You'll be a man my son

Subject: You'll be a man my son.

If I can build a ship or a car for home consumption does it matter that the ship costs more because the local cost of labour is higher so long as the wages paid are recycled locally into buying other local purchases, which stimulates the local economy which  invigorates  the local population.
Investment in such a consortium is labelled Socialism and is designed, through a planned economy to benefit the population as a whole not just a segment of it.
Unfortunately what we have inherited is the concept where 'private enterprise', with their  shareholders calling the shots. A group of wealthy people already segregated from society and the local population, who care little for that society and are only interested in maximising  their return on capital. Not unnaturally it's called Capitalism.
Wealth means power. Not only the power to seek out cheap labour in Asia but the power to manipulate our minds to accept their view of the way a productive economy works.
Of course what is rarely asked is, productive for who. With the media and the news-papers in the hands of the wealthy we are never going to get a definitive answer as to who benefits.
Society is divided up into layers like sediment in a geological dig. The top 1% have already disappeared off over the horizon and live in unimaginable opulence  somewhere where the sun always shines. The next layers, upper, upper middle and middle economically defined segments all have "skin in the game" and therefore are happy to see the status quo continue irrespective that the lower down the geological dig you are the more exposed you are to subsidence.
The interesting sectors are the skilled and semi skilled sectors where with government connivance there is the occasional optimistic olive branch held out that they too can join the party so long as they accept the conformity of the rules. That whilst your jobs are threatened with extinction because we have chosen to move them offshore you can re-train for a less skilled job, no minimum hours contract with lower pay  and no guarantee of employment protection but what the hell  with credit you can 'pretend' to be somebody.
And then there are the unloved, unwashed, "untouchables" who have been cast outside the stockade to fend for themselves. We can and do offer them the sop of 'welfare' but in doing so we take care to repeatedly stigmatise them for not having the gumption to become like us. We ignore that dependency breeds dependency and that disillusion breeds more dissolution. The impact of living in an economic ghetto is to largely to remove the last vestiges of self confidence and pride in who we think we are.
These people with little influence or or power and a voting system which has scarcely any incentive to reflect the needs of these millions of the people, is it any wonder that as the State institutions, for which we were once proud, are being wilfully destroyed by the Tory party.
The ideological allure of capitalism, with the  emphasise on "winners" and of continually disparaging  losers has meant that people cannot countenance themselves as anything other than acquisitive gainers. Sadly this misses the point, not only of failing to evaluate the actual person, content in what they have attained, emotionally and materially but which also reflects the "true you" without the never ending goading to do better.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting to
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies
Or being hated don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good or talk too wise.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same
If you can bear to hear the truths you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the thing you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build em up with worn out  tools

If you can make a heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss
And lose and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after you are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says, Hold on.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it
And what is more, you'll be a man my son.

Familiar seas and familiar destinations

Subject: Familiar seas and familiar destinations

If I were a dog I could settle down in my basket seeking the comfort of knowing I was home. As my eyelids closed I would dream of setting sail, in my basket, for the isle of bones, the juicy bones, crunchy bones, bones of all sizes for a dog like me to salivate over.
Climbing into my own bed has the same effect. It's not the bones but the weight taken off those bones as I relax on my mattress (board hard) with the sheet and the duvet tucked under my chin to keep out any draught. The radio on the bedside table blurting out some esoteric program on the meaning of infinity. Last nights book laying tantalising close, calling me in to continue where we had left off. And all this whilst I stay awake, who knows were my dreams may take me.
Simple pleasures are the best. "Getting back to basics" and forgetting the convoluted specialities we promote mentally as being necessary,  it's  what we yearn for as we begin to turn inward at the end of the day, reconnecting with our inner self after 12 hours of competitive activity.
The scene is within my head, the story line is the creation of my mind and has little if any reality in it. It is a characteristic of getting older that we slowly cast off the reality and the frenzy of doing things, things which invariably used to absorb others in our actions but now we begin to rely on our own devices to construct another more personal world, a world of reflection and evaluation, taking in more closely that intimate  world which lies just at our elbow.
Like the dog with his bone we salivate at some juicy conundrum or try to understand why people react to what we ourselves see as something understandably rational but they with a polar opposite point of view.
Drawing on our experience is what generations have done for generations but in this fast moving world, with information overload and the cycle of societal reinvention down from 50 years to 20 years and now 10 there is little use for experience and knowledge other than in the pub quiz.
And so we lapse into a muse content to sail the familiar sea to familiar destinations.

The Emperor Syndrome

Subject: The Emperor Syndrome

The abuse of power used to be something we envisaged coming from a raw tribal society, (the emerging African states come to mind) which had clothed itself  in the democratic function, voting rights and parliamentary procedures but proceeded  to advance their system of governance on despotic, patriarchal tribal lines.
Vladimir Putin and Li Peng both head so called democratic institutions where their people are offered the vote but 'opposition parties' are largely absent from offering a political alternative. Both are powerful countries, immeasurably important in the world of international politics but who mirror each other in their absolute control of every aspect of governance within their respective countries.

Turkey a large powerfully armed state, with a standing army bigger than any in the European Union, sits at a strategic cross roads between east and west in an area which is seen to be falling apart with national and religious conflict. It's President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking the same autocratic powers, as those totalitarian countries Russia and China.  The power to do what ever he wants and know that the organs of the State including, the media will support him totally.

