Being British

I'v been reading a recently published book describing the torment of a girl forced into marriage by her parents to an older man living in a society halfway around the world and finding the experience deeply traumatising.
There are a number of books written on similar stories of girls who are forced to visit a foreign country with a person they trust, their parent, to find that a negotiation has gone on to hand over their daughter to someone she had never, met for marriage.
This custom, this tradition is so alien to what we in this country believe in we have to ask the question what does it mean to be British.
The term which used to be understood by the world at large is not always sympathetic.
The term "perfidious Albion" comes to mind when the French remember occasions when we have gone back on our word. The image of the 'larger lout' parading around the the towns in some sun kissed places does not make me particularly proud to carry the nomenclature British but this is far far and away removed from selling my daughter to the highest bidder !!
How do we assimilate such disparity in what should be a country of similar attitudes towards humanity at large. We don't after all condone chopping off the hand that was used to steal.
If your attitude towards your daughter is to see her as a "commodity" used in tying cultural strings between families, if that is acceptable, is this acceptability compliant with being British.
Of course we have national born foreigners who have become British and fully established here with, as is often the case, their 'offspring' accepting to a larger or lesser degree the traditions of their parents. Would we feel that "our" concept of Britishness is the same as theirs.
If not we have reached a dangerous moment when short of becoming schizophrenic we have to decide what is right and what is wrong and if deemed wrong we have to outlaw it and take a view on whether we should withdraw their claim to being British.
As usual we will dither around the issue and kick the tin up the road until the numbers decide.
Multiculturalism is an "ideal" but not always attainable. When we have no rules other than common law, no written Constitution to say what our values mean and where the boundaries lie. We need clear guidelines what being British means and if it upsets people in this country so be it. Better to have clarity than this hotchpotch of assimilating at all costs to avoid conflict. The conflict is there but at the moment it's underground, simmering with mistrust and resentment. The strength that our political establishment has to insists that everyone conform to British standards (and not be side tracked by people who question what being British means).
If you disagree you must return to your home and the culture you desire or, in the case of people born here, we must insist that they conform to norms of the country they live in or leave !!!

Greece, what might have been.

It seems to me that the people, the financial players and the financial experts seem to have been hatched from a different egg.

Their egg doesn't contain the normal the albumin to help the blood carry nutrients to other parts of the body. Its as if it is independent of the body, seeing its function as maintaining its own ideas of what the blood should carry, even when the body at large is failing.
Like a religious mantra the aim of finance seems to not based on the rationale of the "patient needs" but is a sort of sacrament, a form of gods grace, only given to a believer who submits. Like any religious tenet, the financial rules have little sympathy for situations where their lending criteria is flouted, we hear little in the financial dialogue to describe the misery which goes on behind the scenes, caused by financial orthodoxy 

Well insulated, the suited executives and the advisor's are never heard to show their concern for the ravages that their rules prescribe. Arbitrary time scales are in place as if the "lender" were also on the bones of a dilemma, itself needing repayment to meet its own creditors.
It is claimed that the Greeks have not been serious about looking to rectify their financial construct, especially the generous pension provision where people can retire as early as 50, the avoidance of tax by the workforce, especially the rich and powerful was seen as a traditional and a cultural anomaly
This disconnect from the payment of taxes, necessary for a functioning democracy was in part the result of years of plutocratic rule by a limited influential group of Greek families, oligarchs who's rule, until recently was all powerful.
Germany and France waved the unsuitability of Greece to become part of the EU aside since this was the pre Euro zone period and the obvious unsuitability was avoided because of their blinkered political objective.
I am not privilege to the current picture but it does not seem to me impossible for the ECB to have sat alongside the financial industry to ensure, over a reasonable time, that the tax take and the pension gap was brought slowly into line whilst effectively placing a repayment moratorium on the Greeks, removing the impossible pressure wrought on the country by the creditors.
This is all in the past and now it looks as if the Greeks can have a fresh start and seek their own future in the world at large. I for one would spend a holiday there to help.

Investment in space.

I suppose the mantra that everything "privatised" is better, more efficient, that private enterprise is cleverer more astute more switched on, has been shown not to be true at least at the high end of technological enterprise.

Yet another spectacular failure of a rocket designed to replenish the space station with stores has occurred and once more we must rely on the well tried Russian rockets to relieve the people on the space station.
What must we make of this.
The space race from the days of the Russian Sputnik and the corresponding American NASA.  establishment was a massive national prestige effort costing billions. Money was no problem and the best engineers were employed to push engineering techniques which allowed the business of getting rockets into space to became very reliable.
It's a strange turn around, the West has now to rely on the Russians. One of the reasons the Communist in the USSR cried "no mas" and buckled under the weight of the arms race was the cost and whilst we are told that the Russian economy is in a bad way since the imposition of sanctions since the Ukraine war they still seem to have the money to launch expensive rockets.
The Russians in their engineering design brought a very high degree of redundancy into the spec.  It was a feature of the superiority of their tanks in the Second World War and even their fighter air craft (MIGs) which were a match for the Western fighter planes, that their designers and the manufacturing establishment were second to none.
Redundancy in this instance is a term used to describe the backup systems, an alternative to a piece of equipment should something fail.  Redundancy and the over specification within the design meant they can launch these technological monsters time and time again without mishap, or  at least any they are letting on to!
When profit, enters the equation then the designs become that fine line of building in sufficient numbers redundancy, which leaks away the profit and, in effect cutting corners to make the project financially viable which the National expenditures would never condone.  
When the engineers are subverted by the accountants you are asking for trouble as was the case in the only major disaster of the American space effort, Challenger in 2007. The disaster was traced to some O rings which a manufacture was supplying and which the engineers had begun to question. The flight was waved on its way by the insistence of the management who, having an eye on the finances were worried about the delay a redesign would take.
Money has bedevilled  mankind since its introduction. Its worth has surpassed that of human life and I wouldn't be surprised to see more disasters as Private Enterprise seeks to turn a buck on an endeavour which should relegate cost into second place.

