Being abroad without having left home

Subject: Being abroad without having left home.

Immigration and immigrants, it seems to me these are two different things.

Immigration is a policy. It's a target for quantifying an economic need or an acceptance of the rights for people who have arrived legally and been processed and noted, to live here with the same rights as I have. It part of being civilised, it goes hand in hand with wishing to be afforded the same respect if you were abroad living in someone else's country. It's a political construct devised to meet certain needs and certain criteria.

It shifts with the changing circumstances, it alters as the pressure grows on resources.

Immigrants on the other hand are not political they are simply human beings placed in much the same circumstances as yourself. They differ, much like you do from your neighbour but like your neighbour you don't wish them harm. If you meet and work alongside an immigrant he or she is virtually a mirror image of yourself except, unlike your neighbour, they have a different cultural set of norms. Mostly these cultural differences don't get in the way but if the culture becomes the defining element in who and what they project, then there is a clash. This is particularly so when religion is involved. You find yourself outside a tent but a tent pitched right bang central on what you had presumed was your cultural/ethnic patch. 

The Chinese are perhaps the most distant, the most diverse. They carry their cultural practices tightly wrapped within their community, rarely venturing out to project their beliefs, content to be who they are. You can't win them over or progress far into their confidence since they have little use for you and find enough solace within the confines of their extended family. 

The African, West African, are a gregarious bunch of people who as work colleagues or people who have a job and an income, share a sheer vibrancy which is infectious. Never far from a laugh they exhibit best when in their own communities especially at church sharing a congregational spirit, which is largely missing in the Presbyterian ethos of the white man or woman.
The people from the many Arabic countries, including the subcontinent tend to be discriminatory, largely because most of them have a religious Muslim heritage, which in itself is complicated and derisory both to the different sects within the religion but also to non Muslims. The religion provides a format, a template on which to perform their righteous and social duties which is, of necessity, exclusive. It provides a boundary beyond which our interpretation of life and the style in which we wish to live our lives is for them, pre-subscribed and the subtle difference is made not so subtle when prayer takes on pre-eminence to all else. 

Jews have a similar "chosen" epithet but seem to be less vocal, less in your face, less of a threat to ones own sense of 'well being'.

In any society an outsider is someone who is clearly, 'not one of you'. The "you" may be hard to pin down, in fact the "you" may be so diverse that it's the diversity which attracts. We resent too much conformity, we fear rigid intolerance or anything which opposes the diversity which we find so attractive. We fear religious structure and strictures which have, in our eyes a hold over virtually everything the believer does, to a point that the "differences" become insurmountable. The strain and conflict, other than the polite uniformity which society adopts when it wishes to avoid confrontation, slowly builds resentment of a "them and us" stereotype.

So what we have in this country are individuals from a whole spectrum of human kind, living and liking each other as individuals but weary of any 'institutionalised structure'. This is particularly so when that structure is imposed, through osmosis, upon us, not as an edict but as a political stratagem of tolerance and forbearing.

It's a little like being aboard, without having left home !!

Being on the winning side

Subject: Being on the winning side.

Gerrymandering is the act of manipulating an electoral boundary be it a physical boundary or putting pressure on a particular segment of society which have a proclivity to vote a certain way.
We often look at Russia when we think of voter manipulation. We think it can't be true that Vladimir Putin can hold such a sway over the population that the opposition is hardly visible. Of course he does use assassination if the opponent is becoming too troublesome and it's mainly through the control of the media and the messages that the public receive daily where is main control lies.
But what of America that great bastion of freedom and unlimited expression.
It has a constitution which is lauded for its balance, in for instance limiting the power the President has to make decisions, unless the country is threatened. The stymieing effect of Congress particularly when it is packed with an ideologically opposed viewpoints on virtually everything the President wishes to do has been the blight of Barack  Obama's term in office.
None the less we think that Americas system of voting is above board and fair but this now seems to be questioned.
Racial segregation has never gone away particularly in the Southern States and Republican gerrymandering has been allowed to raise it head in a number of swing states. In certain states and specifically the 'counties' within those states, the power to impose conditions on the voter when they arrive at the polling  booth meant that the deliberate imposition of stringent identification and limiting, in certain specifically political germane  areas, the time the voting booths were open caused problems for sections of society who could be expected to vote a certain way. Given that the gap between opposing parties was narrow, any inhibiting factor which made it problematic for some people to turn out and vote is archetypal gerrymandering.
It's called vote suppression and America remains " a house divided" with libertarian ethics mixed in with segregation, not only of the traditional black population but now of a significant section of the white population. An economic segregation largely brought on by the globalisation and the ability to outsource production to other, poorer countries has fostered deep distrust and a belief that the politician along the 'beltway' in Washington had their attention elsewhere. Their plight was fostered by the very people who it is claimed manipulated this most recent election, the Republican Party and who are the direct beneficiaries of globalisation, representing as they do the Business Community interest, the very germ of the source of all the "rust belts" problems.
Today at lunch time we will see inaugurated a man who would take, to new levels the manipulation of the masses. His rhetoric (and one harks back to the podium of the Third Reich and its promises to ease the lot of the poor and make Germany great again) is unrestrained unfettered by the need to tell the truth, unabashed by being caught out telling lies, in denial when confronted with tax evasion with the quip that "it's what successful business does and is an 'asset' in his business stratagem".
Unpredictable, hedonistic, narcissistic, an egotist. This is the man who will mount the rostrum today with a new philosophy, unhindered by a world view which purported to believe in the rights of man but one in which there are winners and loser and you must, regardless of the cost to others, make certain you are on the winning side.

