Proper Balsamic

 

One of the massive downsides of the western homogenised consumer society demanded by the global economy is that it loses the flavour and the personality of the individual nation and specifically it's people.

I suppose it's inevitable that the nation with the least history and therefore the most stunted when it comes to having true organic variance in its population is America (having killed off the indigenous people) , the driver of the global economy. It could be argued that they import their nationalities as immigrants and that the flavour of those communities washes into the mix. Of course as anyone who has spent time aboard, the effect is the other way in that the immigrant picks up far more of the new environment than he/she gives out, unless that is if a ghetto is founded and the new immigrants turn in on each other to preserve what they feel important.
Everyone's mindset is governed by the influences they encountered as they grow up and these characteristics define each specific society which in turn influence the way things are done and what is done within that society.
When an Italian designs a car or a food dish for the table he embodies generations of refinement and taste. The uniqueness of the cars design or the creation of the food dish is Italian.
Globalisation is not interested in this, it wants uniformity and codification. It wants price and delivery above quality and speciality.
We are all the losers in this Wall Street driven model.
The cars these days, except for the very expensive are from a specification which demands uniformity. The ingredients in a instant meal come from god knows  where and even the fruit and the table sources are at best a pail image of the real thing. They are an artificial equivalent without being equivalent.
It an interesting phenomena that only the really wealthy, the very people who bequeathed the bland landscape on us, are the people who can visit the expensive restaurant or drive the sophisticated car and escape the dull conformity which is thrust upon us.
The Italian man, eagerly discussing his extravagant balsamic vinegar is a far cry from the stuff I pull off the shelf at my local Sainsbury's but then with a bit of advertising waffle how would I know without having been to Italy.
In the Global Markets drive to batch us and remake our image into something recognisable to every palate we lose that individuality that spark or recognition that character which sets us apart and definable.

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Doing something else

How do we evaluate our time. Is every minute precious. Should we quantify our time by the activity we undertake.

A left over concept from Victorian times was that of the evil of sloth, activity trumped inactivity, that the ethos of our being on earth should be your productivity.

Is it more important to read about cycling a bicycle or getting out on one. 

I would hazard a guess that the overwhelming majority would say the latter.

Most activities are better for our well being by active participation. The caveat to that is, how much of your natural resource is spent in attaining that goal and vitally, it depends on so many other factors, such as the work you do and your age. 

If reading about an activity is second best how second is it. 

Naturally for the older person it might be impossible to be active or they might just be revisiting  old pastures but for the person tied up travelling in a lorry all hours godsend or the marketing executive cooped up in an airplane visiting clients across the globe, there is not much they can do outside the job spec.

What I am addressing is something different. It's the value we internalise from within our concept of what we see and hear around us regarding the value "others" would put on an "activity" irrespective of what the activity was about.

The university don who spends all his time in his study reading his musty books is looked on as being strange and unworldly. The busy person engaged in charity work is valued as an important part of society.

The corollary therefore is, if you read a lot and don't engage in much else, you are of less worth. This judgement is made not only by society but by the participant as well since as they seek to justify their inactivity for a good book they also struggle to rationalise their time spent reading against those hundred and one things "others" find important.

"Mundanity " is a category, or a value of a person by a society which thrives on the "mundane". 

 The inability to find enough sustenance from reading descriptions of what others have uncovered or experienced is a phenomena specific to a Helter Skelter, short-termist mindset which has little space or interest in events outside their own sphere of consciousness.

But It doesn't make it any easier to try to rid ones self of the thought as you settle down to a good read or write that you should be doing something else!

Both are Olympians in their own right

So the Olympic Games are over and we in Britain can feel very proud of our young athletes. It obviously has a knock effect to to our own sense of achievement, admittedly fostered by people we never met or known, other than as an image on the TV but never the less we feel we have a common heritage. 

Of course sport is a business. It's backers want their logo or their product mentioned as often as possible. The athletes are professional, they train all year round, 8 hours a day, "it's their job". It's no longer a something you do in your spare time, it's certainly not a hobby.
If you come from the era of amateur athletics when to compete you had to hold down a 9 till 5 job and still find time to train, travel and compete in far off events. The expense was to your own account and very strict rules governed any financial transaction. There was no sponsorship, no high altitude training camps, only the soggy streets of which ever city you were born in.
Is it any wonder that our athletes are stellar given that they receive so much help and are able to hone their talents uninterrupted by the issues that trouble you and I every day of the week. Like footballers they are removed from the lives of ordinary people and whilst we plod along tipping our £2.50 into the lottery system it's the athletes who glean the headlines, especially at Olympic time, headlines we can emulate only if we rob a bank or commit a murder.
One of the issues at Rio has been the dis-proportionality of the Olympic environment with all its glitz, with the reality of people living only a few hundred metres away.

The extreme example is the "favela" a mound of poverty rising from the same slopes that make the skyline of Rio so famous. Living cheek by jowl, much as the shacks of Cape Flats compete for the view of Table Mountain, these tips are human flotsam, the discarded unwanted residue of a capitalistic system of governance which continues to repeat what seems mankind's default position, and is another example of  "man's inhumanity to man".

That we can disconnect the drama played out through the various sporting activities with the drama of living in a favela where, if the insanitary conditions or the lack of proper nutrition don't kill you the crime will.
Does the will to win a medal compare with the will to stay alive and are the winners in either camp, both Olympians in their own right.

Success.

 

 How are we going to get rid of those doubters, those scornful people who have no confidence , who are always looking over their shoulder and questioning others.

As a country, a composite of people who live on this island we have been so successful in virtually all the disciplines of sporting achievement, following on from the huge achievements of London Games. 

The achievements come from the people who live in this country. 

All too often we diminish ourselves with a diet of condemning our society with programs made to show the worst of ourselves such as Jeremy Kyle and families living on Benefits whilst in the background the real achievers in all walks of life not only sport remain unmentioned.

Our success in sport comes from the funding and the facilities which the funding produced. Men and women were the subject of what can be done with planning and holding to an objective. It came with providing proper management and not looking for a short term result. It emphasises all the things we do not see in the political leadership where goals are short term and more to do with the personal opportunities offered to the politician than to the real health of the country. With finance and planning, with taking the long term view, it is possible with the people of this country to do what we have become accustomed to being told we we can not do.

We have cried out for a change at the top. We need to move away from the casino, the short-termism of a quick profit, of relying on 'paper thin' values based on financial transactions which do not reflect the conditions in commerce but rather the technical trickery of 'the put' and 'the short' plus the insurance placed on the result which makes the trade a win win for some.  Actual 'commercial success' plays no part in the plague we call,  financialisation. 