And so the balance of power shifts once again and one can't help but be reminded of Arch Duke Ferdinand, a relatively unimportant individual who's assassination became the excuse for the start of the First World War.

Sabre rattling has been a way for nations to rally internal support amongst its people often to disguise failings amongst its ruling clique. The tit for tat claim and counter claim is made worse having a psychologically challenged and unstable man in charge of the American administration.
The sight of Donald Trump and Angela Merkel sitting in the White House for a photo shoot, she consolatory and he like an errant schoolboy staring uncomfortably ahead revealed a lot about how difficult it must be having a rational discussion with him.
I suppose the Tsar of Russia or the German Kaiser come to mind when Divine right hold sway over rational decision making, perhaps living in his palatial houses gave Donald delusions of his own grandeur and we have the 'emperor syndrome' all over again.

Concrete

Subject: Concrete

There is a program on the BBC World Service which comes on at 5am on Sunday morning in which facts and statistics are banded around to give perspective to the world around.

This morning it was concrete. 

Concrete gives us a measure of growth in a country. You build something and concrete plays a role in the construction. One remarkable fact is that China has used more concrete since 2000 than the USA did in the previous century. That at current levels, China uses 5 time the amount of concrete annually than the US. And whilst we in this country still remember the building of Milton Keynes (a new town) as a major project in this country, China has built the equivalent  of "Manhattan" every year, somewhere in their vast country. 

The contrast of what goes on in this still mysterious place, compared  to the outside world is stark. And we poke her with a rhetorical stick as that buffoon Trump wishes to do, at our peril. 

China was always an enigma a mysterious place defined by its in-hospitality to outside influence. A place well ahead of the intellectual curve as the succeeding Dynasty's passed down the ruling structure of a god like Emperor, slavishly served by a civil service class, the mandarins who raised the art of bureaucracy to a level never seen before or since.

The deliberate exclusion of any outside influence created a unique system based on philosophical precepts such as Daoism, (living in harmony) and Confucianism ( a rationalistic way of life). With this underpinning of life by cultivating a thought processes which regarded the way people ran their lives, the responsibility for which was promoted within each person, a regime structure was built which was immensely strong and lasted thousands of years.

The West had little to offer and given that the mindset of the Chinese was functional and not in the way we understand it, liberal.

It is nearly impossible for us to understand the fairly recent claim Mao Tse-tung made on the minds of his people and the near total self sacrifice they offered to his crazy schemes. A cult on a stupendous scale which could only be created by a massive lack of 'self indulgence' on the part of the people.

This captive power over 1.37 billion people gives the rulers of China immense power to get things done and whilst we hum and haw over building a '3rd runway' at Heathrow the Chinese have completed 5 new airports.

Cemex the second largest concrete producing company in the world, which just so happens to be Mexican, is set to make a killing on the wall Trump wants to build between the US and Mexico but even this project is tiny compared to what China consumes annually.

The scale of their achievement, post Mao has been phenomenal. A huge population, nearly 20% of the Worlds total population and an iron willed no nonsense political control without the frills of democratic responsibility to hinder its decisions, even President Trumps concept of strength, (other than raw nuclear weaponry), should  be cause to reconsider his bully boy attitude.

To begin in the beginning

Subject: To begin in the beginning

To begin in the beginning.

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobble streets silent and hunched, courters and rabbits wood limping invisibly down to the sloeblack, slow black, crowblack, fishing boat-bobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat therein the muffled middle by the pump and Town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound Town are sleeping now.

And so the rhythmic cadence goes on, spell binding in its quiet ferocity, eloquently describing the mortals who live their lives in this Welsh town. People, as in all towns, having their tale to tell but not willing to tell it.
Dylan Thomas poem, beautifully articulated by the velvet tones of Richard Burtons voice the lilt of an accent amplifying the folk law and deceit implicit in the story. In the dark black, bible black night each person with his secret and only the gossip Thomas to tell us what goes on behind those lace curtains, in the dreams of those laying there, tossing and turning with their demons.
The Welsh, a nation of Celtic individuality have always been to their own. Fervently national, without the bitterness of the Scott's, they weave their nostalgic magic amidst the rain filled valleys and bleak open hills, happy to withdraw into their coven when the satanic influence from across the Bristol Channel raids their space with alien influence.
It's enough to remember the victories at Cardiff Arms Park. Having driven off the devil with their full throated song, each person fully aware of the importance of a tough tribal affiliation.

Mae hen wlad ft nhadau yin annwyl I mi
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri
Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tray mad
Dros ryddid collasant eu gwaed

Gwlad, gwlad pleidiol wyf im gwlad
Tra mor yin fur i'r but hoff bau
O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau

The right to life and death

Subject: The right to life or to death

Should 'old people' stay at home, not go away on holiday, not clog the available facilities at the sea side, not fill the space when a younger more energetic pairing with their kids would so easily appreciate and find benefit.
Being old is a schizophrenic process.  Part memory, part reflection, part reality, it's a process of slowly letting go and trying to find new resolutions which are more age appropriate.
Perhaps staying at home more, content with your own company is the safe answer.  Of course there is a silence in a house if you live on your own.   It can be a comforting silence a solace from all the noise of the world around. If you want noise you can turn on the TV or the radio, tune into music or watch a game of sport. The subtle difference between living with others or on your own is that you are in control. Of course some people like the turbulence of having others crashing about, inflicting their world on yours sometime destroying the peace you desire with a claim to your time, can we go shopping is a perfect antidote to the match you so wanted to watch.
As human beings we compartmentalise our feelings. I was listening to a report on the progress of a bill through parliament to remove the last vestiges of any sort of qualification regarding a women's right to abort a fetus growing inside her. The spinning of the concept that the fetus is not a child is clearly a convenient stretch of anyone's imagination, allowing the wholesale harvesting of unborn potential life on such a scale that our heartfelt unhappiness at seeing thousands of children being killed in conflicts around the world or in traffic accidents at home pales in comparison to the many thousands of potential children who are killed each year in our abortion clinics.
In or struggle to ensure the rights that women have to control their bodies we miss completely the rights of the unborn child.
And so our schizophrenia, our double dealing, our inability to call a spade a spade continues to distort our quest as a species to do the 'right thing' since what is right is different for each one of us.
If the young unborn child has no rights why should a person suffering acute dementia have rights. Do they garner the rights through being born when we know the act of birth is only a process.
In the far north where the Laplander's continue to spend their entire lives following the herds of reindeer as they migrate in search of food, when the old person in the group loses the ability to keep up with the herd he / she is left behind to die of starvation. A harsh decision but one predicated on the survival of the group.
Perhaps it is time, if we have found it in our souls to be so relaxed at killing our unborn young we should consider the euthanasia of our old and crippled.
Who knows how far this will go to healing the 'black hole' in our financial affairs and since our 'black hearts' can find solace in disguising facts with a political convenience I would suggest Parliament is the ideal place to start the debate.

Mississippi Goddam

Subject: Mississippi Goddam

I was listening to a program yesterday describing the life story of Nina Simone.
I first came across Simone when I was young and was particularly struck by her record "Mississippi Goddam". A recording in which she threw, in your face an emotional diatribe about the iniquity of being a black person in America in the 1950s and 60s. 

I  naturally hadn't grasped the depths of pain and resentment felt by black people towards who they saw as their oppressors, the white person as represented by the ordinary white citizen living in the Southern States of the USA. 

Growing up in any society one accepts unquestioningly the norms of the society other than to ask why. Why am I disdained for my colour. Why am I rejected because my skin is black. Questions a white person never has to ask. Their rejection might be, because I lack education or speak with an accent but not because of the colour of their skin. 

We would be naive not to understand that the way you look doesn't send signals from which opinions and prejudice are formed. A beautiful woman with invoke a different reaction to a disabled person, and that whilst an erudite person will attract more attention than someone who displays non of those skills the judgements are interactive not just grouping people with a prejudice because of the colour of their skin. 

We judge people continually, it is said that in the first 10 minutes we form a view which stays with us and is difficult to shake off, and that much of our judgement is based on our environmental upbringing.  If I come from a tribe living in the remote forests of Papua New Guinea, the sight of someone from outside my experience is dramatic.  If I live in a remote province of China then the sight of a westerner is alien. Our own prejudice is rooted in they way we were brought up and what we are exposed to, as well  and what the acceptable norms are in the society around.
Simone grew up in an era where, in the not too distant past a black person had been a slave with no rights, a second class citizen in all and every way. Her experience growing up was to do as all people do, to file away her unpleasant experiences and accept them as normal and it was only as she recognised her talent for playing the piano, writing songs and singing in in the clubs, that she formed the ideas of her black community and began to embark on empowerment and an identification with her people and their cause. 

Her fame led her to meet and know the Black Power movement of Malcolm X, and the civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King Jr and others and in this hot bed of political activity she penned her powerful and personal protest "Mississippi Goddam".
Listening to her emotional rant against white society and their connivance, as she saw it with the extremism of the KKK and their rejection of black people, the importance was lost on me sitting in leafy England but her frustration and condemnation were not lost in the lyrics of this memorable song with its call to consider the inequity, the violence, the unjustness, not only of that bigoted segment of the white community living in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee but of the whole Establishment, not only the Governors and legislators of those states but also the Federal Government which had dragged its feet for so long. 

Reading the story of the "Civil Rights Movement" is to read the Apartheid movement in South Africa. The difference being that it was never overt Federal Policy as it became under the Verwoerd government.

The murder, the shootings, the hangings, the whipping were all pretty common and hers was an angry cry from the heart to make it stop.

Type into your Google, 'Nina Simone Mississippi Goddam' and tell me after listening to her song that you aren't emotionally effected.

702 Johannesburg

Subject: 702 Johannesburg.

I am listening to 702 Johannesburg. It's strange to tune in to what used to be a daily event when living there. The nuance of living away in a different society, the fact that one is no longer attuned, not only the accent but to the social background from which the discussions arise makes the experience very different. You become sceptical, insulated by what seems the parochial set up which now a days reflects the callers and their interests. Perhaps it was always so. 