Greece

So it looks as if the Politicians in Europe have decided to let Greece go. The spectre of Greece holding out her hand for more money without the austerity that was demanded within the time scale which was deemed reasonable by the creditors has nearly played out.
Firstly who are these creditors. 

Well they are the Banks and the investors in the banks and, importantly, the International Monetary Fund an off shoot of Washington. It is their refusal to extend the credit, I think the amount is 750 million euro loan to the IMF due on Tuesday and so true to form, the IMF, the traditional "ball breaker" of many poor economies throughout the world is once more seen leading the fray.
In 2008, not long ago we saw the "taxpayers" (you and me) in the leading economies "give" (hand over without any clauses or need for repayment) the Banks trillions of dollars to shore up their ravaged balance sheets. The Banks had been ravaged, not by being held in the vice grip of German led economic rules and regulations which for instance prevented a country like Greece, from independently offering the market "short term government debt", this is apparently against ECB rules. But ravaged by the insolence of the bankers who in 2008 had gambled the (depositors) funds on the roulette wheel of the money market and the contrived market in derivative spun debt. These same bankers are now shrieking for financial discipline but where was their financial discipline in 2008 ? 
The financial straight jacket and the demand for further austerity has meant that the Greeks are backed into a corner. To continue to oblige your creditors they have to ignore the "impossibility" of the Greeks to survive with their economy in free fall and a debt plus interest which can never be paid. If an individual gets into such a financial mess the only way out is for them is to to seek bankruptcy and have their debt written off.

Greece is bankrupt and has to declare itself so with a view to reinventing itself. Of wanting to exist as a nation of people. Which means they must leave the Euro and re-establish the Drachma and begin trading their tourist attractions and what ever they produce, free of Europe. 

The Greeks were the bedrock of the West's intellectual substance and there is no doubt that they can reinvent themselves as a proud people freed from the shackles of capitalistic dogma !

Religious values vis a vis Secular values.

How did we get into such a mess.
I remember a time when things seemed rational. When the society I lived in had a view which represented the facts on the ground, when we understood ourselves and shared a common heritage.
Yesterday a Tribunal handed down a verdict fining a company for ignoring a persons human rights. Compensation was levied on the company and paid to a man, £6000, because he had been refused access to his "boss's office" to pray !

Obviously the man was a Muslim and had according to the dictates of his religion and it's instruction that he must pray 5 times a day, negotiated with his boss that he could use the managers office to prostrate himself according to practice. Unfortunately this particular day the managers office was in use with a disciplinary meeting being held and the man took umbrage and went to court suing the company.

A Discriminatory Court found for him and the company was fined.
Where do we start.
Since when is it a right for an employee to demand that a place is set aside for him to pray ?
As I interpret the matter It is purely on the grounds of not "discriminating" against a person of faith that company has to consider the use of an area for prayer. So whilst there is no compulsion to provide, there is a compulsion  not to discriminate. Which comes first the hen or the egg.
The concept of discrimination is a minefield since one man's actions could always be held, by another to be discriminatory. If the "cause" is religious this is given priority over what might be considered secular discrimination.
The demand by Muslims to practice a code of prayer as part of their commitment to their God has implications that are not evident in other religious faiths and reading the Muslim Councils opinion on the matter is revealing. There is no common ground, simply a set of prerogatives, of rights, privileges and entitlements we, non Muslims should take on board for the sake of religious harmony. It appears in my reading of their text that harmony has to be granted by non Muslims in response to seeking cultural harmony.
It's a powerful message to us all.  "Understand our unique needs and specialisms and we will coexist, otherwise we will seek redress through the Court".
It has to be remembered that the powerful lobby 'the Political Establishment' seeking to diversify our nation into a multicultural hotchpotch, have captured all the high ground (we were asleep whilst they were at it)  and through immigration, much of which was economic, filling the quotas as industry tried to expand after the war, the ethnicity changed beyond all recognition.
The distillation of English values for those values and cultures coming from abroad was considered multi-culturally beneficial as if the more mixed up you are the stronger the breed. Much was made of the expanded selection of food outlets which adorn the high streets.
What we had failed to understand was that the largest minority the Muslim population had imported a strong, some would say a fanatical religion into these islands just at the time when the traditional religion on these shores, Christianity was becoming sidelined in a gathering sense of the population at large which were becoming immune to the religious argument.
The question is :-
Should we in the 21st century, when all signs lead to debunking the religious story, (it's time line and it's fables), should we be turning back the clock to allow a millennium old, Arabic, misogynistic faith, re-describe our society and subordinate values hard-won over the last hundred years and more ?

Avoiding the inevitable.

What terribly stressful times we live in these days. I don't just mean the stress from the pressure of the international events which I discuss in another blog but the stress of our own lifestyle and the continual bombardment from the press, friends and family about what we eat and if we exercise to ensure good health and longevity.
It seems all bound up in the stress of "putting off ones death". Not the accidental, fell under a bus type of death but the evaluating and measuring of our personal longevity.
The Actuaries must be having a dreadful time trying to keep the Life Insurance companies financially viable as the goal posts continually move and the indices by which the population as a whole is measured, puts us under tremendous pressure to conform.
The ways and the means of staying alive longer fill our news papers and magazines. The TV has an ongoing "diet" of lifestyle choices to suit living longer and we are made to feel bad if we don't succumb.

