Its only indigestion

Subject: It's only indigestion

"Ignorance is bliss" of course and there is no truer truth than when one closes ones eyes, head on the pillow and a twinge of pain catches your attention. Dr Goggle is consulted and any one of a number of reasons, from the acute to the benign causes one to pause and think.
'In the past' without any self knowledge a pain was par for the course, nothing to worry about, if it gets worse place it in the doctors hands. Life was, in some ways, not so precious.
Two horrendous world wars had made a mockery of the sanctity of life and some how we were content with 55 to 65 years as a good innings. I was walking through a grave yard the other day and noticed that 50 years was the average at the turn of the 20th contrary and these were substantial memorials to the dead and must have represented the better off who would be expected to live longer.
Today we are searching for immortality by postponing death to await improvements in medical science so our bodies can be repaired. The technical apparatus handy to the medic today encourage him or her to use what's in the toolbox irrespective of the quality of life since we have been directed into 'specialities'. The lung man, the heart woman, the brain team, each speciality outbidding  the other for funds to promote what they do.
Look how good I am cry's  the abdomen guy, little realising that his success has huge implications up and down the food chain. The saving of life is not just the impact of a replacement but the overall effect that that replacement brings to the body corporate.
Life is finite, death is forever and no matter how we wish to doge the issue, we do ourselves a dis-service if we don't prepare for the inevitable.
How we do that is different for each one of us. Faith plays a great part for the many who believe we are part of something greater than the sub total of our being. People without faith must rely on being pragmatic and wish the end to come without pain, reconciling the inevitability with thoughts of having hopefully lived a good and full life.
And so the pain we feel tonight is only an example of the complexity of a function which has carried on for 70 or more years. Enclosed in a body which has been misused and ill-treating itself for decades and whose elasticity of purpose is fast running out.
Luckily there are pain killers in the cupboard and anyway, it's only indigestion !!!

Democracy

Subject: Democracy

With Teresa May calling a General Election in June, it seems to me that rather than an election about party priorities it will be an opportunity to return a vote as to whether we should leave Europe on what ever terms are offered or if the terms are so bad perhaps we should reconsider.                                                                                               Voting in Scotland has become simply a nationalistic call for ridding themselves of the chains of Westminster and much less than on bread and butter issues.                        Tim Farron of the Liberals sees it as I do an opportunity to send another message to the political elite in Westminster about staying in the EU, he of course has raged at the referendum result since it was announced and one could expect the "Remains" to lend him their vote. With 49% of the electorate recently coalescing around remaining in the EU one would have thought his singular political party opposition to leaving would draw a huge following since, as I say this election following a divisive Referendum will be seen by many as a one issue vote.

Sadly the Labour Party have been all over the place with so many of their core voters wishing to leave the EU and many wishing to stay.  It meant that Jeremy Corbyn had to relinquish his own preferred opposition to Europe and its cartels and try the difficult balancing act of re-establish a middle position on the matter. Of course in politics this is seen as fence sitting and there is nothing worse for someone who proclaims he has leadership potential.
If people who had voted against Brexit reduces significantly the Conservative vote can they continue to proceed with the Referendum vote. Would it mean, cap in hand, to ask for our letter back. The Europeans would probably welcome us back as a wounded force, put in our place as it were and something of a laughing stock.
The doom sayers would heave a sigh of relief, especially the financial markets who see untold problems in our leaving since we learn more and more, how tight the is knot which ties all national economies these days, Not as it was 10 to 15 years ago when individual nations counted in the general scheme of things.
National agendas have been overtaken by Global agendas. Economic Groups such as the Europeans, China, America and to a lesser extent Russia, India and the Brick nations have a collective strength which far outweighs a single country the size of ours and so, as welcome as it is to cast our minds back to Empire, I think we have missed that boat.
That's not to say that we are in a canoe without a paddle only that we might consider  downsizing our self esteem and begin to think, like many smaller nations, about our own society and how we can revive it, instead of worrying about other societies far away on the other side of the world. I believe that we, like them have rights. Although I hate the term rights we should not be afraid to cherish the institutions which give us our special kite mark. The NHS, unarmed police, a respect for not only the laws but the systems which bring those laws into being, an ability to largely get on with all the people who come to live here, a deep accommodation without sacrificing norms for those who proclaim they are different to us in what ever way, a respect of the sick and elderly, an admiration for the youth who cleave out new ways to get to where they want to be, and so much more. This is the mark of a mature society, a society who should not be told what to think but should be admired for the instinctive way it ploughs its their own furrow without disturbing the neighbours.

