Erosian

I suppose if you run a country as a company then the need to show a profit and keep your major shareholders happy with substantial dividends is paramount.
Of course running a country is not the same since you have amongst the machinery that works, a lot of equipment that doesn't and you can't sell what doesn't to an Indian scrap merchant.
In some of our industries, we have sold our control to foreign interests and when the dividends are challenged we see these industries closed down irrespective of the social effect.
Of course if we were able, we could "cull" that part of society which is a drain on the Exchequer. The expectancy of the sick, the old and the undereducated. Their constant need for support places us at risk of needing to borrow from the Market to balance income with expenditure.
If only the fit and healthy, the workers, the doers, were the aggregate  with which we could work.
Perhaps, if we reduce the money and close the services, shut down the old people's homes, eject the sick and close the hospitals, and bring in the desperate from poor countries who are more malleable to improve the balance sheet.

Erosion is an incipient state of affairs. Millions are spent on painting the Forth Bridge in Scotland because we think the bridge is of value to us.  The thought that weakening the strength of the bridge and the danger to those who use it makes the expenditure pass through unopposed.
But what of the erosion to our State and the services which people had come to rely on.
If we diminish funding and expose people to danger, does this have any moral relevance. Would the argument  propounded  by the engineers and H&S regarding a bridge, have any meaningful correlation to to the public debate about the health of our nation.
Our concept of being a 'civilised' nation is also being eroded by the political willingness and the subsequent media propaganda to question why the poor have such sway, when offering so little in return.
UK, Plc has a boardroom stuffed with people who owe their place at the table to their birth.  Boris Johnson is an example of extensive breeding. Having learnt the black art of declension and conjugation, in pursuit of understanding an antiquated language, Latin, it evokes  for us "the public," the exotic mysticism of private education and its ingrained elitism. We listen in awe to his Etonian witticisms. We forgive his  frolicking between the sheets, (that's what the Toffs have always done), as we strain (in vain) to hear the undoubted elegance of an intellectual mind at work. To many the sound of a bumbling actor reaches our ears, who's part should be in the farce of his own making and not national politics. 

Its a funny old world

It's a funny old world.
1. The confusion comes as one listened to Angela Sturgeon, the leader of the SNP declare her aim to detach Scotland politically from the United Kingdom in her wish to gain independence for Scotland.
At the same time the BREXIT people wish the UK to exit the EU as part of a desire to assert their independence from the rules  and the diktats which come from the European Parliament.  
Therefore controversially, the Scots who wish to exit the UK, at the same time wish to remain in Europe and are happy to accept the resulting dependence on the EU parliament and concurrent  lack of independence. Historically and geographically, Europe has always been much more distant much more foreign than the country with which they wish to cut ties.

2. The building of a nuclear power plant (which we can no longer have the skills to build) necessitates signing up with the French 'Nationalised' Company, EDF  (plus a sizeable contribution from the Chinese) but the deal seems on a knife edge.
Last week, EDFs CFO resigned because he feared that the contract would bankrupt his firm. They are significantly behind schedule and loosing money on the two nuclear plants which they are currently building and there is even question marks over the design of the plant.
Under such circumstances anyone with an ounce of 'nouse' would think twice about continuing a project with such a cloud hanging over it but our government, through dragging its feet for years have painted themselves into a corner. There are no other options as we close the current generating plants down due to age about the time when, if built, the Nuclear plant will come on stream.
Part of the problem is that we have been withdrawing funding from wind and solar projects.  We haven't built oil powered plants because we fear becoming reliant on Russian gas. Coal is a no no because of our commitment to reducing the detrimental effect on the ozone layer but of course, the country we have invited to fund a third of our nuclear plant by promising a unit megawatt cost, three time more expensive than the current cost of electricity, is that same country, China which is building dozens of coal fired generating plants each year, oblivious of global warming and the disaster it entails for countries across the globe.

Why do I write. Well the 'internal steam' generated as I look at the shambles around me would power more than a couple of generators. Perhaps that's the secrete Tory back up plan, to make us all so mad we combust.

Freedom of speech, freedom of thought

Freedom of speech seems to have so many caveats. The Labour Party is wringing its hands over the anti Semitism which has sprung up, particularly amongst the youth in its membership. It's leaders and the people who influence the PR aspect of the party are horrified to hear and by association feel themselves tainted by any criticism of the Jews but are also generally very twitchy about criticising any Minority issue. Minorities are the new Idol to focus on as we fight our way from the ills of our past.
How do we distinguish the Jewish community per se and separate that community from the behaviour of the Zionist Government towards the Palestinian people. How can we condone Netanyahu and the Likud Party and the actions of the right wing in the Knesset. 

The Jews as a minority have a special history, not only the horror of the Camps and the genocide practised upon them at the hands of the Nazi Party but also the pogroms in Russia the Ukraine and Poland. The causes were in part brought on by their separatism as a community from the communities in which they lived and also by their natural drift into the money trade which was seen by the ordinary people as being overly influential in the fluctuation in their lives and the prosperity of society as a whole. To trade in the 'commodity of exchange', money which was after all simply there as a measure or a value to barter for labour and not intrinsically, a marketable product itself. The 'money trade' set them apart. 

