Perhaps they'll listen now

 

The issue of having so many Scots holding high places in Parliament and other places of importance in England it is argued by Baroness William, Shirley Williams in her Charles Kennedy lecture is due to the curricula of the Scottish educational system.
Charles Kennedy stands in a line of successful Scottish politicians who came South to integrate themselves into British politics. The list is long and there have been times when it was difficult to find a Minister without a Scottish brogue. On all sides of the House the Scots have made themselves felt and it was suggested by Shirley Williams that this is something to do with the tradition and breadth of commitment to the school debating society and the school rivalry in being chosen best debating school in Scotland.
Apart from the Oxbridge debating pool at university the schools in England and Wales are less enthusiastic about parading their minds in debating skills.
It could be argued that debating a subject is second best to 'rolling up ones sleeves and doing something' but interestingly the power to do something comes from being recognised by ones peers through the province of debating. Oratory has always played an important part in persuasion. Lloyd George, Aneurin Bevan, Winston Churchill, all rose to the top through oratory. Of course there had to be much more than a gift of words but words worked their magic of persuasion and persuasion won votes.
The Scotish school system places high value on debate, the ability to defend or persuade on any topic irrespective of whether you are a believer or not. It's a skill not an ideology and in the powerful world of politics it's the only armoury you have.
And so armed with this tool they come down to London to test their skill against the less equipped English and Welsh (although the sound of Dylan's magical phrasing comes into my mind and asks why).
Perhaps it's the Presbyterian spirit set against the privilege of the public school boy. Aristocracy has its hold over the Scotish as it has the English but it's a more clan based earthy substitute, closer to the people than the snobbery evinced by the Southerner.
Perhaps thrift cleanses the soul and helps focus the mind on the particular. Perhaps the deep resentment felt by the Scots towards the English makes them work harder, want more, search to find a lever or two of their own to make their voice heard above the sanctimonious braying of the English.
Charles Kennedy was something of a tortured individual in that he was too true to his ideals. Not devious enough to monitor the content of the forces against him, including those within his own party, to willing to take on face value what he was told, not enough of a sceptic to treat the political environment for what it is, a cesspool of intrigue.
His Achilles heel was his liking for whisky and with so many people it became a withdrawal process from the harsh reality of the day job.
He committed suicide rather than carry on. A fine caring individual was buried under the crass machination of his peers.
The sound of Don McLeans lyric song Vincent comes to mind.

"How you tried to set them free,
They did not listen. They did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now".

Cleanliness

Cleanliness is a tricky subject. To some it's a passport to heaven since without it, you surely go to hell. To others it's a fuss about nothing.

When does cleanliness become dirt. It's a question many a housewife has struggled with as they see much through the prism of what will Mrs Hardbottom will think.

The concern that women have for their appearance is extended into being "house -proud" it's a form of insecurity of an over-education when young by their mothers about the format of life and how "what other people think", is important.

Scruffiness was never an attractive feature but many lasses carry this crippling burden around in their lives of, what will people think if I don't spend money on cosmetics and the latest anti ageing cream. But leaving that thorny subject aside what about "cleanliness".

As you may be aware I have had the pleasure of the two women in my life visiting me for Christmas. It's been great to have them once again under my roof, the sound of conversation, the ability to take up tea and toast in the morning, the cooking and then there's the shopping !!

Unfortunately there is also a regime of feminine prejudice regarding my curtains, the dusting and finally the A Team arrived with scrubbing brushes and busta stuff to overhaul the kitchen. It's not that I don't clean, it's not that I don't keep things tidy (a con session done away with by the swelling of people and parcels) it's just like everything with a man "it's proportional". I have no fear of the rye comment or the innuendo, I am above being concerned at what "others" think, what's the use of turning yourself inside out on what others might or might not think.

The image of the woman on her knees scrubbing and burnishing the front step of a terraced house was iconic in the 40s and 50s. It represented not only thrift but a proud outlook towards the immediate world on her doorstep. It was one way of sending out a message that we are equal if not better.

The man off to work before the sun rose had other worries, his mind lay outside the home, and rather in his place of work, his sport and his politics. His congregation was different and the topics they discussed didn't include cleanliness. 

Today the workforce is vastly changed as are the responsibilities the different gender assume but there is still a lingering fundamental difference between the outlook of a man and a woman. No matter how "they" try to change us and meld us closer to their ideal, we refuse to be swayed by the imagined concerns of propriety. We cling to our individuality we are proud of our individuality, our individuality is what marks us like the urination of an animal, we mark out our ground by the speciality we see for ourselves and whilst cleanliness is important it is not the "do all" I have just been subjected to.

That's not to say I'm not grateful. The house is spic and span, well at least the parts the laser of famine approval sought out for improvement. The caustic comments went over my head but it once more reinforced how different we are,  "long live the difference".

