The cost of everything, the worth of nothing

Subject: The cost of everything, the worth of nothing.

Can one believe that the coal miners who were lost, killed during a shift were docked their wage for the shift by the owners for not having completed the shift. It's almost beyond belief that the mind set of the mine owners would value their workers, other human beings, with such low esteem. The owners valued the pony's more than the miners, the pony's were harder to replace and it was money and only money that had worth. The conditions underground, the lack of safety, the implicit inhumanity towards a section of their own community was staggering.
Film of the conditions down the pit were shown to people who had worked in the colliery in Wales known as the Big Pit, near the village of Blaenavon.  Men sprawled on their side hacking away at the coal seam with a pick in high temperatures, in the pitch black other than the light from the lamps on their helmets. Could that men be asked to work in such conditions one would expect their pay and entitlements to amount to something for the risk and the hardship but no, as the mine owners jealously guarded their profit even the size of the lump of coal had its price and much of the coal hewn from the face was not deemed worth paying for. Man's inhumanity to man is never more evidenced than working down a coal mine in the 1930s
I had reason to visit Blaenavon in 1997 when a chap I had known decided to move to there to take advantage of a cheap house, £20.000 and a grant to do it up.
"Ye donna get owt for nowt" and the downside was that he entered a traumatised society, dismembered of self respect, living on the dole, time on their hands to feed the flame of their discontent in the pub, with frequent fist fights and enormous animosity towards the English who in the form of Margaret Thatcher were the epitome of evil.
As I drove passed the old slag heaps which in winter look so bleak, in summer burst into green, nature unwilling to let go, I entered the slothful Orwellian life of the unemployed. There was no sign of vigour, only the routine acts which are necessary to survive, a dull plaintive acceptance of their lot. The youth never having known any better, stood on the street corners and looked with bored hostility at this car and its occupant. I found my friend in the pub surrounded by his cronies well into his second or third beer, a poultice against the harsh reality of his move into a forgotten land where the once proud miners had been betrayed by government.
We sneer and carp at Arthur Scargill, at his frenzied call to arms in the face of a Governments cold hearted indifference as it closed the mines for cheaper coal from the Continent, cheaper by the ton but at what cost to the society who's only source of income was their ability to mine the coal. The net cost was what I saw, a local society destroyed by a mathematical calculation of Sir Ian MacGregor and his boss, Mrs Thatcher.

Where is the moral outrage

Subject: Where is the moral outrage.

Identity has become a complex process. There was a time when a Frenchman an Italian an Argentinian or a member of any country, including our own, and could clearly be identified by a range of identifying factors. Racial characteristics, language, and cultural factors set each country out in a way that when you landed there you recognised those characteristics and knew where you were. With, after the war, the immense movement of people much of it encouraged by business and the need to replenish labour after the carnage which cut many populations to ribbons, the concept of a recognisable identifiable person within this country was banished.

This mixing bowl of sedentary communities with people from all four corners of the earth was initially acceptable and I speak specifically of the towns and regions where the bulk of the immigrant population settled but eventually, because the newly arrived provided a focus for ever more new immigrants, the balance of society in these specific areas was overturned. This led to a slow burning resentment of communities who were being changed out of all recognition. It was not felt in the leafy spires of the prosperous upper middle class, their village idyll was and is, much as before but the towns in which by far most of the "working class" lived were immeasurably changed. 

The mantra from the MPs in Parliament has been one of "change is good, that we benefit from change and at any rate to speak out against it, was racialism". 

Dumbing down the resentment has worked in that where the changing cultural identity does not substantially effect people, Political Correctness has been most strident  and its from these areas that the media and the political commentators come. To question the residents in these unaffected areas is to bring opprobrium on ones head, or at least evoke frightened glances with the wish that you would go away. Ask the same questions in a town where the imbalance is high and with it high unemployment and the torrent of abuse towards the system of unimpeded immigration, acknowledges that we are a divided country not only in wealth but in the perception of who we are.

Watching the MPs tormented with rage at the banning of travel to the United States of Muslims, specifically from one of five predominantly Muslim countries, one has to see how deeply and viscerally the libertarian ethos has bitten into the minds of these good folk.  I so regret that their rage against the dismantling of those northern town and the dismemberment of the homegrown population over the last two decades and more, was rarely heard. Their own constituents are taken for granted, their plight is an inconvenience, a result of the global economy, a necessary evil for which it is hardly worth turning up to debate. Of a different order in their minds is the 'one month' ban on visa entry into America. All their spleen is brought to the ready, all their university debating skills are out there on display because this is something they have been nurtured to feel is, unpatriotic, not civilised, immoral. But the immorality of the cut and run from people called Jones, Smith, or Taylor who served the country well in its time of need, who on returning from the war saw the industries they had left to fight for soon peopled by cheap labour, initially from the commonwealth and recently from Eastern Europe. Where is the moral outrage for them !! Where indeed !!

Trumps ban on Muslims entering America

Subject: Trumps ban on Muslims entering America.

Nadhim Zahawi was keen to proclaim the United States as formally the "cradle of of freedom and open to immigration" as he vented his wrath at the vengeance inflicted by Donald Trump on countries and religious cultures which not only harbour but support Muslim extremists.  Providing open tutelage in its Madrassas and nearer to home in the local Mosque of a religious vendetta towards the west for its historical heavy handed treatment in the Middle East and parts of the Sub Continent. Of course Zahawi's main immediate complaint was that he himself was effected and that he can't visit the United States where his sons are attending university.
This assimilation of a 'cradle', a place where the young and impressionable are protected, could also be turned around to see a flip side where fanatics are nurtured within a religious context and little, other than verbal condemnation and often, not even that, is lacking with any vehemence from the moderates who effectively see themselves as the sons and daughters of the people who were part of those cultures on Trumps banning list.
How deep a culture resides in a person is evidenced in all of us living in a foreign land. We know the ties are still there, we celebrate the traditions and have empathy with people who visit us from "home". Is it any wonder a Syrian or a Pakistani retains the same allegiance as we do, equally his or her religious commitment is part of psych and if there is, buried deep in his/her thinking, a sense of Muslim entitlement or they are persuaded to hold a resentment for both historical and or recent slights, then their arrival here is problematical. Trump is saying it's not worth the trouble, the US can do as well without these people and so ban them.
If you were to wind the clock back, ten to fifteen years there was no threat. No suicide bombers, no Sharia Courts no outward display from another religious force with such a martial background.
Can we afford to have such equanimity in a world which has become such a cauldron of dissent, especially religious dissent where history tells us, there is no rational argument only the hatred of an unrequited faith.

Sundays are special

Subject: Sundays are special.

Sundays are special. It used to be that Sunday was a day of rest and much of that which went on during the week was closed. The shops for instance, other than those with a special "off licence" who could sell booze but usually had food and groceries on sale as well. The news agent was open until midday but his main trade was selling the Sunday newspapers and sweets. Other than that the streets were empty of shoppers and remained empty until Monday,  other than for those inclined to walk the dog until midday when another sort of dog emerged and the Pubs opened for 2/3 hours, just in time to provoke the wife's who had dinner on the table. 

Sunday was a time when if you were a cyclist you were out with your cyclist pack twiddling along the highways and byways through the countryside, out on the open road a chirpy happy crowd chatting to a friend who rode at your shoulder for mile upon mile, up hill and down dale oblivious to the toil awaiting on Monday. Little traffic and what there was was respectful since they themselves had only just graduated out of the saddle into their car. The speed of a Ford Popular was not much more than a group of racing cyclists and so the impatience we see today from the motorist to the cyclist was not evident. In the villages the tea and sandwich making shops eagerly awaited this flood of city types, out on the run from the dark satanic streets and we, captivated by the open green fields were eager to find these villages and what we regarded as quaint village people.