Listening to the fervour by which perfectly rational criticism is put down is frightening. We have become convinced that to criticise a minority is unholy and should be banished. We continue our search for the implementation of the multicultural society which our leaders have committed us to irrespective of our own desire and the strain we experience in accepting values which were forged in the furnace of political desire weighs heavily on our civil constitution.

Jewish people like any other have their good and bad within their race they contain some of the most gifted people on earth. From the brilliance of Einstein, to the artistry of Rubinstein or the single minded 'exploitative' mindset of Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs 

We should be free to call them to book when appropriate and not feel their history gives them any special dispensation.

Victim hood.

Victim hood is a phenomenon that we hear about all the time these days. Victims of crime are paraded in front of the TV camera or the microphone, the normally steely voice of the announcer is softened, there's even a catch in the voice as soto voice the person being interviewed is encourage to act out and describe their grief. Of course being a victim of anything is a shock to the system. Being fired when least expected, is different to being assaulted but both are victims. Loosing your home to vandals or having it washed away by a tsunami leaves someone being a victim. But are we in this country making a meal out of victim-hood. Perhaps its a way of contrasting the fully functioning life of a person who sails through life and, in stark contrast, the unhappy lot of the victim is projected on our screens as a palliative  . It is assumed that the victim is destroyed by their experience but there are many victims who build their life on the experience and for many the experience is only one of many experiences which the interviewer would find appalling.
Depending on the environment, people experience all kinds of bad things, but the term bad is relative. Loosing your job is common in some parts of society, experiencing violence is common, all are victims but in some places they are the norm and therefore the middle class abhorrence of anything which happens without the will and acceptance of a person is seen outrageous, whilst to others, "that's life". The victim is induced to spill the last gory detail of something which in sections of our diverse population would be filed away as normal, a case of events, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the voyeur in us needs the details, needs to see the tears, needs to hear the anguish even when the event happened many years ago and had been buried under layers of survival conditioning, the person seeing themselves not as a victim but as a member of the human race who has not had the right cards dealt them in the first place.

From the concept of victim-hood, are we not victims of our own self centred focus.
From birth to death we live without a thought of being the victim of death. We assume our plans in the morning have relevance and will,  for the most part be completed but what if the moment I tap in the next full stop, I drop dead, am I a victim of my own optimism,  "that I will, press send".
This rich experience we call life which some would say we squander is always on a knife edge and yet we never acknowledge the fact, that in some ways, much of our activity is trivial since, in this heart beat moment when we are on this earth (a heart beat in the geological time frame) we presuppose that individually we have meaning and relevance.
Of course in our own minds we do. 

Our minds make up who we are, they feed us the 'story line' of our existence but is the 'story line' for real or is it a fiction. If our minds conceptualise what we see and hear, forming patterns which fit our desires, does the stuff we exclude, like the waste from the supermarket have little or no value. The person brought up in a Palace will have very different  assumptions as to their worth than the chap growing up in a Favela. The conditioning swells or diminishes his perception and his life is made what it is, not only by the economic variance but the mental state that the variance brings. 

We are all trapped in our own mind which itself is trapped in our own experiences. This leads one to conclude there is no real commonality between us, we are all alone. It is a great fiction to believe that life is, or has a format which can be meaningfully evaluated and discussed, other than by ourselves. From our own unique perspective, only death unites us.

Shall I go out today

Blackpool was the Mecca of the working class seaside holiday. Villages such as the one I grew up in used to hire a coach and set off for a day out to Blackpool on one of the public holidays we get. 

It was a fun from start to finish. The boisterous trip there, everyone knew each other and the anticipation of the sea, the beach, the funfair, the girls and the mischief we would get up to as a collective was a great contrast to the relatively dour life we lived. 

The first to see the Tower and then the sea brought a cheer and a babble of anticipation as the bus set us down and we we were off to what ever took our fancy. The Pleasure Beach with its wild rides like the Big Dipper were favourites. The glitzy shops selling all kinds of knick knacks, the food stalls with their specific aromas, the candy floss and the ubiquitous Blackpool Rock designed to knock hell out of our poor teeth and make a visit to the dentist inevitable. If we were old enough there were pubs and bars along the way making the destination more problematical but who cared it was the journey that was important. The sand and the sea, we rarely saw the sea since the tide always seemed out and Blackpool sits on a deep bay. The donkeys on the sand for the very young, the amusement peers jutting out from the land with there entertainment shows, sometimes the big names from the world of entertainment, the comedians and the singers. And towering above it all, the centre of the town, Blackpool Tower. This huge amusement arcade packed full of titivating things to suite all needs. From the jungle gym for the young to climb about in to the one armed bandits. The shriek of the ghost train or the beautiful ballroom with its mammoth Wurlitzer organ playing along for the people to dance to. A ride to the top of the Tower gave you a parametric view of the town below with its gaily painted trams honking their way up and down the wide promenade flanking the sand and the thousands of people walking aimlessly about, agog with all the glitz and glitter around them. 

At last it was evening and a final extravaganza, the Blackpool Lights a myriad of coloured lights strung across the road and up each lamp post flashing on and off, a Disney land of magic.

