The new Messiah

It's interesting as Louis van Gaal lifts the FA Cup at Wembley yesterday he must have known that the knives were out for him in the Boardroom and that his joy would be short lived.
It's the nature of football these days as it has become a multi million pound product bolstered by the ridiculous sums of money brought into the game by that insidious industry advertising, that loyalty or even the most rudimentary sense of respect for utterances made hours before, mean nothing in the behind the scenes negotiations that seem to be continually going on regarding football managers.
As much as van Gaal had nothing to do with the genius of Wyne Rooney's inspired goal as Rooney picked up the ball in the middle of the park and dribbled his way across to the right touch line drawing the Crystal Palace team with him to then with pinpoint accuracy he placed the ball to Fellini who had been hovering around that section of the goalmouth all day and had been a constant danger to Palaces defence, breasted the ball to Mata for an easy shot on goal, as much as van Gaal was not involved in the actual goal it seem his head will roll anyway to make room for the poisoned challis of Mourinho.

How will the fans take to the surly Mourinho. Coming from arch rivals Chelsea where his personal character seems to have got in the way of his team who continued to play well below their ability until the moment he left and then have revived their skills without the petulance and self centred hubris of their manager.
As always results win the hearts and minds of the fickle football fan, fickle towards players and manager, never towards the club, results are all that matter and the blind patriotic fervour turns sensible men and women into raving lunatics unable to see what's before them in their medieval tribalism.
Mourinho will peer at us all with that self centred smirk on his face, secure in the ridiculous contractual obligations which are part and parcel of the employment package, in his heart little thought for the fans or the history of the club, perhaps even contempt as he wends his mystique, a man of few words which when you disentangle the mangled syntax mean little other than "I am the messiah".

The Referendum - Historical Context

If one follows the historical trail of the American mentoring of Germany and Japan, its two proteges, who had been signalled out to be the fulcrum of reassembling the economic zones of influence in Europe and Asia, along with the Marshal Plan, these countries were to be the driving force in recycling the American Dollar and relieving the imbalance of dollars held in Europe and Asia after the Marshal Plan had poured millions of dollars into each zone as a cost of rebuilding after the war.
The cartel called the "European Coal and Steel Community" was an American fostered idea to stimulate the enormous industrial power of German industry, Krupp, Siemens, Volkswagen, AEG into a trans-national cartel where trade prices and the bottom line were decided in the cartels, largely German boardrooms. The Brussels based plutocracy was born as a balancing act between France and Germany. German economic and industrial prowess offset by giving the French the Admin.
The history of trying to find a solution to Germany's industrial clout, stimulated initially by the Americans and then sustained by the creation of a single European market into which it could sell its goods, bodes ill for anyone else in Europe because of the simple fact too much power in a single nations hands distorts the mechanism of democracy where actual power is supposed to lie in the hands of the electorate.
The Commission is not only unelected it is "unimpeachable", it has no checks and balances even its financial accountability is suspect since no auditor, worth his salt has signed off on the books.
In my opinion it's powers up until now, have been as much for the benefit of the ordinary man and woman in the street as the corporate agenda.
It's not all bad, The rules which are forced on the British and are the constant rage of certain newspapers, cover many things which the British Parliament have been criminally ineffectual at. Working time directives, maternity arrangements, pension protection are but a tiny few of the fundamental ingredients which I believe an elitist British Parliament would not have considered important, (unlike its concern over fox hunting say).
The voice of the European Parliament which draws its members from a wider spectrum of human opinion is perhaps wiser than our more restrictive representation in Westminster,  which sadly, more clearly represent the 'USA  style', 'individualism', me and mine, with scarcely  a thought to the other !
I think the EU up to date has done a good job but it's the future I worry about.
The increasing polarisation around a German agenda.
The undoubted problems regarding the further expansion  of the EU (no doubt driven by the German need to expand its captive market). This is especially so as the new nations become more disparate in terms of their and our culture.
The insistence of the free movement of people and the pressures it places on all aspects of a member countries infrastructure.
I think the project which started as an American rebuilding program has got out of hand.
The corollary is a Federal State but this seem to weigh against the European Union since unlike the American Constitution which drew together peoples of a similar background and faith, the objective in the EU ignores  the culture and the ingrained fundamentals within each country, going back centuries, the principals of which people recognise themselves.
The bottom line is, does one over time want to see ones national character, for good or bad subsumed into a Germanic concept of what is seen to be right or wrong. A bookkeepers precision for the specifics but loosing sight of the humanity which lies beneath the figures. Look at how Germany treated Greece.
Is our bumbling society worth saving. It was in 1939 or have we lost the confidence to say we can strike out on our own.  Perhaps it will effect the pound in our pockets but at least it's "our  pound" !!!

Self Aggrandisement, was it worth it

Listening to the debate on the ins and outs of the Referendum is like listening to football supporters who see  no good at all in the other side.
It is always a feature of politics that only the extremes seem to be voiced with little of no middle ground. Problems are always viewed with an ideological slant and never seem to be seen for the issue it presents to the person needing help.
Even needing "help" is an ideological minefield, one side saying its societies responsibility to even out the disadvantages which present to an individual whilst the other believe it is wholly up to the individual to help themselves.
This mornings discussion between two women was the evidence, or lack off, whether the EU is more in tune with women's needs or conversely, the national parliament, left to its own devises would do a better more  comprehensive job.
The accusation and counter accusation frankly got us nowhere since claims are made but rarely substantiated. The arguments are not presented as rational consideration rather discussion and debate have been replaced with accusation and counter accusation.
In a general sense it is worth reflecting that the plight in Britain, something which is engaging everyone at the moment is not anything to do with the Europeans but sits squarely on our own shoulders. A patchy educational system in which one in five children leave school with no skill in maths and are nearly illiterate, a grotesquely skewed housing market and a tragic lack of investment in our national infrastructure, these are the things which inhibit growth and wages not some directive from Brussels.
One of the things we have to come to terms with is that the world has changed since we joined the EU and the national element amongst nations has diminished as the world draws itself economically into blocks.
The impetus with globalisation is to form even tighter trading arrangements of which the latest is TTIP and its Asian equivalent TPP. The arrangements bound up in these agreements are directed at the big markets and one must conclude we are too small to be included on our own. Going it alone, staying outside the German hegemony which is Europe is attractive only so long as one is aware that many things which we had taken for granted will not be on offer when we leave.
It's like resigning from a big company, waking up the next morning without the company car or the pension scheme, still less the salary. You struggle at first but eventually you buy a second hand car you put off investing in the pension scheme and you curtail the long lunches for a sandwich. You tell yourself that this is worth it you have your freedom, your independence but every so often when you pass the skyscraper block which used to be home and see the mechanism for making money still going on well enough without you, just a sliver of doubt crosses your mind, was that moment of self aggrandisement worth it.

