Subject: Oratory and persuasion.

 

Oratory I a powerful and emotive tool in the hands of impassioned people. The House of Commons is currently debating the proposal to remove of hereditary peers in the House of Lords.
I have grown up querying the nature of the English Aristocracy and its place in the running of the country. The idea that the act of ennobling  a person and to give them a title is anachronistic, this extension of privilege is out of character in a country which seeks to establish the principle of egalitarianism. In the days of noblest oblige a French term which dictates the idea that noblest dictates their efforts towards the community around them has as in most dictates not taken into their opinion the frailty of mankind.
Our political history unlike the French has sought to find an acceptable key for that class of people who can cast their lineage back to powerful families who name was the stuff and consequence of who we are, their education and their provenance in history with the power and opportunity to give thought to politics as it pertained to them.
Many of the peers are trained in law and therefore trained in the minutia of law and the need for controls to enable a country to act as one and not be riven by competing forces. The establishment was formed by this need and whilst it did not always exclude the needs of the people the priority of the establishment has always been self preservation.
The nature of the Lords unlike its unruly plebeian cousin the Commons was adroit debate rather than the excitement of political name calling. As the Commons has become more ideologically self censoring with the Whips Office driving and calling the tune along party lines rather than individual political opinion. Political parties are agenda driven and choose to draft laws which are popular thereby enabling the ensnarement of the public and their vote.
The Lords not having to rely on the dictates of the voter is far nor free to broaden their view as to the suitability of a proposed act which will become law. They can push the boat out to examine eddies in the deeper current of welfare especially those of unintended consequences. The Commons with its large Labour majority seeks to push ahead with reform of the Lords believing the chamber to be anachronistic, but perhaps it’s this anachronism that is its main benefit since not only does it approach issues from a different point of view it’s not tainted by the pork barrel politics of rewards for your vote.
I think we are unique in having an unelected body who’s purpose is to examine legislature because, as we have seen in so many areas of life, successive governments fail to address failure (as was seen in the Post Office scandal and the Contaminated Blood scandal) to name but two. The forensic evidence gathered by experts and presented, line by line in a quasi courtroom has uncovered the depth of corporate corruption in the Post Office by setting legal minds to the job of unearth the facts.
The Commons is not equipped technically to do the job of vetting each clause of a new act which they wish to become law even though they are the originators of the new legislation. It’s often only through the fine comb of an alternative view that the short comings appear. The Lords, being released of the need to do constituency politics, which takes a lot of time and effort of the ordinary elected politician, have the time to pore over each clause before it’s handed back to the Commons to be passed into law.
Political ideology haunts the Labour Party on such matters as hereditary peers and there is a fear that it will obscure the benefit they bring. 

 Subject: The oppressors wrong

 

Watching the latest video stories out of Gaza I am reminded of the warnings from friends and family about the bias in the video clips  I received watching Aljazeera.
It was the same warnings from believing BBC footage from people who people had come to label as ‘Woke’ ie too soft in its reported  news about Gaza and the coupling of that with the imagined terror we have of  illegal immigration and the fear they bring of co-opting our culture.
The visual picture of doctors working amongst the bombed out ruin of a hospital and the subsequent arrest and disappearance of more than one of these doctors invokes a Kafkaesque  picture into the mind of the Israeli defence force. Why would they allow their leaders to be apparently without mercy especially since the horror of the concentration camps is still within living memory.
The need to survive is a deep human resource, fight or flight is instinctive and therefore Israel's stated fear of being defeated and overrun by the Arab is paramount but the thoroughness of the destruction of Gaza must point to a biblical blindness, on both sides which obscures any sort of humanitarian sense of proportion.
The Germans thought the Jews subhuman the Jews appear to think the same of the Arab, it’s an anomaly that only humans could assume normal but then normality plays little importance when survival is at stake.
The feral child comes to mind, their concept of life normality lends us to walk carefully when blaming them for their actions. A feral nation is a different proposition in the assumption that people in that society have an effect on the potency of retribution. A nation is measured by the humanity it shows in dealing with its enemy’s.  The Germans are remembered for their harsh treatment of opposition in the towns and villages who rebelled against the authority of the German state. A nation of great composers and philosophers could condone the dreadful practices which went on in Auschwitz.
I watched a film made in Germany depicting  family life whilst living in the shadow of the camp. The Commandant walking to work each morning emerged in his plan to improve the industrialised killing whilst showing his own family great tenderness. That these two grotesque alternate concepts could coexist in the brain of a man illustrates how we  compartmentalise so many things as part of a survival mechanism.
As the world trends it’s way towards more confrontation with the frightening result of global extinction trough nuclear war or man induced climate change we  are also contemplate carrying on much as in the past. The alternative is too grim and knowing that the odds of winning the lottery are tiny, we still buy a ticket, and rather would shuffle off the contumely of modern life.

 Subject: The Laird in his counting house.

 

For my own mental health I have to continue to issue blogs to gain some sense of my reality. The claims and counter claims by the farmers, politicians, media operatives and the general run of disrupters who flood our minds with fabricated truth regarding for-instance the ability of farmers to pay a tax on the inheritance when a farm is passed on to a son or daughter and the advantages of a continuance of keeping the farm running within the family is threatened. To be persuaded that, the removal of the winter fuel allowance removal and making private schools pay VAT like the rest of us, the Labour Party have a challenging task to persuade us that when they came into power the nations coffers are almost empty and the Tories plan to greatly reduce public services was well on its way to completion.
It’s a long tradition that farming is largely  an issue of inheritance rather than a traditional business of selling the farm and equipment on the death of the owner. What is remarkable having listened each year to their life of increasing costs and tight margins they any parent would wish to bequeath the dead hand of a farm onto one of their children. There seems to be a romance in the ownership of land much as there is in the ownership of house, a sort of status signal, akin to the Manor House in feudal times. Our home is our castle in which its ownership to some extent insulates when we close the door.
Farming is a clique and offers status and so when it is suggested that a reduce rate of inheritance tax should be paid tax as part of the revenue required to run the country, everything kicks off. Not only is the tax levied, only on an estate worth more than £1million (for me I pay inheritance tax on anything above £350 ) going up to £3 million for ‘ a couple’ they are granted 10 years to pay the tax off whilst the beneficiaries of of my estate have to cough-up in a few months
If there was a clique to describe plumbers and electricians who had grown their business to be valued the same amount, no one in society would claim they need exception from the tax. The farmers like the rest of us use the NHS and the schools, they rely on the armed forces to protect them from invasion, they depend on the infrastructure of the country but want to cry foul when asked to pay what others accept as their collective burden.
As with most things there are trade offs to consider. The strategic place of food in our domestic requirement, the reduction in the number of farms producing that food and the cost of having to buy in food from overseas, plus the choke-hold of foreign interests if we rely on importation has to be considered.
There is already a drastic withering away of ‘productive land’ by wealthy people buying land to included it as part of their business portfolio with generous allowances. 
Jeremy Clarkson who stands with his plebeian beanie claiming that the tax is unfair but forgets to mention that he invested 4 million of his wealth into a farm 3 years ago to benefit from its preferential taxation

 

Subject: The case for ‘Assisted dying’.