The bus would do a last sweep of the lights as it drove slowly down the prom and we, sated from food, drink and a plethora of memories would settle back in our seats to chatter happily about the day as night time fell and the driver negotiated the narrow winding road back through the wonderful Dales to our grimy, sooty town of Bradford and the village of Esholt where we disembarked, happy and content with our day out to the seaside.
 

Rhodes and what he stood for.

The call to pull down the statue of Cecil Rhodes rumbles on. I listened to a woman under-graduate studying at Oxford, clearly upset that we, the "white" segment of the population should be made aware that our past, particularly in Africa is a thing to feel guilty about and we should flagellate ourselves on a regular basis because of what our forefathers did, or didn't do. She was sure in her emotional diatribe that the weight of opprobrium lay on one side and that left to their own devices, the indigenous African could make a good fist of competing in the world.
Given the state of Africa many decades after the fall of Colonialism, the wars and the genocidal attempt by one side or the other, to wring power in Central Africa or North Africa one would have thought that the old visible examples of the colonial regime, the buildings the roads, the railways and the ports, the airports and the civil structures, decaying but still visible would evoke some sort of praise but no the ideology gets in the way and even in a prestigious university setting such as Oxford, no one was going to dispel their tort.
It's a strange thing this torment which the current generation have for the past.
Living in a mish mash of values, where stricter rules of behaviour are cast aside for being against the "inalienable human right" of the individual they rail against a structure that built and provided the groundwork for progress. The inept, destructive, baleful way these things, which were gifted to a nation have been allowed to disintegrate was not on her radar. This  young woman would have nothing of this, only the mantra of 'self determination' had any validity.
Would that she could recognise that she herself was the product of her parents hand and that their guidance was crucial in her getting to where she was. And so with Colonialism, the parent body of a nation who taught the art of governance who lay down the importance of contract law and civil society, are they to be screamed at like a child screams at its parent in the supermarket mis-understanding the parents intentions, lost in its own pique.

When asked about her degree, she is reading economics and wishes to work for a bank !

Bugger thy neighbour

Is it 'nature' or 'nurture' that has something to do with the reason a person becomes gay.
Notice I say becomes, because we seem these days to rule out any genetic condition.
For a person of my years it's astonishing the number of people who claim to be gay, lesbian or homosexual and that equally mystifying group who change their sexual proclivity,the transgender folk.
I was listening the other day to the claims made, that being the younger of older brothers leaves one open to some sort of nurture change in the phycology of the child, whilst twins carried in the same fluid sack have a propensity to become statistically accountable for changes in the hormonal attraction to one of ones own gender.
It's a rum old world from the one I grew up in where being "straight" was being normal and you never doubted where your attractions lay.
Of course the closset gay was confined to silence, believing there was something wrong with them because of their urges. Of course society was prescriptive in those days as it disciplined itself in so many ways to counteract the hard social setting which constrained the people like a Presbyterian sermon.
The stricture regarding sex and its place in the religious hierarchies of good and bad made things both simple and hard. The transgressors were the black sheep, cast out from the flock, marked and stigmatised like the Jews in Poland. Not with the same disregard for their humanity but never the less placed in quarantine, as if their plight, and it was considered a plight, was contagious.
Today in our rush to free society from any constraint, in our encouragement of freedom and unanimity, anything and everything goes, irrespective of custom or tradition, irrespective of the ancient rules which were set in place to guide society in what was considered its best interest.
I was drawn to write this piece after popping into the pub close to the supermarket I walk to from home.

It was a Saturday.  I fancied a half pint and a quick excursion into the world of football, the pub has a lot of TV screens and is popular for its sport.

I hadn't been in more than a couple of minutes when the place erupted, the final score line, West Bromwich Albion 1, West Ham 2. The crucial win meant the West Ham stayed in the 'Premier League' for another season. The place was in uproar " I'm forever blowing bubbles" the club signature tune was sung as people hugged and kissed each other. Wait on. kissed each other, what was going on.
The non so subtle glances, the overt signals between what I had always taken to be a pub for the building trade, the ubiquitous  "painter and the bricky", now seemed transmuted from darkest Soho. What had been a rough and ready meeting spot for the trade had turned into a pub celebrating the gay fraternity and, as the scales fell away from my eyes, I saw elements of the licentious performance which had driven me to say, after seeing  the outrageous groping that went on in the pubs of Soho, never again.
I suppose like moths to a flame they are drawn to their own camaraderie, their own club. their own predilection. I felt like a wall flower, not wishing to be plucked (yes I said plucked) I downed my drink and wandered on home to my Horlicks and a current bun thinking, is nothing sacred in this world of "bugger thy neighbour" !!!