The pace of life in the town dropped to a murmur as those who had been "out" on the Saturday night recovered and those who regarded the "night-outer" as somewhat heathen took themselves off to church as the bells pealed and called them to prayer.

 It was a social event as much as a religious one since after the service a great chuntering began, particularly amongst the ladies who in their Sunday best cast a withering eye on anyone not up for muster. The service was traditional the hymns were traditional and the music pounded out from the church organ was traditional. It was a tradition of continuity and no one living a hundred years before would have seen much difference. The sermon was delivered in much the same way from a man who, whilst respected, was distant from his flock and knew little of their real problems as he contented himself with their sins in the eyes of god and the fire and brimstone to be heaped down on them.

"Good morning vicar" was as close you ever got to him and other than the gaggle of flower arrangers and bible distributors and those hearty folk who shuffled down the aisle collecting the plate as the congregation contributed a shilling or two, the vicar came from a different planet.  Even this contribution held the implicit impact of your worth in the congregation and anyone who laid a pound or more needed to be noticed.

The 10 o'clock service over, your mothers careful corralling in best behaviour over, the rest of the day was yours and you joined the gang, who had absented themselves from the 'blessing', in the woods to create another world, free from the constraints of parents and society at large to become that mirage of who we saw we were, with our own pecking order backed up by the fearlessness you showed as you climbed a tree or descended a cave. Your worth here was in being dared, to carry out the dare with as much aplomb as possible. The occasional fight to show who was who and being apparently impervious to danger, was all you needed to retain leadership of your clan as you trailed home at the end of the day on a Sunday evening to mothers inquiry "how you got that gash on your forehead", the mystical world of a child's environment away from the apron strings was worth any gash, no matter how painful the swabbing of Dettol caused you to blink.

The town was quiet as a field mouse as it paused to reflect on that other aspect of life away from the mill or the office, it's a pause which is missing in this frenetic life we lead now-a-days. "The peace that passes all understanding" is missing and we are all the worse for it. 

A Brave New World

Subject: A Brave New World.

As we witness the arcane system of government which we have in this country, MPs bouncing up and down from a sedentary position,  leaping to their feet to catch the Speakers eye and then sitting down again. It's a strange almost childish feature of our Parliament and contrasts with the sober procedure in the American Congress.
This is heightened by the sound of the Speaker barking out the names of the MP he wishes to speak next in his polished, effected ultra posh accent, admonishing anyone in the chamber who upsets him. Of course the baying of the parliamentarian wishing to show their support for what the person at the dispatch box has just said is far less belligerent to what one sometimes sees in the parliaments of countries in the East European block where it is not uncommon to see a fist fight break out on the floor of the chamber.
Whilst I am a faithful student of historical tradition we must seem anachronistic to most of the world and pretty much out of touch with our own local people who simple want answers, not performance. It's all very  Shakespearian, dated, and out of touch with the modern world.
The procedure are Machiavellian in their complexity. White papers. Green papers. Whips
Adjournment motions. Adjournment debates. The aye and no lobbies. Masters at Arms
and The Keeper of Keys the list goes on and of course for the people who live amongst all this "tom foolery" it distracts them from the real world outside. They begin to think that this is the real world and what goes on outside is frankly suspect.
This dichotomy is strangely at the basis of much of the discontent shown in the vote for Brexit since on the one hand, the ills of the country, particularly in the unemployed poorly educated parts was conveniently palmed off on Europe and the bureaucrats in Brussels and in its place, the jingoistic call to place their future in the British, House of Commons and our home grown bureaucracy here.
There has been little or no reference to the right wing  composition of the government in Whitehall even though it's recent history has seen an almost brutal willingness to inflict extra hardship on the poor whilst rewarding the rich. It seem that the unemployed in Wakefield have swallowed hook line and sinker the stories emanating from the right wing newspapers of Murdock and Desmond and, like startled lambs led to the slaughter, will become the grist in the mill of the new, super efficient, contract driven business model which will have to be severely competitive, irrespective of the cost, matching wage efficiencies with regulation ditching so we can work all hours 'god sends' to stay afloat. Oh the "Brave New World" which awaits us.
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Trumpenomics

Subject: Trumpenomics.

Donald Trump is like an echo chamber. We hear part of our brain in his pronouncements that part which hasn't been swamped by the prompting of the libertarians.
Build a wall to keep em out is his response to the influx of drugs and crime from Mexico and through Mexico, Latin America. There is no doubt that Mexico, a poor country is in part bandit country with a government hardly able to keep order. We know this is true of other countries to the south of Mexico and we know what a magnet America is to that element which trades misery to millions of people. We know these things but we shuffle the overt facts into some parking space in our minds as we struggle to think of ways to defeat their trade at source. Sadly there is just too much money in their business and all attempts to find different economies have failed to offset the ease of making money through drugs and extortion. So build a wall says Trump this at least will reduce the easy passage into the US through a porous boarder. No one had had the temerity to say the obvious because it offended the sensibilities of the libertarian who's desire is to see the best in all of us.
Suspend immigration from those clearly defined terrorist hot spots where Muslim extremist thrive.  We can't do that say the liberal voice from whose stories of equality and fraternity which we have been fed for decades now. The need to bind the world together in the economic experiment of globalisation has meant that we had to become mindful of our need to be everywhere and have a finger in all the worlds societies, we had to be accepting of barbarity for the sake of a trade. Frightened of our own shadow, morally obliged to others and forgetting our own needs and values.  Obviously in a perfect world this type of altruistic thinking is preferable but in the tormented world of extremism particularly religious extremism one has to accept that you are not dealing with the norm. Cutting the conduit through which the trouble maker comes seems a perfectly acceptable solution until the source of the extremism is sorted out. But of course the libertarian sees in such a move the thwarting of all they hold dear and their belief that good is at the heart of all human beings and we must strive to unearth it.
Trump of course has denounced that aspect of an economic club, a fraternity, a brotherhood. His concept is of bilateral agreements, one on one, takes out of the equation the need to be the same to all men. You can pick and chose, like we did in the old days. Places and people who were deemed a problem you gave a wide berth to there was no sense that you had to help them out with regime change there was no world wide imperative, you chose your friends and respected your enemy's by staying well clear.
The advantage of Trump is that he has been sleeping through all this "world order" stuff  and like a 1950s child sees everything in terms of black and white. No over complicating, no cozying up to despots, he might be one of their breed and knows full well of their corruptibility and avarice.
Perhaps a wall, perhaps calling a spade a spade is what we need in this world where the reconciliation of the bad guy has been seen not to work and it's purely down to the survival of the fittest.

Passed our sell by date

Subject: Passed "our" sell by date.

Has Wally the Wombat finally got his comeuppance. Has Ming the Chinese Dragon finally slain the giant of mineral exploration, Rio Tinto by buying its coal division in Australia. As America discards its role as the leading economic player in Asia through its cancelling of the TPP negotiation, leaving the field open to the Chinese, do the governments of Australia and New Zealand not fear a new yellow peril as they used to fear the old one posed by Japan.

Wouldn't Australia be the perfect one way ticket destination for the Chinese as they expand not only their economy but their already huge population. Sydney already has its thriving China Town where the residents speak the lingo and could act as an information centre for Air China passengers as they step off the plane into the bewildering sunlight needing only a slight adaptation to their traditional hat to accommodate the corks. 