Nina Simone

Watching a film depicting the black singer Nina Simone  one is struck by the need to use the adjective black as if the colour somehow identified her.
We do it all the time we label people as if the label black, white, yellow added something significant to the description, "singer".
Nina Simone's career was one of struggle, interestingly a struggle to invent the label of black and black awareness in her fight to get black people to identify their talent.
In the 50s the discrimination in American society was coming to the boil, witness Martin Luther King with his "I had a dream" speech focusing on the schism in American society due to prejudice and race.
Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" which I remember shocking me with its turbulent lyric of prejudice and oppression sung, snarled by this young black woman who so passionately identified with song. To her and the black movement who's call was nothing more than to be identified as equal seemed, to our prejudiced minds as ridiculous, how could people we identified as living from hand to mouth in the black ghetto be equated with the white society with all its consumerist advantage. The depiction of black people as intrinsically different was part of the media folk law and we were fed with the image of fear, fear of their sheer physicality and proclivity to do things that were well outside the norms of our Presbyterian upbringing.
Simons famous introduction to a song she was about to sing "this song is about black people and you white people listening in the audience are incidental", placed the issue of them and us in perspective and should remind us of the lottery of birth and how having a black skin makes life just a whole lot harder !!!

The Dancing Man

Perhaps the most important element in our lives is routine since without routine we loose direction. Most of what we do is predestined by our environment (work, timekeeping) and upbringing (attitude to being punctual, concern about supporting someone) there is so little real originality about our lives as we seek the comfort of conformity.
Perhaps the only release is music and dance, the non conformity of it all as we release ourselves into the rhythm or a song ignites some lost period in our lives when we were young and only beginning to learn the routines expected of us.
Our lives are a compromise, a battle between our inner drives and the person we wish to project and be seen by people who matter to us. Dance is a method of finding release, it excites the pre-moral stage in our evolution before we enveloped ourselves in ritual and conservatism, before we started to please others, to fit in, to conform to other people's rules.

 The magic is still within, unlocked by the first cords of a tune we loved as kids. The memories flood back of that wild process of attraction which lent you another personality so out of keeping with the character your parents were happy with. The smiling allure of the girl, her jet black, waist length hair falling over her bare shoulders, Jill, always the centre of attention but for this dance at least you were the centre of hers. It was the moment when like a bird in plumage you strutted your stuff in that evolutionary mating dance, chest swelling in self aggregated importance you convinced yourself you were the centre of her world and anything was possible.

The flights of fancy the equally black holes of despair are all tied up in the music and the attendant magic memories as we settle into the obscurity of old age.
It only takes a moment for the opening phrase of a song to unlock the chemistry and even if the muscles are a bit slow to react at least for a while the moves are there for your partner to make what they will of it. The partner is usually imaginary and therefore in pretty good shape at coping with your sudden reaction to a change in beat and as the needle settles into the next track we are off again on the magic carpet ride of nostalgia.

Oblomov

Oblomovism is a word my Russian friends will know which seems to describe me more and more as I get older. I didn't know my condition had a name still less a following but knowing I am not alone is comforting.
Tonight at about 6.00 I decided to go out for a meal. I had been in all day and apart from a bit of gardening I hadn't left the homestead. No fuss I climb into the car and drive the short drive to the nearest restaurant. I pull up in the parking and having listened to a really interesting discussion on the car radio I continued listening. As I listened the thought entered my mind, what am I doing here, why don't I eat at home. Part of me had wanted to go out and mix a little with other people but now part of me thought, what a farce since apart from placing the order I would be as excluded from the conversations going on at other tables as if I weren't there, so what was the purpose. 


Oblomov was the central character in a story portraying the 'superfluous man', incapable of making decisions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room or his bed always rationalising the reason why he doesn't have to do what his fancy suggests.
Today the common impetus for what we do throughout the day is driven by our make-up, our upbringing, and the norms of the society around us. Also much of what we do is driven by the latest fad.
Health and longevity for instance, for many a fixation, is characterised by what we eat and drink, how much we exercise, how long we sleep and how we stimulate our mental capacity. We are bombarded by facts and advice from all angles especially now with the Internet where everyone can have a piece of us so long as they have our profile.
Oblomov would have none of this, his ingenuity is not to have any ingenuity, he simplifies his existence by minimising it, he avoids the unexpected by not expecting much and so in his slothful way he avoids the pitfalls we are all heir to.

The Global Shoe Horn

I think when the American President, the boss of the IMF, a whole plethora of people based on or having links to Wall St and now our American/Canadian Governor of the Bank of England who just happens to have held a very senior position at Goldman Sachs, when they all strongly advise Britain to stay in the European Union we must give pause and think where this advice comes from and why.

In 1953 Joseph Abs director of Deutsche Bank led a delegation to London, the occasion was the so called London Debt Agreement. In essence the United States leant on Britain, France ,Greece, Italy,Spain ,Sweden, and many other countries to write off the greatest part of Germany's postwar debt. Britain protested arguing that Germany had the infrastructure the capacity and importantly the moral duty to pay. Washington vetoed London and thus 70% of Germany's public and private debt was written off in pursuance of the American aim to raise Germany from the ashes and give her "most favoured nation status" (a claim we Brits, to this day, mistakenly claim for ourself). 