The plan

Mario Draghi has just revealed a series of innovative plans to stimulate bank lending.
One of the blocks to growth inside the Euroland and in the UK has been the difficulty of getting banks to lend to the SMEs who are the backbone to growth in an economy. In this country even whilst interest rates were at rock bottom the Small and Medium Enterprises have found it hard to get loans. Governments and Central Bankers have, through Quantitative Easing had their balance sheets rewritten by the taxpayer, billions have been pumped into the banks to make them liquid and encouraged to lend but the money has stuck inside the bank. On the one hand it was used to build up reserves and on the other continue to trade and pay eye watering bonuses to their Investment operatives who continue to lay mouthwatering sums on the progress of the fly on the wall, and the movement of currencies.
Draghi's  plan is to encourage the Banks to lend and stimulate the economy, national growth and thereby increase the tax take to release the pressure of government indebtedness.
It's a proper plan. It takes the game away from the money-market trade and places it back where traditionally the banks used to earn their income, lending to enterprise for growth and job creation.
The ugly sister in the Draghi household is the Market and its reaction. Almost immediately the market fell as the fund managers saw their cosy game of the money-trade being threatened by proper economics. For them a short term gain is worth a hundred thousand jobs and it illustrates the divide and distortion of capitalism,  (or at least capitalism, post Keynes)  has had on the living standards and the disequilibrium which is the Global Market Place. The disproportionate wealth holding of the the 1% who own 50% of the wealth and the inevitable disconnect between "them and us" is an almost insoluble problem as these two worlds pass further from each other, like planets under different gravity fields, they drift away into the abyss.
Capitalism the mechanism whereby industry and business raised capital for investment into plant and equipment and were in turn the developing element in job creation. The money those jobs earned being syphoned  back to the bank through the individuals bank account to allow the bank to continue lending was a mechanism that worked, so long as there were rules and constraints such as Bretten Woods but with neo-capitalism and the dismemberment of the rules and guidelines which Keynes and others had so carefully crafted the age of the free-for-all market capitalism was born.
Draghi's attempt at encouraging Banking discipline will sink or swim on the reaction of 'Fund Managers', people who serve their own or their clients short term interests and not the long term prosperity of the society at large.

The journey

How different it must be. Remember the plane touching down after the long flight, the excitement of seeing again the children who had set up home far away who had become, roles reversed your guide and protector whilst you acclimatised. The luggage collected, the happy faces, the bustling crowd of people also expectantly waiting for friend or lover to come through the doors of "Arrivals".

Sorting out of the luggage the biggest fear is that it won't fit into the boot. 

The excited chatter as questions are asked, of people left behind had they come to the airport to see you off, had the dog settled into its new home, what was it like leaving the home behind but you must see what we've done to the cottage how nice it looks.
The drive from the airport through the suburbs, streets laid out differently, houses also looking different how far are you from town is there a bus service. Rounding the corner into the street, a street you knew by the address, a destination of many many letters and now made real as the car pulled into the drive. It looks loverly you've done a great job of the garden, come on in and let's get the kettle on.

How different for the refugees having walked hundreds of miles, coaxing their families on, not many days to go, hopefully we will have some food in the next village. The clouds darken and the wind whips up as the temperature drops, what sort of shelter will we find to sleep tonight. 

The children are startled by the upheaval, their faith in their parents diminished by the sight of their worried faces as the adult protest between mother and father become more acute.
The dawn breaks and its started to snow their shoes are wearing thin and beginning to leak.
The socks are wet and the feet begin to become raw with the constant friction and the lack of being dry. Another day, another slog, another pitiful urging of the young and the old who were not meant to experience such conditions as this.
And at the end of the journey, no smiling faces  only bureaucrats with questions. No friendly homestead, no warming tea, no sense of security only a tent one amongst many in a neighbour-hood of despair, a sense of anticlimax, a rumour city where the grapevine says that this is it and perhaps, after all their effort they will be sent back to where they came from. 

Noblesse oblige

"It's the mind set".

We are in the midst of a campaign "Clean for the Queen". The idea is that people should go out and collect up the rubbish,and the litter that collects because some louts are too slovenly not to drop their fag packet or crisp packet on the street.

The slogan "Clean for the Queen" was dreamt up to coincide with her birthday and fantasises the idea that as head of state, we her citizens could do an enormous amount of good by tidying up her Kingdom.

Now there is no doubt that a little national collaboration, given the right sort of impetus has a lot going for it and it could be one a much needed antidotes to the creeping isolationism of our citizens as they singularly group around their smart phones, lost to the environment and society around them.

But Clean for the Queen, come off it. 

Clean for your neighbourhood. Clean for the little old lady living down the road. Clean for your own sense of self respect but not as a tribute to a time worn anachronistic family whose only claim to fame is that which birth bequeathed them.

The amount of resentment was summed up by a woman in tears, consumed with guilt that her father who she loves has to struggle to live. Who's government sponsored (tax payer) help has been withdrawn, who worries night and day if he is alright, who articulated the gulf between his condition and the woman on the throne who wouldn't know how to pay for her shopping, who has someone to help her dress each morning not, as in the case of the disabled old man but because it is protocol. This mother of two small children was so incensed by the inequality so very angry that some buffoon in the Palace or Whitehall had thought, in these days of bleak austerity for an ever widening section of society, to invoke a sense of noblesse oblige.

And yes this sort of thing is why I write my blog.

Yes  I was emotionally moved listening to a woman on the radio telling her story of her father who at 90 has little or no help in his life and how guilty this made her feel as she tried her best carrying the responsibilities of being a single Mom but living sufficiently far away from her Dad and unable to give him the care she so desperately wished she could. It's the pathos in stories like hers and the unnecessary inequality in our society which makes me write.

