Shush !!

Who's kidding who ?  There is always talk that Alex Ferguson had the authorities in his pocket and has had many footballing decisions go his way through the force he commands in the Premier League.
Today we saw the power of that "other" Mr Woods, Tiger, holding the rule makers, in this case the rule breakers, to evade the rule which states that your drop, after an unplayable shot, has to land within a reasonable distance of where the shot that went wrong was played.   He knows the rules.   His comment earlier, that the young 14 year old Chinese must "know the rules" when he was asked what he felt about the penalty handed to the young Chinese of one point, for being too slow in his play. The fact that the speed of play is largely determined by the speed of those playing in front and therefore perhaps, the whole field should have been penalised ?
Be that as it may, the Tiger certainly knows the rules and when he admitted that he had gone back on the position of where the drop should have been taken by a couple of yds !!
As they say a yard is as good as a mile especially if you are Tiger Woods and the organisers, knowing that the crowds would be down if he was relegated, decided that the turnstiles were more important than the rules.
He got a two stroke penalty for breaking the rule, acknowledging he broke the rule and then signing his card with an incorrect score which is another misdemeanor. The youngster had one stroke taken away for slow play which I question because he had no way of controlling.
 
Perhaps it was the only way the Americans could get one back on the Chinese ?  

Mrs Thatcher

Mrs Thatcher has died and all the world rush to commemorate her memory - well not quite.
To some she was a deal maker who could make things happen. A person who had the steely resolve to push her ideology regardless of the cost. Unfortunately her idealism was limited to those who would succeed - those who didn't were expendable.
This type of Tory-ism had last seen the light of day, pre-war when "noblesse oblige" was part of the way things were,  the class divisions were entrenched and the society was based on "entitlement" -   not by today's benefit scroungers but by the established upper class - born to rule.
She is known as a grocers daughter,to symbolise her lower middle class background but this was no corner shop.
A  successful father, a leading light in the local politics of his town, he nurtured her in both business and politics, far from the millions of people who were struggling to make ends meet.

Parliament had a special session calling back MPs from all over the country to eulogise and genuflect towards this ideological prima-donna.  Many Labour MPs stayed away to acknowledge their dislike of Mrs Thatcher and the few who turned up were low key in their praise. But one, Labours Glenda Jackson, struck out with a writhing tirade against the Iron Lady reminding everyone in the Commons of the damage that Mrs Thatchers policies had inflicted on large swathes of the UK.  
The Tories were apoplectic, hearing Jacksons tirade but it reminded me of the ideological divisions that used to exist between the parties before Tony Blair captured Labour and castrated the concept of socialism,  realigning Labour into New Labour, a middle of the road, Tory look alike !!            

Loneliness

Sitting in my car waiting for a client to arrive I have been listening to a program on the increasing problem of loneliness in society here in the UK.
Loneliness occurs when we lose the ability to communicate on a level that infers understanding and connection, not simply the noise of words passing through space.
We all have something to say !
Usually we stop short of opening up to others in conversation because of our up-bringing, because we are unsure if our revelations will be misunderstood, whether we will be viewed weak. Yet in reality, we have more in common with our fellow man and women than we could ever believe. The unity of friendship be it religious or standing in a crowd shouting for the same team is universal.

But why do we need people, what is it inside our mind which becomes troubled when we only have our own company.
Does the noise of other people comfort us by blanking out our own thoughts. Does our own insecurity blast out too many demons, inject too many unanswerable questions. Silence is golden but only for a while and then it begins to hang heavily.
I suppose ones surroundings play a large part in the discomfort of not having someone to pass a comment to.
If the environment is remote words, seem out of place and the peace that the silence brings, in part reminds one of how inconsequential we are in the grand scheme of things. But transpose that silence to a place where there had, in the past, been continual interaction, then the silence is visceral.
I suppose one way is to surround ones self with the routine of artificial company. The radio in the morning, the TV at night. After a while, these programs become the hook that pulls you into becoming absorbed with content, other than you own dilemma.
Of course its not the same. One could find ones-self shouting at the screen if the issue is dear to your heart and the blighter just doesn't understand but somehow when you get to this stage, its perhaps better your on your own !!  

