Leicester City

The football season is drawing to a close and the last minute efforts for some to stay up in the Premier League is coming to and end with fans visibly tearful as their team is relegated.
So much hope and faith on a game in which sometimes, because you live in a town where the team play but often because of some link to the past or to a family connection and you become totally irrational in your judgement and support.
Grown men who can not see the opposing side without blinkers, blinding the supporter, obscuring  fact from fiction, turning them into a manic personality.
The tribe is at root of it all, a self absorbed entity with goals which exclude rational thought, only the subversion of ones own personality into a mechanism where winning is the one expression that can ameliorate the day to day existence of a disgruntled individual.
Hours of punditry are spent analysing the ins and outs of a game where Lady Luck has as much a part to play as all the hours on the practice pitch. It's an industry in which obscene wages are paid to young men with little talent other than to kick and control a ball and no matter how the cost of a ticket into the ground, plus the cost of travel to away games goes up and up, men and it's largely men will put aside their earnings to follow the game apparently oblivious to the need to spend those funds at home.
Leicester is the team who have defied all odds this season and look like winning the League. From the bottom last season to the top this.  What happened to the lads who played last season to the ones who turned up this season. Largely they are the same people but this time they are full of self-belief, each fulfilling his specific role, fullback, centre half centre forward 100 & 10 %.
Where did this confidence and the inter responsibility come from. Why now and not then.
A winning streak is a condition known to many. The gambler, the snooker player, the jockey all have winning streaks but it is unusual for a whole team to come together and play as winners week after week in one of the toughest tournaments in the world of soccer.
Good luck to them. We always love the underdog, the usurper who rattles the cage of the heir apparent and especially when they defeat the pundits of their proffered knowledge.

Ken Livingston

I wrote an email the other day regarding the hew and cry over the anti Semitic remarks made by a new Labour MP Naz Shah and then the furore in the media of comments made by Ken Livingston supporting "her right to say" what she had said and then, remarking that Hitler had had a similar idea but in the reverse, encouraging Jewish people to leave Germany and move to Israel through an agreement in 1933 called the Haavara Agreement between Germany and the Zionists where the Zionist movement were calling for the return of Jews world wide to bolster the state of Israel. Apparently the current head of state, Benjamin Netanyahu made the same point to the Zionist Congress just the other day but this has no effect on the commentariat and all they want is confrontation. That's what sell seats. The culture of truth has no place in the modern propaganda factory and the British are in danger of becoming even more deformed.


Even at this moment on the radio Ken Livingston is being pummelled by two media chaps who are determined to light a fire underneath him, determined to explain to him that the truth is irrelevant and that it is more important to lubricate what he said by apologising mentioning Hitler. Livingston is determined to refer to history whilst his accusers refuse to acknowledge that the historical reference was true and are determined that he must apologise irrespective.
I applaud Livingston for his courage to stand up to these craven appeasers who for political reasons would sell their grandmother for a peerage.
The thrust of my email was that I felt the media and other interested parties like the Jewish Guild were over the top in their condemnation and as in so much of our desire to accommodate the changing face of Britain we were in danger of banishing something of real value in this country, free speech. It's interesting that his supporters as they ring in on the radio (LBC) are cut off early in their comment whilst his opposers are given full rein
The row is becoming more hysterical by the hour as people queue up to damn Livingston for what he said about Hitler. Leaders in the Lords, columnists and pundits, all perfectly able to research the history have refused to acknowledge the truth in what he said and instead have continued to pillage him. Is there an agenda, have the dark forces seen a crack to exploit their own bitterness.
The news has become 'entertainment' and the political agenda class have such clout these days that any view, different to the narrow views of seeking conformity, shrinking what we hear and see and what we can say down to an almost meaningless mambo jumbo.
The herd effect of the British citizen is almost frightening. The mass hysteria of a Diana funeral or the almost regimented need to show their grief at every turn has become a new national trait displacing the stiff upper lip of old.
We are of course in the hands of a propaganda machine, which the media, through the advent of television has become a drip feed of uncollaborated  information, be it Hitler or the myriad of no go areas covering disability, feminism, homophobia and much else.
 

Anti Semitism

When is anti Semitism not anti Semitism.
As the Media Rottweilers were out today hysterically venting their anguish at certain members of the Labour Party for so called anti Semitic  comments which, it is adjudged, could, perhaps should be levelled at the Israeli government and the Zionist cause but must not include the Jewish nation because the Jews are a race, not a nation

Heaven forbid if the 'race card' is pulled out.

David Cameron, is an Englishman. The English are identified as a nation not a race, and therefore he and we can be pummelled by opponents as a member of a government, which includes us his collective national entity. 