Where do you get your information

Subject: Where do you get your information.

The man in the "Dog and Gun" has opinions obtained from aspects of his daily life and rightly bases much of his decision making on what he learns. Obviously his expertise is limited to where he/she sources the information and the creditability of that source.
One of the complaints people made leading up to the Brexit vote was the limited and very poor information on offer leading up to the vote and the use of political chicanery to try and persuade the voter one way or the other.
The BBC spend, a considerable amount of money broadcasting what goes on in Parliament. The discussions in the various committees which invite the people deeply involved in the issues to come in and be questioned on their specific expertise.

Today the Group Chairman of HSCB, the Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange and the Vice Chair of Allianz Global Exchange were sitting and answering questions in one of the committees. Their knowledge and expertise on the financial ramifications of coming out was of the highest quality. The opinions and reasoned argument were edge of the chair stuff and I wish more people would watch and listen to these broadcasts rather than taking their position from the Daily Mail or the Guardian.Yes it's heady stuff.

Xavier Rolet the top man in the Stock Exchange was explaining how since the banking crash in 2007 the system was changed and rather than allow banks to clear their positions themselves in direct contact with who ever was the counter party, the system now is handled centrally in a 600 trillion dollar clearing house where all the deals are brought together and compressed into a multi currency settlement process. There are two centres London and New York which cover the world trade.
Douglas Flint the big boss of HSCB and Elizabeth Corley, a very articulate and savvy Vice President of Allianz added their wealth of experience to answer the often sceptical MPs about any specific downside to Brexit.
Another session had the boss of Air Bus and alongside him, the the leader of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturing Association.
These are not the sort of people you are likely to meet in the "Dog and Gun" and if you were willing to stick the course, you learn from the horses mouth, what actually we can expect depending what agreement is reached and what opportunities, if any, arise.
It should be compulsory on schools to feed this sort of discussion forum into their 6th form at the very least since they are going to be the ones having to deal with the Brave New World post exit.

Its not for life

   

Subject: It's not for life.

The Erdogan Referendum on whether to consolidate the position and the powers of the Turkish President with those powers held by the Prime Minister has revealed what a divisive  system Referendum can be when the voting is close. 

Brexit had a similar close result and given the importance Referendum questions have on a country it seems a binary vote, "yes or no" always gives an incomplete answer. 

All voting system leave winners and losers and if in the round the outcome is divisive  usually there is hope for the losers that in time they can have their say and reverse it.

Referendum unfortunately seem to be a totally different political device since the outcome is deemed irreversible. Can an outcome, which is irreversible be judged by a single vote on the bases of a single question on the ballot paper.

Given that the question on the ballot paper matters to people and given that 51% vote 'yes' and 49% vote 'no' how can any sort of consensus be reached between winners and losers. 

Instead of winning the issue by repeated debate and compromise it provides a stark contrast and inevitable conflict within the society, a conflict which simmers with resentment, rather than coming to terms and acquiescing. These acute differences can, in volatile societies become the seed for civil war and even in our own mature society the result of the Brexit vote will not begin to be revealed until the end of the two year negotiation and the position we are in is revealed.

Little has happened since the vote other than we have learnt more about the negative implications of our voting to get out of the EU. This learning curve has taken place after the vote when common sense tells us, it should have taken place before. 

As the implications come out in a drip feed of debate, we become in a better position to make a valued decision and at least having evaluated the consequences, we can't cry when things go belly up.

Referendum then are a rough tool to gauge a populations wishes. It simply polarises people into camps which re-entrench a position, since regardless of any new facts, to protect the reasons you voted the way you did you hunker down and cover your ears. The implications of what you have done reinforce your blind spots since to admit you were wrong on such an important question as to your future and more important, your children's future, would be too difficult to bear.

Few things have a right or wrong component since what ever is one persons right is another persons wrong and "rightly" so. 

Our democratic system of balloting every 5 years is itself full of contradictions but at least it's not for life.

Distilled in a blog

   

Subject: Distilled in a blog.

