The EU debate

Subject: The

 EU debate

Listening to the MEPs in the European Parliament debating changes proposed by Guy Verhofstade the Belgian MEP (who has been given the role of heading the EUs negotiating group to put the EUs position regarding Britain's withdrawal) one is drawn to the conclusion that Europe and its Parliament are made up of  a rich combination of people who represent populations drawn from all corners of the Union, historically who are very different in their specific political journey.

Verhofstade has a mission to federalise and centralise the system under the banner of the unelected Commission with a "business as usual" proposal which try's to ignore the rise of nationalism and the two tier economic schism which has gripped the north and the south of the continent.

Like the "First Past the Post" system in the UK, which is clearly biased and undemocratic, the EU Commission steam rollers its will on the representatives of the national populations which  make up the continent and not unnaturally, there are, as in all nations, many different views, many different claims, many different interests. 

In a purely national parliamentary setting these differences are more local specific, more home grown and the problems, whilst still largely binary, with little common ground there is always the hope that at the next election you can vote them out and rectify the wrongs and inadequate's by new imperatives. 

In the European setting "compromise" was part of the balm which made the system work. The regulations and the uniformity, the conformity of principles of practice, these were the great achievements of the EU. Common laws towards employment, protection of safety through rules of working practice, information regarding food, common laws to arrest criminals, removal of tariffs and the creation of common standards for the manufacture of goods, all this was to the  good. 

I have often been at odds with people over here in the UK, carping on about the rules emanating from Brussels since I have little or no trust in my own government to protect my interests.  Witness the deliberate dismantling of the NHS and the Social Care provisions we have built up since the War. 

Europes main Achilles heel is also its strength. Having a separate executive as relieved the need to bring along all the time the competing interests of 28 member states, each with such divergent agendas and priorities. As long as there were advantages for the majority the interests of the minority could be swept under the proverbial carpet but once the minority became large and growing, it has created its own, inter related  national following and threatened the so called unity, with the potential threat of other  Brexit style withdrawals.

We are all indebted to the creation of Europe as a collective of States which historically had fought between themselves but which now stand, as they do today, within one building to debate their differences.   It has taught us all, if we care to see, the 'commonality', which can lie behind European nations so long as the people of those nations are consulted and is more important than the petty differences which used to perpetuate the quarrelling. 

Listening to Hungarians, the Poles, people from Finland as well as Germany, the Dutch and Italians all those disparate cultural identities. Latvians and Lithuanians, Rumanians and Czechoslovakians, people who cling to their ethnicity but now begin to see themselves as Europeans as well.

It is still tenuous of course and people with ambition can wreck to plan. The ambition of Nigel Farage, Gert Wilders or Marie Le Pen just as much as Jean Claude Juncker, Barroso and Prodi. Each has an agenda, one camp the polar opposite to the other. One harking back to the time of nationalism the other desperate to leaver nationalism out of the way and create a super-national federal establishment which rules outside the constraints of the nation state. 

Sadly I think the way it has been done, by slight of hand and subterfuge, building monetary union before proper unitary political union, shoehorning nations into a Union, a collective which was always going to be unequal without establishing the props and responsibilities which proper Federalisation brings. The Commissioners, playing the long game, deceitful and opaque. Making rules which certain powerful nations could break for political convince but rules which were rigidly enforced when the country was weak and desperate.

Like so many things, a wonderful concept, bastardised by power, wealth and influence.

The Process

Subject: The process.

It's a process not an accident. This economic experiment which, since Richard Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold has embarked the Free World on Free Trade economics with ever decreasing restrictions or controls, eventually plunging the world into the Lehman Banking crisis, a contagion which we have never recovered, despite the band aid of Quantitative Easing.
Turn the clock back but no they say you can't turn the clock back. We can't go back to the old days of financial stability, of people living within their means. We have to feed consumerism, that trick to empty wallets and buy things we never knew we needed.
Who turned the clock forward and, on the back of consumerism, decided to supply the credit struck consumer with cheap goods made in countries on the far side of the globe whilst our own factories closed and the workers from those factories were thrown on the scrap heap to exist on benefits which only now, as the second stage of the great experiment takes place and we discover we can't actually afford the people on benefits.
Who became the arbiter of who would be the winners and who would be the losers.
The design, mapped out in the boardrooms of Goldman Sachs and their ilk had a not so complicated scheme in which economic power was largely removed from national politics and its concern for public interest, by the application of the global market place supplied by global players to peruse global interests
What happened to the national interest. The nation interest was sidelined. Governments bought into the concept of everlasting growth through expanding markets which could only be created by moving the source of production into these potential markets. The global wealth was shifted on purpose to stimulate global rather than national wealth.
Where were the local people fighting for the national interest. Once the shift in power moved from parliaments into the banks and sovereign funds, located where the oil money consolidated, like a monitory slick with nowhere to go but back into buying the parts of the old systems national artefacts and securities at prices which eradicated the local to second or third tier onlooker.
Who sold us all the dummy of internationalism. The concept of looking beyond ones own boarders and visualising the potential of a business venture has been with us from the days of the silk trade. A legitimate barter of skills for raw materials is as old as man's first settlements and proved the great socialising force for communities to gather together. Internationalism, as the name predicts, is predicated on national entities recognising one another as individual entities. It's this recognition and respect for the national character which makes the history of international trade such a long one.
It differs from Globalisation in that in the global system boarders and national States become superfluous. The trades are between autonomous businesses, businesses free to choose their domicile, to invent and reinvent themselves, to own no allegiance to anyone other than their shareholders. They are a layer above the layer of the state there are few rules other than the ones they make for themselves, they are the Masters of the Universe. 

