A conundrum

It's an interesting conundrum.

Is it true that by refuting an argument (defeating it) you have more knowledge than the person making the argument in the first place. Or is it fact that neither of you know anything more than the other. 

Is knowledge nothing more than a game of supposition since knowledge is merely hypothesis until it is overturned by a new hypothesis.

Can we say we know anything at all, or like Socrates deny having any knowledge of any subject and proceed through argument to prove the surety of the other person is false.

Wisdom comes therefore in acknowledging how little we know, not how much.
Of course you will declare that there are many things I know. I am sure of the knowledge which I am intricately bound up with like, how to find my way home, but of the knowledge regarding the ethical contemplation of home and the support it has for our lives, this is not a surety and the knowledge you have regarding the matter is yours and personal and can in no way be presumed as knowledge when applied to others.

We walk in an oasis of our own making with arrangements in our mind that we process as knowledge  when in actual fact we are alone in the wasteland of our our own mental fantasy.

If our "presumption" that others, anyone, has the foggiest idea of where we are mentally  or what we specifically believe in, is wrong, then the equally tricky presumption that "anyone" understands "anyone" else is flawed. 

If no one is in tune with anyone else other than perhaps emotionally for a moment then we should re-jig our assumptions about so much of what we take for granted. 

Reality is that we are individuals with no firm connections. Our insecurity leads us to form alliances but these alliances are only secure so long as we need them and remember they are a two way street, either can be broken at any time.

The whole edifice of society and our place in it is based on a notion, a conjecture, that we are not alone and that other people really care. With very few exceptions the healthy mind rushes to new pastures as soon as it believes it has obtained a sense of its own security, that the ground is safe to proceed to forming new connections, which we have argued is in themselves false since no connections can be possible, given the desperate convoluted individuality in each of us. 

The Robin is back

The cheeky Robin Redbreast is back. As I mow the lawn he watches me from a few feet away. There is no bird like him for his fearlessness and apparent interest in what we humans are up to. Of course it's the worms he's after but given other birds also keep an eye open for food, it's his apparent lack of fear when so many other birds fly a mile at the sight of a human. What is it in his psychology that allows him to treat us as if perhaps not a friend, at least not to be feared.

Is it seeing his picture on the Christmas card makes him presuppose we like him. Does his red breast indicate a full heart ❤️ courageous and courtly such that whilst being so small he can communicate a sort of equanimity.
Of course it was the nightingale who pierced her heart to make the white rose red for the Prince. I think the robin is too shrewd for that, he has covered most eventualities and won me over with his pluck and fortitude.
I pause my mowing sensible to the moment, sharing the moment with something so fragile so small and vulnerable but with that bright chest puffed out like a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Coldstream Guards. Don't mess with me he says, get on with the mowing I can't wait all day for the worms.

The Listening Project

 There's a delightful program on BBC radio 4 where ordinary people record their conversation with each other, usually down memory lane. 

It's the sort of simple unadorned program which the Beeb does best. People who are comfortable in each other's company totally relaxed, remembering events and situations father to daughter, mother to son, grandchild to grandparent which they remember with special affection.
The program is called 'The Listening Program' and it's a gem as it highlights the intimacy of the family. It's the most un-contrived program on the airwaves, every story is fresh with the power of speech, often enriched with accent, always with some pathos mixed with simple joy. It's a comfort to hear these memories as fresh today as when they happened, each speaker an expert in this private domain of sentiment and love.
It's especially poignant when the youngster, have watched a parent, an uncle or aunt now reveals the unfolding learning experience they learnt back then. What they saw became today's knowledge in its simplest form, transporting them back to when the parent had such mystery. When Mom or Dad were endowed with such wisdom.
With the passage of years the roles have changed but love and respect have replaced the one dimensional parent child relationship with a meeting of ways.
Adults with time for each other.❤️️

Can I change my mind please

With only a few days to go before the the US Election the revelation from the FBI that there are more damaging emails sent from Hillary Clintons smart phone when she was Secretary of State, has startled the world.

What ever the actual content, the voting public are skittish towards both contestants and it wouldn't take much to frighten the horses.
Virtually every candidate who has lined up in the past for the Presidents job has some sort of skeleton in their cupboard. From Abraham Lincoln to Kennedy, from Reagan to Bush and of course Hillary's husband was almost thrown out of the job.
Powerful people are used to getting their own way, even using questionable methods to ensure it. Power corrupts and so we should begin to assume that the politician who has risen to the top of the pile has enough skeletons to fill a graveyard.
Would the Trump presidency be so bad. Would Hillary's presidency be anything other than the same old same old. Would she go for the status quo, would she be an appeaser towards so much of what we have become to know as the American Establishment.
The Global experiment, which was a contributor to the Banking crisis and itself revealed the paucity and un-sustainability of the American financial empire, was I'm sure a regular breakfast conversation between Hillary and Bill when Bill was President.

Trump in his "inward vision" for America is a massive swing in the psychology of a country that wished to put its imprint on the 🌎.  The country has had to keep recycling the dollar and in the process print billion to pump prime the Global economy and keep the deficit economy on track.

Trump has no baggage other than that he is successful in making money. To make the kind of money he has in Real Estate, means that he knows how to use the teams of experts needed to build and revamp his buildings. He knows how to coordinate and drive people and you can't beat his vision, even within a narrow prospectus of glitzy hotels.
Historically when Ronald Reagan was chosen he was chosen on his personality. As an actor in B grade films his lineage was hardly the stuff of Presidents and yet he is remembered for the simplicity of purpose and the clarity of of his agenda to defeat the USSR in the Cold War. He certainly was not proposed for the job because of his knowledge of the minuta of internecine politics. He was not an insider like Hillary, he was not a wheeler dealer within the system which is her claim to fame. I was not a supporter of his conservative rhetoric (along side Margaret Thatcher) but like Churchill he was the man for the moment.
Hillary seems to me to have a very grey image of what we need to lead the free (sic) world.
It seems with the passage of time, under the spotlight of the media debate, she seems to be "dodgy", but then perhaps they all are.

The Benefit Culture

Listening to a heated debate on the axing of Concentrix from the business of chasing Welfare claimants revealed not only the complex system of benefits that people can claim, housing, tax, child benefits the list goes on but also the complexity of people's lives, single mothers, disabled children, people who have hit the buffers in life and in there own individual way, desperate. A bureaucratic nightmare which is further complicated by the closure of the offices where in the past face to face discussion between claimant and the authority used to take place. Now the whole business is done over the phone with the inevitable frustration that the call takes ages to connect and then the person in the Welfare Office simply bats them off with a plethora of rules. 

