No one is happy.

I was on my way to the shop, walking through the park when I overheard a couple of women discussing a toy and whether it was appropriate for a boy or a girl. There has been a strong movement to blur gender weighted toys and to encourage boys to receive things that in the past would be the preserve of girls and visa versa. In this

ideologically driven mood we are determined to mix and match like sweets in a bag, the genders, so that encouraging boys to play with dolls and girls to push a truck around will develop a society in which out of work poorly educated males will recognise their role ,and make an ideal house husband.  

When I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, the gender identification was clear. It was based on a society which assumed that men went out to work and women prepared for marriage and to have children. This was not a bad contract for the bulk of people and whilst not written in stone. Many women rejected the stereotype and ploughed their own furrow by becoming part of the full time workforce, competing for a piece of the proverbial pie, by often deciding not have a family. Many accepting that they couldn't do justice to being a mother and a full time member of the workforce. 

Then came the evolution of the Welfare State.     It becoming a surrogate husband, providing an income stream which

meant that the role of the male began to diminish. 

Resentment has come, interestingly, not from the male side but rather from the female as they became a media talking point. Feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of having to be a a person in their own right on the job promotional ladder whist raising children they sought both more state aid and demanded that their partner (if they had one) played a much more intensive role in child rearing. 

The pressure of living beyond ones means is a cruel dilemma, wanting it all is a human failing and some how we have landed in such a mess that no one is happy !!!     

Mark Carney

Watching as you do (?) the the Select Committee having a hearing from the Governor of the Bank of England,

Mark Carney, and are asking questions about rate fixing in the Bank. 

Often one is swayed by personality, in this case of the Canadian born Governor and I was impressed and convinced that not only is he on top of the job but that he is as, open a book as one can be in this important job. 

The last Governor, Mervyn King, was a member of our Establishment, one of the old school, who one always felt behaved as if he was above the parliamentary committee and therefore seemed to be condescending in his reply's. 

He was a master in obfuscation and batted questions away with the qualification of "a need to know what is the Banks business". 

The new Governor is not old school, he is clear, although guarded because of the importance of what he says and gives confidence in his answers. 

He was accompanied by a man, one of the old school and the contrast was palpable. The old school, squirm and search for ways around the question avoiding any suggestion that they can, at a later date be pinned down. Its a debating game and not an attempt to find a resolution. 

I was impressed by Carney and felt he was on our side by which I mean he was not a club member saying one thing to the watching public whilst reserving the truth for the club members. 

Its a characteristic of this country that a very high proportion of the countries Prime Minister come from one school, as do the bulk of the other members of the Party in Government. We are a 'class ridden' society and even given the suggestion that we have opened up some of the 'command positions' to others from lower back-grounds, we still contrive to accept that our betters know better. 

It was refreshing to hear a man who, whilst very clever, had not been born with the disadvantage of growing up in the "hot house of exclusivity".        

Hope and gullibility

A good book is a gift to the soul. It becomes a companion as your read the text and the story unfolds bit by bit, character by character each struggling to make contact with your mind.Through the eyes, we have a lifeline to explore the world around us, in the case of the reader a world we haven't visited but is made no less real by the craft of the writer. Some writers have a gift to inspire, others are simply wordsmiths. Occasionally one comes across an author who so captures your mood he or she become, in a sense, interwoven with your ideas about things in general and you walk in their footsteps all the way. 

One such writer, Jonathan Raban has for me been a voyage of discovery. Angela bought me his book 'Coasting', and I wrote a blog describing my appreciation of not only the story but the story behind the story which was, in some ways my own.  Many of my thoughts and emotions were captured in the book and seeing the images on paper, so well crafted is like having a good conversation, its a pleasure you savor for a long time afterwards. 

I am currently reading his book Bad Lands a story of the immigrants to America who were cajoled by some of the finest ad-man's craft, to move out West into the Prairies and settle on the land. He describes the type of person coming from all corners of the earth drawn by a pamphlet so alluring so filled with promise that from the stunted life in the cities of Europe, Europe was such a poor second that it was no contest. As with all prospectus the problems lay in the small print or were not mentioned at all and it was only with the tenacity that human beings finding themselves in a predicament find solutions. The size of these vast stretches of land, rolling out as far as the eye could see with no identifying features to hang a mental perspective on must have been mind blowing to the cramped imagination of the European. 

