Conscience does make cowards of us all.

The books of Jane Austen are riddled with the use of rank and prestige within society, a situation which still lives to this day. 

In those days the intricacies of form were a labyrinth  of formality and structure. In less than a two hundred years we have attained our savage face once again.

The curious tension that used to exist between male and female, the reserve and the respect are all gone. That first stolen kiss leading to a pounding heart and confusion as to what you were letting yourself in for. That involvement with a creature, so like yourself yet so different. It was if there had been a changing of the guard, with instructions now being issued by another individual for which you were only too happy to comply so long as you pleased the lass.

Clothes were no longer something to hide your frame and keep you warm, they became a fashion accessory something to attract attention. Hair, toiletry and the consumption of polo mints took on a substantive importance such as never before. In your mothers eyes at least, you were smashing.

The trials of unrequited love ❤️ were just beginning. The torture of being rejected was fresh. The lyrics of the songsmiths gained new relevance "If I fell in love with you would you promise to be true" was a sad refrain when she ditched you for the other fella. Oscars lament that "it was better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" was no recompense.

They were marvellous years as much for the pathos as for the satisfaction. They are the moments you still remember as if it were only 'yesterday', (another lyric, another memory).

So Jane your writings still had relevance, a relevance today's young people would probably claim superfluous. Bing bash bong is the current trends one night stand arrangement. Living out of wedlock, raising children without a partner and wearing the single parent motherhood as a badge of honour.  

Of course it also carries the badge of choice and free will but in my estimation, free will is a difficult road to travel. You have to be hedonistic, self centred and selfish for it all not to carry with it a few pangs of conscience.

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude is a lovely word. Difficult to pronounce if you have a thick tongue like mine but so apt in these days of cranked up emotion.

Whether it is the Brexit discussion or the truth about Hillary, whether we are watching an advert proclaiming the latest health food or reasons the stock market is rising we are fed a diet of verisimilitude, a smidgen here, a dollop there, just enough to make the wheels go around.
We are all so gullible but then we have had decades when what a person said was taken on face value. Only the deceitful played with your trust and if you were lucky you didn't have many of them around you.

 Newspapers such as the old, pre Murdock day, Times printed on lightweight paper emblazoned with a coat of arms, was the 'word' brought down the mountain, true -un-embellished fact, you could bet your life on it. There were of course 'others' of a less distinguished nature, from a stable not known for its veracity such as the News of the World but, like purchasing gin in a brown paper bag, you were identified leaving the newsagents with a copy.

Auntie (a term describing the BBC) was so well turned out, so precise, so clear of purpose - to give the news to the nation as received from dispatches. No messing around, no tarting up, no agenda to teach.
We were so lucky. The secrets remained secrets, quite rightly they were not for our titivation - they were secrets damn it.
Today we weave our way through a plethora of, he said she said, claim and counter claim, innuendo and aspersions, queen trumps  jack. It's all so confusing but of course it's more than just confusing since it undermines the fabric of society if everyone is seen to be lying. A lier was always frowned upon. It was if communication, painfully developed to help us progress as a species, had a virus that could destroy us all. That knowledge and trust could be destroyed. That we wouldn't know how to proceeded on the quicksands of deceit and treachery if our confidence was shaken.
Today with not only state propaganda but also from  those people purporting to claim that we can place our faith in them to lead us and make important decisions for us, if they are mired in duplicity, double dealing, trickery where do we turn for leadership.
Perhaps God has a place after all but then some would say, he invented verisimilitude.

The Law

Who to believe, who is implicated, what are the next revelations going to reveal.

