The Law, like the Ritz, is open to all

One of the things which identify our problem in the matter of being in or out of the EU is that we still have the mind set of who we were at the end of the war with regard to the nations of Europe, some of whom were our enemy's and some our allies.
Each nation was definable, we could measure them and evaluate them through a historical and cultural context. We see the Germans as Germans not Europeans we see the French as French not as European and it's the same across each European country. 

Have we got it wrong. Have these countries moved through an emotional currency the way they feel about about their national roots, feeling Federal, part of a collective whilst we are stuck in a 1950s mind set of defining ourselves wholly as a  National entity.
Are we at risk of being left behind because we failed to grow up and recognise that the world has changed.  'Wall Streets' global agenda  (Goldman Sacs) changed our actual importance and our influence in a changing world. 

Of course we could do worse than comparing ourself to Australia or New Zealand in maintaining our individualism but both these countries are in a junior league when it comes to their political weight and being so far away from Europe, out of sight means out of mind.

Do we feel up to the job of striving to sit at the big table or should we not admit that two world wars stripped us of our youth and no amount of Viagra will stimulate our loins.
Watching old footage of Macmillan being humiliated by General De Gaul in his infamous ridiculing of the British request to enter the Common Market, especially after the sanctuary we gave him and the treaty obligations we had given France and fulfilled, before and during the war, it was hard to watch and reminded one of the 'pot calling the kettle black'.  France's term for Britain was and still is "Perfidious Albion".
In the scheme of things, this family of nations, like many families is pretty dysfunctional and one must watch ones back at all times. Who was it who said "Know your enemy's but watch your friends". "A wise man will kill what killed his father, a foolish man will allow what killed his father to kill him".
Does the economic argument of today's market rule out the possibility of an economic disaster overtaking a skewed Euro Zone, where the intransigent German fear of monetary imbalance and debt made them unable to take their heel off the Greek neck and where a German leader encouraged the inflow of migrants, as much as anything to prop up an ageing German population, as it was humanitarian. When decisions are made which effect all members, where was the collaborative negotiation or is the 'top table', a table set, but the rules prevent you the opportunity to speak. 

"That Law like the Ritz is open to all".

Who to believe.

The tragedy of communication is that the industry which propels the thoughts and ideas of people to others is itself a damaged vehicle.
The BBC this morning has cottoned on to an email sent within the South East Yorkshire Police Federation so say to its members, after the police have taken a hammering in the Hillsborough verdict and moral must be rock bottom, that "you the members of the force can hold your heads high for the work you did, day to day, so many years ago". My interpretation was that the message was not directed at the police who were present in the ground but generally and even if it had been directed at the core of Bobbies serving in Hillsborough that day, it seems to me that as a collective they serve under a command and their actions are governed by that command.
It is the commanding officers and the orders they issued then and subsequently that are guilty.
I don't mind the BBC or any other media outlet, asking the question "why the email", but too often these days they act as judge and jury and more importantly they influence the ordinary man and women in the street as to what to believe.

The communication is at it again with the "trolls" lining up to cast aspersions at the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn because of his history of being pro Palestinian and anti Zionist. The sound bite investigatory interview is designed not to pursue the truth but to heighten tension, just as the newspaper headline is designed for the bulk of the readers to be egged on in their prejudice.  

Even prejudice has its roots and can be explained. We all think and express ourselves based on little or no knowledge and we all think we are right. One man's right is another's wrong and how we come to our surety had better be assumed on a broader base than what we read of hear on the media, otherwise we will be like the 'sheep' (limited understanding yet blindly supporting Napoleons ideas ) in Animal Farm, which of course was Orwell's reason for writing the book.

Criticise at ones peril

What happened to our right to free speech ?
Currently the Jewish lobby is up in arms against members of the Labour Party for criticising the the actions of the Israeli government in Tel Aviv.
I think it common cause that the heavy handed actions against the Palestinians has provoked criticism even from Israel's  paymaster the United States where it has a tremendously powerful and influential block vote in Congress.
Of course Israel has been in a covert/overt war with all of its Arab neighbours since 1947 when the state of Israel was founded as recompense for the terrible pogroms the European Jews had experienced, specifically under the Natzi's.

Prior to this recognition in 1947, and followed the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, known as the Balfour Declaration mandated the area to be under British control in 1923. The 1947 arrangement was, on behalf of the United Nations, a handing over process, from the British for joint control between the Palestinians and the Jews. The plan was accepted by the Jews but not accepted by the Palestinians and the conflict rolls on to its present day bloody impasse.There have been moments in the journey when agreement was close but the intransigence of one side or the other was a hurdle too high. 

The de facto situation is that the Israeli hates the Palestinian and visa versa.  Zionism, the nationalist political movement formed in 1896, flourished under these conditions and now reflects this as bitter antagonism.
We see today the result of the intransigence as a battle, on the Jewish side for their existence and on the Palestinian side a call,( pre Imperial tinkering ) for the reinstatement of their land.
David and Goliath, at the start of the Mandate the Jews numbered 56.000 and the Arabs 700.000 now many multiples of that but with an ultra modern army/airforce backed by American financial support the Israeli has 'might' on his side.
From our cosy European standpoint the Zionists are too heavy handed, too dictatorial, too unpleasant in their dealings with Palestine and have created a great deal of opposition amongst the more libertarian amongst us and this surfaces from time to time in comments and arguments trying to explain and solve the impasse. One such recent comment was from a Labour MP and made before she became an MP, was the suggestion of 'repatriation of Jews back to the USA' along the lines of the repatriation of Syrians who are flooding to Europe. It's something the author Philip Roth, himself a Jew had envisioned in a story line of a book he wrote, in this case, it was the repatriation of the bulk of the Jews to Continental Europe from whence they came in 1947 -onwards.
The Jewish lobby are always sensitive to such talk and with their propensity to avail themselves of the media ( they own much of it ) they respond and insist on who ever has had the temerity to question what they do "back home". The Jewish whip is cracked and our supine leaders, linked in all kinds of nefarious ways, rush to the dispatch box to threaten us "to be quiet",  which like 'good children' we are all supposed to do.
There is always this balance of keeping a lid on dissent within society but Jewish dissent reaches biblical proportions, ( akin to cartoons depicting Allah ) and one criticises at ones peril.