And don't think you New Zealander's will escape. Those hot springs and geysers would make an ideal laundry outlet, no need to fill the metre, the steam will take out all the creases, chop chop as they say Beijing.

It's hard to know where to settle these days. Immigrants dressed in sheets and driving Rolls Royce's, others lying prone on the ground at 2pm, thousands of orientals pointing cameras at us as if we were in the zoo where will it all end. Even Branson's escape project, a one way trip to Mars seems to have stumbled and we are caught in the gravity of Trump and Brexit.

There was a time when things were so so different and one could reach for ones Pith helmet to express ones superiority. People knew their place and the sun never set. The proud heritage we carried on our shoulders benignly issuing our orders with the experience of being special and having, according to the old passport, the Queens blessing. Little did we know we were a scourge, a menace, venal despots for who no apology is enough for the people they disgraced by setting up their damnable colonisation system with its straight jacket of laws and contracts not to mention modes of transport and buildings made to last. No glitz no Trump signage, just exquisite symmetry, no branding other than architectural common sense and the indefinable sense that you had seen its replica right across the world. 

One Nil to the pinstripes

  

Subject: One nil to the pinstripes.

Does the success of Donald Trump alter our attitude to Brexit.
The concept of Brexit was formed in a time when the conditions for world trade were much more settled. The force that is Donald had not yet been experienced and the sight of him belligerently breaking all kinds of business agreement, tossing into the waste basket much of what Obama has struggled to achieved, keen to have a slanging match with China and Europe, whilst propounding his faith in President Putin, the whole landscape has changed and perhaps our own view on Brexit also.
Whilst Theresa May jets her way across the Atlantic at this very moment do we not think trying to do a deal with Donald Trump will be anything but traumatic and we will, in the end pay a heavy price. Given our weak hand and his avowed aim to put American interests first will he not insist that American health based interests will have unfettered access to our NHS or that Monsanto be given the rights to impose their genetically altered seed and artificially grown beef onto our shelves in the supermarkets as a prerequisite to any deal. Is the waterboarding scenario the tip of the iceberg in how extreme and cavalier he will be. Perhaps we may well rue the day when we cast our backs on the coterie of bureaucratic suit's in Brussels.
I would think that Mrs May will have to take a long look at our prospects after having met him and if she doesn't like what she sees perhaps the pragmatic route would be to open up and be honest with us.  Is being out of the single market doable now, given the turmoil that a wild man in the White House can bring to world commerce.
It is a conflict of interest, which brings innovation head to head into conflict with regulation, the one pitted against the other, is it only a matter of this or that, one or the other. Do regulations signal something about the way we think and behave towards each other since regulations are there to protect us from certain types of innovation which we know can sometimes be very one sided.
And so in the aftermath of Brexit and now Trump, the world as we know it is in for a change as we swap the "steady as she goes" methodology of the Europeans, who, always have an eye to the consequences, especially the consequences to the individual within the electorate.

Raw capitalism has always had both "its" eyes on the bottom line and a profit and in Donald Trump the system has a messiah who punches well above his weight. 

Unforetold consequences are not part of his agenda, he sees things in black and white and if there are losers they better get out of the way now the 'big boy' is in town.
The Tories have also always been "regulation lite" the fewer the rules the clearer business can get on and do its own thing to make a profit. In mitigation, the argument was that the tax take would increased as the profits increased. The population would benefit with an increased tax take and better funded services. 

Sadly business, always one step ahead with the advent of the Global economy they can now chose their domicile to pay their tax and it's a win win for the pinstripes.

Life's journey

Subject: Life's journey.

In that crooked journey, down the narrow street of life, boarded by events for which we had no answer,  we are entombed by the narrowness of our interest and the paucity of our intellect. We were bewitched by what we see ahead and what we see ahead we are programmed to see. Our upbringing ringed us into a limited corral from which there is no escape. Our horizons are the horizons of our parents and the folk around us, pegged to their experience, haltered by the length of rope which also proclaimed their lives.
This is not necessarily a bad thing since 'homespun' is good and emotionally comfortable but as an exercise in discovery, it severely limits the imagination. The fears which lie within every small community are propagated like orchids and like orchids are vulnerable
The manifest of most small communities lies in the height of the stockade they erected to prevent 'newness' seeping in.
Walking that narrow street of conformity we are blinkered if not blind to opportunity. We satisfy our desires with artificial stimulants, we falsify our dreams with a traditional contempt, a sarcasm for everything which has not been approved by the high priests of societal norms. Chloroformed by the stench of righteousness, imprisoned by religion, we stumble about making the best of a bad job. If we are clever we concoct a story line to make us sound, even to our own ears, heroic but in the still of the night we know the truth.
A wider street perhaps, with more opportunities to escape, but then with all that freedom, far away from the sound of home, would we be any happier or simply more observant. Treading new ground makes us, of necessity, more observant. Our very survival comes from scouting out and adapting, getting to know the surroundings.
The comfort of winging it home is not an option, until of course you have made the new surroundings our new home and then, once again, you are forced down the same narrow street of conformity.

Waiting their decision

Subject: Waiting their decision.

So now it's high heels !!

Gender discrimination has raised its head again with apoplectic women lining up to complain about the company who insisted that a woman wore high heels to work.

The aspect of dress in the office has, as with everything become an issue of personal rights which from a very early age seem to define us. Of course we all have rights (?) but to judge your right to have rights outside the home is littered with exceptions. 

I can be prosecuted if I decide to exercise what I assume my rights if and when I break the law. If as a child, I go to a school which has a school uniform not dressed in that uniform. Men in an office environment are often expected to wear a suit and tie. 

The news reader interviewing the young woman, who has taken this matter of what she claims is discrimination, (through her female MP) to Parliament, was dressed immaculately, as news readers always are, as required by the television channel.  She knowing she was to be on show in front of the cameras had spruced herself up and was dressed to kill, high heels and all.

When, for what ever reason her company had told her, on her first day with them, she must, as part of the dress code wear high heels she felt her gender slighted. 

Now whether high heels are appropriate or not it seems to me that if on joining a company on your first day you might be expected to comply. This is your desk, these are your duties, this is when you start and finish and these are the standards of dress we wish you to conform to, with the unspoken caveat and if you don't like any of these issues then please don't apply for a job with us. Simple as that !!

But of course it's not simple anymore and we of the older generation are adrift in this "make it up to suit yourself world" we live in now.

Listening this morning to academics propounding the theory that under no circumstances must one shout at a child, no matter how bad the behaviour, no matter how you perceive the danger. So slapping is out, shouting is out and apparently singing to them is in. All our actions towards the young and we are not talking about toddlers, has to understand the motivation of the tantrum, the root of the trauma since it is never the child's fault. It can never be the child's fault, they are too precious to hold grudges or wish you harm, they carry a clean slate and it's up to you, the teacher or the parent to suss out the causes of why they are screaming. The simple old fashioned expedient,  because you had said enough is not enough.  It's a question of rights and your rights come way down the chain. 

The intellectualising and psychoanalysing has drawn us into a very dark place where every mood-swing, every attention seeking ploy, is run through the prism of some sort of underlaying fault line and we had better get to know our child's true emotional landscape so we can mollify their concerns and modify our need to bring order into our lives. 

As a sentient being I am to subordinate my consciousness to the consciousness of others, in fact the conscientiousness of all others is more important than my own and my rights lie not in my hands but are the business of everyone else and it's for me to wait 'their' decision.

Fascism, we never learn.

Subject: Fascism, we never learn.