A short wave radio geek

With internet streaming from Tunin Radio the whole planet is opened up at the touch of a button.

I remember in the "old days" tuning in with my faithful Nordmende Globetrotter  short wave receiver to programs from across the world. With ever so fine tuning the short wave spectrum was spread across a number of bands as you tweeked the tuning knob just a little to find the signal. Lots of static, lots of noise and whistles and then out of the either there she was the signal and the voice you were looking for. The imagination flew to the country or the city the broadcast was being sent from, this was especially true if it was music. Strange to our ears, the sound of Chinese music discordant but mystical or the beautiful  melodious voices calling the faithful to prayer from Tehran, seeped in the sands of time, a call as regular as the BBC pips.
Crouched over the tuning dial the world was your oyster as you sought to escape or get into contact. The familiar strains of the BBCs signature tune meant you were in London, back home amongst the wet busy streets, close by on the dial  the sound of an Aussie in Alice swotting flies, or the husky sophistication of a deep throated American voice announcing the next play of a modern jazz theme. South American music or the improvisation of a Congolese station were all there to pull you away and excite the imagination.
Today it's too clinical, too easy. The fun of the find has been taken out of your hands by technology. The Crystal clear signal comes as if from next door, it has been neutered of distance and mystique, the flies and the sand have been removed. The traditional garb the smells of the cooking pot transformed into an antiseptic studio with a white shirted announcer perched in front of a microphone, much the recent global content of uniformity. Certainly a far cry from the fetish of a seasoned shortwave receiver geek with his Ariel strung across the garden, a specialised computation of length to the wave spectrum designed for optimum signal strength. Late at night when the atmospherics were best and the reflective layers in the ionosphere worked towards good propagation one listened, mesmerised to a world going about its business, a world so rich in variance, so different to ones own patch, a place to visit and explore.
Today the Aussie farmer is bemoaning the drought or the price he is getting for his wool,
a whole different compartment in the train leading us to the same destination. The forest fires or the flooding are dreadful in their local content but no less down to earth is to hear a local station in Louisiana talk of the disintegration of their suburban environment or the excited chatter between two people in Brazil discussing their music and a festival soon to take place.
The world going about its business puts a perspective on our own lives and the norms we carry around in our heads.
We are blessed with Radio 4 and so much of the BBCs output. The impact of the tight broadcasting format has produced professionalism and when I listen to the gibberish that often takes the place of serious discussion on perhaps 702 in South Africa I must stop and remind myself that Radio reflects so much else than the spoken word and a nation evolving with a people who for the first time have a voice is indeed a wonderful thing.

One persons truth is another's falsehood

Isn't it strange how something which is perfectly plausible to some is implausible to others. From religion to politics from teams you support to cultural differences which make us miles apart in terms of our understanding.

The liberal call to uniformity of purpose is nearly impossible if so many entrenched ideologies exist and are slavishly followed. If individual prejudice, born of childhood experience separates us and enslaves us in our own private ghetto, when can we fruitfully see the others point of view.
This is not the prerogative of a cult leader, it includes the Pope, all political leaders, fans of Manchester United as well as believers in a flat earth. The scope of our belief and our understanding is limited by our personal experience which is so varied that it is a wonder two people can agree.
Much depends on how willing we are to defend on opinion. Most people prefer the quiet life, many have surrendered there opinion to others such as a "headline" from the newspaper or a glib one liner from a talk given in a news bulletin.

Seeking your version of the truth depends on your willingness to look outside your immediate environment and one of the easiest ways to do this is to read a range of opinion from people who have themselves made the effort. But always remember you are an reading opinion just as slanted as yours which might be no closer to "the truth", (what ever that might mean) !

One persons truth is another's falsehood, or rather somewhere in between and given the lack of any sort of mean between us, what does the surety of the Pope or the Dalai Lama amount to. Is blind faith nothing more than blind. Is our commitment towards the  specific knowledge/experienced we all hold, nothing more than a personal mirage.
Once a thing is known it is never unknown, only added to.

Being a Troll

 So I am a troll !!   In internet slang a troll is a person who sows discord on the net by starting arguments or upsetting people and by posting inflammatory, extraneous, off topic messages.

