Mankind its own worst enemy.

 Subject: Mankind its own worst enemy.

 The blight in our public services is being laid bare more and more each day as the progressive cutbacks and the slashing of budgets has left all public services bereft of their purpose and unable to carry out all but a minimum. The councils are bankrupt, the hospitals, the schools, infrastructure (replacement and repair) are all perilously underfunded. 

If we were in Africa the hotchpotch of tarmac in the Main Street would flow no further than the chiefs kraal and be accepted as the bounty the chief demanded for his position but in democratically elected Britain each man or women is “chief” and in some way demands their slice of the cake.

The deliberate cutting back of public services and supplanting them with privately owned ones, a plan instituted by Thatcher and accelerated by Osbourne, leaving the patient without hospital care, hollowed and frail like a person emerging from surgery with half his inner‘s removed they are expected to resume work the following day.

The latest wheeze is that all patients are better off at home with a prescription for the chemist, it’s better after all, to die in your own bed so the argument goes surrounded by friends and family. But what if dying takes a year, two years what then as the ambulance makes repeated calls to A&E to boost the system with a saline drip. 

It’s macabre stringing out living with dying so the patient doesn’t know what stage they are at. 

The indignation at “assisted dying” for patients with acute and painful conditions, by parliamentarians who can afford the Dignitas Clinic, is I submit hypocrisy at the highest level.

The Rail Unions are once again clamouring for pay increase’s, that is the ones who were not included in the current settlement and are promising to go out on strike if they don’t get parity.

Is there a line in the sand which says the past is past and the future dependent on how we earn and spend our money. Do we not have to dial down on expectations and rein in the fat cats and reintroduce social aspirations by binning financial liberalism.

Of course in any contractual arrangement there is a price to pay for the service. If the price is too high the service either doesn’t get done or is rationed. If we were to continue rationing services so that only the wealthy could pay and the case made out for that fact to become the status quo, then the Thatcher/ Osbourne/ Cameron plan to reverse the Clement Attlee plan would have succeeded. 

As usual, mankind is his/her own worst enemy.

Out of step.

 Subject: Out of step.

It amazes me that the authorities in this land seem to be so out of tune with their electorate and human kind in general. Of course they don’t hold a candle to the authority in some nations. The Israeli blindness to what has become genocide in Gaza, a genocide which started as retaliation for the attack on the young enjoying a music festival, youngsters massacred as they fled the Hamas armed killers. The revolting scene of terrified Jewish teenagers as they fled across the field was startling and as the Israelis turned their army on the civilians of Gaza  we understood their need for retribution. Retribution has become something else by the continuation of the bombing and the ordering of the civilian population from one so called safe areas only to be killed in another area. The pinpointing of schools and hospitals as targets for their drones is without question a crime even if their claim that Hamas hide behind the sick and children is true this type of warfare particularly by a national which itself has suffered so much in the ghettos of Europe. It’s not as if their claim to only target the political/armed concentrations of the enemy but the skill and political will required to take out the leadership of Hamas or Hezbollah with such pinpoint accuracy means they have the means if not the will.

Whilst politicians here are too timid to speak out given they feel any disruption to our localised social and political set up is significantly far into the future, they would rather obscure the stated objective of some countries hoping the threat will dissipate as we the public acclimatise to change.  We are famous for falling into line, is it any wonder “the queue” is one of the things we are known for. The sight of the thugs taunting the police, the police backed up against a wall as the mob throw what ever they can lay their hands on at them, the bobbies virtually unarmed was sickening.

Rubber bullets, water cannon, pepper spray, tear gas would readdress the balance but we are still under the illusion that people are inherently peace abiding.

The internet and its trumpet call to action across the country is a game changer and whilst the willingness to throw the activists in prison seems to have had some effect it doesn’t give any attention to the underlying causes of disharmony.

Conciliatory words for some are the order of the day and Keir Starmer has weighed in against the far lefts old adversary, the far right. His inability to acknowledge any of the fears vocalised by the far right is a missed opportunity.

The social embroidery looked at from a distance

 Subject: The social embroidery looked at from a distance



Are the forces we see at play around us progressive or reactionary. Do they seek to progress human-kind or inhibit it with opposition to progress or reform and why for many is reform a dirty word.

People fear change especially if the change leads you into unknown territory and taking you out of your comfort zone can act as a stimulant, particularly in the way you conceptualise things. The social embroidery we carry with us from childhood comes under stress as our environment changes and pressure grows to re-examine previously un questioned beliefs. Some would call it a learning curve others the ever changing process of selling out of our values.

With the news this morning that funding has been withdrawn from a number of projects including developing an artificial intelligence hub in Edinburgh for which £32 million has already been spent on a building to house the computers.

The growth of AI is one of the key areas to sharpen our research capacity but  once more we have failed at the last hurdle to define whether we continue to spend on the social burden we have or change the emphasis on where we spend our limited resources.

Perhaps given the complexity and expense  of present day medicine we have to consider charging those who can pay. As  nation we are in a very different place from when the NHS was conceived to treated people in 1947 (when it came into being) and the present day. The diagnostic tools including AI have become so sophisticated and costly that a charge might be necessary to offset the spiralling cost of the overall medical package. The Pharmaceutical industry for-instance  is wholly run by private enterprise for gain with shareholders who expect a handsome return by exacting a high charge for drugs and is a major component in the final account.

For those with “the ability to pay” it covers most things in life. The comfort of your long distance flight, to the comfort and opulence of your hotel. The size and splendour of your home, to the food on your table are all a direct function of your disposable income.

Why should medical  treatment be different, should your life chances, when, you are sick be different to everything else which rates the depth of your pocket as the most important element.