If Germany rose up in the 1950s to become the powerhouse it is today it is due, in no small part to Washington, as is the furtherance of the financial plight, much of Europe has found itself in through its acquiescence and subservience to the strictures of the Bundesbank. 

Europe's fallen nation thus emerged from the ashes whilst nations who were supposed to be the victors and who had laid themselves bare in terms of their human and financial capital were forgotten and placed to one side by what had become the dominant force in the world the USA as it embarked on its dollar based global subjection. 

So we have to ask ourselves, do we believe the US when they say it will be in our best interests to be subverted into the German hegemony which Europe is rapidly becoming or should we, with Churchillian bloody mindless, refuse to be frightened by the odds and become "our own destiny" instead of agreeing to this 'global shoe horn' which the IMF, Goldman Sachs, Uncle Tom Cobble and all would have us submit.

Another round of negotiation

Listened to the Chief Executive of the Leave Campaign  Mathew Elliot interviewed in the Treasury Select Committee, I was quite  disappointed listening to him backtrack on the claims they have been making recently regarding the savings they suggest which can be made by leaving the EU. They state the cost of EU regulation was an opportunity for saving money if we came out whilst in fact much of these costs would remain if we were in or out of the EU.
One of the positive aspects of belonging to the EU has been the relentless pressure on British business and the Government here covers such matters of The Working Time Directive, and the Minimum Wage to name only two things. European temperament has always had a humanitarian edge to it in contrast to the Anglo / American model of laissez faire and market forces. With what appears to be a long period of unfettered Conservative Governance we might wish for those European regulations.
It's hard to hold much confidence in the lead people who support the leave campaign.
Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, John Wittingdale, Liam Fox, are not people who I for one would leave the trenches for. The most positive campaigner is Nigel Ferage who's chirpy dialogue on the subject, is a torrent of superlatives for leaving forthwith, post-haste and without the customary handshake.  
The issues, which I have covered in previous blogs, are ones of equating a fear.
The fear of loosing any economic advantage we have of being in a larger marketplace, against the fear of any practical form of control being subsumed in a none democratic, 27 nation lash-up. Held together by a none elected, unaccountable bureaucracy, which is in danger of falling apart under the weight of manifestly variable financial constituencies, without a mechanism for recycling surpluses amongst them. Add to this the Schengen problem of free movement of labour which was alright until Europe felt the weight of an avalanche of refugees mixed up with economic immigrants and containing the threat of jihadi John.
The economic argument was interesting since one of the problems of coming out is that we will be required to renegotiate trade deals with the EU. The tariffs we will be required to pay are a matter of conjecture since it is argued that the EU countries will want to trade with us as much as we with them.

 One way of looking at the cost is that we will have the WTO (World Trade Organisation) tariff which is 2.4%. This means that with the claw back of our membership fee less the repatriated money (the EU money spent in Britain) means we will be around 9 billion in credit if we leave but we have to offset this saving by the WTO tariff cost to trade in the EU which represents about 7 billion. So all in all we are about quits financially, no membership fee versus a recognisable and relative low tariff to trade in the Euro Zone.

Removing the fear of being caught up in the possible calamity of a failed Euro Zone and the prospect of having our society even more modified by the rights of new entrants to Europe having an EU passport and free access to an already creaking infrastructure in this country I have to say the "leave" prospectus gets my vote unless I can be convinced otherwise.

Victim-hood

Once victim-hood becomes such a valued social commodity, it leads to a desperate search for it.

We have become a society where the slightest whiff of controversy towards certain sacred cows the predictable reaction is to treat it like a epidemic and everyone is put in quarantine  and isolated. 

The offences grow each year with academia the most effected. Lecturers warning students of passages in prescribed books which might offend them, perhaps even to the point of needing counselling so they don't have an adverse reaction in later life. I ask you.

"Punch and Judy" was in the news this morning with a woman (it is usually a woman) complaining about the violence, the child abuse, matrimonial wife beating, every discriminatory ill you can imagine was being piled on the head of this Victorian entertainment for children.

The Flying Scotsman's journey into Scotland was put on hold whilst some jobs worth in Network Rail had to be convinced that there were no "issues" regarding the train travelling on the track.

We are being manipulated by certain people and groups because the can and they can because we have acquiesced to their every whim and complaint. People have become frightened of their own shadows and to hold views that don't fit in with what is a minority view but a minority with a loud publicity machine, aided abetted by the 'media lovies' who feel quite fragile on these sort of things, bless them. With the truly British characteristic of avoiding any sort of controversy we stay silent.

There are so many "no go" areas that one begins to doubt the ability for young people to hold opinions other than those which have been cleansed by political correctness. The art of questioning "everything" of looking for fault in all aspects of current thinking will wither on the vine for fear of upsetting 'someone' especially those with group think. 

In Business its litigation which has become the boogie man as in so much of our private lives it's the fear of being brought to court which strikes fear into the individual who holds a different  viewpoint and is willing to articulate it. 

Freedom of speech, the freedom to disagree are the first things to go in a totalitarian society. Totalitarianism is usually the outcome of a one party state, the "dictator", be it an individual or an ideology, seek to close down communication outside the sanitised politically acceptable view. Conformity is the aim, uniformity the ideal and the dead hand of authority is everywhere.

We are not there yet but in their avowed rush to protect us all, the totalitarians would have us mute free speech, maybe abolish it altogether for a sanitised version of history and events, so that the hymn book is known to all and along with the familiar tunes we become, like any congregation, putty in the hands of the person giving the sermon. 

No not this one.

I suppose subjects like abortion are another minefield of social conviction and as a man I would do well to steer clear of it. Pity about that.

The Royal Society of midwives have come out with a statement that abortions should be available to the woman right up until the moment the child is due to be born. 

