Speaking from the sidelines

Subject: Speaking from the sidelines.

Oh dear what will become of us. Two years ago we traipsed down to the polling station to answer the question " Do we wish to remain in the European Union".

Such an emotive wide open question was to be given a simple "yes" or "no" answer. A simple question which needed so much information if we were to get the answer right or a complex question which didn't ignore the complexities of coming out. Instead we traded the complexity for an emotional question, "do you want to leave or stay.
As with most relationships the staying is often fraught with bouts of unhappiness, there are moments when you wish to cut and run, to make life less problematical,  to rediscover your 'mojo' or simply find 'peace of mind'. But then, as the divorce speeds up the implications of finding a new life outside the domain of marriage hits home as you discover the reality of your current position. To start again with the enthusiasm and naivety of youth is usually not on offer. The reality of life living under one roof has weakened ones resolve to go it alone, if for no other reason than not only have you lost the skill to be on your own but there was so much going on in the house which you were oblivious to along with the skill to now perform. The economics that two can live as cheaply as one and that sharing imposes 'regulation' was not apparent when you tied the Gordian knot. Like Alexanders attempt to untie the 'untieable', you resort, in sheer frustration to severing the knot with brute force.
Brexit seems to have arrived at just such a moment with the latest meeting of heads of state ending equally brutally with the EU reaffirming its position from the start and we hoping for a compromise which would produce something more palatable.
Two years to once again reach the starting point. Two years to find out that your partnership meant nothing much when matched against an ideology which sought to tie a knot that could never be untied for reasons of pragmatic necessity, to prevent the nations of Europe from ever entering into war again.
And what of the future. Our national life outside the partnership will require a crude painful reappraisal of ourself. A rediscovery that we were not all we thought ourselves to be. But on the other hand as we fashion a new life perhaps we will rediscover a more simple, more relevant life, not one determined by others but one which better reflects our own independent national character.
We must reevaluate ourselves and stop linking the past with today and especially the future. We must rid ourselves of the concept that we are equivalent to a world power and stop performing roles to which no longer suite our economic position. The worlds policeman, the worlds charity provider, even the worlds moral backstop all seem beyond our reach today and we must stop trying to right the wrongs of other nations especially since those wrongs are something we perceive and might just be appropriate to cultures different to our own. That doesn't mean we will withdraw into ourselves but rather become more realistic as a small nation should "and learn to speak from the sidelines".

The modern day social evangelist

Subject: The modern day social evangelist.

As a society our capacity for self flagellation  is immense. We twist and bend to acquiesce to opinions held about us, frightened to risk offence, we nod as people rail against our beliefs, laugh at our idiosyncrasies but wish to have their own idiosyncrasies, their own culture, their own religious observance respected and placed on a par with the indigenous arrangements which were virtually the only norm 50 years ago.
The television is a melting pot bringing together people from all walks of life who inevitably represent a particular opinion. They largely belong to a class of people educated and financially independent, who pontificate views which include the 'ideal' even if it is highly unlikely that their views are representative outside their particular social niche.
The unwashed majority are discussed as if they are a different species, they are an anachronism to the perceived philosophy of the great and good and whilst they garner sympathy they are accused of being their own worst enemy by not understanding what is good for them.
If immigration is a good thing because it subdues the latent bad, inherent in our own sense of worth by opening our eyes to other ways of doing things and that therefore the short jump to imagine we are indebted to the immigrant for setting us straight, well it's hardly conducive to winning friends and influencing people. And yet this is exactly what we are faced with on a daily basis through the plethora of punditry and advice.

We are told the NHS wouldn't run without immigrants and yet the Health Service, when I grew up in the 1940s, 50s and 60s was staffed from the cleaner through to the nurse the matron and the doctors by white 'home grown' individuals who seemed to me to represent the very best of society. With a population of around 45 million the hospitals and the old age care homes were a respite in times of need and all municipalities were tasked with providing and running them.. Housing was adequate and affordable when measured against a man's pay packet (no need for a wife to go out to work and neglect the children).  The respect for law and order meant that one Bobby (policeman) could control a crowd and of course people played the economic card by buying "only" what they could afford.