Who invented Globalisation. Well they did. Robert Rubin. Henry Paulson. Lloyd Blankfein. Alan Greenspan. Ben Bernanke. What do they have in common, Jewish parenthood and strong links to Goldman Sachs. Does this make for a conspiracy, who knows but it certainly looks suspicious and with the diaspora spread across the globe, it would be convenient for a group who hold themselves as 'chosen' to chose to exclude others, simply for being 'the others'.

How do you recognise a Welshman

Subject: How do you recognise a Welshman.

Do you remember the days when their were "15"  CJ Stander's in the South African side.
Of course now a days he plays for Ireland and today has been a devastating force in the side playing against Italy at number 6, the blind side Flanker. Of course in this global village if your granny lives in Kilkenny or Bologna, Dumfries or Cardigan Bay even Basingstoke or Limoges then your in the side and there are South Africans players all over the Northern Hemisphere playing for one or other of the national sides.
One has to wonder why the cream of Afrikaner manhood is not playing under the cloudless sky's of the Highvelt or are they ? The South African team have failed to show their old majesty, they lack the intensity, the brutality, the win at all costs mentality. Back then the shear hostility was evident in all their games, it was the result of a febrile hostility the Afrikaner nation carried in its psychology after being caned by every nation in the world because of Apartheid. The political imperative translated itself onto the field as they threw themselves into the ideological breach trying to make up for the hypocrisy of many nations, especially the Americans with their own breed of separatism as witnessed in the 'Deep South'.
This week we have lost at the age of 45, one of  the the great scrum halves, Joost van der Westhuizen. His kamikaze bone crunching tackles on the huge New Zealand winger Jonah Lomu were frighteningly awesome. Who would have the job of stopping that 18 stone freak of nature Lomu but Westhuizen and he did it with heroic courage. Sadly
both men are no longer with us, both dying in their effective prime, yet another example of life's lottery.
England scraped a win against the Welsh in Cardiff this afternoon in a great match one which swung this way and that. A draw would have been fairer but with that awesome crowd on their side, singing to make the rafters shake it must be worth points before the ball is kicked. I turned the volume up full blast as they sang the anthem and cheered that stocky 'self belief' in themselves, when up against that old foe England.
It wasn't quite enough, but considering the financial resources England have within the game of rugby, the innate ability this tiny nation has to play with the oval ball, for me, ( a sucker for the underdog), always leaves a wry smile in anticipation of my next trip to the "green green land", home for 50% of the Wood family, so it can't be so bad can it ?

Being optimistic

Subject: Being optimistic 

As all the bodies organs slowly shut down and lose their effectiveness through ageing the brain still maintains its optimism. Of course in the sad case of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia there is an equally disastrous dissembling of faculties which are as traumatic as the heart or the lungs packing in but on the whole we die from other failings in our collective body apparatus, not from the brain giving up.

The optimism, planning for tomorrow, the emotions which have stayed with us in tact throughout our lives still function regardless. 

Running for the bus, as we used to, has an immediate response from the heart or lungs and they soon remind the brain they are not up to it. Anything to do with balance is suspect but the brain doesn't know yet as we take to the dance floor to re-enact an old romance stimulated by a tune from the past. It's only when we try to execute that pivot that we are brought short and flounder. Playing for the Dads against the boys in the school tournament, the young lad approaches with the ball at his feet, will he go left or right. It doesn't matter really since your reaction time is so slow you are constantly wrong footed.

And yet we continue to order books to give us purchase in understanding the world around us. We listen to programs with interest about the economy in 2020 or worry about the rate of global anything. We behave as if there is no tomorrow.

