Judge not, lest we be judged

Subject: Judge not lest we shall be judged 

Watching the trauma of rioting in America, ostensibly race riots since the police brutality seems directed at African Americans one has to question the whole ethos of the  'American Dream' the idea that if you worked hard you could make it.
The resentment black Americans feel is that, this isn't true and only a few cases, Barack Obama being the most sensational exception, for the bulk of them life is invariably one of hardship. Poor educational facilities,   overcrowded cities leading to inadequate accommodation, a sense of disillusionment with few job opportunities and above all the sense of discrimination due to the colour of their skin. This of course also describes a large section of the white working class but they don't have the luxury of skin colour to rally around, nor the historical image of Jim Crow or the pent up dislocation of ancestry and the misery of slavery.
The story of slavery, the rounding up and exportation of thousands of Africans to work in the cotton fields is a story which feeds their sense of disenfranchisement. Taken by force from their villages and their ancestry in Africa, disallowed any rights in their new country, they were placed in a bubble where the rights of the Constitution in the new Colony were denied them and they were left for two centuries and more, stateless.
Now with a statute book more in their favour they are still denied justice and it is only the capture of video footage which reveals the brutality meted out to them by a few 'redneck' policemen.
Of course it goes beyond that since the act of the bigoted policeman is backed by an establishment within policing which sees skin colour and black people as being on the other side, the enemy in their daily business of keeping people within the law. The ghettos within so many cities in America are black ghettos, the violence towards the police in those cities comes from black people and with the use of drugs, makes a strong man even stronger. Wrestling a large powerful man to the ground is a job which thankfully we are never asked to do and if we were we would probably run a mile. In the war zones of the inner city the balance of power between law enforcement and the gangs is often on the line and with everyone being tooled up with guns and knifes, is it any wonder that the procedure of arrest breakers down.
We are too ready to judge what goes on from our armchair and the security of our home we condemn so much without knowing the facts which in this case are clear thanks to the video but what is not clear is what went through the mind of the policeman and why.
Was the man powerful, did he fear for himself if he released the pressure on him. In this case he was surrounded by fellow officers and therefore he wasn't in danger but what of last nights shift when he had to confront two guys in a dark ally and ended getting roughed up. Maybe it was simply a question of prejudice and a brutal streak in the officer who saw his chance to make a point the odds being in his favour but I'm sure there are many instances when the odds are reversed, which over time clouds the normality we expect of people doing the job we don't want to do, perhaps daren't do. Like all lessons acted out in situations we are never faced with, we perhaps shouldn't  judge too quickly.

Trinidad and its search for identity

Subject: Trinidad and its search for identity.

It's an interesting juxtaposition this attempt to see ourselves as others see us. In our conversation and our attempt to break down cultural barriers we try to put on the costume of the other person whilst all the time wondering what they think of us.
Each race, each individual is brought up under the influence of the people around them and form a view of life as seen through the lens of the cultural influence close by. We carry this cultural identification with us throughout our life and whilst in the modern process of learned mixing and multiculturalism we try to throw off our prejudice, we often fail to succeed.
But what if your society, the one you grew up in didn't have a culture of its own and only had a borrowed culture, a culture which had contaminated them, in this case from the USA, to such an extent that it saturated and dislodged their own sense of self worth.
Race has its roots in the assumption that you are what you are, your identity is written in, amongst other things, your skin colour and the identification it brings by amplifying a perceived difference. The question of whether this difference really exists is a moot point and whether it's impossible to be black without it linking you to Africa and Colonial Slavery. Even if you grew up out of Africa this sense of historical injustice swills through your thinking, and although sublimated by your surroundings it is closer to the surface than we think and it can soon be made the scapegoat for any ills a black person feels. 
It's not the same for white people who live and grow up in those parts of the world which are predominantly black and which white people have come to identify as home. They don't carry the same historical baggage, they were not uprooted from their homes and carried half way across the world to fit some economic opportunity.
You carry your skin colour around with you for some like a sign to say this is who I am. 
Frowned on by current thinking, where we must be the same, brothers and sisters all part of the same human family it never the less make a contrast as we walk down the street in East London, the nationalities, the dress code all contrive to announce I am different. Much like members of a family, we often see ourselves as being different to the other members of our family. The difference is in the interpretation we have of our own experience, it gives us that sense of our individuality and purpose. The rules which describe our ethnicity, our religion make us the people we are.
In Trinidad, unlike other island communities in the Caribbean, Trinidadians have sought to differentiate themselves both in terms of ethnicity, where they came from (Africa) and who they imagine they have become, living on the island of Trinidad. It's been suggested that the Trinidadian sees themselves as a work in progress. Being enamoured with white culture, their goals are seen to be someone else's and they play the transitory card which was thrust on them by the invasion of a white, predominantly US culture. This lack of a home grown cultural base has stripped them of their history and left them unequipped to value themselves for who they are and rather masquerade as wannabes, lost in the life style of an alien force, America.
The calypso is Trinidadian, the steel band is Trinidadian, the lyrics and their lingua franca is a rebellious short hand for English, a way of saying, "I am not who you think I am". It's one of the few attempts to identify themselves as separate from the artificial characters they see and hear on films and listen to each day on the radio and television. In that sense that they project themselves as a white James Cagney or a Lauren Bacall, aping the culture of the Hollywood stars, making them the identity they aspire to.
Culture matters, it's the linchpin pin which makes us identifiable, our values and even our prejudices are wrapped around in our culture and amidst the pressure to submit to multiculturalism, across this globalised world we had better understand that culture is important to better understand ourselves.