Mrs Thatcher changed all that and with Ronald Reagan began the consumerist society which has led us to the global society and the inherent need to ignore national difference for a manufactured global "must have regardless of the cost"
The rights of an individual to say no I don't agree to globalism or uncontrolled immigration is met by contempt and worse, ridicule and social exclusion.
The exemplar in all these things is the drip feed assassination of all that went before. In  its place, a wish washy idealism which excludes the reality of what we actually see around us. As we manifest the new Britain in as a series of exclusive societies growing and prospering upon  the fabric of a nation built on the foundations of those who in the 50s are now forgotten and even demonised, by the offspring of far away societies who would laugh at the liberalism of the modern day social evangelist.

America First

Subject: "America First"

And so there you have it, the clash of the cultures. Don't you get it. One side is shouting we are special, rules are for ordinary mortals "America is First" our President repeatedly tells you so. And on the other side of the proverbial net the Asian default where a lifetimes cultural up bringing showing at all costs personal humility, where the round of hand clasped bowing when meeting someone is part of the ceremonial respect which their Shinto religion teaches the Japanese.

Serena the imperial First Lady of tennis an American Queen was typically aggressive, (who can forget the tantrums of John McEnroe) when questioned by an official. She was astounded that the umpire should suggest that she needed coaching by her coach, not me gov whilst it seems in the aftermath of comments she did in fact receive advice from her coach {although she denies hearing him}. He finger wagging rant, her petulance at not having her regal status acknowledged, her rage embellished by smashing her racquet on the floor (another point deducted) and yet the pundits and ex players from across the pond leapt to her defence blaming the umpire, another, tail wags dog story.
How could he treat "our" girl like that. Billy Jean King went so far as to suggest it was all down to the umpires misogyny, "he would never have treated a man like that. Interestingly the players and pundits on this side of the Atlantic supported the umpire and said he was merely applying the rules but of course, we have become used to following rules (like queues) whilst our cousins make them.
The crowd were out of control. Always partisan to a fault, I suppose the result of so few Americans getting out of their back yard to see how other cultures perform, they barracked and booed and drew comparison with Wimbledon  where scarcely a mouse is heard to squeak.
One felt nothing but sadness for the 20 year old Japanese girl Naomi Osaka who before 'Queen Serena' went into one was playing very, well taking the first set.
As she stood there on the winners rostrum she looked a dejected figure, close to tears receiving her first big trophy and all because this undoubted force of nature, who is used to making her opponents look second rate, powering them off the court clearly can't take the psychological strain of being proved second best every so often.

Walking on water

Subject: Walking on water.

Lobbyists are a powerful force in the land particularly since the internet now feeds their commentary into all our homes virtually 24/7. Like many people I have formed opinions based on my experience my upbringing my choice of books and the literature I choose to read. The choice does of course presuppose the outcome since we usually chose what to read. 

Most of the television we watch  is bland in so far as seeing and hearing extremist opinion, the organisation well aware of the cost of unresearched gossip.

Not so the "shock jock" radio station who's very purpose is to be controversial.

From a diet of careful prudence which is today's televisions carefully scripted output it's exciting to listen to the blather of a radio host who is out to provoke, and who thrives on the controversial.  Fake News is different though through its agenda to willingly distort and deliberately mislead, all part of the tool kit of news dissemination. 

But political agenda and the half truth of an excitable shock jock is not far behind this dissemination. Information which fly's out of the mouths of these highly paid demagogues is largely based on popularism. Popularism is a trade we learnt in the playground. Who were the popular guys and what was their tune, it paid dividends to stay close, even if you disagreed. (I never did and bare the scars to show for it). The gains to quote the latest prejudice were an easy m

notch on your tricky path to status. It was difficult to stand out and say no that's wrong.