The same old same old.

Listening to Bill Cash a staunch "outer", one is amazed at the 'surety'and the blind faith in people from both sides of the BREXIT argument.
Cash has been calling for our exit from the EU for years, when it was less of an issue, he repeatedly stood up in parliament and pleaded to come out.His argument was about  sovereignty and democracy, the right to chose and protest, the right to feel some sort of kinship, something we can all identify with.
The BREXIT economic argument for staying in is bolstered by the movers and shakers in commerce and industry. Being naturally sceptical it makes us wonder "what's in it for them" do they all have 'skin' in the game and of course if they do it sullies their argument because of what they stand to lose personally. But should it. If they lose we also lose, jobs are lost and income into the exchequer is also lost not to mention the pension funds which rely on a healthy economy.  
Sovereignty and Democracy are an over valued concepts because true democracy is rare and for most modern societies the concept of standing alone and sovereign is old fashioned in the age of Globalisation.
Take our 'first past the post' system. Voting in the UK is unrepresentative, the bulk of people in our society lie outside the winning political party having voted for someone else and have to accept that their views are not represented by the governing party.
The idea that "we" make our laws to suit "ourselves" is to first question we have to ask.

The "we" and the term "ourselves" is opaque since it could be argued that unrepresentative government  does not have "our" collective best interests at heart.  

Is perhaps the European Union, a bureaucratic organisation made up of, and representing 28 nations, not more likely to contrive a more equitable rule book,  reflecting a more egalitarian picture of humanity than our own special interest cabal.
As the ruling party connives to draw new parliamentary boundaries to further its grip on the electoral process, distancing the underbelly the rank and file, ever more a subset of non-achievers  who's schooling, housing and healthcare are regulated through the prism, not of affordability but as a return on investment. As the Private Sector takes increasing hold and we begin to see the emergence of conditions in some of our depressed and deprived cities which we last saw in the 1930s, (that  last period of unfettered capitalism), does the suggestion that our sovereignty means something else, depending in which class, or economic subset you belong to does this schism in our society mean that the sovereignty Bill Cash yearns for is anachronistic, something belonging to an earlier time.
Countries deserve the rulers they get if democratic principles are adhered to but politics, which underpins democracy is a cloudy world of hubris, self aggrandisement, self promotion, and of course self interest. Perhaps under these conditions  "our" (the peoples) self interest comes a poor last and we are foolish to listen to the same old same old !!

A good short.

For years we have spoken of our "special relationship" with the Americans. For years we have deluded ourselves that because we share a common language, we are brothers.
In fact the Americans are naturally, Americans first and last.
Their history, prior to their emergence from the seclusion, which the distance from Europe and their large landmass  encouraged was, prior to the 1st World War, one of isolationism. The trauma of the 1st World War and its catastrophic toll on the financial stability of the Old World plus the blood letting, particularly of European males meant that one of the global fulcrums of finance had become unstable and as any marketeer will tell you, 'instability' is an opportunity to make money and consolidate power. Wall Street saw the opportunity and up until the financial crash in 1933 were busy destabilising the Sterling Area.
The 2nd World War produced another golden opportunity, not only to put the final nail in Sterling's coffin but to 'mentor' the two warmongering protagonists, Germany and Japan, who both under American occupation, were compliant to American designs.
We on the other hand were largely left to sink or swim. Yes they provided us with 'loans' which unlike Germany and Japan had to be repaid and we were forced to give up lands or mortgage them as collateral.

Even their entry into the war in 1941 was touch and go with a large block of the American public opinion wishing to stay out of the European conflict. Churchill's pleadings and Roosevelt eye to future pickings, eventually brought them in but only after they had held us hostage before agreeing to supply us with armaments and ships which, as it turned out were old, part redundant vessels rusting away on the Florida Keys.

The reason I bring this up is, listening yesterday to Barrack Obama and his warning that if we didn't remain in the EU "we would go to the back of the queue when it came to renegotiating trade treaties" was hardly the response from a brother or even a most favoured nation.
I think it is time we also grew up and recognised that the "relationship" means nothing. We have to see ourselves as just another European country, a nation state with a flag and an anthem, no more important to the Americans than the Netherlands or Spain, no more important to Wall Street than the opportunity for a good old "short".

Creating a wedge

It's simply called "creating a wedge". Clinton Crosby the Australian mastermind behind the Tory win in the last election (his tactic of creating the spector of the Scots SNP being the power behind the thrown if Labour won the election frightened the voters) was famous for advocating the tactic to divide the 'Opposition'  followers by quoting a 'mis-truth' and repeating it sufficiently often that in the minds of the listener it became a truth. Of course he had the willing help of two thirds of the British Press and Media to help him and given that people have so few places to go for the facts, they are suckers for a good story.
The latest wholesale piece of dishonest reporting has been on the Junior Doctors strike with the claim that the last and only barrier to a settlement is the question of Saturday pay.
Nothing is further from the truth. Rather there is a whole raft of disagreement waiting to be resolved but with an intransigent government negotiator in the form of the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, willing and able to defect the truth, then the case of playing hard ball with people's lives is for him a price worth paying.
He has form. He came to prominence in the saga of BSkyB when the Murdoch Group wished to consolidate their hold over the media in this country. Hunt was nominated by the government to act in a quasi legal brief to adjudicate in the matter but was discovered to have been negotiating with James Murdoch in an improper way given his position of impartiality. He lied then and he lies now. He is a man not to be trusted, glib and self assured he would sell out his grandmother if it propelled him nearer his goal of power.
The imposition of a contract on your employees, ripping the old one up and insisting on a new one which is radically different is a breach of workers rights. But it's just the sort of thing this "mother of parliaments" is capable of given the ideological agenda which the Tories clearly have to Privatising anything and everything. Health, doctors practices including the purchase and rationing of drugs. Schools with Academies replacing the overarching control and supervision of Local Government in favour of sponsored schools with total control of teaching and especially the curriculum the pupils will be taught. In this push toward this "brave new world" much of it predicated on the US where all neo conservatism has its roots, a little matter of the truth should never be allowed to get in the way.
If Europe has a founding grace it is that it is not based on the American model and has amongst its most glittering accomplishments, that it rests on the European ideal of the"Social Imperative" as the driver for any laws or policy enactment.
Perhaps this ideal is the clincher in the BREXIT debate ?

