Bob Crow

The death of the union leader Bob Crow has made front page news and rightly so. He seemed at times to be a caricature of an an age where unionism was represented by men from the shop floor who had worked their way into a leadership role but retained their working class roots. There were parliamentarians in the same mould, some of the best people in Clement Attlee's, post war government were from the shop floor and had not been enticed by the mahogany of the boardroom to forget what they were there to do. To represent the interests of there electorate. Oh if only the people making up the benches of Parliament today had even an inkling of that concept. 

Bob Crow was a big man in many ways. He was not afraid to be himself and, at all times to remember who put him there around the table negotiating with the powerful. His vision was simple. A living wage, proper working conditions and some sort of security for each of his members. 

Our society has been fed with a diet of gloom and doom about the global society, how we are but pawns in a larger game and can no longer expect to keep pace with the world unless we become more like the Asian who sadly seem, through poverty and numbers willing to work 14 hours a day for a pittance just to say alive. 

Bob Crow would have none of this and year on year secured wage increases for the men working on the underground. Of course he couldn't match the banking industry or the boardroom increases but they knew they were dealing with a man of his word and the loyalty of his members when push came to shove. Thatcher emasculated the miners with the strong arm tactics of the police, some say the army in police clothing. The pits closed and we now wait to see if Russia will keep us supplied with gas, what a stupid position to be in. Its as if the lunatic asylum had been making the decisions, lets choose our long standing enemy and give him the keys to the castle. 

Bob Crow was asking for a fair deal for the men and women who run this mammoth transport system. It's often trotted out the importance and the losses when the tube members go on strike. If the importance of the Tube is such then surely the people running the thing have to have a part of that value, they have to be worth something. 

Its the question of the Bankers Bonus all over again. We are told they have to be paid in the millions because they are worth it, look at the investment earnings to the country. Well as they travel to Canary Wharf in their Bentley's then the thousands of workers, who keep the lights burning for these Masters of the Universe to play their crooked game flood in on the transport system and are needed, just as the train operative is needed each playing a part and each entitled to a piece of the pie !!!                     

Dress code

Dressing gown and slippers are the fast route to somewhere we would rather not be !! At least that is if they are slipped on and into for longer than it takes to shower and brush ones teeth. Descending the stairs not dressed to meet the Mayor is a mistake, it places one halfway between the bed and the office, a nowhere place to disintegrate into and become the household bum, drifting in and out of the kitchen with a plate in hand. 

Its funny how we are the sum of our actions. There seems to be no substance in the basic self, we have to dress to maintain an image but who's image.Society has a set of norms and woe betide anyone who kicks at the traces, we are therefore the sum of all the prejudice that our fellow mankind has accumulated over the centuries. 

What a sad thought !!!!      

Coasting

Its not often that someone buys you a present that is, 'just what the doctor ordered', a perfect gift that is savoured for each evocative sentence, marvelled at for the crafted nature of the writing.  I  think it reflects much of me in that it glorify's the pleasure of being a loner, looking in, observing yet not quite wanting to join. This sort of knowledge can only come from someone who has taken the time to observe and learn, in essence someone who loves me for who I am. 

The book, it had to be a book, is by Jonathan Raban and is called Coasting. Its a tale of travelling around the coast of  Britain in a small boat but its not a book about sailing its a book about a man's relationship with the country he is circumnavigating, its about his observing from a distance of a mile or two the island he grew up in and of the idiosyncrasies of the people living there. 

Its sad in that it charts change. Change from a product that had intrinsic value to one that has become more of a Theme Park of fakery than a country of substance. The book is not nostalgic rather it is deeply factual in a relatively cheerful way. Behind every lace curtain there is a tale to tell a life to read in the tea-leaf, adjustments made, responsibilities honoured and dreams as yet to be hatched. 

His rich descriptions of living on the turn of the tide and the constant attention to the weather forecast, the

myriad vagrancies of the sea and the wind, the snug shelter of a harbour cove whilst the storm blew over to reveal,  a hundred yds away a land of complacency where life was taken care of by the State and recourse to sue. 

The self imposed isolation of societies who, for protection from ridicule and exploitation put up near impenetrable  walls. 

Raised the son of a vicar in itself isolated him other children with moves from parish to parish, the vicarage a remote, large house, under maintained and rarely visited by people other than from the dwindling congregation. He delves deeply into the physic of the people living on the Isle of Man. Their term for anyone not a Manx man, "Comeovers" says it all and its this self imposed isolationism that people erect in their defences which makes the grim bearable ! 

His description of the boat, his environment, a world outside the bustle and indifference of those living on the land played many sympathetic cord in my ear. The boat (pre Copernicus) was standing still, the land its self moving slowly to Port on its own journey, a separate existence from the observer who revelled in his isolation.                     