A financial industry, not in place to support the industry which makes widgets to sell but as an entity in itself which trades its own creation, money, not to add value but to devalue value by the mechanism of derivatives and placing bets.

If we could rid ourselves of the elitist mechanism where the only people to succeed and handle the levers of power, come from only one from school. How crazy is that.

If politically we stopped making decisions based on the popularity we think we need for the coming election and considered the countries need for long term investment and training. 

Unfortunately as long as we continue to feed the Westminster fishbowl with the same old same old we will not replicate what our magnificent athletes have done over the last two weeks.

Mo Farah

This morning I had confirmation that I didn't dream it as the newspapers are full of pictures of Mo Farah winning the 10000 metres.
It's one of the enigmas of our times watching a clearly patriotic individual, not only win another Olympic Medal but clearly and emotionally dedicate his win to his family, his fans and the nation. There has been no other athlete as keen to sing his patriotism and he seems to epitomise the good guy, the once in a lifetime person who seems, amongst his fame and celebrity to be a centred family man, who clearly defines his special talent with his faith. He always parades his faith after passing over the winning line by supplicating to his God in the way Muslims do and we, at that moment are confronted with the dilemma of facing in part our ignorance and prejudice. Suddenly all Muslims are not identified by the savagery of ISIL or the patriarchal influence we believe is the relationship between men and women living in the faith and, exemplified by the Burqa. Suddenly he is one of us and the arguments about fear for our future, our fear of being overtaken by a culture and a religion which is very different from anything we understand as being part of the norm we seek to identify "us".
Should we tear ourselves apart with this contradiction, should we become schizophrenic when we address the two images, one of Mo clinging to his flag, our flag and a Middle East rooted society which has arrived on our shores with values and rituals which we don't understand.
If there are answers please send them on a postcard.
Diversity which as the world shrinks becomes a feature of our lives and here is a difficult dilemma, the give and take seems to come from one side.
Religious observance is inflexible, the tenants laid down centuries ago which reflected life at that time, has no way to adapt because it relays on a scrip purporting to come directly from God and who can argue with that.  Well of course every secularist to start with, and in the specifics of the message, every other religion and belief system has a different view. This is what make religion inherently dangerous. Not the ideals proffered but mankind's susceptibility to make it a "them and us" issue.
Mo Farah for a moment combines us all in saluting, not only his achievement but also his humanity.

Which sect do you belong to

 

 A picture speaks a thousand words. The picture of that little dead boy who had drowned in an attempt to reach the shores of Europe, his limp body resting in the arms of a man who picked him up off the beach where he washed up, the image went around the world and drew, if only for a short time, the worlds attention on the plight of the refugees fleeing from Syria.

Today it's an even more poignant video clip of a little boy sitting in the back of an ambulance, his face blooded his body covered in dust from the rubble of the bomb which caused his plight. What made this video have more of an impact on me is the image of his vulnerability, his shock, the incomprehension as he put his hand to his head and then looked at the blood on his hand, as if to ask,what's that.

Aleppo a name we are all familiar with, the town that has been under siege and bombed out of existence by the government forces in Syria was the little boys home.Some home. The rubble which used to house people now covers who knows how many bodies.  The residents who the Syrian army would like to annihilate come from a different religious sect, they are Muslim whist the president of the country, Basher al-Assad as are all senior members of the ruling Ba'ath (incidentally the same party which had another despot as leader Saddam Hussein) party Alawite, a branch of Islam.

As with the Sunni and the Shia who both seem to loath each other so the Alawite hate the Sunni Muslims who make up the majority of the people who lived in Allepo.

To bomb them with chlorine gas is commensurate to the Nazi exterminating the Jews, they are not people they are less than human and so their death is irrelevant.

It's a mind set that thankfully has no place in domestic western society but it makes sense to the religious mentality of the area. 

The schism between the two branches of Mohammedanism runs so deep that an act of succession in 632 AD provokes blind enmity, suicide bombings and killing on an industrial scale today in 2016. 

How are we to make any sense out of it, especially coming from a largely non sectarian society where the power of religious belief has been largely frustrated.

It shows the hidden down side to any religious system of governance where the mind is crippled with supposition, and superstition. Where men and women can be controlled by religious leaders, irrespective of training other than religious observance, who's image of society is distorted by first asking the question "which sect do you belong to" ?

Barnett and Scottish hubris

One of the open secrets in politics is the deep resentment the Scots hold towards the English. There are many groups and subsections within the United Kingdom which if we examined these groups we would find that the Kingdom was far from United.
Groups within Northern Ireland, sections of Central Wales and of course since the Scottish Referendum, which only narrowly voted against self rule, there is a strong sense of Scottish Nationalism which is openly advocated by the clear majority in the Scottish Parliament led by the Scottish National Party the SNP.
Given that Westminster devolved many powers to the Scots, it is felt that whilst English Parliamentarians can not vote in the Scotish Parliament, the SNP having over 60 parliamentarians who sit in Westminster, each has an equal vote to his/her English counterpart. The same goes for Ireland and also for Wales and it was argued last year that on certain bills which only concerned the English there would be a veto by the English ensuring that the Scots Irish and Welsh couldn't pilot a vote against the interests of the English. Westminster have devolved the powers to these countries with the explicit reason to limit the English so they couldn't control what went on in each devolved country.
It's been a fairly long overview and for those of you who are still awake and the reason I mention it is that I have been listening to the Scottish Committee who were, to a man and woman, sticking the boot into the right of the English who wish to level the playing field and have created a veto option on matters which only feature English matters.
I suppose it's good parliamentary knock about but it does get up ones nose to hear them bleating about a very very minor subjugation when week in week out, Nicola Sturgeon is threatening to leave the UK unless she obtains more powers.
Tribalism is never far below the surface and one wonders at the Barnett Arrangement whereby 85% of the Scottish Parliamentary Budget is allocated through it. It is a block grant and pays little attention to the actual needs of each country.
There are advocates for a new system of ensuring the allocation of resources to each devolved administration be based on an explicit examination of the actual relative needs. Under the present system the Scottish administration can be far more generous with our money on, for instance, tuition fees at University.
It's certainly galling to hear how cock-a-hoop they are in Scotland discussing their spending plans when in fact, now that the price of oil has plummeted, their own income has also fallen through the roof done and it's only the English taxpayer, through the blessed Barnett Formula which makes it possible for them to have a budget at all.

Viva la difference

 It strikes me that we made a serious mistake in our history when we mis-understood, under the weight of the feminist cause, that being equal and the same is not the same thing.

The feminists have quite rightly argued for the need for 'equality' between the sexes.

Given that a man and a woman are doing the same work they should be equal. 