It throws the whole subject of abortion into the air since it seems to say that it is the woman's "right" (and here we go again on this compulsion we have on "rights") to kill the child she is carrying, irrespective of the child's "right" to be born. 

Hang on say some, the child can't be killed because it only has life when it disconnects itself from the umbilical cord and breathes air unaided. Well no say others, it is life the moment the sperm and the egg start the process of cell division and the chromosomes and genes have their way in deciding which cell belongs to which organ. For convince sake  say others, let say we will class the foetus as having life (what it had before that moment perhaps only God can answer) at an arbitrary age of so many days and that will give some breathing space for the women, who have had an unwanted outcome of their sexually motivated night out and don't want anything  more to do with the business.

Abortion used to be reserved for overcoming abnormality. No one would wish for a baby to be born with a chronic defect and to suffer, but to terminate because the child was not wanted by the mother is a vastly different thing.

A foetus is a part of a woman's body and as such she owns it, is the current argument.

I would argue that the foetus is not part of a woman's body but 'resides' within a woman's body whilst it develops into a baby waiting to be born and the woman has no more ownership than to claim I have ownership of a piece of bacteria or a virus which lives within me.

The case of identifying the status of a foetus viv a vis a baby is crucial of course. We know that the moment of conception, given that everything is healthy, is a pathway which once started is determined and if for convenience we say that up until a certain stage in the development cycle it is not one thing but another then that old evil pragmatism has taken hold and we are in a sorry place.

 Well now the midwives, of all people have joined the fray, the very ones who you would have thought would want to preserve the very thing they serve, along with the interests of the mother, the idea that the health and safety of the baby is paramount are now joining hands with their sisters and proclaiming "choice" is the yardstick which we should all adhere to.

Abortion clinics are terribly sad places. They are not in the business of terminating sick dysfunctional foetus's that is done in the hospital but perfectly health ones, who's only crime is that the mother doesn't want this particular one !!! 

No one cares

Having just arrived back from my walk to the Post Office I'v broken my Obsomov for the day.
The walk was pleasant with the air warm but the sunshine hidden behind a light covering of cloud and the suburbs as I have mentioned before interesting as one walks by the gardens and through the park. Apart from the occasional nod of the head I didn't speak to anyone until I got into the Post Office and the bureaucratic play began. What's in the package ? I need to know.

Having travelled around a bit and used the postal services in many countries there was never the need unless the package was going overseas and might attract customs duty to disclose what was inside. Now there is and it's just another officious niggle to remind us that we are in throe to powers which lie all around. The head of steam that the security regime have built up mean that not only do I suffer the ignominy of my trousers falling down as I shuffle forward in the airport departure process minus my belt, which for some reason has to be scanned but as I innocently send someone a CD or a book I have to describe the contents of my package. If I were a bomber it unlikely I would reveal the truth of my intentions but some jobs worth feels he/she has ticked a box by asking the what and the why. It's intrusive but never mind we have covered our posterior if something were to go off and the bomber didn't tell us.

And then there's the infernal letterbox gadget which determines the postage charged. As I said to the lass behind the counter. Once upon a time the postal service was a "service" but not now, within reason, they would accept some variance. Not these days. I know that particular test is to see if the package will fit through the letterbox (remember we have already weighed it to ascertain one criteria for cost) my package was soft but because it touched the letterbox it attracted a higher rate. With slight pressure the shape would change to go through but since everyone now is taught to tick boxes the cost of postage fell into a higher bracket. 

Now that Royal Mail been privatised and scandalously sold for a song by the Vince Cable, well under market valuation, even after the taxpayer was saddled with retaining the enormous deficit built up in the pension fund. Another scandal. Allowing business to take a "contribution holiday" whilst the people who were covered by the pension have to continue to contribute from  their wages, the company is allowed to lapse its payment thereby allowing huge deficits to grow vis a vis its liabilities.
Philip Green, the BHS owner was due to appear before another Parliamentary Committee because he did the same thing, avoiding his fiduciary duties whilst paying his wife massive dividends in Monti Carlo. All these "movers and shakers" walk free but heaven help the old lags who steal from the bank security boxes, their feet didn't  touch the grass as they were hauled away for stealing approximately the same amount.
The first thing the private owners of the Royal Mail did  after closing down about 50% of the Post Office outlets and spending an enormous sum of money on a re branding exercise, which once in place was scrapped, was to increase the postage and have been increasing it ever since. Strange since the reason the Post Office (established in 1516) Royal Mail was sold was it wasn't producing a profit. There was never any attempt,  prior to the sale, to increase the cost of postage since it was acknowledged, as a public service that the service was fundamental to society  and had a price ceiling in terms of its use and its target market. As soon as it was sold all those ideals were thrown out and now large swathes of society are priced out of using it.

Public service Old Peoples Homes are the same, only when sold for a song are they closed down and the ground turned into profitable real estate. The rape of Public Assets and no one can do anything to stop them.
I could go on but we seem pretty ambivalent about the way we are being put out to tender. No one seems to mind, no one cares either about the Government intervention in the BBC or the on going Privatisation of the National Health Service, no one cares, no one cares, no one cares ! 

Tinker free zones

The issue of refugees escaping war zones and its effect on settled societies makes one wonder how we came to this impasse. In the wars fought in the distant past there was no reflection on the rights and wrongs of what happened or the consequences to the victim. Everything was too far away and the time delay somehow inoculated you from feeling connected.