One of the most disturbing things about growing old is that as I look at the four hundred or so books I have lining my bedroom (the rafters just about bear the load)  they are becoming a blank canvas in that I can't remember much if any of the detail or what they are about.
It suggests that if I didn't buy another book, I would actually have something to read until I die without having to buy another and more to the point it suggests that all the stories and information I gathered reading them has disappeared like the rabbit down its hole. This has a disturbing effect since I have prided myself for making the effort to read and find out only to discover it was all a waste of time as I approach a blank slate once again.
Is this the sum total of our endeavours, the result of being inquisitive and instructive. Have all those hours reading been a mistake, a waste of good drinking time !!
It highlights the fact that not only are we finite but also frail. Frail in that area we most prided ourselves, that of having a memory which enabled us to draw conclusions.
Without conclusions what are we but a kaleidoscope of unrelated images, moments of recognition without cognisant awareness. All those years of tinkering around the edge of knowledge, of putting some semblance of order into the world we observe and making our home comfortable within that recognition.
Shall I start again on the top shelf. John le Carre sitting next to Huxley, Alan Clarks Diaries nestling up to D H Lawrence, Walter Greenwoods "Love on the Dole" competing with Philip Roth's  "American Pastoral. "Berlin" by Antony Beevor side by side with Churchill's War and Hiscocks "Cruising under Sail".  Solzhenitsyn to Arnold Bennett Orwell, to J B Priestly, Gunter Grass to Voltaire. All with a tale to tell, never mind the books written on the causes of the Financial Collapse or Black Holes in the Universe, it was all pertinent once and still is in a funny sort of way but our specific take on what we read will die with us, as if "we" had never existed.

That cultivated personality which defines us, so relevant to our effort to understand, has but a few years to live and yet it was so personal. All our journeys are different each unique in that our exposure to things is different and the formulation of our intellect is also so different. If we could bottle our composite experience and hand it down it wouldn't be so bad but to lose it all in a heartbeat, 'or rather the absence of one', seems more than a pity. 

It used to be thought that your children were the depositories of your learning but with a fast moving world the children find little relevance in your knowledge, still less in the factors which made you what you are. 

Cryogenics might be one solution. We could all become a bottle on a shelf, to be sampled when appropriate, like a dusty book in the depths of a reference library.

The super sensitive, emotional, task specific human has no or little value in this world of bits and bytes, other than we might find storage in "the cloud" but only if you have taken the time to distil who you are and what you care about in the digital format of a - blog perhaps !!!

Lapping up the adulation

Subject: Lapping up the adulation.

 

 

I'm sitting in 'Uplands' a suburb of Swansea having a lunchtime beer. The sun is shining and the streets are begging to come awake as people drag themselves from the bed where they had crashed following their usual Friday night shenanigans.
My head is clear, it's a while since I have been 'out late' and I was looking forward to a visit to the Swansea waterfront and the bistro lifestyle which has sprung up there.
'Uplands' to those who don't know it is a quasi bohemian place, the Main Street, full of quirky cafes serving cuisine from across the world. It's a place full of lovely old houses clinging to the hillside on which the suburb is built, a jangle of twisty streets and difficult parking. It has a flavour of a more affluent time when money built homes to take advantage of the view.
Now it's full of a Sushi Bars and the Vietnamese restaurants intermingle with the KFC to bring a cosmopolitan clientèle onto the streets, each contesting the available space with the ubiquitous motor car. At night the pub I am seated outside is heaving with eager testosterone fuelled youth, mixed up with old, "seen it all before" locals who refuse to get old, but now it is the quiet before the storm.
The Welsh, as their accent denotes are a sing song community somewhat displaced from the business hubbub which is increasingly centred on London but they flourish on what ever they can get since the cost of living here is so much cheaper and as long as the pound in their pocket stretches to cover the 'basics', the weekend pub culture and its music scene thrives on what's left.
The guitarists, piano players, base players and drummers, all well past their Prime but still a delight to listen to. Each night they relive their youth somewhere, playing those musical cords that come as natural as using a knife and fork, cords learnt as teenagers in their bedrooms and to this day, just as vibrant. The time warp is that of nostalgia for the music which drove their generation and their following, the lads and lasses who used to listen back then and still do.
Society hasn't changed much in Wales. They have an inherent optimism, their Celtic blood, ties them tight as a community and through it comes their strength. There is a deep consensus of their rights as a nation and if the deceit practised in Westminster doesn't fulfil "promises made", then they will quietly wait.
Where ever you go Wales, Ireland, Scotland the North of England its the same message, "perfidious Westminster". The House of Commons  a building where words are spoken which have little sincerity, where deals are struck within the cartel, between the Government and those who benefit from the gravy train of ex-civil service work now spooned out to G4S and their cronies. It could resemble something akin to the Russian oligarch but we give it a cover of genteel spin and call it The Market economy.
This time of day, midday, is a man's world, the girls are still putting on their make up, repairing the ravages of last night. The pub itself a dark cavernous place with a dungeon like interior is empty and we sit outside in the sunshine. Men with white hair, or no hair (me on both counts). Men heavily tattooed, proudly display their art in the sunshine, (not me). One wonders what on Earth encouraged them to become a walking canvas for Doris and her python. The maritime mermaid entwined around the anchor on the forearm is long gone, now-a-days the adornment is total, not an inch escapes the needle. Like an Axminster carpet, the patterns are intricate and full and one has to wonder why they chose to display such a disregard for mothers skin. It's not so much a reflection of class, as of the past but something else. One often also finds beautiful young women disregarding and degrading their bodies, covering  themselves in designs more appropriate to a Chinese Dragon Show.
Am I wrong to feel prim and proper as I sit amongst them, not a jolly jack anchor in sight on my white, slowly shrivelling torso, with no wish to embroider my skin in this way. Fashion I know is in the eye of the designer and women become part of an industry which says the moment you've bought it it's out of fashion and you must buy something new to display yourself to others. With the tattoo it's the polar opposite, once you try it on your stuck with it for life. Since life psychological journey is varied and changes with age, surely the thrill of Doris and her python will have worn off by the time you reach 40 and still more so by 60. Showering once or twice a day, there she is reminding you of that moment of madness, egged on by your mates you hadn't the common sense to say no.
Anyway it's bistro time and I'm now down at the Waterfront listening to a trio of fantastic musicians "leading me on" with their Django  Reinhardt toe tapping rhythm. Music to die for as I sip my Courvoisier and marvel at the riffs. Oh to be young again, to pick up that instrument of torture which only need the time and perseverance and then I too could be on stage lapping up the adulation.