In the eyes of the 'law' they should be equal. In having 'rights' they should be equal.

Of course it's been for women a long hard slog to find equality with many obstacles placed in their way by men who felt threatened. Women growing up in an era of deference to men, the ownership of property and the business decisions which, although small were inevitably made by the man. The man was the breadwinner. On his head rested the financial security of the family, he left the house each morning to contest, not only the weather but with others for his job. Often his job was dirty and dangerous and the competition for it, always a risk. 

The woman on the other hand was the queen of her domain so long as the money continued to come in, she was left to love and cherish her children with no one to conflict her tenure or the security within her home.

Over time activists, who saw their situation, not as mothers, unhampered to do what arguably is the most important job a person can undertake, that of bringing up a child, but as individuals seeking recognition. To them motherhood was of a secondary nature to be put off for as long as possible and ignored in securing the task in hand, that of competing with men. Competition with men became the Grail. There were only so many positions of influence and suitable rewards and for the feminist the question of "why not me" became an obsession. 

Right and wrong in these matters is subjective. 

Is it right that even today women are often paid less than men for doing the same job.

Is it right that promotion for women often takes in questions of her being away to have children and be susceptible to putting the child's needs first.

On the other hand. Is it right that a woman has a 90% chance of having custody of the children when a marriage falls apart. 

Is it right that in the law courts, 50% of a man's current and future earnings are allocated to the woman, irrespective of whether she remarries or is the culpable party in the breakup of the marriage. 

Of course each case must be judged on its own merits but the law has a tendency to view women as they used to be and not take into consideration that body of law which has made their position so much stronger.
But the reason for writing today is not to grasp the thorny issue of feminism but ask, have we mixed up the concept,  is being "equal" the same as being the "same".

The case of Caster Semenya the South African runner who in some ways resembles a man, of which I wrote the other day, highlights the complexity between men and women, it emphasises that it's not just the strength but how the strength is arrived at. 

Through subtle chemical processes we have a man or we have a woman.

 The anatomical difference is secondary to the chemical differences and in fact it's the chemistry that leads to the anatomical variance.

The chemistry is so pervasive that it claims the mind and the way the mind thinks. It is the neurones and the synapses which are fundamental to our being who we are and not being called John or Jane.

 Jane can never be John or visa versa and unless there is an induced abnormality in our chemical makeup,  no amount of social clap trap will alter that.

We are not the same and Vive la difference.

There's nothing standing in your way

It's hard to know what maintains the will to win. There is more information on the importance of altitude training especially if you are born at altitude and have grown up used to running over the open dirt roads, covering significant distances each day in the normal course of the days events.

Watching the woman's marathon, run under a pitiless sky with a heat, which one must assume favour the African runners. Each athlete  pounding away, with no shade at all, the miles slowly eaten up and in the distance Rio's city sky line looms ever closer to the finish.

The Ethiopian, and the Kenyan runners are all in place. Each marathon is a template. The same runners from the same nationalities make up the lead group but unusually, this time, there are also three American Caucasian women who have challenged the Africans  and also one white female from Belarus.

Clearly the American coaching has given these girls a self belief which is missing in the rest of the non African athletes. The long distance British women never seem to put themselves up for a contest, they seem happy to sit at the back of the race and run within their mental competence.
Yesterday we flew the flag for Mo Farah but of course he was born in Africa, it's his gene pool which marks him out for success. He also trains in America and uses an American coach to instil what it is that's needed to make a champion.
His training partner, the American Galen Ruff is the only white male who seems to be able to mix it with the Africans and in the 10,000 metre race, which Farah won, he finished amongst the Africans in the sprint to the line.
It's impossible not to acknowledge that the African runners, at the longer distances have some sort of advantage over white people, usually leaving them trailing in their wake but it seems that it's not all anatomical and that the mental aspect of what we believe we can achieve is as important. Galen Ruff and the American women were keen to banish the mystique of African invincibility, the "no can do" attitude which limits the British long distance runners as they trail around, with the other Europeans at the back of the field, losing not only minutes each lap but also the confidence to compete.
It's only in athletics that we trail behind. In cycling and in rowing we lead the world and, speaking to the athletes after their success it's clearly down to coaching, nutrition, and a host of small things which seems to give them the edge, the mental capacity to know there's nothing standing in their way.

His Yang, her Yin

I remember the sight of little slight figure of Kat Copeland sitting in the bow of her boat having won the Olympic Lightweight Sculls Final at the London Games. Her face said it all, she couldn't believe what she had achieved as the boat slowed to a stop and the pictures beautifully described the emotion.

Tonight I think that emotion, that moment in time when someone lays out their absolute joy, the face describing  everything that is special in human beings.

I refer to that sweetheart of modern track cycling Laura Trott as she realised her fiance, Jason Kenny had won the gold medal for the Keirin event. Tears of joy and happiness spread across her face in an uncontrollable emotional outburst of love for her man. He, displaying that taciturn demeanour all Northerners aspire, was her Yin to his Yang, total opposites yet fully immersed in the glory of each other's achievement. 

It's these deep outbursts of passion and emotion which make the Olympics so special.
We are privilege to see people at their best and at their most vulnerable, we can not comprehend the hours of pain and effort that goes into what is often only a few seconds to prove it was all worth it. The joy on winning, the tears when losing, the self recrimination if you didn't bring your best game to the race.
Sitting in the living room, the most athletic event is when we get up out of the chair to make a cup of tea so the dance of joy on the track belongs to a different animal, someone who rises out of bed with the milkman, who ignores the rain and the cold who stresses their body to breaking point and when it's broken, hopes the physio can put it back together again.
Of course these days it's become a job. A glamorous job, taking them to all parts of the globe to compete and train. It's all a far cry from Roger Banisters '4 minute mile' when all athletes were true amateurs, holding down real jobs throughout the day, catching public transport to the events and certainly not receiving any endorsements for their clothing nor the thousands of pounds for winning.
It's at these moments when, on reflection you see how the world has changed from a purely "personal achievement culture" to a money orientated one but there's no doubt that deep down, the sight of Laura Trots tears was worth even more than a gold medal.

Muddling through

  

What is it about the Rainbow Nation that they can bring to the surface anomalies which mirror the complexity of the society.
A legless runner who not satisfied with competing with other disabled athletes but contested with able bodied people who when at the hight of his profession on the track, shoots and kills his girlfriend at home.
Watching Caster Semenya run her first heat in the 800 metres one is again struck by the fact that she looks masculine. She was born with a condition called hyperandrogenism which causes the body to produce male hormones, especially testosterone. 