Today we are in a very different world. From a position of not caring we have moved to a position  where we care too much.
We care about everything. We try to find a space in our lives for everyone. We feel we are not normal unless we grieve.
The most recent wars were wars not about our being threatened but that our code of 'right and wrong' was being threatened. We went to war to punish the people in charge who were not following the stereotypical Western standard. Regime change was the new game as we sort to impose our concept on tyrannical societies throughout the globe and sent in the troops to remove the culture of a nation for something more palatable to our norms.
Our lack of understanding the very intricacies of control, within the regimes which we were even more out of touch with and our inability to understanding the tribal arrangements and the despotic control needed to keep everyone in line.
Al Qaeda were the only group to threaten the west (Twin Towers) but groups like the Taliban (who had been funded by the Americans to fight the Russians)  and their Muslim obsession with the position of women in society meant that the war in Afghanistan was made more complicated.
Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and the resulting Arab Spring, upheavals all over the place as the West interfered with the balance of power. Syria is a case in point, the current nightmare was made worse by our intervention, even if we were doing it as some sort of of civilising agenda righting the wrongs of humanity we failed to understand that our concept of humanity is not necessarily theirs.
The United Nations was created to take care of providing some sort of baseline regarding human relations but the UN became a talking shop peopled by politicians and diplomats who are not the best people to deliver humanitarianism.
Perhaps the massacres and the famine's, the corruption and plague are natural phenomena and we tinker with them at or peril.

a Vets Dilemma

Another interesting phenomenon or fact is that 4 times the number of Veterinarians commit suicide than do Doctors.
There has always been the theory that the English love their pets more than their fellow humans, they show massive amounts of tolerance and seem to connect with their furry friend in a more fundamental way than they do with a relative in the family.

 Part of this is the dominant nature in the relationship and through that dominance a sense of ownership which clearly is missing in most human relationships. The ownership expresses itself as love since there is no danger of being rebuffed, unless it's a cat or a tortoise and it's very fulfilling to be able to wholeheartedly devote empathy and sentiment accepting that the significance of a wagging tail we construe as friendship and a lick as near a kiss as you need.

Do Vets over emphasise their role in this drama between man and animal, do they transmogrify through a magic relationship, beyond the clinical responsibility, such that the pain of the animal and the owner is absorbed in some way.
I remember working in an acute cancer ward for a week installing a telephone system for patient use at each bed. The atmosphere in the ward was business like but the stench of death hung over the place. You would go in in the morning to find Mr So and So had passed away in the night and the knowledge that death stalked the passageways seemed, in my eyes, to haunt everyone. I asked the nurses how they dealt with it but they said it was a job and they couldn't become emotionally involved, although to repress the natural regard we build up for someone we look after and care for, seem to be less than normal. I suppose we also find a kind of 'resolve' in treating humans because by communicate with them, the very process of interaction, their  passing away is made understandable by its "normality" given the place and the disease.
An animal seems to the 'animal lover' on a different plain. Most of the communication is carried out in their own head. They figment what ever emotion the animal feels and then find release by being downright sentimental by concocting a relationship to mean more than it can.
Perhaps Vets being privy to this daily symbiosis they are prone themselves to become overly sentimental and as we know, too much sentimentality is bad for you.

The shape of a banana

I love to re read history. It's a mirror to who we are, even if we don't wish to acknowledge  it, since as a people, on the whole we don't change.
On a wider scale, the history of Europe is also fascinating especially how the temperament of the different nations are also reflected in their past. The machinations of the nations pre 1939 were, as, pre 1914, a mixture of old wounds and opportunism as treaties were signed to effectively inoculate any response from one nation so that another could be invaded. The crown princes and the diplomats were playing a game based on a map, the landmass was Europe, the boarders, a matter of relentless speculation.
When we look at Europe today and criticise the incursion of labour law, the type and size of packaging, the rules governing the shape of a banana we should just take a step back and remember the behind closed doors meetings to plan and decide to the invasion of whole areas of the continent and as a by-product, commit a generation of young men to die on the battlefield for a few hectors of disputed soil.
Read your history, not the history of the Romans or the Renaissance but the 'recent history' of Europe, within living memory and marvel that we have moved away from that chauvinistic period into one where we as a race of human beings are trying to find accommodation of even such trivial matters as the shape of a banana !!!

Just don't bang on my box

The more one reads and listens to the commentators speak, talking about the Global financial system the more one realises that we are all in trouble.
The imbalances and the breakdown of the method of recycling these imbalances across the financial world (starting with the de-linking of the dollar from gold by Nixon) has not only inflated the money supply as countries seek to stimulate their economies by printing money through Quantitative Easing, producing a massive deflation across the board and the reason why we now hear quoted the word trillion rather than billion or the old fashioned term million when ever profits turnover or expenditure generally is mentioned.
Our psychological adjustment to hearing revenue and expenditure of over a trillion is not really matched by the realisation that our pay, staying somewhat fixed as interest rates and specifically public sector wages continue to be held with no increase in sight, in effect, means a decrease in spending power as consumer goods and food continue to rise. Of course this fact is hidden amongst the credit card records as we offset our decline by borrowing more.
The rising stars of the last decade China,  Brazil even the EU have to varying degrees faltered. Although in the case of China their war chest of trillions of dollars in surpluses and their still superior GDP 6% means that whilst the country is still earning massively,  because it exports to a less wealthy world and the spending on infrastructure, almost mind boggling compared to virtually anyone else (18 Nuclear Plants under construction whilst we worry if we can afford 1.) there are storm clouds ahead due to political consequences of a slow down in the modernisation of this largely rural and backward country.

When ever you tune into Blomberg they have the almost unabated scenario of economises slowing down and debt building. They become shrill when Apple who posted profits of $18 billion for the first quarter last year and 18.4 billion in the first quarter of this year, on revenues of $74 billion, are now expecting  the revenue to fall to $54 billion in the second quarter and profits to a measly 14 billion. The end of the world is neigh !!  $14 billion profit becomes a problem. Perhaps as a comparative reflecting a slow down across the board but then comparatives are dangerous.

Of course under laying the concern is the fact that the banks still have the boogie man of under valued mortgage assets on their balance sheets (parked off the balance sheet) which undermine their own true value. Given that inter bank lending is based on sentiment and confidence, another Lehman Brothers is most likely. Can the politicians again rob the taxpayer, asking them to bail out this private enterprise which is quasi integrated with a countries commerce that it should be controlled by government but, as we have seen, the politicians failed us all and allowed the banks to continue as before, this time with "our" money and "our" guarantees.
There are fewer bullets to fire with interest rates at close to zero and so when the tipping point approaches only QE, which itself only postpones the inevitable, and will have less and less of an effect is then available and at some time a seismic event will occur.
There are so many elements in play as we continue to postpone righting our bloated dysfunctional economies.
Lowering living standards, removing entitlement, curbing population growth, dismembering the elite and their schools, curbing the market and making capitalism more accountable, all these concepts are in the melting pot in one way or another and only the strong will survive.
Just don't bang on my box when I'm 6' under.