Of course no one has asked the "oldies" what they think about the business of struggling on into their nineties and it is assumed that they will want to do it.
Old age is an accumulation of change. The physical wear and tear on the bodies parts often bring pain, and pain brings sleepless nights in which one can wonder at the "gift" of longevity. The years often bring the separation from a loved one and lonely nights missing them.
The focus on living brings dying into perspective and it becomes a regular colleague in the daily dance as we question what we put in our mouths and the effect it will have on living longer.
Exercise is a must if we want to live longer. Our comfortable day must be interspersed with bouts of madness as we stretch to ensure the poor old muscles, who by now deserve a rest, must be brought out of retirement to earn their keep and don't seize up.
When we were young it was natural to strive and compete against our peers but this striving against the Grim Reaper is of a different dimension and should be seriously questioned.
Death will come this year or the next, does it really matter which ?

The now and before.

The concept of something 'proceeding us' and the importance it has, symbolically, is that it places us in a time frame, the recurrence of which, (regardless of our presence), proceeds without us.
Being of "mind"  and relying of this mind to provide us with all we know about ourselves and the world around, we naturally get stuck with our own importance. We become omnipotent, supreme in our contemplation of the nature, of life and it's meaning, (if indeed it has any meaning).
There has to be a moment "before" the moment we are experiencing at this moment.

There has to be something which allows us to "recognise" what we see and experience. Something which cognitively allows us to know "what we see" has meaning.

There is no void in which I am bereft of "experiential" recognition.
If the world lies equally outside my own experience then it places me, (in relationship to the experience), as something simply "composed" (but not essential) of that experience.
It is this world of the other experience, (related to but separate), that I have to understand.
It places me like a leaf on the surface of a pond dependent on the waters surface tension to keep me floating, eventually I will become heavy with the moisture (accumulated experience) in the pond and sink out of sight.  My substance changes as I become silt at the bottom of the pond, I become something else, another option in my passage through time.

To assume that I am the centre of anything is quite ridiculous. Copernicus and Galileo were ridiculed and their lives threatened when they suggested that the Sun was the centre of our planetary system and not the Earth. Knowledge of our Galaxy and it's place in the Universe makes us seem even more insignificant. Our galaxy is judged to be on the edge of the group of galaxies (not the centre) which make up the Universe and even this Universe is perhaps replicated by another duel Universe. Perhaps the sub atomic partials which  have no mass, only a 'charge' but which when combined produce mass, is clouded even more by the introduction of "dark matter", matter which has the ability to be quantified without having any sense of substance.

To say the world and our almost incidental place in it, is complex has to be the greatest understatement ever.

How do we marry the 'moment', even its colleague the 'pre moment' with the enormity of the Universe and the greater riddle of a quantum world ?

Ramblings, 'old school'

I suppose you are asleep but maybe not." Ramblings " with Clare Balding at the helm has just finished.

This week it's five old buffers who meet to wander around the countryside, having  awfully genteel and polite chatter, a sort of club in its own way. They, the ramblers have emerged through life, professionally trained with a sense of their own value, sharing a life experience but today put to one side for the day, like William and his gang, they were boys once again off on an exciting wander around with no particular plan, only the pleasure of being together rescued them from wishing they were somewhere else.

"Three Men in a Boat" has a similar collaborative theme of men messing about, enjoying being boys again without the strain of being that 'other person' which society and their wives demand they are.
Puffing like steam engines they open and close gates and rumble around in the refuge of their minds to add to the gaiety of a collective view. Every nook and cranny has the potential to remind each one of them of a memory and it's this collective feast of reminiscence that is so rich in the sharing.
Balding holds the reins of the conversation superbly clearly enjoying their off the cuff banter and the old school way of telling. It's all very English, abet a rarefied school these days but it reminded one of a more refined time when 'style' meant something and I don't mean the badge on the car.
They used to say it was due to breeding something you either had but couldn't buy. It was an accumulation of school reinforced by family where the greatest crime was letting "the side" down by crass behaviour. The tribal totem which distinguished the "gentlemen" from the "players" and was worth in the deep crevice of your being, more than money.
Class has many forms and formats but it is most evident in the way you speak and the way you deflect the uncomfortable truth of the importance of birth and all that flows from it.

Time on my hands

It's Saturday (Friday) night and I just got paid
Fool about my money don't try to save
My heart says go go have a good time
Cause it's Saturday night and I'm feeling fine

I'm going to rock it up, I'm gonna to rip it up
I'm going to shake it up, gonna ball it up
Gonna rocket up and ball to night

Little Richard, to the uninitiated, roared the words out as we pulled on our "best" and set off, in the rain to wait for the bus to town and a night out.
It's a lifetime away the late 50s. No car, no mobile phone, no internet, no 'virtual' family of friends to chat and catch up, only the reality of the real thing. Everything was real. The job was based in a firm and within an industry which, if wanted was there for life. Our friends and the extended family lived within a radius of 10 miles. The business of life was within an easy orbit and we were happy.
Of course ignorance is bliss but bursting the bubble of Yorkshire and discovering the warmth of the Southern Hemisphere revealed a vastly expanded experience in new found relationships.
One thing not repeated anywhere else to the same degree was the individualistic British, Friday / Saturday night out. Be it to the pub or the ballroom, boys and girls took their chances to meet and have fun.
In other countries dates and dances were far more formal, a remixing of the same people with predictably the same outcomes. Here in the UK we never knew how the dice would fall or even if we were in the game but we went out resolutely looking !!  Chemistry was at play and life's recurrent theme, boy meets girl was played out in all the nooks and crannies across the land.