Means tested medicine would drastically reduce our national imbalance to income, even a small charge to perhaps a larger one if treatment is self induced. In every other area of our lives we pay appropriately but it’s not considered appropriate if a person is struck down with cancer or hit by a car. You have to have insurance to cover others if you have an accident, why not a small insurance premium if you set off to climb or walk in a remote part of the country. The protesters would claim it’s a tax on the universality of our open spaces but at least it would fund and equip those who we rely on to come out for free when we get into trouble. From lifeboats to helicopters we assume a deaf ear for the service we receive and it’s part of growth in the number who now flock out each weekend the extra stress we place on rescue. When it was a small group of people who experienced and properly equipped and responsible the cost was minimal.

The growth in identifiable disease and mental disorders has expanded the diagnostic range for which the medical practitioners try to treat and clearly “free at the point of need” is unaffordable.

Six of one half a dozen of the other.

 Subject: Six of one half a dozen of the other.

A verbal statement has just been released in which a solicitor acting for the Pakistani brothers involved in a fracas in Manchester Airport in which a policeman is seen kicking one of the brothers in the head whilst he is prostrate on the floor having been stunned by a laser gun.

Our immediate reaction was of horror that an officer of the law should breakout one of the principles of law and order policing given the schoolboy ethic, “never kick a man when he is down”.  More video footage showed events leading up to fracas showing the brothers actively raining blows on the police, both men and women officers. The guy who was eventually kicked should have been in the Olympic boxing team so effective were his punches the police seemed for a while on the back foot and loosing control until they used the laser.

I have mentioned before in the past the police used to be respected with one Bobby a lone able to control a crowed by the authority his uniform.  Not so today, he has become fair game, with the court offering no deterrent to the thug who’s “Brief” has the a plethora of legislation to back him up.

The Mother of the Pakistani family had had a torrid time on her flight back to the UK from Pakistan having been, according to her statement racially  abused by a fellow passenger, she had received no assistance from the flight crew and one can understand the exasperation and frustration within the family as she landed in Manchester.

The scene is set for a tinderbox event with racial epithets from the police (un - collaborated) kicked in and the melee occurred.

The facts are, you don’t take your frustration out on the police.

You don’t violently attack the police

The rules of engagement are the Courts but unfortunately the Courts are proving ineffectual, (clogged up in celebrity libel cases) the trust in authority is at an all time low. The violence we see in our streets, not only the current rioting but the knife crime which has infected our young is phenomenal. I have never seen the number of deaths through knife fights and it come’s, in part, from the castration of police numbers under the Tories and their failure to retain good men and women. ‘Bobbies’ are as rare as hens teeth particularly in the town centres and the multitudinous constraints put on the police makes their job almost impossible.

A comma out of place, a statement given out side the sterile jacket of procedural propriety and an otherwise watertight case is thrown out. It’s as if we intend to lend all leverage to that evil, dangerous contingent in our society in the pious hope that the world is watching and applauding us for our ethical stance. There was a time when we could afford to be magnanimous, when the jails were half empty and rudimentary jobs available. Now everything stands on a knife edge, politicians are haunted by quotes made under very different conditions, the funds to rebuild our depleted infrastructure are non existent and a new government held to ransom by financial exactitude.

The contamination of the racial mix, not by doctors and nurses but by centuries old customs and religious propriety is now played out as sides are formed and prejudice spews out from both sides only relieved by the thin line of bobbies place themselves at tremendous risk in between.

Who on earth would want a policeman’s job.

Toleration

 Subject: Toleration.



There are so many conflictions in our lives some of which these days are down to the priority given to minorities. Iwas not always so. The public sphere, in which we all live has many variations,  from mental health to physical health, from gender dyspraxia and the unfairness of trans people (effectively biological males) competing in female sports) to the ranking of immigration rights with an established populations right to scarce resources.

Since the 60s the rights of the ‘individual’ overtook ‘societies’ right to exhibit what it would called ‘normal practice’. A plethora of minority rights has skewed our understanding of a homogeneous society to one in which minorities now seem to carry more influence but of course, society has never been homogeneous, it’s full of quirks. Ability quirks, religious quirks, gender quirks, and many more, a problem arose when the call for equality began to formulate the Human Rights Act by trying to give equal equality rights to everyone by shoehorn people into being recognised as the same which common sense tells us we aren’t. If you display a physical disability then no amount of tinkering with the environment will make it equal.

Athletics and ‘trans’ people (males) competing against females is obviously wrong and the sports authorities have shied away from common sense for fear of upsetting minority rights but in doing so have created a mess. The solution, to create a new class of athlete, ‘trans athlete’ which exists alongside male competing with males and female with female. I suppose the argument then moves on to defining who is trans and who isn’t. Genitalia used to be the cut and dry distinction but now testosterone and even the chromosome distinction of YY versus YX doesn’t seem to clinch it and we are back to how a person feels about their gender. Perhaps the authorities they that the trans lobby will claim discrimination, that their rights of self determination are being interfered with.

As with so many issues our society these days, is scared to go against the shibboleth of human rights. From cultural rights to religious rights, minority rights  to gender rights often these rights clash with one another and then it’s a case of which group carries the most clout. So rights then become negotiable, not a physiological  argument but an ideological concept differently interpreted by different people. In this country because we have traded away what we called uniform common-sense in our attempt to appeal to everyone we have landed our citizenry in a morass of conflicting, often non-negotiatory issues.

Weakness and conciliation are the hallmark of successive government in this country and it’s only the patience of the citizenry (now seen frayed by street battles) which somehow negotiates a route between the tolerant in our society and everyone else.

Of course our TV screens show the sheer thuggery of what is calledFarRight disaffection but in reality was classed a few years ago as football thuggery when football fans travelling to have a punch up on the oppositions turf. Today’s violence is supposed to be about the problem of too much  immigration  which affects people by placing a strain on resources  and our national ability to House, Employ, and look after people Medically. Of course our real problem is a lack of real willingness to expand and build to accommodate the expansion.