Undoubtedly we were dumbed down by the media and influenced by the governments attitude towards world news and events. Apartheid had made us a pariah. To the countries to the north we were the enemy who had entombed their brothers and sisters in a politically divisive segregation process which had drawn condemnation from right across the world. It was natural we turned in on ourselves, listened to our own voices and built our own imaginative defences to respond to so much criticism.
The result was a social drawing together and a light hearted lifestyle on which we based our existence. The norms of a white South African were far and away more comfortable than their opposite number overseas. The comfort and the lifestyle developed a relaxed environment in which Plumber and Doctor mixed equally. The development of commerce and in manufacturing, of ideas and standard borrowed from overseas and afforded by the artificiality of a blocked rand, money was spent in providing the best most advanced workspaces of anywhere in the world, the best equipped hospitals, on the roads and railway expenditure to match the need to respond to outbreaks of political unrest from that blind spot we all carried with us "the native question".

I use the term "native" much  as the 17th and 18th century explorers would use the term or the inhabitants of the American Deep South would use the more derogatory term nigger. These terms were no more, or less derogatory than the Indian Dalits (outcasts) in their divisive caste system, or the Burakumin in Japan, the Gomecista of Venezuela. All over the world mankind has blighted the lives of sections within their society. Stalin was particularly fond of designating whole swathes of people as undesirable and shooting or shipping them off to Siberia and of course historically religion has cast its dark shadow even to this day.  I am a Kafir, an infidel in the eyes of a Islam.
And so now having lived here for 20 years and being "politically cleansed", certain words and phrases are off the Richter scale of acceptance as we blindly concur to an ideologically derived concept of our fellow man and woman. There is no scope for distinguishing one from another. It is an anathema to do so and in its own way, being politically "incorrect" is to damn oneself to joining a social band denoted "unclean" and so the spiral of differentiation continues.

Its not winning but competing

Subject: It's not winning but competing.

"It is not winning but competing". This was the mantra which was used time and again when after competing, we had lost. It was our fall back position, an excuse for not being quite up to it when on the world stage.
The London Olympics were pretty unique.  We won gold in so many events, not least in cycling. The sight of our rowers and track athletes winning event after event was remarkable but this was particularly true in track cycling where we pretty much cleaned up all the golds as event after event the union flag was raised at the winners rostrum.
The cycling team had come on leaps and bounds, mirroring the success on the road on the continent with the road race pinnacle, the Tour de France being won, first by Bradley Wiggins and then by Chris Froome.
These successes stimulated the sport all over Britain and with serious lottery money equipping  Manchester and London with top notch cycling stadiums the serious business of training and winning at the top level seemed set for a long innings.

 The team had been the mastermind of Dave Brailsford  and the Australian Shane Sutton technical director. These men developed a such winning attitude that the team won 8 gold medals at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, a winning attitude based on a competitive win win attitude. They had to be tough they had to be ruthless to develop the right attitude and self belief which the team needed.

The women who were just as much a part of the euphoria which surrounded the team came out and demanded that Sutton be "investigated" for alleged remarks made to 

Jess Varnish, so called sexist remarks. Not in good enough form to be chosen for the Rio Olympics she was left out. Sore at her exclusion she sought Sutton's downfall and along with Victoria Pendleton and Nicole Cook accused him of not being empathetic enough, claiming he was ruthless in his drive to make them into a  winning team.

It is interesting that other women on the team, notably Laura Trott and Johanna Rowsell had no criticism of him or his methods.
Today a statement was released describing him as a man absorbed by winning but failing to support the women and not able to empathise with them as women.
The power women who level claims of sexism is a modern phenomena. The damage done is irrevocable. It has, like so many descriptions of behaviour such as , racism, homophobia, gender issues, so little which can be argued as a counter, other than a denial and a plea for using proper perspective before coming to judgement.
Management often men, are terrified of the claims the 'sisterhood' can make in this Politically Correct era and would rather surrender their 'brother, than risk the scratches of a feminist cause.
"Blown out of proportions" was the general comment and so a 'poor looser' , Jess Varnish has destroyed the man who with his intense drive and desire had developed the team into a fantastic winning proposition. His job was not to be a comforter a social worker a confidant his job was to be the person who's experience was mentor enough. His job was not to seek after the reason for their tears but to instil that attitude which says "we are the best"
As we return to being second best, satisfied with "just competing", content in our national obsession to be kind and liked, a little unsure when we win !!!

Trumps trumpet

   

Subject: Trumps trumpet.

It could be argued that the loosening of the reigns of power away from the old Establishment in America which includes the power of the Fourth Estate (the media) and even the fundamentalism of the Republican Party, with its unwavering support for Wall St, perhaps all these things give the Trump Presidency some leeway to do what it appears to be doing.

America has since the war pursued a role of being World arbitrator, either by raw military power or the power of the dollar and a willingness to insist on a financial structure manipulated by the IMF and the World Bank which drew nations in to interdependence.

Backing this financial hegemony was the determination to inflict on nations Americas  concept of democracy and free elections, removing the leaders it thought who were barking  at its grand design.

Americas fingers were everywhere as it sought to kick start economies along the lines of a, rule driven, legally binding construct. This world view ensured that 'America first' in so far as the electorate at home was replaced by the Wall Street ideology of Globalisation with the nation state taking a back seat to the Multinational Company.

 Trump has a massive job on his hands extricating America from its commitments. His followers at home need the industries brought back. The focus changed from outward to more inward. A realignment of liberalism towards a pragmatic assumption that ones own family comes first.

The forces stacked against him are huge with an enormous socially conscious middle class America having been persuaded, much as in this country, that "human rights" are sovereign and trump (no pun intended) all other rights. 