Here we are programmed to go out, to sit at home on the weekend was a crime and so it is with some trepidation that I find the desire to leave my chair greatly diminished, withered to a reflex action based on a memory.
So much of what we do is based on physiological impulses, themselves powered by memory and motivated by our past. 

The time we get up and when and what we eat. The obsession with fads, be they health and eating or the need to exercise, they dip drip at our modus operandi.
To be energetic is good to be lazy is bad but surely it depends not on some Tsar who dictates the concept of "The Good Life". It should be the individuals decision.
The Victorians were always banging on about engaging ones self with "Good Works" and that idle hands were a recipe for trouble.
Perhaps the "idle rich" were fearful of the "idle poor". Too much time to think and contemplate could turn to mischief, rather redirected the masses and sow the concept of being "busy" as an ideal in itself !!!

IslamicState

It's almost impossible to understand how three mothers and their vulnerable children could have persuaded themselves that going to a war zone and siding with ISIS was a good plan.
We in the West have been fed a diet of how horrific the Islamic Caliphate is and it is certainly substantiated by the pictures of the beheading of prisoners who were non Muslim.
Our understanding of Jihadi Brides, young girls marrying men quite a bit older than themselves, the Islamic fighters, was also very difficult for us to understand.

Part of the problem, a large part, is that we are naturally judgemental. It's also natural that when the norms which we carry around in our heads are challenged we do our upmost to reject the other persons point of view, especially if it is a cultural disagreement. A further issue is that it becomes extremely difficult for a person who believes in a whole range of alternative beliefs to speak up openly,  it is difficult, if not dangerous to go against the flow

I would imagine that there are many Muslims in this and other countries who would like to make a good fist of telling the story from their religious and cultural point of view but know that the norms and values of those around them, if they live in Europe, wouldn't give them much of an opportunity or the the 'time of day' to present their reasoning. The proverbial boot on the other foot is also true. Living in a Muslim country has many constraints and one has to be extremely sensitive to their norms otherwise you are in serious trouble.
We all have our opinions especially, if we are brought up in a secular society without the "surety" that religious belief and observance brings to those who feel their beliefs are the only surety in our lives.
Does a religious conviction trump a non religious one ?
Historically the Muslim case against Europe, the conflict between Christianity and Islam goes back a long way starting with the Crusades. More recently the relatively cack handed invasions against Muslim majorities in a number of armed expeditions undertaken by the U.S. and this country has defined and focused the differences between our Western culture and Islamic culture.
It's natural for Muslims living here to be confused and even resent the use of force against people they identify as having the same deep religious link even if the force was directed against a corrupt political establishment, they were followers of Mohammed and therefore brothers and sisters.
It "isn't" a huge shift to become absorbed by the propaganda which lies behind the creation of a Caliphate, where the teachings of Mohammed and the laws that pertain to the teaching have resonance for some who live in our complex laissez-faire society. Confusing to us, it must seem to be the work of demons if one has become absorbed in a religious life.
This is even more the case when they see their children becoming Westernised. Perhaps moving to an "Islamic State" makes sense. It brings the religious structures,"observance and law" into line.

Forcing your way out of the swamp

It's unfair to say that because "one man's meat is another man's poison" that there is a right way and a wrong way. "Each to his own" is the retort when someone questions why you follow a particular track in life. It's not that you are being defensive but that your passage to where you are is simply too difficult to untangle.

Some people are programmed from birth to ascend the throne as it were, the family tradition the school ethos, the people you mix with determine who you will become. You may be a good 'un or a bad 'un but you are clearly recognisable as one of them.
There are shades of this "footstep following" in most areas of the social rainbow and it's only in the bottom, lower rungs that the muddy water dissolves any semblance of a ladder to anywhere. For these folk the best they can do is flounder around and make do
It seems unfair that ones birth is so uniquely important. Tied into the constraints of the the class tendril we are bred like mice to respond to stimuli around us and it's no wonder when virtually all stimuli is withheld, it takes a very special person to light their own fire to forge a path out of the swamp.

Power in the wrong hands

Clearly I am naive. As for I listen to the Labour Party blaming its electoral defeat on not being enough like the Tories. Its a capitulation, a climb down, caving in on the principle and the belief of what is right and what is wrong. Disavowing what 'society', not only the individual, is about and how we can work towards proclaiming a balanced, humain, political discussion which voters would find attractive.

As the MPs line up to decry Ed Miliband and his so called, left leaning project to provide a clear alternative to the Conservatives, acknowledging that there are increasing numbers of people who are being hurt by the Tory insistence on austerity (a defined austerity where the people asked to dig deep come from the lower orders) whilst the gap widens between the wealthy and the poor.
Politics has become about winning at all costs, aligning ones-self where the power lies, the marginal swing voters of the Middle class, and ensuring the 'pork' gets delivered.
The principles that brought a party into existence where not academic principles they lay at the heart of a philosophical belief. Equality was not an artificial construct not just an economic target but an ethical construct at which lay the root of socialism.
The party which professed to be socialist, the Labour Party was destroyed by Tony Blair and became New Labour a machine designed to win and gain power.
Of course common sense also acknowledges that without power your hands are tied and any attempt to alleviate the gaps in the economic prosperity within society at large are bound to fail.
The reasoning that if you have a population of say 65 million of which say half are boarder line 'disadvantaged' in some way, if your manifesto describes these people and offers them a hearing then one would assume your party would be a shoe in for the bulk of those votes.
But no, the "First Past the Post" system of choosing the winner skews the result by corralling huge sections of the populous, living in the various cities, who just happen to be, many of them poor, these citizens are represented by one politician and therefore have only one representative in parliament. The leafy villages in the Cotswold or Surrey also have one politician but you can count the voters on one hand !!
No wonder we have such disparity such power in the hands of the few and it was the Blair project to appeal to these people that made him sound like "son of Mrs Thatcher".
Of course the demographics have changed and the industrial landscape is now filled with SMEs
(Small Medium Enterprises) one man bands selling what they can. They feel independent, with their small workforce vigorously opposed to any sort of collective bargaining, they are the very grocer stock which Mrs Thatcher presumed to know, her father being the owner of a store in Grantham. This was the sort of voter that Blair won over and Miliband did not, but there were other far more complex reasons for Labours demise.
The rise of the SNP in Scotland who now provide the most vocal opposition in Parliament and are taking on the Conservatives whilst the Labour parliamentarians barely bother to turn up.
The rise of UKIP in England who became the natural allies of the wage earning worker by decrying the high immigration from Europe. The rise of the Greens amongst who's ranks the anti nuclear lobby, once the provenance of Labour are becoming the alternative 'establishment' party which the Liberals lost when they cozied up to the Tories as a member of the last government. Even Plied Cymru in Wales absorbed the Labour vote as the 'Nationalist' wave in Scotland infected the Welsh, admittedly to a lesser degree.
Is winning by 'contrivance' worth it or should one have a platform on which your principles are clear and you wait until the bloated, credit card swilling society wakes up, under the debt of "Quantitative Easing" and realises that power in the wrong hands.