When you drill down, behind it all, is the austerity of the financial settlement between Government and its citizens, which it is argued has to be made for the nation to become solvent again and a private company were engaged (Concentrix) to root out the people who were not what they were appeared.
Part of the problem is the complexity of claims and the opportunity for some to "play the game" by putting in bogus claims.
The complexity and the opportunity are not the fault of the claimant or even the bogus claimant and the need to address the hugely complex human plethora of changed and changing circumstance is a situation brought about by the changing state of the nation as it closed down avenues for work whilst still trying to fulfil the founding ideals of the Welfare State set up in 1947.
Can we, should we provide a Welfare blanket in the way we used to. The Welfare claimant in the 1950s kept their situation to themselves to avoid the claim by neighbours that they were scrounges. Today claimants ware their Welfare status on their chest happy to be seen as being "on benefit". The psycology, 'to get off benefits' is missing and a lifestyle is created to accommodate the payments as they come in. No wonder the terror of a delay when the relative comfort associated with regular payments is thrown up in the air.
The skill of a woman in the 1930s, 40s and 50s to make the rations fit the needs of the family, "to make ends meet" as the saying goes, was the guile she employed.
No 40" TVs, no mobile phones, no motor car, probably no washing machine and certainly no dish washer. No overseas holidays, no credit/debit cards, Clothing that was mended not thrown away it was a different world and one which largely people accepted and were certainly proud of their ability to manage their affairs within the financial constrains imposed.
Today it's entitlement, it's a right of passage that a certain standard is yours irrespective of where the actual money comes from. My mother and father would run a mile from credit arrangements on the basis that they could "not afford" the things Hire Purchase offered. Affordability was the touchstone of the working class household and their pride in their own self sufficiency was the cement which bound them together as a society

The Great American Debate

And so it continued. He said, she said, he lied, she lied, this bitter playground squabble. Unfortunately the definition of squabble describes a noisy quarrel about something 'trivial', sadly the subject matter was anything but trivial and was carried out by candidates for the most powerful office in the world. 

Unseemly, childish, unbecoming. These are descriptions fitting childish people, has the American political system fallen to this.
I tuned in early at 1am thinking the debated started then. CNN were in full warrior mode with teams of journalists and opinion makers contending their views as to how the debate would go and the substance of the contestants.

Trump seemed to have only one ally, a young woman, very confident very savvy, willing to hold her own and row against the stream. Her analysis of the disillusioned parts of Americas great cities was spot on. Her observation that the Clintons had, along with George W Bush, and latterly Obama, presided over this state of affairs for decades, arguing that market forces should be allowed to prosper whilst the industrial heartland in the States disintegrated, along with the people who worked there.

Trump speaks for these people he talks of putting America first, of preventing immigrant labour drive down wage rates, of stopping the Chinese from dumping. These are the messages the ordinary working American wishes to hear. Enough of the liberal waffle about Americas responsibilities, of its humanitarian agenda and its security commitments. It is probably all talk, it's probably political campaigning but who cares, it hits a nerve and sounds good. There's little in their lives to cheer, so why not cheer the showman.
These people don't know and don't care. For them the global agenda which has made one percent immensely rich, has allowed the rest to languish in varying degrees of need The Clinton doesn't speak  for them the Obama's doesn't cater for their raw needs. The tired old rhetoric  that Hillary espouses, they have heard time and time again, for them nothing changes as they sink further and further behind.
And so as the debate gets under way, these two monoliths, like huge icebergs grind away at each other with little or no attempt to understand where the other comes from. All political agendas are like this. There seem to be little or no common ground. The people they are meant to serve are the  in the grist in the political wheel, the outcome of their plight is of little  insignificance to the established politician. Maybe a crass uncouth entrepreneur, untainted by years of double speak is just what the people have been waiting for.

Aberfan and the gulf between us.

Subject: Aberfan, and the gulf between us.

The Aberfan disaster which occurred 50 years ago when a spoilage tip, weakened by rain slid into and onto the Aberfan school killing 116 children. It was a disaster that need not have happened, and it was caused by the lack of foresight of the owners and management of the colliery.

Relations between owners and the pit workers had always been poor in an industry 'where above pit' and 'down the pit' were worlds apart. It resembled the age old schism between the classes. An intolerable conflict which eventually broke out in the miners strike and the efforts of Arthur  Scargill to take on the owners of an industry which typified the gulf between the workers and management.

If your workforce are "scumbags", a term I first heard when I returned to the UK in 1994 used by a chap I had known overseas in Johannesburg and who in a period had established a company which was to go on to be a leading player in the U.K. Telecoms Industry, seemed to me very sad and not a little unhealthy.  His use of the term revealed a deep resentment to people who were his workforce, they had become "them" whilst we were "us". 

Was it in his makeup, a result of his upbringing, that he distrusted his workforce to disparage them so. Is there a thread which runs through the gene pool that resorts to type when people are placed in a position of authority. Anyway I was having nothing to do with it and so we parted ways.

There are so many instances where 'industrial relations' in this country have been sour. Shipbuilding, car manufacture, the mines, are all situations where men, in great numbers are used to produce a product but where industrial relations are poor if and when the management is predominantly English. Give the ownership and implicit with that, the management control to a foreign company, the Japanese, then the production line and the whole process works a charm. Why.

Is it that the Japanese have understood the benefits in their own culture of individual respect, not least because of the overcrowded nature of their island and further they understood that if you can inculcate that sense of respect in your neighbours (workforce) and implicit in that they for you,  you have unity. Build on the sense of unity by enabling greater  participation in feed back and decision making and you have a winning proposition such as the Nissan factory in Sunderland.

It would be incomprehensible for the person who ran the company I worked for to believe his success came from anywhere other than himself. His hubris, his arrogance, his conceit got in the way and whilst he was successful, his success was shallow since whilst everyone feared him he had no friends within the company. Perhaps that didn't matter but as an example within the society, it exemplified to me the shaky nature of industrial and social relations within this country. 

Remember we spend so much of our lives at work. What a traumatic failure if in that most important aspect, human inter relationships, (the pleasure we can derive from supporting others around us), if we spend our lives in unhealthy competition.

Is patriotism dead

Is patriotism dead. Does it still have a place in a multicultural world. 

Can a country feel, first and foremost for itself, or has the diversity within a nation made this impossible. Can the subliminal values which make up the recognisable character of a country and its people, ever be supplanted in an environment with such a kaleidoscope of competing interests.
The substance, "character" is formed by the surety you have of people responding in a similar way to crisis. The "stiff upper lip" is an example of the English reticence to show emotion for instance.
Living in an environment which has become so changed by the huge influx of people from all parts of the world, each with their own characteristics, can a 'nation state' still  exist any more. Is the concept of a national image an anachronism in this day and age. Do values which used to denote a nation now mean little, lost in the mish mash of a new
construct  more in line with an arbitrary need for people, of what ever creed or conviction. Part of the economic plan hatched in far away boardrooms by faceless executives who themselves have no fixed nationality.

Is this "Brave New World" a world of fact or fiction. Has fiction become fact, with all the terrible consequences which Huxley's description of a society 'manipulated' in all and every way revealed.

Do we have any way of reversing the trend or are we all destined to become only 'numbers', part of an action plan to smooth the social desire for self recognition, with a pleasure seeking alternative administered by a Commission.
Is Brexit the last chance to dig down and rediscover our real needs, to evaluate what is important, to have an input. If it is we have to be willing to be creative and stop being led by the nose like donkeys. We have to take an interest and stop assuming others have our interests at heart.
With a dose of austerity perhaps the impossible will happen and we will ween ourselves off 'free loading' through necessity, since we don't seem to have the stomach to do it any other way.
This not only includes weaning the under class, which will find itself ever more marginalised but also the upper class who will have to be dented its traditional paternalism.  Making the sanctified regions of  Public service such as the civil service and the armed services  for example, much more accessible to the ordinary people in society.
Ban the links through family and patronage. Make it impossible for people to be appointed simply through the act of knowing someone but only through the rigour of being the best person for the job, measured through real merit.
Perhaps a Brave New World would be no bad thing, so long it was tested democratically (proportional representation) by an educated savvy public opinion.

Who to believe

Are we entering a phase where any 'criticism of the West' is being shut down with claim and counter claim, that the issues raised are the fiction of our old enemy Russia. 

There are calls to close down the Russian broadcaster RT on the basis that it is spreading propaganda. There is the suggestions  that Wikileaks has become a tool for the Russians to interfere with the so called democratic process (sic) going on in the United States at the moment. There are stronger moves being made to freeze out Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he is holed up, by cutting off the Internet link to the Embassy.