In the final days of the run up to the American Elections Julian Assange has orchestrated a drip feed information leak with Hillary Clinton firmly in his sights.
The information is not a smoking gun where a victim lays on the floor in a pool of blood and the killer has a gun in his hand. Much of what has been levelled at Mrs Clinton seems to be, breaches of protocol (her use of a private email account) or innuendo such that the Saudi Arabian government who fund ISIS, also fund the Clinton Foundation and somehow this fact implies there is a connection between the crazies in Syria and the crazies in Washington.
Of course the whole business reveals the less then transparent dealings in the Capital of "capital" where a politically designed, unregulated capitalistic business system has unfettered power. The shady deals and shaky regulation makes a mockery of the of the importance of an independent judiciary. The opaque structure within a market led economy which demands freedom to wheel and deal has no sense of an "inter -connection" between it and society at large. The deals and the bribes are part and parcel of the way a contract is secured and if it is thought that "jobs are at risk" or tax revenues may dry up then the "end", proceeds any ethical consideration.
Wikileaks has been extremely useful in revealing warts and all much of what was hidden, dotting the I and crossing the T, but it has been done at a cost. The relationship between a population and its leaders can only prosper if the people believe that the law applies equally to the rich and powerful. If that trust is lost then anarchy is never far behind and whilst we may feel far removed and superior to the countries, such as in the Middle East, breaking down as I write we mustn't be so sure.  If the delicate balance begins to turn in our own country then forces which are prevalent in all societies might just tip that balance the wrong way.

 One of the saddest sights this morning was to see the newspaper headlines, virtually across the board, damming the judges for doing what they are paid to do, rule on the law. The issue of whether Parliament has the right to be involved, over the head of government, when "statutes", which are the province of parliament, are to be changed especially since there is no written constitution in place, only Parliament as a collective can change a statute.

Article 50, part of the constitutional membership agreement to join the EU, which will trigger our exit from the EU, will on its application set aside an existing statute taken at Maastricht when we joined the EU and therefore it needs parliaments approval to set it aside. That's the law and seems to me that as countries tread their own line in this increasingly turbulent world, only the precision of law can possibly fend off the tyranny of the fascist.

A room at the Inn

Having made a booking and driven many miles to see your "bed for the night" it always seems that the procedure for obtaining the key, advancing down the corridor on floor three looking for room 368, is to remove yourself from all you know and places you in a capsule in which a clock is ticking.

Reception confirming your presence brandishes a key with a reminder that dinner is served at eight o'clock sharp. The rules of the establishment are pasted on your door and as you struggle to fit the key the door eventually opens to a narrow cubical largely taken up with a bed and wardrobe. There might be a small desk with a pot of tea which only requires hot water and a complementary biscuit to make your welcome complete. Off to the left is the shower cubical and a sink. And as you peer around the door you are met by an apparition, yourself, tired and hungry staring back at you in the huge mirror. The ubiquitous multi channelled television waits, it is the only link to your own domestic nest 200 miles away but somehow reassuring in that the programs seem to be a common thread no matter where you are.
It's Tuesday and the meeting tomorrow will be much the same as last week, a sparring session to denote who is the Alpha male and how many widgets they will buy this time.
Hunger drives you down stairs to see what's cooking and also what else this less than salubrious establishment offers.The bar looks tired and the barman more so. Perhaps one before dinner to cheer myself up but even a splash of alcohol can't raise the spirits much and the conversation between strangers is hardly creative. 

Staying long. Where are you from. Going tomorrow, I see.

A little after eight the doors to the dining room swing open and there is a surge to find a seat. The menu, like the tablecloth hasn't been changed in a while but beggars can't be choosers. The swing door into the kitchen bangs open to reveal our waiter looking tired and somewhat depressed at the thought of being here, like the barman, (hang on it is the barman) takes our order and shuffles off into the kitchen.
The food is not unappealing since I am ravenous but the smell of cooked cabbage does little to lighten the spirits. Meals can be moments of absolute satisfaction, given the right company they can be memorable but eating with a bunch of company reps and a sprinkling of resident pensioners is hardly a salutary experience.
As you settle down in the double bed you wonder if this is what your dreams amount to since by Thursday you will be repeating everything over again with only the long drive home to look forward to.
The dream used to be of being in charge, not only of what you do or where you will be at any given time, but of not being part of someone else's calendar, of having your own space time a personal capsule and like captain Spock "go where no man has ever gone".

Things ain't what they used to be.

Having worn glasses virtually all my life I must have visited the optometrist on a regular basis over the years. As with all the professional organisations that one fleetingly interacts with, like the doctor and the dentist, some things have changed but much has stayed as it was. 

The chart on the wall and the lens holding device are all from the past. The new gadgets are the pre test analysis such as a pressure measurement and the ability to scan the eye in such a way as to pick up potential problems regarding the health of the eye itself.
The test still relies on an interchange of in formation but much of the information flowing from the patient is subjective. "Is that clearer" depends on an evaluation which is trying to be helpful but struggles to distinguish between "clear" or seemingly better defined in so far as contrast is concerned. There is a difference.