Imagine the uproar if the British and their Empire was off piste because they represent a race of people.We taunt the French and the Germans and they taunt us but I have never heard a challenge made of inflammatory language towards us or them for doing so, but then again these are nations not a race. What a load of baloney !!!
The power of the Jewish lobby is everywhere and as these labour MPs surround their leader baying for him to chop off heads, it's amazing how many of them have Jewish/Israeli ancestry. 

I understand why a tribe feels it's identity is important, especially one with such a turbulent past but turbulence, as any engineer will tell you doesn't come out of thin air. Turbulence arrises when  natural conformity is challenged, when a society, any society or subset of that society sees itself disadvantaged in someway. When it feels there is a detached group of people in their midst who have their own agenda and are exclusive. 

The Jews are not inclusive, try marring one, they have their own code and set of values. In terms of the ultra orthodox then they are downright strange, practicing medieval segregation not only externally but within in their own race and worse, between man and the woman much in line with that other Middle Eastern Religion the Muslim faith. We are excluded from their contrivance of "Special Nation Status" in the eyes of God, is it any wonder their are questions asked of them.
Group think, which identifies the ideology of the media pack, makes us feel sullied by the special demands voiced and propagated through the media. Unusual behaviour is after all the trait of a religious identity and when it becomes overt, when it demands special status, when it asks us to review our own status in terms of freedom of speech, Jews or Muslims become an anathema to the secular world. 

In seeking  a special dispensation, the shrill insistence of a special place in the hierarchy of Man. We "the others" feel left out, let down but made very aware that we are on dangerous ground if we wish to dissent, let alone, 'heaven forbid', criticise.

Baking a cake

The future gets closer each day.
It's two in the afternoon and I dozed off in the chair for half an hour as part of the "day's activities".

It reminded me of the days when I had a contract installing data circuits in an 'Old Peoples Home' in East Ham watching the oldies sitting around in the main lounge sleeping the day through, hung up on tranquillisers. I used to joke with the staff that I wasn't a resident but as I started myself out of my sleep it occurred to me I had the pedigree. 

Life is about tomorrow more than today, unless you are lucky enough to be doing something special and tomorrow, not yet having arrived, one can still hope. The activities when you retire centre around the domestic and mundane. There are few exciting, what if's, there aren't any gambles, only the surety of the same old, same old and even then there's no actual surety !!
In some ways this is ok, the trials of strength, the conflict, the ongoing need to perform at ones best are yesterday's problem. The comfort of knowing that it's paid for and that the increasing improbability that you will shake of the lassitude which inhibits most of your planning is no longer threatening.
The warmth of a hot bath and a cosy bed is the prism through which you begin to judge the day, the headlong dive into the pages of a good book who's plot you are immersed in, the characters swollen into reality by the skill of a good author.
Cooking and the Internet, You Tube to play housemaid as you pour a little of that and heat a little this, reveals hidden talents of which you proudly announce to friends and family as if you were the embodiment of Jamie Oliver. The smart phone captures the gastronomic triumph and with a wosh is transported around the world in a nano second to establish that you are still around, a valuable item, someone of consequence.
The things you should avoid are the things you were good at since the comparison is usually unfavourable. The balance isn't quite there. The wind and the muscular strength have moved away. It's no use running for that bus, rather wait for the next one, there is usually a next one and you have the time.
'Invisibility' is a bummer since internally you are still overpoweringly in your own bubbling with things to say, holding the court of one with an opinion which no one seems to want to hear.
As you pass down the isle in the Supermarket or walk through suburbia on your way home you are invisible, inconsequential an impediment and yet for all that you carry in your heart and your head the memories of bygone times when you were noticed and people wanted to hear.
This is not a melancholy message and it's not the same message for all those of a certain vintage but it has enough seeds of truth in it to bake a cake.

Hallelujah

Listening to an interview with Rachel Dolezal a white woman who identifies as being black was an interesting experience. She bases he linage on the fact that we are "all" descended from an African mother.
It's an interesting claim and delivers the racial divisions which have evolved over many thousands of years into the modern cultural climate of group superiority, a deadly body blow.
The perceived distance which was created as the model of Northern European identity evolved. The need to build shelter and mechanise food production as a way of surviving the inhospitable conditions in the Northern climes, distinct  from the African who stayed behind in an Africa with its bountiful harvests, where life was easier and that in some way, being easier was somehow less of a developmental challenge.
It is now accepted that we all evolved, but according to our needs and it is a false premise that we are fundamentally different since although we modified our tools to survive , we are as one and not different in any other way.
It's a message one hears from religious groups, we are all equal in the eyes of God and under the outward exterior we all share the same physiology.
This woman has determined that her ancestors are the true arbitrators of who she is and she deliberately shies away from claiming any advantage that society claims for her because she looks white. Her ethos, that the historical tale of the subjection of one group by another is based on this damaging premise of superiority. In her view there can be no superiority other than that amongst  individuals regardless of race.
If it is true then it immediately rids the world of one of the most harmful aspects of division, that of race.  We are all of the same race, the same stock, the same ethnicity. We are all brothers and sisters, we are all one family. Hallelujah !!!