Wheel out the heroes

Subject: Wheel out the heroes.

"The chickens are slowly coming home to roost". The fallacy, the hypocrisy, the political manoeuvring has brought us, this Monday morning to people being told it's safe for them to return to work to kick start the economy again try and emerge from the economic mess we are in. The period of lock down seems to have done the trick and halted the spread of the corona virus through the population. We have learnt a lot about COVID 19, not a lot of it nice but at least we are not as blind as we were. We know it seems to be worse for certain sections of society, thankfully the aged and people who are already weakened by other respiratory complaints and not across the population as a whole. We have learnt that the majority seem to have symptoms similar to a bad bout of flue and thankfully we have learnt that our children seem unaffected by the virus. This has been the result of observation, a sort of try it and see approach much valued by our politicians who seem to a man and woman fazed, caught in the headlights not really knowing what's going on and covering their pronouncements by having scientists flanking them at every turn with the mantra "it's the science which is leading us".
I'v no doubt that the Machiavellian master mind Dominic Cummings is behind this  insurance policy of having a panel of experts at their side each step of the way advising them.  The one problem is that the experts don't  agree what is the best way forward and so we dithered until some sort of consensus could be arrived at and the Prime Minister could announce his deliberations (sic).
Unfortunately we have not been blessed during this deep period of crisis with a man known for his decisiveness or even truthfulness, a man known for bumbling along when we needed someone who could grasp the broad brush assumptions rising from the facts and a quick mind, having grasped those facts, to do what a powerful politician with a massive majority and a Parliament paralysed by not being able to sit and properly debate the issues, should have done. He should have turned on the taps to ensure that PPE was available, regardless of the cost and he should have ensured that that testing and tracking of whole swathes of the population could be done swiftly.
Unfortunately for him after decades of underfunding and mismanagement we were in a terrible state in terms of having stocks of protective gear and we were not in any way  prepared for an avalanche of testing, having run down our laboratory capacity and the trained staff to operate them.
Warnings had been ignored, medical analysis had been ignored and in our obsession with financial manipulation, a thing we pride ourselves on as a thing we really excel at, the son returned from the casino to find his house burnt down.

This was one shaft of light in a government clearly out of its depth. The still wet behind the ears chancellor Rishi Sunac, forced into his position by the sudden resignation of the old chancellor Sijid Javid,  (both linked to the subcontinent of India and the Punjab) and both having held senior business briefs before entering parliament were a refreshing change from the Etonian, old boy network with its born to rule assumptions.  They at least had been tried and tested in the real life theatre of earning a living by their own endeavour and not on the nod of the establishment.
Sunac's immediate contribution was to grab the economic problem facing the nation by initiating what became known as the 'furloughed scheme' whereby the people asked to stay at home would receive 80% of their salary from the taxpayer until they could get back to work. His immediate and simple response was to calm the nation down whilst his colleagues made a mess of rising to the task of finding solutions to the practicalities of fighting the virus.
Now as we are requested to return to work with little or no confidence in the virus testing procedure or the woefully inadequate laboratory system to analyse the tests when they do indeed come, plus an embryonic untried tracing regime and we are opening the floodgates, not only to the people returning to work but also to the virus  pushing the infection rate up to exponential levels.
It's only the lock down which has brought the hospital admission rates down not any intervention medically. The euphoria displayed by the political/scientific team who appear nightly on the Downing Street Conference applauding as the  death rate started to level, was not due to anything they had done other than people isolating themselves leaving the virus with nothing to infect, (other than the poor souls living in the euphemistically called Care Homes).
I railed against the Cheltenham Race meeting and the Liverpool / Atletico Madrid match at Anfield, when they happened, it seemed crazy at the time and now the spikes are  evident through the the statical information now being published. It's not rocket science, it's common sense the same common sense that tells me to expect another wave of virus infected patients to flood back into the hospitals and where the heroes of last month will be expected to become heroes once again

Did we get it right

Subject: Did we get it right.