The complications of our decision to exit the European Union has been tender meat to all political commentators and our press moguls.
The introduction of our Supreme Court into the mix by an interdict from a private individual on the basis that our parliament has to have the exit procedure placed before it so that a debate and a vote can be held by the elected representatives, the MPs, has just been resolved amid much rancour, propagated by our right wing press.
The MPs themselves are the centre of a constitutional question, whether they are free to act on their own initiative or whether they are bound to mirror their constituents who put them in Parliament in the first place.  Being elected in our system of democracy seems to hand over the power to decide on all political matters to the MP since even the party manifesto is advisory and not binding. We elect them in good faith to do as they said they would when on the doorstep but that's as far as it goes.
The question "do we want to be in or out of Europe" was too simplistic since the consequences were difficult to prove or disprove and remain so. The cataclysm which was foretold by the Chancellor George Osborn has not come to pass yet, since in actuality we are still inside the EU and little has changed, other than the sentiment and the rhetoric from the banks and business.
The issue of whether we can find comparable, equally profitable markets to trade into  has to be seen. The world has moved on since we last traded with it. It is now more predominantly made up of powerful blocks China and Asia, the US and of course Europe
We are a minnows compared to them and are at a disadvantage when it comes to the muscle required of a deal. We clutch at straws when we place hope in Donald Trumps new "restriction free, American commerce to give away much of a free meal.
The Chinese are difficult to do business with since they are a hybrid of a free market and an authoritarian centralised government controlled economy. Their business practices would not stand scrutiny in the West and for us to expect a quid pro quo I think is highly suspect. The smaller nations such as Australia and New Zealand or Canada have populations not much greater than one of our major cities and so whilst on the periphery, trade with them is not going to feed the gargantuan appetite of our welfare expectant consumerist led population, unless of course we all become "tree huggers"!!
And so the reality of what we voted for is pretty dismal unless of course one brings into the equation the probable collapse of the EU as we know it. The strains are there with the shameful misappropriation of trust in the land grab which defines the expansion of the EU to include nations which are inappropriate to  belong to a monetary union without Federal governance and a centralised control. The national imperative is too strong, the variances between the economies too great, the temperaments too wide to make a lasting success of the union and when it pulls apart it were better we were out than in.
Can we scale our inbuilt preference for grandeur to something more modest. Can we enter the ring as middle weight and not take on the heavies. Can we recalibrate our society to understand there is no free ride and that if the norms of a sensible society can not be met on the cash coming in we can not continue to kid ourselves that it's business as usual.
Of course with a Tory government in charge the brunt of the pain will be brought to bear on the most disadvantaged. The business community will be cosseted and encouraged to exploit the new restriction free opportunities that coming away from Europe will bring
and it is perhaps so sad that people here, manipulated by the press Baron's diet of lies and extremism, were unable to understand that being close to European culture and ideas was far more healthy than the new liberalism of America, never mind the extremes their new president brings.
We are where we are as much because of the intransigence of the Bundesbank and the straight jacket German finance has over Europe, evidenced by their treatment of the Greek population, the Irish, the Spanish, and the Italians. The rise in hard left/ hard right populist political parties is an outcome of the stricture of the Bundesbank and its proxy the ECB. Fascism was a response to the financial strictures we and the French put upon Germany and it would seem we never learn.

The tale of a good book

Subject: The tale of the good book.

The business of going out has always been a dilemma to me. It's not that I am not at ease in other people's company, far from it since I am quite a gregarious soul but it's just that I am equally at home in my own company. When I look outside as I do now, the sun is shining and although it is cold it looks pleasant. Why then do I have no need to go out and be communicative.
Of course our lives are divided up into segments. Our childhood was filled with the whimsical, whilst our school years were infested with learning a curriculum some of which we liked and some we hated but all of it was suffused with the torment of being examined on what we had taken in. Then the long road of work, working in many jobs for many varied organisations some benign, some hard and cruel. We had to perform tasks for which, at times we were unsuited, both from a lack of temperament or a lack of technical  knowledge. We, if married had the weight of expectation on our shoulders and bills to pay we had to fit a template not of our own making but a societal one which at its sanctimonious best lays strict guidelines on who were were supposed to emulate. Just another task in our deficit prone life to navigate.
And now to paraphrase Frank Sinatra "the end is near". We have been let off the leash to forage for ourselves without any kind of third party judgement. The difficulty of sailing on a new tack, with only the rocks to aim for, is that one is in danger of glancing back over the course sailed and finding that it's hard to find a reason to wear sunscreen again Ones whole 'raison d'etre' was the hurly burly of work, of being a father and a husband and trying ones best to fit a role that you were, at best an amateur.
Finding the space again, to settle for silence and inactivity, with only the part of the mind engaged, is attractive whilst it's a bit overwhelming having to consider places and experiences which the brochure advertises as a 'must have'.
The influence of ones own persona, modified by need and which has slept for so long perhaps needs a proverbial stick to stir it back into life, but to what end. When we were young, driven by desire, not least that of chasing the opposite sex, the pavements led somewhere we thought might reveal fun but now, as a dodgy old observer, the trigger to get up and go is missing. The rationality of a single bed in some far flung hotel or the table for one forced to observe others warming to the chase, it all seems pretty meaningless when a good book, snug in my own warm bed fulfils most of my earthly desires these days.

Seeing yourself

Subject: Seeing yourself.

When I was young the 'street debate' was common. Usually men would gather together to talk and argue about their conditions and about world affairs. These meetings were held under the street lights in some juncture of streets and buildings or in rooms above the pub taproom. Sometimes they were held in the grand Victorian buildings such as a civic centre or famously the corner of a park such as in Hyde Park.
Depending on the venue, the meetings were conducted by those attending with either the decorum of a boardroom or the shouting match of a football match. The "ragged trousered philanthropist" with his philosophy gained by life and much time spent in the warmth of the Library Reading Room, was contrasted by the middle class, small scale employer keen to hear and voice his opinions. The wealth of interest and concern led these men to their weekly debating haunts like bees to honey. The weather was no deterrent neither the distance since for a short time they were amongst brothers. The characteristic was a need to understand or to vent against the ills of the time and the men who gathered there were united, not in their argument either to the condition or the remedy but in the well being to be amongst people who cared enough.
And so it is with the blogosphere. The opinions are put out to be squandered by silence or savaged by a clash of personal experience.
It doesn't matter which it is since in my case it's partaking that is important. The

judgements which I make are mine alone, they are a anthology of my life and I am proud to be able to expand and enthuse about the conditions of the world we live in. It's a world far from perfect but it has within it the seeds of universality where a common good or bad resonates within us. If it doesn't perhaps we have already departed and don't know it.
I ask everyone who has a brain, to think and to feel outside their close personal need, their self centred image of what makes up the world and see themselves as a 'part of the whole' and not 'the whole of the part', which only effects them on a day to day basis.
Start a blog or as a start, reply to this one and we will see how far you are prepared to go to justify those assumptions of who you see you yourself to be.

Marching to the Promised Land

 

Subject: Marching to the Promised Land.