The other day I was looking for an address in Canning Town. I knew the area since I had worked in an Old Peoples Home in the area. I used to joke that I wasn't one of the inmates. 

The Home has been flattened and a block of offices built in its place. Where are the oldies who lived there, who's caring for them now, does anyone care !!!

Ejecting the old out of hospital to prevent bed blocking is an economy only if they have somewhere to go and people to look after them. With the modern family needing to have mother and father working full time, sometimes doing two jobs apiece, is it any wonder the kids are going feral and more to the point who is going to pop around to keep an eye on the old person just discharged from hospital now the government have cut back on home care.

Must I also bury my head in the sand whilst, what we had become to believe was a civilised society with props in place to care for our old if and when they could no longer care for themselves is taken away because of budget constraints whilst we refuse to tax the multinationals or our own rich but are happy to spend billions on Trident or Overseas Aid.

Mrs Thatchers dictum regarding "standing on your own feet" is all well and good but when the feet won't carry your weight any-more, who will be the crutch of last resort ?

Truth versus Facts

It's interesting that the violent closure of the last anti Turkish Government newspaper, the 'Zaman Daily' has not received much coverage in the western media.

From the Russian point of view it's different, they are out to give the Turks a bloody nose after one of their military aircraft was shot down by the Turks who claimed it had strayed into Turkish air space.

Naturally whether it is reported, or how it is reported is all "politics". Our world is political. The information we are given is controlled as a political decision. And given the artificiality of politics and politicians, it bodes ill for us as we become the chaff in the internet focused  "phantom reality" which we are groomed to believe in.
1984  pre-dates the Internet but mind control was the essence of the book. Information was an artificial commodity strictly controlled to elicit maximum happiness amongst the masses. Keep them distracted and happy whilst "we" get on with our nefarious activities.
Dissembling, falsifying, camouflaging, faking are all adjectives which describe the source of our information if we rely on the traditional inputs such as the professional politician or the media editor who decides what goes out on our screens, a media which unfortunately, has begun to "make the news not just report it". We then are in a poor position to judge whether what we see is good or bad.
It could be argued, is it any of our business to know the truth since in knowing one truth, do we know the other truths which go to make a decision or react in the way "our betters" do.
Certain people know some of the answers of course but the truth is either uncomfortable or it is at odds with their long term plan and no amount of morality could dissuade them from the action they eventually take.
Truth then is a variable and it is only when you drill down sufficiently do you discover the facts.
The football supporter can not see any possibility that his fullback brought down the player in the penalty area until the 'slow mo' camera shows him the incontrovertible  fact that it had happened
It all rests on facts but the facts can hardly be expected to allow for the importance emotion plays, our continual need to know, plays cat and mouse with our preconceived ideas and is one of the reasons that the public at large do not have the patience or the time.
Soon we are to be asked to vote on the important issue of the EU Referendum. With so much apathy due to the misappropriation of facts by the people who visit us in our homes each day unannounced through the TV and who have their own agenda to say what they do then the outcome which ever way it goes, is a fraud !!!

A point of view

Africa, Australia, everywhere is different and has a different effect on people who settle where ever they choose to settle.
It's as if the soil or the sunshine, the media or the type of lifestyle on offer dictates who you are and what you will become. Open societies versus closed ones  happy successful versus sad.
Of course that also depends on the sort of character you are and how effected you are by outside stimulus or conversely how aware you are of what is going on around you.
It is often said of Africa that it's hard to get out from its effect on you and by this they usually mean the open savannah the animals the pathos of living and dying and the unquestionable sagacity of the village African

Australia in the 60s had a brash "can do" attitude. The people were open and sunny, cocky in a Mates sort of way which was refreshing. They were an homogeneous bunch without any natural predators in those days and could afford to take life lightly having earned their reprieve by stepping off the boat 200 years previously. The literature was full of die hard characters putting two fingers up to the establishment or settling in the outback hundreds of miles from anyone. The scale of the country put it at odds with the person in Europe, particularly the tiny island of Britain where proximity meant that one had to respect the order bequeathed from above just to exist. In the 'Outback', as in many of the smaller towns the individual was allowed to flourish whilst in England uniformity ruled.

South Africa was a strange phenomenon in that the divisions in society defined the country.

The white population was split into two camps, Afrikaner on one side and the ones with an English heritage on the other.

Both camps were united in establishing their rights, not only to their perceived rights to the country but in the assumption that their rights trumped the rights of the indigenous native African.

This tripartite was the cause of much soul searching and whilst the die-hard, settler mentality which spoke for keeping what it had won regardless, was a harsh compatriot the alternative was unthinkable, that is at least until 1994.  
The defining of people by colour made the society concentrate on its own and with this concentrated awareness came a closeness in which it was instinctive to offer alms and shelter once you had concluded who the "other" was. Arriving into this open armed family of people was so refreshing after the "my home is my castle" mentality back home and I was astonished at the warmth and civility of Cape Town in 1962
The reason for this blog and its subject matter was a reply to a blog I wrote, obviously one of a number which had conveyed the impression that I hated the government (I do) currently governing over here in the UK and that  but in so many other ways I am contemptuous of much else in this country.
He is a good friend and I'm sure after our little contretemps we will assume normal service but for what it's worth this is his take.