The Hillsborough disaster.

The Hillsborough verdict where the jury passed down a verdict of murder by "unlawful killing" as just been released.
Plain speaking is a trait of people in the North and the plain speaking, coming from the mothers, fathers, relatives of the people who died so horribly on that day 27 years ago has been the thread running through all these years as they sought answers for the deaths of their loved ones. The articulation of their feelings has been exemplary. No cut glass rhetoric just plain speaking, from the heart with generations of common sense to fall back upon.


There have been many stories to come out of the disaster and a great number of lies and untruths were clearly presented by, not only the police and the ambulance service but by the judiciary in support of the Police and of course by sections of the media.
The tragedy was of course of the lost lives, 98 football fans on a day out,  enjoying the sport they love but as great a tragedy was the cover up by sections of the Establishment.
Our faith in the political establishment and the structure which represents the legal system which we all rely on to provide us, the common man and woman, with justice has taken a knock.
We all know that justice is a duel path. If you have money you can buy your justice but then, as it is today,  with empty pockets comes empty rhetoric.
The tenacity of the family's of the 98 for truth has been an endearing example of solidarity amongst the ordinary men and women who reside in our town and villages. With hurdle upon hurdle placed in their way by Establishment bodies, further exacerbated but a vitriolic press, led by Rupert Murdoch's  The Sun newspaper and its scurrilous editor Kelvin Mackenzie who to this day is still employed by the paper as a feature writer and who's pumped up overblown strictures one still hears when he appears on TV.
The front page headlines depicting blame on the fans, due to their drunken condition (it was also claimed and reported by the Sun that fans had stolen valuables and from the dead and dying)  a claim which originated from Irvine Patnick, the Tory MP for Sheffield and then crucially, the supported by anonymous high ranking police officers in the Sheffield force.
It has taken 27 years of obfuscation and lies to uncover the true depth of the deceit by the civilian structure we rely upon to uphold our values of justice. They have been found woefully inadequate and with such a fundamental failing we have to question our faith in the very edifice on which we build our trust in being governed in what we hope is a civilised society.

Or bugger off.

The complexity of this global space we now live in is that it discards our old ideas of boundaries and national identity. It rocks us back on our heels to hear a person who identifies with a different culture, his view of the new world in which his place is as secure as ours.

The conversation I was listening to was taking place in Denmark between a woman who was defending Denmark's right to expect people coming to live in Denmark obeying  Denmark's laws and social norms. It would seem a no brainier and part of the respect you offer as a emigree.
The opposition to that point of view and it centred on men marrying under age women in a forced marriage came, needless to say from a studious Muslim man who's organisation in Denmark was to educate non Muslim of the requirements of the Muslim religious culture and "it's" norms.
The argument that "I have rights" was paramount in the whole debate and lends itself to the humanitarian concept that we should all be equal in law.
Of course the law of one country is different to that of another in terms of its gestation, and how it was developed to meet local needs. Local needs and conditions modified the overall legal directive to suit the local condition but of course beneath the tweaking lies the substructure of what we might call universal law,  practised as part of the process of recognising that "all men and women are equal" and have equal rights under international law.
So the Muslim man pressed his case for recognition of his cultural values and practices whilst the Dane said that these practices whilst common in some a Muslim countries were an anathema to Denmark.
It's a problem which is going to become more and more common as we become more and more globally multicultural with the unique flow of people from one continent to another.
The essence of "rights" of course has not been clearly defined especially when interpreted from a religious base whilst it is assumed that the gold standard, "humanitarian values", encompasses everyone.
If a society is made up of a significant ethnic mixture does our legal system not need to be further tweaked to take care of the variances, or are we right to assume that old adage when you come in to a new country, you accept its rules and regulations and if you don't like it, bugger off.

The London Marathon

All the worlds a stage and all men and women merely players.

Watching the start of the subsection of the London Marathon dedicated to blind people and people who suffer as arm amputees, I, as a person who promises himself to get out on the road to do a little fitness training but usually puts it off for another day, am in awe. 

To run, being totally blind, even partially blind is a challenge which I can hardly comprehend. 
Running in a totally undefined vacuum might describe it, since all the stimulus or warning signs are missing. There's no sense of how far or how near, there's no sense of what's in front of me as I pick up speed or negotiate a corner, my world is disconnected with only sound to link me to others around me as I pound the road, heading in a direction which is meaningless, no signposts no milestones only the rhythm of my feet.