Has the gender centre of gravity moved today as female power takes to the street across the world. The sight of so many women on the march persuaded by the contact list in Facebook, galvanised by an apparent Neanderthal in the White House they came out in their thousands in so many cities across the western world to protest.
Making up 50% of the worlds population and having such influence at the level of home and family as well as in commerce they are a force to be reckoned with. It is said they are the softer sex, more caring more assimilated to the long term needs of our planet which go hand in hand with the needs of the children they raise and care for. Their perspective is subtle more nuanced than the male who's character is more adversarial more prone to conflict.
And yet they represent that frightening phenomena in this age of the internet and unrivalled communication, a pack. The pack was always feared, be it wolves or predators in the sea the pack is feared because its cause is death and the destruction of what ever is in its sights. A pack whilst having a leader also has the motivating force of numbers, numbers which seem to give it legitimacy.
The hysteria of the pack is only manifest after it has trailed and weakened its pray it feeds on the support each member brings but is manifest as a collective will or spirit.
The women in the march were far from wild instead they were calm and reserved holding placards and walking in an orderly way. The implication was that "we are reasonable", "our claims are reasonable" and therefore "we have to be heard".
There were no faces hidden by Balaclavas, no Molotov Cocktails no overturning of cars or looting of shops. None of the nastiness that men get up to when in a crowd to protest a grievance.
And what were their grievances. Were they to do with pay inequality, a little in so far as it effects them. Were they upset about the cancelling of trade deals or the belligerence displayed towards China even the imbalance of the trade deals by American conglomerates into the 3rd world with genetically modified crops, no their concerns were much nearer to home.

The right to have an abortion, the right to share the boardroom with their male colleague

The right to be recognised as having "special rights".

Feminism has always skewed the prism through which mankind has looked at life by inferring that women can bring a special way of looking at things and therefore the outlook will be better all round. But in my own experience. Mrs Thatcher was as one eyed as any man, totally obsessed with her mission to change society into winners and losers and as far from the 'caring female' as you could get. Teresa May and Nicola Sturgeon seem to be in the same mould, hard headed politicians who's brand of idealism is to be more feared than applauded.

Should we conclude that power has the same effect on both the male and the female, it distorts the good in either gender and if that is the case, we have to judge the feminist much as we judge the male, both are unhinged with a suffusion of egotism and self - aggrandisement. 

Knowing your people

Subject: Knowing your people

There is much talk about the value of democracy when the democratic will of the people get it wrong. The view comes from the section of society that believes it knows what is best for society as a whole, the intellectual, the middle and upper class, the bourgeois.
Is it right that an uneducated man or woman has the same power, when it comes to voting as an intelligent university trained individual, trained in the art of evaluation and the skill in researching source material on which to base their decision. Is it "right" that reason can be cancelled out by emotion. Can ignorance sit at the same table as intellect.
The Referendum on Brexit and the election of Donald Trump are examples of "popularism",  a circumstance where the "unwashed" have won a victory over reason by the sheer weight of their emotional discharge, fuelled by the distortion of messages made up to appeal to the more basic element of our psych.
People are a complex amalgam of needs and desires. Society is a mechanism for guiding those desires, subverting some and amplifying others. Society is in effect a controlling mechanism for promoting what is defined by some as worthy, a manipulating process to ensure its, "business as usual".
Occasionally the plan goes astray and a dissatisfied section of society, probably the section which had been taken for granted and bypassed by mainstream thinking, all of a sudden get a chance through the ballot box to invade the calm of the chicken roost and cause havoc.
The question now arises should we curb democracy. Should we ensure that the direction of travel is insulated from these "hicks" who know nothing of our plans and see only their own plight,  amplifying their needs out of all proportion to ours.
Democracy has, along with liberalism appealed to the philosophical, altruistic mindset but does it have a place in our open communicative world where influence is now so much easier. Even the President of the United States rules his people from a "twitter account", priming them with tit bits of popular tittle-tattle, keeping them agitated for the next pronouncement irrespective of content.
It's a phenomenon of the modern world that people want information in shorter bits and bytes easier to consume, easier to construe what you want to read into it, like the headline in the popular newspaper which contrives to create a story in three, eye catching words. The contribution that the detail makes is irrelevant and unwelcome.
The attention span of a newt used to be a derogatory phrase but now-a-days even the newt would get a C.
Can we be sure that all men and women have equal rights. Yes.
We know that this is a misnomer but never the less we believe in it as a founding civilising principle.
If one of those rights is freedom of speech and a right to be heard, then every opinion no matter how ill informed has equal prominence and if the powers that be find this uncomfortable then they had better make it their business to educate us better so that we too are informed. If we still make decisions that go against the grain then perhaps the fault lies in the Establishment for not understand the issues and the "peoples" needs better.

Thought for the day

Subject: Thought for the day.

One of the, can I say problems, that people, for many reasons have such diverse views which no matter how deeply or how long the views, often so diametrically opposed, are maintained and they continue to be the bedrock of who we are.  Is there, there for any  purpose in bringing people together to converse and attempt reconciliation.
Statistics are thrown around like confetti and like confetti have little or no substance because the statistic used is often isolated from the causes of the statistic.
The subjects ranging from "feminism" to "conditions in prison" and "the part religion plays in politics" are aired, opinions voiced, reasons offered and yet little or no change is evinced and the landscape remains much the same.
If on the other hand every time we settle into a discussion we paid attention to what is being said, even if what is being said is completely against ones own views, the act of trying to understand where the others view point has its roots gives, even an unpalatable opinion, perspective.  Perspective can bring to mind the similarities between us and the differences in our mental assumptions, which are often based on common circumstances, can then be better appreciated.
Listening to debates one is often struck by the infallibility of a persons viewpoint only to be struck the next minute by the contrary view which follows it.
On feminism, the arguments, often voiced, as they were today by 'women' who had opposing views were sadly tinged with the acid of contempt for anyone who dared to think otherwise. "The cause" had swallowed any sense of rationality, the demons were men and the power of the system, which to their minds rested with men and these demons were to be sort out, root and branch until equality was seen to be evident even if the price paid was a heavy one on individual women themselves.
There is no greater force than a woman slighted, she has ineffable determination to see herself as the victim when in fact she is as much the cause of disequilibrium as a man. The imperative that carries her forward is not the varying  workplace agenda between men and women which should give her cause for pause to ask herself, does she really want the hell hole of long hours, subservience to someone else's regime, working in conditions that are evil when she can get some poor slob to do this work for her, or is it only the heights she desires and the assistance of gender preference through women only lists.
Conditions in prison were to visit the problem as if the victims were irrelevant. The recidivist were the fault of the prison not the prisoner. The harsher the conditions in jail some how contributed to the people committing crime, repeating the crime because they had not been weened off their preference whilst locked up. The low level of repeat offences in Scandinavian society was evidence of the success of much better conditions in Scandinavian prisons and should be followed here at home. No mention was made of the huge differences in society here and society there. No mention was made of the social concept of the Scandinavian society and the facilities outside prison. No it was all hobby horse stuff. Our prisons are awful and need to become more of a 'finishing school' for those people who had gone off the rails. Etonians beware.
The part religion plays in politics was suffused with the image that religion was a guide to our behaviour here on earth, how else would we get the rules to play by. The argument that the rules lie in the evolutionary need to perform in certain ways and predates religion by thousands of years of Darwinistic justification held no traction with the believers, especially the established church. Belief has to be the last bastion of the primitive man. There is no foundation other than the mystic for believing in any other power than that which lies within our own psychological make up and, as varied as that makeup is, are the myths we support in times of need.

Three very different women

   Subject: Three very different women

Aside from all the testosterone on display yesterday at the inauguration of the US President there were three very distinct women who played or will play an important role in the affairs of state.

 The ice maiden from Slovenia, Melana Trump. Barrack Obama's wife Michele and Hillary Clinton. There couldn't have been three more different people on show. 

The slim stately model, unsmiling not totally sure of herself but like being on the cat walk she performed with econometric precision the part assumed for her. Michele Obama a more matronly figure secure in her persona confident in her future with the man she loves and who so clearly loves her back. And Hillary still smarting from having secured more votes but defeated by the caucus system she put a brave face on it as the only one of the trio who had taken on the men and so very nearly won.