The doctors dilemma

Sitting in the Doctors waiting room is an opportunity to see the people in the raw, a mycoplasma of disease, old age, pain and insecurity mixed with hope and the assurance that this is the place that can help.    Mothers and fathers holding

toddlers for their first immunisation or more worryingly a nasty cough that the little guy can't shift. The middle age man obviously in pain not knowing where to put himself as he waits to be called. Children and adults waiting to be seen by the one person society still put its faith into when all other societal linchpins have fallen into disrespect. Of course as Doctoring becomes less of a calling and more of a business, as their choices towards patient care become twisted by financial complications "can the practice afford this" we may have to revise our faith ?  

A riff and a spliff

Words are like the paint on a painters pallet, as you mix them the picture they paint is altered, developed into a different image telling a different story. Having been invited out to the pub by my daughter Angela I was drawn from my comfort zone, the warmth of the chair and the laptop into a noisy community of wild Welsh men and women out to enjoy themselves irrespective of cost or consequence. They were up for a party, the Welsh rugby team had thrashed the French and whilst I tried to be impartial, well perhaps I engaged in a little light hearted French partisanship the win certainly whipped the locals up for party time.

 Most people in a pub do not go there to engage in the minutia  of the game they are hedonistically out to press the character they identify themselves with, the good looking, drop down gorgeous, witty, laugh a minute personality that they have convinced themselves they are. The noise ratchets up a decibel or two with each passing pint and the few of us who are keen on the game struggle to follow it. 

Being a reinvented virgin in the night out stakes I watched the party boil up into a witches brew as the participants etched out a position for later on, whilst my attention was turned to a local jazz group warming up as the game finished. I'v mentioned in past blogs that Swansea is awash with pubs hosting jazz and blues bands its as if the town was a final settling spot for aged musicians still wishing to strut their stuff and good stuff it is too. 

How I wish I had the gift to play like they do, ageing is of no consequence if you can role back the years with a riff and maybe a spliff.       

US Foreign Policy

When will we learn and understand that the logic we hold is not universal. 

The Americans, largely isolationist for years took on the role of the world policeman after finding its self confronted with the insular politics of the old world. 

Believing its own hype about democracy establishing an even, common political landscape in which people would find their own equilibrium, through the mechanism of free elections, (their holy grail), they set about educating the world at large. 

But as we see, when people like Snowdon break ranks and the Internet and the smart phone captures and transmits

around the world in seconds the incidents that government would rather see covered up we receive a very different education. When the democracy which America projects is corrupted on its own soil by the smell of money, when its belief in the rule of law is ignored in the medieval attitude it exhibits to its own prison population and the ignominy

of Guantanamo Bay. They like the British before them, meddle in other peoples affairs and make a bad situation far worse. Libya, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, Syria and now the Ukraine have all felt the moralising of the US trying to effect events according to a Western recipe cooked up in a political assembly that bears no reference to the world at large. The events that bubble up in the far flung corners of the world are far too complex to boil down to one prescription. Dictators often hold together disparate conflicting tribes in a way that freedom to elect your leader is aced by the sight of a Kalashnikov !!!    

Promises, promises

What will happen in the Ukraine now the Russian Bear has started up the engines of the tanks on the countries border. The Russians don't mess around, remember Georgia they simply rolled into the country and settled the issue of a Georgian nationalist uprising by cracking the whip. The tension in the Ukraine was on our screens every night and one wondered why the army were not called in and Marshal Law proclaimed. The ultimate force is always held by the

government no unarmed or disorganised group can take on the State and for some reason they never called on the police or the army to resist the onslaught of bricks or the violent use of staves to beat the police lines. 

The police did not retaliate and simply absorbed the violence behind their shields with many of their men sustaining serious injury. 

It brings to mind the so called Arab Spring revolt in Libya and Egypt. The public resorting to violence in Brazil and Venezuela, in Thailand and Pakistan its all a far cry from sleepy old UK. 

One wonders, as the financial industry draws down on the global society and we all have to pay for the crass and some would say illegal activity of the Banks who collectively broke every trading rule in the book but interestingly, were not judged illegal by the banking fraternity and didn't promote one arrest by the authorities of any banking executive. 

The damage to the financial fabric, (which we all depend on), is virtually irretrievable and has only been sustained by massive quantitative easing, printing money, devaluing currency, what ever you want to call it. It will deform much of society for decades to come. 

Nationalism, tribalism, separatism are becoming attractive to populations across the globe as they see the inadequacy of the old order and the sham promises that democracy and the parliamentary system made to ordinary people !!!