One man’s thug is another’s man’s freedom fighter and of course as the Prime Minister lists the groups who fear for their existence, the nonwhite, the Muslim but little mention is made of the deep grievance within many towns about the dissembling of a more traditional way of life. We have been persuaded that we are our far too parochial, too introverted and we have to undergo re-education to understand the value immigration bings.

Most of us understand there are many things we gain from by involving ourselves in societies much older than our own, we travel to different parts of the word to see at first hand the ruins of great civilisations  but of course being old is no guarantee of being better. Listening to the hectoring tone of the ex SNP leader Humza Yousaf last night  doesn’t help neither, to be honest, the tone of Keir Starmer who’s homily seems to come from the observer class than those affected.

At least the ‘War of the Roses’ cut through Baronial influence and was home grown, this questioning of multiculturalism has been blatantly ignored by many in our national executive.

So speaks for the disadvantaged

 Subject: So who speaks for the disadvantaged

And now it’s the GPs who are holding the nation to hostage, threatening to limit patient access because they say their surgeries are underfunded by government which of course means tax receipts. The junior doctors have just secured a record breaking rise on their claim that their hourly pay in the region of £15 ph, is ridiculously low given the time spent preparing to be acknowledged as equipped to exercise any sort of medical expertise. The nurses similarly suffered, under the Cameron/ Osborn austerity regime as  year on year their pay slipped down the cost of living statistic as did so many reliant on public service increases. So whilst as a nation we simply didn’t improve our productivity but instead insisted on withdrawing from our by far our largest market, the EU we were seduced by the rhetoric of the ideological school who insisted we could go it alone irrespective what the economic statistics told us.

Where do we go from here, do we cripple ourselves by becoming more indebted to the sovereign funds who often represent political states which we arbore, do we trim back the money spent on social improvement or limit, in a distinctly troubled world our defence expenditure. We seem to have a pathological obsession in not investing in the bright ideas which our academics develop and would rather do a two step with nations who will invest in us, but on terms which benefit  them.

Where are the UK manufactured of wind farms, ships, railway stock, all of which we have to buy from nations who are our competitors. We had the skill base only 50 years ago but frittered it away long before the Chinese arrived on the scene but by a refusal to invest in our ‘trade collages’ we  converted them instead into dodgy universities peddling even more dodgy degrees. We, or should I say, our business leaders, are the author of our demise

whilst they take their seats in the House of Lords to reminisce about the time they made a killing on the stock market we riot on the streets of predominantly northern towns desperate to be heard in a world that has no place for them.

Of course there is an element of thuggery amongst them but there is also a cry to have been let down as to them the last straw is the sight of swelling immigration which culturally and economically displaces them from the very towns they call their own.

This was foreseeable. Having grown up in Bradford the mill owners rather than compete with the Taiwanese and their modern equipment instead used the oldest tool in the box they imported cheap labour from the subcontinent and expected the people of Bradford to assimilate. A few days ago I broke down in the centre of Bishops Stortford.

Parked behind me was a taxi driven by an old Indian chap. I approached him to ask could he take me home but he explained he was out shopping with his wife and not for hire. Anyway to cut a long story down he agreed and as I settled. Into the back seat alongside a lady his wife he explained that she didn’t speak English even though they had lived here for over 30 years.

Assimilation is in some communities a myth especially if the religion separates women from the normal occurrence such as the freedom to leave their home and integrate with others then the possibilities are few.

The riots are a miserable reflection of the waste land which has occurred and is a blind refusal of our politicians to garner as much remorse for their own electorate as they do for other nations. When I see Yvette Cooper the new Home Secretary voice her disgust of the violence, I see a middle class woman whole sole preoccupation has been towards minority and female issues wholly sidestepping the resentment brewing in working class towns and It’s not so funny to see our country as a whole now reliant on the police, a force which has been described as institutionally racist and misogynistic but on who we now place all our hope to face down the misogynist/racist on our streets.

Hope they don’t follow the lead of the junior doctors and go on strike but of course they can’t, they are constitutionally bound to protect us or more to the point the property interests of the influential.

Rowlock ambassadors

 Subject: Rowlock ambassadors

I remember watching the London Olympics which the highlights were shared between track cycling, on the water with rowing and of course, the track and field events.

The rowing was particularly thrilling as each race unfurled along the course the rowers eking out the last bits of energy right to the line.

They became over the event time household names and personalities in their own right, particularly the broad smiles and exuberance of the women sitting in their boat having accomplished, through years of training the right to represent their country. It seems to me that, particularly the women are the great ambassadors in what they say and the way they present themselves in interviews.

Of course in London much was made of the enthusiasm of the crowd they were unstoppable as they cheered and cheered our contestants and now it’s the turn of the French to show their patriotism. In the pool the supremacy of Leon Marchand has mesmerised the crowd like Michael Phelps used to do in years past

The woman’s archery was fascinating. The sight of the porcelain-white faced Chinese women, their impassive faces made even more stark by the smudge of red lipstick with which they kissed the flight of the arrow before releasing it on its way to the target. They looked ‘out of this world characters’ with their impassivity, more like the image of a Geisha than the spontaneity of athletes generally.

Images are fed in my mind of the male swimmers walking on out to the start their event. Each encased in duvet style full length coats to keep warm, they stroll/saunter like gangsters towards their starting plinth to do battle. Cocky, they seem out of tune to the adulation from the spectators, its more like a "godfather" meet, faces grim and determined and very different from the girls who grin from ear to ear and wave to the crowd.

There’s so much to appreciate and whilst mentioned the thought of the hours training on the road or in a boat at 6am in the cold drizzle far from the bright lights of today.

‘Track and field’ are just getting going and the focus really starts on the national gold medal tally.