The definition of a man and a women is usually 'anatomical' with the other defining feature, the production of chemicals by the body which help produce bulk and the muscle power 

In Semenya's case she produced three times as much testosterone as a normal woman and was forced to take drugs to reduce this. As she did so her form fell off and her times became more equivalent to the other women athletes. Then politics stepped in and it was determined that her personal rights as an individual was being diminished so the testosterone in her body was allowed to find its normal level again and her times on the track got faster.
It is rumoured that there are a number of women competing at the Olympics who are hyperandrogenist and that they gain an advantage for being so. 
Is it fair.  Should we try to define what is normal.
As our society discover more and more variables in the make up of homo sapiens we have to continually move the bar to what we understand as normal. I suppose we could do it statistically, grouping people like voters to a party, we should forget trying to do the impossible, grouping everyone under the same banner but recognise the inevitable and group them appropriately. It only matters when you wish to contest on a level playing field such as in an athletic competition but then one could ask, should we segregate short from tall, fat from thin, dark from white.
It's a conundrum which we seem to have solved by ignoring it and striking down anyone who wishes to question these matters.
The women running against Caster Semenya could claim their rights are being infringed but as "human rights" continually frustrate the old rules of "common sense", I suppose we will continue to continue to muddle through. 

When can we get together.

What if I had had a brother or a sister, how different would I be and how different would my life have been ?

To have had siblings, to have shared a family, to have imbibed the sense of being a part of something organic growing and developing of which I was a part but only a part.
How now as I become old and reflective would I benefit from having someone to relate to,our upbringing and our memories of childhood. Memories of our parents and the events that we shared under their protection. Memories of crisis, memories of joy, memories of danger, and memories of sadness. The synthesising of two or more brains to make sense of the time when we were vulnerable and susceptible.
Some people are blessed with large families, lots of brothers and sisters who went on to shape their own lives but were still kith and kin forming a bond if for no other reason than the proximity of growing up under one roof with all the flash points and confinement. Being controlled by the same ring masters, Mom and Dad each child tried to find their own independence through which to form their own character their own identity.
To sit and ruminate about those days is a pleasure I have never had or will have. The "only child" is a lonely furrow in some ways, in others it can be a blessing. One had the total absorption of ones parents love and attention. And whilst this could and often does lead to spoiling, developing a sense of overblown self importance, at least the withering weight of competing for the spoils of parental attention was never my problem.
It's only now as the speed of fulfilment dies away and reflection replaces resentment that such and such hadn't happened, does one miss, like a palaeontologist misses that fragment of bone, the recall of conversation and events played out as you were growing up.
That bond, which at times fragments into argument can not be destroyed, much as the forces surrounding and uniting the atom, the forces binding family are immeasurably strong and so I suggest who ever you are, what ever disagreement you might have had when you were last together, pick up the phone to your brother or sister and say, "Hi I'm sorry I haven't spoken for such a long time but when can we get together" ?

The Chief Engineer

As you opened the door into the funnel space the hot air rushed up at you, as did the noise from the engine room far below. The steel steps, the companionway,and the greasy hand rail descended into a world of noisy machinery, of hot air and steam, of noises which to the engineers ear was as comforting as the tuning cords to an orchestra. Each sound meant a piece of integrated machinery was still integrated, still performing the task allotted to producing the 10,000 horse power needed to push 15,000 tons of ship plus cargo through the water. The routine of checking, of continually keeping an eye on the gear, of observing the gauges and noticing undue vibrations. Of checking levels and feeling the bearings for heat, of noting the hours of the watch and logging the conditions under your responsibility. 

Generally cheery, the watches at handover reflected the expectancy of a cold beer as the relieved crew pulled themselves up the hot companionway,out of the noise to the relative calm of their cabin, as the incomers settled into their 4 hour stint.
There was and needs to be a hierarchy at sea. The organisation of who does what is clearly defined and the rules on board are generally unquestioned.
The skipper is the boss. His word is law. He has the experience and the training to make the voyage safe and he is the Companies representative on board.

The chief engineer is in charge of the propulsion equipment and the ancillary equipment which make the ship a productive unit and therefore, in terms of responsibility the chief is a close second to the skipper in the eyes of the company who's responsibility it is to turn a profit for the owners and the shareholders.

I had the pleasure the other day to sit and chat with a 91 year old ex chief engineer / engineer superintendent.
I remember, the Superintendents were 'gods' as they descended on the ship whilst we were alongside in port, their job to examine and search for defects in the machinery. In their spotless white boiler suits with white gloves they were what Ofsted inspectors are to a school but on a higher plane, more of a mystic as their presence around the ship was treated with awe and reverence. The chief followed them on their tour hoping that between him  and the 2nd engineer they were prepared for any interrogation, whilst we, the underlings stayed well out of the way.
This 91 year old Superintendent was a delight. A twinkle of recognition as we delved into the past and invoked memories of a sea going life which for many, now being a landlubber, is a poor substitute in so many ways. As a Chief at sea and in port he was master of his environment, respected by the men who worked under him, the company equally impressed on his importance showered upon him what ever domestic benefits which  the Chief and a Captain expect to obtain in this closed world of shipboard living.
Rank entitled you to a large cabin and a separate bedroom and shower. When we entered his cabin we were always impressed by its size replicating as much as possible living quarters ashore. Many Chiefs and Captains travelled with their wives on certain trips and having a woman on board had a strange settling effect on the ranks. It reminded us to be less bawdy a little more shore wise as we remembered that "other half" waiting at home or, for the single lads, in the next port.
In most ships the Chief and the Captain kept to themselves, in fact tradition required that they be invited into the officers bar where most people spent at least a couple of hours each night spinning the tales to the clink of a bottle of cold beer or two. The division between deck and engine room with the inherent snobbery of the deck officers over the grease monkeys below meant that at the pinnacle the Captain and Chief Engineer were separated by a gulf of contrived separation. The Captain was boss he had more in common with the Chief Mate, both having opted for the advantages of a career path which would promote them to being "the boss".   Even under the close environment of a ship, with its need for In-dependability the need for elitism kept them apart and whilst it was always light hearted there was always a measure of one up man ship between the deck and the engineers.
Technically speaking the deck were, to some extent stuck in a time warp. Their profession, that of plotting a route, ensuring the cargo was secured and placed appropriately for the unload at the next port, most of their equipment such as electronic navigation was making their job more mundane. The use of the sextant (part of the navigation ticket or exam) by the third mate as the sun came up and he took a sight placed him in line with but not far advanced from Captain Cook.
Engines, steam and diesel were forever evolving. The complexity of automation was the engineers expertise and whilst bridge control placed the engine momentarily in the hands of the Captain as he manoeuvred alongside, the effects of his demands on the engine were still in the hands of the engineer below. As the ship gained in complexity it was a mechanical / electrical complexity which had to be mastered by the engineers and fell under the Chiefs responsibility. Modern skippers are as much mechanically trained as they are navigators but the responsibility for making sure that a ultra complex environment such as a ship works, belongs to the Chief Engineer and I was privileged to have had the opportunity to chat to one very old seafarer who's life experience was more than enough for one man.