It's far better that way of course since pessimism about not being around, would be suicidal and the very beauty of optimism is that it is optimistic regarding all matters, even if reality will disprove the optimism.

The brain therefore ploughs on disregarding the facts. It was ever so of course since in its 'alter ego', the mind, it always lived in a bubble of its own making.
Casting around in a slurry of presumptions, it is besieged by romanticism, a calling for things gone by, of values no longer relevant. 

It lives in the surreal world of yesterday, trying to adapt to today, and frightened of tomorrow.

Experts

   

Subject: Experts

"Experts" the world is awash in experts. One of the problems with experts is that they live in their own bubble, they consume there own prognosis to the extent that they can't see what's happening in front of them.
In the field of politics the experts endlessly pontificate about what politicians think and how they are manoeuvring to cut their colleagues down to size. Columns of words are written by the columnists virtually every day with their media shadows appearing on our screens, on the hour each hour repeating 'ad nauseam' the experts tittle tattle.
So much weight is given to the 'pollsters', another bunch of experts, who examine the polls and base their predictions on a carefully chosen cross section of the populous who are asked to comment about their intentions. A little like the weather, human emotion is very complex and extremely difficult to predict. Politics for many is based on emotion and not rational thought and so we see the swings between what the public tell the pollsters and what they do when they enter the voting booth. Never the less, being experts, they 'tell' us rather than advise and we have seen time and time again, most spectacularly in the last general election when they were predicting a hung parliament which the Tories won quite easily.
In the sporting arena I am constantly annoyed to hear the experts expounding from their predetermine script, unable to see what is happening on the screen in front of them, unable to adapt their fixed pre evaluated opinions.
You see in front of your eyes events unfurling, perhaps in a marathon, where the favourite is dropping behind but they continue to plough on and speak as if the favourite is still a contender, as if what we see on our screens isn't happening, commentating from notes they have prepared beforehand.
I suppose we all do it in one way or another, we all script our reaction to most comments by responding with an "appropriate" response rather than thinking on our feet and sometimes being controversial in calling black, white or deliberately going against the flow of the company you are in to speak of your own convictions.

Fair dinkum

   

Subject: Fair dinkum

Why is sitting and watching mid day television "so not the thing to do". What is it in our mania for fulfilling schedules that doing zilch is so frowned on. Why can't we watch television all day until we fall asleep in front of the set and then drag ourselves off to bed to dream.

In reality life is just a dream, a mystical series of events over which we have little control.
Throughout our lives like automatons we get up to the alarm clock and hurry off in our car or on public transport to fulfil someone else's agenda. Even precious time at home, is scored through with the usual chores and often we have to walk to someone else's drum beat.
Even in the latter stages of ones life we are expected to wake up and fulfil each day with a busy schedule. Cleaning, mowing, feeding, and only then do we feel that we have achieved our personalised goals which through years of conditioning, allows us to feel good about ourselves. Our ownership of our personal space and the condition it is in often reflects what we want others to think about us. The big house, the flashy car, even the neat lawn and the colourful flowerbed are all the dance we perform for others by which we feed our own ego.
Consider this. If, at the behest of others, we spend in our lifetime, 96,000 hours doing stuff demanded by someone else, perhaps spending the time we have left, 29,120 hours doing what ever we please, is fair dinkum.

St Crispin's Day

Subject: St Crispin's Day.

It has been for many reasons one of the strangest political phenomena, this exit process of Britain from the EU. 

Last night the House of Commons voted my a large majority to continue the process to leave the EU regardless of the fact that many politicians disagree with the People's Referendum and its vote to leave. It's not an academic question, for many of them they see an economic  disaster looming ahead as we lose the right to trade without tariffs barriers for the goods we produce in this country and sell to Europe. Our trade with Europe is by far the largest and so it is from an economic point of view like punching yourself in the face, something you can still decide to do but will hurt and under normal circumstances is unnecessary. 

So why are the so called custodians of our decision making so gung ho to commit us to this questionable 'self harming' situation. 

Well "The People have spoken" is the answer and in the Referendum they voted to come out. It has been argued that the People didn't know the facts or understand the consequences of their vote and no doubt with the claim and counter claim swirling around it was exceptionally hard to make head nor tail of what these consequences were. There was a large rump of people who feel discarded by politics who's economic position is dire anyway and have felt discarded by politicians of both the main parties and who therefore took a kick at the government of the day, who's  professed wish voiced through the Prime Minister was to remain. To these people they felt their lives couldn't get any worse.