It's funny imagining the journey we take, popping into the world with our eyes open and exiting it with our eyes closed. Does it mean we have seen enough and can't take any more or that the light on the other side is so blinding, we dare not look.
The passage of time is relatively minuscule when taken geologically, a mere blip and yet in that blip we contrive to fit so much. Much of what we fit is repetitious but there are some fundamentals to our well being and amongst the most important is receiving lots of loving attention when we first look around at where we are. This discovery phase like no other needs the constant reassurance of a mother's care and her constant attention. It never ceases to amaze me the constancy of my daughters wrap around consciousness towards the babies needs. Men might drift off in their role of baby sitter, their mind adrift on other matters, a mother never so. The slightest sign of danger or some sort of mental tick and she's on to it, referencing her innate protective psych, a sort of genetic hardwired set of responses which men rarely possess.
For the child, the womb behind, the world unfurling at their fingertips, the child's self identification begins, advancing in leaps and bounds as it starts the hedonistic phase which for some never leaves them until, they too become a parent.
The issue of let him cry or should I sooth him by smothering him or her in cotton wool, the journey of bruised knees and bruised egos takes us into our twenties when responsibility is supposed to kick in. The thirties wedding bells, the forties mortgage and school fees, the fifties  the university exodus from home and in the sixties the whole cycle starts again but this time you are an observer not daring to say too much lest your reminded you don't know what your talking about.
Everything is cyclical, what goes up must come down but it's a fact that our role and our route through life seems bound by so many conventions most of which we have no control.
I suppose a world without reference would be confusing. Our need for milestones is reassuring, if for no other reason, that we can tick them off and then ruminate, did we actually get it right.

Maybe its an epoch moment

Subject: Maybe an epoch moment.

Remember back when. The old boy with his photo album proudly talking about his grand children, the football fan describing his feelings when the ball went in the net, the holiday in Greece, the reuniting of family from overseas. Those old enough amongst you can remember growing up without the motor car, without television and certainly without computers or the smart phone.

They can tell you were they were when Nikita Khrushchev tried to supply arms to Cuba and the world held its breath as the Americans sailed their fleet into the path of the Russian ships to prevent them from arriving in Cuba. The shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas and the landing on the moon were all events in a world which functioned as a collection of events experienced by individuals. We felt joined to the drama by our humanity, "there but for the grace of god go I" but somehow we were remote enough to know that these events played out in another world to ours and we were observers, not participants.
Today the virus has made us all participants in a way we thought we never would. We are part of the drama, we are it's ingredient, it's fuel we can not escape it and only hope to live through it. Children in the future like my granddaughter will wonder at the pandemic being fought out, as a watermark, an event in their early life which drew a line in the sand, much like the fear of a nuclear Holocaust drew a line over ours and which to this day nations fear to tread.
Never has the world been asked to close down and ruin its economy for the sake of saving lives. Never has the world had such a collective fear for its future.
Will January/February 2020 be known as an epoch, a time to subdivide what went before and what happened since. Will we strive to remember when we travelled with abandon anywhere in the world, will we remember crowds of spectators fondly or will we marvel that individuals jostled onto trains and sat side by side in theatres. Will the fear of the virus tame us into submission, satisfied to take instructions as who and how many can attend a party. Will the weekly death-toll be on our minds when we meet people and engage in conversation, will we measure everything in metres and not in good intentions
The crows in India circling the burial sites or the sight of water tumbling down a cliff in Peru will be limited to the few who can get a pass from the authorities, no more the hedonistic thrill of a rock concert or the push and shove as you pass through the gates into a stadium, no more the freedom to explore without first checking what the infection rate is like and if they have enough ventilators.
And so my darling granddaughter will your experience be dramatically different to your Moms or mine even earlier. Each generation is different, each generation has its cross to bear and each generation thinks its was the best to live through but maybe this virus with its hidden gestation period and its ease of transfer makes a world very different place to the one before.
I hope not and who knows what you will invent to do the things you want to do, a trip to Mars or a dimensional holiday in the comfort of your front room and who knows if what you want to do will be anything like mine.

Enjoying what's left of summer

Subject: Enjoying what's left of summer.