The term is a catch all phrase, much like racist, homophobic, misogynist, it covers such a plethora of intention that it closes down sensible comment and discussion.
Much of what is meaningful in communication has an element of healthy questioning, even of disagreement. No proposition is so true that it can't be questioned, all dialogue is made meaningful by acting "devils advocate", suggesting an alternate line of reasoning that perhaps hadn't occurred to the person you are writing to. Of course in an age where reasoned discussion has been ditched for the simple Twitter page, "a content minimising format" to match the current limited attention span we find popular these days.
The old fashioned shorthand ttfn has morphed into lol, thx, wtf, btw, and such is our hurry, such is the pace of life we have to dispense with any form of old fashioned word -craft.
So I am a troll because I question and seek answers which are not the standard patter one has come to expect. Given a point of view I sometimes challenge it to make sure the person is convinced of their facts. Hearing a platitude or cliche, listening to prejudice or unthinking religiosity I feel it incumbent to put another point of view or challenge the basic hypothesise. If this is being a Troll then we need more of them.
We need more reasoned discussion, we need reasoned doubt, we need an alternative to the blind acceptance which is so often taken for the norm these days, we need to counter self serving acquiescence for the sake of peace and security, we need to be brave and challenge all ideas which are not our own and welcome it when someone challenges us.

Truth holds no attraction when you can construct your own.

The tremors felt across the globe by the politically astute, regarding Brexit and the Trump election both signify a pull back from open door liberalism into a more traditional insular, nationalistic mode has caused the academic to ask questions, is this a swing which will bring back the competitive self-serving philosophy which produced two world wars.

The problem with political commentary is that it freely beats itself up with projections of doom and gloom. The political animal matches the 'inherent selfishness' that often lies within nations, given the vast scale of under-over achievement attainable within the society living there. If the liberal agenda turned its attention outwards on the disparity in distant lands and forgot the desperate plight of its own citizen, then the backlash, when it came, upset the cozy assumptions of decades. That we could ignore with impunity  the 'local yokel' or at least pacify him with trinkets.
Both in the States and here, that assumption has come crashing down and the psychological format that assumed that the "world view" was the way forward for prosperity, with the equally banal supposition that everyone would eventually prosper is shown to be flawed.

In this country the danger in not building affordable houses or attempting to limit the inflow of other people, particularly when here one celebrates the institutions of a 'benefit culture' now designed to address every minor disfigurement and a 'health system' proud to claim that it treats everyone equally, free at the point of need. 

With such an attractive touchstone our society holds enormous attraction in a world where, with very few exceptions there is nothing to compare and where sickness and real poverty are the norm.
Liberalism never dealt with the actuality. The accountancy was simply too boring to banish the bright light of philosophical expectancy.
Of course in their favour, the liberals light shone on the human condition, not from a parochial position but was inclusive of all human beings. 

It's antithesis, fascism and in its extreme state, nihilism, are on the increase, neither particularly attractive but reminiscent of the not too distant past. Nationalism has within it some of the elements of both as it seeks to identify the differences between us individually and collectively as a nation. It feeds the cult of being special and the jingoism is easily fed by a reprehensible media/press. We see it every day in the slanted commentaries and untruths peddled by people with an axe to grind.
Truth holds no attraction when you can contrive your own.

Happy Christmas

"On Christmas Day", "On Christmas Day" as the song goes, we gather to open presents and wish each other Happy Christmas. A ritual made much more exciting when children are around and the fable of Father Christmas is bright within their eyes. 

Mummy, Daddy he's been, the excited voices drift up from downstairs, the Christmas Tree having magically been transformed with packages, the mince pies eaten as Santa maintains the vision of 'shared goodwill' across the streets and hedgerows. There will be a special feeling of Happy Christmas" amongst the neighbours as the children try out the new bicycle or rush off to their friends nearby to discuss what they got for Christmas.
With a credit card having transformed Christmas into an orgy of giving and spending its  far removed from the austerity of my own childhood but those austere days bring a simplistic glow as my parents did their best to fill the stocking tied to the end of my bed.
It was no less magical because the gifts were smaller less glitzy. Father Christmas had been and the mystique held one more year, that of a fat man in a red suit drawn by reindeer sweeping across the sky, squeezing down the chimney with my gifts was too precious to loose.

The excited squeaks, the sound of paper being torn from those so carefully wrapped presents, the hopefully gleeful sound of pleasure as the gift meets approval, all this is in the past now but it brings happy memories of the years when we smiled with satisfaction having brought it off once again.

Every year these days we remind each other "no gifts" but each year like a broken election promise we sneak out and buy just that little something to avoid the embarrassment of 'receiving' yet empty handed you protest "but you said". Because it's simpler it doesn't lack the appreciation and amongst the clatter of cooking and the smell of the roast turkey the table will be littered with nicks and nacks, last minute ideas settled in amongst the socks, a glimmer of the thought that went into the choosing, a measure that someone cared enough to go out and try.
It's the essence of Christmas that we remember each other. The phone call, or more often, the Skype or FaceTime call to friends and family. It's a moment to reflect that the address book has entry's that are no longer available, that this year a call to someone you love is no longer possible. It's the accountancy of old age but there are still enough to make the morning a happy time to ring and say hello.
The weather still seems abnormally warm. No sign of snow this year, my bed has the minimal duvet on it and the usual chill when you have to go to the toilet on a call of nature is not the torment it usually is at this time of the year. I don't know what the nocturnal animals make of it all but I can well do without the cold.
Angela and Marie are with me so we will soon be up and about, perhaps a walk on the river bank or through the Hatfield forest would be nice except Marie finds walking too far, a pain so perhaps another cup of tea and a mince pie will suffice !!!
Happy Christmas to you all !!! 😘

Who are the prisoners

 The riots in our jails remind us of how poorly our system of governance really is.