Trade is pivotal for economic well being, less trade and ones well being is sure to be effected and whilst everything is in the air at the moment and depends on the concessions wrung from the Europeans there is no doubt our well being will be effected negatively. Why then did the parliamentarians not vote against our referendum decision they being the guardians of our best interests.

It has often been said the if "hanging" was left to the popular vote that it would be reintroduced for specific acts of murder. In this case the parliamentarians see themselves as guardians of or morality and consistently vote against the reintroduction of hanging. In the field of "assisted dying" we are often amazed that the sight of people so broken by an illness who wish to end their life under very carefully contrived conditions are rejected this humanitarian wish by the politicians who fly against the wishes of the people. There are hundreds of laws enacted which fly against the popular vote so why not this one if the politician sees leaving the EU a disaster ?

Why in this case are they so craven not to vote against the three-line whip which is an order from their leadership to follow the leaderships decision. 

You would have thought that the guardianship we entrust to them on all matters would make them follow their conscience or economic gut and say no irrespective of what it might do to their political career.

Of course I have placed the worst case scenario of our Brexit leave and it is to be hoped the agreement will not be all bad. There is also the gradual build up of trade in other parts of the world but make no mistake this "European Free Trade Area" as it was originally conceived to be, was a tremendous idea and the concept to which we originally wished to enter. It has been the political progression that has begun to trouble people in this country as the Union tried to approach a closer federation with legal and monetary union. 

In Britain, with our island mentality we were never wholeheartedly within the mindset of Europe, refusing to join the Euro for instance and so I think it was more being the reluctant relative that drove the vote in the direction it did. For many political and economic reasons the thrust of European decision making has come from predominantly Germany and historically it sticks in the gut to think that after two world wars, when Germany represented an alien ideology, something we were so opposed to that we were prepared to send our lads to die to oppose, that we would calmly accept, 50 years on, their unquestioned leadership.

The economic instability of a two tier Union of States, strong North, weaker South without the recycling of surpluses as is seen in the USA, a proper federation of states, then the economic disharmony within Europe would only flourish with the disaster of systemic unemployment the only outcome. This almost, built in, unequal structural aspect of the EU was to my mind something to be avoided and since the hegemony within the union had already been established it would not easily be relinquished.

It was for this reason that I wished to leave but I have to be frank, the full implications of for instance, 'financial pass porting' was never explained, nor its implicit ramifications on the strongest element in our economic structure, the Banks.

Henry Vs St Crispin's Day speech before the battle of Agincourt 

This day is called the feast of St Crispin

He that outlives this day and comes safe home

Will stand a tip toe when the day is named

And rouse him at the name of Crispin

He that shall live this day and see old age

Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours 

And say 'Tomorrow is Saint Crispin'

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars

And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day'

Religious observance

Subject: Religious observance.

Yesterday my blog concerned itself with emaciated donkeys. Today our television screens ore full of emaciated little toddlers, children so young, so traumatised that the anguish on their little faces should concern us all. 

The one common denominator is that the 'region' is the same, "the Middle East". 

It's the same people who are engaged in this bloodletting which we see on our screens, families being obliterated. It's ironic that we claim these emaciated children are the lucky ones, are they lucky, their world blown apart, they have seen and experienced things which no one should ever experience.
And still the fighting goes on. 

Saudi Arabia (supplied by "our" munitions manufactures) dropping bombs and munitions into the towns of Yemen. Iran fighting on so many fronts with their proxies

, Hamas.  The terror of the Boko Haram in Nigeria. The Islamic State, ISIS with its inhumanity towards everyone not of the faithful and even then, a further contradiction, they specify the faithful as the Sunni kill their fellow Muslim, the Sharia with a venom that makes one shudder.   

As you watch the tearful relatives being reunited in the airports in the United States one has an empathy with them but where is the empathy between themselves at home. Where is their  rational, the empathy between neighbours. What is at the heart of this turmoil. 

It's claimed one is inciting "prejudice" to lay the blame for all this at the door of religion especially so if you lay it on a specific religion. One of course could also argue that it's "religious prejudice" which is the cause of all the mayhem.

To me it's amazing the power that exists in religious thought especially since the origins of the stories about the historical/f actuality of mankind's place in the religious story has been successfully challenged. With the mainstay of 'evolution' accepted, the stories become parables to describe a proposition which is fanciful to say the least. Perhaps for most people the alternative is too bleak and without any alternative people continue to pray for their own salvation. But the twist is that in the prayer for salvation a human hierarchy exists. Some religions proclaim superiority over others and the believers are encouraged to believe in their own superiority. 

Conflict becomes inevitable and because of the deep seated nature of belief systems, differences become irreconcilable.