Jeremy Corbyn has had to undergo a continuous barrage of viperous slander not only from the government benches but also from his own party where his stunning election left the tried and ineffectual Blairites feeling very sore. Not only in the corridors of Westminster Palace but in the corridors of what used to be known as Fleet Street. His rise to power from a lifetime of being a vocal back bencher was seen as a destabilising influence on the established cohort who rule our lives. The movers and shakers who's position is often reliant on the school tie were astounded to see an avowed left wing trouble maker rise to within a cats whisker of political control. Since his victory there is not a day goes by without some slander attached to his name and at a time when the government should be held firmly to account. 

As our social services dissemble into bankruptcy for lack of central government funds brought about by George Osborne ideological neoliberal free market capitalism. The media, in nearly all its forms, opens its front pages with anti Corbyn taunts. The latest being the shrill chest pounding from the Jewish lobby who, with  influence everywhere, demand their voice be heard. Perhaps the assumption "that they walk on water" has been the fault line running through many democracies.

Picking your enemy

Subject: Picking your enemy.

The row about antisemitism drags on in the Labour Party. Never a day goes by without the right wing press publishing Jeremy Corbyn attending, sometimes years ago meetings and wreath laying with Palestinian groups as if the Palestinian cause were in someway a slight to democracy. 

Freedom of speech and freedom of association are the building blocks of a civilised society and Jeremy Corbyn's willingness to espouse the cause of Palestine has been a life long conviction.
The 1947 creation of a homeland for the Jewish nation acknowledging their historic rights to parts of what was once called Palestine, in the Balfour declaration was an act of recognition that the Jewish diaspora who had so brutally suffered in Europe needed a home to call their own. As in so much of what was done in those Imperial days, when maps were redrawn without thought to the local inhabitants, the recreation of a Jewish or Zionist state was brought about without the views of the local Arab tribes living there being considered.

The history of the Jews as a tribe and the surrounding Arab tribes had not been without acrimony and the wholesale resettlement of European Jews, bolstered with American money has never made for happy bedfellows.
The Zionist government seeing the numbers and the inherent hostility have been, since inception resolute in propounding "Israel first", no matter what the means to ensure its survival and many of the means have been brutal. 

Corbyn's view and his sympathy lay towards the Palestinian. He saw the single minded might of American money, so often in our world, juxtaposed with justice for societies deemed of lesser worth, and it was of sufficient cause to examine what it meant to be a Palestinian. What he found was distasteful and he cried foul.

As a left wing leader of the Labour Party he was always  a thorn in the flesh of the Blairites faction of the Labour Party, themselves caricatured  as "Tory Lite". They and the Tories have been intent, since his leadership on a continual program of character assignation from the day he was elected. 

The Jewish lobby in this country are powerful, holding capital and media control far in advance of their actual numbers. This drip drip disingenuous feed into the public discourse has finally settled in this row over the call to acknowledge the Holocaust Memorial Pledge which binds people to disengage from anything which could be dreamed anti Jewish as being anti Semitic.  

Part of the embitterment has been the assumption that to be anti Semitic included being anti Zionist and therefore, criticising the government of Israel was being anti Semitic. Interestingly the term "Semitic" includes the Arab tribes of  largely, the Middle East as well as the tribe of the Hebrews. The term should have been wholistic but seems to have been coopted by the Jews.

Corbyn's case is that by unreservedly signing all the clauses within the Holocaust Pledge (authored by the Americans) it would prevent him from criticising the Zionist government of Israel when, to the very fibre of his being, he has had sympathy for the Palestinian position. 

It was never a crime to pick your enemy but in the case of Israel it seems it is.

I think tomorrow, I will be a girl.

Subject: I think tomorrow I'll be a girl.