Aesop's 2017

Subject: Aesop's 2017

It's like one of Aesop's fables trying to predict what 2017 will be like on both a personal level and world wide.
The famous fables were simple stories with a moral bottom line, ideal for putting the point across without labouring it. The underlying

basis for teaching especially,  children the essence of why and how we evaluate values, is to present a story, often using animals to reflect the human condition whilst at the same time separating the complexity of self identification. A tortoise and a hare, a mouse and the lion all share an improbable connection, but have in their assembled persona, a yin and a yang element which makes the story both unbelievable and at the same time believable.
How would a mouse convince a lion not to eat him and then repay the the obligation by chewing the rope to set the lion free. The essence in all of our lives of doing the right thing and then unexpectedly, receiving a bonus
Of course one of the biggest fables has been the European Union.
On the one hand recognised as a free trading block it attracted many nations who were attracted to such a large market place but it has morphed into something much more cloying, much more intrusive, much more corrosive as it seeks to federalise all the nations into an undemocratic single entity. The slight of hand practiced by the French and the Germans in their efforts to cement an artificial hegemony over what they saw as peripheral nations, the poor cousins who would go along with a little persuasion.
As the goodwill which is so necessary to convince other nations to seed power for the greater good begins to wear thin and the populations who lie under the weight of the twisted economic experiment begin to voice their displeasure, the lack of cohesion places enormous pressure on a already flawed political structure.
The damage done by successive administrations in America with financial deregulation has damaged world confidence in the banking system and with it Americas confidence to be the global backer of last resort. The end of liberalism and its commitment to equality (a misnomer if ever there was one) the insistence that there was such a thing as World values which could be understood everywhere has been shown to be absurd.
Donald Trump who will wind things back to the 30s and release a "dog eat dog" mentality which will destroy much of the economic stability, is a man of his time in so much as he has pricked the bubble of complacency, not so much amongst the rich but amongst the poor. Other than the vote, the poor have no leverage but if Trump wants a second term he has to make substantial inroads into his countries economic weakness vis a vis China and the Asian/South American/European comfort blanket of a soft dollar, recycled ad nauseam through the banks to prop up some economies which were unsustainable and others who are in for a free lunch.
What would Aesop have made of this dilemma and which animals to depict the crisis in confidence between the rich and the poor, the people from lands far away now drawn closer with arranged modes of travel, political duplicity, and industries that no longer pay homage to a local population or any attempt to justify the cost of production with any sort of moral justification.
Perhaps the Hydra (a many headed serpent) pitted against the Amoeba, the one representing the many faces of Capitalism the other the changing shape of a society it was meant to serve.

Another Crusade

Do we need another Crusade ? With the call to Jihad by the Sunni led coalition of what are termed terrorist groups but what might be termed Islamic warriors out to punish the infidel for the invasion of their territory. If that is the case the political leaders across the globe have to ask themselves, can they stand by and see their citizens butchered whilst going about their normal lives. Perhaps a coalition from nations across the world, much as came together during the world wars to put a massive army together to drive Isis, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and others into the dust. Of course their backers Iran, Pakistan,
and some of the Gulf States would have to stand by and see their dreams of radicalising the Middle East and, through slow immersion into the Western society, eventually the world excluding of course those with totalitarian governments such as Russia and China.
It's a sad reflection that mankind is not ready for democracy or shared ideology. It's religious schism are too deep to allow the "other" to live side by side.
It's also sad to think that Obama was before his time and that we are better suited to Donald Trump.
Kim Jong-um is the antithesis of Obama but his methods at least secure a continuation of an ideological pattern and at least what he says goes. Is Kim Jong-um the format for the future, an impassive Asian, atheistic despot along side the religious zealotry of an ancient faith, at war with its self.

Our heritage.

 Having watched a program celebrating the Queens 90th year I am always amazed at the deference paid to an anachronistic figure who's relevance to modern day public life is to say the least problematic.  Why do we still place such importance on titled people. 