There is a mindset in running whereby the overseas athletes from Africa seem to have a self -belief which sets them apart from the European runners. The start of the race amplifies this as the Africans stride out from the starters gun and leave the others in their wake. In no time at all they are 100 -200 stretching to 300 metres ahead and expanding the gap with each stride. They are not superhuman, they aren't from the planet zog, they have, if anything a desire to run at a certain cadence because, as they grew up their fellow countrymen and women were running at speed through the dirt roads in a way which meant it became 'normal' to expect to do so.
Confidence is crucial, if you tell yourself, "this is what is normal" then you rise to the normal.
The Europeans have a different perspective of what is normal and they run to their normal.
Of course the television and the Internet which helps the picture reach all corners of the world has made the marathon, a must do event for many. Ordinary people spend hours pounding the streets in an effort to get fit and take part. It's a cliche but for most of them it's taking part that matters. There are no medals in their sights other than the finishing medal and the commitment to the charity they represent. This running for a charity is in itself a phenomenon. Dressing up in the most improbable gear, (someone went around a couple of years ago in a deep sea diving suite and took about 2 days) is a reflection of the quaintness of the British for self ridicule. Bizarre is a better description, it's no mean feat encouraging people to laugh at you.
The men are off and again it's an African dominated event. It's not a matter of seconds, it's minutes faster than the nearest white man and one has to ask, is it genetics.
The best sprinters on the track are all of black origin and whilst it may not be politically correct to ask, what are the factors at play here ? There are no Indian top flight runners for instance and whilst the Chinese compete reasonably well they are not top flight.
Even within Africa it's a limited Only in parts of Africa, Ethiopia,  the Kenyans, Tanzanians is the cream of distance running observed whilst people from lower down the continent simply do not feature.
The muscular North American sprinters perhaps rely on the bulk that living in a prosperous country brings and with it the inherited physical power of having such a large body mass makes a difference. Long distance runners, on the other hand are slight, fitting the profile of their countries lack of prosperity as they grow up as children, the goal of riches comes from running.
What ever the reason there will be many tired limbs tonight as they settle into bed, all the more reason to marvel at that limited band of runners "the 10 tenners", people who succeed in completing 10 marathons in 10 days. That's nothing to do with genetics, it's simply a form of masochism !!

Catastrophe waiting to happen

I have just been listening to one of the most disturbing programs. It covered the dilemma of people getting old and needing care in a home for the last months or years of their life.
As you know my day starts early acknowledged by the time which is recorded when I send out my blogs. This morning I wrote from about 5.30, having read from 5.00 and then at about 7.00 I rang an old friend in Australia who I had heard was in a home suffering from dementia. This timid voice answered, it was Jenny, not the strong assertive Jenny who I had known but someone who had regressed into her childhood and who was trying to make sense of who would ring her. "Hi Jenny its John, John Wood how are you". There seemed to be a flurry of recognition a firmness in her voice that indicated she knew who I was but then slowly the mist descended and her brain couldn't cope with the job of remembering. Her voice became plaintive and then as the sentences themselves became a struggle she seemed a child again, the simplicity of not knowing, of not having to cope with social protocol, of sounding shy towards this stranger.> > It was so sad and yet in some ways it was a relief, as she retreats into her formative years with all the simplicity she knew but didn't know. There was no pain, no regret, no nostalgia, no troubling emotions towards those you are leaving behind only a world of the immediate present, a fleeting experience that changes from minute to minute. This would be frightening if there was any sense of perspective but without any perspective, just like a child, it's their reality.
Having finished my call I thought I would see how my old friend Johannes in Africa was. He is a black man who used to work for me back in the days. Having retired he moved back home into a tribal settlement where a few years ago I had driven out to visit him and his family. It's fairly unusual for visitors to pitch up from the city and he was really pleased to see me as he waited at the side of the tar macadam road to guide me up a deeply rutted track heavily eroded by the rain until we reached his home. His extended family were there looking at me with what was not hostility but rather amazement that I had driven over 200 miles to see the man of the house. Anyway through the marvels of modern day communication, after a couple of rings he was there overjoyed to hear my voice. He has not been well, problems in the stomach as he described it the doctor was going to put him in a machine to see what's wrong but in his native assumption, that life and death walk side by side he was phlegmatic about the outcome. My call perked him up no end and I promised to ring again in two weeks to see how he is.
The reason I describe these calls is to illustrate that whilst we sit in our relatively secure, pain free environment carrying on as before, our collective experience is diminishing as friends die or become seriously ill.
Impermanence is a state we all belong to and the program I was listening to was about the increasing dysfunctionality of our social care system. The cost of keeping someone in a care home is outrageous and beyond the realm of affordability for 60% of the population. I know we oldies have a propensity to say "when we were young" but I have to say that back then old people's homes were funded out of general taxation as part of the responsibility of the State towards its old and in-firmed.
The creeping privatisation and the mantra, since Thatcher, that taxation was a bad thing and that one had to make provision for ones self, is coming home to roost.
I was brought up to understand taxation was not an evil but was paid on the basis of your ability to pay and is the financial bedrock of a civilised society.
Mrs Thatcher and her Reagan/Friedman economics borrowed from Anne Rand was the social catastrophe waiting to happen - and it's happening right now.

Early to bed

I remember a number of years ago coming across a web site which if you answered a number of profile question it predicted how many hours and minutes you had before you died. The site was headed with a dramatic picture of the Grim Reaper equipped with scythe waiting patently !!

It all seemed so pertinent today on the Queens birthday. At 90 she still seems to be going strong and with her husband Prince Philip who I think is 96 she is the embodiment of a busy old person still fulfilling her responsibilities. 

Someone also made the comment, I think yesterday that how it shocked them to compute how much time they had left in this world and that when you computed it into hours it seemed so close so real, they felt they could possibly touch it !!
I suppose the next question what should we do with this precious commodity, "once departed may return no more".
The view that one should make as much use of the time as possible means different things to each person. Whether one should be out and about, possibly limiting one time sleeping ,burning the candle at both ends. Trips abroad sight seeing, or visiting old friends. Keeping a close relationship with ones own family or spending money and time finding excitement and unusual thrills. Eating out at good restaurants or helping other less fortunate than yourself. What about the passive thrill of reading or studying, what about seclusion and finding your own rhythm, learning to watch and use your eyes beyond the need to navigate, engaging in a world that is around you but in your hurry, you are oblivious that it's there.
Coming to terms with yourself, instead of that image you wished to project, learning that in essence no one really cares and that in your isolation you once more meet with the true you, as you were at a very early stage in your life.
It's not to say your relationships are any the less but that your relationship with yourself is paramount. It's only when we understand ourselves, set in the time bubble, do we find the contentment that an early night in bed brings.

An anachronism

It's so strange to watch the odd arrangement and the stratagems of the Coronation, especially the importance of the crowning process itself and the mystic of noblesse oblige.

 The House of Windsor has been playing its self out on our screens. There is a fascination with Royalty especially when the power of the various royal families in Europe was crucial in the political machinations that were for ever rumbling between nations.