Who said nationalism should be put to bed and only multi nationalism allowed to flourish. Of course between the athletes themselves each respects the other and even amongst nations who glare at each other across a no man’s land of barbed wire, in sport these antipathy’s are laid aside and mutual respect breaks out.

A new voice

 

It was rewarding yesterday having tuned in to LBC to hear the measured tones and arguments of James Heappey instead of the hectoring tone of James O’Brien, a person who has over the years become a serious ‘self publicist’ and biting scourge to anyone who doesn’t follow his reasoning. O’ Brian’s intellectual and robust debating skills which attracted me in the early days as a passionate anti Brexit commentator who’s razor sharp interrogatory methods were a delight when he came up against those who favoured our leaving the EU. He put into words what I thought and condemned Nigal Farage ceaselessly. Unfortunately given his platform on the radio show he began to bully callers needlessly on a range of subjects and whilst I supported many of his views I felt he needlessly used his skills of oratory and debate to undermine the caller who maybe wrongly had formed an opposite view which needed to be heard.

O’Brian also developed the annoying habit of being a self publicist particularly since he began to write books. A self publicist is, in my view a particularly unattractive person especially so given his daily slot on LBC where he felt free to endlessly promote himself

James Heappey is a totally different character. He had been givenO’Brians slot for a day and whilst being a Tory he was a Tory with a human face as he reasoned with the callers in a way O’Brian would never do. Heappey an ex-army officer before becoming an MP was a product of Sandhurst which in its present incarnation seems to instil a thoughtful reasoned attitude, far from the caricature of a colonial blimp, he was one of a number ex army people who served as a Tory and reasoned their argument with facts.  I enjoyed his show and hope he gets another chance to illustrate that the Tories are not all bad “and who would ever have thought I would say that”.

Go East my child

 Subject: Go East my child





Life is like a game of golf, bunkers and fairways, just when you see the green and the flag something happens which in golf can usually be explained by faulty technique but in life it’s not so obvious. There are techniques for living your life but it depends what you want out of it and the risks you take.   In the famous 1960s film, Billy Liar, Billy the dreamer meets a girl who has the confidence to leave her northern roots to move down to London. Billy is to go with her but as she boards the train he hides in the main hall of the station unable to pluck up the courage and the movie ends with him still fantasising as he walks on the road towards his home.

The film points out the fallibility of youth in that today it doesn’t seek solutions but assumes a solution to their lives will be found by others. The Nanny State has infantilised our young people into waiting for help rather than looking around the world perhaps where opportunities are on offer. Needing to be close to a comfort zone, family and friends, an environment you know instead of understand the excitement of living in new communities and creating new foundations whilst at the same time discovering new ways of approaching life.

With, in effect the world now made smaller by cheap travel and the ease with which you can get to a new country but offset by the bureaucracy in getting visers granting a right to stay. In the past there were windows to emigrate such as the £10 passage to Australia common or garden immigrants were encouraged, today unless you belong to a group or profession needed by the host country you will struggle. That’s not to say you mustn’t try and if your destination has to be altered by circumstance then it may be just one of life’s quirks to force your hand, eventually it offers reward.

One of the worst things is to feel locked in your home environment if you know the system or its politics is letting you down. This country has been degrading itself for years, perhaps intentionally, by ignoring the need for skill training. No longer does it need the unskilled factory worker, instead  we need the skilled worker trained in robotics and computerisation but everything is dependent on investment within the productive environment to equip it to function.

I remember having returned to Yorkshire on holiday from abroad visiting a gear cutting machine shop in Shipley and seeing, side by side, gears being cut by highly skilled lathe operators whilst across the isle a computer driven machine was doing the same job, better.

Daring to invest in new ways and yet clinging on to the past has been our failure in so many fields of endeavour

Size matters

 Subject: Size matters





Just been watching the Paris Olympic Opening Ceremony,  essentially a fleet of slow moving  riverboat’s with the athletes on board frantically waving their national flags as the rain poured down. I can well imagine that on a conceptualists drawing board the idea of using the Seine to transport this athletic montage was great but as a visual pageant water somehow is too predictable in the confines of a river, too somnalist  and the show got bogged down in repetition. Perhaps an illegal dingy or two amongst the smart boats which allowed the French to reserve the bidding for themselves although the most eye catching was the Netherlands boat.

It’s difficult to capture on such a wide canvas the excitement of a stadium opening but hats off to the French for trying.

Now we get down to the competition and I for one will be glued to the television watching the track and field athletics. Many sports are for the competitors rather than as a visual event for the spectator. Archery, tie kendo, shooting competitions are not my cup of tea nor is horse jumping or dressage but there are many instances where watching people tussle, good naturedly to win but not without consideration of one’s opponent makes for good viewing.

The Eiffel Tower light show was iconic but even more so was the  very French Canadian sound of Celion Dion singing Edith Piaf’s timeless “L’Hymne a l’amour” from a platform up on the tower.

Each nation staging the Olympics  seems to try to outbid the previous ceremony. The Chinese with their vast choreographed ensemble, London with its emphasis on the historical development within the country and now Paris with this open air montage of the river set amongst an iconic backdrop of buildings, enervated by singers and dancers who seemed impervious to the pouring rain.

It seems unthinkable that whilst this coming together of nations goes on we are also entering a period of conflict around the globe that if we aren’t careful will kick off into ‘world war three’ of which the resulting world will be unrecognisable.

The boot on the other foot.

 Subject: The boot on the other foot.





Each day we are made aware of kinks in our armour, every day we see cherished institutions like the police found wanting or more to the point individuals in the Force bring it into disrepute. The cry’s for reform come from parts of society who would never themselves venture out on a wet night not knowing if they might be injured or even killed. They are the people who rely on the police to keep them safe but reject the use of violence to do so. One of their weapons is to hurl abuse at institutions like the police by calling them institutionally racist. There’s no doubt at the sharp end of a battle the men charged with meeting violence with violence are left with mental scars and depending on the frequency they are asked to go into battle on our behalf, regardless of the training they receive some will become racist if the adversary is often the same.