The rights of the individual has led to the growth in an amazing diversity when describing what an individual actually is. All kinds of strange groups now people the new human canvas (like the abstract art of Jackson Pollock). 

Daily new pronouncements form ever new groups, groups who can prove through chemical aberration a difference and who seek to define themselves by either their proclivity or more often, by string of letters which reflect the long chemical name to which they are now branded. 

The phenomenon of "My rights trump your rights" has produced a state of confusion,  a polyglot of principled intention, a libertarianism 'the acknowledgement that all people have absolute liberty and should be intrinsically free from State interference',  has produced a State which interferes just to ensure that people are free.   It's this State intervention which causes so much angst since there will inevitably be as many who oppose your abrogation as support it. 

The weight of the democratic appeal for all men and women to be placed on an equal footing, world wide is an almost impossible task other than as a philosophical statement.

Trumps appeal to the "rust belt" has been to bring the philosophy back down to earth and bring some pragmatic reality back into the political equation.

His first task is to unsettle the surety of the Establishment by behaving irrationally. 

The Tweets and his condemnation of those lofty pillars of state the Legal and the Intelligence fraternity as well as the Media are meant to unsettle to discombobulate the political class.

A shake up is no bad thing (a thought I cling to as Brexit moves closer) since the surety any establishment has in its past way of doing things can only encourage the embalmer  to preserve something which is dead and needs burying.

The recent disaster of the banking system, which was predicated on Globalisation and a   dislocation of national authority has brought "Populism" out of its closet  (with its cousin Fascism), and seeks to claw back the National resolve. 

"Trumps trumpet" seeks to reassure those who have listened to the plight of others far away on the other side of the world and have asked, "but what about us"  that he will bring their plight back where it belongs centre stage in the political discourse.

Whether it is the con of all cons is yet to be seen but GM pulling out of Europe is a start.

Fantasy Land

Subject: Fantasy Land.

Should we be happy living in a fantasy land and is it healthy.
Married life has protected us from being afflicted by fantasy since the reality of having a partner to keep reminding you what is real and expected is for ever present. Much of life's daily chores are often more important to one partner than the other and their needs filter into your own consciousness, not so much by osmosis then by continuous brow beating. The sound of the dentist drill is nothing compared to incessant berating, the constant reminders that this or that need doing 'and soon'.
On your own you are lost in a world of your own making with only ones conscience to guide and interrupt you.
This fantasy land is all too readily available, to slip in and out of at will and since the fantasy is of ones own construction the pleasure of hanging out with your own best fantasy is formidable. To close your eyes and slip into that dream world of cool self adulation where the rewards which were missing in real life, are waiting to be played without a price tag or any sense of reality. The car, the trip, the good will, the hospitality the demonstrations of ones brilliance are all at hand and require not much more than a smidgen of imagination. The richer the imagination, the richer the journey, the more rewarding the experience.
Our Victorian scruples will jar at this lack of any industry to our everyday lives. Our Presbyterian Alter ego will rile at the absurdity of slipping out of the straight jacket which their standard driven forbear's placed us.  The importance of hard work and keeping your feet on the ground were an artificial connivance anyway.
To drift off into La La Land was a crime.
Having just woken up, the lure of turning over and drifting off to sleep again is strong. Not the deep sleep but the light dream state where one still seems in control, at least of the agenda to create ones own fantasy island where who is invited and when, is an import by your own imagination.

Its a process not an accident

Subject: It's a process not an accident.

It's a process not an accident. This economic experiment which, since Richard Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold and embarked the Free World on Free Trade economics, with ever decreasing restrictions and controls, which eventually plunged the world into the Lehman Banking crisis, a contagion from 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 that monster consumerism, that trick to empty wallets to 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 local factories closed and the workers from those factories were thrown on the scrap heap to barely exist on benefits. Only now, as the second stage of the great experiment takes place, we discover we can't actually afford people on benefits.
Who became the arbiter of who would be the winners and who would be the losers.
The world 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 governance  and its concern for public interest, by the application of a global market place supplied by global players to pursue 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 parts of the old systems national artefacts and securities at prices which eradicated the local to second or third tier onlooker.
Who sold us this dummy '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 automatous businesses, businesses free to choose their domicilium, 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'.

Running the country

Subject: Running the country

With the Brexit result and now the result in the USA, electing Trump. The argument about a 'franchise qualification' being a prerequisite to vote, along with the question, "is democracy the best way of choosing our political leaders" is now being asked.
One person, one vote, each equal in potency, each suggesting an artificial equivalence amongst all the people within a nations boundaries.
It could be argued that artificiality is the problem.  We usually accept  that education lends an advantage to decision making in that it supposes the educated person will it is better inclined to take the trouble to turn over more stones to seek the truth. But of course, history and facts on the ground illustrate that poorly educated people often have as strong a sense of political grievance and need to be able to articulate their desire for change more than the educated individual.
We know that generally amongst the poorer class of people there is less interest and less an assumption that politics matters. The poor are prejudiced by their plight to believe that change is on the minds of the politicians in Westminster who come from a different class and can hardly be expected to understand their needs so why waste time turning out to vote.
There is of course within all of us is an ingrained sense of right and wrong, of fairness and unfairness. For some voting is based on maintaining a financial opportunity whilst for others, their conscience towards those less well off makes them vote for a party who proclaims an interest in righting that inequality in the civic system.
Politics is also tribal. Generations of families vote a particular way, sometimes unthinkingly. A poor man will sometimes vote for an Establishment party so as to believe he is one of them. A rich man will vote for a socialist cause because he feels it's the humanitarian thing to do. In each case the artificiality of their decision makes politics and democracy uncomfortable handmaidens.
If democracy is skewed by emotion then the argument, that it represents an attempt at providing a level playing field, within the populous as a whole, each persons vote given equal weight, and the importance of pure 'rational thinking', taking into consideration your economic and social status within society (which is what politicians address), if this is set aside by emotional proposition, (a sort of faith based thinking ), then the democratic process has failed, other than in elevating the mystics.
Cynicism is rampant towards the political class and in part this is because democracy has been seen to fail in securing change. A vote at a general election is largely irrelevant because with our current 'first past the post' system only a few swing seats have relevance to the actual outcome.