 

The debate in the House of Commons regarding Assisted Dying is about to start with parliamentarians voting on the matter soon. The question Comes to mind, who gives this discredited body of politicians the right to be the arbiters of whether I can decide what to do with my own life. We are not talking of the right to kill anyone else but the fundamental right to end your own life.
Lives are cut short in their  thousands/millions when politicians declare war and not a murmur  but if I wish to end my own life then all hell breaks out. Is due to religiosity and the sanctity of life in terms of “god giveth and only god can take away" but surely in a world where many people are atheists then religion proclamation should not be a deciding factor.
A private members bill seeks to question the idea that you are limited in how you seek death, especially if life has become intolerable because of pain and acute discomfort. My own view is that an individuals life is theirs and should not be beholden to political or religious whim so long as safeguards are in place to protect those who might be encouraged to seek to end their life because of port unary  gain and even then if the person wishes to die because they feel they have reached a point where they don't want to be a burden then that decision should be theirs.
If we can abort a foetus why not ourselves, if we can kill chickens and cows in their millions why are we so discomforted by suicide which up to 50 years ago was a criminal offence. People are living much longer these days and as they do they become prone to a range of maladies which make their lives intolerable.
End of life sanctuaries such as Hospice rely largely on charity to offer help to the dying and face difficult financial difficulties in the task of coping with an ageing population, people needing pain medication and compassion in their last days, often years of suffering. The national plan to relive hospitals of aged bed blockers by encouraging them home only works if the medical services are comparable with hospital. Little or no attention during any of the last 20 years of government has been directed at national or government funded “old peoples accommodation “. The municipalities close the existing ones down and sell the site to housing developers who then build unaffordable housing. It’s disgraceful, the closing  of social retirement homes  just when the hospitals determine that there is no space and they have to sell their only valuable asset the family home to cover the cost of accommodation in a private retirement home. The ditching of social owned assets in favour of privatisation is a middle class endeavour pursued by all governments, yet another example of the growing divide in the country.
Asian families seem to assume the mantle of responsibility by proving a place for the old mother and father in the family home, just as they would for a child and are clearly more civilised in so far as this particular aspect is concerned. Our fragmentation of family, children rushing off in their early twenties to make their own lives has a profound effect on later life support mechanism especially if the government and local authorities have, over the last decade or two washed their hands of social care.
Much depends on location and the dispersal of family is much less evident in the North of England than in the South. The push to go off and make your fortune is part of being in areas where individual success is important and the sociability of one’s surroundings much less so. Those who skedaddle off to the four corners of the globe used to cut their ties to hand written letters and an annual phone all but at least today the internet and video links make up for a great deal of the loss.  
It’s only when frailty and illness rears its head that the family is stretched by concern as to how to handle the matter. Its worst these days, my parents generation conveniently died before their needs became apparent, today’s oldies cling on well past their best and become a sorry sight of their children to behold.
A bright orange pill in a box on the mantle place with the ‘will and testimony’ and the keys to the car not far away

 

Subject: A trip back into the past, curtesy of You Tube.

 



As I think I have mentioned in previous blogs that I’m an enthusiastic latecomer to ‘You Tube’.  It’s store of archival video’s are a delight, threading, you back in time to when you were a person another person living your life under very different circumstances.
It was 1961 and I had just arrived on Christmas Eve in Cape Town, in the land of Apartheid "Separate Development" and moral and ethical exactitude. I was forced into many generalised political arguments based on my assumption, growing up in England that truth was on the less totalitarian side, (sadly I wouldn’t be so sure today). 
Today on You Tube  I have been watching Mr Johann Vorster, the then prime minister of South Africa interviewed by the well known American conservative intellectual W F Buckley. You couldn’t get two individuals with greater diversity. Vorster the blunt spoken Afrikaans politician  known for his strong views and the effete Buckley, the former Doyen of the American news channels known for his forensic questioning.
Vorster was defending the indefensible , the separation into racial camps of people living in his county. In the world at large South Africa had become a detested state with few apologists and yet in many of her detractors countries a similar code of conduct was practiced without being formalised. My personal experience whilst living in 1960s CapeTown, set as it is in beautiful surroundings I willingly succumbed  to a higher standard of living than I would ever have had in England, a country which continued to pursue a different type of Separate Developmental, one in which Class did the job of Apartheid.
I argued the unfairness and the lack of any moral opportunity cost, the beastliness and the injustice but, like Isreal today, the sheer necessity was conveniently overlooked when a nations back is to the wall, in South Africa’s case the face of communist aggression, communism was becoming entrenched in African countries to the north. The ideology of communism projected by Russia was an anathema to the Western way of life  and South Africa had become a buttress to the Russian influence and the threat it imposed towards the sea route around the Cape.
This was in an age when division in the world were clear cut.
It was before 'Globalism' and 'Multiculturalism'  (a necessary Corollary to global trade) had dislodged the white mans footing in countries which had felt the yoke of colonialism. The carefully crafted propaganda issued by the South African government was clearly one side of the argument and survival, (as it always is) was paramount.
Listening to Vorster I couldn't fault his logic, the logic of who ‘represented the enemy’ of which racism bundled people into the ghetto of "them and us".
It was before perceived surety that minority voices could be brought to bear on fairness and equality, irrespective of the potential diminishing of loss your own values.
Values instead were seen as ‘universal’, part of an inherited culture all humans should have but as we increasingly see this is an illusion. It's not a case of right or wrong but rather the interpretation we place on many aspects of life and the way we wish to live it. Religion says we are all Gods children but as children are motivated by parents and the community they serve, these communities, were then representative of a area and a culture (often formulated through religious doctrine) the politics  and values disparate largely because of the local conditions and challenges which form them.
The conundrum is why then assume the ‘commonality’ which the global order demands especially when the world order is transcribed into town and village and fact that there does appear we have little in common, other than we all bleed.
Pain and sorrow, hunger and adversity we all suffer but our reasoning behind each affliction is different. Even the similarities between our so called cousins is blown away when a demigod like Donald Trump arrives on the scene and preaches a type of politics which we should all fear for its crude naivety and bully boy tactics.
I’m sure in 50 years time (if we live that long) the equivalent of You Tube, will probably be a news related psychedelic implant we receive at birth to control any impulses not presumed seemly. Conformity is the mantra, conformity of purpose and the erosion of any sense of individuality

 

Subject: The Parliamentary debate on assisted dying.