What is never called into question is that if the adversary are themselves from an ethnic minority surely they too can be called racist by the very fact they hold their ethnicity as the reason for  going into battle on our streets, an act which the police force has to deal with which then reaffirms one of the reason for prejudice and violence.

One cannot only imagine the anger in the minds oppressed, hassled from an early stage in their life it helped instigate the violence seen in Manchester airport which eventually resulted in the brutal scene of the angered policeman kicking the man in the head. What we hadn’t seen was the punch thrown at his female colleague which broke her nose.. The niceties of combat and the reservoir of chivalry with which we are brought up to understand, “you don’t hit a woman” clicks in when the  policewoman is violently hit and clearly angered the policewoman. We are not shown how the altercation started of hear the the antagonism in the Pakistani groups rhetoric towards the police, all we get is the loaded  commentary from the media who, from the safety of their studio condemn the very tension their media contribution has helped bring about. The very “them and us” question mark which hangs over everything these days, from immigration to the ambulance service, from housing to schooling each amplified by media bias feeding and manipulating our minds. Even the concept of properly researched reporting is also manipulated and distorted in favour of the ‘spot check‘ assumption merited through the lens of a passer-by’s smart phone.

Dangerous times made more dangerous by the new television channels funded by Rupert Murdock where the show host can be as outrageous as he or she likes ( the shock jock) whilst the BBC walks on eggs with its version of the truth.

Everyone’s truth is tainted by everyone’s experience and we must never forget that everyones truth is equally relevant to them.

Outside the four walls.

 Subject: Outside the four walls.



I’m parked outside the dentist. Last week I had had a dry run coming a week early and no its not dementia but a life long revolution of being late for meetings in a world now made meaningless with regards time, with so few meetings.

That’s not wholly true of course since the world around hasn’t altered and the things I busied myself with, mainly work, is no more although the neighbourhood still stands. A painful ankle and weakening leg muscles make the walk unpleasant but I still enjoy driving, even the 220 mile trip to Swansea is still within my grasp (or at least I tell myself it is) but somehow the  impulse of ‘dropping in’ is frowned upon for some reason and with Marie now here in Bishops Stortford I don’t have the excuse any more. People think journeys have to be planned down to the last detail but I was always prepared to “wing it”.  Clothes you could buy, food and drink obviously, as you sat in your car happy unencumbered, the ultimate coping mechanism is in your head and hopefully, in your wallet. Schedules, are a metal encumbrance, the assumption was, “that people should be glad to see me” but I’m slowly learning, after 83 years that’s not necessarily the case. If you carry around a hopeful aura that they would be as happy to see you as you are them and it can lead to embarrassment. For a start you are crossing into their territory and some people can be very judgemental, especially of their image which they might want to maintain is a reflection of the fact that perhaps the dishes aren’t clean or the house vacuumed. The pleasure of driving my old (1948) 940 Volvo Classic far outweighs lacking a specific destination, the involvement of travel is enough, it takes you back to when you were competent and all destinations were full of promise. When companies anticipated your arrival and the skills you brought. You were that important link offering something they couldn’t or wouldn’t do, you were someone who could solve some of their problems and they had confidence you.

One of the problems of aging is that people lose the confidence that you can bring to the party something valuable.  They did it sadly with Joe Biden, forgetting the instinctive value he had brought, through his long experience.

So he takes a little longer to go up and down the steps, but it’s what happens but it’s what you do when you get there that’s important. We are all prejudiced towards the aged, there’s  a mixture of a benign feeling towards the old, mixed with impatience and the fear that eventually you yourself will become pretty much like Joe, at least physically.

From the perspective of a son or daughter, the fear that there will be little they can do to help, a little shopping perhaps, some tech problem solved, a hand to hold when sick but your fear that you will be in fact powerless and eventually submerged by the cost of care is frightening.

From each side, as the oldie continues to drop the baton, you eventually tire of picking it up.

Not even a shadow

 Subject: Not even a shadow



What insignificant creatures we are,  Hollowed out opportunists with few architectural masterpieces to litter our skyline, no Shakespearian sonnet, no figurative  life defining achievement, only the dross left in the waste disposal truck when our belongings are emptied from the house.

Sure we are more than just our achievements, we are an amalgam of our individual  experiences for which, in various ways we list those experiences as being special and remark on them as if they we’re important. Children of course are our most important achievement, perhaps a little cash in the bank, a house and car but after years of breathing the air and chewing the cud, it’s a salutary fact that we are quite insignificant given our brain’s ability to conjure up so much more.

Reading of the Dutch’s pioneering discovery of New Zealand and mans relentless urge to explore one is always in awe at the remarkable gains in knowledge. From Einstein and Newton  to Maxwell and Rutherford. From Aristotle to Kant, from Heisenberg to Schrödinger, the music of Chopin, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, these creative talents shadow us forever but only emphasise our own obscurity.

But it’s enough. So long as you have chosen a life in which you have objectively done your best and importantly,  no one deliberate harm.

The period on life’s stage, under the lights as it were is only a detail but it’s all we have. Even at our funeral talk will soon the turn to tomorrow but it’s a tomorrow in which we have no place ‘yet only yesterday’ we placed ourselves high in importance.

Perhaps we should place ourselves at the mercy of religion, to buy ourselves more time, or take up a philosophical claiming rebirth.

“With threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise,  one thing at least is certain - time flies, one thing is certain and the rest is lies - The flower once blown for ever dies”.