We are chalk and cheese

It is some measure of a society, the way we treat prisoners and the Americans are revealed as severely flawed in the way they view the people they sentence for crime. Their penitentiaries are full of people who are given jail terms which sometimes compute to two sometimes three lifetimes.

This is not restorative justice this an eye for an eye
A man in Louisiana is on the cusp of being released from prison where he has been kept in solitary confinement for "43 years". He isn't out yet, the authorities are fighting his release, as if his sentence wasn't barbaric enough.
Of course there are regimes throughout the world which are worse. ISIS simply chop off your head as an example, torture is very prevalent in many countries, summery execution is common but on the whole we divide nations by the way they treat the disadvantaged, the sick and the incarcerated and we hold them up to the light of day to see how they use their power.
One of the great positives which has come out of the European Union is the consensus achieved through the Human Rights Act about the rights of human beings to be treated fairly and with humanity. The rules governing the protection of prisoners is strong because they are 'vulnerable' and exposed to a public who sometimes are baying for blood as revenge for a terrible crime the prisoner has committed. The 'death penalty' for instance is the populist response when the crime is particularly heinous and we have all been guilty of being surprised even horrified at what we see as light sentences especially when we know the sentence will be cut in half and the prisoner will be out on the street in no time.
We, as a European nation are a million miles away from the Americans, a nation who we would draw parallels with in terms of our past links and shared culture but a nation who we do not understand in terms of their 'gun culture', their lack of a common 'welfare commitment' and their treatment of prisoners where a "throw away the key" policy is in place and that's not to mention what goes on in Guantanamo !
It's strange how the culture gets in the way of our all growing up with the same ideals and how from the outside we are so similar but inside our heads, we are "chalk and cheese".

A purdah

The use of the term "purdah" has sprung up recently in discussions surrounding the rules by which the Referendum on whether the UK will stay or leave the European Union.

It is a term which I remember in my reading of the Indian continent and the books written of British Colonial rule during the period of the Raj. 

The chaps were in Purdah, Mrs Hamilton-Blithe was in Purdah because of some indiscretion or other. It seemed a very colonial term associated with a class of people who had contrived a whole set of rules based on etiquette and not a little racism.

The term of course has much deeper roots. It's describes the social attempt to separate.

It describes the method of keeping women secluded from the eyes of strangers and is at the root of the veiling women from head to toe in the Burqa when away from their home and in some Hindu homes is a screen in the house dividing the woman's space from that of the male.

The Orthodox Jews use a screen to separate the sexes, a melehitzah curtain segregate men and women whilst they pray. Also in the Jewish tradition, the use of a wig to cover a married woman's hair so that only the husband sees his wife's real hair is another form of Purdah.

From the social Purdah to the religious Purdah we practice a form of Apartheid, segregation based on gender not on race but no less a segregation, practised by men over women. In our so called enlightened era of equality should we, as a Secular society not also ban this type of segregation as well. 

The French have imposed a ban on wearing the face covering vail in public places on the spurious basis of security but surely, as we bang on about equality of the sexes, this should be a corner stone in the feminist crusade. 

But wait. Just the other day a Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt was sacked from his long held position at University College London.  His crime was to joke at a conference of his peers "Three things happen when girls are in the lab - you fall in love with them and when you criticise them they cry".  This produced such an outcry amongst the feminists that he was chucked out of the University.

Perhaps the Hindus, the Muslims and the Jews, three old established communities linking their traditions back over Millennia have it right, there has to be a barrier, a purdah, a melehitzah screen between the gender differences, since together we do such great injustice !!

The first salvo on the Referendum

As a tour de force Alex Salmon is a redoubtable performer when on his feet in the Houses of Parliament.
The House is debating the ground rules for the up and coming Referendum as to whether the United Kingdom should stay or remove itself from the European Union.
The initial proposition  from the Conservative Government has been on the house rules which  are being debated today.

1. To leave it for the Government to do what's necessary to achieve what it wants (generally the General Election is free from "Governmental" pressure in the form of public money if used to promote the hoped for outcome), whilst there were strong arguments against the governments immensely powerful position of being able to persuade the public.

2. The question of sixteen/seventeen year old 'not being' allowed to vote when, in the Scottish Referendum they were allowed to vote on independence.

3. The willingness to allow people (UK Citizens) who live outside the country in Europe to vote on the Referendum. It was interesting that the Government wish to withhold the the vote to these citizens whilst proposing that the citizens of Gibraltar are given the vote because it is felt that Gibraltar is very sensitive to the effects if we withdraw.