Reading of India and its overwhelming poverty, of the many tiers of humanity within the multi layer societal sets of division and subdivision one can be forgiven for wondering at the complexity of modern society.  Glancing across the whole panoramic view of society within the sub continent one would not recognised the influence of caste other than by a division of labour, jobs that certain castes would never do. The significance of class and birth right are more on display in India than in an English Public School and whilst we may struggle to adequately answer the immorality of our education system the Indian has no such qualms. A Society much older than ours and much more entrenched, have subjected any reasoning on these matters to the trashcan. No one questions the status quo, the world is as it is.
It reminds me of my time in South Africa when as a first time visitor to Cape Town in in 1962 the sights and sounds of this beautiful city didn't include Gugelethu, Nyanga or Langa or the feared District 6 on the lower slopes of Table Mountain.

To white people these places didn't exist, or if they did it was a matter of administrative convenience not any sort of soul searching as to life there. People become opaque outside our own caste we have enough to worry about trying to keep afloat amongst our own kind. 

This concept of "our own kind" is an anathema to many.  Today brought up on a diet of rights and universality they push the envelope out further and further to include, as of yesterday any self sex identifying individual. Today I can proclaim I am a man, tomorrow a woman with all the ramifications for the safe havens for women in changing rooms and toilets. The claims of molestation and lewdity have risen enormously since we began to address the rights of the 'cross dresser' but of course, since we now seem to assume that sexual identity is in the mind and not in the genitalia (even God would be confused) and because we must protect everyone's human rights, even the most 'far out' within our society then victims must just suck it up.

Beware the Hydra

Subject: Beware the Hydra.

As the Brexit deal stutters forward, sometimes hurdles, sometimes clarity of purpose, we seem to zig zag between and around the obstacles, kicking some into the long grass as just too hard but always in the knowledge we will have to come back to them before the deal is consummated.
Much of it is like the conversation in a funeral parlour, stilted, acknowledging a dreadful event has occurred but knowing it has, that there's no going back, wishing at all costs to show there is no ill feeling
The sheer profundity required in unzipping and then reassembling 40 years of intricate legal diplomacy is mind boggling. It's not like a divorce where one of the parties leaves and the locks are changed it's as if the keys are still valued and access to the pantry and kitchen is ok but definitely not the bedroom. It's a divorce of convenience and like a marriage of convenience is based on something other than love.
The well rehearsed arguments of economic nurturing versus economic empowerment seem no nearer to being resolved.
Mrs May has been on a trip to South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya those old colonial stalwarts, hoping to drum up business. Mrs Merkel has also been about in Africa, also drumming the trade drum in Senegal, Ethiopia and interestingly also Nigeria.
All of course are treading on the coat tails of China who is well established in Africa with soft loan projects all over the continent, cannily,  turning the clock back they have imported over a million workers from china to ensure the projects get done on time and within budget.
With the Americans pulling out of their "world role" under President Trump the Chinese with their vast current account surplus see, much like the Americans after WW2 an opportunity to swamp foreign economies with loans and infrastructure projects such that these countries will be for ever indebted. If you fail to keep up repayments, like Sri Lanka, then they expropriate a city port such as Hanbantota for their own strategic purpose. This of course is exactly what the Americans did, all around the world as their power and hegemony grew after the war. Allies such as Britain were leaned upon to relinquish land and infrastructure in payment for the loans Britain was forced to make for fighting the facist for Europe.

History tells us much but we learn little.  If a successful Brexit is made impossible by the French, who's very existence can in no small part be due to our tenacity to continue to fight the war after they were defeated and overrun. Especially our ability to convince the Americans to join us in the fight.  Or the Germans veto any deal since it is they who in the end have come out victorious, without the taint of fascism but rather through their power of organisation and the investment in both people and industry (something we never learnt to do).
Perhaps as a small island state we can become a theme park with organised tours for visitors to gawp at, reflecting how quaint life was before the global Hydra arrived.