Backwards and forwards the debate rolled on, each member eloquently putting forward their opinion since on this matter it can be nothing more. I’m sure most of the politicians have already made up their own mind on the matter but it seems to me that the question is for the person dying, not the philosophically opposed, not the diktat of religious opinion or parliamentary opinion, the only opinion which is worth considering are those of the ones who are experiencing the onset of death and death who are in acute pain or distress.
Undoubtedly palliative care is ‘not’ sufficiently available in our county and whilst underfunded by the government and reliant on charity, in some circumstances, even the palliative services cannot provide a relief from the pain and distress when a person dies.
Who are we kidding listening to the parliamentary ‘legal eagles’ pick holes in the definition or wording of a clause in the bill, this is not an exercise in definitives it’s simply placing in the hands of someone dying the option of avoiding intolerable pain. It doesn’t question their morality or their ethics it simple states that their life can end and the pain brought also to an end.
The implications of others interfering and influencing the person dying can be dealt with by providing safeguards but shouldn’t preclude the principle of right to choose the ‘time and place’ of my death.

 Subject: Messaging the electorate.

 


It seems to me at least that the vote for Donald Trump is based on a voter who sees the principle of “putting his/her own country first”,  as a natural shared affinity. It’s a national affinity we in Britain seem to have misplaced in our sorrow for the tragedy of what is happening in other countries across the globe. We rate ‘humanities heart beat’ above our own and take on board customs and attitudes, foreign to ours. We would rather give our last crust of bread to ensure a foreigner survive than ensure that our attention is placed on our own economic woes.
The Trump, doctrine “America First” has yielded opprobrium from the democratic world. Happy to see the continuance of American ‘heavy lifting’ in democracies fight for survival against totalitarianism, we, along with many of-the European nations are less willing to share the financial burden.
With our legacy of historical ‘profiteering’ from the ‘Empire’ of which little is said of the infrastructural legacy, including transport, buildings and contractual law which we left behind and which enabled many poor countries to subsequently prosper.
No ‘debit/credit ledger’ was drawn up, only an emotional call based on ‘norms’ which were not current 200 years ago, for reparations. I wonder would the inhabitants of Bradford and Burnley, for whom the ‘Industrial Revolution‘ bequeathed the grim blackened streets and a greatly a shortened life span, be a reason for reparations. 
Instead our sights are set on Africa where the many Africans of Arabic ethnicity rounded up the men to be transported to other parts of the world as cheap labour, and were just as implicit. Would the Arabic African diaspora also be chided 250 years later or is that the sole  provenance of the white man. 
African nations whose tribalist structure has largely benefitted the chieftain class have not been kind to their tribe. Must we perpetuate unburdening our guilt by pumping more and more Aid money into the pockets of a dodgy African hierarchy whose grounding in democratic civil society is strictly limited.
The economic infrastructure erected by the colonisers continues to stand although heavily over burdened and greatly  deteriorated through a lack of local investment and maintenance.  The ‘Aid’ helps keep the Presidential  jets flying and their executive homes in reasonable upkeep but little filters down to the grass roots in the African community.
Perhaps we should be like the Chinese, undertake infrastructure projects but managed by us, contractually ensuring we retain ownership until the loan is paid off. So long as Aid is seen as a gift no real value will be attached. Also long as we continue to side step the people of Burnley and Bradford who still wait for descent amenities, whilst our newspapers remain scathing about the issue of a financial black hole left by the last government and don’t have the sympathy for the Third World, many of whose citizens now reside here alongside us then, as we degenerate into becoming a Second Rate economy then the tolerance for each other will break down.
A society like ours has limited land and needs to raise taxes to pay for the previous government's inability to make increased provision for urban finances. The danger is we reignite a class war where the participants are drawn not from the fields of Bodmin but rather the Punjab
Nationalism is both short and long sighted. It heals the immediate pain by instilling the sense we are all in the same boat but if that sense is evaporated by cultural and religious shifts then what was deemed a nation disintegrates.
We need a period of financial probity where truth replaces the smokescreen of politics.
In the 1930s  we were scared of the might of German fascism but by ignoring the crippling debt of war we fought to present another face to totalitarianism based on our national fortitude.  To see it defaced by the salad dressing of conflicting ideals must be avoided at all costs.

 

Subject: Being as one.

 