Defining who we are.

How do "we" define who we are. 

If we are defined as a 'nation', how do we define those 'others' who clearly are different to us but who can, through birth declare themselves to belong to our society of common interests which make up the essence of being a nation. Can there be a set of common interests in a society as diverse as ours has become. Does the baggage of my parents and their experience define me more than my own experience. Does the lingua franca that passes for a common language between us express a common spirit or is it simply a form of words.
Families are often at odds with each other, mixing up the signals which pass between family members, imagine how in a multi cultural society these signals are even more distorted and misunderstood leading to a sort of blank in our daily interaction with those around us. The natural synchrony which we perform instinctively with those we grew up with, speaking a hidden language which, if we have been away overseas for some time is so comforting when we get back. This hidden connection is missing and they have to make do with 'being abroad' all the time, even when at home.
The signals are not there, the conversation is held back not through a lack of words but shared experience.  The camouflage which disables our sensory vision makes us all strangers, even to ourselves and causes some of the trauma which we see, particularly in our youth who are now denied even the security of a meaningful occupation, as they try to cope with the myriad hues of a society, tugging and pulling this way and that, blighted by political correctness and its attempt to homogenise thought and avoid people asking pertinent questions.
The world or at least parts of it, have become unrecognisable from the landscape of our parents. To question this trend is to go against the straight jacket of formal thinking which has been developed to cope with the terms of the global environment that has been created. No more the the surety of ones own culture or the values, tested through generations of experience, instead we have hotchpotch, a rag bag miscellany of normality which gives only confusion.
The Global experiment is driven by economics and business. It cares not a jot for the damage done to the individual and the destruction it has brought about in the society and whilst in small doses it is instructive and beneficial, when conducted on the scale we have witnessed over the last three decades it fly's against all of mankind's ability to compensate and adjust.

Wayde van Neikerk - who

 So who is Wayde van Neikerk. Where have you been hiding him.

What a magnificent 400 metres Olympic final with a new world record time beating Michael Johnson's long standing record.
Given the most difficult lane to race in he blitzed the favourites and won by a long way still pulling out as he crossed the line.
But what made the most impression on me and It brought it all back as they interviewed him after the race was the special compartmentalised thought which I hadn't heard expressed in that specific way since leaving South Africa
What used to be described as a coloured man to discriminate that race of people who had mixed blood, the result of inter breeding between the early settlers and the existing Cape tribes, a group who were predominant in the Cape Province for their unfortunate position in Apartheid South Africa of being neither fish nor fowl, neither integrated with the whites nor with the blacks, excluded since, to a subordinate role in the so called Rainbow Nation.
Amongst many, Coloured people  the church seems to play a great supportive role in their lives.
Alf Forbay a printer who worked for Anglo American Life/Southern Life, and a friend. was a man who's God meant everything, God was his yardstick and never more than a millisecond away from his thoughts as he determined his response to a problem. His whole mental demeanour was phrased in his love of God and what the scriptures taught him about people. He was never judgemental and always seemed to be prepared to manoeuvre who ever he was dealing with into the light of gods benevolence.
Listening to the interview this morning with van Neikerk,  I was taken back to the mind set of of Alf Forbay.  van Neikerks efforts in this life were like Alf dependent on gods will, the mental environment in which he lived his life was plastered through with a deferential position to his God who was at all times the provider on the track and  in his life in general with all the sustenance he would ever need.
People who have such genuine commitment, not overtly beating their breast, trying to convert but quietly effecting gods teaching, according to their belief into their everyday wisdom are a phenomena, I would say, of human conditioning, of holding a belief system when few seem to believe in anything and are therefore like a beacon amongst the hedonism of the usual track and field athletes around them.
It quaint in some ways to hear them, in this success driven environment laying off the success to someone something else, they are only the vessel through which gods will and wisdom is speaking and his word is far more important than anything Than they have just achieved.
Of course it's atavistic but still no less a reflection of the complexity of humankind as we ponder the values of Donald Trump on the one hand and Wayde van Neikerk on the other.

We are all in this together.

Following BREXIT there have been thousands, perhaps millions of words written about the cause of the rejection by a majority of people in Britain to remain under the political control of The European Union. 

 Immigration and the changes that immigration has brought particularly to urban areas, changes which go beyond the dress and colour but involve culture and religion.

For years the people in power, particularly the people in Parliament had ignored the calls for a curb on the numbers that were coming in and importantly using existing resources such as school places and hospital facilities, never mind housing. The populations of inner Bradford and Burnley were asked initially to be understanding and patient, that over time the immigrants would mix and blend in, would adapt and consolidate our own culture and the norms which govern us. The opposite has happened since the early settlers gathered their communities became ghettos, ethnic no go areas which slowly spread gobbling up the surrounding areas as the locals retreated. Today through the force of "collective identity" where allegiance to ethnicity and religion binds people to vote and place their own voices on the political and legislative councils, to the extent they the immigrant community, which never assimilated, are now the power in the local community. Pockets of Bangladeshi or Pakistani influence and culture are entrenched in the society of many urban towns and cities across the country and one would have to look hard to recognise the Anglo Saxon substructure which was there previously. 

Does this matter ? 

Any people who are constrained by their pay packet to live work and play within the confines of a territory which they define as theirs are going to feel unhappy if others take over their patch. If the struggle for meagre resources is made difficult, if their calls for fair play are ignored by metropolitan London then they will reject what ever comes out of metropolitan London what ever the cost. Remember the cost to them is relative. Already there are few jobs, the housing stock is poor, and the schools continue to under educate their children. Is it any wonder there is a deficit of trust in the establishment and a referendum  a moment in time when they can stick up 'two fingers'.

Our society has become evermore divided. The "trickle down" economics of the neo liberals hasn't happened and the wealth of the country resides in fewer and fewer hands with whole swathes of our society forgotten. These people are not swayed by the fears of the bankers and the industrialists. They already  can't find work and they therefore can't open a bank account. Where are they to fall.  They are already at the bottom and even if it gets worse there is the devilish satisfaction in knowing "we are all in this together" !!!

Your only 20.

I'm fed up. They keep on saying "your only 20 years old"!!

 Perhaps I could invoke age discrimination or some sort of harassment or claim mental abuse.