Kings and queens held sway in courts which were out of sight to the ordinary man and woman. Grainy black and white film shows them lining up like battleships far out to sea, massive and remote, their ceremony and the splendour were a pageant of fairy-tail proportions, a massive theatrical pantomime complete with heroes and heroines but largely jesters and jackanapes.
The movers and shakers who move behind the throne, the traditionalists and monarchist, steeped in the minutiae of protocol, oblivious to the way the ordinary person would think they inculcate our thinking like a novelist such as J K Rowling's with her creative underworld.
With the mist of oblige  our eyes cast down to a respectful glance or two, we watch what they do and wonder at their tomfoolery. The act they lay on is so stiff and predicable its a wonder a whole series hasn't been made to go hand in hand with the modern dysfunctional family in Wigan.
Surrounded by fawning functionaries and courters who resemble stuffed fish in their courtier clothes is it any wonder that the Royals become consumed by it all and lose touch with reality.
The film showed the matriarch Queen Mother now, on her husbands death, relegated behind her daughter yet, as mothers do, still wishing to influence.

Her stubborn refusal to move out from Buckingham Palace to a 12 bedroomed pad down the Mall on account of it "being too small" and then after the house, Clarence House had been refurbished and modernised by Elizabeth and Prince Philip in their time prior to becoming Queen, the Queen Mother insisted on another refurbishment before she would move in. It's astounding that she would assume it her right to spend the taxpayers money so regally but she did and they still do.

The Dutch have got it right. Their Queen is truly one of them, with her in-ostentatious ordinary lifestyle, she has succeeded in democratising the pomp and majesty and made herself a much loved ordinary citizen. Wilhelmina, Juliana and Beatrix were Queens who gave way to holding a more pragmatic position regarding what is after all, an anachronism.

Pragmatism

Most of us would like to claim to be humanitarian, after all it's the essence of who we are  to be collaborative to others. To be identified as humanitarian is to rank alongside the good in people.  To love ones fellow man and women is a religious ideal, right at the base of ones understanding of what is Gods will.
The immigration debate brings this human ideal into conflict with that old devil "pragmatism".
How do we square the circuit with what we know we should do as a response to someone else's suffering and the side effect it has on us.
To put ones hand in the pocket and make a contribution to aid, even the running costs of ones own local charity is one thing but to give ones time and energy to actually joining the ranks of helpers or accepting the consequences of taking in people with needs, which will stretch the resource for your own people, is another.
In a perfect world our leaders would have our needs at the forefront of their own priorities but this is rarely the case and we see with the inadequate building program for affordable houses or to train enough medical people or school teachers that the politicians gaze is elsewhere.
We have chronic shortages in all these and other fields of social support and at the end of the day it's a numbers game.
If we have shortages and we haven't the money to pay for the improvements needed why on earth would we be so generous to people who are foreign to us.
Until we can rectify our own mismanagement in the supply of these fundamental cogs in the machinery of modern social provision we should have a blanket stop to any more 'incoming' from where ever they come.
This is the Australian view and we would worse than to consider that even though they took some brick backs from their policy of turning people around and sheltering them off shore in Papua New Guinea it sent out the message, "we are in charge".
Our own government clearly are not in charge. Irrespective of the agreement of the free movement of people in the EU we combine this with our responsibility with the UN charter regarding people fleeing a war zone at our peril. These responsibilities, which are at base ideological, counter our responsibilities to our own people and we have to face up to the pragmatic fact that we shouldn't put a 'stranger' before our 'own family'.
I'm sure there's a tract in the bible which echo's this.

The Law like the Ritz is open to all.

One of the things which identify our problem in the matter of being in or out of the EU is that we still have the mind set of who we were at the end of the war with regard to the nations of Europe, some of whom were our enemy's and some our allies.
Each nation was definable, we could measure them and evaluate them through a historical and cultural context. 

We see the Germans as Germans not Europeans we see the French as French not as European and it's the same across each European country. 

Have we got it wrong. Have these countries moved through an emotional currency the way they feel about about their national roots, feeling Federal, part of a collective whilst we are stuck in a 1950s mind set of defining ourselves wholly as a  National entity.
Are we at risk of being left behind because we failed to grow up and recognise that the world has changed.  'Wall Streets' global agenda  (Goldman Sacs) changed our actual importance and our influence in a changing world.
Of course we could do worse than comparing ourself to Australia or New Zealand in maintaining our individualism but both these countries are in a junior league when it comes to their political weight and being so far away from Europe, out of sight means out of mind.
Do we feel up to the job of striving to sit at the big table or should we not admit that two world wars stripped us of our youth and no amount of Viagra will stimulate our loins.
Watching old footage of Macmillan being humiliated by General De Gaul in his infamous ridiculing of the British request to enter the Common Market, especially after the sanctuary we gave him and the treaty obligations we had given France and fulfilled, before and during the war, it was hard to watch and reminded one of the 'pot calling the kettle black'.  France's term for Britain was and still is "Perfidious Albion".
In the scheme of things, this family of nations, like many families is pretty dysfunctional and one must watch ones back at all times. Who was it who said "Know your enemy's but watch your friends". "A wise man will kill what killed his father, a foolish man will allow what killed his father to kill him".
Does the economic argument of today's market rule out the possibility of an economic disaster overtaking a skewed Euro Zone, where the intransigent German fear of monetary imbalance and debt made them unable to take their heel off the Greek neck and where a German leader encouraged the inflow of migrants, as much as anything to prop up an ageing German population, as it was humanitarian. When decisions are made which effect all members, where was the collaborative negotiation or is the 'top table', a table set, but the rules prevent you the opportunity to speak. 

"That Law like the Ritz is open to all".

From our own point of view

How different my views would be if I were a black man, a muslim, a woman, a gay person, the list goes on, an amputee, an african living in the Congo, and so on, how different and how strange that we never seem to make the effort to see any situation from the 'others' point of view.
We are usually prescriptive in how we see things only from our own point of view, and our solutions which take our own condition to be the default position. 