I suppose you are glued to your screens awaiting my opinion on the State Opening Ceremony.
As you know I have little time for the precedence of a monarchal society, it seem very anachronistic to say the least.
Watching the dignitaries, the pomp and circumstance, the labels of state, linking the past opportunities to bequeath favours from the crown on its Dukes and Lordships with today's community made up of men and women from all strata of society, the rich and the poor who also wait patently for their opportunity.
In their ermine, amidst the flummery and ancient uniforms of state, this nation which is trying to test itself against the world and asking its citizens to judge it for the future, and instead puts on a pageant which identifies it somewhere around 1640.
Gentlemen at Arms, Lord Great Chamberlain the Lord Spiritual, the Garter at Arms, the Lords Temporal and so the list goes on as the television commentators in hushed tones explain to the masses the significance of this and that but lost no doubt on Mrs Wright in number 34 who has just received a notice to quit because she has an extra bedroom.
The Coach carrying the accoutrements of state, the Crown, (not the heavy job the monarch gets when he/she becomes King/Queen at the State Coronation, oh no, we have another priceless one for that) the Sword of State and the Cap of Maintenance proceeds the Queens coach and the pass the parcel of getting the crown out of the coach is somewhat amusing
Black Rod heads towards the Commons to summon the commoners by wrapping his staff three times on the door leading into the Commons which had been closed as a reminder to the Lords of who actually runs the place.
The two old nonagenarians totter down the long carpet (sad that a septuagenarian 70+ and a octogenarian 80+ become "non" when they reach 90+) dressed in regal clothes, he wears the uniform of the Lord High Admiral with gold braid up to his elbow and one wonders sadly if they will make it. This year they went in the lift to avoid the steps and we were told of an amusing story of a couple of years ago when the Queen and Philip entering the lift with Black Rod reaching for the button to go down, all of a sudden the lift went up to the floor above. The doors opened on a couple of cleaners going about their daily duties who had called the lift first. Imagine the embarrassment trying to make room for the buckets.
The Beast of Bolsover, Dennis Skinner, an octogenarian himself a remnant of the past, a socialist who's quip this year to Black Rod was "keep your hands off the BBC", recuses himself from attending what he clearly feels is an occasion, well passed its sell by date.
 
 

Nitpicking the rest

Watching an ITV program this evening  screened From Leicester where the Referendum was being debated by a collection of local people one was struck by the make-up of the audience and their resilience to put forward arguments specifically tied to what they see as a series of inequalities which would make their parents blush with embarrassment.

The program illustrated the changing demography from what we in leafy Bishops Stortford, assume is our country  populated much as we observe it in the streets and our local Supermarkets. 
The claims made by the audience regarding people willing to work for lower wages and accept longer working hours was strangely reminiscent of the claims made in the 50s and 60s regarding their parents. They felt it unfair that workers coming from Europe had skills that they didn't have and therefore they felt they needed protection !!
What a damming indictment of this country that a person from Lithuania or Bulgaria, Poland or Estonia, countries who have really suffered the deprivations of war and who economies are far far smaller and less sophisticated than ours but have managed to produce workers more economically valuable than ours.
There seems to be something terribly wrong in the way our kids especially the white children from deprived sections of society are failing and emerge from 8 years of schooling, innumerate and illiterate.
Is it a culture thing, children from the Caribbean and certain parts of Africa also seem to under achieve whilst Asian kids from equally poor environments seem to lap up education and become the ones who flaunt their wealth when older, driving by in their huge Rolls Royce motor cars.
Leicester known as a human melting pot, now famous for its football, has many questions to ask of the Referendum. It seems strange for them to identify with the importance, in their minds the question of sovereignty, when their parents, so many years ago  had made the decision to leave their own national patch. These first generation Brits seemed to know the value of living here much more than we, the indigenous do.
Perhaps we take for granted so much of what passes for political stability here. Perhaps our police and the courts give them a reassuring sense of security. Perhaps it's our sense of fair play and support for the under-dog (dogs in general),  our general sense of tolerance and a largely free media to hear and if we can, express our opinions, these are great motivations if you come from a society where the taste of tear gas is common and the threat of homicide a regular deterrent from stepping outside at night.
Yes we take so much for granted which I suppose thankfully,  leaves lots of time to 'nitpick' the rest.

Motherhood and apple pie

With so many marriages ending in disaster or, if not disaster, at least early closure, is it time we had a rethink about the role of marriage, not from a societal point of view but from an individual point of view.
The conservative catholic teaching which most of us over a certain age absorbed as sacrosanct is challenged all the time by the growth in single motherhood. Putting aside the economic aspect of funding the raising of a child, is there any opposition, other than the religious one, to the single parent, child rearing formula which is becoming common. This includes both gender since it has to be assumed that a man can be as much up to the task as a woman, although observation doesn't quite bare this out since one sees what seems instinctive in a woman, the full time attendance to the child's needs, in a man even with the best will in the world his attention can drift.
But before I get sidetracked, it's the psychological imperative of marriage that I am questioning.
In the age when we had breadwinners and home makers the guidelines were clear and the roles set. Now with both men and women working and both trying to contribute to the home making have we not reached a stage when either gender is ambidextrous and apart from the act of copulation (even that can be sidestepped) there is less and less need for the other in the mechanism of child rearing. This is not to say that in a balanced family the absorption by the child of gender characteristics isn't useful, the question is, is it necessary ?
In a Gay household one or other gender is missing and whilst there is some stereotyping role play in the home, the dominant, sub-dominant, it seems that the influence or lack of influence has little or no effect.
Gay children are the offspring of heterosexuality and heterosexual children are the outcome of Lesbian or homosexual homes with of course the caveat that there had to be a member of the opposite sex involved in the process at the beginning.
Again I am in danger of being sidetracked.
What I am getting at is, do people put too much store on finding the right man or women and getting married. Is it a societal thing first and foremost.
I see the other day, in Japan, a woman of 72 married to a man of 76 has just given birth the a baby. The conclusion has to be that physically it's possible but emotionally, for the child, is it fair.
Is it fair for a child to be brought up in the home of two Gay people. Is it fair for a child to be brought up in a home where there is only one gender to mimic and role play as the child forms its opinions from its environment.
We have to say yes since the opposite case, of growing up in a dysfunctional family with all the wrong gender signposts in place the tendency has to be for a poor outcome.
If the so called magic of the church blessed happy family is rare then we are left with the church of, make do and best intentions.
People rise up and prove the opposite to convention, they prove that resilience and common sense are the best ingredient for life in general and we make of our lives the best when we are able to rise above the confines of societal norms and stamp our own personality and character on what ever we decide to do.