4. To hold the Referendum vote with other voting occasions, such as local elections, instead of separating the vote as an event all by itself, illustrating the importance of the decision which will emerge from a yes or no vote.
This is the beginning of a long series of debates on one of the most important questions which we as a country an be asked to make. One of the problems of a debate is that the people who are most to the fore, (the politician, the leader writers and program makers) in the debate are shameless in using "their own facts" to win an argument and it is going to make it very difficult for the "man in the street" to draw accurate conclusions.
Lies and falsehood are a poor handmaidens for any sort of union be it political or domestic.

Isle of Man TT Race

Today is the last day of the Isle of Man TT.  What the devil is the TT some of you may say, others will nod their head in reflection of an historic event which sits in the pantheon of motorcycle events.
Growing up prior TV, the radio was our main source of home entertainment. Music and plays were the main ingredient interspersed with news and topical affairs. The other important constituent was sport, particularly football. But every year a dangerous but absorbing event, the TT held on the roads which snake around the tiny Isle of Man, roads closed whilst the racing is on but with little else to define a race circuit from the normal road held us in its grip.
In the popular and well defined Motor Cycle GP events they race around specially designed circuits with wide run off areas if the rider gets into trouble, where safety is of very high importance. The TT along with a number of other events run on normal roads has little room for error. The narrow, twisty, tricky cambered road road is edged with hard stone walls, hit one and you know it. There have been over 230 deaths in the event and it's difficult to imagine it's unique combination of high speed and danger being held, other than under the independence of the Isle of Man.
Listening on the radio back in the 50s the sound of the bikes roaring past the what had become famous vantage points around the circuit, the infamous Bray Hill where Les Graham was killed, further on, Ballicraine, Parliament Square, Creg-ny-Baa  each vantage point coupled with the technical commentary,took us to new heights of fantasy.
Back in those days the bikes were mainly made in the UK, part of a thriving industry with pools of supporters. AJS, Matchless, Norton, Triumph, BSA, Ariel, Vincent. Single cylinder or twins with the occasional four cylinder such as the Ariel Square Four. It was the age of British Manufacturing but it was also an age which signalled the inability in this country to invest and develop, rather rest on ones history, following, rather than developing.
I was listening one day. The sound of the deep throaty roar of a single cylinder Norton came over the airwaves and then, from up the road the sound of a high revving multi cylinder bike, the MV Agusta entered the microphone, a high pitched scream as it changed down trough its multi geared gearbox, and a new era was born. The Italian MV and the Gilera were soon to displace the British bikes followed by the Japanese, the Honda, Kawasaki and the Yamaha. The demise of the British Bike was on the way, our reliability and general finish, our bikes were notorious for leaking oil and the investment needed to sustain our historic advantage was not forthcoming.
Whilst the manufactures let our influence dwindle our riders stayed on top. Geoff Duke, Mike Hailwood, John Surtees, Barry Sheene all competed with the best and differed from the continental and American riders in that they still raced in the far more dangerous races around the Isle of Man.

Today's TT riders are a breed apart from the glitzy MotoGP.  The tradition of the TT still draws the brave and foolhardy. Joey Dunlop (killed) with 26 wins comes out top, a legend around the course, John McGuinness with 22 wins (Mr Perfection), David Jeffries (Bradford lad) who was killed. Ian Hutchinson ( Bingley) the latest star but many are waiting in the wings. Guy Martin a "colourful" character is one. an anti authority, short tempered individual who has made his name tackling all kinds of speed associated records not only on the bike. His series on the TV rebuilding a canal boat was idiosyncratic to say the least. Lee Johnston, Garry Johnson, Conor Cummins, and the oldie (44) Bruce Anstey the crazy Kiwi, any of them could win.
Winning is in their blood and ignoring the dangers is part of it. The likes of Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Marc Marquez and Casey Stoner are the stars of MotGP and deserve all the acclaim they get (along with the mega pay packets) but the bravery of riding the TT is beyond even them and whilst they certainly have the skill, do they have the courage of this band of home grown motorcycle racers, never far from having the dirt under their nails they are a breed apart !!!

How we see ourselves

Why do we have ears. The ear is a marvellous piece of engineering. It's shape helps funnel sounds into the canal in the inner ear, through the membrane, picked up by the delicacy of the Incus and the Cochlea, the sound waves are now converted into electrical impulses and then transferred by the nerves to the brain to be identified.
So the ear has a purpose but I have gleaned a more practical use by the female of the species, that of repeatedly hitching their 'hair' behind the ear using, it as if it were an appendage. The hand repeatedly flicking or lifting their beautifully coiffured hair out of the face to be held for a few moments before cascading down again and drawing a curtain on their features. I often think that it must be a tremendous distraction to have ones face continually clouded, the eyes peering through the strands whilst trying to keep their attention on what is happening around them. Perhaps they don't, their attention is turned inwards into that unfathomable female psyche that defies male understanding.   
Of course men with beards are also prone to distraction, instinctively stroking the bearded as if it were a friend from which their knowledge is stored and from where they will pull the next witticism.
This brings me to 'bald, clean shaven' people like myself. We have nowhere to hide, not even our age, which is all too evident. With only a hat to ward off the elements I stride the street oblivious of how I look, well not quite but fully aware of my invisibility !!!