Little light is shone on the so called missing emails from Hillary Clintons private phone account. How important was the content of these emails  vis a vis the revelations of the locker room talk by Donald Trump. Why is there virtually no investigatory attempt by the American media to find out.

If you follow the paper trail regarding these emails you find obfuscation, blocking and a delaying process aimed at the highest offices in the land, the Courts and the Congressional Committees, as orders to release the emails are made through the court. In dribs and drabs they come. Suddenly 32000 have been deleted (!) by Mrs Clinton, emails sent whilst occupying the second highest position in government. 

In comparison to "locker room talk" this is serious stuff but the media are fixated on Trump and few inches of investigative copy get written.

The power of that inner sanctum, the insiders who really run the show across the pond make the European Commission look totally transparent.

I think the power and the influence the United States has occupied has inculcated in their psycho a sense of their special position, where the rules for others are suspended for a messianistic sense of their own destiny, to be in charge no matter how, no matter why.  I'm sure we Brits had the same delusion of grandeur and purpose when Empire was in full throw so we should recognise the dangers of believing our own story.

Management at its lowest

Thank god we have the 30 year secrecy law which prevents information being released to the public otherwise there may have been more public pinching than is deemed necessary in a civilised country. Of course it begs the question how a civilised country can feel need to protect the "Great and the Good" from its citizens.

Today being the actual 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster  I decided to read more into the subject.
Early Friday morning 21 of October 1966 the slip occurred.

Lord Robens, who headed up the National Coal Board (NCB) on hearing of the news failed to react to the disaster, he was being invested as Chancellor of the University of Surrey on Friday and only the following day Saturday did he came down to the site.

You must understand as head of the NCB he was implicitly involved in the tragedy and had heard claims about the threat the slurry piles presented. Money was involved in making them safe, money not destined for the owners pocket and so the warnings fell on deaf ears.
From the start he and the other ministers involved refused to acknowledge culpability and went out of their way to obstruct information regarding who was to blame. No member of the NCB were fired or prosecuted. It's so reminiscent of the way people at the top of organisations today, such as the banks, have failed to be prosecuted. Some things never change !!
At the time a spontaneous fund had been set up and ordinary people from all over the country donated over 1.6 million pounds, (£24 million in today's money), this at a time of real austerity. The money was to help the relatives rebuild their lives.
A Charity Commission, made up of the "good and the gracious" was given the job of managing the fund.
The delays and the dreadfully insensitive investigations as to each families justification for help and assistance revealed the mental disconnect between sections of our society, a disconnect equally as strong today.
Especially damming was the way financial help was not only hindered in reaching the children's families but that a proportion of it was diverted to cover the costs of clearing and cleaning the site !!! Can you imagine how crass and how devoid of compassion were the managerial class towards the people who worked and risked their lives each day underground, to provide a healthy dividend for the owners at the end of the year.
Perhaps the 30 year rule inhibiting the release of information is too short. Perhaps 60 years would be better and only the shrieks of outrage coming from the dead in their coffins would ensure the that the cold hand of "shame" can never becomes a problem for our not so gracious Establishment.

Opaque in every way.

So the solution to the this counties questioning about the age of the "children" who are being brought in from Calais, who don't seem to match the concept of children at risk which we were sold as the reason for fast tracking their importation, is to put up sheeting so we can't see the people coming off the buses. So much for the open governance the transparency we all desire.

Once again the general public are conned. Their fears dismissed as irrelevant, not worthy of consideration especially if it reveals that the top down design is something else, something many would take umbrage at.

This game of democratic accountability is severely flawed if we don't have accountable government. The acceptance level of politics and politicians falls each year as we assume we are being lied to.
Where are the leaders with guts to say "this is what we are going to do for such and such a reason". Argue their case and if necessary take the flack politically but this ongoing deceit is so unhealthy.
There may be good reasons for bringing teenagers and young adults in first. Perhaps the young children can't be brought over because they don't have relatives here which was part of the fast tracking arrangement but we need to know and putting up opaque sheeting is defiantly not the way to gain our trust.

Its all a matter of time

My pet disillusion regarding modern man or woman is the tragic inability to hold their attention on any issue for other than a short space of time. A lack of attention of time and effort. How often I hear the complaint, "I haven't the time".

Time is precious of course. The time we spent with our first girlfriend was like attending a university course trying to understand the mood swings, assimilating the signals, promoting our self. All these quirks of human behaviour as we  assembled a bio pic which we could roll out and replay in our mind when things became inevitably tricky.
That basic assembly of knowledge was a time consuming issue but we were happy to wait hours to see the smile on her face, even if she had kept us waiting for an hour or more.
Now, to be asked to set aside 5 minutes and read an article (even a blog) is an anathema to many. Time in their lives is too precious to spend reading something, 'for god's sake'!

We're busy doing nothing
Working the whole day through
Trying to find lots of things not to do.
We're busy going nowhere
Isn't it just a crime
We'd like to be unhappy, but
We never do have the time.

When "I" read, I am transported by the text. The place, the idea, my mind runs with the narrative and often intercedes with it to bring my own experience to bare. Likewise what I read translates into problem solving in my own world which is made richer by the experiences of others. I would go so far as to say the world would be terrifying if I faced it on my own but the opinions of others, on subjects which might be worrying me now, is like a comfort blanket to a child. 

We are but children sampling each new and old experience with eyes that might see the bogeyman everywhere if it were not for the positive testimony of countless books.
To reach out and take down a book and open it on the page you had last closed, it is like renewing a conversation with an old friend. You remember the mental moment when the connection was broken and is now its rejoined. The mind re-opens the dialogue as if nothing had changed, no time had elapsed and you set off once again down the same path, the writers path but one on which you carry your own baggage, your own assumptions.
And so I say to the time conscious non reader, think again how devoid of substance our lives are without the extension to others for their opinion. Think how trivial our lives can be without being able to place it in some sort of context, the sort of context a good book can bring.

Boys and girls

It was if a different species had decided to sit together and for a time combine.

Two little boys with their mother, and two little girls with their mother sit together for a meal. The children were well behaved but, to type, the boys were noisy demanding that their mother pay attention to what they had to say, whilst the girls, much more demure much more polished in the way they saw themselves, sat quietly observant, were well on the way to being the finished product.

 Behaviour is taught, its imbibed by instruction. Boys are much less encouraged to follow some party line, they are given a free rein to learn by experience, to assimilate the result of their actions, good or bad and to bear the consequences.



Little girls are much more cosseted, for them the learning curve is far less open to chance. They are perceived to be at risk, they have to be chaperoned. The outcome of the way they behave and the way they look, what they wear and how to present themselves is a matter of great importance to a parent.

The boy can fall and they are expected to pick themselves up, the boys dynamic is that of being an individual, or at least that of self sufficiency, he has no one to blame if he doesn't succeed.
The girls, even in today's enlightened society are considered the weaker sex and therefore accumulate more protective and supportive points than a brother.
The girls learn to become shrewd, old beyond their years, they evaluate the opportunities that their situation provides whilst the boys are left to be,  just boys.
This promotes more self awareness in the girls, who, used to the attention, evolve a sense of their importance to others, whilst the boy gets on with his life, often feeling somewhat of an outsider until reaching adulthood, when at last  he  can assert himself fully.

Yes sir. No sir. Three bags full sir.

   The fervour of scepticism. The righteousness of some, and there will always be someone who feels strongly about any subject, to voice their opinions. It all flows out as a stream of "the continuous subjective" aired each day. The rights and the wrongs, the good and the bad all have their advocates.