A family drawn together

Subject: A family drawn together.

It's always interesting looking back. The experiences you had, simple occurrences which stick in your memory not so much for there spectacular impact but the connectivity with a human emotion.
I have my maps of Ireland spread out before me and I'm examining the roads which took us one day at the back end of March into the archipelago of land and water which make up the western shore of Ireland. The map (an old fashioned paper job) has in my memories eye, the journeys we made and the people we made those journeys with.
The map takes on a different perspective as it draws the names of the villages and the roads that link them into some sort of order. What had been a journey through the sparse and relatively wild countryside, a series of snap shots of houses and and gorse now become the pathway which we used to buy our groceries or visit the pub.
The people, who as I write, live there going about their lives just as they did when we were with them, brought the experience to life. This was no incidental jolly but a gathering of family from all over the world to celebrate a wedding which the local Irish were keen to represent as a welcome for the bride into the larger Irish family.
The Irish make much of family and the coming together of the extended Irish family at the occurrence of a wedding or a wake. This apparent pleasure for the opportunity to gather together and celebrate or commiserate is instinctive and reflects the pride in their parochialism, their tribal affinity their enjoyment of being together.
We in the urbanisation of our society have become insular and far less reactive to the call of brotherhood or sisterhood.
The wedding a mixture of Irish and internationalised South Africans was to my eyes a large gathering,190 guests but the following week, a wholly Irish affair was to include 400 guests.
Thinking back, I was the only Englishman there and given the history of the area (which I covered in another blog) the genuine warmth from all the locals concerned was not in any way diluted by my inclusion.  The possible contamination by the inclusion of a member of that most despised group "perfidious Albion" was allowed to fly under the cloak of family !!
I hadn't seen the family I married into all those years ago, for years but it was a warm spontaneous and I feel genuine reunion as we played catch up from those riotous days and memories of living in South Africa.
No matter what people, most of whom have never been there but have preconceived ideas of life in the days of Apartheid think, for me the inclusiveness of the South African towards me was truly memorable. I have never felt more together within a society than then and the good times came flooding back as we reminisced.
The map reminds me of a breakfast here or a trip there. It reminds me of independence slogans on the wall of the pub or, in another drinking den, the near hysteria of a shrill, 'pipe cleaner thin girl', praising Martin McGuinniss whilst damming him in the same breath for the pain he had brought her family. It was not the time I decided to announce my ethnicity nor my political persuasion.