He wrote :-

Practically every blog you write is riddled with your loathing of everything that the British Conservative Government does. Everything it stands for is riddled with evil and I wonder if there’s anything done that’s respectful  or worthy. There’s not a single thing that you find right in the place. It’s a pity that you left South Africa, that cradle of democracy after Apartheid. You must miss the peace and tranquillity of the African continent.

My reply 

At last a fervent, if disquieting response to my political views regarding this country. Keep it up I need the criticism.

Yes I have always been a Socialist and therefore I disagree with much of the policy emanating from the government of the day. Being at odds with government is not an act of treason, well at least not yet anyway and I would argue the effort I put in to my criticism and the concern I clearly have is a measure of how much I care. 

This society has much that is good, especially when I compare it with many other societies but that does not mean that it is without considerable blemish. 

The education system in the UK when compared to Africa is of course streets ahead but we are not comparing eggs with eggs and it is an accepted fact that we are a two tier country largely because of the artificiality of our schooling system. From this flows the apparent lack of concern for the true effects of draconian changes to the subsidies we pay people and the protection we afford them. Unlike the Germans we relegate whole sections of our society to the dustbin. 

This is an historic problem and we are no closer to solving it today than ever we were.

Of course if inequality doesn't concern you all well and good. There are many people I talk to who couldn't give a damn, but I do and I think in your work the fund raising and the charity work you do, you also care.

Placing an argument, perhaps the dislike of the 'medieval religious uptake' over here, or the chipping away at anything which is not 'privately owned' or run with inevitably, the effected of its lobby on shareholder interests, these are things that I wish were debated and on everyone's lips but they aren't, and so, in its incomplete way my blog is a clarion call to think about the other point of view which is just as relevant.

I might say that Africa and you mean South Africa is the "only country" in the world to have dismantled its Nuclear weaponry.

It had a Truth and Reconciliation system which was unique in the world.

It has a Constitution that is the envy of the world in its comprehensiveness and legally binding constraint on Parliament to follow civilised and humanistically derived rules.  (It's noticeable that the Mother of Parliaments continually refuses to consider a Constitution).

And on a personal basis having lived in a number of countries including South Africa I was shocked and dismayed on returning to Blighty, at the attitude which particularly English bred management displayed toward its workforce. But then people ape their betters and we come back to the entrenched class attitude that is as deep in the English psyche as it ever was.

We are friends, we go back a long way. I am my fathers child as you are yours. We shared the open spaces of our environment but we were segregated at the school gates. I hold no grudge but if it taught me anything at all "it's important to be your own man" and my blog is an epitaph to that.

Rugby by consent

I suppose we should have seen it coming. The commentary team at international matches used to be an all male affair, ex-players who knew their sport and we the public had respect for their insight. Then came the female link person, the glamorous celebrity chair who acted to field the questions to the ex-players at half time or, as is the nature of today's broadcast, the preamble before the match where issues are discussed. Recently we saw the introduction of the first female ex-player a woman who had featured in the women's internationals, flanked by two males, she played her role by giving her opinion. There is a massive discrepancy between the game played by men and women and although the rules are the same, the intensity and commitment is totally different, the tactics and intricacies are so different that the experience gained in the women's game is irrelevant.

Now today we have another woman muscling in on the game, suggesting that school rugby should ban "tackling". It's too dangerous, like the trip to a farm is full of possible disaster and the teacher has to do innumerable risk management forms to get the kids into the farmyard.
Is it the continuous feminisation of all "our" affairs. The banning of laddish ideas for the newly contrived "the modern man", at home in the kitchen, driving the vacuum cleaner, lining up for maternity leave and co-opting as a surrogate mother.
"In my day" but I suppose I better stop there.  

The power of conversion by drip feed of the 'hard done female eunuch', Germaine Greer has worn a deep furrow in Western man's psyche and to trade punches with modern, politically correct ideology risks eternal damnation 

The fiction of your own life

Watching the cycling track event this evening I was intrigued by the oblivious nature of the young athletes, oblivious of their age, oblivious of the gift of youth, oblivious of their lives and the opportunities ahead.
Being at the end of the trail with no more objectives other than keeping wrapped up to prevent getting ill and questioning the years still available, one realises that the natural healthy progression which our psychic instils in us when we are younger, somehow dissipates when we get old. As an antidote to this depressing fact I offer you "a good book".
There are two reasons for reading. One is for information, the other is companionship. We are all mentally isolated if we like it or not and even the close attention of a loving wife does not overcome our inherent isolation.
The gulf between events and our comfortable predictions, things which hope for is an ongoing and continuous reconciliation. We excuse our hopes from reality by hoping some more, and in the process we realise just how fragile our actual world really is. We try to bolster our spirits with a holiday or by buying something but this is usually a sticking plaster to cover a deeper wound. The wound is the incontrovertible fact, especially as we get older that time, those minutes in a day or the ones you share with your fears at night, are outside your control and after all, control is what we crave. The insecurity is heightened as we realise how no amount of shopping will fill the gap.
Reading is one, perhaps the only therapy, where you absolve yourself and become someone else. You escape your own plc and the responsibilities of always reporting to the board of directors, of which your wife is chairman and the children out vote you.
Instead you join the posse as it ranges across the desert in pursuit of the bad guys, you join the defending barrister in trying to get the chap off, or you become friends with a character dreamed and created by another mind, who for a moment or two had also escaped reality. 