Our views whether coloured by our mobility or our security, our sexuality, our experience through the prism of being born who we are, clouds our ability to see clearly through another's eyes. 

It is of course clearly impossible to see the world through another's eyes. Even if you were an identical twin the trillions of connections in your brain preclude the chance that, other than in a general sort of way, your twin and you will be at one and in sync.
This opens up the frightening concept that 'I am alone' whilst standing in a crowd.  That for comfort I will concede and accommodate just to become accepted.

In the defence which Socrates puts before the judge he argues for his identity as a person who simply reasons things out, not from a position of knowing, not even from a position of trying to teach and convince but through his own integrity to question. 

His accusers say that he is an influence on the youth and that he denied the gods of Athens. His potential sentence is one of being put to death. And so even in court and in danger of being killed - he 'reasons'

"For the fear of death is the pretence of wisdom, not real wisdom, being the  pretence of knowing the unknown and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be their greatest evil, may not be their greatest good. Is not this ignorance a disgraceful sort, the ignorance which is the conceit that man knows what he does not know."

We all have a responsibility to reason. We might not get it right but we have to try. If we are the individual I suggest we are we can not look to others for answers, we have to find the answers ourselves and then at least we can say, "I gave it my best shot".

Referendum Mark 3

We are in a quandary. 

Who do we believe when the main players who are out and about quoting statistics and dire warnings are those same people known for their deceit. 

The BREXIT referendum is drawing ever closer and as claim and counter claim assail our ears we plunge deeper into a trough of despondency, who is right and what will it really mean.

The vote is not for a day or a year not even a decade but virtually for ever. The implications of getting it wrong can be catastrophic and yet for most of us we are lambs to the slaughter not really knowing and for many, not really caring. To wake up tomorrow sharing the bed with a stranger is no big deal say some. To others its a crime against their sense of empowerment to control their destiny.

Like a tennis match the proverbial ball is played from one side of the net to the other but unlike tennis there are no rules, no umpire, no recall to Hawk Eye. It's as if one side is using a cricket ball whilst the other fields three players.

I suppose it can be divided into three questions :-

1. Do we reject our Parliamentary process for a Bureaucratic Federalist  decision making body which has at heart it's own agenda.

A1. Given that our own Parliament is far from perfect, with a voting system which is profoundly undemocratic and inherently, an extension of the elitist Public (Private) School system which discounts so many of the countries citizens, Would an unelected elitist system, garnered from a wider, possibly more enlightened stock of people be better at administering our laws and conditions. 

The killer is that they are unelected and therefore we the people are impotent to their will. At least currently we are under the impression that we can rid ourselves of our government if we wish.

2. The economic advantage of trading into a large more or less equal in standards market place with rules of engagement which are common to all.

A2. Our trade with Europe is fundamental to our financial existence, not with standing the argument that we are inhibited in trading outside the EU. As far as I know there are more Mercedes sold in China than anywhere else so if the Germans can do it why can't we. Do we have to seek EU approval ? If others have done so why not us.? 

Reciprocal trade has the barrier that trade tariffs might apply to goods coming into the EU but again the Chinese are currently swamping the EU market with cut price steel.

Have we the industrial base to manufacture to the world at large. Not any longer. 

Our Empire is gone and with it the trade preferences we were happy to negotiate away by Edward Heath in his obsession to join the EU.

Are we in fact a second rate nation when it comes to large scale manufacturing. Yes. 

We are leaders in niche products, mostly expensive goods for a specialised market, pharmaceuticals and of course the Services Industry, particularly financial products.

Could we survive on these low volume high labour cost products feeding into a world of chameleon like proportions where insecurity and market made billionaires come and go with a percentage point change here and there.

3. Immigration and the changing face of our society is an emotional subject. Does it matter if we lose our identity. 

A3. Of course it does. People have given their lives for a concept of who we thought we were. But have we already passed the Rubicon with a nation of so many different backgrounds and so many different callings. The horse has bolted. Would it not be better if we became accustomed to the new surrounding and drew succour from an infusion of new ideas and tastes. I'm not sure.

What I am sure of, there is a cost to immigration that this government is not willing to accept. The cost to the services provided by any modern society has to be in line with the number of people calling on those services and other than tweaking around the edges little has been done in housing, schooling, health, and welfare to acknowledge that in a fairly short period our population has grown by 10 million and exponentially will accelerate as the higher birth rate amongst the new arrivals fuels the shortages. 

Can we afford it is the million dollar question or will standards have to decline in line with other poor countries. Will the distinction and the distance between the haves and the have nots continue to grow and the ghettoisation of parts of the country become entrenched. 

To be sure to be sure, that is the question !!!

Tottie

"I want to speak to the Tottie". I had never heard the phrase Tottie before but it was used by a Parliamentarian in Parliament the other day to describe a young women reporter. There have been many column inches used to hold opinion, particularly female opinion, about the demeaning nature of the term and the temerity of men to use it.
The nature of communication these days is a minefield of do's and don't's with political correctness so deeply entwined in our mental reflexes that we tread a minefield of innuendo and nuanced remark.

Coming from an Andy Capp era when calling a pretty lass, "a lovely piece of crumpet", might well have carried muster since the movers and shakers 'down south' wouldn't have understood what I was saying but today we are assailed with "correctness" and I wonder if it isn't the same sort of schism that effect our dialog with Muslim people.
Listening to many Muslims on the radio describing and acknowledging the terrible effects of suicide bombing, they often have, as an afterthought (although I would suggest its a predominant thought) that the history books, including recent history is full of non-Muslim aggression towards people of the faith. "Look at what you did to us" is a phrase and a release from the responsibility of the latest terror attack. Them and us. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
If we are to be judged for our fathers sins or if past events are taken out of context then we are all to blame and there will never be a consensus.
Similarly the 'female movement' is a movement for ever critically judging men for the position they seem to hold in the boardrooms and as leaders in politics. Years ago as the head of the house, in the days when he was the bread winner and she was the home maker, roles were defined and whilst one always had strong authoritative women, the strength behind the throne as it were, women generally played a diminutive part.
Perhaps it's this historical baggage which has to be worked through. Perhaps after opening the door to a lady or offering your seat has faded from memory and we all 'robustly' contest what ever scraps come our way, when only the most conniving win, will we have accomplished this egalitarian world we struggle to find but, having found it, will we have accomplished anything worth having.
As a matter of interest "I want to speak to the Tottie", is simple rude and boorish behaviour and irrespective who was addressed a simple punch on the nose would have worked wonders.
Sadly men are better equipped at this sort of thing so we can't win what ever we do.
 