Why do we make such a fuss of the New Years Honours List. Why do we still confer titles and privilege, why do we still differentiate between the Commoner and the Aristocracy.
We still doff our caps and tug our forelock when in the presence of these people, we confer special opportunities on them and deny ourselves many millions of pounds to maintain the myth.
Of course in the Queens case there is the respect for an older person but one must keep in mind the paraphernalia behind the scenes which enables her to act out the image. From the Royal household and the palaces which enable the awe to be felt by people not used to opulence, to the lines of tradition as the flanking soldiers in all their plumage, keeping control whilst reminding us of the gulf between the ordinary and the privileged.
What is especially intriguing is the way ordinary folk react when she drives by. The flag waving, the excitement of a glimpse are all a part of an inculcated sense of "nobleness oblige", a calculated plot to keep us all under a mystic which should be so totally foreign to every normally functioning human being that the potion should be bottled. Grown men and women who normally would feel righteous rage to be told that they were second best, become putty at the sight of royalty. They curtsy and bow and follow the torment of protocol, the do's and don't's, the what can's and what can't's would and do fill a book, a book proudly upheld by a certain sort of person who's image of people stops below the footman.
Of course nations seem to need a figurehead, be it royalty or presidential. I'm not sure why. Their elected head of state is a politician who can be removed by the ballot box and not the executioners axe and is where the real power resides. Why do we need another layer on the cake and importantly the cost, which goes with it, when democracy for all its failings was invented to keep "them" away from power and out of our business. Why do we linger. Is it because we like the pomp and majesty to keep our thoughts away from the austerity of our ordinary lives. Is the sight of opulence, much like an opiate it makes us lightheaded. All forms of dynastic rule have this way of dressing up their position with robes and magnificent buildings, priceless paintings and a wall to keep "us" out.
The religious and the aristocratic have this in common to bamboozle us, to make us know our limitations, to keep us behind the ropes and in our place.
On another channel,  the story of the development of the Vulcan bomber, a beautiful technical achievement of the 1950s, a period when as a country we could built not only the Vulcan and its sister the Victor but aircraft carriers, and missal systems, and we managed to sell home produced products to the world, we were rightly proud to be British.
Now we only have the Monarchy, a monarch who has ruled also from the 50s and seen the demise of the country and its expertise. Perhaps her reign has not been as impressive as the program about her would suggest.

Justice for all.

Listening to Sir John Chilcot present himself to the heads of the various parliamentary committees regarding his long drawn out Iraq report in which Tony Blair was taken to task for not only taking the country to war without the blessing of the security service charged with discovering the existence of Saddam Hussain's chemical and biological capacity, or the Attorney Generals lack of legal opinion to rule out the Prime Ministers decision to go to war without proper parliamentary scrutiny. 

One is struck by the high diplomatic intellect that Chilcot displays as he balances his words with a seemingly fair disposal of the raw blame when it is the modern politicians natural process,  "to criticise and crucify". Measured language instead of the use of vitriol, an attempt to find a reason for an action instead of a demand for blood.

Was regime change such a bad thing, "questionable",  what was woefully negligent was the refusal to weigh up the consequences,  of ignoring the potential turmoil amongst  the dissident groups which make up Iraq, mostly religious, to co-exist without strong government. Tipping Shia against Sunni, a conflict centuries old has led to the dismemberment of the Middle East. Conflict of almost inhuman debasement, where the image of the opposition is so distorted it rules out any sort of compromise.
Chilcot is one of those civil servants who have practiced the art of compromise all their lives and it is a revelation to listen to the measured tones one is almost hypnotised by the sheer plausibility of an analysis in which no fish are actually caught and those brought under scrutiny are let off with a warning and are safe home in bed before we wake up to what has happened.
The investigation, if that is what he undertook was wrapped around with so many caveats that no one was compromised or given much of a verbal roughing up. It's not the way we do it when our own are concerned. Like the Eton Wall Game the origins of what these lads are up to is mired in tradition and tradition is maintained at all costs. The law is for those lower down the ranks and even if we pride our self that in theory "no one is above the law" we know that in our heart of hearts that is a fallacy.
It was a good little earner for Mr Chilcot and his merry band, whilst it lasted (7 years)  and one would wish that the British solders now pursued by the relatives of the IRA or the representatives of the terrorist organisations fighting in the Middle East would get such a sympathetic hearing.

Who went out and who stayed in.

Subject: Did you go out ?

Who went out and who stayed in ?
As the year drew to a close I found myself at home rather than being, 'out and about', partying or watching a firework display. Every year since I can't remember when I have promised myself to go and mix with other people on New Years Eve since this is, in essence, a social event to join your fellow countryman and celebrate the unity of being a part of some defined community.
It is not the nostalgia of past parties since I remember ruminating, each year about not going out and wondering why I was so apathetic.
New Years Eve is a moment when traditionally the reserve comes down and we embrace each other in a moment of goodwill and a willingness to turn and grasp the hand of strangers. Perhaps I am too blasé, too apathetic, too insular, too curmudgeonly or simply not inclined to bother. We all have our Achilles heel and mine has and always was "putting things off" not wishing enough to be doing what "others" are doing. I'v done a few things but not done some of the things I had promised myself to do which is no doubt the case for most of us. I can willingly rationalise my reasons and there are always good reasons for not doing things. It's usually a question of perspective, coming to terms with reality and not feeling sad or impoverished if you have left off the list something you had a passion for when younger.  A list after all is only a wish to have, or to be something which is not part of ones immediate personality or personal accomplishment.  The danger of seeing oneself as, "someone else", of inflating ones natural tendency  to the extent of contorting your natural capability and has many dangers.
Conversely there is great joy in recognising who you are, your limitations but above all, your strengths. It provides a profile which you recognise and which you become familiar with. It cements who you are and hopefully gives others some pleasure in having known you.