I'm talking of the Olympics which I watch, as I did 4 years ago, 8 years ago, 40 years ago with the same eyes but a diminishing body. In my mind I am one of them, I feel their pain in defeat and their joy in winning, I gulp as the anthem is played but slowly the realisation that "they" are on another planet, they belong to a different race, a race of people who "still have time to spare".  

To compartmentalise our lives seems no more evident than when watching young people do the things they do in a sporting event. Realising that even running for the bus has become an issue, puts the differential into perspective. The 'them and us' is never more clearly illustrated.

Where did all those years go as I see these magnificent specimens of youth climb onto the winning rostrum. Where and when did the slow disintegration start of the person I know as myself. Dealing with my peers in their suits or walking in the supermarket, one is not particularly aware of the differences between us. Our clothing hides a lot and we are not in competition to have to notice each other. We pace ourselves and feel proud at our current achievements, enjoying the leisurely walk and the mild sense of still being able to get around and do what ever we want to. Of course it's all relative. Our world has shrunk to accommodate what we can do. We are on the back foot in expecting too much improvement and rather seek the lesser goal of holding our own against "Father Time". The drives which used to make up much of our mental process are now damped down, aglow, still alight, but only just.
Seeing these fit, energetic, optimistic people looking wide eyed into the future, 'their future', one has to draw breath at the turn around in ones own esprit, ones own life.

One of the rewarding things is the sound of so many Northern voices during the interviews, lads and lasses who know the environment I grew up in, who are made of the same stuff, abet much more highly tuned but the emotional landscape which makes the North so different to the South is there in spades.

10 minutes in Mackay, our time

All life is a journey. Every minute, every hour, every day.
My alarm goes at 5am and I listen to the BBC World Service for half an hour to see what's been happening whilst I'v been asleep.
Then the "Face Time" jingle rings to tell me it's an incoming call from the antipodes, it's far too early for family to ring from here, it must be Andrew.

The screen floods with sunlight, a cloudless blue sky, wide streets, little traffic and the tropical palm tree confirms its not a call from the UK.  "Morning", although clearly not morning over there, it just adds confusion to juggle with the time difference so "morning" will do the trick.

Andrew is driving between jobs and ever keen to show off his surroundings and share a minute or two, with the marvels' of modern communication, your there, inside the car turning left and right down the wide boulevards that substitute for our narrow twisty roads. Missed that turning, no problem do a U turn in the mid afternoon traffic, (wait a minute "what traffic") and turn around, it's all so relaxed.
After not more than 15 minutes he is back on again, job done and he's off home to pick up some 'take a way' and with his partner in tow, it's off down to the beach, there's a shower of meteorites expected tonight and where better to watch than on the beach.
Events are happening across the globe as I write. Good events, bad events each driven by circumstance, each a product of the environment each pre-determined.
In the cocoon in which we live we convince ourselves that we have some control, that we determine the course of events but in effect we are merely  players scripted by forces outside our control and other than minor adjustments to the ships heading our course was laid when we were born and depended on luck.
We are creatures of the society and the norms we were born into. Perhaps through travel and emigration to a distant country we can absorb different norms and develop an antenna which recognises those values into we were born as well as assimilating the new values. Two setts of yardsticks is no bad thing since, if for no other reason it teaches you that there is more than one way evaluate not only our own actions but also more importantly the people around you.

The world is our oyster.

There are strong moves, and getting stronger for there to be a rethink on the Referendum vote to come out of Europe. The political elite as well as the financial elite were stunned by the results of the vote and have been working overtime to consider ways to overturn the decision to leave.

Part of the problem has been, having won the vote the main "leave" contestants were immediately drawn into government and given the job of negotiating our way out of the network of labyrinth and torturous agreements on trade and the reciprocal laws which govern us. 

Grasping the nettle of unlocking the grip Europe has on us is the task given to Liam Fox and David Davis both ardent "leave" campaigners but behind the scenes is the rumbling of discontent from the "stay" group in parliament and a whole host of people in the business world.

1. The first argument to raise its head is that Parliament needs to 'ratify' the vote because it raises constitutional issues that only Parliament can resolve.

2. The second issue is that the people were fed only sound bites of what the ramifications would be financially if we came out.

The constitutional argument is complex given the place parliament takes in our democracy, especially not having a Constitution or a set of constitutional touch stones to guide us. We rely on Parliament on all matters, even our case law on which we build up our law defining the legal decisions in our courts to be binding and each decision a stone in the wall of our legal precedent. Most countries draft their laws from the top down with legal opinion from the senior judges forming the law which then has to be instructed through the courts. It is argued that our system is more "organic" in that precedence is given to what actually happens in society rather than a concept of what 'should happen', handed down from a class of people who are remote from the society they are supposed to serve.

The second complaint and crucial in the minds of those who wish to stay in is that not enough emphasis was placed on the actual dangers and the actual effects which would arise if we left the European Union, particularly the effect on finance and commerce.

George Osborn (where did he go) was clear in his overall warning that there would be dire consequences but he didn't provide the detail. He like so many of his political ilk had lost the trust of the people, his utterances were taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. 

One man who could have spelt it out and wasn't allowed to was Mark Carney the Governor of the Bank of England. Constitutionally he wasn't t allowed to take sides. 

In fact Jacob Rees-Mogg the conservative parliamentarian and member of the "leave" campaign has been pursuing Mark Carney in the Finance Committee for what he feels were comments made during the run up to the referendum which placed the Governor, alongside the Chancellor George Osborn, suggesting doom and gloom for the economy if we came out.

One of the problems of a democratic mandate is that democracy is not a science but an aspiration and being such, the words used to describe an end are arbitrary. They do not have to conform to any specific definition certainly not a legal definition and the public have grown sceptical of their political masters when it comes to speaking "truth".

The "Governor of the Bank of England" who has the specific responsibility to speak the truth as far as the evidence before him, can not, because of "protocol". 

Who said our world isn't mad.

I have become a firm favourite of Yanis Varoufakis the ex Greek Minister of Finance. His two books "The Global Minotaur" and his second "And the Weak suffer what they must" are both excellent appraisals of the financial machine and the politics behind it. 

The first book covers the American re-financialisation of American spheres of interest  and the creation of a dollar zone in Japan (covering Asia), and Europe to recycle the dollar imbalances as America pumped money and resources into her prodigies Germany and Japan. Both countries under her control with a sitting occupational army and both  destined to be the nucleus of the rebirth of each area after the war.

The second book covers Europe and the intrigue that went into and still makes up Project Europe.  Varoufakis saw at first hand the relentless power of the Bundesbank in his negotiations as Greek Finance Minister trying to find a way of relieving the oppressive debt incurred by his nation, trapped in the clutches of the Eurozone.