The author retraces the steps of the rail road, The Great Western Pacific as it pushed its way across the prairie

giving birth to small towns with improbable names, spawning clusters of humanity to develop some sort of viability. 

His journey now is one of a ghost finder, the homesteads gone, the ruins merging back into the soil, each a dream unfulfilled and a perfect example of the mist that creative story telling in the form of the copywriters art brings and finds its epoch in today's 'consumer society'.  

The Ghosts are everywhere but their story is rich in hope and endeavour, a monument to mankind even if tinged by his gullibility!!          

A democratic decision

So now we inch forward to an economic freeze between the West and Russia with all the implications for everyone. The financial health of the western world is still precarious and requires a great deal of confidence between nations to allow the huge interlinking deficits, held by mostly western banks to work themselves through over time. 

This sort of potentially seismic spike in the financial world will be difficult to contain, given the fragile condition of the banks and the linked economies can the ideological positions on both sides take into consideration the overall picture.  

As with so much of our past, national boundaries have been drawn as part of a quid pro quo,  a quirk of of back room deals or a wider consideration and not a reflection of the actual needs or the ethnic make up of the land to be partitioned. 

The Crimea was a part of Russia until handed to the Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in the 50s.    It has a predominantly Russian speaking population and in yesterdays referendum it naturally chose to belong to Russia. 

This seems to me to be a perfectly "democratic" outcome arising from the threat by the Ukrainian government in Kiev to make the Russian language, in Crimea the second language of what in effect are Russian people. The bulk of the people rejected the move, particularly from a government that its self had come into power by ousting the sitting President, ostensibly by a right wing putsch supported by the West, the President having chosen Russia as its benefactor not the EU. 

The blatant policy of the US to interfere with sovereign nations where ever they are and particularly in its containment of Russia by the encroachment of NATO forces around the boarders of Russia has at last produced a backlash from the Russians. I have little or no sympathy with President Putin, he has been guilty of outright suppression in his own country throwing opposition into jail and worse. He is a throw back to the type of politician that ran the old USSR and yet the ordinary Russian respects strong autocratic leadership, its built into their history perhaps their genes.          

Spring is sprung

Its been a lovely warm sunny day today, perhaps Spring is sprung and we can look forward to the marvel which happens each year, natures rebirth is all around. 

The trees are in bud, opening to display their subtle often vivid colours, attracting the insects to help pollination. 

The apparently dead plants throw off their winter gloom and find new life with the warmth of the sun. The fish pond is alive again with frogs croaking and copulating madly in the seasonal reaffirmation of the life cycle, the need to procreate the species and boy do they procreate !! I have always wondered where do the frogs that now populate my fish pond go in winter.There must be 20 or more fully grown frogs in the pond each busy and yet each year, after they have spawned I gather them in a large bucket to take them down to the river and release them. The frog spawn become tadpoles and the tadpoles become breakfast for my fish and yet each year at this time they are back, like homing pidgins to start all over again. 

The birds are also returning their song a rich communication, revealing their identity and position, calling for a mate to continue this 'maintenance plan of who they are and what, at its very basic, life is about. 

We as humans loose this perspective, we build our shelters to make the climate inconsequential, our food is produced by others and the procreation aspect is usually a short sprint whilst we make plans for other things !!!!       

Not giving way to adversity

Disability is a term we use to describe people who have perhaps lost their sight, an arm or a leg, we say they are disabled when compared to ordinary people, we imply that ordinary folk are more able. 

You would think this a reasonable assumption, people with impaired sight have many extra hurdles to get over when they cross a room or a road and much of what we take for granted is to the unsighted person a maze of complications. Having only one leg or one arm means the many of the places and exercises they might like to visit and do would be impossible or at least very difficult. 

I have just finished watching the Paralympics skiing finals at Sochi and I feel truly humbled watching the disabled athletes hurtle down the slopes at breakneck speed. 

First it was someone with one leg on a single ski swishing left and right through the gates at a speed that seemed every bit as fast as a normal person. I use the word normal in the sense that they would describe themselves normal whilst I think they are crazy to skim over ice and snow apparently so close to losing control, being on a knife edge of success and disaster, a line crossed far too easily. 

To do all this on one leg well, I was fascinated. The next person had not only one leg but, if this wasn't enough, she only had one arm !! Down she went at breakneck speed changing direction this way and that moving her weight to push the ski one way and another to negotiate the the gates.  

Disability not a bit of it just another example of the remarkable tenacity some humans have of reinventing themselves and not giving way to adversity.