Once we listened to our mothers and then our fathers, our brothers and sister, uncles and aunts but now we listen to strangers broadcasting their ideas through the media platform and television channels 24/7. You wake up to them  the cackle of their voices shamelessly selling their interpretation of their truth whilst we become further and further submerged in their conflicting stories. A plague on their house I say.

Post democratic times.

 Subject: Post democratic times.

Joe Biden bows out and and the Democrats is left with plenty of egg on its face.

I’m amazed in this brave new but unscrupulous world of ours that a man who it’s admitted is be an irascible liar amongst other despicable things is placed on a higher level than a man who sadly is showing the first signs of dementia. 

Donald Trump whose term in the office of the President of the USA was blighted by sedition and his refusal to accept he had been defeated by the voting public and whose public demeanour is one of a tyrant.

An American public seeped in its Constitution should not behave in this way and yet 70 years as the defender of the free world and high on its own appraisal of itself,  its overt accumulation of power and seeing itself through the almighty dollar is about to vote in a most disagreeable man with narcissistic self opinionated  faults that make Benito Mussolini seem almost angelic.

If this image is how Americans now see themselves we are in for a rocky ride especially If their opinion of us is anti American

The Kings message

 Subject: Fwd: The Kings message

Her majesty’s government will :- (and so begins the transfer of power and commitment to change).

“Maintain the balance between ownership and tenancy, the rights of the citizen and the immigrant”. “The right to continue to have underfunded children against the human right to have as many children as you care to even  if the state has to fund the child through to working age. Even the concept of human rights, especially in reference to people coming into the country, as of their right is still challenged.

There is no right in a totalitarian country only the right of the dictatorship to decide, it certainly makes things simpler if a slide rule or algorithm provides the answers and sidesteps the moral/ethical aspect of the question. Is affordability the bench mark or are there deeper values at play.

From the time of the lumpen clog shod factory worker eking out a pittance in the traditional satanic mill, to the soul draining queue at the dock gate for a days work which incidentally made the mill and shipbuilding profitable, to the empty factories and ship building now undertaken on the European mainland. Was it down to the rights of the welder in the dockyard or the machine minder in manufacturing, perhaps the bloody mindedness of management also played a part as it wholly only saw value in the bottom line or was it because of the distance between the ermine and the cloth cap which made paid employment less attractive than income from dividends.

We are caught between two stools. American mythology profit and  power before all else and the European experiment of a wider set of participative values. The Afrikaner in South Africa had a derogatory word for it,  “soutpiel” when describing the English who couldn’t make up their minds whether to be in philosophically in SA or England. Hardly dry on the manuscript, the Kings speech describing Labours proposal for government was being taken apart by the commentators (the enablers) raising all kinds of negative comment. These highly paid armchair experts who infiltrate our minds and set the political atmosphere in and on the media platforms are paid for being controversial and creating the smoke and the daggers which we mistake for healthy political dialogue. The public are left confused thinking that what they had thought a good idea was rubbish and via versa. Is it an any wonder that the mental health of the country is on a downward trajectory, the stress of having your common-sense assailed is one of the root causes of abuse. We are in for a rough ride as the forces of extremism line up to contest for middle of the road opinion and it’s important not to be drawn by either left or right if their direction of travel excludes the right of reply.

Do we make history or does history make us.

 Subject: Do we make history or does history make us.

Are we, of independent mind, willing to force our way to the front of an issue or are we carried along at the back of the class only able to note events as they happen.

With the cacophony of conflicting views presented on the various media channels by  men and women each prepped with at least one angle on the subject and already tailor-made to suite a perceived predisposition.  Can we see a patten which could be called a popular trend emerging to signify the historical direction along which we travel or has our path been so broken up that we hop from stone to stone in danger of being carried away by the fast flowing stream and the hurdles we encounter on route.  

Of course it's true that leaders make history. From Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, from Gandhi to Martin Luther King, each in their different way made history and we the people followed but equally of course it was people who brought those people to prominence and it was with the connivance of the electorate (with the exception of Genghis Khan)that they were given a platform.

Donald Trump in the US continues to divide America into irreconcilable camps, antagonistic and diametrically opposing it’s hard to think their opinions are born to people who were educated in the same educational system. The inward looking mid -westerner (many of them Trump supporters) who's once great cities have become waste land as manufacturing  was given over to the Chinese and their immediate world shrank into one of listless poverty by the demand of market forces (well illustrated in Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath') and supported by the democrat as well as the Republican. History driven by the Banks and venture capital, is being formed, not by leadership but by the short term gain and the needs of the boardroom to protecting the 'investor class'.

Trump's leadership has the belligerence of a Khan but it's hidden in the courtroom and behind the law and the lawyers who nit-pick the contractual clauses rather than one which  envisages a destination which encompasses us all. Trump is a mixture of a Barnum and Bailey showman, one minute on the high wire the next a clown pretending to throw water over his audience. As Circus it's ok but it's no way to run the most powerful nation on earth. The paucity of thinking beyond the glib catch phrase seems beyond the nation who's collective mind has been stunted by generational advertising and gimmicks and who's capacity to think for itself is buried in the copywriters slick phraseology and the promise of jam today.

We aren't far behind in the U.K. with a parliament packed with conformist propaganda, the truth buried under a fear of losing voters and upsetting people with the reality.

Only yesterday the government had  announced their latest master stroke, the intention to clamping down on the 'sick note' and withdrawing pay from those unwilling to return to work. With millions of people now refusing to rejoin the commute into work after experiencing the governments 'stay at home' directive to cope with Covid 19 people seem to have broken with the conformity of generations and turned their back on work in exchange for unemployed benefit payments. These benefits are designed to cover illness in all its shape and sizes as well as economic hardship but generally required the acknowledgement that you are suffering in some way. With a plethora of newly discovered ailments, some fundamentally mental, it’s easier for the doctor, not wishing to risk misdiagnosis, he/she has little option but to hand over a sick note.