Paying for your sanctity

Subject: Paying for your sanctity

Of course it could be argued we live in a multicultural world as if multiculturalism was the norm and we are obliged to get used to it. The truth is there is little multiculturalism in many of the countries where the bulk of immigrants come from. This distortion of world wide multicultural acceptance is made even more acute by comparing the efforts of India, China, Russia and Japan to readily accept people from other countries to settle in their land. It's a resounding nil and so one is faced with only the western democracies who are bombarded with the taunts of being racism and anti humanitarian. The norm outside the ideologically stressed West is of closed borders and authoritarian government.
We of course are continually told that multiculturalism is good and for world accord, is necessary. Being drip fed a diet of moral and ethical prejudice we fear our own true feelings especially if we try to moderate this lust for multiculturalism.
Even when we are told that the immigrant brings their own exclusive customs which are usually portrayed as a cultural necessity for them and part of what makes them who they are, there is no attempt at a quid pro quo with our own culture, since apparently we have so much to learn from the new.
It's all codswallop. Our democracy has softened us up to persuasion and the global economic imperative dictates who comes and who goes.
If when we lose our distinctive cultural identity, as we have in many of the cities around the nation. If when we lose the power of being a majority in the land and instead the majority is formed along religious lines, a religion which is alien within this largely secular country. If when the hard won minorities rights are squashed by an intolerant patriarchal brother-hood which takes its lead from a society born in 600AD and which still professes a strict  observance to rules formed then, in that distant past. A time of no relevance to the current day. If these things come about, the movers and shakers who brought it about will no longer be here having shipped out to a raft of exclusive islands fortified against those without the cash to pay for their sanctity.

Institutionalised brutality

Subject: Institutionalised brutality.

The issue of Cyril Ramaposa's message to the citizens of South Africa that "land can be appropriated without compensation" hits against all kinds of legal precedent, not least the term of contract law which defines the repayment of the Bond (mortgage). Nedbank not known for its political sensitivity has said that the bond repayments must be met as per the contract, irrespective of the fact that the land and its contents have been appropriated and given to others. It's just the sort of mess politicians get into when they play the racist card, in this case, black against white. The argument of reattributing land to people who held the land in the sense of far off tribal occupation and made landless by colonial power and white repressive government is undoubtedly accurate. I'm sure it could be made the case in virtually every country over time.
The distribution of land in this country by the King to the ancestral Lords as repayment for loaning men from a Baronial district to fight the Kings cause was common (no matter that the men who lost their lives in the battle received nothing) and that vast swathes of countryside and city are now owned by a few families.
Compensation never came into it since we had been taught to "know our place" but we are easily incited to feel the injustice if, in another land the agents of a colonial power working often for that power are seen, through the modern lens of a myopic correctness feel that an injury has been done.
How little thought is given to the tribal representatives of this country the bulk who I see standing in the queue at MacDonald's with little or no education and subsequently no hope for the future. Who's life map is planned by their Post Code, just as the boy in Mitchells Plain is earmarked for gangs and drugs.
Our willingness to be coopted into some sort short term sympathetic frenzy is legion whilst all around us lies an equally disdainful, if less acute way of institutionalised brutality.

Amazon rules the world

Subject: Amazon rules the world.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad thing for Amazon to rule the world. For all our shopping to be done through them instead of trailing out to the shops. After all its only nostalgia which keeps us returning  to the past and the old way of conducting our affairs.
The shops could close and become residential, only the eatery remaining open and a snug to hide away in to pass the time.

Mr Bezos could soon become the first trillionaire on his way to his first quadrillion, his empire could reinstall a modified version of the "slave trade" as he sought workers in his warehouses to work for free vouchers for Amazon Prime. Ironic perhaps since really there is nothing they could afford to have delivered anyway.
The indolent will benefit by having a reason to stay at home waiting the delivery. The roads will be clearer for the delivery vans to get around as people, not having a reason to go out put their cars up on jacks to avoid road tax. The ones who still have a job which artificial intelligence has not taken over, will be 'on line' anyway interrogating the minority who have to actually get out and do things.
It's the brave new fibre optics enabled world, distance and position mean nothing any more since, in the globalised pot, all being corralled into becoming peon's and only Jeff Bezos is out shopping.