So it’s happened, as many predicted and many feared. An authoritarian, narcissistic deeply flawed personality whose vindictiveness is well known will now move against and seek retribution against the legal system which had sought to bring him to book. Trumps win has been so overwhelming and left the democrats scrambling for some sort of meaning to their defeat. What is it in his charisma, both within his followers, or the loathing within his detractors, this extreme position which has revealed itself to the the ordinary man/woman on the street. An egotist can rarely be described as attractive and there’s hardly any point of mutual contact between the pro Trump and anti Trump group.
Is it a case of male masculinity versus female consensus seeking, is there blood in the air amongst Americans due to the missteps by the ‘democrat’s’ being in part party to their country being weakened by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Russians in Ukraine. America who felt supreme since they had financially remoulded the world since the Second World War, who had built up a ‘nuclear arsenal’ and a ‘ballistic delivery’ and a mobile naval platform during the confrontation with the USSR which made Americans believe they walk on water. The rise of China, the stomping of Kim Jung-un across the Korean/Asian peninsula and of course the resurgence of Russia under Vladimir Putin.
“Mine is bigger than yours” is a masculine phenomenon and leaders in some countries rely on this vision of strength to embrace their electorate. In totalitarian regimes there are no elections, (in the normal understanding of the word), no need to take into consideration the population at large which can hobble the act of leadership without needing  the delicate balancing act of  ‘accounting’ to a parliamentary opposition or the dissenting voices within one’s own party. The authoritarian totalitarian has no such fight on their hands, there word is gospel, there aim is unswerving.
Trump is vindictive, famous for suing his opponents he is a bully yet the American public when out in their millions to vote for him even though many of them disliked him as a person.  Part of it is due to the American personality brought up in amongst Wall Street riches and the Founding Fathers attitude of individuality and every man for himself,  maintaining a gun culture that astonishes the world and an intolerance of failure.
The hysteria of his supporters is fascinating ,it’s as if each had won the lottery nothing normal but then nothing is normal in that country.
The question of what is normal is characterised my the temperament of the Russian, the Chinese, or North Korean, the willingness to sub serve for the nations good, the strength of religious values, the idealism of political belief the blindness  of ‘follower culture’ formed by slogans and half truths.
The world is a tricky place if you believe in conformity, if you hold for commonality among humans if you believe in listening and evolving your own sense of what is right and wrong. If you believe there is a little bit of everyone in everyone, not too much not too little but enough to at least listen.
Where do we go from here as the global policeman hangs up his coat and a free for all becomes the norm much like Europe used to be 18th/19th century with boarders claimed and redrawn, wars fought over a family feud or nothing more than a squabble since human life is cheap to some people and sending young men to do battle on your behalf is par for the course.

Listening to Kamala Harris giving her ‘concession speech’ was remarkable, the difference between her and the belligerent  Donald Trump.
Of course one must remember that whilst the defeat was emphatic there are still many millions who voted for the Democratic Party and for Harris in particular. One also has to recognise the ineffectuality of the political system which often seems to be a talking platform without much resolution
Trump joins the ranks of the totalitarian class which now a days seems to represent the bulk of the worlds population as politics moves ever right.
Neo- liberalism hides the actual direction of political intent in that it largely rewards the wealthy in its urging of growth because it’s inflated by the views of individual entrepreneurs who’s ideals are fixated on what’s in it for them, not the public at large. Crumbs from the table will always be crumbs as we are encouraged to be thankful for them.
A states like the Scandinavian group of countries have as their objective the needs of the people not only the elite and prosper by planning their objectives to benefit the nation at large. We on the other hand are under the thrall of class, the division and the entitlement. We don’t have the confidence to minimise the anachronistic entitlement syndrome and trust in ourselves to prosper according to our needs.

'Ambivalence' is a state of mind, we are human frogs in a heated pot, the fear of inconvenience which smokes out 'doing the right thing' requires us to consider the consequences of any act we engage in. In this age of the narcist  where, because we have been exposed to hours upon hours of individualised self aggrandisement, where survival is seen as an individual thing not a social aspiration, is it any wonder there is tremendous resistance to giving anything up for the social good.

Climate change arguments side lined for the immediacy of profit and our unwillingness to step back and reappraise our lives of what really matters.
Social structures cost money and perhaps a relinquishment of rights and a reassessment of values would nudge us back to an awareness of others.
This appraisal of life's journey from its self attainment to an overall view of the opportunity to die with respect for others, not as brothers and sisters but as colleagues in the journey. Not all colleagues are respected for their views and we trivialise humanity if we seek unanimity everywhere but in dying, because it's such a mystery a but a black hole of endeavour which has ruled our existence whilst on earth.
 It's the death of the social compact which is important and one in which  we should be judged. From 'assisted dying to assisted living' we should be as one.

 

Subject: The Democratic mis step

 


What is the prognosis of the Trump win.
The defeat of the Democrats and what they purport to stand for  is so deep that amongst other things, the proposed dismantling of the equivalent of our civil service to ensure the governmental structures which in the past ran the operation of political will, will largely disappear and, in its place they will have a democratically elected ‘dictator’ who will have little or no opposition. He doesn’t yet have the power to seek a third term, but having secured the acquiescence of the Supreme Court by choosing the judges he could possibly rewrite, or at least modify the  ‘Constitution’ for him to stand in line with the Russian and Chinese presidents who extended their time at the helm.
The result appears to point to the fact that the Democrats have lost much of their connection with the citizenry although the sight of tearful democratic supporters, (mostly women who see a further eradication of their right to abort their pregnancy as overt misogyny), but also the dehumanising process towards foreigners and immigration generally, the over representation of business interests and the immersion in woke LGBT affairs, the sight of walk on celebrity in the form of mega rich Stars’ to support Harris on stage is another example of disconnect between them and the people, the media stars, the sporting stars, the millionaire class, have shifted the Democrats traditional focus from the man and women in the street. This apparently incipient attitude towards the poor as individuals, other than as political totems, drove many blue collar workers into the Trump camp wooed by his wild rhetoric.
In the not to distant past the Republican Party represented wealth and Business interests whilst the Democrats sought a better deal for the poor. The result of the election seems to have swung public opinion the other way because they have not kept up with the economic system. Despite a dismembered voting chamber in Congress which locked so much of the Democratic political process out from getting bills onto the statute book, this seizure of the political system benefitted the status quo and the logjam needed breaking. Trump 'as deal maker' will have a free hand to override any opposition and one can expect the wheels to turn again even if in the wrong direction. If there is no economic miracle and the bulk of the population see no progress at least the shrieking banality of the Trump mob will then be called out. If Trump can get the American economy moving and start to reinvest in the industries taken over by the Democratic dream of a global platform to make and sell goods and services, having recognised the Chinese play to a different tune, then the American dream might be reignited.
There will be losers, (we amongst them) but after two World Wars, which wiped out much of Europe wealth. Europe pulled together and created a unique system of collaboration and a unity of values, many of them humanitarian which contrast favourably to the Trump mould.  Flaws and all I would rather be part of Europe than America  therefore I feel we should seek closer alliance with Europe than America.