Democracy suggests that the collective will of the people will eventually find its way to the top through the process of elections, elections which are supposed to convey what the people seeking election promise the electorate on the assumption that the politician will put into place what they said they would.
Of course we know this is a sham. Promises made through "election pledges" are not worth the paper they are printed on and a Minister worth his salt can soon find reasons for ignoring any election commitment.
Ministers are promoted by some strange osmosis, they come and go, they are reshuffled into positions for which they have no experience and still less expertise.
To see Liz Truss and her startled face at the dispatch box, fielding questions about a crisis in the manning scale of prison officers within the prison system and the apparent breakdown of control is pitiful. The severe reduction of over a third of prison officers since 2007 is coming home to roost as the Prison Officers Federation said it would but the blatant stonewalling of "The Minister" spitting out platitudes and hyperbole as if truth were a commodity so rare that anything else would do. 
We hear it so often, the fine phrases, the impossibly benign objectives offered as a palliative for real action.
In virtually every political space, truth is a casualty, it has no place in the lexicon of a politician, it is superfluous, in fact it is dangerous since it resides in the real world and not the made up world of the paid up politician.
The Dispatch Box, that lectern of political oratory must have more than its fair share of deceit and downright scandalous misappropriation of "the people's" trust. The great and the powerful have all lied through their hind teeth and whilst certainly not great or perhaps good, Liz Truss is but the latest to diffuse our hope in an honest broker to represent us.
  

Attendance is what matters

 

 I was reminded once again last night by "you know who" that I am a sad git because I watch the parliamentary channel, not so much the debates in the House of Commons  but the sittings of the various committee hearings. The claim is why do you bother, you aren't there, you can't take part and the exercise is pointless.

Well of course it is pointless in that sense but then so is so much of what we read and watch. We do it as an exercise in trying to make sense of the world around us, trying to educate ourselves, not so much to effect external change but to come to terms with an internal change as we learn what is in store for us in the future.
The Lords were having a hearing on the funding of the NHS and its poor orphan the Social Care offered outside hospital.
From the entrepreneur who ran a thing called Global Services, a sort of think tank looking at best practice across the world who was very persuasive in a marketing sort of way, to the Governments Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Scientific Advisor and a Professor who's expertise lay in his study of the growing disconnect within society as a whole, the Attainment Deficit which causes so much stress on a Health System designed in the 50s to deal with acute health issues but which has grown into a hand holding Aunty for many.
One is struck by the reliance on statistics and the part story they tell when listening to the Government advisors, as if the collection of facts and figures is enough to dictate the picture of need. A great play was made for the interconnectivity through IT of more statistics and reducing the inevitable overlap in a specific regimes area of expertise with another. Planning seemed to be a major question mark with plans not passing the medium term. The revealing absence of 'preparation' to meet known pandemics such as Alzheimer's, a sort of national "sticking the head in the sand" syndrome for which we are past masters in this country. As with all government employees, the absolute acute resolve not to have a view outside their remit, as if a lobotomy had been performed to exclude any thoughts which might get them into trouble with their political masters.
Scientific journalists such as from The Lancet, the Economist, the Guardian were much freer to hold and offer opinions and whilst their Lordships were interested in frightening the pants off the obesity fraternity, much as had happened with smokers and drinkers the jurnos were sceptical that without sanctions, education has a limited effect when it comes to eating issues.
The ever increasing funding was a misnomer if one recognised how, creating a fit health population with self esteem could contribute massively to the economy making the need to expend money on the genuinely sick, old and in-firmed once again affordable.
Attainment, schooling, parental education all massive hurdles which successive governments have paid lip service to but with private health care and a Harley St doctor to attend to your needs I suppose the effort to find a solution will be as far off as it ever was.
Dying is a great leveller. Perhaps we should all be inculcated into Buddhism to make our passage easier.
And so back to the question, why bother to listen to old farts rambling on about what ifs. Why not tune into Jeremy Kyle and see for oneself the disaster space some people live in or, better still, watch coins slide towards the edge of a shelf hoping yours will be the one to fall first.
Life is a game of two halves. At half time you are only one goal down and you have all the rest of the second half to get the equaliser but as the game moves on and you near the final whistle scoring a goal seems less and less important, merely  attending the game is enough.