Perhaps it's the power of the church or mosque which is irresistible. The collective sense that they can't all be wrong and we need this paternalism in our lives.

What ever is, "on the 'other' side" has intrigued mankind, quiet naturally, since we place so much weight on our actions on 'this' side. The romanticism of heaven and the purgatory of hell are descriptive of mankind's need to seek control. The captive audience is fed the story and succumbs to the pressure and then locked in and finds it impossible to properly reflect on the fanciful story they have committed their lives to. 

Religious hierarchy have an enormous influence over their flock and of course this is made more so the less sophisticated the flock is. Coming from societies where life and death are easily traded, the appeal of salvation is strong and the threat of damnation is real as their lives on this earth bare manifest.

Oh to be a super god

   

Subject: Oh to be a super god.

Music to set the foot tapping, I'm listening to The Modern Jazz Quartets album at their European Concert, fantastic. I remember it as if it were yesterday as they bewitched us with their suave, oh so delicate, sophisticated jazz.
Walking home from the St George's Hall in the 50s having missed the last bus it was raining but we were in another world, the wet streets a backdrop to an escape from the drab conformity into a world which trembled with possibility as Milt Jacksons sticks ran over the Vibraphone keys and John Lewis kept a sympathetic control over proceedings with his piano backing. These giants of jazz were over from the States, their Union relinquishing a ban as they and more of the stars of contemporary jazz came to our shores and thrilled us with their musical interpretations.
I know I'v been here before in my blog. Abba took me back to the days when the limbs weren't tight and everything on the dance floor was possible. Thriller, Guilty, Rob Stewart, Mr Gravel Voice, ever so explicit in his lyrics and his off stage persona.
As one sits and listens with closed eyes one is easily transported back to parties when so much fun and testosterone was bouncing around the place and we were all giddy with potential.
The concerts where the thrill was multiplied by the thousands attending until it became an impossible wave of shared emotion to whoever was performing. They were gods on the stage, the spotlight picking out the singer, the lead guitarist creating ecstasy with his riffs and gyrations around the stage, the songs a common language to everyone producing shrieks of anticipation as the first cords were struck and the boom boxes spoke, terrorised our ears with loud unhealthy decibels, squeezing out from us all any last vestige of independence as we fell in thrall hypnotised by the phenomena of a rock or the purity of a singer creating the romance of Athens.
The mind is fodder in such situations and one can see why the drug culture is so popular
It  provides a similar escape from the humdrum lives we all lead into a place where for a time we exist alongside those super gods on stage.

Little Green Men

Subject: Little Green Men

If only the baddies were "little green men". How do we identify the baddies has always been a problem.
"Stop and search" was often deemed discriminatory as it clearly targeted young black men in preference to white men. Statistics were stated as the leading reason for targeting this section of the population since the type of crime the police were after, drug and knife related offences were more prevalent amongst this section of the community. Of course one could ask, was the higher arrest rate due to the fact that more young black men passed through the police filter and was there as great a chance that the white cohort in this age group wouldn't have produced similar statistics.
How to we target the 'baddies' if society as a whole is capable of the crime. Well clearly there are some giveaways.
If the crime is a financial white collar crime you don't go looking amongst the homeless. If the crime is one of speeding you leave the cyclists alone. If it is rape of a female you target men. When it comes to terrorism, in the days when the IRA were armed and on the warpath, people with an Irish accent attracted the spotlight and now-a-days, since Al-Qaeda hit on the Twin Towers and the subsequent success of ISIS in Syria and over the boarder in Iraq and their call to Jihad or holy war, people who look as if they come from that part of the world are suspect and the security forces are more stringent in their checks on Syrian looking men for instance. This leads to claims of racial stereo-typing and intolerance. Of passing judgement on people because of their ethnicity and so on. People become very excited when people's right to justice is infringed, as was witnessed when the Speaker of the House of Commons rose to deny the honour of President Trump to speak  in Westminster Hall to an assembly of both the Lords and the Commons when he arrives here on a State visit.   President Trumps ban on Muslim visitors from certain designated countries in the Middle East, which are deemed unstable seems, in a realpolitik world, to be sensible and unfortunately necessary but of course many people don't live in the real world, their world of make-believe where all men and women being equal their rights are based on the judicial standard that everyone is judged innocent until found guilty.
In a war and make no mistake we are at war,  innocence and guilt mean different things to either side and where the consequences are what we saw in Paris, then the rights of Habeas Corpus have to be addressed as has much of our squeamishness in dealing with the threat.

Is David Hockney a fraud

Subject: Is David Hockney a fraud.