Today it's Army recruitment and the age a young person should be before being asked to bare arms for Queen and Country.
The Army are currently recruiting 16 year olds. Part of the deal is that the recruit is trained and educated for a period of at least 2 years and can not be sent into a combat zone until they reach 18. There are also two streams, the infantry trained to fight and the technical logistical back up.
The opponent to entry at 16 was from a woman who's organisation states that at 16 they are not mature enough to enter a strict disciplinary organisation and that emotional  harm is done to them.
The recruiting soldier says that it's the making of these largely young men and that the benefits of the training and camaraderie far outweigh the disadvantages.
He also highlighted the scandalous fact that often when a recruit is brought in at 16 it is found that the educational attainment of the new recruit is of an eleven year old.
After twelve months of living in an environment where discipline is made an important constituent of the recruits life, they are able to sit the GCSE exams of a 16 year old.
It's a remarkably damming comment on the normal traditional method of educating our kids at a normal school that  within one year, young people can be turned around to fit an educational profile.
Perhaps it's an argument for compulsory service to be reintroduced, taking the kids out of the hands of the educational libertarians to give them all a quick dose of "yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir".

Choose carefully

"Raheem Kassam", Raheem who ? 

His name is not one an Anglophile would normally find in their address book and yet he is the lead candidate for the job of heading UKIP in the future.
UKIPs profile is one of upholding the cause of "little England", of limiting the flow of people who come to here to live, and who see themselves as the voice of the working class who see their jobs under threat from immigrants.
Raheem Kassam hardly chimes with Joe Oakenshaw of Scunthorpe but Joe certainly does chime with UKIPs core voter and so I wonder if UKIP aren't continuing to shoot themselves in the foot.
Raheem I am sure is a perfectly good UKIPa but the label, the brand, is often synonymous with the leader, instance Donald Trump, his overt signs on his equally glitzy buildings tell their own story. Nigel Farage with a pint always nearby signified one aspect of the common man but I would somehow doubt, in such an immigrant conscious party, that a person called Kassam signals the right message.
Of course this is all "politically incorrect conjecture" and with the verve that the PC lobby have, maybe it's a question which will never be asked, (over the airwaves anyway).
It's an age of so many questions, questions about questions.
Organisations make fortunes out of profiling everything with questions, they make it their business to enquire into all the nooks and crannies, not as a good housewife, cleaning her house to root out the dirt but rather to find the dirt to use in some campaign.
This information and counter information is very confusing when trying to make up your mind as to the efficacy of something, or someone.
We know that Kassam is a journalist and can be described as having political views of the far right. He has history, "tweeting" some extremely disparaging messages, using language reminiscent of his alter ego Donald, about Nicola Sturgeon and Suzanne Evans
Is he part of Europe's tilt to the right, with parties becoming more aggressive as they seek to coalesce the disenfranchised underbelly in each nation. Is this part of the rise of a new phase of fascism within each disgruntled society, the sort of authoritarian leadership which piggybacked the German nations misery after the First World War.
It doesn't take much for political causes to become national ones and we have to beware the leaders we chose if they are inclined to sharp elbowed, rough unhelpful rhetoric when purporting to have the characteristics of leadership.

Spring is sprung.

As I contemplate the weather and its effect on my walk to Sainsbury's in another part of the globe there is real trauma. 

The whole of the Middle East is effectively in turmoil. Like fireworks, splashes of light and sparks erupt and die down only to flare up again and again.
Egypt is under the control of a tyrannical government led by General Sisi, a placement by  the West after their fears of another Muslim Caliphate led by Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring.
Geo politics determines the shape and the political constituent of an area but has little or no influence afterwards on the actions and the micro effect on the population. The savage put down of any opposition harks back to Saddam Hussain and Gaddafi and it seems that the intercine conflict between tribes throughout the Middle East has no peaceful solution.
The attack on Mosul is an example.  The ISIS fighters are only marginally more hated than the collaborators who have joined forces to defeat ISIS, have for each other.

 The Iraq Army is mainly Shia, the fighters from the Mosul region are Sunni, as are the majority of the civilians in Mosul, and the strongest element in the force trying to regain Mosul are the Peshmurga, the people from the north of Iraq , Kurds who were dreadfully purged by Saddem's Shia back in the days prior to the Arab Spring.

How joyful that term sounded. An Arab Spring, a people's uprising to throw off the tyranny and scourge of despotic leadership. How it would lead the way to democratic institutions, the rule of law and above all stability.
From Afghanistan to Libya the area is aflame with religious and tribal conflict. The divisions go so deep (632 AD) and lack any sort of resolution. Differences based on historical religious slights and more currently, divergence regarding tribal affairs and tribal boarders which, like family differences smoulder awaiting the smallest draft to fan them into flames again.
In the security of my little house there are no rockets shooting overhead, no religious zealots in the street only Mrs Smith exercising her dog disturbs the peace and quiet.
Spring is a long way off but we know, when it arrives it will bring life and a reawakening of the time immemorial pageant of rebirth that our Spring is famous for.

A Gay Cake

We all have our separate view on virtually everything under the sun and feel this an intrinsic human right. 

Centuries of philosophical debate has led us to test our ability to reason on any subject and we place the action of rational thought at the very highest pinnacle of a civilised society.

The High Courts decision to force a small family run business in Ireland to bake a cake with a design on it which upset them because of its connotation is preposterous. The business's  refusal to bake the cake belong to any one of a number of decisions that any business chooses to make about the way it wishes to precede its business. If it says no I don't want to bake the cake, it should be perfectly in its right to do so, the potential client then has to search and find a company which will do so. I'm sure there are many Gay bakers who will step up to the plate.

 But of course it has nothing to do with the wishes or otherwise of the baker, it is rather the powerful Gay lobby who have chosen to make this yet another 'way point' in their campaign for Gay Rights which unfortunately means inhibiting the rights of others.

I would have thought in this case, "force majeure" should apply, it exempts the contracting parties from fulfilling their contractual obligations for causes that could not be anticipated. Clearly being asked to decorate the cake with a motif that went against their religious convictions was not something that could have been anticipated. Would a Jewish baker be forced to bake a cake in the image of Adolf Hitler, I doubt it.

The Gay lobby, like virtually all minority lobbies seem to carry a lot of clout these days and often get their way. Public opinion it is said is in their favour but I often wonder if this is true. I rather suspect it's the fear of vilification which weighs on all our minds amongst  a society which is weighed down with "politically correct" posturing.

The young couple who refused to bake the cake looked to me like perfectly reasonable articulate people. Their religious preference should not preclude them from saying no.

It's not as if they were the only cake maker in the land. It's another case where poorly worded 'anti persecution' laws are misused, for which the people who wish to represent Gay rights should be ashamed of themselves.

The pleasure in reading

They continue to tumble through the electronic letterbox, books, books on books.  

Is everyone out there writing ?
Perhaps it's mankind's last refuge, writing about the chaos which is all around and which, whilst we now know about it, blow for blow, we also know we can't do a damn thing about it.

Books on economics, books on the part water has played in the history of China, the demise of the Church of England, gun crime in America, the secrecy of the State, and so it goes on. I'm sure many of you would throw up your hand and say "who cares" but it is a fairly recent phenomena, that so many people are writing.