An algorithm

There is so much in our lives that was due to opinions other than our own.
We are an amalgam of the pressures which formed us as we grew up. These pressures themselves were part of the attitudes that people held during ones adolescence and youth when most of the character traits are formed. We owe who we are to these pressures and the pressures reflect attitudes that are ever forming and reforming from year to year.
Attitudes are the consolidation of what is deemed acceptable but is often conflated with what people are told by the forth estate (the press/media) to think. We have become more afflicted by what others wish us to think than at any time in our history. The media have grown out of all recognition and have consolidated ownership of the papers and media empires such that we seem to get much of what we hear and see from the same script. The independent argument that evaluated a different position has to be looked for from overseas. The era when you could attend meetings on street corners and find intelligent but diverse opinions from a multitude of news-papers, each with an editorship/ownership ploughing their own definitive furrow is long gone.

Globalisation has catapulted the global reach of a relatively small number of companies into the stratosphere and like CCTV, they monitor our every move through the Internet. The crazy situation of a  financially secure person not being able to secure loan finance because they haven't had the need to borrow money and therefore don't have a financial profile on the mainframe is ludicrous !
The fact that industry and commerce rely on third party financial information consolidators like Experian to grade an individual but who, (Experian) themselves glean their 'unaudited information from the data base of Banks, Building Societies, Insurance Companies, and the Public Sector where the information is so huge that the incidence of inaccurate information is high and can be potentially harmful to the individual.
The reliance on the Internet and a company data base to present an alternative to a face to face meeting and a handshake has taken humanity out of the equation, we are but so many bits and bytes in an an algorithm.

Fickle friends

That word "normality" comes up for scrutiny once again with the arrest and release of the people, including a woman from the UK who stripped off some of their clothes when up a mountain in Malaysia. The mountain had symbolic religious cogitation and the locals were outraged.

Apparently it is becoming the rage amongst some to expose themselves when the fancy takes them and one has to ask "what's wrong with that" ?
Seen from the protagonists point of view their actions are part of the freedoms won by various, largely western societies who are forever pushing back the the "acceptance blanket" which society has constructed over the decades to find formal norms to describe what is acceptable to the bulk of society.
The term bulk or majority has always meant the greatest number and the term greatest number has meant that the lessor number has drawn the shorter stick. It seems axiomatic that if more people want something, then it is more acceptable that the majority should have their way.
That of course was before the concept of "human rights" placed all humans on an equal footing and numbers don't count. The 'individual' has rights and as long as the laws of a country are not broken then they should be free to do what ever comes into their head.
Of course human rights naturally contest the concept of laws which seek to limit the individuals actions and so we have a contest within society at large, society being prodded to relinquish their position by activists on all fronts.
Is it fair that the "norms " which the bulk of society have grown up accepting should so easily be challenged by the individual ?
Is the questioning of 'everything' a good thing. Does the speed which the Internet broadcast these incursions into what we have established as good or bad, before we know it, made our normality old fashioned and out of kilter with the trendier sections of our respective societies.
We in the UK, always coy about "insisting" would rather accept to fudge the issue and work on the drip drip assimilation of change than face up to standards which are set.
The Italians, certainly the Religious societies are more traditional in their surety of what is right and what is wrong and in some ways, because one can never define properly what is right and what is wrong they have at least some sort of basis for defining when a woman wishes to take her top off, is she is within her rights to do so. Religion would say no and we must be sure in our secular world that we understand, there are no other boundaries other than the religious ones since taste and conformity are fickle friends !!

The Queens Birthday

We are celebrating the Queens Official Birthday today and all the pomp and ceremony are assembled on Horse Guards Parade to ceremonially pay tribute.
An event full of protocol. The Colour, (the flag) which feature in the old stories representing the heart of a regiment, men died protecting it from falling into the hands of the enemy.
As the raucous commands from the regimental Sargent Major are shouted out over the parade ground the resplendent troops wheel and shuffle their manoeuvres to the sound of the drum. Precision and discipline are the criteria by which any army worth its salt is known and these Guards Regiments on drill today are the best we have.
Watching the Queen inspecting the troops from her coach as she is driven past the lines of men ones mind is taken back to a young woman sitting side saddle on her horse fulfilling the role back in the 50s. Ramrod straight she epitomised her class and breeding, doing a job which had been thrust upon her by the death of her Father (1952), she seemed too young to have to shoulder the responsibility but we didn't know then the steel of this woman. Now just short of 90 she is still up for the job.
Watching the parade flanked by her husband Prince Philip (94), her indefatigable consort, the two of them representing the "old school", a breed which, through the family and links to the other monarchs in Europe represented Noblesse Oblige a concept that 'entitlement' carried responsibility to all, and was supposed to ensure through honourable behaviour and benevolence that a ruler would generate the respect of the nation.
There are many more Republicans these days, (people who think the monarchy is an anachronism and should be abolished) than when she came to the throne but it's not due to any failing on her part as she played the role handed her impeccably.
Today she does it again and whilst we may soon be witnessing the end of the Pomp and Circumstance  which ordinary people in the past were once dazzled by but who now, much more sceptical of the divisions in society,  may wish to bring it all to an end, not with the guillotine but an Act of Parliament.!

A wow day

I suppose we all become myopic when it comes to identifying who we are in relation to our nationality. Does the sight of watching the regimental troops parade on Horse Guards and down the Mall make us feel special even proud ? Or are we 'fed up' of Monarchy and all the trappings, do we see it as another indication of how tiered society is and how near the bottom we are.
Do we think, 'well there are not many, if any, nations that can put on a display of ceremonial pageantry like the one we have just watched celebrating the Queens Official Birthday'.
Have we got one up on the Yanks or the Germans, is there anybody willing to spend to entrench their history in this way ?
Do we make too much of our history and not make enough widgets to sell to others ?
Is history, which inevitably represents our victories over others not corrosive in this Global interconnected world where the future is troubling and history has few lessons to teach us.
Does society need a non political figurehead ? Are we prone to feel there has to be a hierarchy and doffing ones cap is still "par for the course".
I suppose the term looking up to someone, be it a religious icon or simply older people who have played a part in your life and who you respect, has a psychological part to play as we stumble around trying to make sense of our lives. Seeking advice from others who have that respect is sensible and comforting.
In today's birthday celebration the finale was the gathering of the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace (I wonder if Duncan Smith has an eye on empty bedrooms) to watch the fly past. There was speculation if George the son of William and Catherine would be brought out and there he was dressed in a blue romper suite looking like he owned the place. He certainly is an eye catching child, inquisitive and alert he wasn't put out as the jets of the Arrows thundered overhead, more an expression of "what's that dad" as he sat in his dad's arms. Wow went dad.
It was a fitting end to a wow day.

