emphasised in a powerful true story drama called the 
"C Word".
It was the moving story of a young women and her family, who having been diagnosed with breast cancer, embarked on the torturous road of treatment.
One of the strengths she found to get through this was by writing a daily blog to set down her hopes and fear, her frustrations and triumphs so they were not bottled up inside.
Writing is cathartic. There are so many events of which we have no control but in which we have an interest and writing about them and what we think about them, has the effect of going beyond the passive into a state of some sort of partial interaction. By publicising at least one point of view we hope that it will get others to think.
How often one comes across the expression "I can't be bothered", or its modern equivalent
"I can't be asked".
It's an expression of passivity and withdrawal, it means that you are only interested in things that effect you directly, the rest has no meaning and carries no weight.
The world beyond our personal experience is full of richness and can teach us a lot, not least about ourselves as we search for meaning
This women was dying and like most people in that situation she had no parallels to give her guidance but in writing and focusing her mind as she wrote it became clearer, the path less a minefield, easier to negotiate.
Eventually she published her blog in the form of a book which became a best seller and an inspiration to people in a similar situation.
Blogs or writing of any kind is the slow motion working of the mind and given we all have one, it is fascinating to explore the whys and wherefores of our prejudice or our optimism as, as the bard says, we pass this way but once !!

May Day

The days when today, the 1st of May (Labour Day) were celebrated in Red Square Moscow with a massive march past the Praesidium to a grumpy salute from Alexei Kosygin or a more cocky wave from Nikita Khrushchev are long gone. 

The huge threatening presentation of power as the rocket launchers and the lines of tanks passed through the Square was a reminder to us in the West not to poke the bear too hard or we would regret it. The might of the "Collective" and the power of the industrial machine which Stalin had assembled to compete with Capitalism was on show on May the 1st and in countries such as ours with a far less overt military machine we understood what raw overt power meant. 

Like the parades of the Nazi Party  (The National Socialist German Workers Party) in front of Hitler in Berlin. 

These parades which went on for hours were more than just propaganda they were a display of virility, of masculine strength to indicate the power of a nation. The all male martial marching songs, crisp and measured, sung in language of verbal precision, clear and precise the message came across loud and clear. The blond haired, pigtailed, blue eyed madchen gazing adoringly at this massed assembly of manhood were a crystallisation of the breeding plan that claimed a superiority over other races.

We never had the drive to present ourselves in this way. Our troops were a somewhat motley assembly of largely, part time soldiers. Only the Guards Regiments were significantly smart and had any sort of military stature. We were not a martial nation, we were scornful of authority and prided ourselves on our rudimentary individualism.

May Day to us meant dancing around a May Pole, holding a ribbon rather than the rifle, and celebrating Spring, the awakening of life not its destruction !!

Don't shout at me.

What a weak kneed society we have become when a manager giving someone a verbal bollocking in front of the TV cameras drew so much criticism from the Match of the Day football pundits. 

It seems everyone has been tainted with a sort of Political Correctness where no one should receive criticism, only 'watered down praise'. "It hurts the lads", to be told they played like a bunch of dummies said the pundits and will respond negatively at the next match.

What a load of twaddle ! 

They then drew the comparison of how you handle young players in a youth team where encouragement is needed to protect the young psyche but, and even there, one should never reward a poor performance.
The premier league players are grown men, astronomically well rewarded for what they do and if so sensitive would never survive a building site environment where you get verbally roughed up quite often and have to wait a long time if you need to hear praise from the boss.
I hear this pandering to the soft feminine side of our character (an oxymoron if ever there was one), the culture of, its "prizes for everyone, and no one is  either a winner or a looser"  a philosophy which has taken hold in our state schools.
The privately educated child is not led to believe that you win by loosing, you win by winning and you better get used to the idea ! That is why they succeed. Their internal antenna is tuned to find ways to win, simply taking part is not enough.

Our place on the high street

I still have to rate the program, "The Big Question", as one of the most thought provoking programs on television. I don't know if it is shown overseas but it should be. It portrays Britain, in so far as the people who live here as an assembly of many different hues and even more a multitude of sincerely felt opinions which are coloured by background and cultural variations.

The rich sub stream of humanity that parade down our high streets is confusing to a person of my age, who remembers a very different high street, one more inclined to my own experience of life and growing up with the various totems which I thought of as my identity but which have had to be put aside in an attempt to come to terms with the new society.
Change is unstoppable and we are told, is healthy but of course there are winners and losers and whilst we educate ourselves to cope with, not only the change but the reason and the background for change, it makes us insecure.  
Cultural norms, not so much based on the individual but on either a religious or a cultural basis have bubbled to the top and in our previously fragmented secular society which has developed post Thatcher we have no composite collegiate to fall back upon for sustenance or guidance.
Now, being agnostic both towards religion and my English culture (part of spending so much of my life's outside the country) I find being British confusing to say the least, particularly when comparing myself to those who now lay claim to being British with whom I have little in common, other than my humanism. Is the belief in the common man enough. Can I adapt to a universal brotherhood when the people I would normally share a train journey with come from a series of backgrounds that are clearly differently to my own.
My tribe has surrendered its position to take up the comfort of a pragmatic approach to virtually everything whilst around us "the others" are feeling more and more sure of their own tribal affiliations.
Do our traditions, not withstanding the onslaught of PC and the need to placate "others" at every turn, do they mean anything and are they worth fighting for ?