Is David Hockney a fraud ?
I watched him being interviewed on television last night. He appeared to be the archetypal Yorkshireman, flat cap and broad accent. He sat in the glow of the praise the interviewer heaped on him, a benign smile on his face as if to say I'v heard it all before.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. Rembrandt, Michael Angelo,Titian all painted in great detail, providing reproductions of scenes actual and mystical which we still stare in awe. Then the Impressionists Cezanne, Van Gogh, Pissarro with their use of colour and texture to often blur reality and find some other inference to what we see around us.
The Modernist School. Picasso with his Cubist rendering of shape, the Surrealism of Chagall with his more fluid shapes. Paul Klee with his explosion of colour to define the emotional. Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Post Modernism they all moved further away from an artists depiction of reality into a world where it was often up to the viewer to make out of the picture what they wanted.
Somewhere along the way came the impostors who with the backing of the Art Critique made enormous claims on our credulity. Tracy Emin with her unmade bed is for me a bridge too far. She seems to simply capitalise on a market that has invented itself to provide people who have too much money and not enough sense, a place to buy and display for the unique pleasure of saying "I have one of those and you don't".
Hockney is somewhere between Pop Art and a sort of Impressionist in that on face value his pictures depict the world around us but with a twist. His "Big Splash" showing a splash of water coming up from a swimming pool simply reflects his love for California where he lives part of the time and the "Big Tree" which reflects his roots in Yorkshire. Neither painting is specifically gifted in my opinion, neither precise nor evolving into something which needs interpretation, it's more blurred than factual and one is left wondering if it isn't the work of someone who can't paint or draw but has somehow become iconic through no fault of his own.
I attended the Bradford Technical Collage and across the road was the lessor building of the Bradford Art Collage. We used to think of the arty types as lesser beings than we of a technical 'engineering' bent but Hockney has had the last laugh. Although we both walked down Great Horton Rd, he no doubt on the other pavement, our paths since then diverged. He went on to become wealthy and famous and I remained unnoticed but no flat cap can dissuade me that his wearing of it is as fraudulent as are his paintings.

I wish they were here

Subject: I wish they were here.

It's sad but true that as we run our journey through life there are various stages in it when for perfectly good reasons we take our parents for granted.
When we were children they were the focus of our lives, they were our security they sustained us through thick and thin. When as teenagers we discovered we knew it all, we discarded them as much as we could whilst still living under their roof. As we ourselves became married and had children  of our own our own parents were much forgotten as we struggled with our own problems which marriage and children brought.
It's only now when we ourselves are getting older and reaching that stage when we begin to see our own parents in ourselves that we wish they were still around to reconnect with. Age brings with it it's own fears. Illness disability and death have arrived to poke us in the side and remind us that the time ahead is limited. This is not to say that one is disheartened or depressed only that the reality of life's journeys end becomes ever more predictable. Under these circumstances it would be nice to chat about the old days with ones Mom and Dad, to reminisce, to ask those questions which were never asked back then.
I have friends who's mother turns 100 this year and who still seem to sail on and on. I received photos from another friend who's mother was celebrating her 89th. We lost a man who was in his late nineties last year and so aged parents are all around us and whilst ageing often brings difficulties to the children in attempting to look after their  Mom or Dad, sometimes the heartache of dementia or simply having the decision to put them in care when it becomes too much for the family, we should cherish the connection they bring, to everything we have become.
That piece of the jigsaw that is indistinct, our early childhood when we were particularly vulnerable. Those formative years when they struggled to meet your needs especially the needs they thought were their responsibility. Their hopes and fears their delights would be nice to reminisce with them if not only to prove to them that you had made it and it had been all worth while.

Fake News

Subject: Fake News

Currently there's a big 'hoo ha' about Fake News. It's a term brought into prominence by Donald Trump in his diatribe against the main media and its demonising of him.
Of course the term is meant to describe the stories put out over the web which slot into people's consciousness even if they are absurd and silly because we have become over time, an absurd and silly audience.
People who's attention span is nearly overwhelmed by a statement made on Twitter, who's method of communicating is by a trail of seemingly unconnected letters, "wtf",  but as in a code makes a whole new collective meaning for the young. A new sort of undercover way of expressing themselves without much effort.  Like using 'smileys' although a smile is never far away from a smiley.
There is great concern that the Internet has allowed communication to get away from the control the Establishment wants to have over the communication the nation needs to receive. Propaganda, and lies are the tools of the main press as much as they are for the malicious stories released on the net. The Sun, the Mail, the Express are continually inventing news in the sense that they invent a slant on the factual news that has little to do with the actual story. The columnist in their columns trade opinion for news and we are encouraged to believe them rather than the factual story.
The drip drip of mis-information is  Kafkaesque in its mission to impregnate a mis-truth in the nations psyche
So "Fake News" is nothing new it's just that the Genie is out of the bottle and heaven knows where it will lead us.
Hopefully, not to be so gullible and for us all to form our own opinions with a bit of checking and a whole dollop of cynicism if it comes from a politician of any persuasion.