Writing and reading

Subject: Writing and reading.

Like an alcoholic I have just been binging on Amazon, buying books. I have these urges to read up all that a specific author has written. It's as if each book each word and sentence will inject the same joy, the same pleasure as when I read a book by them the first time.

Today it was VJ Naipaul who's book,  'A House for Mr Biswas' captivated me a couple of years ago. His prose style and his quirky characters are brought to life and you live right alongside them from start to finish. My bookshelves are largely full of 'need to know' stuff,  historical philosophy to the present day, attempts to get my head around the sub atomic partials and parallel universes, history books and travelogues, auto biographies and biography mostly political. The realm of novel writing was limited by those I felt I should read, Russian and German authors as well as the best of the English  but my attention was caught by such as VS Naipaul's Mr Biswas,  (just ordered three of his)  Philip Roth (bought them all), Jonathan Rabin (bought all of them) Richard Ford who's book 'Canada' was a great read, and all of John Le Carre who's ability to weave an intricate story is on par with the best.
Books are the rabbit hole experience we all desire as a relief to the crazy world around us. The increasing thought that it's all a con that nothing is true anymore when it gains mainstream interest. The scramble to outdo and embellish the story, to coat it in innuendo and scepticism,  as if we the public need to have a bias presented to us to juice up our own bias.  Where is the truth in a world of tweets which are but passing thoughts without the discomfort of facts. The tweets and the anti tweets, the bile and the anger all the discomfort of modern experience brought to the boil on the internet.
Perhaps having to put a 30p stamp on the envelope contained our worst excesses in the past, today it's too easy and too anonymous, too easy to bring out the worst in people. To shout abuse at the 'bouncer' takes courage, to write and abuse someone from the comfort of your armchair is too easy.

An interview with Linford Christie

Subject: An interview with Linford Christie.

I was watching a program on television a couple of days ago in which the 100m sprinter Linford Christie was being interviewed about his past and, via footage of TV shows shown in the 60s and 70s which had a strong racial bias, his opinion on race issues  today. These early TV shows reflected the opinion of the time towards racial stereotyping, the assumption of white racial supremacy and the comedy built around a "them and us" philosophy which invariably placed the white person in the ascendancy.

A great deal of work has been done in this country to banish this sense of racial prejudice and in a growing multi cultural environment is seen as  vitally important to calm the publics sense of living in a two tier society. 

In one sense it has been done by suppression. The use of  'Political Correctness', an often quite savage embargo of subject matter deemed racially oppressive, with strong deterrents  for people in the workspace if they hold views which were deemed anti PC.

Over time this indoctrination of public perception has meant that people now-a-days instinctively shy away from discussing subjects that could be deemed to flow against the PC tide. Their participation in open debate on critical aspects of racial mixing and the effects which flow from that mixing is seen to legitimise prejudice and therefore must be shut down. People brought up in this era of Political Correctness often have a blind spot when it comes to the reality of issues arising when trying to blend diverse cultures.  It is said that they are blind to the differences and accept unhesitatingly the story of white oppression seen through colonialism and the inevitable guilt the white man must carry for events which happened many generations ago.

Linford Christie in his day was the epitome of the black man as seen through his physical strength and natural physiology. He was was, for a while the fastest man on Earth.  His deep brooding eyes and his piercing gaze as he concentrated on the job in hand the race, were synonymous with that terrifying imagery we remembered as children from the story's of tribal savagery in darkest Africa.  Linford was the man we were not.  His explosive power was saturated in myth, a myth about latent sexual strength, of a physicality with which no white man could compete, with huge muscles virtually bursting through the skin as he swayed and prowled around the starting block.