That distant drum

Is the essence of our being tied up in the rhythmic beat of our breathing, and  the rise and fall of our chest, symbolically an indicator that we are still alive. As we breath we  continue and whilst we do so it gives us the opportunity to contemplate our existence. It allows us to differentiate ourselves from what is happening around us, to in essence disconnect and form a unique opinion about ourselves and the meaning of our lives. 

We are not connected other than as observers with the events around us. Our influence is limited to an historical reference of what happened in a similar situation last time with no surety that it will be repeated. As for the future it is beyond our knowing and whilst we may make provisional plans to do something in the future we have no surety that we will be in a situation to do what we thought we would do.
Left with "the now" and interrogating our-selves with ritualistic subpoenas to reveal our essence, the simple structure on which we base our lives, the under laying urges which govern our survival, the characteristic subset of rules which make our inter relationship with everything around us permissible, the challenge of our impermanence. All these issues are a challenge to someone who asks the question "why".

The drama of the religious performance, the distinctive clothing, the symbols,  the need to evoke a monotheistic God to take care of things like death for which we are inherently vulnerable, not only in having it as a final destination but that in the finality of the event it clouds the reason for not being an anarchist, for not being all the things we plead of others in our desire for a good society.

The essence of our lives should be goodness. It should come from a revelation that we are both special and ordinary, in our understanding that breaking down our protective  layers, like an onion until we discover the core of who we are. Why goodness and not selfishness or avarice, why not the ugly side of what we call "nature". It simply has to do with "preservation", a willingness to accept that your best interests are favoured by being good towards others. This can only follow from the logic inherent in all of us, that we desire as a principle emotion, peace and goodwill.
Of course if it's "life's agenda" to prepare for death then the Buddhist tradition has the profile. Many of the rituals and much of the terminology was gestated in a period long gone and developed in a culture much different from our own. The symbolism and the mental discipline comes from a time when certain individuals took off to practice asceticism, to find answers in self flagellation, a principle common in many faiths. Man is worthless compared to the glory of god and therefore I must atone by suffering.

Removing ones self from society and reducing ones worldly goods to an absolute minimum, containing ones desires and limiting the amount you eat and drink as a function of proving yourself to be without need makes the belief in a ritualistic search for nirvana, such a disconnect from our comfortable lives that not many truly embark on the journey. The ones who have are seen as elevated, where their every word is grasped as special. The hushed utterance, the poignant pause the almost hypnotic mystical swaying of the upper body is unworldly as it is meant to be since, unlike Christianity this is no coming together but the opposite, it's a refinement of oneself to the nth degree.

I wish I had the discipline and the strength to begin but I am too frail, too full of my own importance to engrossed in things, for me to give up my own search, outside myself.

Never the less I find it fascinating to see people who have attained such self awareness, such discipline, such confidence in their rational, such surety in what they have discovered, such a positive position on that all too chilling contemplation, our own death

Merry Christmas to you all

As we edge ever closer to Christmas one is drawn to remember the Christmas celebrations in the past. This is increasingly so as one gets older since, with a mixture of hindsight and a sense of becoming excluded, either by ill health or defective memory and tinged with the fact you are becoming one of that rare breed "last man standing", you are increasingly marginalised and lonely. 

I must make it clear none of this has anything to do with me since I am fortunate in having a caring family, my health is good and I have a canny Yorkshireman's habit of not getting carried away when it comes to spending money. Still working, it leaves me with the feeling that I have irons in the fire and that I make a contribution but there are many who don't feel this way and for them Christmas is not such a happy time.

Societies craving to make a fuss at this time of the year is a mixture of a time when people used to make the effort to come together and celebrate their family connection and of course it has now become a marketing tool to swell the pockets of the shareholder with the year on year introduction of a "special day" to go out and spend, dragging  the last remnant of common sense out of millions of 'credit card' devotees. 

The insipid films which churn out the Christmas story in all its unlikely imagery have been on our screens for a month or more, softening us up for the Ho Ho Ho serendipity Glowing faces, happy children, tinsel and decoration convert our homes into a setting for the scripted annual event which, as much as we may grumble, never seems to fail to lighten even the most sour temperament. Like children we respond to the carols and the excitement of the youngsters as they hold fast for one more year in their belief of Santa. The parties and the excuses to indulge in more than what is good for one makes for a covert moment when we throw off the 'good intention' and loose our heads in a little light hearted shenanigan.
It rises to a crescendo on New Years Eve with an eye watering fireworks display as cities across the globe seek to out-do each other in setting fire to as much, wiz bang money as they can cram into 5 or so minutes. It's a last crazy irresponsible act of abandon, a last drink before the sun comes up and one surveys the wreckage of another year and  the  mother of all binges (to your wallet if nothing else) and a sure as hell recollection that you promised last year was to be the last. The bill is waiting, the clock ticking, will we never learn !!!