As we all watched the Post Office Inquiry it was easy to see how easily Post Office Branch investigators were able to scare the pants of the Postmaster/mistress to the extent they handed their own cash over to cover shortages. Subsequently much was found to be due to a malfunctioning Horizon Computer system and a back door into the system where corrections could be made but notwithstanding, the shortages were allowed to stand and people sent to prison for it. The Directors at the Post Office seem to be Teflon coated since, other than reputaional damage no director has been kept at his majesty’s pleasure.

The PO enquiry drags on, as did Hillsboro, the Grenfell Tower, the Blood Contamination scandal and  one suspects that ‘enquiries’ are simply a method of kicking an issue into the long grass and protecting that class of person for whom birth  trumps everything.

Success or failure are two bedfellows

 Subject: Success or failure are two bedfellows

This morning I woke up to the news of the attempt to shoot Donald Trump.

In a land where shooting people is endemic, it’s surprising only 4 presidents have been successfully assassinated given the public exposure they offer a sniper. John F Kennedy is the most famous of course, in broad daylight shot from a distance with a high powered rifle we see the tragic end to a young man in the prime of his presidency with the hope of much of the western word on his shoulders. He wasn’t without blame and his private life was risky to say the least,  in at least this one aspect Donald Trump emulated him in growing up under the tutelage of a rich powerful father.

Trumps natural chutzpah was to raise his fist in defiance, a show of resilience  which his followers will cherish and their harsh assessment of the world outside the USA makes me worry as Trump supporters show no sense of unifying with anyone other than themselves.

The American mindset crafted by Trumps messaging is quite crude in the concept of any future role America should play. There are few diplomatic niceties, little apparent reflection of the power of a coalition which came into being since Russia invaded Ukraine. The Chinese, already a super power tooling itself up as a nuclear state, Russia with a stockpile of warheads which exceeds even Americas, and now the belligerent kid on the block, North Korea who psychology is so extreme, who knows what they may or may not do. Europe is a collection of disparate states each with different philosophies, tied in to their European experience by a troubled historical past. They could easily fragment if their corporate affairs are threatened.

All this within four years when Russia started to turn the screw. Firstly in Syria and their support of Bashar al- Assad, then the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine,  the west (we mean America) started to rationalise its position, to weigh the odds of the cost of war rather than its strategic importance. The odds have swung towards the totalitarian state,  their collective will unfettered by electoral responsibility they determined the cost in terms of power and the future rewards power will bring.

We never believed, after World War Two and the efforts made towards active collective security through the realisation of NATO that financial backsliding amongst member nations with America baring the brunt of the cost that they would eventually balk at continuing. Amongst the individual nations who benefit from NATO, as with any payment, if you fall into arrears it’s almost impossible to catch up and with so many social commitments promised, without defence spending ring fenced and populations within NATO not educated that the world is still fragile place (just as it always was) and that we can’t take our defence for granted.

The travesty of 14 years of conservative government has meant our armed forces are down 2010 levels and, as with education, health, public infrastructure, social welfare , police, sewerage control etc,etc,etc, the villains in the piece are the Tory party manipulators who stood to gain financially from the marketisation of UK plc. Nowhere, be it the trains, the prisons, the post office, the water companies, the environment agencies and agencies across the board who seemed more in bed with with the business they were supposed to control than the public they were set up to protect.

It’s been a massive failure, this mantra of privatisation but perhaps we as a nation are destined to fail because of the ‘lack of will to succeed’. In some ways mollycoddled by the concept of human rights and the integrity of human action we inflated our worth.

Perhaps we haven’t progressed that far and need to pull our tails in.

Loosing the magic.

 Subject: Loosing the magic.



Over the years of faithfully completing my blog you know I have struggled to describe my ambiguity towards women. It’s not misogyny rather a skepticism  about their aims. There’s no doubt I owe my mom a tremendous thanks for bringing me into this world in what seems such a painful evolutionary process. My mom, bless her, nearly died giving birth to a large 10 pound plus baby, who even at that stage of his life was proving difficult in presenting himself to the outside world as a ‘breach baby’, and this in the slight frame of a tiny 4 foot 11 inch woman.  A miss match if ever there was one and incongruity seems to have been etched upon me ever since as the screams of childbirth lasted into the night and I became the centre of my moms life ambition, (along side my dad of course), who continued his phlegmatic approach to most things, head burrowed in a book or news paper

I watch the safari cam-cord show ‘Wild Earth’ as the distinctively accented South African born guides glide around the hectares of wildlife land in their jeeps spotting the twitching tail of a cheetah behind the long grass or, close to the watering hole we watch the animals parade to drink in a pecking order which helpfully doesn’t mix the predator with the pray. The magnificent maned lion, the laborious elephant, the flighty springbok, all part of an evolutionary fit, eat or be eaten. The fertility circle of the female and the testosterone driven urge to fight and dominate are the constituent values of the wildlife scene, no health and safety malarky, no human rights, just an active pro forma to life and death depending on the species.

Only mankind has threatened this balance of power with the insistence of religious or sectarian  principles governing our actions and what a convoluted ‘mix-up’we have landed ourselves in as we start to veer away from the pronouns which describe our gender.

The lion knows his place, the lioness hers but in the arms wrestle for supremacy men and women have lost sight of this evolutionary purpose. Women force themselves into roles much more fit for a man, witness the role of a female PC as she scrambles around in a melee outside a pub trying to secure fighting men.

There was a time when striking a woman was thought heinous but as women become more assertive in all walks of life that blurring of cultural etiquette starts to fall away and much of the magic is lost between us.