The test largely concentrates on each eye in turn but when the eyes work in tandem and there is an incremental lag between the two images, the frustration of the Optometrist is palpable as their own information is based on specific graduations in the strength of the lens they now have to cope with the subjective reality of someone's else's brain having difficulty blending two perfectly good optical signals with a phase shift which makes a mockery of all they are trying to do. 'Oh my god' is the look on the face of the Optometrist, whilst the poor old patient dearly wishes 'their reality' was more like the one expected of them.

Dentistry has changed much more radically, not only in the sphere of damping down the pain but also the administration of the painkillers. The tools of the trade remain much as they were, the pliers to pull the tooth out and the hooks to probe around are much as I remember them. One significant improvement has been the high speed pneumatic detail drill, such a far cry from the belt driven drill of my childhood, that and the use of gas with the dentist forcibly clamping the mask over your face like a kidnap artist.

In those days the drill, the gas, and the adversarial temperament of the dentist terrified his patient and made a trip to the dentist a thing to dread. Conversation is of course very one sided and usually resorts to grunts and even today the high pitched whine of the drill and the expectation of pain as the cavity gets deeper is synonymous with some sort of Disney cartoon comedy where you know the circular saw will not reach Mickey's chest but the look on Mickey's face tells you no one has told him yet.

A visit to the doctor is less reassuring these days.  Then the doctor knew the family pretty intimately he/she had been around at the birth and their  knowledge of every medical scare was imprinted on their memory when you walked through the door into the surgery. Taking your seat and noticing who was in the room so as to know your place when "next" was called was far simpler than under going the gauntlet of reception Today sadly the doctor doesn't know you from Adam. The practice has grown such that it's nothing more than an assembly line and with the clock ticking, you had better get down to discussing your medical problem and quick. Much of the small talk which used to reveal a lot to the doctor as the patient opened up to speak, was of emotional nature and revealed problems often laying behind the medical ones as for a minute or two a rapport was established. Today the computer holds your history, you are to it nothing more than bits and bytes whilst to the doctor, you are a blood test and a pathology report.

Trumpeting a different message

Is our comprehension of what is 'right and wrong' simply a prolonged intrusion into our collective mind using programs to re-educate us and pacify what we would have said were our deepest fears. 

Our deepest  fear is the fear of something we can not recognise. It was the bogey-man in our childhood, the unrecognisable shape, the thing under the bed waiting to pounce.

In those days the fear was fantasised it was a sublimely felt fear of something foreign to our common experience.

This description of a foreign experience is all around us today.  The fantasy is real and this reality has been the work of those who sought to remould public opinion toward what ever was foreign.

By foreign I don't just mean the people from foreign lands or their foreign ways and customs, (to say nothing of their food) but it's the foreignness of our belief system and again I am not talking of a religious based belief system but the beliefs which were  grounded in our psych as we grew up, the things you took for granted were your culture.

In virtually every area of this childish surety we have been re-educated, told that our values were wrong and pressurised to change them.

This world in which we now make our way is full of things of which we have, at its mildest, reservations , at its extreme, revulsion and yet these  dry natural  impulses to quantify and evaluate the current situation are demonised by the liberal movers and shakers, pigeon holed with derogatory terms, racist, or misogynist. Terms used to close down any further conversation or debate, the decisions have been made and you query them at your peril.

Of course this largely only effects the older person, those who held opinions before opinions were held for you !!

One of the saddest sights is seeing how the young are so pliant these days, easily manipulated by media propaganda. If they have interests and a willingness to visit the barricades it's on things of self interest such as University fees or the hopeless situation of a housing market which has been manipulated by middle class interests. Perhaps the global economy and the power of the banks can get the juices flowing but arguments regarding the social make up of society, or the pressures of contrasting cultures within a not so homogeneous society, is to process ideas that have been formalised and made instinctive in only a matter of a decade or two. The totalitarianism which has subsumed the youth in general is the work of a section of society who for one reason or another had to deal with a multi cultural, multi ethnic society which the political masters in this country had foisted on us to provide the low wage economy needed for high returns and a quick monetisation of their investment.