Not belonging to that lot over there.

The term "working class", "middle class", "upper class", aristocracy, are great reminders that the term "we are all in this together" seems pitifully inappropriate. 

The term "divide and rule" is a qualified tactic used to destabilise the population by differentiating between sections of society,  pointing out the differential, dividing us modulating our opinions towards each other so that you don't  recognise each other as being members of the same society.
 Once again today being encouraged, by an ever narrowing political conglomerate of the powerful news gathering groups, disseminating opinion to us for us to believe what we believe, because we are fed what they want us to believe.
The crux of the matter is how people, now a days see each other.
For instance. One view is "A strike is crisis which must be fought with all the tools in the toolbox".
Another view is that the Dickensian employment conditions in some of the largest most well known companies in the country are a matter of 'market conditions'.
The stress and under manning of our Prison System (budget cuts of a third) leading to prisoner rebellion, is a political question because the Unions are not allowed to strike and have to wait, or leave whilst the matter is sorted out.

What is the bottom line, what are the emotions which govern our leaders, what class of people do they really represent. With all their sangfroid who do they most identify with, and will the "working class" ever get much more than a mention in dispatches. Has it become imperative that we need representation other than from our elected Parliament.

The vilification of unionism by Mrs Thatcher was retaliation for the Socialist concept of a "fair day's pay for a fair day's work". A view well advanced in Germany before the 1st World War

The British political elite were reticent. Using all kinds of parliamentary jiggery pokery they lulled the voter into believing that their future was in good hands whilst, tied up in the small print, lay the truth. Their hearts were never in it and so it is today.  A holding clause here, a diversion there whilst the Globalised machinery marches on, diminishing the few hard won provisions on labour protection for the benefits of "flexibility". 

The Germans are in accord with their society. The leadership feel a part of that society and seem to work in conjunction with the German society as a whole, whilst we in Britain seem keen to be seen as "not belonging to that lot over there"!!!

Getting to work

It's been a "braw bricht moonlicht niche" and the ice had to be removed from the windscreen before I could get going this morning. The sky is cloudless as the sun come up from over the horizon nearly warming the air but at least making us all feel more cheery for the light it brings. 

It's a feature of living in a warm country, those bright mornings to uplift the spirits on your way into work. Normally at this time of year it's a cloudy overcast sky and a drizzle sufficient to keep the windscreen wiper going. Squish squash, swish swash, as you join the queue of cars down the motor way, inching forward picking up a bit of speed and then on come the brake lights slowing to a stop. It's a 30 mile trip down to London. On a good morning, three quarters of an hour, with traffic, at least twice as long. Intertwining your route, depending which part of the city you want, its always question of potential hold-ups, delays that cause you to fret if a deadline is missed and people kept waiting. The police car or ambulance speeding down the emergency lane is not a good omen something has happened up ahead and the emergency services are no respecter of my schedule. Heavily imbued with their power, they close off the road at a moments notice and the rigmarole of an investigation starts quite oblivious of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of cars held up and its cost to commerce.  It's as if the police belonged to another universe.
I remember in South Africa, after an accident vehicles pulled manually to one side as soon as the cops arrived (even before) to get the traffic moving. Unfortunately litigation has demanded that no stone is left unturned and the investigation must be made forensically watertight or else the police are in trouble.  More trouble in fact than the people who caused the accident in the first place.
It's a funny old world, this blame game culture where the legal fraternity are forever casting around for a reason to sue or searching for an escape clause for their client to get away with it. It seems guilt is a finely textured concept with many opportunities for doubt, and doubt to be easily manufactured.

Prerogative Power - part 2

Rejoining the hearing on day 2.

The elephant in the room was that in 1973 not only did the legislation admit the UK into the thorny arms of the EU but it also permitted European Law and statute to supersede English Law. In so doing the European based laws it ushered in became the "legal rights" of the people and only Parliament can annul those rights. It is not in the gift of the Prime Minister to remove those rights which is in effect is what a Prerogative Decision would do. Mrs May may have egg on her face. The hubris of power has perhaps gone to her head. "Brexit means Brexit" means I am in charge and her argument that the government called the Referendum and having heard the voice of the people she was duty bound to effect their wishes as promptly as she could overlooked the significance of who can change the law. Only Parliament can do that and since when the door opened in 1973 and ushered in the acts of another institution (the EU) making ones own laws if not irrelevant at least lose their primacy, then only Parliament can reinstall the English version.
Mr Eddie had worked hard on the first day to create the impression that the Royal Prerogative was perfectly justified because it would be used only following the explicit will of the people in its Referendum instruction. No one on the Government side had thought to consider the implications of the mechanics of unravelling our legal code of practice.