 

Subject: Cognitive dissonance

 

Am I suffering from cognitive dissonance as I try to cope with the sight of an almost wholly red landscape east to west north to south of the political landscape in America.
The totality of the Trump win is startling, like a hurricane it has swept out the influence of the Democratic Party from all the nooks and crannies from all the homesteads, the rural towns and powerful metropolitan cities. Never has a political ideology (liberalism) been dealt such a blow, is it the end of any alliance with “the other”, an end of meeting someone halfway where only totalitarianism remains.
Liberalism has a lot to answer for with its refusal to accept what might be called ’home grown culture’ for a globalised equivalent, where cultures were homogenised to mean the same thing  but which in fact were the traffic lights people relied upon to distinguish themselves. People don’t like being identified as data held in a computer, they don’t like being analysed and identified by an algorithm.  Their honorific value i’m British you are from Pakistani runs deep in most cultures and whilst the acceptance of differences shouldn’t lead to hostility they are part of the make up by which we use to identify ourselves.
Americans  have long been separate from their European cousins. National yet unique in their Constitution which suspends any idea of empiricism and instead creates an inter-lacing of  statutes which were erected to stop overt control from the top. This fear  of the power of government by an over weaning executive has led to a disparity between State and Federal control in which ‘abortion laws’ are but one of the striking variances. Trump appears to have cut through the internecine warfare of political debate with slogans such as  “ make America great again “ (no matter the cost). The voters bought into it, tired at last of the woolly rhetoric of Democratic Party idealism they trumped instead (no pun intended) for the soil on the boots of the cowboy and an individualists shoot out.
Since the end of the Second World War and the founding of the United Nations “talk, talk” became the modus operandi and it is only in the last decade or so that the bush fires of intolerance have broken out threatening to be beyond the control of even the best firefighter.
Trump will burn back the opposition by financial means, money having become the great accelerant or de accelerant which everyone understands. Trump has little congruence of harm his disruption is likely to bring. He is fixated with self and not the other person but maybe it will be a wake-up call to dislodge the assumption that there is a class who knows what’s best whilst secure in their ivory tower.

 

Subject: Budget day.

 

The time ticks down, the red box appears and is transported down the road into the Houses of Parliament as the first female chancellor launches into a long diatribe on the economic sickness that has befallen our country and the cure she proposes to revive it.
It’s been a long while coming and much has been leaked. When I was growing up  budget information was sacrosanct, leak’s could spook the financial market and whilst politicians saw themselves as policy makers it was the Markets movers and shakers who held the power. Today, ‘information leaks’ are expected, all part of the mummification and infantilisation of the nation who have grown weak and unable to understand  the word “taxation” as being a component necessary to pay for the goods and services on which we rely to provide things. The police, the courts, the prisons, the schools and hospital’s, road building and repair  the list goes on but we seem ignorant to the fact that taxation is an integral component to make society work. Taxation is not a ‘punishment’ but a method, like insurance of ensuring that when the time comes you have the money put aside.
One of the strange things in the working of the political system is in the effort to ensure fairness, the people who oppose you are given their time to detract from virtually anything and everything and so immediately the Chancellor resumed her seat the converse arguments as to why she was wrong in her analysis flow and counter flow challenging all her hypothesis and leaving us confused and often resentful.
No one likes the idea of having to part with money you rightfully assume is yours but equally the uproar when prisoners are released early because of a shortage of prison space, or the long wait for an operation, overcrowded schools and undernourished children all fundamentally provided out of taxation but the media and the phalanx of  Influencer’s who, night and day spin their web of controversy, is it any wounder the mental health in the country is dire.

 The right to die.

 

An the choice regarding their right to chose when and how to die is once more stirring the nations conscience. The religious leaders are almost wholly opposed on the basis that it’s Gods choice, not the individuals.
The Catholic Church warns that “the right to die can become a duty to die”.
The Muslim religion is steadfastly against assisted dying and yet in certain circumstances marks some out women for stoning and by issuing a fatwa the death of someone who has upset Islamic justice.
The Church of England decries assisted dying as it does suicide on the basis that only God can take away a life since only God brought life into being.
The Jewish approach is to worry that life’s uniquely precious approach to life will break if we compromise anything other than a normal death.
There are as many variations to the theme as there are different sects who preserve the idea of the sacristy of life.
But where, how and why did this doctrine come into place since we are generally agnostic about killing. We butcher animals every day but other human beings we remain stubbornly conflicted. Wars, punishment for crime, are all authorised by the State but to take your own life is somehow the ultimate sin.
I believe my life is mine to make of it what I may and to end it is not a crime.
Is it the belief in the omnipresent power of god over our existence, living and after death that gets in the way of this basic choice. Is it in some peoples mind that this power that can’t be over turned since then we consider superseding god.
From the essentially primitive mind to the most finely tuned mind there is a wide divergence as to the meaning of life. We give little cognisance  to the primitive but are in awe of the person who has spent a lifetime asking questions regarding the sanctity of life, but of course, what if are asking the wrong question and directing it towards the wrong people.
If we spurn the idea that death of ant is different to our own then it becomes supremely narcissistic to say  “we are special”. There’s no mention of the animals who went into the Ark, (two by two), they are, the Palestinians of Gaza,  collateral damage and not counted in gods omniscience and yet in the physiological architecture of life we are all similar. Darwin summed it up “all life is descended from a small species pool and that evolution occurs only through natural selection “. It’s only mankind’s ability to think out of the box that we create a different kind of box one in which a thought like the viability of Schrödingers cat, (something which can be thought of as being in two places at the same time) because it’s fate is determined by something can’t be determined.)
This ambiguity of not knowing is like that surrounding a belief in god. We can’t know and therefore to make prognostications on matters which affect our health and our right to end our life becomes inadmissible.
It’s not a question of, is it good or bad to base our right to decide to live or die on religious terms, it’s simply a question that can’t be answered in religious terms.
In fear of social malpractice, it’s not beyond the wit of man to devise safeguards to prevent people being coerced into an early dying program against their will since the desire to die because they no longer simply wish to live is a perfectly valid and rational position to take. When you regress into old age there are so many issues to contend with which were not evident in middle age such as muscular weakness, breathing issues, sleeplessness, early forgetfulness leading into dementia. From the pain of a worn out body to digestive complaints, backache, and mental non productivity to financial shortages, leading  to diminished self esteem.
The sight re of yourself caught in the reflection of a shop window is enough.
It could of course be a damn sight worse. With a chronic illness your right to call it a day should always be yours and not a weirdly dressed archdeacon or subservience  of parliamentarians to electoral opinion polls
I must advise my friends that I don’t suffer or wish to serve up an early death on myself but the hypothetical arguments on the religious need to live has to be questioned.

 Trump first and last.