I was drawn to my diatribe this morning having started a book on Donald Trump written by one of his wildest advocates Ann Coulter. She speaks of the rage and the sense of impotence many Americans feel towards the establishment. She feels the insensitivity of  the establishment towards the Trump barrage against Liberal America is just what fuels the great rump of American people's contempt.

From Illinois to Montana the people are fed up with the Washington consensus, fed up with the "pork", fed up with the wise words and yearn for an expletive or two. Their world is made up of expletives especially when another bill comes through the door and they haven't the money to pay. Their world is simple it stretches back to when America believed in it manufacturing as a "productive" thing signifying its masculinity not the slithery trade in derivatives, or outsourcing to some far off land they had no idea existed until their factory closed down and the widgets were now made in  Fengshui.

Trump speaks a rough language, he is for them visceral, he is unpolished by years of diplomacy, that Machiavellian skill of deviousness and cunning, of being and saying the opposite of what you are. The Congress and the Senate, the White House, the whole plethora of coat tail activists is as far from their day to day needs as were the workers in Fengshui.

Trump has stirred them up, the hornets are terrifying the Liberals, perhaps their carefully contrived edifice is about to collapse.

Trumpeting a different message

Is our comprehension of what is 'right and wrong' simply a prolonged intrusion into our collective mind using programs to re-educate us and pacify what we would have said were our deepest fears. 

Our deepest  fear is the fear of something we can not recognise. 

It was the bogey-man in our childhood, the unrecognisable shape, the thing under the bed waiting to pounce.

In those days the fear was fantasised it was a sublimely felt fear of something foreign to our common experience.

This description of a foreign experience is all around us today.  The fantasy is real and this reality has been the work of those who sought to remould public opinion toward what ever was foreign.

By foreign I don't just mean the people from foreign lands or their foreign ways and customs, (to say nothing of their food) but it's the foreignness of our belief system and again I am not talking of a religious based belief system but the beliefs which were  grounded in our psych as we grew up, the things you took for granted were your culture.

In virtually every area of this childish surety we have been re-educated, told that our values were wrong and pressurised to change them.

 This world in which we now make our way is full of things of which we have, at its mildest, reservations , at its extreme, revulsion and yet these  dry natural  impulses to quantify and evaluate the current situation are demonised by the liberal movers and shakers, pigeon holed with derogatory terms, racist, or misogynist. Terms used to close down any further conversation or debate, the decisions have been made and you query them at your peril.

Of course this largely only effects the older person, those who held opinions before opinions were held for you !!

One of the saddest sights is seeing how the young are so pliant these days, easily manipulated by media propaganda. If they have interests and a willingness to visit the barricades it's on things of self interest such as University fees or the hopeless situation of a housing market which has been manipulated by middle class interests. Perhaps the global economy and the power of the banks can get the juices flowing but arguments regarding the social makeup of society, or the pressures of contrasting cultures within a not so homogeneous society, is to process ideas that have been formalised and made instinctive in only a matter of a decade or two. The totalitarianism which has subsumed the youth in general is the work of a section of society who for one reason or another had to deal with a multi cultural, multi ethnic society which the political masters in this country had foisted on us to provide the low wage economy needed for high returns and a quick monetisation of their investment.

I was drawn to my diatribe this morning having started a book on Donald Trump written by one of his wildest advocates Ann Coulter. She speaks of the rage and the sense of impotence many Americans feel towards the establishment. She feels the insensitivity of  the establishment towards the Trump barrage against Liberal America is just what fuels the great rump of American people's contempt. From Illinois to Montana the people are fed up with the Washington consensus, fed up with the "pork", fed up with the wise words and yearn for an expletive or two. Their world is made up of expletives especially when another bill comes through the door and they haven't the money to pay. Their world is simple it stretches back to when America believed in it manufacturing as a "productive" thing signifying its masculinity not the slithery trade in derivatives, or outsourcing to some far off land they had no idea existed until their factory closed down and the widgets were now made in  Fengshui.

Trump speaks a rough language, he is for them visceral, he is unpolished by years of diplomacy, that Machiavellian skill of deviousness and cunning, of being and saying the opposite of what you are. The Congress and the Senate, the White House, the whole plethora of coat tail activists is as far from their day to day needs as were the workers in Fengshui.

Trump has stirred them up, the hornets are terrifying the Liberals, perhaps their carefully contrived edifice is about to collapse.