The chatter of the house maid in the hotel was delightful, particularly in her enthusiasm for her country and especially the area we were in Belmullet. She reflected the insularity that the fiord like separation of coastal inlets developed between the communities, only a few miles apart as the crow flies yet a different universe as regard kith and kin, she from Belmullet whilst we had stayed in Achill. She was a delight with her chatter and the pride she had for her area. She was also generous to the English for, in her opinion, providing an escape route for work and prosperity for many of her fellow countrymen who had emigrated to England.

She was so talkative I wonder how she got through her round of bed making but her generosity of nature shone through and I thought she was a gem.
It was only a few but memorable days but too soon we were saying our farewells as each car filled with its individual family, some off to see more of Ireland others going on to Europe before jetting off to their own continent. Will this be the last gathering.
The bride, Wendy had taken two years planning the wedding, getting everyone together and we all owed her a vote of thanks. But as brothers and sisters cousins and nieces hugged farewell one saw the downside of going global, families communicating by Facebook but missing that instinctual familiarity of being physically close and walking life's eventful road together.

Waking with a clear conscience

Subject: Waking with a clear conscience

"Those who know how to resolve the problem of life almost always remain in Siberia".
So said Fyodor Dostoyevsky in the opening paragraph of his book "The House of the Dead. The size and the extremity made Siberia a place like no other, a place where you learnt to adapt and reform your old way of thinking, or you were dead.
Our lives or the happiness in them depend on coming to terms with life's changed circumstance. Our ability to adapt and find positives in new ventures, rather than old adventures. The willingness to equate to the small things, the incidentals, which in a busier phase of our lives had been overlooked.  This more observant, more reflective you is alive and well, so long as this myopic perspective is valued for its richness, its subtlety, perhaps even for its parochialism.
Too often we squash under foot that which is under our noses. We are blinded by the distant view, the opportunity to be somewhere else when all the time we are content enough being here, where ever here is. The glitz of a hotel, the noise of a crowd the exuberance of motion has always left me puzzled and somewhat out of sorts. The essence of happiness is locked in our own making not the making of others. Our own self realisation, the world according to you, is not something you should be ashamed of, nothing you should have to justify or apologise for. The world according to you is personal, a complex reflection of your personality, not something that can be homogenised to fit another's norm and one of the struggles in life is sharing your identity with others without loosing who you are in the drift to fit in.
With the evenings beginning to grow long and the light tempting you out, is the desire to be out in such circumstances a pre-programmed hunting urge to forage or is it simply a genuine pleasure to have done with long dark nights. Is the urge to go out and commune with others, part of the ritual prescribed in finding a mate and being intimate, a desire which can unsettle the soul but stimulate another part of our character the" id " that primitive, instinctual aspect of our psychological make up.
If we choose not to go out have we fallen foul of our "super- ego" that moral hierarchy which plagues us, throughout our lives, acting as a damp squib, a party pooper, a preserver of all those decisions "others" make on our behalf. Or is it a case of, been there, done that. 
Understanding that the degree of equivalence required is so damaging that one is forced to acknowledge the inevitable pain one is often exposed to, stepping outside the protection of ones own "ego"  that mediator, that conciliatory council which we apply when we are rational.
"Staying in" has the blessing of Saint Agnesius the patron saint of all who wish to wake the next morning with a clear conscience.

No room for an honest debate

Subject: No room for an honest debate.