 


So it’s happened, as many predicted and many feared. An authoritarian, narcissistic deeply flawed personality whose vindictiveness is well known will now move against and seek retribution against the legal system which had sought to bring him to book. Trumps win has been so overwhelming and left the democrats scrambling for some sort of meaning to their defeat. What is it in his charisma, both within his followers, or the loathing within his detractors, this extreme position which has revealed itself to the the ordinary man/woman on the street. An egotist can rarely be described as attractive and there’s hardly any point of mutual contact between the pro Trump and anti Trump group.
Is it a case of male masculinity versus female consensus seeking, is there blood in the air amongst Americans due to the missteps by the ‘democrat’s’ being in part party to their country being weakened by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Russians in Ukraine. America who felt supreme since they had financially remoulded the world since the Second World War, who had built up a ‘nuclear arsenal’ and a ‘ballistic delivery’ and a mobile naval platform during the confrontation with the USSR which made Americans believe they walk on water. The rise of China, the stomping of Kim Jung-un across the Korean/Asian peninsula and of course the resurgence of Russia under Vladimir Putin.
“Mine is bigger than yours” is a masculine phenomenon and leaders in some countries rely on this vision of strength to embrace their electorate. In totalitarian regimes there are no elections, (in the normal understanding of the word), no need to take into consideration the population at large which can hobble the act of leadership without needing  the delicate balancing act of  ‘accounting’ to a parliamentary opposition or the dissenting voices within one’s own party. The authoritarian totalitarian has no such fight on their hands, there word is gospel, there aim is unswerving.
Trump is vindictive, famous for suing his opponents he is a bully yet the American public when out in their millions to vote for him even though many of them disliked him as a person.  Part of it is due to the American personality brought up in amongst Wall Street riches and the Founding Fathers attitude of individuality and every man for himself,  maintaining a gun culture that astonishes the world and an intolerance of failure.
The hysteria of his supporters is fascinating ,it’s as if each had won the lottery nothing normal but then nothing is normal in that country.
The question of what is normal is characterised my the temperament of the Russian, the Chinese, or North Korean, the willingness to subserve for the nations good, the strength of religious values, the idealism of political belief the blindness  of ‘follower culture’ formed by slogans and half truths.
The world is a tricky place if you believe in conformity, if you hold for commonality among humans if you believe in listening and evolving your own sense of what is right and wrong. If you believe there is a little bit of everyone in everyone, not too much not too little but enough to at least listen.
Where do we go from here as the global policeman hangs up his coat and a free for all becomes the norm much like Europe used to be 18th/19th century with boarders claimed and redrawn, wars fought over a family feud or nothing more than a squabble since human life is cheap to some people and sending young men to do battle on your behalf is par for the course.

 

Subject: Short memories.




One has to wonder what Mr Putin, president Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un think as the government having lined up business leaders from all over the world to consider investing in GB our media pour scorn on the government in this act of doing business. Be it taxation or comments criticising the blatant misuse of  power by P&O Ferry’s where a couple of years ago they sacked all the British seamen and replaced them with much much cheaper labour from the Sub Continent. This was rightly denounced at the time and we were reminded by the minister of Transport that the management of P&O were remembered for their scurrilous labour practice. All media hell broke loose and the new government are pillaged for mentioning it. It’s as if the media belong to a different environment to the one they occupy and only 100 days into their term all the old mistakes made by the previous government over 14 years are forgotten in the their drive to criticise a doctrinaire position and not cheer on moves for the betterment of the country at large.
“The enemy within is greater than the enemy without” and we had better recognise our greatest worry which should be the selling of mistruth for profit. Money is a new god and the ‘Conviction of a policy’ for the overall good it brings the population as a whole is damned by that section of society which have made the making of money the only viable positions held against a plethora of the poverty seen on the television.
Self respect for having a belief which might not benefit you personally is old fashioned, even revolutionary (Corbynism) and we are pommelled by opinion which will ensure the continuation of gross inequality.

We seem to have lost that element in our political decision making where imposing or reducing legislation has to pass the financial test “ will the change, make or save money” and the issue of  “is it the correct thing to do” seems to baffle people these days.
Insisting that Private Education meet VAT requirements and is not a charity function and that ‘non doms’ should pay the same tax as those domiciled here seems obvious to me but to many it is clouded by what the effect the new imposition will bring.
Doing the right thing was always a bore and usually required handing over hard earned cash and was therefore emotionally difficult. The essence behind it was obscured when linked in with ethics and morality which meant different things to different people but there were common elements which generally required one to see the action was for the general good. Today in the post-Thatcher era where everyone is for themselves this composite sense of the ‘general good’ is a fast vanishing consideration as people become more isolated and insulated in their own issues. The general public had in those days a sense of the wrongness of people “sponging  off the State” and would let the work shy know their feelings on the matter, the police were respected and one policeman could control a crowd, while neighbours were a watchful deterrent since neighbourhoods were made up of ‘the same kind of people’ who were seen as a sympathetic collective, each looking out for the other.

 

Subject: Knowing you, knowing me.

 


It’s been a wall to wall nostalgia, great singing, great musical arrangement, beautiful women dressed in body clinging cat suites, what more can a guy want. The pathos of their married lives, the drive of the guys, particularly Benny to wring the best out of this remarkable group, was on show with its highs and its lows the phenomenon of ABBA played out in our lives as we danced to their hits with such passion in the parties which bridged our lives from the 70s our love affairs our rejections all to the racy sound of “Dancing Queen”. The choreography was perfect, the story line of winning and loosing relevant in our own sing-along maturity. Knowing You Knowing Me.  The costumes, the men’s hair styles, and what do we read into the body language between the couples.
song writing, professionalism. Sheer class
If I have anything in common, we drove the classic Volvo 940
Winner takes it all.
Where did those years go, the passions, the complications, the hopes and fears, the disappointments and the small successes, mixed with the un fulfilled promises.
I suppose if we were privy to viewing our lives as a script we would be terrified to make a false step and yet our lives are cluttered with unintended steps.  Its these step which enrich our journey with intrigue. Would you dare to leave the security of the womb if you knew the pitfalls which await you, it’s the events and how we handle them that create our character and, if nothing else it’s our character, which is the unique imprint we leave behind.  How do we make that character work to sustain, in the minds of others, a smile of having known him or her. The imprint can be different to what others pick up in their interaction, since much depends on their background and the values they themselves hold which eventually develop into a very personal link and which, in its un-shakeable is the surety we seek

 

Subject: Darwinism writ large.