Who to believe

The tragedy of communication is that the industry which propels the thoughts and ideas of people to others is itself a damaged vehicle.
The BBC this morning has cottoned on to an email sent within the South East Yorkshire Police Federation so say to its members, after the police have taken a hammering in the Hillsborough verdict and moral must be rock bottom, that "you the members of the force can hold your heads high for the work you did, day to day, so many years ago". My interpretation was that the message was not directed at the police who were present in the ground but generally and even if it had been directed at the core of Bobbies serving in Hillsborough that day, it seems to me that as a collective they serve under a command and their actions are governed by that command.
It is the commanding officers and the orders they issued then and subsequently that are guilty.
I don't mind the BBC or any other media outlet, asking the question "why the email", but too often these days they act as judge and jury and more importantly they influence the ordinary man and women in the street as to what to believe.
The communication is at it again with the "trolls" lining up to cast aspersions at the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn because of his history of being pro Palestinian and anti Zionist. The sound bite investigatory interview is designed not to pursue the truth but to heighten tension, just as the newspaper headline is designed for the bulk of the readers to be egged on in their prejudice.  

Even prejudice has its roots and can be explained. We all think and express ourselves based on little or no knowledge and we all think we are right. One man's right is another's wrong and how we come to our surety had better be assumed on a broader base than what we read of hear on the media, otherwise we will be like the 'sheep' (limited understanding yet blindly supporting Napoleons ideas ) in Animal Farm, which of course was Orwell's reason for writing the book.

Criticise at your peril

What happened to our right to free speech ?
Currently the Jewish lobby is up in arms against members of the Labour Party for criticising the the actions of the Israeli government in Tel Aviv.
I think it common cause that the heavy handed actions against the Palestinians has provoked criticism even from Israel's  paymaster the United States where it has a tremendously powerful and influential block vote in Congress.

Of course Israel has been in a covert/overt war with all of its Arab neighbours since 1947 when the state of Israel was founded as recompense for the terrible pogroms the European Jews had experienced, specifically under the Nazi's. 

Prior to this recognition in 1947, and followed the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, known as the Balfour Declaration mandated the area to be under British control in 1923. The 1947 arrangement was, on behalf of the United Nations, a handing over process, from the British for joint control between the Palestinians and the Jews. The plan was accepted by the Jews but not accepted by the Palestinians and the conflict rolls on to its present day bloody impasse.There have been moments in the journey when agreement was close but the intransigence of one side or the other was a hurdle too high.
The de facto situation is that the Israeli hates the Palestinian and visa versa.  Zionism, the nationalist political movement formed in 1896, flourished under these conditions and now reflects this as bitter antagonism.
We see today the result of the intransigence as a battle, on the Jewish side for their existence and on the Palestinian side a call,( pre Imperial tinkering ) for the reinstatement of their land.
David and Goliath, at the start of the Mandate the Jews numbered 56.000 and the Arabs 700.000 now many multiples of that but with an ultra modern army/airforce backed by American financial support the Israeli has 'might' on his side.
From our cosy European standpoint the Zionists are too heavy handed, too dictatorial, too unpleasant in their dealings with Palestine and have created a great deal of opposition amongst the more libertarian amongst us and this surfaces from time to time in comments and arguments trying to explain and solve the impasse. One such recent comment was from a Labour MP and made before she became an MP, was the suggestion of 'repatriation of Jews back to the USA' along the lines of the repatriation of Syrians who are flooding to Europe. It's something the author Philip Roth, himself a Jew had envisioned in a story line of a book he wrote, in this case, it was the repatriation of the bulk of the Jews to Continental Europe from whence they came in 1947 -onwards.
The Jewish lobby are always sensitive to such talk and with their propensity to avail themselves of the media ( they own much of it ) they respond and insist on who ever has had the temerity to question what they do "back home". The Jewish whip is cracked and our supine leaders, linked in all kinds of nefarious ways, rush to the dispatch box to threaten us "to be quiet",  which like 'good children' we are all supposed to do.
There is always this balance of keeping a lid on dissent within society but Jewish dissent reaches biblical proportions, ( akin to cartoons depicting Allah ) and one criticises at ones peril.