As a nation we prepare this weekend to go back to work hoping that by practicing social distancing we won't become infected by Covid 19 and, if we do our bodies will handle it as it does most disease. The dice is soon to be thrown and we will soon find out whether our medical experts know enough to take the chance.
We can't of course extend the lock down indefinitely, money doesn't grow on trees and we've spent enough already that it will take years of economic adjustment to balance the books.
The people I feel sorry for in this back to work saga are the front line workers in the hospitals, the ones dealing with the patients who have the virus and are succumbing to lung failure. These shattered front line workers who have only just now started to feel the easing in admissions, driven by the draconian decision to close a nation down and tell it to stay indoors. This was not a solution just a palliative sticking plaster to halt the scourge whilst we considered what our options were. The medics were at one point near breaking point and are the weakest part of the elastic holding things together.
I hope the government have not been swayed by the public clapping not have put into place a greatly expanded system, particularly the nurses and doctors trained to cope with the dying. We must expect a second wave and the R factor to go out beyond 2. We must expect the ambulances and the wards to fill. We must expect the trauma to return but in manageable proportion so that our professionals can come and go to work in sufficient numbers that each day death from the corona virus is treated as the norm and not as a daily crisis.
Death and the acute form it takes seems limited to a certain segment of society and not the whole. Perhaps that part of society, the old and those with a respiratory weakness will have to stay in lock down indefinitely. They will have to wait until a vaccine is found before being invited out. Luckily as far as the aged are concerned their age tends to limit them anyway in so far as leaving home is concerned, they are most likely retired and don't need to be out earning a living and there could be a focus on their needs and their fragility way beyond our cursory insistence that we care for the elderly.
Care homes should be nationalised once again and not be places for the rich pickings of an investor. The investment should come from the public purse and must be ring fenced towards that section of society who are most at risk. Only then can we morally sit back and say we have things under control and the economy can resume its merry way.
What we mustn't do is to invite crisis back into the hospital ward and expect others to cope with our lack of resource planning. We were woefully unprepared and Government shut its eyes to what needed to be done, we prevaricated and left the politicians in charge to make things up as they went along.
This brief respite and the knowledge we have gained must be put to good use and maybe, just maybe we might enjoy whats left of summer.

The story of the Covid Ward

Subject: The story of the Covid Ward.

 

A truly gripping story of a hospital and staff in Lombardy was broadcast tonight on News Night on the BBC. It portrayed the depths of exhaustion and hopelessness amongst the doctors and nurses dealing with severely ill patients flowing in like an unstoppable wave into the hospital in the worst days of the pandemic. They were helpless to offer much more than palliative care as patient after patient arrived with ruptured lungs, gasping for breath the doctors knowing that there was only so much they could do. For all the technology and training there had never been anything like it on this sort of scale. People desperately ill were treated with what ever there was to hand but the general feeling was that this has overwhelmed us and we can do little good. A doctors training is based on offering care and finding solutions but the virus was out of control and whilst the politicians issued their optimistic sound bites, the reality in the Covid wards was dire.
Doctors refusing to go home and sleeping for weeks in the hospital, they bustled between patients hidden in the folds of their protective gear, names scribbled on the garments to help in the identification of who was who.

It has taken its psychological toll, the unreality of the emergency room, with patients dying one after the other, a few luckily escaping to recuperate slowly from deaths door. You can not stand such unrelenting strain outside a war zone. The reality of the trauma in the hospital and the relative normality of home, a general public clamouring to get back to work regardless of the cost regardless of the pain and strain heaped on these civilian heroes.

As we speak the death toll is falling in Lombardy and the medics draw breath, slowly emerging from a nightmare but filled with apprehension as the public demand their freedom to mix again with the inevitable corollary that the pandemic will gather pace and once again swamp those brave people fighting this uneven battle, until an vaccine can be found but even then, the incidence of death will be  inevitable amongst the weak and the aged.
A simple thing like a virus crossing the threshold between ourselves and the animal kingdom has revealed how precarious our hold on life is and how cavalier we are in not addressing our mortality.

Shtisel

Subject: Shtisel

I'm engrossed in the film Shtisel.  I find it a fascinating watch whilst at the same time, disturbing.

The story is set in an ultra Orthodox Jewish community and amplifies the mental internment of people who dedicate themselves to an interpretation of religion. The community is rich in character, characters who's strict observance of the Talmud make them supremacy confident in their destiny. The film portrays the rigour and surety of living in such a community.

Human beings born into communities, for good or evil soak up the current practices of that community, its styles and the ever changing norms of practice, the ins and outs of fashion.

In the world of the ultra Orthodox Jew there are no fashions there are no changing norms only the truth as obtained by reading and reciting the Torah. This psychological disconnect from the world around them, the word of God speaking from the pages, determining their every action has a profound effect on the mind. The character of the people are set biblically in a period when men and women were defined differently and the role each person played was settled beyond dispute.