It’s a funny cultural conflation which provided women with the protection of etiquette to instil in the physically more powerful male rules of engagement that were supposed to ensure each know their place and yet, through feminist ideology, much of this protective culture is being destroyed by the insistence of laddish behaviour on the woman’s part and an ongoing defining drama where men are always cast as the villain.

Competition is always a factor in demeaning one thing from the next but if we learn to respect and understand our respective roles then the world would be a happier place.

Beyond the pale

 Who are the civilians in Gaza. As the death toll goes up and up and the Israeli airforce continue to pound the civilian buildings, any sense of “we are civilian they are Hamas” begins to diminish as death becomes the final arbiter for those living, as does any sense of cooperation with ordinary people who might have been nonaligned but who now hate the oppressor on either side.

With a history like this how can a ‘Two State’ solution come into being, (ie the creation of a fully fledged Palestinian State along side that of Isreal’s.) how can normalisation be established for future ties with the depth of outrage swilling around.

Perhaps the only solution is a Korean style separation, such as between North and South Korea with a ‘no go’ area between the two states and economic ties broken as all population movement is stopped. I suppose this is a solution favoured by Isreal’s but not Palestine since they seem totally reliant on Isreal economically.

Perhaps the fault lies in the history of the region and the unreality of any healthy interrelationship. You can’t build a structure when the foundation is weak and the fractured interrelationship between Arab and Jew appears to be a permanent thorn in their side. It wasn’t always so. In biblical times they were Arabs with a tribal difference which defined the social family structure. The house of Abraham descended from Noah split. into Issac and Ishmael. Moses through from Issac went on to found Judaism whilst Ishmael’s  progeny later founded Islam through Mohammed.

Brothers, cousins, uncles who are now at each others throat were once part of the same stock, but as in any family feud the schism runs deeper than normal because of the assumption of ties which when destroyed are inimical even malevolent to rational persuasion.

Humans with their prejudice are unstable bed fellows owing to assumptions of fealty to tribe and kith-ship, and illustrates how bound to support from those around us we are. Swimming against the stream, holding controversial opinions, rank you a trouble maker to be shunned. And yet it’s from the ranks of controversy a way is defined to move forward.

Churchill was a belligerent whist around him the appeasers held sway and we may be at the cross roads as decisions to arm Ukraine with better defensive/offensive weapons might just be that moment. Of course Churchill was not making decisions in a nuclear world were retaliation brings with it such a price but the lesson of the cold war was that at the brink rational voices held sway.

Joe Biden’s dismal public performance contrasted with his coherent strategy as President generally far offsets his early onset of dementia, forgetting names has been with me for 50 years but it quite rightly sends out warning signals. A greater warning signal is Donald Trumps almost flippant attitude to leadership with no sign of cognitive joined up thinking, simplistic popularist rhetoric replaces the balance required in diplomacy

History and the tales it tells.

 Subject: History and the tales it tells.



Reading of the 1930s imposed famine in the Ukraine one sees the historical tension between Russian an Ukraine played out by a monstrous body count. 6 million largely Ukrainian  peasants died of starvation in the Soviets realignment of productive capacity from farming to industrial pig iron. In a day of media attention the sight of ten million staving agricultural worked dying on their feet from hunger should have stifled all political acceptance of communism as a stable alternative to capitalism in the 1930 but the malign aspect of Bolshevik ideology, where people were expendable to the  national ideological plan dreamt up by Marxist/ Leninist thinkers who, when led  by Joseph Stalin was ultimately responsible for up to over 10 million deaths of his own people. These dark age statistics have never been understood in this country as it struggles to come to terms with its period of Empire and Colonialism. The Jallianwala massacre in the Indian town of Amritsar where 379 Indian people were shot by the British Army is a black mark on our history and taught in our schools as such but the Maoist extermination of millions of their own people in the cause of mind cleansing, ranks with Stalin and Hitlers monstrous purge of 6 million Jews in Germany.

The point of history and historians is to set the record straight and by doing so warn the present of the depths mankind can sink when ideologically unhinged. We are different but similar to wild animals and whilst, through the black art of propaganda and untrammelled communication we can be worked up to accept the killing at least the animal does it for food and self preservation.

Language and communication therefore sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom and in the case above it was ideology which allowed the blood letting, ‘ideology’ a phrase easily used but little understood, a set of ideas or beliefs, often political which characterise a particular culture. There has to me to be a certain acceptance of a totalitarian mindset for ideology to take over as the dissenter is pushed aside (and often murdered) to collectivise a national viewpoint and its a danger when through media platforms the ‘common man’ is exposed to propaganda. Truth and rational debate give way to scurrilous rhetoric, rabble rousing anger is easily bent to some sinister purpose and the population becomes complicit to what is going on around them. The Weston Capitalist have their own sinister agenda I believe globalisation is one. It desensitises people to the real cost of their consumerism and the hardship it causes in distant communities. It was only through the real time exploitation of the World Wide Web that the fragmentation of the industrial process allowed the poorest to be engaged in production and whilst this brought some relief to the poor in western countries it also took away their ability to compete for work

The politician here and seems obsessed by winning votes rather than being effective in which ever ministry he or she is given. The sense of ‘conviction’ politics seems dead but without conviction the political dynamic is worthless. The merry go round of a prime ministerial reshuffle, moving the dummies in the shop window serves little purpose unless it’s to remove a non performer. The ministerial brief of a department is pretty unique to the type of department they control. Learning that brief and then a year later move the person on to new responsibilities seems totally counter productive.

Rory Stewart’s book “Politics on the Edge” was an incisive expose of the turbulence of ministerial office when plotting and almost internecine warfare between smart boys of Eton prevented him from doing his job when birth has given you privilege, the job you do is almost incidental and the out come almost irrelevant.

We will see I hope a change in emphasis with this new government but never underestimate the power of the civil service and its phalanx of Etonians ready and willing to impede its change.