One wonders if it is not the same old failing which we all suffer, we take advice from sources where it most fits our desired course of action. We are either deaf to warnings of the alternative argument or blindly hope that these warnings, will be argued away  by your own council. They have a job to do, to win your case and it's bad practice to be overly concerned with the oppositions case.
David Pannick QC was in my opinion very convincing in his attempt to demolish the Governments case and seemed to carry the sympathy of his Lordships. Mr Eddie for the Government had made hard work of detailing his constitutional argument and on the balance,

                             Perry Mason won by the "flamboyance" of his argument.

Prerogative Power

The Law is an ass, well a complicated and convoluted ass, a wordy ass, an ass that is fed on statues and common law, on decisions reached in the past, dealing with similar issues, decisions which when reached become another brick in the legalistic edifice which we rely on to frame our legal practice, and in essence the justice we cherish.

At the moment the barrister leading the Governments case is pleading with the High Court that the Government can make decisions using its Prerogative Powers to start the Article 50 Brexit exit. Prerogative Power is a concept of legal precedent which dates back into antiquity when the King made all decisions and which filtered into the early days of Parliament where the Royal Prerogative became a way of passing law onto the statute book bypassing the need to gain the consent of parliament as a whole.
Because we have no written constitution the law is made on the hoof with decisions reached by considering decisions made in other courts which then became part of common law, itself the basis of all legal judgement.
Statutory Legislation concerns "legislative acts" which pass through parliament, and, after debate and a vote, become wholly the business of Parliament and not the Prerogative of government.
Statutory Legislation in 1973 secured our passage into the EU, and it is this legislation that is being in effect challenged by government through a Royal Prerogative.
The people who brought the application to the High Court today challenge the legality of using the Prerogative powers to overturn an act which originally saw life in Parliament and which they argue is the job of Parliament to overturn.
I must be a wonk because I love the arcane argument and the delicate judgement based on interpretation and language. It's the intellect working at 110% and just listening makes you up your game as you try to follow the logic of what is being argued.
I have been to the Old Bailey to sit in the public gallery and listen to Applicants who have brought a hearing to the Appeal Court when their cases, having been tried in a junior court, feel that they have been unfairly judged. The barrister leads his case and three judges listen and question the points made. The thrust of legal opinion is quite cutting between these "high minds" and their Lordships can be damming towards the QC who is poorly prepared. In some ways it's theatre, a contest of words and meaning set in the arcane setting of a court room where no allowance is made for misinterpretation. At this level no accommodation can creep in to the affair, the finite meaning is all that can be allowed, dotting the 'i' and crossing the 't' is the life long business of these people and, like jockeys in the final 100yds, the whips are out and no holds barred.
Of course the issue won't make any difference to the triggering of Article 50 but it will ask much more of the Government since it will have to present a case to Parliament covering not just the motion to trigger Article 50 but the much more thorny issue of when triggered what the Article means to the economy and the standard of living of the people living here. Speculation which has been smothered in conjecture and hidden away for another day.
For the legal eagles it means even more as they feather their nests on the minutia of constitutional law. For them "form" means more than "substance" they have squirrelled enough substance to get them through many a winter. Much more important is the procedure and president of law, unearthing the meaning which lies behind any or all of man's historical acts and interpreting them in today's world, which I would contend is nearly an impossible act.

Irish Home Rule

Reading a fascinating book by George Dangerfield written in 1935,  called "The Strange Death of Liberal England" I am struck by the prose and the lofty, somewhat supercilious air that this man of letters has towards the movers and shakers of the period he writes about at the turn of the century (1900) and the great issue of the day, "Home Rule for Ireland".

The justification for granting Ireland Home Rule and the outrage this produced in Protestant Ulster, as well as the subsequent rage amongst the Tories towards Asquith's led Liberal government infected the relationship between the two parties. The Liberals had made pledges to that rump of Irish politicians in the British Parliament which made Home Rule for the island of Ireland a necessity. The Irish with characteristic fervour had pursued their cause and many an Irish landowner, part of the Irish aristocracy, spent their days haranguing the delicate susceptibilities  of a Liberal conscience. The Tories were no less enrages at the thought of their land owning cousins in Ulster being thrust under Papal dominance.
The outcome we know and since events were overtaken by the Great War the ire and dislike which arose in Parliament over this matter was one of the reasons the Liberals were greatly diminished and slowly cast out from being a political force in British Politics.
Fascinating as this period is, even more fascinating is the eloquent yet waspish tongue of Mr Dangerfield. Written from a position of hindsight, his book was applauded and highly rated by historians and the academic fraternity  and whilst I find it immensely entertaining, illustrative of the period and the political actors of that period,  I find myself worrying about the power of the written word to obfuscate and  obscure the true picture.
There is a turn of phrase and a sense of pomposity which the English are famous.
Mr Dangerfield, like Loyd George,  Bernard Shaw and most famously, Mr Churchill, used the English language to weave a picture which had the mist of folk law entwined in the  fabric of truth. The ability, through oratory to raise people to emotional incontinence is a dangerous gift, with little thought to the tensions raised within local communities  where the players are deeply entwined with day to day prejudice.
Never the less, a great read and a fascinating insight into a period which saw the gradual demise of British hegemony.