I’m lucky, as my legs slowly fail me my brain roars ahead pondering the complexities of people and their actions. I tap away on the iPad to let off steam by creating a different world, a world of sentences and ethical meaning. It’s not the same as doing a stint in a hostelry or providing food in a soup kitchen but it helps to fend off the despair which according to the media  surrounds me.  The lack of affordable homes, the inadequacy of the education system and the implausibility of medical treatment free at the point of need when many can afford to pay
Why don’t the well off pay for their Tailer Swift concert seats, why are so many things tax deductible through the companies accounting system, freebies galore “put it down to ‘expenses”.
Why do women continue to bear children when it’s beyond their individual sustainability, or is it yet another right, this need for power over the child.
Which ever way we look there are multiple inequalities, crazy religious groups who demand a hearing at the point of rebellion. Executive reward and pampered life styles, irreconcilable class divergence and political posturing, crimes which go unpunished and are swept under the carpet as being of too large a cohort to challenge.
The list goes on and for many they do not get a mention in their neuro plasticity, so involved in the shallow end of life and protected from their stupidity by a society which professes compassion but are NIMBIES at heart.
So where are the “upland lawns”, they can only come from our own mind and it’s decoupling from actual events as being non personal but that’s not to say we don’t observe them
The term ‘wholistic’ symbolises the bringing together and interplay of everything each having a part in the life of another. To grasp what it means to be and share the ‘wholistic’ view one has to share your ideas with others and whilst the internet is ideally the perfect tool for that task it is also used as a device to disrupt people through virulent argument. The media channels where guests are brought on to define their thoughts about incompatible subject matter and pit their opinions which of course only leads to confusion. There are so many ill defined concepts such as right and wrong now that the ‘religious message’ has been dumped for pragmatism.
The high priests of religious dogma have been shown to base their opinions on a surety which does not fit the accuracy demanded in the world of today. The mysticism of ‘hand me down story telling’ has no place when set against the accuracy of carbon dating, the moralistic definitions don’t cover so much of our real life, even our definition of life itself is being challenged, not in a superstitious way by ethical and moralistic teaching but by the conclusion that we are not special instead we are ‘Darwinism writ large’ with all the flaws which “natural selection” brings.

 Work shy and disillusioned with life.



I’m from the school who believed that a large proportion of the people who search out a doctor for anti depressants and need a doctors note to have time off work,  are, to some degree suffering from hypochondria and exhibiting an example of being work shy.  The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has been complaining that too many people are having a “sickie” by taking too much time off work or refusing to rejoin the work force because they don’t feel up to it. Their claim for a sick note is backed up by the increase in the evidence for a rise in reported general mental illness amongst the population at large. Apparently in this world of stress and strain which contributes to some mental conditions which would have made Fraud blush, the more we discover about the working of the mind the more cause we have for reflecting on the  aberrations to arise due to our psych being constantly needing to deal with a messy world.  This morning there have been a plethora of callers describing their stressful condition brought on, either by an abnormality in the way their brain functions or by conditions in the workspace/home-place where bullying and the expectation from work colleagues and family as to the role they play in the success, or otherwise and their life’s  attainment and success.
Of course ‘it were ever thus’ but we never had the narrative or the definition to enable us to find common ground with other mental sufferers. Our aches and pains like our hopes and fears were ours and not often shared. Today we head straight for Google for a broad analysis and find reams of information to categorise us into one psychological camp or other. A trip to the doctors surgery and we have our fears confirmed and, with the prescription in hand we join the queue at the chemist for this or that chemical powder.
The cause and effect of our malady has their source elsewhere and in that sense we search answers elsewhere. The stoicism of the past in which you constantly upbraided yourself to “get a grip” is missing and help is continually sort from the therapist, (the shrink), a prop in what ever form it takes as the mind reveals itself to be inherently unstable. The instability is due in large part to the complexity of the daily, hourly, minute by minute, second by second input it receives, tuned into the smartphone we sidestep the reality and scratch around us for the immensity of everyone else’s problems, is it any wonder we hobble ourselves like donkey's to one crisis after another and so become one ourselves.

 Greed is inherently human, so long as there  are no consequences


if  there are no consequence wouldn't we do many more things for which the outcome would be to our own favour. Our rational of good and evil is powerful because it's built on our life experience which is as least as strong as is the opinion of others. The often outlandish comments made daily from certain popular media platforms and which sow seeds of confusion in the common mind is the source of a great deal of instability and much unhappiness’s
The BBC, assailed these days by so many if they misquote or under value the opinions of often extreme views are themselves castigated for trying to be even handed and dare to the give another point of view. The ideological surety of societal positioning, even posturing becomes our fall back option in this conflicted world we live in, where truth wears so many clothes and we develop a need not to be seen naked.
I am at a loss to hear arguments in favour of Donald Trump for instance but to some (close to me) he sounds to them literate and persuasive, how can this be. Hitler was able to convince a large section of his people that what he intended to do was acceptable. Stalin’s aggression towards his own people was. tolerated in the 20s 30s and 40s  and even defended by many Russians living today in Putin’s Russia.
The understanding of power and its symbolic effect on the individuals psyche  is a conundrum, as is the excitement of popular culture and the icons churned out in sport. People seeking their own sense of fame through others or through a football club have, in my opinion, less sense of their own self worth and their own heroics of getting through the week or year with their values intact.
We live in a cauldron of competing interests with a multitude of conflicting opinions, is it any wonder we seek shelter under the guise of success but a success which has to be bought in terms of the star players in a team or the lives on the battlefield, the unhealthy conditions of a factory is no genuine success since every individual maimed is one too many.
Always be your own person. Never shy away from disagreement if it confirms your ethical position and never ditch that position for populism and a quiet life.

Subject: Image is everything.