Intellectualising the world around is for some a game for others a pure waste of time but for the chosen few it's their "life force" as they try to come to terms not only with their own lives but the lives of others.
It's a question of how seriously do you mentally venture out into the world or do you rather stay secure at home with only the occasional foray into the "twitter sphere" or "face book".
The content of a normal "tweet" is a few words. It's more an 'aside' than a statement, a retort than a fashioned argument. It's substance is limited by the words, both in number and quality, it limits the depth of engagement to a cursory line and if not, downright abusive, has little to say. It's safe because it reveals so little of you and there is a need these days for anonymity.
Cultural anthropology needs words, it needs language and rhetoric it needs construction and it needs the courage to speak.
We learn by pondering not blindly accepting. We learn by questioning but the questions only have little more than the localised merit, if we confine ourselves to a "twitter" account.
If we wish to engage rather in a world we know little about I would argue that books still bring the best source material. The TV screen is too fleeting, too cursory too much in a rush to capture the next audience.
The silent book, waiting patently, full of information, humour and pathos is a far better companion as the cold winter nights draw in.

With God on your side

Bob Dylan's lyric of the way we are taught to make enemy's, to see the potential for  harm in others especially if they are a different skin colour or speak a different language.

We are brainwashed to follow the political will of whoever is in charge, irrespective of the fact that another political force is inculcating the same hatred towards us.
All our histories are littered with conflict, conflicts which become the stuff of legend, legends our children absorb and in their immature minds, the insecure foundation of history and the nationalistic impediment we all imbibe with the propaganda is born over and over again.
Men have fought battles of which they have no idea of why they are fighting, other than some spurious "Your Country Needs You" poster. They give their lives for some jingoistic claim, often based on a falsehood, without thought. It's amazing.
The call of the Queens shilling, the sound of the regimental band as it marches to the quay draws these young men away from their mothers apron strings into a world they can not imagine, nor would they wish to.
The Americans (and there's some information that the British tried it too) used hallucinatory drugs (LSD) in the Vietnam war to smooth the horror but the broken veterans who returned from Indonesia China to receive the "spite" of a nation not used to loosing was pitiful.
The mournful sound of Dylan's harmonica and his snide lyric which mocks the whole edifice of war and our willingness to be drawn into it. Simple driving chord structure sets the mood for the inevitable thrust forward which is the hallmark of war itself.
Joan Baez rendering of his song has a more reflect approach in her feminist call for peace but Dylan's near inarticulate method of articulating the sadness of histories hubris is the one which drew the hippy revolt out into the open and scared the establishment silly.

Engaging in activity for activities sake.

One of the problems of not belonging to a routine is that without one the lack of structure draws one into the one area that structure still exists, eating.

 The process of preparing and cooking, even the substitute in the day of time, when earring becomes like a post to tie yourself to for an hour or so.

It's a lack of a time line which is the problem. One can make up the day in which ever you wish and equally you can let the day drift. Letting the day drift is a Protestant no no of course. It goes against all the ethic of hard work, of making time pay  of protecting ones self against being lazy.
Our Victorian forefathers had a hierarchy of sins of which being work shy or lazy was right on top of the list. Even when retired, society had its rounds and its protocol. You were part of a show which determined your breeding.
Luckily we are not any more a part of Crufts and can more or less do what we want. Unfortunately after a lifetime of punctuality it's difficult not having anything to be punctual for. The ethic drummed into us from childhood about cleanliness and keeping busy makes us yearn therapy to learn to relax, to do nothing without feeling that it's a crime.
Looked at from the perspective that you only have so much time left (to live) and that you should cram as much into a day as possible. It's a conundrum. If and when you let go of that set of ideals and criteria which are presented as socially acceptable, only to find that in actual fact, society itself is not acceptable, where do you turn. I have to turn elsewhere for inspiration but if the criteria is flawed because the interplay with others is built on the false premise that all are equal what then ?
Food and its preparation is one of the links to ones past which changes little. Perhaps now the food has to be prepared by yourself, but that's no bad thing since if you don't like it, it's no use complaining.
The process of eating is one of those fundamental time clocks, stuck in aspic moments which because we need food we unreservedly set aside time no matter how busy. Even the Victorian overseer allows us pause for a food break so that when we eat this is like an oasis, a period of being off the leash which no one can interfere with. Subliminally we are free from doubt and its one of the reasons we turn towards the kitchen when stuck for anything else to do.
Eating too often and too much produces the very antidote to a busy fruitful life you get fat and more immobile but then it also reminds us that with a good glass of wine 🍷 time brings so many other rewards than simply an opportunity to engage in activity for activities sake.

Distrust is all we have

"Is it" inevitable that we buy goods from an overseas economy so as to present the purchase's as cheap to our own citizens. Affordability is of course important but it begs the question, if a product is not affordable, other than when it is made in a sweat shop in Asia, then it perhaps these goods shouldn't be presented to the population in the first place.

Everything has value and of course it is proportional, so many factors are at play both in the manufacturing country as well as the consuming nation.
Is there somewhere a moral imperative which should make us consider the implications of our purchase and hand in glove with that thought, the moral imperative of the industries, such as advertising, which make enormous amounts of money seeding our minds to purchase things we could well do without.
The questions raised by invoking such concepts as an ethical dilemma and moral imperatives, is indeed fraught with complexity.

As an example, the amazing disparity of views voiced on a radio program this evening called "The Moral Maze" where the participants were asked their views on the numbers immigrants we as a nation should be asked to take into this country as "needy people".

The terms refugee, economic migrant, are the equivalence of needy people and there seemed to be in some of the panellists mind that we have a moral duty to offer all we can irrespective of the cost.
The concept of diminishing returns is well understood but diminishing compassion was a struggle for some. The idea that you should care most for your family, your friends and then your countryman and finally people of different cultures from the other side of the world in descending order, which would in some way inevitably place the immigrant at the back of the queue. This was a total anathema to at least two of the people discussing the current situation. The moral precept was for them a philosophical touch stone based on the concept that we are all part of god's people.
The gulf between the moralist and the pragmatist was never wider and we do a nation no good by placing them in the emotional firing line. We do them no service by manipulating the heart strings with pictures of very young children and then in reality substitute them for young adults on the basis that they too deserve our sympathy.
If the story is corrupted for political ends then the trust is also broken and the tentative relationship between the governor and the governed is broken with serious consequences. That single line of policemen who can hold a baying crowd at bay is part of the trust the people place in a civilised society towards the running of that society.
In my day a single policeman could hold order, today it would take 50 !! That is the measure of the disruption to our psyche which the politician, hand in hand with the immediacy of television and the "sound bite" has brought where now the default position is that, "he/she is lying.
Where is morality when distrust is all we have ?

The village pub

Sitting in the pub with a dog curled around my legs, suddenly the air is filled with a pungent smell, he's farted again (the dog not me). 

It's a rural scene. The small village surrounded by fields the hedgerows are full of game and wildlife. Suddenly the door opens and the men who shoot and their dogs who retrieve come in from a mornings work. But it's hard for a suburban type like me to equate work with killing.
The fields and the 'natural order' are disturbed by mankind's thirst for accountability. The fox is accountable for so many geese the geese are accountable for a nice Christmas meal and there can only be one winner in the man-made abacus of priorities. The shooting of birds is another matter. They too find their way to the table and the taste of wild bird can only be found in the wild. But our taste buds, which in this case crave a flavour, not food to survive, have once again set men in the mould of being the brute. The pheasant, partridges and quails are all game to these chaps as they leave their guns secure in the hatchback and stand, heartily fresh from their early start in the cold air, now snug in the pub laughing at the events of the morning.
Also in the hatchback are the blooded bodies of the birds. An hour or so ago alert to the sight of a mouse as they skimmed the trees oblivious to the power of a high powered shotgun. The bird didn't even hear the bang, the shot had found its mark with unerring accuracy, tearing the beautiful symmetry of bone and feathers, an evolutionary marvel which defines us, enabling the bird able to fly whilst we unerringly are tied to the ground the less graceful species we are.
The dog at my feet sniggers in its sleep, it too is out chasing it's pray but it's only the neighbours cat and only in its dreams, so no harm done.
Another pint please !!