A personal journey

To be able to read is a privilege. Reading transports one from the immediate surroundings into a world created or described by an author who themselves have been moved by what they saw or wished to create as a story. The fertility of the authors mind and the skill, with language to capture the images they want us to see is, in essence one of the most important advances that mankind has undertaken in its history. 

Where would we be without the written word to pass on our knowledge and develop a civilisation fit for our children.
I have been this last couple of weeks transported back to the 1930s following the journey into the Australian outback of Ernestine Hill and her book, The Great Australian Loneliness, a tale of the people she met who richly provided a story of endeavour and hardship, a shift of mindset far from the paradigm we consider a normal way of life.
When we think of Australia we think of Sydney, its bridge and opera house, we think of the long rolling surf sweeping in onto pristine beaches, we think of chipper Aussie batsmen and bowlers out to prove how good they are and not at all reticent to tell us !! But there is another Australia, which starts 50/100 or so miles inland and stretches 2/3000 miles to the east, the Interior. It is exemplified by a people with not only a tenacious spirit but a life long desire to escape the corral of city existence and make their own mark on the life they choose to live. 
The book was written in the 30s  and portrays an even more remote outback than the present day. Much of it concerns the North, that vast space, untrodden except by Aborigine who form, to this day, a link into a prehistoric past a world of magic images, of superstition, of unworldly values where the ancestors play an immediate role in todays events and the famous "go walkabout" is the quest to reconnect with something more important.
She takes us into the world of the drover, the sheep sheerer, the fencer, the stockman. She introduces us to the heroic, isolated settler, the vital camel train delivering mail and provisions. She describes the lonely existence of, mainly men but also some women, who know no comforts other than a basic dwelling with no communication for months at a time. The fence repairer who sets off on horseback on a trip of 3 months, alone, to check the thousands of miles of fencing. The miners scratching for gold or opals living a most rudimentary existence, year in, year out.

Only through reading can we gain perspective. A perspective which gives us a measure of our own existence when set against others, a measure of our fellow man as we ponder our own fate in this our personal journey.       

The real culprits

 

This is the week that the focus fell on identifying the malcontent's who have inherited our Benefit System.    Who it is claimed use, for their own benefit,the System by manipulating the rules and avoiding the common understanding, that claimants have to be deserving.

The Philpot family apparently exemplify the benefit scrounger. A clearly dysfunctional family with a very unpleasant man who dictated two women, each prepared to accept living and supplying this man with a sexual platform to produce children by the bucket full. 

The Tory's have been quick to link the dreadful tale of the Philpot's, with the claimants of benefit assistance  and in doing so, to demonise all benefit claimants

It has been a tactic of the Tory's to link our economic condition with the strain that the benefit culture has imposed on our borrowing requirement. There is no doubt that the complex array of benefits that we, as a civilised country, feel are necessary to insure the financial problems that effect people throughout their lifetime, do not bring more trauma  than necessary. 

Problems arrive on our doorstep which are often no fault of our own. We can fall ill, we can become unemployed, the wage earner dies and leaves a family to carry on somehow, all these events can be traumatic and society such as ours has the view that "the whole", "care for the few" for a period of time, until the situation repairs its-self. 

The concept, which came into being after the second world war and has gone through many formats, becoming more and more complex as the New Labour government sort to define the different type of claimant.

The politicians and the media seek to project a story that most of our financial woes are due to the burden these claimants put on our finances. We see the Chancellor, hurriedly dismembering the essential bridges that society has come to accept as part of the country we believe in.
There is no doubt work to be done to reduce the bill by, for instance, re-examining the way that private landlords have made a packet out of tenants,who's rents are paid through the benefit system.
Having sold off, (under Thatcher), all the post war stock of rented houses, held on the Councils books, used, to house the poor,  the Councils have been actively  discouraged by central government from borrowing on the open market to build new stock, the council now has to turn to the private sector, who obviously have little or no social conscience and make what ever they can out of this social dilemma.

Needless to say there has been little or no comment from anyone about the gigantic hole in the counties finances resulting from massive tax evasion. 