Replacing life with fiction, the fiction from a book is far healthier than troubling yourself with the fiction of your own life.

Licking our wounds in private

Sitting comfortably in my chair, stomach full, mug of tea freshly made I look out of the window, it's cold and wet and I'm glad I don't have to go out.

Watching news coverage of the refugees pressed up against the fences on the Macedonia boarder with Greece, that outlying edge of the EU which acts as a buffer to the Balkans, reminds one of the massive discrepancy in the way people live in this world. Next door to Macedonia, Bulgaria which shares a boarder with Turkey is the route from Syria and beyond, and as part of the Balkans, is an area of hard line opposition towards the humanitarian impulse which we in the rest of Europe purport to support. 

These are countries who have not bought into the multinational, free flow of human labour which the Schengen principle dictates.
Similarly the picture of immigrants waiting at Calais to hop across the Channel and the awful conditions under which they live is highlighted by the French attempt to bulldoze their camp and move some of them into "storage containers" !!!  Warm and snug as I am, they are being turfed out into the cold and one worries, specifically about the children who in this sort of turmoil must be terrified. Why not wait until the weather had improved should be on all our lips ?

The question of "rights" is a whole different kettle of fish. 

My right to go and settle in America or Australia, Russia or China is in the hands of the country I wish to settle in. The United Nations ruling which covers people fleeing from a war zone, has very specific rules and designates them "refugees". The immigrant and the refugee are different but provoke a similar reaction. The fear is that in massive numbers a bandwagon is underway to move and leave behind them the economically poor conditions which they call home.
We hear the arguments that they only want to come over to work and have no intention of taking advantage of the Benefit System.  As I understand it, the French have much better workers rights and employment conditions but they still risk life and limb to get to us.

Why is France not more attractive ?
The issue seems to be the number and type of jobs available. In the France the higher wages and better conditions make hiring people more onerous. In the UK's free for all,  plenty of jobs are available at below the minimum living wage, with employers benefiting from the fact that "Benefit Top Ups"  subsidises the employers unwillingness to pay a living wage. The immigrant from the poorer East European countries, usually young men, band together and squat or room many to a house, so that they can keep the overheads down and save to support families back home. Many are on a short term stay, 2 to 3 years and are content to live in minimal conditions for a short time.  The true 'refugee' is of an even more desperate mind set and will accept virtually anything.

Of course the other side of the equation is that this inflow of people, willing to do anything for work, drives down wages and makes a mockery of the terms and conditions the indigenous UK citizen has worked hard to obtain. In a Capitalistic market this is called "flexibility" and one often hears the politician quoting the advantages that our "Flexible Economy" brings making it the most attractive element of the economy.

Perhaps when the Market has had its fill and we the working class are once more impoverished, maybe the immigrants will depart and leave us to lick our wounds, in private.

Mother nature

Opening the steel door into the funnel space, the hand rail and the steps leading down into the engine room were hot to the touch. As the engineer descended towards the engine platform the hot air greeted him like a blast from a furnace, his watch keeping was about to begin. 

The ship, mid -Atlantic was ploughing her way through the swell, a storm up ahead was signalling that things were about to change in the next few hours. On the Bridge the Second Officer had taken his first sight of the day as the sun rose over the horizon and had transferred his figures from the sextant onto the chart in the navigation room, which was just aft of the bridge. He was considering changing course to avoid the worst of the storm ahead. The Captain, raised out of his dream, as he lay in his bunk, woke to the sound of the voice pipe whistle and the new course reported and confirmed. Heading 320, 3 points to starboard, he signalled his agreement to the Second Officer and swung his legs out and onto the deck. The ship was beginning to plunge into each swell as the new course ploughed a different track across the waves and she started to pitch and roll.
In the galley the Cook was the first to notice the change of course. The pans on the stove began to take on a life of their own as anything loose came adrift. Breakfast was the next meal but if the seas got worse he might have to scale back and serve cold meat.
In the engine room the watch was also changing over, 3rd engineer having finished filling in the log was about to be released by the Second and after a short chat to bring the Second up to speed he would be on his way up those steps to his cabin and a cold beer.
The heat and the noise as the 12000 HP Burmeister and Wain Diesel engine roared along, full ahead had been his companion for 4 hours and he was pleased to be out of it for a while. Much of the ancillary gear was electrical, the fuel pumps the salt water pumps all the ships services were dependent on the large alternator and a smaller DC generator which was the domain of the Electrical Officer who's shift was about to start.
The Bosnian and the Chippy had the crew out securing the deck fittings as the ship began to take large plumes of water over the bows the sea crashing down on the deck as it raced away aft.
Dark angry clouds gathered on the horizon as the wind increased, whipping the spray off the sea drenching everyone on deck, it was going to be a rough one.
The Captain now on the Bridge was assessing his options there was a hurricane up ahead and although his ship was over 20.000 tons and could cope he had a responsibility to try to minimise any potential damage.
The Chief Engineer had come below and was conversing with the Second. As the ship plunged down the face of the waves the propeller was in danger of loosing traction causing the load on the ships engine to vary effecting the governor which controlled the engine revolutions to minimised any untoward surges.