Group Think

Subject: Group think.

When we see on television those atrocious shots of mutilated donkeys crippled by the work they are forced to do, do we reflect on the societies within which they live and the apparent disregard that members of that society seem to have for the donkey as well as apparently condoning the people who are beating the animal.
North Africa is the scene of course and its the same scene that "we" are asked to show compassion for the people living there.
Of course we mustn't be prescriptive, we must judge everything in the prism of our own conscience a conscience formed by our own society and "its" norms.
We are packaged and labelled by that society as a product of the "group think" that passes for free will. When we see the donkey we reach into our collective pocket and donate money on the assumption that our money will do something to assuage  the donkeys suffering. If the collective will of the people, both here and in North Africa were anywhere similar then either you would see donkeys beaten in the streets of Warrington or, you would see more compassion from the people who happen to have tribal differences and currently beat donkeys openly on the street.
But no there is no connectivity and whilst we continue to hold the false dichotomy that all people are the same we will also continue to ask questions of ourselves and the collaboration we are being asked to develop with strangers from this troubled part of the world.
The "libertarian" will round on me asking 'how can I equate a donkey with a person'. Well in this country if you ill-treated an animal in this way you could end up in prison. Society takes a serious view of animal cruelty.
Why then do the societies in the Middle East not take a similar position if we are, as suggested, 'kith and kin' in the libertarian view of this assembly of human beings.
This and so many other things point rather to the differences between us.
The unity is in the mythology that because we belong to a defined species, homo sapiens then there is enough commonality to link us all and demand equality.
What makes us who we are is not the heart or the lungs, nor the vertebrae but the mind which is different from the brain. "We think therefore we are" but what we are is what we think !!
If people think in different ways to ourselves should we automatically give them a seat at the table. Are we not allowed to differentiate as to which person joins us. Can we no longer make these sort of decisions or has the decision making process been taken out of our hands.
It's as much this 'group decision making' which so annoys people, along with labelling individuals if they wish to go against the "group thought"

Is religious conformaty another form of fascism

Subject: Is religious conformity another form of fascism.

How do we differentiate an individual from a group. Even more importantly, how can we tarnish a group because of the actions of a few individuals.
The second question to ask is how individual is an individual, can anyone be an individual living in a society who are largely made up of a specific group.
President Trumps exclusion of Muslims coming to America from certain, predominantly Muslim countries carries the argument that since there is an Islamic war going on, minimising the opportunity for fighters to gain entry into America makes America safer. During our war with Germany, people from Germany were prevented from coming in and the ones here already were placed in camps.
The opposing argument is that by integrating and socialising, it acts as an soothing poultice, minimising the actions to those of the active terrorist (who is dealt with by security intelligence) whilst converting the mass to some semblance of uniform conformity.
Unfortunately the elephant in the room is religion. The 'individual' coming from certain countries, along with his pluralistic brothers and sisters are conditioned not by what we would call common sense or even a call to humanity but are rather pray to the pulpit.
We must also understand the difference between the Christian Church and its call for 'inclusiveness'  and the 'exclusiveness' of the Muslim religion with its fundamentalist  underpinning.
There are many countries in the Middle East where brutality is the norm as punishment for what is deemed religious slights which include adultery and theft. There is no comparable strictures these days in Christianity although in the not too distant past the Church was as much to blame for the savagery it inflicted on a person accused of stepping out of the religious footstep.
When we see paraded in front of us the plight of someone caught at an airport unable to return to America, we place ourselves in his or her situation and feel their frustration. Our media are experts at whipping up the masses to protest but when did the media last set out to deliver us a picture of the stoning to death of a woman in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. When did we last hear a politician stand up in Parliament and berate the Mullas for condoning such savagery. When did we see on our screens the removal of the hand that had stolen. Where are the prison reformists who see in our jails, harsh conditions but as a collective group, fail to rail against the conditions in the Turkey or Mexican prisons, not a word. We are full of blind spots, full of excuses.
Could the process of thinking or alternately not thinking be the cause of our problem.
Every time we think, (properly consider) some aspect or other of what is happening around us, if we are honest the more we think the more we bring in extraneous factors which alter our vision. Thinking and travelling to discover other ways of living and thinking has a beneficial effect, even if it clouds our original perspective and makes us change our mind.
The mind is the crucible of thought and it is this precious thing, our mind which sets us apart from other living things.