Today he is a jovial, contented man who, when asked, having seen a clip of a risky 1970s comedy what he felt about it only laughs that it was funny. The programs 'white presenter'  seemed abashed and quite put out by this lack of current day opprobrium on all matters racial, his tinder having failed to ignite a man comfortable in his black skin, comfortable living in this country, comfortable to see the stereotype humour of the 70s for what it was, comedy, could only stutter his own reverse prejudice for which modern society had trained him well.  The healthy enactment through comedy, reflected by the society of the day, a society learning to assimilate the situation in the best way it could, by poking fun through an enlarged humour based characterisation of that prejudice. 

The frigid, ultra sensitive, politically correct individuals represented by the 'presenter' miss the opportunity which used to present itself as working class humour to take the edge off potentially contentious issues by laughing at them, and would rather "insist" it doesn't happen by legal injunction  and punitive punishment.

A political monster

Subject: A political monster.

When I was a young boy we used to go fishing in the canal. It was pretty basic stuff a simple rod, a float and small lead weights to take the hook down through the water to where we assumed the fish would feed. The lure was worms which we used to keep in a tin and we would pick up the worms who had tried to escape and pop them back in the tin.
It was all so reminiscent of Brexit, a can of worms which once opened the worms escape Worms we didn't know were there, worms with such healthy vigour we now identify with the corporate body and are at a loss to imagine how the coronet body will function. A Pandora's box of worms which now, out of control we cast around for solutions where probably there none.
To be in, or to be out, that is the question since remarkably there seems no half way. The implications for virtually everyone living on this island mean change and usually not for the better. From simple things like visa requirements when you go on holiday to the assurances we have become used to when purchasing food, all of which is regulated by the EU. Every legal dot and tee has to be reexamined and redrawn. Complicated supply chains which have grown up as part of the manufacturing process will be broken and a reversion to 20th century uneconomic practice, recreated. From the drugs market to the legal authority to fly over and into Europe has to be renegotiated because the status of the parties to the existing framework has changed. In finance the system of providing a seamless trade between the financial centres is brought to a crashing halt with massive implications for our main income earner.
So what seemed as a relatively simple procedure to keep on as before with only a bit more form filling has been shown to be horrendously complex.
The world had moved on and we hadn't noticed. We assumed that the system of multi -national companies and global trade, were allegiance to national priorities was made irrelevant  by corporate boardrooms sitting in tax havens was as it was when we last looked. Parliaments have become largely irrelevant, limited in their power to influence these global juggernaut, even to make them pay tax on the profits on the products they sell within a nation. We have left for years now the nitty gritty of trade negotiation to the EU Commission where it collectively negotiates on behalf of 28 soon to be 27 nations. So bad is our position that we have hired people from New Zealand and Australia to teach us how to do it.
Perhaps when we first looked into sidling up to the trade area in Europe in the 50s and 60s first being humiliated with a rejection from Charles de Gaulle, our wartime ally who had spent the war in the relative safety of London plotting his return to France.
Cap in hand, we pleaded to join this alluring market place, ditching our loyal supporters, the Commonwealth in the process, swopped the paradigm we knew for  a political monster.

After Brexit what will be retained

Subject: After Brexit what will be retained,

One of the effects of Brexit was our desire to escape the clutches of German hegemony in the guise of the EU.
It's useful therefore to read European history, and the rise and fall of the Hapsburg empire with its seat in Austria but influenced by the German states and especially the power of Prussia.