 

There is no avoiding the fact that women are overtaking men in the media arena.
Watching the boat race, a race between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge on the river Themes was,  when I was growing up, the outside broadcast of the year, an example not only of the physical endurance between the crews but also a view into the elitism of university life and one of the traditional markers in our society. These young men paraded in front of us were doing esoteric studies such as the classics which meant that they had to master Greek and Latin.
In our everyday lives language was limited to our own version of English, some versions were just as foreign sounding  and the mystery of learning a language which was no longer used other than being able to translate directly the documents written in the age of Greek and Roman achievement and had become the foundation of of modern philosophical reasoning and as an offshoot a foundation for a modern language, Latin was the basis for much of the structure of modern thought.
Academic achievement was also the foundation of these amateur rowers and the early seed of BBC outside broadcasting somehow leant an allure to these slim boats buffeted as they were by the river currents and tidal waves created by the current as the tide turned. John Snagg was the voice in those days of the boat race as he counted the stroke pattern of each boat. On one memorable occasion, his unflustered voice described the sinking of one boat as the crew and boat went underwater with its crew still rowing.
It was not until the 1960s that women began to share the day with the men and in their own way enlivened the racing with the contrast. So what in my day was a men's race has turned around into being for all intents and purposes a women's day with media coverage now being predominantly brought to us by women.
It's the same in football and in rugby, motorcycling, horse racing the and athletics females on the touch line and in the studio  commentary box have taken over. The panels who group together in the studio to give their post mortem on the game are now pre-eminently women even though there is no contest in the game on the field. It's as though in our desire to level up we have felt the need to dissuade the men of the need for their presence even when only men are playing.
Some would say this opinion is based on misogyny or an unwillingness to move with the times but as with any change there are winners and losers and seeing great players flanked by women who would not have made the team but now are accepted as pundits with equal say.

Is it all a matter of glamour and sex appeal and where content takes second place to presentation. If that’s the case we men are on a hiding to nothing. 

 

Subject: Dementia.


There are a few subjects which frighten us more than dementia since we are all largely at risk of dementia  in some form or other. The most known symptoms are, loss of memory but the outward manifestation can reveal themselves as mood changes and the apparent disconnect in personal response. Anger is one of the manifestations, anger on all sides, both the sufferers and the people left behind by the departing person who are angry about their inability to cope and having to rejig their thought processes to compensate. Children of a dementia parent fear their inability  to cope often at a time when they themselves are at a crossroad and worry a great deal about their own children’s path through a rapidly changing world.
When I was growing up dementia was almost unknown, people died before dementia manifest itself but today, with modern medicine people live into old age with little if any realisation that aging itself kills by small cuts and in many ways.
Perhaps we have pushed the medical ‘can do’ envelope too far without looking at a plausible end to life condition for people to discover for themselves
The artificiality  of body and mind, prolonged after its course has run but which medical science insists isn't a problem so long as there is a heart beat.
I’m of the opinion that the person suffering dementia is far less aware of their condition than we, the non dementia observer, whilst we try to judge them as if they still had those faculties which we measure a person by.   It’s the family and friends who suffer as they try to adapt to the ghost of the person they once knew.
If your surroundings become enveloped in mist then the dimension of your reality is reduced to what you can see and given that this reality becomes the norm, like deafness or limits to mobility then the adaption to dementia is in the eye of the beholder.
End of life pain relief has to be a critical red line and we should all make preparation to take matters in our own hand and not leave it in the hand of the doctor.
Society is coming to terms with death being as natural as life and the heavy hand of religion is slowly being prised away from our understanding of ethics. The secret service agent was reputed to carry a pill if caught, not for his avoidance of the horror of torture but for the information he/she might reveal. The essence is therefore not the individuals salvation but the groups salvation, a group think as self-centred  as we can conceive but also in line with humanities lack of understanding.
So in line with death, dementia is another phase of the unknown, to be more precise the ‘unknowable’ since we are both the observer and the observed.

 

 

As the population of the world expands to 8.3 billion from 1 billion in 1800 it's obvious that given the constraints of the globe to feed us that we are on a calamitous trajectory.
The World Health Authority have warned of pandemics, the scientists have projected glockenspiel warming and crop failures and yet we still continue to worry about the immediate future and who will win the League this year.
Child mortality is outpaced by child birth and the resultant call for aid from the rich to the poor. The Web has brought it all into our living rooms with calls for charity ranging from child impoverishment to maimed donkeys all whilst the same old malcontents try to eradicate each other.
Perhaps the only true humanitarian cause is to limit population, much as the Chinese tried to do but with more finesse. Can it still be a right to have a child if you don't have the means, these fundamental rights that were never fundamental but rather selfish and self serving ( perhaps the proper meaning of fundamental)
"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous prejudice or, take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end it".
Listening to Elon Musk pronounce his fear over the uncontrolled growth of Artificial Intelligence, his acknowledgement, that the gene is out of the bottle and that's it's only a matter of time before we humans are relegated and made subservient.
My question is that given the poor job we have made of our opportunities, other than the odd epoch here and there do we not deserve to be superseded even if the new category of human doesn't have the collective ideals we are supposed to have, morality, ethics and philosophical reasoning. These yardsticks will have been replaced with a google type question and answer system with reasoning based on enormous experience recall and a cognitive reasoning based on trillions of experiences which are being gathered each second we are on the Internet to become billions of artificial doppelgänger of ourselves.
The link between our cortex which reflects the body we carry around with us and we recognise as our human identity and that amorphous mass of information we currently carry around in our heads is in the process of being transferred onto hard drives which will then reflect our total knowledge. The processors will then be free to develop thought in conjunction with the stored knowledge and fathom new ways of thinking and doing without human input.
Perhaps the bright side of all this is that AI will have routed out our obsession with celebrity and the ghost of Oasis will be no more.

 

Subject: “Division Clear the lobby”

As the parliamentarians troop off to vote on the controversial move by the newly elected Labour Party to limit the winter heating subsidy to those in receipt of Pension Credit which, was meant to be a top up if the normal pension doesn’t reach the threshold of a living income.
Successive governments were happy to pump up the receipts of the poor who work for low wages, rental/housing support and child support boost the pay of the under paid which inadvertently brings the. tax payer  into a sort of partnership with so many businesses in this country, but please don't expect any dividends.
Our national 'expenditure' bill is too high and the the tax receipts too low from the 'multi -national' conglomerates and the Accountant  protected wealth  of Middle England.
The financial system in this country has always favoured the rich, London after all is the financial capital of the Russian Oligarch and their under the counter dealings whilst promoting a plethora of 'off shore tax havens' and understated wealth income.
Is it part of our DNA that the power will always lie with the rich, I suppose so given they accumulate the tools to maintain their wealth and position, perhaps only a Revolutionary such Jeremy Corbyn who threatened the very status quo of our society here but don't hold your breath given how the ' wealth press' vilified his very existence.
Only from a war torn, shell shattered country could a truly socialistic government be brought into existence and each government since, (including Labour) has failed to face up to the iniquity.