They came to their positions from very different routes. 

Melana, the traditional route, being beautiful she played the feminine role and seduced
(I know it's a two way street) her way into Trumps affections. Having grown up on the wrong side of the track in a small town in Slovenia she plied her main asset, her looks to find a route into prosperity but I am sure even she had not thought of rising to be First Lady of the most powerful nation on Earth.

Michele Obama had no need for good looks, although she is very feminine in a matriarchal sort of way, she was securing herself a future in her own right when she met Barrack and suppressed her own opportunities for his. She clearly has heaps of charisma as well as talent as has been seen in her personal forays into women's emancipation and instilling the cause in young women.


Hillary Clinton by far the oldest has been on a route which would have daunted most men. A successful career women she married a charismatic man who whilst rising to the top of his profession and becoming President committed the golden sin of getting caught with a member of staff in a compromising position. She then faced the humiliation of the world and its dog knowing that her husband had been unfaithful.

Her decision to stick by him and, after his star had waned, embark on a political career of her own rising to the second most actively powerful job in the administration, Secretary of State, she opted to apply herself for the top job.
Perhaps through the vicissitudes of her political experience she had become over politicised her actions and her performance in front of a crowd laid claim to being insincere and robotic.

Of the three she had come closest to taking the men on, closest to power, closest to being the first woman President. And yet it was the American women who rejected her who felt she couldn't be trusted and as she kept a brave face in surroundings which could have been so different, one had to feel sorry for her as she acted out the final act of what to most would have been a glittering career but to her rested on deep failure. After all she won more votes than the antithesis of all she stood for, who's hand is, as we write banishing all the work that Obama and Hillary had, with such opposition and difficulty cobbled together over eight tumulus years in office. The bile must be bitter and her husband Bill could hardly bear to be there as he looked on, grim faced at all the back slapping around him. Perhaps he more than her felt the anger on her behalf having been the cause of so much of her pain earlier. 

Trump and the promised land

Subject: Trump and the promised land.

And so it happened, there was no thunderclap or lightening strike, no sign from on high, no post script from the almighty just a moment when the handover takes place, not just of power but according to President Trump, it was a hand over of power from the Establishment to the People.
Unusually for a presidential hand over the speech it was a speech of someone still on the stump laying our his vision. It was more a speech that could have been given by either a socialist or an isolationist, it promised to hand back some of the riches of the country to the people and to draw back from spending abroad.
It's been a unique phenomenon since the end of the Second World War that America took on the job of financing the world in the hope of creating and sustaining markets in which it would be a beneficiary. It was the old adage you have to invest to create the opportunity and since the world was largely broken America had to create that market place to sell its goods and recycle its 'lease lend' money. It had to create alliances and create the umbrella where those alliances could prosper without fear of being attacked.
It became the godfather of the capitalistic system with Wall Street and Washington the two most important centres of commerce and politics.
Trump seems set to reverse much of that. The piggy bank is empty he says, countries must learn to stand on their own feet and we are going to reinvent the machinery that made America such a powerhouse. Buy American, made in America, by Americans.
It's a powerful call and one bringing so much hope to those who have been left behind by globalisation.
The internet and real time communication has meant that the factory could be anywhere and so why not where wages were a fraction of the ones back home. From a business man's point of view it was a no brainier. The resultant desperation left in cities across the country were not the business of the corporate officer, he didn't have to worry about the loss of a home market since the same internet bubble allowed him to trade everywhere.
It was a win win situation and many became billionaires on the back of this new world order of boarder less opportunity. In full connivance with the economics the politician lent their weight in convincing their electorate that expanded markets, along with expanded credit would trickle down and square the circle. The deprivation which occurred was the result of unemployment and poor education but somehow the poorly educated unemployed were to blame. Television Programs were made to display how gross these people were, alcohol and drugs were highlighted as a cause rather than the blighted lives and people taking to stimulants to get them through the futureless day.
Of course I am talking about America but one could chose any western country, including our own, to see this scenario played out. The disenchantment with Capitalism in the form of globalisation is rampant in Europe and we in this country having gone along for an easy ride in the European bandwagon will now have to reinvent ourselves as Trump promises America will do but we, of course have a much weaker economic engine to drive us to the promised land.   

Propaganda and its consequences.

Subject: Propaganda and its consequences.

Propaganda is not the art of convincing people of something, a point of view, but of drowning out any other point of view other than your own. Of continually projecting only one view and not allowing other views to take hold in the minds of the people.
Propaganda has the insidious twist of closing down debate of any kind by the sheer volume and tenacity of its message.
It creates not only misinformation but has a dissembling effect on the human mind by continually distorting rational truth for a process which manufactures everything for an end in itself, to brain wash people and subjugate them to a political / religious ideology.
The damage this does to individuals is seen in the mass adulation of the North Korean leader and just recently the upheaval in Israel with the pronouncement that the young Israeli soldier who shot dead the Palestinian lying wounded and incapacitated on the ground was convicted of manslaughter.
One of the revealing things about modern day communication is the reliance on amateur video footage which captures unarguably the actions which are later reported on. The nation is split between those who see with their own eyes and form their own opinion and those who see for their own eyes but who are so damaged by living their lives under a regime where propaganda is the tool to convince people that black is white that they prefer to follow the party line.
The confidence that the soldier had to shoot a person, as if they were a dog laying in the street comes from the distortion that state propaganda brings and the sight of his grinning face as he entered court was further evidence of his assumption that the state would protect him since after all the person he shot was a Palestinian and less than human. Funny how the wheel has turned when it was the Jews who were deemed inhuman by the Germans. Israeli PM Netanyahu has been very vocal demanding that his courts had got it wrong and that the State should pardon the man.
The image in my mind is of a nation in denial. A nation which can justify what I would describe, having watched the video as an act of murder since there was no provocation, no act of retaliation, no threat only the cold blooded dispatch of a human-being without thought or compassion and most of all, because of propaganda, without fear of reprisal.
Without the camera without the evidence he was most surely right but even a court in Israel has to accept the evidence before its eyes.
Netanyahu's Israel is perhaps a harbinger of the future as nationalism begins to take a place once again alongside the global aspirations of Wall Street.

Reflecting on the consequences.

Subject: Reflecting on the consequences

It was an interesting preposition made by Bertrand Russell in his book "In praise of Idleness" that during the 2nd World War, people drawn off productive 'profit making enterprises' to produce armaments for which, largely profits were ignored in the national interest. The capitalistic mantras were laid aside, as production was focused on the war effort and yet the population remained fed, clothed and cared for. The numbers embroiled in the war effort were in effect excluded from the business of producing for the nations actual daily needs and it has been argued that when the war was over the population could actually have been employed on 4 hour a day to produce what was needed by the society and importantly would have  'maintained full employment'. Instead the country lapsed into the old model of capitalism, long hours of work by those lucky enough to have work and long term unemployment for those who were unlucky and superfluous to need.
We know that things could be arranged better if there was a will but with human capital so poorly valued and so distanced from the "powers that be" we have no way of remedying the misery within parts of the society if we have been encouraged to turn our backs on these people.
Without the option of mass euthanasia such as a major war we have to consider alternatives on this misuse of our human capital.  Poor or virtually nonexistent education plus the modern acceptance that one should leave everything to market forces, leaves us with unemployment as the only prescription Capitalism offers as an economic tool to modulate demand. That it leads to the broken society, fulfilling the prophecy that to misuse people in this way will lead inevitably to social disruption and the unlikely rise of a media property mogul such as Donald Trump who's pronouncements are enough.
We see it on the streets of the inner cities in the west but is it any worse than the clash of the Caste System in India or the travails of a gender twisted hierarchy in much of the Middle East and large parts of Asia.