The Party Manifesto, the offer on which people are supposed to chose who to vote for, is thrust aside as soon as a party takes power and the enticements which were offered are withdrawn.

It seems to me that the Manifesto should be a contract which is legally binding and can only be broken for valid usually economic reasons. It should be properly adjudicated by an impartial body to ensure its claims are pursued by the party who has come into power on the promises made in the manifesto.
This would return the vote to having relevance and remove the natural cynicism people have as they see the politician reverting the very things he or she promised us to gain our vote.
So there is nothing wrong with democracy it's the way it's practised. If the cabinet were a board of executives who failed to follow the minutes of the board meeting then the shareholders would be entitled to throw them out but somehow running a country seems to offer a different set of criteria than running a legally constituted company.
Why !!

Was it worth it

Subject: Was it worth it.

Listening to a committee meeting with parliamentarians questioning the equivalent Scottish Minister tasked with negotiating Brexit as it effects Scotland one has to ask, what is the intrinsic difference between the two countries.
Scotland wants to remain inside the EU and is aghast at the Referendum poll to leave.
It sees nothing but dreadful economic failure when we leave and derides the politicians from the House of Commons for having led us into this impasse.
I suppose in many ways the Scots feel and have felt, since the days of Bony Prince Charles, a deeply felt antagonism towards the English. We in the English counties have forgotten the slights which lay deep down in nationalism and the pride you gain from recognising your place amongst your ain folk. To often the English are reminded that they are a bastardised community coming from all corners of the world.

This island, small as it is has been pretty unique in settling its disagreements and uniting the separate nations as a whole but the Battle of Bannockburn still rings with pride amongst the Scots, propelling the Scots into the North of England and parts of Ireland. The subsequent weight of English arms and the attendant lack of further blood letting brought a respectful peace which, until this day has meant the Scot's play a more than meaningful role as members of parliament in Westminster. They have promoted themselves into all senior roles of government, including Prime minister and are a very strongly established across the nations Civic Establishment. Leaders in both industry and science, they influence so much of our United Kingdom and yet they still differentiate themselves from us.

Of course locality and dialect bind common opinion and the call from the SNP resonates in the hearts of ordinary Scots who feel disenfranchised by a governance so far away, living in its own bubble. The fact that the decision makers in Westminster are often Scot's themselves seems to carry little weight.
It's hard to see Scotland as presently constituted with its main market in England being an  economically viable nation and yet it describes Brexit perfectly, and our own economic frailty when we lose ease of access to such a huge market as Europe.
Hubris and confidence make us do strange things. An overzealous opinion of ones strengths, and an unwillingness to accept ones weakness, often leads to a bloody nose and the only hopes is that, as the bruises heal, we continue to think it was all worth it.

Nothing more than an epoch

Subject: Nothing more than an epoch.

"Robots will soon take your jobs".

This is more than a prediction but a near certainty as massive advances in, not only robots but the associated ability of robotics to learn and improve with the use of artificial intelligence.

Already much of the decision making in large organisations relays on algorithms, a statistical tool which bases its findings not on the interpretation of what an individual needs but rather on the revelation of the statistical mean. As we follow this mechanistic path we push to the fringes the human desire for exclusivity, be it in thought or in the career we wish to pursue. Exclusivity is no longer seen as a mark of quality, the human being is slowly taken out of the picture to become an observer. Perhaps 1984 was set 100 years before it's time.

This global technological push to reach for global standards in the name of economic conformity  for the sake of profit leads us, as humans into a dark place. The technocrat the programmer, the specialist will be well rewarded but the mass of people, poorly educated and poorly equipped have little or no value other than as consumers and will be so undervalued that one can only fear for their future. 

In the corridors of power they are already softening us up for another phase shift, canvassing the concept of providing a 'universal basic income', a wage which will be provided regardless of whether it is earned, a sort of pension entitlement from birth till death to cope with the massive increase in unemployment and the unemployable. Brave New World indeed.

The worries of the Brexiteers, 'that of not having a sense of national authority' within the over reaching power of Brussels will, in the unstoppable reach of globalisation, soon become irrelevant as the nation state buckles under the weight of a collective global hegemony. It will soon be outside the national remit to influence things like climate change since to make economic decisions which determine carbon output will require an agreement that other states, like ones own will each hobble their own industries, otherwise it's simply a rush to the bottom.
With "world governance" controlled from "elsewhere" where and how will we feed our sense of identity.
Will "identity" be constrained to what ever we think or are told to think we are and will our histories be gobbled up into a group think.