A skeleton in the royal cupboard

Princess Alice of Battenberg.

Now there's a name to conjure with. Member of the royal household, born into that clique of royalty with a silver spoon, a secure home with a family of connections covering all the great(sic) families ranged across Europe.  Ruled by tradition and a succession system which defied understanding.
Protocol was everything and anything "strange" was deemed unacceptable. Princess Alice was unacceptable she suffered from mental aberrations which today might be labelled schizophrenic.
As a member of the royal household she became an embarrassment and was shipped off by her mother to an institution in Switzerland (a country of institutions) where she was incarcerated for a number of years.
She was the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, who went on to marry the Queen and whilst Philip as a child fell under the influence of Lord Mountbatten he was only reunited with his mother not long before he married Elizabeth. Alice appears in the ceremonial pomp as a stranger amongst the renamed Windsor's and even more so when on the day of the Coronation. Here she appears, dressed as a nun striding down the cathedral aisle, solitary amongst the finery of the noble houses of European aristocracy.
Clearly at odds with the strict protocol of the upper classes she must have been an embarrassment but given her illness and incarceration, her rejection by her mother and eventually her husband she had the tenacity of character not to wilt and become inconsequential. She founded a religious order and did much good work amongst the poor in Greece. Perhaps the rebellious nature of her son, his unwillingness to follow the Household line, his blunt undiplomatic talk are a carry over from his mother who was in the end more than a match for royal protocol.

Too ridiculous to be true

I know I am becoming a sceptic but after all the fan-fare of the UK taking in the "children" who were living in the refugee camp at Calais I fully expected to see some of the small children we have become accustomed to see wandering about the camp.

When the bus pulled up and the "children" disembarked, I was surprised  to see fully grown teenagers leaving the bus, no sign of the young children who the "press" have been illustrating as the need for immediate action, softening the public up for us to accept them as quickly as possible.

Has everything become a question of smoking mirrors. Is nothing as it seems. Can we believe in anything we read, or watch on the media or is it all a story line written by a shadowy guiding hand.
We are fallible, increasingly exposed to a cacophony of information, not necessarily from reliable sources (an increasingly difficult concept) but from amateur footage sown together in a ménage of kaleidoscopic images which show the immediacy of the event without giving much perspective. It was always the problem with photography, the shot was a contrived effect, a mixture of exposure and aperture speed with a little, out of focus thrown in for good measure.
The bombed out shots of Aleppo are an example. From the scene more Dresden like each day how can anyone live under such conditions and yet in a few hours of ceasefire people emerge and begin to carry on their lives as normal. The bombed out ruin and disintegration which we see is real but the extent of the devastation must be limited otherwise no one would still be alive.
And so it is with everything.  We are treated to a fantasy world of telescopic lenses, close ups of a specific drama and encouraged to think that its general. We have no way of navigating ourselves through this crazy melange this jumbled mess, this confusion, this hotchpotch of truth and fiction.
For mental survival we begin to look away, we become sceptical, we become agnostic in our deliberation unable to comprehend from our relative security and the democratic assumptions we take for granted that this other world exists.
As the children become young adults and the bomb creators reveal life living amongst them, as the starving continue to procreate adding further misery to their lives is it not all too much, too ridiculous to be actually true.

No sovereignty no democracy

No sovereignty and no democracy.

This was the corner piece of my decision to vote to leave the EU. It was not about immigration, although our dreadfully poor record of building for an expanding community in this country made the decision, to have a hand in who comes here very important. It was not the "Employment Market" taking the opportunity to reduce the cost of labour which worried me because, by taking back sovereignty we could address these problems and if they were not addressed, then politically we had the opportunity, through the democratic mandate, to change the government.

Dr Schauble's Europe has little or no truck with the need for sovereignty or a democratic mandate.

While members of the European Council and the Eurogroup are individually elected politicians answerable theoretically to national parliaments, the Council and the Eurogroup are not collectively answerable to any parliament. Moreover the Eurogroup where all the important economic decisions are taken is a body that doesn't even exist in European law, that keeps no minutes of its procedures and who's rule is that it's deliberations are private and confidential and not to be shared with Europe's citizenry.

Just as Prussia enticed and then swallowed the smaller German states encouraging them to believe they would be stronger within Zollverein only to dismantle it soon after so the Euro project, very much under the sway of Germany has historical precedence.

Surely it is argued, there is no room for small sovereign states in this global society. Yet small sovereign states like  Iceland retain the authority to make there own laws and hold their elected officials to account. There is no similar sort of accountability shown by the European Council or the Eurogroup. Everything is done behind closed doors and in secret without public scrutiny.

Surely this is enough reason for our wanting to leave. Never mind the economic down-turn, that can be remedied but the democratic fault lines built into the "project" from its conception are much more dangerous since, without accountability who knows where events, conceptualised in smoke filled rooms will take us.

Speaking truth to power

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Following my Blog about the justification or otherwise, my claim that the anti-Semite lobby are not only over the top in their attempt to close down discussion on the whys and wherefore of of Judaism but do their cause great harm. Program after program bring the subject up, hours of discussion reminding us of the evils of anti-seminitism.  It's as if there is an agenda, a lobby who will not let the matter rest.

If you say something often enough it becomes established, it becomes the de facto position which everyone confirms is theirs. It's a well established tactic if you want to alter a societies freedom to think for itself. 

I was listening to a debate on Feminism only this morning and it was significant, of how angry and how intolerant of the anti-feminist views which were being expressed by another woman who's pitch was that the feminists were in danger of driving a wedge between men and women rather an trying to assimilate a union. Both feminists were well known female politicians.  I have never seen them as angry on a subject. It occurred to me that if they could express such vehemence on matters of real social divergence we might have even better more realistic political outcomes which is surely why we voted for them.

The intensity and the vehemence of the put downs seemed directly in proportion to some sort of 'blind intolerance' of any other take on the matter. It seemed impossible to give an inch or to accept that anyone can hold an alternate view and still be socially benign. The extremists are the "others", the only intolerant people are those who tolerate another interpretation.

In so many ways the definition of "fascist" comes to mind. A fascist is a person who is; authoritarian, totalitarian, dictatorial, autocratic and undemocratic.  

The pressure and the blind surety of purpose describe so many of the protagonists who fall under the banner, advocates of Political Correctness. There is no debate, they have centre stage, in their minds they occupy the only stage.  There can be no discussion since to discuss the subject would allow just a chink of light which might, in itself throw greater light on the complexity which is society itself. The shades and variation in the human story have no place in their fascist agenda. 

"Speaking truth to power" has no place in their modus operandi.

What does it mean to be - anti semitic

Is it possible in this country to be anti Semitic ?

The confusion arises in the concept of, 'who are the Jews' who are protected by reason of our race laws, which protect people of race being collectivised and critiqued.

Are the Jews a nation, or a specific race of people. If they are a race and notwithstanding what the Old Testament says about them being Gods Chosen People, then they come from an Arabic genetic pool and therefore, if we criticise any Arab nation as a group,  we are applying the same sort of racism. 

If the Jews are a nation and have 'parliamentary representation', through their Knesset, then the actions of their parliamentarians can be criticised.