Shakespeare v The Bible

Sunday is a special day. No not because of its religious connotation but because it contains "The Big Question".
Today I was gripped by a discussion "is Shakespeare more relevant to today's audience than the Bible". 

Why on earth do I describe this as gripping, what relevance does Shakespeare or indeed the Bible have on our lives in this fast moving drama we call 'our lives'. 

Of course I describe 'life' as a drama and Shakespeare was the master story teller in which he describes the vicissitudes of people who live through, even up to today, what is right and wrong, good and bad in each of the characters with which he describes our own dilemma.
The audience in York were extremely erudite and it was for me an, edge of seat occasion, as I listened to an impassioned academic debate, each participant at the leading edge of their speciality. 

I am fascinated by language and a persons ability to put across an idea with the correct choice of words. Language is a rich mixture, like the ingredients in the mixture of a cake, leave out one of those ingredients and the finished product is spoilt.
Today's event was a delight since it was largely a meeting of minds yet each contribution brought new light to bear on the difference of the contribution between, a "directive" issued by the Bible and a "self censoring" question which the Shakespearean plays pose. 

"To be or not to be" is a question that not only Hamlet grappled with but one we all pose to ourselves, "whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them"

Neither a borrower or lender be for loan oft loses both itself and friend and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

You speak an infinite deal of nothing.

Love is not love which alters when alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no it is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.

Shall I compare thee to a summers day, thou art more lovely and more temperate. 

Conscience does make cowards of us all.
Our language is full of Shakespearean phrases which we set aside as truisms. It is rich in pathos as it is of success. The characters although written and construed in the 1500s are as relevant today because he emboldens them with all the frailties we see in ourselves as well as our hopes and desires.

The Bible is the word of God, written by men who wished to bring a message of his love and belief but tainted with the proposition of eternal damnation. 

It's a series of moral agendas, of being right and wrong but with the sharp edge that 'being wrong' is not a choice. 

It acknowledges man,s weakness which is part of Gods gift of 'free will'  "but with the hand that giveth he taketh away".

 The stories, the parables are a gift to set and compare ourselves with but unlike any self analysis which is by definition, something within your own gift there is the heavy hand of condemnation behind it all and a dire prognosis if you don't aspire.

Another over-optimistic moment

Embarrassing  moments such as the one I described when a wall limited any further forward movement on an optimistic booze fuelled bicycle ride across a pub car park reminded me what a couple of pints can do to raise your optimism and climb metaphorical mountains.
I suppose spinach did it for Pop Eye but it never ends to amazing me how a stimulating drug, what ever is on the label, can push the mind out of its conservative reference into 'I can take on the world'. Is it that we inherently play down our role in life and seek the safety of playing safe. In some ways it seems a pity since with a bit more mental goading who knows how far we might have travelled.

In the days, pre 1994 South Africa and especially in Johannesburg  Professional Wrestling was popular. The tournaments always garish, always over the top introduced these huge men, sometimes fit sometimes a bit out of condition to put on a show. We always knew it was entertainment rather than a true sporting contest but each fighter had his following and it was especially spiced up when the promoter brought in opponents from overseas to fight the local lad.

Sitting in a pub one Saturday afternoon with a couple for friends I had reached that moment when the alcohol had placed me above and beyond and certainly outside rational thinking. Sitting not far away at the bar were two of these overseas wrestlers, each weighing over 20 stone (127 kg). They were sitting, minding there own business, two lads from Yorkshire over to make some "brass" fighting the local gorillas. For some reason I decided that this wrestling game was not what it was made out to be and anyone, "me" could put a 'headlock' on one of these chaps, not to cause a fight but out of that Olympian desire to compete. Puffed up with stimulated bravado  fuelled by a pint or three I walked up to this innocent guy and, putting my arm around his neck in an arm-lock said something like "get out of that" !!
The next moment or two was something of a blur but as my friend described afterwards, he simply stood up with me clinging to his massive neck and simply shook me off like a dog shaking water of its fur and I collapsed onto the floor. Game over set and match.
In the ensuing conversation, we became chums. Their coming from 'Gods own County' helped and soon we were swapping stories as if we had been born in the same street.
My wife, Marie had lent me her Mini and fuelled with beer and bohem I set off to show them the sights. The poor car. Can you imagine the sight of two huge men sitting on one side of this tiny car with me as a counterweight (11 stone when wet). The suspension must have wondered what hit it as we drove, virtually on two wheels rather than four, over the Queen Elizabeth Bridge on our way through Braamfontein to Witts University where I had had the marvellous idea we could have a swim in the university Olympic pool. Security not withstanding we swam and sobered up to finish yet another eventful day in the sputtering life of yours truly.

Ouch that hurt

As we struggled with our first steps, it's  a moment along the path which we evolve and become who we are. There are other mile stones such as our first wobbly attempts to ride our first bike and like our first steps this ability to stay upright is, it is suggested a skill you never forget.

Even if it has been many years since you last rode a bike you normally have little trouble in sitting on the saddle and soon re remembering how to ride the damn thing.