Both books informed and influenced me in my decision to forgo the warmth of the European embrace (specifically the German embrace) and the tricks of the deviously powerful bureaucratic Commission, Jean Claude Junker and his pal's. 

A cabal of influence which is undemocratic and only serves its own ends.

Given that we survived in the past as an independent nation, effectively trading with the other nations of the world before the EU was conceived, there seems no reason we can't do it again. We need to get up off or collective arse and stop reflecting on what might have been and consider our strengths as a nation which are many. If we can drag ourselves into the 21st century and leave the traditional humbug behind, including our crippling obsession with the preservation of class and elitism "the world is our oyster".

Reading and writing (never mind the arithmetic)

It's strange that as one gets older, one puts so much effort into reading to gain even a little information, information to make one conversant with a situation so you can understand it better. 

 When you are young learning is a natural progression, even a prerogative of a young mind eager to grasp and make sense of what he sees around him. The knowledge equips him/her with an ability to fit the pieces of the jigsaw, together and understanding how they are interconnected, to understanding the significance of each of the parts.

In business or pleasure to know things allows you to interact, interject, become a player.

At the other end of the scale, as ones life begins to close the need to understand should become less important, certainly as a tool for self enhancement. And yet the need to read and learn becomes 'greater' not less.

Reading of course is a sedentary occupation and most suited to the old, who's arthritic joints take a way the pleasure of a walk. The journey outside becomes a torment and deadens any sense of enjoyment. Sightseeing, even the effort to get to an area where the views are spectacular is something which, undertaken when young was all part of the anticipatory fun. Part of being alive and feeling connected with everything around.

When the joints ache and the breathing comes laboured with a funny whistle as the air seeks a journey through the narrowing spaces.

Is it any wonder we turn to, some would say first, some would say the second best transportation platform known to mankind, (other than the  "transporter" in Star Trek), a well written book.

Turn the pages and your off into someone else's world, visiting places someone else has visited, sampling the pleasures bestowed on someone else. This third party arrange-meant could and is viewed by the energetic, none arthritic amongst you, as being second best but I would argue firstly, beggars can't be choosers and anyway even the most athletic and vigorous amongst you are hardly likely to want to trek across the Gobi Desert or stand by the side of Ellen MaCathy as the wind shrieks through the rigging and the deck bucks and plunges in the South Atlantic.

The political discourse, the Religious surety the philosophical probing are all there between the covers of the binding, secure and ever helpful, like a good friend. 

But why I ask is all this probing, this needing to know, this matching of dates to seek the relevance of the time and the perceptions of that time period, why is it important when soon you will be no more (sans wine sans singer sans end).

 The brain like a sponge is saturated with facts and figures and yet you want to cram in more.  Of course its a habit of a lifetime, a relaxation, it's an escape from the boredom of not being active, of not turning heads as you flashed past the proverbial winning post. Having become a sad mixture, of being transparent, people don't see you as being memorable and opaque in that if you had shape, you don't resemble anything of value.

Reading reverses all that, it puts you in the driving seat, in charge or the gears and the steering in so far as you can close the one book for another. You scramble a while for context and then you are away disappearing down Alice's rabbit hole to who knows where, a magic carpet ride through the Aladdins cave, a brush with something you remember from the past which makes you reel with nostalgia, a sad reflection or a smile at just having been there.

Reading and writing are, like Porgy and Bess an attempt to rescue something from the torrent that is all around. The urge in Porgy to bring stability to Bess to release her from the clutches of her violent lover is a deep strain within us all to do good and in the act, find some sort of redemption for ourselves.

Writing is even more important in that it becomes the synthesis of what we have read and learnt. It's instructive not only for ourselves, since this is mostly why we write anything down but in some ways is instructive to others who might just read what we write and, for a moment we lose that opaque/transparently for which the old are famous.

Rio de Jeneiro

As always the cycle race is one of the best ways to see the surrounding countryside and this is especially so as the road race in Rio de Janeiro unwinds.

Rio is a a beautiful geographical setting, spoilt in some ways by the real estate which is crammed onto every square foot of ground. The apartment blocks and the hotels, squeezing out the ordinary houses, making the intensity of life living in such stark density and such a claustrophobic life style, one wonders at the way mankind seems able to adapt to anything.

Suddenly the helicopter swoops down on the ravaged dwellings of the favela clinging to the mountainside, a slum of unimaginable proportions and a misery for anyone condemned to live there. For them the Olympics belong to a different world, a world they can hardly imagine. For them the luxury is clean running water and food on the table.
The road hugs the loverly beaches fringing the mountain which dominates the landscape. The heavy tropical foliage deep greens contrasting with the white sand and the blue water. A paradise if one didn't know better.

The local population have been protesting about the billions spent on the games when their city is bankrupt and can't pay for services to the ordinary citizen.  Clean water, electricity, food on the shelves, are all in short supply as this mega show takes over their town. It's when capitalism and big business come to town and squash the rights of the individual, when Coke and Niki swallow all the available resources, obliterate our collective sensibilities and steamroller their imprint on everything, leaving little behind other than a vivid memory as, in a couple of weeks the show skips town to leave the people to pick up the pieces of their lives again.

The surf tumbles in bringing the large rollers crashing onto the beach, the sunbathers lie with little thought for the cycle race passing a hundred yards away. The sun worshipers glaze their bodies, turning as if on a spit, they become comatose in the heat, cooking their flesh to a turn, oblivious of the long turn damage of a deep tan.

The contrasts are all around. The sun and the sea, the rich and the poor, those who count themselves special and those who specialise in just staying alive.

Rio is the extravagant face of mans desire to set himself apart, to signal to others that he/she counts more than the next person.

Be it the curves and exposure of of the girls on the beach in Ipanema, or the Ferrari set, drifting about strutting their stuff in their red machines. The restaurants, full of expense accounts and overpriced food, the special service expected from the hotel staff, the acknowledgement that the client belongs to a special exclusive breed, they have plenty of money.

 And all the time the spectre of the favelas haunting the scene. 

Corbyn v Smith

Having watched the first debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith I have been struck for the first time by the woodenness of Corbyns debating skills.

I have listened to him in the past from his position on the back benches in Parliament argue with genuine passion about some cause or other he was espousing. He stood out from the front bench Labour leadership who always seemed to be arguing over peripheral issues making them sound more like that part of the Tory family who come over at holiday time  but are seen as the outcast in terms of real Tory values. 

Brought up under the shadow of Tony Blair who sang from the centre left of the Tory party hymn book a large section of the parliamentary Labour Party seemed to argue not with their hearts but because they were paid to do so. Their rhetoric was just that, oratory eloquence but without much bite or passion.