The onslaught against Ken Livingston seems to have no bounds and like the the Salam Witch Hunt, is fanatical in its aims.
What are those aims. The preservation of the almost mythical position The Jews hold in the Western World regarding privilege through the persecution they have suffered, specifically  at the hands of the Nazi Party in Germany. The horror of the concentration camps which became death or extermination camps holds no comparable comparison regardless of the barbarity of ancient tribes and the destruction they caused. This was industrial killing based on a plan to exterminate a group of people who were identified as Jews.
The Jews had suffered pogroms before. Initially they were driven out of Palestine by the Roman legions. In 1791 Catherine the Great created the 'Pale of Settlement', an area in which Jews were forced to live and, particularly in Russia the Ukraine and Poland, they suffered repeated atrocities 70.000 massacred in the Ukraine, 14.000 killed in Romania, 6.000 in Poland and this before the Germans started the mechanise the killing.
Why were the Jews singled out in this way. Their individuality was apparent and their habit of living in close community made them a target but why the hostility. A hostility which became a mania to wipe out the residents of these Jewish ghettos. It's as if they were to blame for something, scapegoats perhaps.
The success of the Jewish family, its accomplishment, achieved  through a gene pool of talent and a willingness to work hard, has no corresponding equivalent amongst other ethnic groups. The belief in being the 'Gods Chosen People' gave them a symbiotic understanding of their place, not only in history but the relationship they had toward each other. This extended family had great power and where ever they lived, they prospered. The exclusiveness which held the Jews together also separated them from society at large and made them a target.
The Holocaust made them famous for the most infamous of reasons. Many hands were mixed up in the events which started as incarceration and became extermination, not least the governments of all the Powers specifically Stalin but also the French, Italian and through inaction, the British and Americans.
The opprobrium  heaped on Ken Livingston's shoulders was his recollection of the "Haavara" agreement, made in Germany in 1932.   An agreement between the German Government and the representatives of German Jews,  to resettle 60.000 German Jews to Palestine. This piece of history has been air brushed out by the Jewish congregation since it 'very slightly' mitigates the Germans in the world condemnation of the Holocaust.
Livingston's mention of it has produced a backlash from British Jews with their leaders calling for Livingston's expulsion from the Labour Party. But it's not only the Jews who are calling for him to go, it's also the opportunists who seek these moments to beat their breasts with righteous indignation on a subject they feel they are secure in bringing self congratulatory applause.

These Judas like characters who would stab you in the back as soon as look at you, people like Tom Watson the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, are complicit in a crime now so common amongst the political class and commentariat. The crime of duplicity, deception, hypocrisy take your pick.

It's the currency they deal in and when truth and dissimulation are interchangeable there is no hope for an honest debate.

Prejudice is often the last to go

Subject: Prejudice is often the last to go

One cannot but be struck by the similarity of the conditions pertaining to "the workers" and those of what can loosely called the workers today. They had no voice !!
Capitalism and the power of money has dislodged any effective voice they once had, other than the magnificent period brought about by the Attlee government of 1946 to 1950 of reasoned socialism.
Of course it is impractical to compare the population before the  First World War to the one we have now. Now there is the 'apparent wealth' brought about by the credit revolution, in which consumerism is allowed to flourish through the build up of a gargantuan  debt, now running into trillions of pounds.
The voices ranged against the iniquitous 'exploitation of labour', at the turn of the 20th century, such as  the Independent Labour Party, and the Fabians led by Sydney and Beatrice Webb were a sideshow against the industrialists. Even the Unions were split amongst themselves representing initially, the individual craft based workers but the enrolment of non skilled workers caused a schism amongst the craft based unions who valued their representation of skills.  It deflected the collective strength inherent in the labour force and it was only with the arrival of the concept of Syndicalism (a French interpretation of Unionism) a concept where the "importance" of labour was matched to the "importance" of capital, neither one  superior to the other. 

Imported from France and the USA, this much more overt form of protests was developed, with growing interlinked strikes and the eventual challenge of a "General Strike". The industrialists for the first time felt threatened and it began to change the calculus in labour relations.
It is reasonable to accept that conflict between the 'workers' and 'owners' is fair if for no other reason than there was money involved but there is no such reason to support a conflict between a people and their Parliament, a parliament where the trust of the people resides to solve conflict.
Sadly the Parliament of its day in 1903 - 13 was not a representative parliament and much like the parliament we see today, an agenda to weaken the rights of the workers in favour of the employer and the owners of capital was insidiously at work.  In this we see a hardening of attitudes towards the class which used to be the muscle used to turn the wheel but which today is fast loosing its position in the mechanism of the production of wealth.
This Westminster Parliament had form.  Its harsh relations regarding the treatment of the people of Ireland 50 years previously in 1850 and the resentment still seen to this day in the eyes of ordinary Irish people raised on a visceral hatred of the English through years of conflict and the extremely harsh treatment meted out by the Protestant landlords to their Catholic tenants.

Sometimes you have to be amongst the people and see the malevolence in their eyes, a malevolence born of years of storytelling, particularly in Western Ireland where the 'Potato Famine' was at its worst in terms of the starvation. The treatment of the Irish Catholic  was far harsher than that of a  Black Person living in South Africa during the period of Apartheid or the Slave living in North America. It had, in its total disregard for the human condition, echo's of what the Nazi Party thought and did to the Jews. 