The misuse of people is at the heart of virtually all our problems. Both morally and intellectually, we know it is wrong but we continue to support traditional allegiances  and the misconception of who "we" are in the scheme of things. Perhaps a little more piety without the religious connotation, perhaps a better word would be "respect" for others.

It's easy to do, it doesn't take much effort and it costs little, other than that curious trick of seeing yourself in the other persons position and reflecting on the consequences.

Exceptionalism

Subject: Exceptionalism

Exceptionalism, that belief that has so tainted mankind is still alive and well.
In the case of Jerusalem the Jews a chosen people, the city a chosen city and the land Palestine a chosen land all based on the belief in each being exceptional, more than just special but chosen by God as the founding place for the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and the Muslim faith and is destined to be the final place on Earth when god returns to issue his final condemnation of mankind's evil with the Apocalypse.
A melting pot of ideological connivance, the source of so much disharmony and hatred it is amazing that the players in this mystical bonanza are all meant to flourish from the same God as revealed to Abraham.
The complexity of the historic story of a town situated in a dry Spartan landscape burnt by the sun, not astride an ancient trading route nothing to suggest it had any of the brilliance of Athens, Rome, Constantinople and yet Jerusalem was the crucible of the major exportable religions. The impact of its religions has been both traumatic as well as  a yardstick for something which the secular world still grapples with. The faith of millions of people are tied up in the story of this city, and its political contrivance to plead, not only its exceptionalism but to export its message to the four corners of the world.
With the exception of China, a closed region for many millennia and the strong hold that Hinduism has in India, the monotheistic concept of one god was unique in Abraham as was his instruction to live in the "Promised Land" Canaan, the land of Israel.
And so bequeathed, this Spartan land with its equally Spartan city, Jerusalem was to grow and became the focus for that other alternative premise. That not only did we prosper from Darwinian development but were also blessed with a patriarch who would care and look after us, even after death.
Given the prospect of a good life with a good outcome we seem to have pretty much reneged on the deal and especially insofar as the very religions which were primed to spread the word but have been at each other's throats ever since.
If ever there was a focus of man's inhumanity to his fellow man it has to be the continuing rampage across this barren land which continues to this day. The Israeli contempt for the Palestinian, his cousins in terms of his geographical history but clearly despised as the events showed last week in the cold blooded murder by the Israel soldier of a Palestinian laying on the floor incapacitated with a bullet and yet deemed by the soldier to be worthless. The instant protection of a pardon by the Israeli Prime Minister showed the depth of the contempt and how far this nation, promised so much has fallen even one supposes in the eyes of God.

The truth sits elsewhere

Subject: Truth sits elsewhere.

What sort of mental process goes through the brain of a politician who willingly presents them self in front of the television camera to either lie or obfuscate in response to a straight foreword question. For most of us lying, avoiding the truth is difficult, we show all kinds of discomfort as we lie since we know from childhood that to tell a lie is deceitful, dishonest, underhand, scheming, conniving, none of which we would like to be known for and yet the politician not only relishes the tag but makes it their main professional armament.

They sit and tell lies without a twitch and stony faced. When presented with the truth they are quite prepared to keep on telling the lie without any shame, it's as if their job has turned them into something else, less human less courageous, a lesser person in the chain of humanity and the goals we are all supposed to live by.

The business of politics seems to be the business of persuasion no matter what and I suppose I shouldn't deny them a place alongside the secondhand car sales man or the person selling windows, they are also taught to lie to make the sale but somehow we expect more from the politician and it's a barefaced secondhand car salesman who would continue to say there was nothing wrong with the car if it belches smoke or sounds like a grinding machine. And yet the politician does that day in and day out he carries the deceit to new heights, he is unabashed at facts which show his last comment spurious he ploughs on with the line the party is pushing at this moment as if he has received a tablet from god. The face belies little of the torment, since if he or she are human they must wish at times to throw up their arms and say "yes I am wrong", but when if ever have you heard them say that ?

Is it any wonder the political class are held in such low esteem. Is it any wonder that we despair when we hear them mangling fact which effect us materially, knowing as we do that there is nothing we can do to change this farce which is portrayed on our screens daily. A farce is meant to be humorous it is couched in such a way that the language and the characters are distorted and we know it is a farce. But the political farce is for serious, its actors take themselves very seriously indeed. They lead a nation into war, they make decisions which effect us all. They are given the pomp and circumstance, not to mention the pensions, that ordinary people would cry for. 

The Prime Minister (the liar in chief) is respected and adorned with high office. They are listened too with anticipation, they know the truth, they have to hand the statistics and the power of the Civil Service at their disposal to route out the truth, but what do they do, they stand at the dispatch box and lie and then their acolytes line up to praise them on their perfidy. 

What a sorry state we are in as we weasel our way through the important questions about the state of the nation. "Yes we have just increased the budget on secondary care in the health service but after many years of cutting back the budget Minister but we are woefully short of money to run the service. Yes but I have explained, we have increased spending this year. But Minister that only partially offsets the cuts of the last 5 years. But we have increased it this year". Pause whilst the impasse filters through to us all, he is not in a position to acknowledge the truth since the truth is a matter for the party and sits elsewhere.

The beauty of a smile

Subject: The beauty of a smile.

The beauty is in a smile. The same person grimaces and you immediately know to adjust your own projection (that's what we do) to suit the needs of the occasion. People with a sunny disposition take people with them, who can disagree with a grin, who can overcome a peal of laughter with a serious debating comment, who would want to douse a happy person with your own reality.
The importance of the visual signal is possibly more important than the verbal message. For one we take what people say with a pinch of salt but rarely disbelieve the smile or the laugh  but then that is exactly what an actor does for a living. Of course the actor is in the business of creating a Dopplerganger, they have a storyline to follow and the character they depict is plastered all over the billboards.
The politician on the other hand has storyline which flows from a need to manipulate our minds for the purpose of their being installed into a position of power. No one would suggest that the actor wants to influence for power alone. Other than perhaps Ronald Reagan, the actors mental process is the artistic representation of a fictional character, in fact the more zany the character the higher the kudos for the actor.
But in our ordinary life we judge others on how 'they' act, specifically towards us, and in which the most defining feature is the face.
The face doesn't tell it all but it sets the mood for any discussion we have. The smile softens the whole process of assimilation, it assumes there is a caring interconnection based on the assumption that through the other persons apparent  happiness, we are invited in and not shut out. From then on anything can happen but it will be most likely be a positive interaction.
So today when you meet someone, even someone you are sceptical about, smile and you will be amazed at the result.

A trip to Swansea

Subject: A trip to Swansea.