A Machiavellian agenda

I have started to read a book Andrew sent me called "The Banquet of Consequences" by Satyajit Das. It foretells the collapse of the financial world as we know it because of the gigantic imbalances that have been allowed to flourish as an alternative to the positive uncompromising political action needed. It is predicated on the need for us all to take a reality check and question a society based almost wholly on consumerism.
The preface lays down the image that most of us are living beyond our means with 'expectations' feeding the frenzy of buying the "next thing" without considering its utility. It paints a picture of the disintegration of our Public Services for being too expensive, unless we are willing through taxation to set aside the money to pay for them. For too long we have been in thrall to our politicians who fearing bad news and its effect on their electability would rather we are fed sophistry and lies.
Of course being a socialist I believe in taxation. I believe in the importance of society.
I reject the beggar thy neighbour attitude and the selfish importance which Mrs Thatchers policy of individual success brought, because to my mind, individual success always comes as a cost to someone else since in that system there can only be one winner.
I reject the idea that the market is more efficient in finding the right price because the price is contaminated by 'middlemen' and the 'place men' who Hoover up the contracts to disperse through a subcontractor who should have been able to quote for the work in the first place.
Our needs as a society haven't change much but the services to the society have morphed from democratically elected councils where political forces keep the members somewhat in line to unelected Quangos or large organisations such as SERCO the "outsourcing company who's sole purpose is to win the tender and then sub contract the work.
Not only do you loose accountability but being that crucial, one step away from actuality not only is the finished product more expensive it lacks the quality of a directly accountable pathway to the client with all the pitfalls that that can bring.

 Why are our care homes so unaffordable and are being closed down all over the place. 

Why do the companies say that they can't make them profitable enough when one learns of the massive fees charged to the families of people spending their last years there. Labour within the home used to be one of the most expensive elements in care and yet, under general taxation we afforded it. Today the unit cost of often imported labour is the minimum wage which pro rata is worth less than it was when the care homes were part of local government. And yet the homes are allowed to close with a prerequisite that the home is first put out to tender and only after it is in private hands and away from the political limelight is it closed and the land then sold to a real estate developer so he can build homes on the ground that the ordinary citizen in the borough can't afford.
Why is it that municipalities can't or won't build affordable housing. Why does it have to go to a private developer /contractor, why can't we take back the building of houses into the realm of Public control.
Why why why.
The books premise is that we will all have to take a very stiff dose of nasty tasting medicine to become economically viable again. My prescription is a dose of, de-"private enterprise".
Of realising the needs of a society are not an iPhone but a secure affordable home where society can once more coalesce and get to know each other and possibly recreate the social substructure to care for our elderly within the community as we used to.
I suppose the political masters are wishing for the time when we oldies, with our memories of a time when we all had very different values, would die off and leave them to get on with their twisted Machiavellian agenda.

How we see ourselves

Me thinks she protests too much.
I'v been reading an article about gender and the difficulty of recognising what gender is about.
Apparently Facebook has 71 variations of gender (part of the descriptive profile) and its growing as people keep adding there own perspective.
Am I a man or a woman is broken down into a whole and complex set of subdivisions which given modern medical treatment can be modified and tailored to suit your proclivity.

 When born and in furtherance of god's wishes and especially the biological sequencing of Y and X chromosomes we physically become identified with the tag male or female, boy or girl. To have these physical characteristics was usually enough and although it was sometimes a struggle, the choice of being a boy or a girl was out of our hands. 

Of course we have moved on and today in this never ending search for the definitive, people demand to be recognised for what they are which includes what they feel they are. The hormone element, the psychological element the physiological element all produce a mishmash of alternatives which in today's world we can chose what we want to be. The tapestry is rich in colour but confusing in shape since the population as a whole, who have been brought up on a diet of stereotyping, try to pidgin hole what they see and understand but are guilty, too often of putting the proverbial square peg into the equally proverbial round hole. Because science can lend a description to a condition doesn't make that condition any the more understandable.
Perhaps fundamental to all this is the concept of "self". We are who we think we are and just because we normally take ourselves for granted, perhaps our gender is, irrespective of self,  an aberration in the process of knowing who we are.

Confusion reigns.