Successive  Parliaments in England were guilty by proxy of doing little or nothing, whilst the county staved to death. In the the ideological belief in laissez faire, the "relief" was left to the Protestant landowners to distribute and when that was found to be inefficient  the "relief" was further limited because of the fear that "charity" would destroy the equilibrium of free trade.
It's not an easy read to discover that the privileged in England had such a warped view of humanity that they felt the Irish to be less than human but there are echo's today in the Tory parties obsession to balance the books on the back of the poor. Some thing's never change and prejudice is often the last to go.

A trip to Achill

Subject: A trip to Achill

Sitting in the lounge looking out across the flat grazing land that edges the bay, the early morning light floods in etching the scene of white cottages which dot the hillside behind.
It's 6am and the holiday let we are in is quiet as its occupants chase their dreams, snug in their sleep like a deliverance.
The sun, warming the landscape, prods the sheep who patiently await  a new day, chomping the grass to maintain its condition, oblivious of the ignominy ahead.
Behind the cottage the hill rises to catch the first glow. Houses dot the hillside, each eager to gimps a sea, which today's flat calm, is a mote between us and America.  Maybe tomorrow, the water will be angry, white topped waves rushing in from a thousand miles of unchecked ocean to crash with force onto this first bit of inhabited land since they were whipped up in the deep mid-Atlantic.
Arriving for the first time onto this broken archipelago, the West Coast of Ireland, one is mindful of the weather. The main survivor of this wind and rain swept land is the gorse bush, clinging to the roadside. There are few flowers to illuminate the isolated houses. Grass and sheep are the main feature and whilst it is somehow attractive in its sparse practicability, one is aware that nothing without an evolutionary purpose would exist here and that we, on this trip have been blessed for our first visit, with clear sky's and exceptional day long sunshine.
History describes those ranging marauders, the Vikings, coming in on their longboats, knives and axes at the ready, they beach their vessel on the sand and run ashore to plunder and kill whatever they could find.
A history full of bloodshed. Bloodshed enough from the raiders and even more bloodshed from each other as the family clans continued to attack each other with an unnatural ferocity, remembering a family slight or regaining land. A continual never ending battle. This bloodletting continued from generation to generation and did much to inhibit the formation of civil society or any sort of allegiance to central rule.
But today all is calm as the sleepers awake and think only of food. The quiet is soon pierced with chatter and laughter. Lets do this or that, lets look for fairies and leprechauns, in this land of bogs and demons now made famous for its strange folk-law melding truth and fiction into one.
The road clings to the edge of a cliff as we first climb up and then descend to an isolated beach. The 'faint hearts' squeal with apprehension, pleading with the driver to slow down and keep his or her eye on the road as the car is forced closer to the edge to make space for an oncoming vehicle. The drop, sheer into the sea, leaves little to the imagination as the surf pounds the rocks below and to some it's no laughing matter this terror of heights, the irrationality is lost on them, as they exhibit their own personal terror, whilst we simply smile.
The rhythm of this part of the country is slow and easy going. We became mixed up in a long funeral procession yesterday but it seemed to make no difference to our patten, or flow released as we are from the frenetic pace of Southern England. The Irish wake is a tradition to wonder at as the whole town turns out to "celebrate" the passing of a respected friend. The pipe band in their Irish kilt, more brown than the Lovat of Scotland but so similar that you would find it hard to tell the two nations apart. The bagpipes, to an untrained eye are the same and one wonders at such a strange invention being in the two separate nations since the language, binding the Welsh, Irish and Scottish doesn't as far as I know make provision for the bagpipes in Wales. I suppose like the Vikings the Scotts in their thrusting raids down the shores of Ireland left their own impression, perhaps it was the other way around and the Irish bequeathed this strange instrument to Scotland ? 

It's interesting to watch from our lounge window a Shepard training his dog to round up the sheep. Apparently he offers this as a service for local farmers who need a trained dog. I love to watch the dog ranging back and forth, ever watchful of his errant target, a nudge here a rush there as the wilful flock dart around in startled disarray.  Once the pantomime is over and the dog returned to its home, the sheep continue their placid, chomp chomping, wondering I'm sure, what the hell all that was about !!

We too are momentarily placid as we also chomp our way through the three meals a day signalling a pause in our pursuit to learn what the island has to offer. This insatiable quest to dig and turn over all the rocks in the pool. Are we programmed to stir around to discover, or is it our inability to sit still and muse about what we already know ?