Perhaps our universities are already embarked on this project as they seek to dumb down on dissident thought and corral the students into a PC amphitheatre where nothing is heard but the bleating  of ideological conformity.

The big question is "what are humans for". Do we have in the future, the role we always thought we had as leaders and innovators, or are we largely destined for the trash can.

Are we a fiction of our own making (a mental construct) soon to be largely irrelevant. 

Is our 'reality' illusory, merely  a passage in time and like the dinosaur, we will die out and become nothing more than an epoch.

We chuck them out at our peril.

   

Subject: We chuck them out at our peril.

As the effects of Brexit begin to gather pace, the dividing line between the right wing and the rest is brought into focus. The issue today is whether EU citizens, (which currently include ourselves), living in the UK and carrying an EU passport, would they retain common rights in the U.K., such as UK citizens currently living in Europe have reciprocal rights as a German or an Italian if they live in Germany or Italy, when we leave the EU.
As we break the ties with Europe these rights are up for negotiation. Its the governments view that we keep the 'rights issue' of people living here as a bargaining chip towards obtaining a quid pro quo for Brits currently living on the continent.
Listening the debate in the Lords one is struck by the dilemma of well minded people who grapple with their conscience, on the one hand saying that it is a fundamental measure of who we are as a nation not to allow people's lives be deemed a bargaining chip, no matter what the leverage and others who are more pragmatic.
As we descend into the dog bating Pit, setting one against the other, apparently irreconcilable in our constituent beliefs of right or wrong we reveal all the antipathy of our up upbringing. It's fair to say that the House was divided in the debate between the Liberals/Labour who were secure in their belief in the old philosophical values and the Conservatives who wished to negotiate.

Families who had come from Poland after the war, families established in this culture of ours from all corners of Europe, families of mixed nationality, children born here, are all in danger of being thrown into this bargaining pot. As a consequence it has unleashed in a small minority, that xenophobia of extreme hatred of a "them and us" emotion with people with accents and clear foreign characteristics being called out and slandered in the street.

Civilised society must never be taken for granted, it can be tipped as Germany was in the 1930s and whilst our prejudice is fine as a viewpoint we must never forget the fact that the world has changed and we are all so much more interdependent these days.
So much of our industry, our hospitals and care homes are peopled from other countries and because we have ourselves morphed into a self centred, rights centred, consumerist people, forgetting our old skills of self sufficiency and our ability to turn our hand to what ever is required, because we have come to differentiate ourselves from what others do and consider money and prestige above all else, we have become unfit to do the work of these immigrant families and we chuck them out at our peril.

Breaching an emotional wall

   

Subject: Breaching an emotional wall.

My alarm clock brings me back down to earth at 5am as the BBC World Service kicks in to tell me what has been happening in the world whilst I lay asleep.
The time zones across the globe reflect the ebb and flow of our lives where, for most, darkness switches us off and daybreak switches us on each pretty much in ignorance of the conditions on the ground, each so different depending where you are.
This morning I woke to the sound of a doctor saying the words, "your so beautiful". The simplicity of the emotion was perfectly captured by the sound of him saying and repeating it as his guard came down and the compassionate human within him was overcome with love.

It was Aleppo that scene of carnage where man sees fit to pump high explosive shells and bombs into civilian occupied housing on the assumption that this is justified by being in a state of war. A rather one sided war particularly in so far as the civilians are concerned and even more so for the children living in the area.

The doctor was English, he had volunteered to help in the hospitals out there and one day had come to the assistance of a tiny little child who's leg had been mutilated by shrapnel, the same shrapnel which had taken the lives of both her parents.
The doctor described the primitive conditions, and that after 7 hours of intensive operation they had repaired her leg but with no post operative equipment her chances were still very slim. We move forward half a year and he discovers her in a Turkish hospital still recovering but alive. "Your so beautiful" was all he could say as he was reunited with the outcome of his handiwork he was overcome and immeasurably rewarded as she lay alive, starting a new phase of what will be her life.
Emotion is always near the surface of our carefully contrived exterior. We reveal with it that, deep down, we are so much more than our outward appearance. The norms of 'culture' forms a calluses around our natural propensity, be it love or hate, we sometimes contrive to be who we are not, in an effort to fit in.
The sound of the doctors voice so full of love and emotional happiness was like an over spill in a dam of water releasing the pressure, it came from what we euphemistically call the heart, that well of symbiotic feeling we have towards others if and when an occasion allows the wall to be breached.

Dad's

Subject: Dad's

Who are they, what are they.
The traditional Dad was the head of the family, revered and trusted with sincere respect heaped up on him. He was revered for his knowledge and experience, he was accepted by the family as being the font of much sense, if not sensibility.
Today's Dad is a pale character to this semi historical image. He offers non of the structured strength and decision making of old, happy these days to defer the responsibility to his wife who, (clutching his wallet), is only too happy to dictate affairs.
Watching from my lonely table for one, I see the Dad paraded by his grown up children, as if he were a whimsy, a relic of the past, a person once feared, once accepted, now an outsider and irrelevant !   Placed at the head of the table his grandchildren  listen, with scarcely hidden boredom to his words of wisdom, so inappropriate to the modern world. His influence is still reflected in his daughters attention but clearly she feels more of an affinity with her mother. 

Mums are a different kettle of fish they have nurtured a life long collaborative link with their children which spills over into the adult relationship.  