The film series depicts the pressure on a father, a Rabi who's son, also a Rabi, is induced to follow the normal matchmaking tradition of having a wife selected for him. Unfortunately he finds himself besotted by the image of a woman who is married and struggling, her husband having left to find his fortune in another country and it's this emotional dispute which provides the backdrop to the story.

The complexity of a patriarchal led family, made more so by the patriarchs total subservience to biblical scholarship and a mode of dress and living  which leaves no doubt as to their position in society plus the conflicting role of the mother dealing with the practicalities of life whilst men talk in biblical riddles.

I'm reminded of the Jewish comedians who used to have a retort for everything.  These men talk in preprepared assumptions, of argument and discussion preset in their brains are not the response of a free mind. This paradox, the surety that you get when you take your answers from a biblical text, itself is based on a world far removed from our own, has an allure but is bound to shake the presumptions of a father who loves his son but is in direct conflict with the way his fellow Rabbi will judge him.

The position of women is a poignant juxtaposition of what we are used to in the 21st century. Apparently subservient and yet wielding a great power in the home they are left to get on with raising the family but always under the strict testament of a faith bound by the innumerable rules which both define men and women. Helplessly they must as mothers find ways of imposing their will on the patriarch, he totally dependent on his biblical status, she on her undying love of her children.

Reading the media releases' the series is an accurate depiction of an Orthodox community in Jerusalem. Set in Hebrew I am fascinated by the ritual, the tapping of the scroll, a Mezuzah attached to the right hand door frame as you enter a house, the ritualistic prayers which are appropriate on eating and drinking and the almost medieval majesty as they go about their mystical business.
It's well worth watching 

Has it been a holiday

Subject: Has it been a holiday.

Another cloudless blue sky with a holiday squeezed in amongst it but of little or no consequence since we are barred in Wales from going out to enjoy the weather or the glorious beach. It's as if some power were playing a celestial joke, remembering my past visits to Wales and the grey water leadened sky's which were a feature of each stay.
Even the meaning of a holiday is lost in this forced immobilisation where the working days and the weekends merge into one, making our normal tick box sense of time unreliable.  Monday back to work, Friday party time. The identification with each day, Saturday a day of sport and a trip out to the pub to catch up with mates, Sunday the lunch time get together and a barbecue in the garden or a scramble in the countryside recognising the natural beauty of this tiny island. We are creatures of habit and even in retirement that sullen glow of Monday morning and the need to go to a job and make some more money becomes irresistible.
The sense of the encroachment on our freedom which work brings is etched on the faces of the travellers on the bus or train, the glum no talking on the tube, the swish of the doors as we pile out into some subterranean tunnel complex, caught up in the flow of humanity as it trails, pale faced  up the jerky escalator only to separate at street level in search of the office. Forced by uniformity we press on  passed the shops, the fast food outlets, the chemists offering relief for the excess of the night before, the vast emporium with stick figurines posing in the window waiting for the shop girl to make them modest, the bright interiors cosy from the rainswept street. Only a few more streets to go as the traffic sweep by, splashing the wet pedestrian as they wait patiently at the Intersection, their minds awash with the anticipation of a rebuke from the boss at some oversight last week, a mind perhaps still awake with the laughter of the weekend.
This routine has been on hold for a number of weeks now and whilst the lucky ones with recognisable jobs have been furloughed, the majority the GIG workers, casual itinerants in the world of work, people who emerge early out of their tiny poorly furnished rooms to stand side by side with those who have proper jobs, jostling for an ever reducing piece of the cake. No furloughed pay for them, only the worry of an incessant rent which is always due and the eternal hope that something better will turn up.
All this has been suspended in the aspic of an unseen virus. For some a killer for others, much like the flue, an inconvenience. With no banking security, no nest egg to fall back upon these people are keen as mustard to get back to work and we, the retiree are unjust in frowning at their rush to compound the pandemic and the torture of the staff working in the hospitals as they battle each day the unseen enemy, putting their own lives at risk as they do so.
Will this be the last week of lockdown as the bean-counters evaluate the market against the lives of a few. Will the economic model by which we fly each day, suiting its needs and the investors in Dubai or Singapore, ensconced in their tower high air conditioning lit by the glow of their computer screens, far removed from the mayhem on the street more enthralled in the mayhem on their screens as billions of dollars are wiped off an imaginary trading board which is their only reality.
So it's back to work whilst keeping an eye on R+1, hoping not to hear the referees whistle blow time again.