Femme fatale

Reading about domestic violence in Chile one is encouraged by the female activists to believe men are "brutes". Of course the activists is scarred by their own past experience and the tales they hear every day. 
Like bullying the use of force on someone weaker than yourself is cowardice and should be decried in the strongest way possible. Women are deemed weaker than men and although this is not universally true it has sufficient truth to create, in a civilised society a code which says "you never hit a women", no matter what she has said or done.
Within the Chilean household these norms do not appear to be there and men make use of their strength to terrorise the family.

Norms are cultural. 
Andy Capp represented a section of the Yorkshire 'working class' sardonic hedonistic male culture which both loved and derided his female partner who equally kept up a barrage of her own. 
Andy was never violent but he was dismissive in the way he set his boundaries and decried  Flo the opportunity to cross over. 
In his world and he represented many people, there were two parallel worlds, the male and the female. The pub and the whippet racing were his whilst hers were the equally devise world of other women's company where the topics were as alien to the male as chemistry is to the business graduate.
Profiling this division meant that the gender stereotyping in the Andy Capp cartoon was both funny and well understood as a reality to people growing up in that era.
Fast forward to today and we have the pressure of the feminist movement to deny that there is any difference in the two gender specific roles.
It's another issue of accommodation and change which everyone has to go through. We have to accept that violence, usually the preserve of men (although not always) who wish to settle disputes by physical force has become totally unacceptable. Even when pushed to the limit the moment you lay a hand on the other person you are in trouble.
Of course what has been missed is that "violence" comes in many guises. The tongue can be as violent as the fist and just as damaging. There seems no countervailing laws which prevent a violent verbal attack on a person. The drip, drip corrupting of a persons character through years of innuendo or verbal abuse is as much a crime as a good old fashioned punch up.
I suppose it's the price we males pay these days to get on side with the power of femme fatale !!!

The police an unenviable task

The image of the police in this country has received a bad press, particularly after the shooting three years ago of Mark Duggan. It's amazing having lived in countries where the police are really heavy handed that our police in this country are so derided. To counter the derision coming from certain sectors and to attempt to "get onside" they have allowed the television cameras in to depicted themselves, where possible, as leaving the policing of street gatherings, carnivals etc, in predominantly black areas of London to the residents themselves. This was largely due to a demand of the leaders of the community who see the police as racist and at odds with their society.
The question arises what is a racist, and how do you define racist.
Given that the definition of racist is "a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another", then the act of defining a race and demanding separation from the other, which is what the local community demanded and the police agreed to cooperate, is this the act of a "racist community"? Have the black people in our society become racist ? If a section of society overtly displays its power and insists that the colour of the skin is the determining factor then we would normally say "that's racist".
Obviously discrimination, unemployment and the banding together of people who recognise their ethnicity and believe their economic position in society at large is due to the colour of their skin will draw from this dark well and find fault with all and everything people who don't fit their stereotypic profile represent.
It's not going to get any better as the disenfranchised grow in numbers and see their strength increase in these growing numbers. Society which doesn't recognise its constituting parts or feel proper affinity for others in that society is bound to collapse under the weight of its own distrust, irrespective of what the police force does !!

What is real.

The Heads of Government have just finished the meeting of the 7 Nations in Germany. One meeting, three versions of the meeting depending on which 'news channel' you tune into.
RT the Russian news service designed to broadcast to a Western Audience, from the Russian stand point.
AlJazeera also designed to feed the West with a news service that evaluates the news from a Middle Eastern point of view, and then there is our own set of domestic news services' which decides what it feels we should see and is geared to selling the viewer what it wishes the viewer to know.
So you takes your pick. It is one more instance of the confusion we are faced with in trying to understand this complex world we live in. Of course there is too much information, too many variables, too much dark and light. With all the amateur, smart phone equipped, reporters snapping the immediate event as it happened feeding us more confusion we are in overload !!
So is too much, too much, is the complexity of our personal lives enough,do we start to do ourselves damage and become 'insensitive' to everything, other than a small very personal group.
Do we begin to discount others, distancing ourselves in ways that is not supportive of society as a whole and even worse, being blind to the larger problems of mankind.
Part of being well rounded is to regularly engage with other people and recognise that there is a common threads running through all societies. This common thread is what ties our humanity together and without 'understanding and compassion', be it for the poor or disabled, for people like ourselves who throughout their lives experience many ups and downs, or by birth, they are fed a lifetimes exposure to awful conditions under which they have to lead their lives.
Perhaps the problem is "expectations", those picture postcard selfies that we carry around in our head depicting ourselves as we would wish to be seen by others, imaginary, part memory part fantasia an amalgam but fake !
Reality on the other hand is good, it's earthy its cut from the same cloth as we are cut it has a texture that is familiar and a set of norms that are close to ours. It places dreams in the same drawer as a win on the lottery. It's not to say our dreams won't be realised but if not, then the result is still a rich experience and fully fulfilling.