It's as if the brain has a file in which the knowledge we once accumulated is readily available to be opened and checked. Motion it seems gives one the magic ability to stay upright.
Of course this magic is dependent on having access to the files locked away in the brain but if you find yourself surfing a wave of alcohol down those very corridors, the doors into the filing room remain locked.
Climbing on a bike after many years can mean you are keen to get fit. It could be the only way to get about if you had accumulated more than 10 points. Perhaps even it might be that familiar madness which, when having "one over the eight" causes some to stagger out of the pub, stumble onto a bike in the pub car-park and feel confident to give it a go.
Four wheels have at least a stabilising effect but two wheels requires a massive rapprochement. Something which, with the flexibility of youth one can get away with but when, with even the light touch of advancing time we stiffen up and our reactions are are not reactions, but clumsy reflections of what might have been. And then, to crown it all, somehow, a wall is thrown in our path !!  It can in retrospect seems difficult to fathom why we were silly enough to put our leg across the crossbar (please forgive the illusion) in the first place.
I hope the ego is more bruised than the shoulder and that the remarkable Irish sense of humour can smile a wry smile at the mysteries of a pint of Guinness.

The Grand National

Rule the World - Rule the Irish. Liverpool the second Capitol of Ireland and the home of the Grand National was taken over as usual by the Irish horse racing fraternity. The owner of the winner, Michael O'Leary the controversial  owner of Ryan Air, the trainer and the jockey were part of that breed of people who seem competent to compete with the Arab Sheikhdoms and their billions in the business of breeding and training these thoroughbred horses. 

It's a world we ordinary people don't quite understand. The investment and the risk, the shady characters the dubious business of betting, the money thrown away on a dream of the colour of a jockeys shirt. 

Having had the radio on as I arrived back home prior to the race the sentiment was anti racing and the harm done to these magnificent animals. The tragic statistic that over the last nine years a horse has had to be put down due to a fall on the track, one horse every second day. One thousand nine hundred horses have died as a result of falls in the last nine years on British/Irish courses. A terrible statistic and one which seems to have no effect on the appetite of the race goers and the horse racing industry.

I heard many shrill voices calling for it to be banned and how cruel it was for the animals to have to perform with a human being on its back, jumping fences which although greatly reduced these days are still a tremendous imposition especially for a tiring horse over two miles. And yet as the race unfurled and jockeys were going down like ninepins (who cares about the jockeys) the jockey-less horses continued to race and jump the fences. At one stage the race was led by a horse who was going like the clappers, it hadn't seemed to have cross the horses mind that this was cruel, and that it needed a jockey to goad him on, the horse was in his/element and proof that breeding is everything.

From the person who joins the workforce at fifteen, out of bed by six and through the factory gates by seven, nine hours a day, five and more days a week with three weeks of for a trip to the seaside for the minimum wage, perhaps the women and it was largely women who were complaining about the ill treatment as they saw it for the horses, should turn their gaze to the inhumanity of a Bangladesh sweat shop or the miner, boilermaker, ship steward, shelf packer since there is much human misery inflicted on other humans than in a stable. 

Ireland revisited

Thank you for you interesting email. It provokes the sentiment that, in all of us is a "right" which we feel strongly about and which often has its seed in history, or at least the history we were given.
The history books I was brought up on was possibly no different to yours but in so far as the emphasis the teacher gave, given his or her background, often the story was biased one way or another.
Believing in our past was and I emphasise 'was', a touch stone to who we thought we were.
Yes we were of course individual's  but we also belonged to something larger more complex something we identified with, much as we identified with our parents and their parents before them. The warp and weft of the tribe was totally ours and as a Yorkshireman I would often reply to the question "where do you come from", Yorkshire rather than England.



The mention of the Easter Uprising and Bloody Sunday are events which mark a moments when the rule of law broke down and the Establishment reacted, often over reacted. 



Of course uprisings and rebellion was a national cause, dating back to the 1500 and before.
The FitzGerald's, the Desmond's, the O'Donald's, the O'Neill's and the Maguire's families and clans who took up arms against the English. The Fenian raids and the War of Independence when we first heard of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1919. The 'Troubles' in 1969 - 98 which eventually brought into being the Northern Ireland Parliament and the sight of a   Ian Paisley working alongside his nemesis Martin McGuinness was remarkable, given the apparent enmity between them or was it on Paisleys part, pure oratory given the man's calling to preach when ever he was given the chance. McGuinness was a different kettle of fish, as head of the IRA with all that that entails, to becoming a respected politician was a bumpy journey and I have always, when I see and hear the man, reflected on the dark secrets he holds in what was a very dirty war not so much against the Establishment but against the ordinary man and women living on the wrong side of the street in Belfast and across Northern Ireland.
Nationalism often fired up the people who resented instruction, nations form made up of ordinary people who break free from convention and strike if they can, a new model closer to their needs.
The Irish have been, through the aeons of time, seen as a hot rebellious people and as we mentioned before they found central government very difficult because tribal affinity held sway and even to this day their anger  is quite destructive as old enmities continue to bridal passions.
From an Englishman's point of view.  A view which had settled the question of working within some sort of democratic framework in which law and order held an important role, it has always seen these matters of nationalism, questions of 'debate' rather than a call to arms.
In England the aristocracy formed a pact with the local citizen and thought its method of governance exportable. Conquest and then a formulation of a structure for governance was introduced with much the same format, right across the world.  India and  Africa were all supposed to see the enlightened opportunities of 'light touch' guidance but largely self -governance but unfortunately based of a structure which was foreign to all of them. And so wherever the English went they assumed too much and bore the brunt of rejection virtually everywhere.
Roosevelt saw it in Churchill's plans for setting boundaries and creating allegiances after the 2nd World War but of course he had his own desire for hegemony under a different guise, the dollar.
The problems in Northern Ireland with the segregation of Church and the split allegiances that it created within the population as well as the divisions on political opportunistic lines are all for another blog.
Be it Parnell and his powerful advocacy for Home Rule and Gladstone's efforts to get it through parliament must wait another day.
As a simple Yorkie I might miss a point or two under-standing the very deep antithesis of being raised in amongst the turmoil. You could no doubt confirm chapter and verse the unfairness, some would say iniquity of the English and their meddling. Whilst I might say, in the round, the English were benign compared to the history of most Empires.

Ps Yes I also like Mr Higgins, he seems a throughly down-to-earth chap, so unlike those who would purport to be famous and influential.