The wet streets of Swansea reveal once more this city perched on the sweep of a curved bay backing onto hills and valleys, dividing the place up into the posh and the less desirable at the whim of geography.
When you enter the better off parts of London they stretch into the distance, the post codes giving the house prices a mounting preposterous value where a single garage can cost hundreds of thousands to buy.
The landed gentry have always enclosed themselves with walls. The huge houses, sitting amongst cultivated gardens and an artificial lake have that sense of unreality. How can any one family live in and need so much space with an the added sobering reality that the upkeep would send many a person quite mad as Spring approaches and nature try's, once more  to reassert its control. The eternal weeding out of what comes natural and its replacement with the artificial, man's enormous ego at work once again.
Swansea has no clearly identifiable estates or houses which one would call magnificent instead it bleeds the classes into each other as it were a delta blessed with that most natural flank, the sea. That's not of course to say one can see the sea. For large parts of the day its, 'out there' somewhere. There are no Atlantic rollers crashing in to reveal the seas power rather a timid, insipid tidal flow which comes and goes like the repetition of a good clock without cause or to make much of a fuss of.  The town council have, probably with this passivity in mind, flanked the bay with wide path along which the strollers stroll and the cyclists ride their bikes each oblivious of the sea. There are no whales spouting in the bay, no dolphins, no seals, no penguins only the gregarious sea gulls waiting to snap up the discarded chip.
Of course there will be the outraged local who might take umbrage and demand I mention Singleton Park and the gentrified housing close by and, not far away Cwmdonkin Park mentioned by the Welsh bard, Dylan Thomas. But there is nothing to match the Royal parks in London,  the mansions at Audley End near Safron Walden, or Harewood House in Yorkshire (where they do have penguins) or the many other stately pads around the country which were built to house our aristocratic masters.
Swansea is not famous for its town-centre either, no architectural wonders, no centres of excellence, no historic buildings other than fragments of a time when the Welsh were more warlike and castles were built to either keep them in or keep them out.
That's not to say the centre of town doesn't have its quota of lurching semi clad girls and incoherent young men roaming around on a Friday or Saturday night. The bars and the bouncers sit, cheek by jowl down Wind Street, music cascading from open doors onto the street from cavernous buildings which look as if they served a different era and a different purpose and add a certain sobriety to a very un-sober street. A narrow passage at the end of the street called Salubrious Passage, leading to Salubrious Place has a distinctly Dickensian feel to it, and I wouldn't venture down it late at night if only, to avoid stumbling over some drunken body.
There has been an explosion of small cosmopolitan restaurants. From the ubiquitous Chinese to their neighbours the Vietnamese. Japanese sit side by side with Italian and French cuisine and one is spoilt for choice as each business is fully aware of the competition from this less than well-healed town where many seem to be on part-time odd jobbing work and some neighbourhoods have a bad name. To counteract the lack of prosperity the jaunty Welsh character makes a very pleasant change from the, aren't I so sophisticated English. Their welcome seems genuine and friendly, the atmosphere in the pub (other than the city swill) is often laced with music, particularly jazz where the "older" performer still strums his stuff and the night is a deafening, foot tapping limited conversation event and no worse for that.
Of course a mile or two outside the town is the gem of the Welsh countryside. Narrow roads leading to quaint villages and more castles. The sea and the estuaries dominate the route and one is forced to do detours of many miles to get to the other side. The tides come in flooding the fields leaving the sheep stranded but safe as the moon experts its pull and we are reminded of the nature of all things, not withstanding our own bloated self importance.

The importance of our health system

   o

Subject: The importance of our health system

A dose of nasty tasting medicine works wonders. When I was small the medicine of first recourse, if I complained of feeling ill was a dose of "Fever cure " a Quine based fluid which tasted nasty. You had to be sure that you were ill, there was no avoiding the nasty taste and school wasn't all that bad after all.

And so it is with everyone, make them face the unimaginable, and they are forced to  consider their values and how important these values are or how much you are prepared to forgo something.

The crisis in the NHS has I believe been brought on by the government to test our collective metal. First it was an ongoing cut back on the funding as part of George Osborne's book balancing exercise, then the Jeremy Hunt
confrontation with the junior doctors and now the slanging off of the GP. It's as if the government were prepared to risk a breakdown of the medical system in order to create a privatised system more in tune with modern day capitalism where people are evaluated against the backdrop of a balance sheet. 

The effect of pushing people to the edge creates a current of energy in which people consider their role in the organisation and wishing to save it, combine creatively to find ways to make it better. There are always ways to improve any large organisation, especially one which has no overall CEO, no defined product range other than a wish to provide a service for sick people who are at their most vulnerable. 

The sheer volume of folk who pass through their doors with a range of critical urgency and an ill defined spectrum of outcomes make this a business like no other and therefore to use the tools of the balance sheet seems inappropriate to say the least.

A nation which values other people who are ill is a nation with compassion and given that our capacity to have morality and ethics as part of our make-up we should move heaven and earth to keep alive the Attlee governments awakening, after the trauma of Second World War, that we have to be more inclusive with our people and show them the compassion we expect from our own family. 

The stress on our hospitals and General Practitioners is a fundamental reflection on what we have allowed and contributed to within our society, worshipping the lowest price and therefore the lowest unit cost, loosing sight of the inherent value behind everything.

The political connivance between all parties to move from direct taxation and hide the cost of services in oblique ways, putting the cost on the consumer, knowing full well that this slight of hand removed the onerous weight of being taxed on the income you earned to what you spent, knowing full well that the expenditure of a family with children would absorb pro rata much more than taxing the income prior to the individual receiving it. The idea of increasing "income tax" to cover the cost of the NHS and hypothecate the tax so it can not be spent elsewhere, is the only solution in the long run but perhaps it is right that the system needs to be shocked into a mode of self analysis   otherwise the same old, same old continues and no matter how much is put in, still more will always be needed.

Our health is the most fundamental and important thing we have. We can cope with everything else.

Post code liberalism

Subject: Post code liberalism

Is it time yet to declare liberalism dead. Has the urge to be fair, generous, kind, just and truthful come to an end in a surge of rational practicality and are our own problems far more important than the problems of others.

Donald Trumps capture of the rust belt vote or the Brexit result would seem to suggest that the voters have had enough of giving and now want to be recognised as having needs.

There is no doubt that the political class take whole swathes of their own electorate for granted. The assumption that (as it used to be) cheap fags and beer was enough to keep the masses onside whilst the real work with the poor and disadvantaged in other lands, was the aim of a liberal society. 

Of course the make up of our society has changed immeasurably and many of those disadvantaged foreign people now live here as being British. It's also interesting how many of the people who have escaped their own national poverty are the first to pull up the drawbridge and claim we are full.

The question we must ask is, is Liberalism an intellectual pastime only to be practised by the middle classes who having found "sufficiency" can spin a little largesse in the direction of the unwashed majority in far off lands, knowing that this might act as a salve to their conscience. 

Conversely these same middle class people resent the poor unwashed variety in their own country. They happily demonise them. The politicians who are made up from this middle class 'thought speak' assembly in Whitehall, hack away at the few props in the welfare system which make life passably bearable. They find nothing but contempt for our own brand of poverty  whilst eulogising the under nourished, under educated people who's faces light up our TV screens with painful pleading looks and a call to donate. Donate donate is the mantra but not for our own undernourished, listless disheartened folk who can also claim, as a person living in Lagos, that it's all down to a post code lottery.

How many middle class people understand their advantages flow from their own post code lottery and the positive advantages, nay surety of "the good life" it brought them. Oh no we had to work hard they say. My University "education" was no gimme and the "job" was demanding, it meant I had to make "choice's". The assumption that education, a job and choice are on the table for all, that the feral societies in some of our inner cities are so by choice is one of the greatest lies of the 20th and 21st century. The assumption that people chose to live the way they do in the drop out estates is criminal. People are conditioned by their environment just as much as the middle class are conditioned by books and the school they attend, so are the drug addicts and the unemployed.

So if "Liberalism" is to survive it better switch its gaze closer to home otherwise a Donald Trump will come along and capture the glassy eyed electorate, first to capture power and then to turn us all into Disney characters a hotchpotch of the surreal, the cat and the mouse where only the mouses hole in the wall offers any proper security.