But what if the mind is whipped into conformity, political conformity or religious conformity. In the former we speak of 'fascism' an authoritarian form of governance much derided for its brutality and the way it seeks to achieve its aims through strict obedience. Religion is another form of 'fascism'. It seeks governance through strict obedience. The mind is subordinated, having to accept some pretty unusual concepts, unchallenged by the faithful. The manipulation of the mind has some terrible historical precedents. Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, to name two but I would claim that religious teaching with its ultimate "fear of damnation" is but a fascist tool to obtain control. If this power is true then the "group" so afflicted are fodder in the hands of the manipulators.

If religion stays benign, dealing with the social aspects of our lives I have no problem but if it were to flourish into a political organ then the danger to the non religious sector of humanity (perhaps 50%) is clear and be it the individual terrorist or the Mullah in the pulpit, those of us who are neither need to be aware of their significance.

A state of combobulation

Subject: A state of combobulation

Are we all just figments of imagination. Do we know anything for a fact or is it all simply conjecture. If the mind plays tricks on us, when is it not playing tricks since the process of gathering information around us is so buried under with supposition, mental supposition based on templates that hardly fit the occasion but are used anyway to surmise our conceit.
If the world around us is a matter of conjecture and even ourselves, as we continually submit to some confection of ourselves to suite the occasion getting ourselves mixed up in something we conjure for others, is there any sense of true reality.
Many of  Shakespeare's characters are afflicted with this warp of human nature. Their lives play out to the deceit they play on themselves and to others, as is true of the mix of others to them. In this hall of distorted mirrors is their an object which is true or is all mankind simply a sham.
It's a question which is nearly unbearable to contemplate since we place so much store on the image we subconsciously project and would, like the Emperors new clothes, be naked if found out. In our battle to be what we perceive others to admire can we ever be happy.
So a blurring occurs from the start. We perceive what isn't there, or if it is there we perceive it inadequately and on such foundations we presume to understand others who are similarly disabled. What a mess.
I suppose in this fog of made up assumptions we can create our own truths, our own myths, a whole universe according to John or Sally, a combobulation of our own making which, if we are generous works toward the general good. If we are less than generous then we have conflict but you can be sure the conflict has no more a secure base than our own generous model for a Utopian state.
Mankind is cursed with inherent myopia, what it sees is a mental aberration a surrogate  for what it doesn't see, and what it doesn't see is by far the most of what is actually going on.

Sharing your thoughts

   

Subject: Sharing your thoughts.

"We think therefore we are" and through thought we express our thoughts in words.
The beauty in words and the part they play in our thoughts. Thoughts which define who we are and so the words have to be carefully chosen. The richness of language and our confidence to use the language, trying to articulate who we are in this circular journey in which we engage, garnering  the essence, and the substance of what we believe is true.
Does believing in something matter or is life like a kaleidoscope of moving images, each relatively unconnected. Is there a theme to our lives or are we chaff thrown up in the wind to blow about hither and thither, no specific direction, no particular objective.
From Socratic 'pluralism' to Pluto's 'solitary reflective', mankind has been troubled by our role in society as individual people. The giving and the withdrawal of ourselves and the balance we try to achieve between the two. Our integration with people and the reluctant interrogation, within ourselves as a response, of what we have exposed of ourselves.
Of course there are people who are polar opposites and are no worse for it. Their thinking has lent them a position, a hook on which to hang their proverbial jacket which they try on each day and feel comfortable wearing. The jacket describes who we are even the scraps of paper in the pocket reminding us of what we thought yesterday and have decided or wish to remember..
John Redwood is as contrary a figure to Jeremy Corbyn as you can find.
Mrs Worthington-Peet has little in common with Jessy Higginbottom. Lee Huang and Mahdi Algafari, Marco Rossi or Achim Muller all come from backgrounds in which formative thoughts are embedded in cultures which are as different as are the names of the individuals who carry them and yet as human beings there are certain common elements in which we all coalesce.
We love in the same way, we all feel pain and disappointment in the same way and yet our respective cultures has taught us to respond outwardly in accordance to the norms of that culture. From the stiff upper lip to the wildly romantic from the formal to the mystic we differ and it shows. The culture and the society within that culture plays a part in how open we are, or how closed, is it any wonder that misunderstandings arise.
At best finding a "mean" to negotiate our way is all we can expect and it is made especially difficult in a multicultural society. The variables are trip points, ensnaring us in confrontation and are much more numerous.
"Two minds are better than one", and three, is better still, the more we can share our thoughts, has to be beneficial and to everyone's advantage.