Corbyn was a man cast in the old mould, "a man of the people" who had conviction and wasn't about to tack away when a political squall blew up.
Perhaps his views on disarmament were a trifle simplistic, seeing mankind as being more benign than they are, he wished for a better arrangement putting all his hopes in Plan A with little thought to Plan B. 

Never the less he was a breath of fresh air after the moribund performance of Labour in the face of UKIP and the Tory Party.

Corbyn has been under tremendous pressure not only from the opposition but hurtfully from where he should least expect it, his own parliamentary  colleagues. When your own family engage in giving you a kicking, it must make you despair. He of course was never one of them and when his name went forward as a fourth candidate, a sort of sop to the left, no one thought he had a chance. Somehow his oratory in the towns and villages across the country struck a cord and a following such has not been seen in parliamentary circles of any colour for a long time, denying the paid up MP their assumption of power. 

The Corbynistas as they became known, have been remarkably loyal in the face of some scurrilous reporting in the press and media. A none stop onslaught of denigration and ridicule has been been heaped on his head, an example of the dirty tactics paid out in politics, particularly if you are seen to be 'anti status quo'.

The contest within the Labour Party as to who should be leader is like the BREXIT debate, subject to interpretation. The MPs don't like him, whilst the rank and file think he is refreshing, a man cut from their own cloth.

The debate to see who should lead the party, Corbyn or the MPs choice, Owen Smith, a little known Welsh MP who seems to have come out of nowhere opened yesterday.

Watching the first debate I was surprised to hear how resoundingly socialist Smith was and how resolute he sounded in the way the Blairites had become trite. He took the fight for the countries 'resources' back into the towns which are struggling to exist, he turned away from the metropolitan straight jacket of being London centric. He wasn't afraid to mention taxation and making those who can pay, pay. He didn't shy away from the mantra that the city pages make of taxation and the dangers of losing all our native talent abroad he said, as the BREXIT referendum vote proclaimed, "what will be will be", "don't be afraid of your own shadow" "stand tall and believe in what you feel is right".

Corbyn seemed, as I said wooden in his responses. He appeared to be consulting his notes, even reading from a prepared script. He had none of the open oratory, none of the spontaneity, he didn't engage the audience with eye contact, he seemed shut off in his ideological space.

It's this taciturn trait where he seems to reserve communication for his ideological bed-fellows, communication which is rich in motivation but remote unless you are plugged in to what his beliefs are.

So the question is does he have the charisma to sell his policies to the public or should the party look elsewhere for leadership. One of the benefits of the turmoil of the last few months in the Labour Party has been that it has shook up the party and dislodged some of the old wood that had been hanging on since the fall of the Blair/Brown pact. The old sound bite crew who wouldn't have been able to espouse an original thought if they ever had one. 

I was impressed by Owen Smith and look forward to see how he projects himself in the debates to come.

The modern anarchist

 The anarchists are on the march, traffic has rolled to a halt and passengers attempting to catch a plane at Heathrow are up in arms.

The definition of an anarchist is one who creates chaos in the matters of the state.

 Another definition is that an anarchist is a person who has lost hope in political solutions to right a wrong and seeks solutions from the bottom up, taking control out of the hands of the establishment. The methods are usually seen as antagonistic to the status quo and therefore shunned by the ordinary man in the street as well as the established forces within the community. Given the top down structural nature of the society the pressure for answers or even an acknowledgement that their cry is being listened to, develops a schism which leads to desperation. 

The Heathrow protest is about racism and the belief that matters which effect black people are not as important to the country as they should be. Stopping the traffic, chaining yourself to what ever is solid and therefore holding up for as long as you can, frustrating the march of people going about their business people ignorant of the dilemma you see around you. 

The face of the anarchist is usually one of the unwashed, pin pierced, undernourished freaky people who we pass by each day, casting hardly a glance, afraid of what we see.
Society is made up of many faces and many fits. There are as many misfits of course and as we become conformists, relying on our smartphone to feed us up to date information, ignoring the fact that sadly the information is flowing from much the same source so that we all imbibe, much the same story.
Once upon a time we sourced our story from our own, 'hands-on' experience. It was unique to us and actually played out as our own 'back story'. We developed a tendency to evaluate the world through our own eyes and come to our own conclusions. We kept our distance as individuals not because of any distrust but because proximity bent our sense of judgement, (like large bodies distorting and bending the rays of light) and we instinctively thought  it was vitally important to come to our own conclusion.
The modern day anarchist unlike the famous dissenters in the 19th and 20th century have less of a single cause such as the State and all its organs but rather the world wide confederation of global capitalism, structures such as Wall Street the bureaucracy of the EU and the totalitarianism of Russia and China.
Their angry militant faces should remind us of our 'indifference' to virtually everything which we, hedonistically don't value.

Allahu Akbar

 So the game in town now, is to claim that these people who shout Allahu Akbar (God is great) as they blow themselves up, or submit to a hail of bullets having committed some atrocity, that they are mentally unbalanced and therefore our supine western media now claim that these people are mentally unsound and therefore, in an oblique way, they are victims.

The politician recognising the deep hole he has dug in the fabric of our society by encouraging people from all over the world to come over and mix, believing that in so doing some sort of osmosis would turn us all into tolerant, benign citizens, has backfired big time. The politician, he/she, have of course  no idea what to do now. 

Never having understood the power of religious conviction, politicians who seem to hold no long term convictions of their own, other than re-election, can only wring their hands whilst a "commoner " in  Bradford would say, "I told you so and have been telling you so since 1968".

The difference between theory and practice is as strong as ever but 'we', sorry, 'they' have gambled with the taut nature of what balances and holds a nation together. Numbers count, identity counts, wealth counts, recognisability counts, and above all, the collegiate group nature, the bond which each feels for the other, beyond the familial.

How can we keep a lid on this phenomenon, this marginalised religious based hatred when the common cause lies in the writings and the interpretation of the Quran.

Admittedly it is only an extreme, ultra-orthodox Wahabi sect that lead the onslaught against the infidel (you and me) and yes you could describe then as having mental problems. 

They would supposedly say that they are gifted with the true clarity, manifest from gods teaching through his holy book and it's we who are mentally disturbed.

The difficulty is that there is a subtle attraction for young struggling Muslims, particularly growing up in the Sodom and Gomorrah of the West with its 'anything goes' mentality. Our own youth who on reaching the bottom, stay there. The young Muslim has his religious book and his community, which itself conforms to a rigorous observance unknown within the Christian community. The Imam (depending on the Mosque) will highlight the contradictions in life style and as is the logic of youth, they want to go and find out for themselves.

Returning home with a religious ideology firmly in place it's easy to see how we might question their mental probity but remember, they also question ours !!