What would a Donald Trump on the American throne mean, would it be any worse than the existence of Putin on his.
Would the world be a scarier place or would it have clearer definition, black on white, no more of this wishy washy grey.
One of the disadvantages of political "universality" is that we lose our identity and psychologically suffer from not knowing who we are or what we stand for as we conciliate more and more.
Of course the alternative could lead to confrontation and our "identity" then becomes lost in the fall out of a nuclear war.
Trumps appeal to the mass of voters, much like Corbyn over here, is the belief that the ordinary man and woman in the street have become invisible and the "Suits" just don't care. The ultimate Establishment figure Hillary Clinton is seen as a chameleon, flip flopping to which ever audience she addresses unable to fully convince her constituency that she means what she says.
The real power lies not in the Presidency, not even the Congress but in the people who fund the political establishment to gain influence. Wall Street decides what is important, the boardrooms behind closed doors, the faceless people who lobby for "pork".
Trump proclaims an end to the shibboleth of Party allegiance with its self serving carve up of the national pie. He, the billionaire, will speak for the people, he knows their fears and he understands their frustrations as the "Suits" sweet talk the people into doing what is clearly not in their best interests.
Democracy has become a tool. Complacent governments have been complicit in allowing the political ideal of one man one vote to be sullied by the buying of influence. Money means more than the idealism of representation based on being a member of society. Society has no value, it is a cost not an asset and therefore can be dismissed as irrelevant.
Founding fathers,Washington and Cromwell, in their different ways tried to find a place for the common man in the considerations of the rich. One based on a Constitution and the rule of law, the other more brutal tried to chase out the money changers from a parliament which was little more than an extension of Crown and Gentry and far less than the idealistic search for a balanced "rights of man" assembly. One of the reasons we have never had a Constitutional Document in this country is that the Establishment would never wish to cede real power.
Like chaff in the wind we hope and pray that some of the largesse come to us but it is more in hope than in power of persuasion.  The Referendum, notwithstanding is a once in a lifetime opportunity to exercise real power and is the reason why the political class are in such a state. Manifestos can be broken the day after winning an election but can a Referendum. I suppose it could since the ruling party might say it was in our best interests to ignore the democratic result.
One of the fall out factors of 'single policy' question is that people coalesce into two camps and as we see in Scotland unless there is a decisive outcome the question is never, one way or the other, successfully answered. The nation remains divided and government seen playing catch up rather than leading.
We live in interesting times and although conflict and disharmony fill our screens each night we are still, as always individuals buffeted by the wind of change but never the less getting on with living our lives as best we can.

Self organised learning

"Self organised learning", education through the Internet.

With the advent of Google, YouTube, TED and so many other sources, information at your fingertips, the Internet brings a whole new opportunity for gaining knowledge, virtually in your pocket.

Societies agenda for school children and young adults, for the life when they become adult has in some ways changed. Part of this is to do with the requirements in the work place which has changed so much in the last 40 years. Go back 40 years and most of jobs were semi -mechanised and people were merely a cog in the manufacturing process. Teaching was by rote, learning was a function of remembering reams of things just in case you needed to know stuff at a later date.

In today's world, machines are far more able to do the job from start to finish and the need to employ thousands of people to fit widgets is gone. 

A new concept is being introduced, that of "learning only what you need, at the moment when you need it".

It becomes largely curriculum free, a space where understanding and answering a question comes from the speed and the inter-relatedness of the subject matter which is available on that monster file, the Internet.

A guy in India decided to experiment with children in India's rural heartland by providing what in effect was a "hole in the wall" computer, set at a hight to suite young kids, who were free to use it. He was amazed to discover how quickly these previously semi illiterate kids were discovering a world of knowledge that had not been remotely available before. He set them projects and without adult help these kids learnt the answers, not only to the questions he had asked them but  as the process stimulated them, they wanted to know more and more.

From our traditional point of view this was not 'teacher cantered', 'curriculum based', 'joined up education' which we recognise but rather it was knowledge specific.  Learning only what you had been asked or what you needed to know.

At the end of our school education, we enter work. Most of the education we learnt at school is forgotten and we hone our skills around the tiny bit of specific knowledge we need to do the job.

The argument is that children learn best by themselves, particularly in small groups, without the strictures of a teacher, other than acting as a facilitator. Their minds are inquisitive enough to grasp the links and their enthusiasm is sparked by it all being a part of a system of "self -discovery".

Learning is not like growing a tree, a process from root to branch but more molecular in that the part is not the whole and depending on ones importance in the structure, you need to know what you need to know. 

This is not some Orwellian nightmare since it is predicated on the freedom of "wanting" to know. This can be brought about by the stimulation of the teacher, the parent or even the peer group. One of the things which seems to set the Privately educated child apart is this 'stimulation' which through smaller class sizes and receptive teachers who seem to have the time and the inclination to act as mentors,  bringing the child into that special place of inquiry, of wanting to know.

Embedding knowledge through "self organising learning" seems to be the way to go. 

It presumes that all children want to know about the world around them and whilst some find the rational, binary route, which needs discipline and rigour, too difficult,  a more self motivating method would be far more successful.
 

The power of music

Watching the Russian Orchestra playing amongst the ruins of the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra and now hearing the cries of "Russian propaganda" thrown out by the Western Press seems to accentuate the apparent inability of humans  to get along.

 When I first saw the concert I was struck by the ambiguity of culture and war, the one representing the highest striving of mankind the other its lowest. Of course, because it was produced by one of the warring parties the incongruity was especially clear since if one wished to project peace and good will, the best way to do it was to stop the fighting. 

Propaganda is a finely tuned tool and relies on convincing people of one thing while desiring something very different. But I for one was prepared to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt if only because it reminded us of the contrast in that war torn country and what is at stake.
The West which has been playing catch up in what started as a dreadful civil war, between Assad and the Sunni rebellion but which has morphed into a religious movement wishing to create a Caliphate State, resembling the worst religious ideology and characterised by absolute intransigence towards anyone not of the faith, not even only faith but a special brand of the faith which has its origins in the distant past.
With more resolute leadership, America could have seized the nettle and displaced Assad but not unnaturally the American public were tiring of this repeated regime change policy and Obama didn't have the stomach for it. The Russians are now the major players and with their decisive air strikes they seem to have consolidated Assad's military position. There is now talk of including Assad in the short term, whilst the Caliphate forces are defeated.
Another Putin gamble comes off and consolidates his standing not only amongst his own people but also in the geopolitical world of power politics, evidence that dictatorships can be decisive when it comes to conflict whilst democracy seeks debate and consensus before doing anything.