The Holocaust was such a dreadful event, a deep  scar in mankind's history, (along with the millions murdered in the Soviet Union by Stalin, in China by Moa Tse-tung, Pol Pot  and the butchery which still goes on in Africa), that world opinion gave them special rights.

The Nazi campaign against the Jews was a madness which stunned everyone especially as one saw news reels of the people in the concentration camps as the Allies swept over Europe, living skeletons, people made inhuman by others who had total power and felt themselves invulnerable.

The genius and special talent of the Jewish people has always played an important part in the economic direction in many countries and because economics has a role in apportioning the wealth of a country and the equity its people receive, the poor outcome of their involvement taints them.

It's no accident that Goldman Sachs, a largely Jewish led financial investment bank, tinkered with the financial fluidity regarding Greece and was a major contributor to the desperate condition the Greeks now find themselves in. The question is  can they be criticised as a bank but not as an institution led and influenced by Jewish thinking. 

One is not creating a catch all situation where every Jew carries the stigma of gross financial manipulation but one would be crass if one didn't equate the fact that many of the banks are run and owned by Jewish families and perhaps the one industry which has become mired in corruption is the banking industry.

The power of the Jewish lobby in the American Congress is well known. The power of the pork (which incidentally is amusing) meaning to vote which ever way the money lies is a constituent part of American politics, the power of the corporate largess to influence the political outcome is particularly strong in a fraternity who recognise their own race to the exclusion of others.

These sort of statements are rapidly becoming persona non grata in this country as the press and media hound out any sort of disquiet or criticism. 

At this very moment the Labour Party is being repeatedly brought to task for having anti semites amongst its members. Their anti Semitic statements are never broadcast for evaluation only the damming word "anti Semitic" which like racist, homophobe, sexist, are words which are enough to close down any further debate and in themselves are close to a sort of "totalitarian fascism".

Innocence or guilt

Profiling. We all do it. We all put two and two together in coming to a conclusion, we draw conclusions based on statistics and our own prejudice.

In the United States a person arrested of a crime is required to complete a questionnaire and amongst the questions, one simple and obvious one is "have you ever committed a crime in the past". It seems at first glance, innocuous and to the point but it is claimed it is prejudicial when applied to a black person if that person lives in a certain area.

Algorithms have been compiled which 'statistically'  prove that a person of a certain race are more likely to commit a crime if they come from a certain area. The argument goes that because there are more black people in that area, any crime committed is likely to be committed by a black person.

Statistically correct but is it justice. Should a person be judged to be innocent until proved guilty, or can his/her guilt be presumed by association.

The questionnaire is now being deemed racially prejudiced because whilst it does not ask for the persons race it is assumed that coming from the area the person will be black and by assumption that because they are black and coming from the area they will be guilty if they admitted that they had committed previous crimes.

How precarious is justice. The other question, how important is the protection of people in keeping criminals off our streets. Is it a price worth paying that an innocent man is put behind bars lest the same man is actually guilty and goes on to committed some horrendous crime.

Is the crime against an innocent person worth more than a crime against a person who lives a marginalised life in a crime ridden area.

If we assume that "everyone" is innocent unless caught with evidence to the contrary then profiling is wrong and the algorithms have no value in a court of justice. If on the other hand there are a whole set of prejudicial facts about a person which can be brought into play and used as building blocks to profile the likelihood of guilt, is likelihood a sufficient claim to take away a persons liberty.

A footballer the other day was released from prison for raping a woman because new evidence had been led that the woman had had an almost identical case denied and that her claim "to have been raped" was one she had used before. The judgement was that there was sufficient doubt as to the veracity of her story and the footballer was released. 

Part of our judicial system in this country usually precludes previous cases from being cited in a new case.  Each is judged on its own merit but in this case it was allowed because of the symmetry of each case.  Women's rights groups are up in arms because they say that the past history of a woman in this sort of case has no relevance.

That aside, the assumption that previous association, be it because you come from a black neighbourhood or because you were, in the past promiscuous, has no baring on your innocence or otherwise.

I did it my way.

It's an interesting thought that the will and determination to remove boarders in Europe for the economic prosperity of the continent as a whole is not the work of Jean Monnet but goes back further. "The new Europe of solidarity and cooperation amongst all its peoples, a Europe without unemployment without monitory crisis will find an assured foundation and rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic barriers are removed", so said Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Propaganda Chief.

It's slightly chilling to think that the "European Project" was conceived by the Nazi government and whilst the means dictate the ends and we are far from the totalitarian concepts of the Nazi Party in today's Germany, the seed of a united Europe have been around in that country for a very long time. To conquer by the might of arms, or by the force of economic might is not purely semantic but the ends do justify the means.

Tracing a thread from Kaiser Wilhelm to Mrs Merkel is a difficult proposition but there has been in the German psyche an assumption of superiority which has been shown to be true so many times that you can't afford to ignore it. The discipline and a willingness to be coerced as a nation, a national temperament willing to be led, has tremendous advantages over a nation like the French who pride themselves on the strength and importance of individualistic liberte. We, like the French find authority difficult, we rail against common cause, we question leadership and find that believing in ourselves is somehow pompous.

One of my founding reasons for wishing not to continue in the European Project was that I feared a world of plasticity where you had to fit some sort of Germanic inspired template. 

We are not widgets in a manufactures assembly line, often we will do irrational things and the cause for which we struggle does not have to be measured by our ability to succeed .

The economic prerogative is an artificial one. Obviously there are needs, to feed, clothe and put a roof over ones head are usually considered essential but 'what you eat', 'what you wear' and 'where you live' should be your choice, not a statistic in some sort of economic plan or an essential component of some multinational company's balance sheet.

I am not drawn to clubs or routine engagements. I much prefer the chance occurrence, the unplanned event in which you are as much a spectator as participant.

It's all very un-Germanic and whilst I won't be around to take advantage of our new found freedom, it will be as much as it can be, freedom. 

Freedom to make mistakes, freedom to experiment with the choices which appear out of nowhere and above all freedom to look back and, as Sinatra would say, "I did it my way" 

Donald Trump an enigma

Watching a film made for the BBC the interviewer Emily Maitles, who often presents BBC's News Night took us through the glitzy world of Donald Trump. This was Trump before he became mired in his attempt to become the President of the United States.

I have always eschewed extravagance, the overt over the top lifestyles, the glamour of exclusivity. Perhaps it was a method of inoculating myself mentally from something I was never going to aspire to.
It's a method I have used all my life. Never browse through adverts for things which are out of reach, have the ability to see yourself as who you are, warts and all, and rather be the plebeian down to earth chap who sees value not in a things price tag but in its utility.
Donald Trump is none of these things.

 He is the ultimate showman, he wheels and deals, he creates a world in his own image 'where what you are is only what others see'.

Ruthless, he sits atop of a world where he disdains most people for not being as rich as he is, for not flaunting your wealth in the way he does, for not branding the world with the name Trump.
It's easy to see how he has got himself into political hot water. His world is entirely of his own making, what he wants he gets, one way or another. The hubris of a presidential candidate is dwarfed by his hubris of believing in who he is. The fact that I don't like what I see is irrelevant in his world of mirrors in which he only sees himself.
The sheer opulence of his creations, the price tag for only one night, well beyond my means makes his world phoney in the sense that it is and will always be un-affordable to most of us. The distance between my portion of the planet and his has to be dealt with by my declaring it false, contrived, artificial but of course if I were extremely wealthy perhaps I would try it out, perhaps I would go in for some pampering but when I came to write my blog at night, I doubt if the gold plated bath tap would feature in my stories.