The conquests of Napoleon which tore the continent apart led to the amalgamation of the countries lying to the east under the titular political control of Austria, countries such as Hungry, and Galicia, Transylvania and further south, Croatia. Metternich the German diplomat, the schemer the supreme fixer with his complicated political treaties, tying the threads with a semblance of legal continuity. And Russia prodding the surrounding nations, taking bits here and there through conquest and threat of conquest, a continent in continual flux with dynastic assumptions leveraging the imbalances.
Up until the two world wars these nations were always jockeying for advantage. Boundaries drawn and redrawn, nations one moment subservient to this power, the next under the rule of another. Flux and counter flux with the common denominator, men dying in their thousands and, as the killing machines became more efficient, in their millions.
The Iron and Steel Community, the Free Trade Area, the EEC and now the European Union have been a spectacular success in unifying all these disparate nations supplementing each with a common interest, a common economic union with trade and free movement blurring the nationalistic differences.
Sitting off the continent proper these islands were protected from the pervasive influence of national grievance and were allowed to evolve our own concept of parliamentary democracy. Our expansion was in the Far East, Africa and to a lesser extent the Americas. Trade and exploitation were our modus operandi, mainly driven by private companies it relied on a business structure based on the law of contract and a substructure such as roads and railways to exploit the trade.
As we seek to extricate ourself from our short dalliance with Europe we must understand the fundamental philosophical difference between the way European nations think. Their history of turmoil and confrontation, now reaching this safe harbour of economic and structural tranquility, which the EU represents.
Federalism, the subservience of nationalism is the corollary of a thousand years of conflict which we in Britain never felt the pressure to assuage in the same way.
Our nationalism will lead us into many false dawns but at least, like the child leaving home for the first time there is the excitement as well as the fear of the unknown which once again as we come of age we cast off the sureties of parental conformity with its structured "I know what's best for you" diktat. Our mind has become dull with the conformity, we have forgotten how to function as an independent nation, leaving much of the decision making to the EU Commission and the European Courts. This  has been a safe haven with many benefits. General high quality standards, good labour laws, a set of progressive environmental sign posts which might have been overlooked by our traditional obsession with dumping regulation in search of profit.
It can only be hoped that our brief flirtation with a large family, ( the nations of Europe) which of necessity requires compromise and a wider more consolatory view will be retained.

The savagery of the dispossessed

Subject: The savagery of the dispossessed

The concept of "democratic rights" as proclaimed by the French Revolution was also the prerequisite for the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Both were born on the back of terror. The Jacobean terror in Paris matched Lenin's tactic of irradiation by extermination of all opposition to the 'Parties' rule. Ideology over-rode the normal compassion mankind can feel towards its fellow man and millions of people were put to death or shipped off to the gulag, which often amounted to the same thing, without a moments thought. Ideology be it religious or secular has a habit of misunderstanding the means with the end.
In both, the revolt against their individual monarchies replaced one despotism for another, the aim, to release mankind from suffrage was subsumed by the acceptance of the violence needed to change the status quo. Violence begets violence and the freedom to inflict violence become persuasive, the fine balance between freedom and responsibility is broken.
On a less grand scale we see it in society today as the freedom to protest our rights overwhelms our compact with society to understand our responsibility to earn our rights by manifesting behaviour which contributes to the progress we all can make to ensure society is balanced and fair.
Society today is clearly unfair as the spoils of our labour largely contributes to the riches of a few. From this flows all the imbalance in health and opportunity which creates the dissatisfaction so many of us feel. The disproportion fuels this dissatisfaction such that our assumed entitlement buries any sense of cohesion and like a disturbed ants nest we lose coordination.
The revolutions of the past were based on just such as this, dislocation within society and a focus provided by a few silver tongues.
Only the false security of the credit card and the balm of consumerism prevents a kick back to that undemocratic, unequal and immoral concoction, Globalisation. The faceless multilateral organisations and the hedge funds who swop their financial allegiance at the whisper of a better deal, the conglomerate who's boardroom is made up of players with fingers in all the other boardrooms, the dissembling of truth such that the population is unable to make rational decisions. All this leads to the perfect storm where, with little to lose the general public revolt and dismember the artificial norms so carefully built up by an ordered but unequal society for ones based on the savagery of the dispossessed.