At what cost to the individual.

 

 

All nations are like a tarnished mirror, they reflect the image of the people who look into them. If the source has afflictions and affectation then these will be reflected as the common denominator which describes the nation, warts and all. This reflection is taken as a national characteristic and builds around itself the cultural and religious variances which help develop a nation. A nation therefore is built not on a prescription of things you would desire but on the rough hewn susceptibility of chance and history. The identity of a people and their back story is what makes them so different even from people who live not many miles distant but have grown up isolated from each other by geography and a limited means of travel.

This myriad complex world of substance and difference, a world which has slowly matured over centuries has been the scene of an experiment the like of which has never been seen. For reasons of economics and profit and brought about by the marvel of  inter-connective communication via the internet, the hatching of a plan to divide the world into consumers and producers, not as in the old days of placing the production close to the consumer but by sourcing the production in the poorest parts of the world where people are expected to work a whole day for pennies and transporting the goods across the world to the wealthy, allowing  the privileged wealthy to be even more advantaged by buying goods, even more cheaply.    It's perverse in the extreme. 

In our defence of Globalisation and the need to transfer people from all corners of the globe to make the ease of the 'developed wealthy' a little more easy and a little more wealthy, we have encouraged the intermixing of ethnicity and culture and allowed the spin doctors to projected it as a positive. From a better cuisine to better the understanding of the different people and their priorities, priorities which different people bring when they settle in a new country and all is part of a learning curve we must undertake to understand not only the other person but ourselves.

The shrill condemnation of the voices who would question the scale of such social engineering is wholly based on the suggestion that if you question the process you are prejudiced, nay worse, a racist.
The people who are loudest in their condemnation, who fling the epithet that nation states and nationalities are a thing of the past, based on the absurd claim the because there is a genealogy that links us all to Africa, therefore our observance of national norms is tentative, "we all come from somewhere else" is drilled into our conscience making us afraid to question the premise, not for its genetic truth but because the passage of time, geography, climate and so many other factors makes the argument that we are all the same ridiculous, other than as an anatomically collective species.

To assert that the National Health Service couldn't work without the Filipino nurse or the Indian doctor, setting aside the criminal indifference to training the local people to do this work, it never seems to concern the collectivist to address the problems of the brain and skills drain it puts on the countries who lose  these workers to the West. This is skimmed over in the need to homogenise our "think/speak" in order to brainwash the people for the purposes of their containment.

All nations were formed out of practical need. The identity of the British is subject to wild variance between its constituent parts. The Irish, the Scots the Welsh and the English are so different that it is only seen as a composite whole by glossing over the many deep differences and the pragmatic approach to political convenience which political history has connived to make this island race of four nations fairly comfortable living with each other. Imagine the potential turbulence when nations from every calling descend on this tiny patch of ground and claim their inheritance. 

Once again, political convenience will have to be applied but at what cost to, dare I say it, the indigenous individual.

An eight metre sprint

 It was as if time stood still or at least slowed down to a trickle. Waiting in my car I saw the three octogenarians advancing towards me along the pavement. It was like watching the all too regular contest between those huge trucks on the motorway when one driver takes it into his head that he can overtake the truck in front and swings out into the middle lane. A slow gargantuan tussle begins as the overtaking vehicle slowly inches alongside and part of the motorway is blocked whilst this battle for first takes place.

Three old people none of them steady on their pins were advancing slowly, their walking sticks trembling in the sunlight like three Excalibur's waiting the chance to do battle.
Pedestrians coming the other way took one look at these two hombres and an even more determined woman and stepped out of their way. The distanced travelled was not all that great but the determination to be first was unequalled. Slowly the woman drew abreast, a glance to the side and the man in the middle put on a spurt, well he waved his stick in an effort to increase speed since this was becoming the equivalent of Bannister and the 4 minute mile. The two men were grimly intent, the woman grinning all over her face as she tried to accelerate and gage the gap to overtake. In slow motion it all took on an unreal air, the battle of the titans would seem appropriate. There was no reason to the contest, the distance gained was unimportant, like the truck drivers the gain was irrelevant nothing much more than the length of the truck but it was part of human nature to want to be first.
In what seemed like an age the trio drew level with my car and the contest drew to a close as Marie opened the passenger door and got into the car.