Mums role as a mother, lends a certain intimate knowledge base which Dad has never experienced. Sitting around the table, the child centric topics to which they return again and again, leave Dad marooned in 'act one'. 

Relegated to finding work and focusing his energies outside the family he wasn't there at crucial times. His role today, as then, was that of an "observer" and what he sees is far from what he imagined when he entered the union, (if of course he imagined anything at all). 

His grand-children are either captivated by his historical recollections of sporting events or bored witless because their world has moved on and his experience is so out of date.
The suppositions we all make as to our own importance are never more challenged than by the 'age gap'. A gap which emphasises the self importance we place on everything, but which is lost on the following generation (our children) and further watered, a generation later by our grandchildren.
It's hardly a surprise that the 'fervour' we have as a 'seasoned' Dad  is light years away from what is happening at the table opposite. 

Dads continue to struggle to have much relevance or capture any of the limelight until, at the end of the meal, the bill is presented, and his plaintive voice is heard -"don't worry I will pay" !!

A comfort blanket

Subject: A comfort blanket.

Listening to a discussion regarding such faiths as, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, one is amazed that in the 21st century, we, with all our scientific knowledge and our ability to test any hypothesis by examination, are left with millions upon millions of people who profess such a surety in the magic of faith.

 Faith in many ways is static, a story set in aspic.  It follows different historical texts written by various patriarchal propagandists who refer to their personal revelation, through a conduit to god.  Mankind has had difficulty in describing god and the part belief plays in the interface which seeks to answer that most difficult concept, the challenge of proving and measuring a hypothesis described as "a belief in god".

If God is a concept used to describe the 'unknown', even the 'unknowable', and is based on a blind leap of faith then much of what follows is supposition. To base ones life on supposition is risky especially if knowing the truth is important. If you accept that your truth is at best, romantic propaganda and that your acceptance of its truth is based on a gigantic leap of faith then all is well and good. The benefits of taking that leap are that in doing so one places oneself under the protection of a certain kind of benevolence which asks little other than acceptance, for which the mysteries of life are answered.
Without faith and some sort of existence after death, the process of living becomes  problematic. The process of gathering a life span of experience solely to have those experience dashed on the rocks of dying seems pretty pointless but of course the whole conundrum of anything having a point to it, is somewhat philosophical.
Philosophy, clearly a man made experience, has as its basis, logic. Logic which is of its self a process of the mind as it seeks to think and find answers.
Faith is the opposite of logic and, since mankind has failed to find a logical answer to life after death, faith has jumped to the rescue and provided answers where there are logically, none.
So perhaps faith is nothing much more than a 'comfort blanket' and, as with a comfort blanket, we put it aside when we grow up.

A confused society

Subject: A confused society

There are very important differences in the make up of the society, immediately after the Second World War and the one we now see reflected by the nations representatives in parliament debating the issue of whether President Trump should be given a State Visit
The parliamentarians after the war were mostly men, men there through privilege or because they represented the nascent Labour Party through municipal and trade union representation. There were few if any women, there were no black or Asian people, there were no openly gay people. The debates were largely bound up in national economic issues and ways to provide better working and living conditions in society as a whole.
Today we are such a mixed bag with an enormous spectrum of interests. We are vocally adamant over the issues of gender, of sexual preference, racial considerations, political  correctness and so much more.

The schisms in 1950 were defined by work and the opportunities that work brought. Today it is more like a examination of social prejudice.

Of course in a fragmented society, much amplified by the interests of both multicultural and the complex gender influence, the excitement and vehemence on display is both encouraging and sad.
The issue of whether Trump should be given the red carpet is lost in the prejudice of each group and the need to make a political grandstanding statement regarding the rights of women or wrongs towards a religious group. Economics and the perilous state of our trade when we leave the EU was sidelined by their indignation that the man had groped a woman (the women were much more explicit than the men dared to be), that he had indiscriminately (their words) banned Muslims from certain countries, entering the USA.
Today we have a man and a woman taking their wish to apply for a Civil Partnership as an alternative to Marriage, to the Appeal Court where they have just learnt that their wish has not been granted, re-enforcing the fact that you have to be of the "same sex" to create a legal union in this way.
Yet another divergence from a 1950 societies concept of what is right and what is wrong. That concept of what is 'wrong', growing up in a society where the divisions were clear has become terribly muddied by the extra concept or "rights". My 'rights' trump your 'rights' has meant that everything is up in the air and there is no common surety.
In a world where everyone has an equal opportunity to propagate their own concept of how they see the world was fine as an individual stance but with the advent of the internet, you can easily find followers to raise awareness of your own special proclivity. These days groups are sprouting up each day like cultures in a Petri dish, some virulent some benign but each adding to the confusion which makes up our society these days.
Of course the bottom line, the catch all phrase is, "we are all human beings" and whether, from outward appearance, we seem diametrically opposites, deep down we are only flesh and blood and of the same species. All the differences are cultural. 

Of course whilst this is true and the human body is pretty much matched in all of us, surely it is the mind that determines us.   It is the mind which calculates 'what the flesh is heir to' it is the mind which defines us. 

So, whilst we are all human beings with "rights" these rights mean different things in different cultures.
Is there therefore such a thing as a "universal right" or are we simply  flotsam and jetsam caught up in the ongoing turbulence.