The SNP

 I have been watching and listening to the Scottish National Party's annual conference.

The mass influx of SNP parliamentarians into Westminster, 54 in number, now present a phalanx of parliamentary opposition which is united in its opposition as much as the Labour Party seem disunited.

There has always been a tendency of people in England to be high minded about the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish. It's as if these nations are seen as pesky children who should hold their tongues  when the parent is around. 

Of course the financial/manufacturing strength has always been in England. The ruling authority resided in London. Initially the King and now Parliament, saw Scotland, Wales and Ireland as countries initially won with force of arms and subsequently  amalgamated into the parliamentary system. Recently with the further loosening of power devolved parliaments have come into being in each country's.

From the English position of an imaginary parent, it's been difficult to let go.  We are always reminding these recalcitrant children of where their pocket-money comes from.

Watching and listening to the various parties one is struck by the much more down to earth approach when the SNP come together. The stiff structure of Westminster is shown up for what it is, an anachronism. 

In England we place such high regard on the traditional nature of our 'unwritten constitution', with common law based on  incremental evidence, gathered over time. Decisions come, not from fundamental belief, set down in a Constitutions such as in America and latterly South Africa but rather we prefer to bumble along, piece meal with a sticking plaster here and a band-aid there.

Listening to a female SNP MP describing the situation when she attended a committee meeting with her young children and, when the youngest full asleep, she naturally picked the child up to comfort it on her knee. Up leapt a "functionary"and said "it was not allowed".

Apparently the child was ok to be in the meeting but the moment the child required  physical support it broke a rule which denies "strangers" access to the member when they are taking part in a meeting. One would have thought that a woman's child could hardly be called a stranger but in the terms of Parliamentary rules it seem it was. 

How ridiculous and how real and relative it made the SNP parliamentarians seem to the procedure witnessed coming from the Speakers Chair and the arcane way that business is processed through the chamber. 

As a show it has merit, as a method of holding government to account, I wonder ?

Wells Fargo

   

The subject today is Wells Fargo. Yes you remember Wells Fargo. If you went as I did to the cinema when you were young. Wells Fargo was the stage coach Company which ran horse drawn coaches that thundering across the screen to the "he-harr" cry of the driver to his team of horses to pull more and keep up the schedule. Often you had cowboys or Indians racing behind shooting at the coach since apart from the passengers they also carried the takings of the small town bank.  This was the beginnings of a banking system of which Wells Fargo rose to be the third largest bank in the USA.
So from being the good guy with the baddies streaming in their wake, they are now the baddies having been caught creating false  accounts amongst the lowest rank of depositors and charging these people for accounts which were fraudulent and imaginary.
The CEO, John Stumpf appeared before a Senate Committee a couple of days ago and was thoroughly condemned by the committee for his stewardship of the bank over a period where over 2 million fake accounts including credit card accounts were falsely entered on the banks books . Whilst staff lower down the banking hierarchy have been indicted for the crime, he was allowed to escape criminal proceedings and its only today that he has resigned, with of course the comfort of the usual financial parachute in place to feather bed his future life that the dreadful deceit of the banking industry takes yet another turn.
It's a parallel universe to sit at the top of these powerful organisations where, not only do they seem immune from the law but irrespective of what they do are rewarded by separation packages which are worth more than a lifetimes earnings for the ordinary bank employee.
It's the immoral face of capitalism. It prospers regardless of the ignominy  regardless of public opinion, regardless of common law and the laws which would apply to us. Governments are complicit in the scandals by their lack of action, as we see, time and again, the senior members of a companies executive walk away with little more than a slap on the wrist.
How corrupt has our world become, how corrupt the real politik when real criminals are beyond the law whilst, for the ordinary man or woman, the parking ticket is rigorously enforced.

Turning over a new leaf

The air waves are awash with the claims and counter claims. Were we lied to regarding Brexit proposition. 

As the pound falls to levels not seen in decades and Unilever having informed Tesco that their goods are going up 20% and Tesco replying that they won't therefore stock Unilever.  A start one presumes to other companies being forced to adjust prices relative to sterling and the dollar.
The "Remain" camp warned of this they cry, particularly Mark Carney the Governor of the Bank of England and George Osborne the Chancellor. Osborne particularly was hysterical in his dire warning of what would happen if we left the cosy club of the EU.
Well it is happening and we haven't even left, so one should ask the question why ?
If our trade routes are still in tact, if the financial mechanism is still operating, if nothing has changed. We haven't yet singled that we have started the process of leaving, why are the markets in turmoil.
Perhaps the term market is misleading. To be in a market presumes some sort of trading arrangement based on the position of seller and buyer. Perhaps 'way-back-when', this was indeed the case but not now. 

Everything is a cartel. The moves in the cartel are dictated, not by market forces but by the political motives of the major cartel players who in fact control the cartel.
Finance is manipulated by the Central Banks. The distribution of finance (lending) is controlled by the banks themselves. The shareholders of the banks (often finance funds in their own right) control or influence the direction in which the bank moves its business.
The multinationals who diversify their holdings are dependent on the banks for finance, the medium to small business even more so and so we go on. Each part of the global jigsaw interdependent and each susceptible to finance.
Why has sterling fallen against the dollar and the Euro when nothing has changed. It's called sentiment. The international sentiment has changed just like sentiment can change between human beings, and the basis for the change is a lack of surety when one of the band of brothers breaks free and decides to strike out on their own.
Can 'independence' be obtained in this tight web of Wall Street controlled global economics. Are the constraints simply too strong to break away.
If one takes the analogy of the child breaking away from home, the stresses are often deep but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. The root, re-potted in different soil prospers and becomes a hybrid.
Perhaps we as a country will have to become a hybrid. Perhaps our roots were becoming root-bound, perhaps we needed the compost of new ideas, a sense of our entitlement re-rooted. Re-examining how far we had become an appendage of the European experiment and the Global experiment, drifting along with little or no need to do anything unless asked.
Certainly we are in poor condition. Our industries have been allowed to fail, our skills likewise and whilst we called ourselves the 5th largest economy in the world we were little more than a warehouse. A holding shed for a society reliant on credit which the banks, defining our needs fed us, like the "Drug Barron" feeds its users.
Perhaps like the detox clinc we can wean ourselves off "stuff". We can build our lives around the things we need, not the things we want.
We don't need to be the 5th largest or the 7th or the 10th so long as we are solvent. So long as the structure of our society is more caring, less judgemental, less acquisitive more proud of what it makes and the skills it equips it people with to make them.
There are many small nations, (and we are a small nation), who are proud to be who they are and represent what they value.
If Scotland and Ireland become truly independent is that such a bad thing. Have the wars we fought to bind this collection of small nations, Britain, not taught us that there was never a true meeting of minds and that the seed of independence went  far deeper than the political construction.
Do we really need a seat at the top table of the United Nations. Isn't that game played out with our near impoverishment after the two world wars.
Give it to Germany at least they can afford it.
Restructure our needs in accordance with our ability to pay for it. You don't have to Dickens to understand the logic.
Take out the extravagance, take out the falsifying diet of things available all the year around in the supermarket. Cheapness based on the in-affordability of the supplier to produce.
Cut back or cut out the overseas holiday, make it an obsession to buy British and if it isn't available ask why. Re-incentivise our productive capacity by demanding we make it.
It will be more expensive but at least the merry go round of money it will be ours and not belong to some far flung corporation.
Above all re galvanise our sense of who we are, not by what we own but in how we evaluate our lives emotionally.
Above all have some ambition and rid ourselves of the self doubt.