The huge problem of "laddering" by the global industries as they produce a complex web of interlinking companies to hide the profit and therefore the taxes due.

The money laundering that is part and parcel of the off shore tax havens, and owes much to the demise of Cyprus.

Our horse meat scandal illustrated the length of the chain of the producers and the many counties that finally assembled the product, never mind the financial trail as each account moves through boarders and different financial conventions.

The global economy has produced a monster whereby the tax revenues that society needs to, protect its citizens, repair the roads, build the hospitals etc etc.is missing. How convenient to blame the underclass !!

The silence is defining, from the opinion makers, from the political class from the elite, from all the beneficiary !!          

An overcast sky

Easter Sunday, the weather is, as usual overcast. 
When living in a warm sunny climate I often was reminded of the quote "the sun is shining again today but why do I have to go out and enjoy it"? As an antidote to the sunshine I used to think how satisfying to be sitting in a room looking out of the window as the storm lashed about outside and we warm and snug inside.


After what has been the most prolonged spell of poor weather for as long as records have been kept I think  sunshine has won the day !!
Inside the small houses that most people over here live in massive improvements have been effected so if the square meterage is much the same, the heating and the lighting, the connections to the outside world TV and internet and through the internet, huge opportunities with on-line music catalogues, skype and video communication, google maps which take you anywhere and everywhere, a limitless 
accessibility to information and yes, if you must, on-line shopping.


When I think of our house back in the 40s, pre the TV era with only the radio and a limited number of 78 rpm, shellac records to play, on a wind-up record player. 
When it was cold outside it was cold inside too with only a small coal fire to heat the whole house. The fire also heated the water which was plumbed as far as the kitchen tap, there was no bathroom or toilet inside the house. 
The bath was a zinc bath which, on Friday night was brought into the kitchen for the family to get a weekly bath. 
Hot water being precious was ladled into the bath, a pan full at a time and each member of the family had to queue to use the same water. Dad always got the wrong end of the stick
and was last in, by then it must have been soupy ! 

To go to the toilet meant a trip down the path, outside to
a small stone shed like room in which the toilet sat cold and foreboding, spiders and other creepy crawlies waiting to pounce.  
Going to the toilet wasn't fun for a young lad with a vivid imagination.

So you see we have travelled far but the overcast sky is still with us !!!  

A bloke with a past

Boris Johnson. Is he a clown or is he a phenomenon of our times. A performer who has used the media to create an image that now considers him a  future Prime Minister.
His attraction is that he is so different from the ultra controlled, media rehearsed, opaque crop of MPs who continually fail to carry the man in the street as they obfuscate on nearly every issue. Of course Boris does this as well but his method is one of claiming uncertainty, not knowing an answer he bumbles and smirks to bring onside his interrogator and lesson the tension. He uses a technique that has empowered him in the peoples eyes, he's one of us, not a know-all who typically tells us what they think we need to know. 
Of course the crazy thing is that his background makes the gulf between him and the ordinary person, vast. Coming from the upper middle class, his life experience has been so different. Head boy at Eaton, President of the Oxford Union at Oxford University, member of the elite and exclusive Bullington Club in the University, a true blue Tory.
It is said that in his school repertory society he learnt, not only how to act but discovered that fluffing his lines in a play, brought the audience on side with a self depreciating grin which signalled his human frailty and placed him as the likeable fool.
Beneath this joker image lies a calculating individual who has learnt to substitute clarity for a unique type of obfuscation. His private life is strune with, some would say, inappropriate behaviour. He has been a profligate in marital affair's, attractive to women, this overweight joker has an allure that must make his red blooded peers very envious !! Given his gaff prone history he is a gift to the media and when he agreed to submit to an in-depth, warts and all interview that brought back into focus his chequered past, he must have known the mine field he would be negotiating.
In the documentary his ability to look nonplussed or,excruciatingly embarrassed as his sister lent her views as to why he would make a good Prime Minister. His giggles as Sis' spoke her mind, made him human, nothing to be po faced about it brought us all around, he is one of us, a bloke with a past !!                    

The truth of course never got in the way