As the ship entered the full force of the storm its passage forward over the ocean floor was down to a few knots and at this rate it was standing still, nature reaffirmed its strength compared to the puniness of man and his machines.
Pitching and rolling, twisting and plunging the ship shuddered as it slammed into tons of angry water. The 3rd Engineer lay in his bunk bracing himself as his cabin seemed to corkscrew around and his gear spewed out onto the deck to smash from side to side. There was no way he could sleep and he was needed below, things were becoming serious.
The Mate had laid off a new course, virtually turning around, beating a retreat until they could ease their way around the depression and resume the way they were headed. It meant loosing precious time and their slot alongside for unloading in New York but Mother Nature had spoken and there was no gainsaying her !!!

The opposite sex

Those of you who are old enough to remember Pat Boon the singer in the 50s will remember the theme of virtually all his songs was, "young love" that hypnotic state we all entered into from time to time and which cast a spell on us in ways that is embarrassing to recall. 

I went to the pub this afternoon to watch the rugby. Standing at the bar I watched as the first game started, the arrival of some young guys and just afterwards  another guy and his girlfriend. The conversation between the men had been about the match, it was relaxed as they were engrossed in the game. The girl and her boyfriend arrived, he was obviously a mate of the other lads and in no time at all the conversation, and the centre of gravity, changed to centre around the girl. She wasn't particularly good looking, quite overweight in fact but she drew them in like a phantom Aphrodite with her smile and femininity.

The guys had planned to watch the main game England were playing Ireland but Aphrodite had plans to go shopping and "her" young man, although seemingly startled to learn what she had in mind for him, went along with her plan.

No amount of ribbing and there was a lot, would dissuade him, he was as the saying goes "cuckold"!!

What is it that bends  a chap from the familiarity of his mates to the uncertainty of feminine company with all the known pitfalls that can occur.

What is the trigger, the attraction, the allure that scrambles the mind to such an extent that he was prepared to miss a rugby match !!!

What, even more interestingly was it that captured the attention of his friends.

Is it sex. There was no sexual opportunity for the young-man's companions, he had marked her card and old fashioned chivalry precluded any of the others from moving in and yet, never the less she was the queen bee, with them all eating out of her hand.

Is it Testosterone or the pituitary gland accelerating the hormones to swaddle us in chemicals which have as their functionary basis, our in survival.

Is what we call love nothing more than a chemist reaction designed to keep the species afloat.

I'm sure Pat Boons lyrics, when we listened to them as we snuggling up close to our latest desire on the dance floor, added yet another example of that hypnotic power to the unanswered mystic of  the, opposite sex.

Who have our best interests at heart

As always we are being asked to accept a truth which is not a truth but a fudge.
The call by the Tories, or at least the ones who say they are worried about our loss of sovereignty and the call to be individually able to support our values which, it is suggested, are not "our values" if they are fostered on us by the foreigners across the Channel.

 The values which purportedly are not ours are those old fashioned European ideas regarding the human status of individuals, both in the workplace and the home and of societies ability to recognise the importance of the surrounding humanity of which we individually are a constituent part.

To a Tory the importance of the 'bottom line' is reinforced by the superstition that we are a two tier society and that the different educational system on offer to the 'uppers' and the 'lowers', defines why the "Outers" would wish to rid us, as they see it, of the constraints that Europe wishes to place on the bosses to run their businesses as they feel they need to.
Many if not most leaders of commerce and industry prefer the American model of a free labour market free from constraint, free to exploit the capitalism that is virtually the only model in use today.
We have become one of the worst at educating our children which is the mainspring of life chances. We are comfortable in looking at that growing section of society which is poor and undereducated as it acts out our predictions by being uncouth and rowdy and like a Victorian Peep Show we can reduce ourselves to the lowest bear pit analysis of our fellow man and woman and revel in the fact that we are different.
The Capitalistic Market Driven economy where the Debit,and Credit are the only method of evaluating everything underlining the importance of "the bottom line" but forgetting  (if it ever knew) that value is more than just a profit !!
Market Laissez-faire practising what ever the market demands (the American way) is what many in the Conservative Party demand and the rules which float across the Channel are abhorrent to their sense of being in charge. The fact that they are in charge because their parents could afford to send them to Private Schools which then ensured their success is purely academic.
The Social Chapter which ensures protection from exploitation is a European concept, not one born in our own Parliament.
In our Courts, the legal right to protect our interests has under the Tories become unaffordable to the poor, with legal aid now only available to an ever decreasing band of litigation.
Controls continue to be abolished in terms of 'employment rights' and it is only the "rules" which the EU insist on that mark, like icebergs, sentinels in a sea of diminishing human concern which is being dismantled piece by piece as I write.