Mothers Birthday

 

Subject: Mothers Birthday.

Now all is revealed. 

How I came to have my birthday celebrated 5 days early.
I have been educated, by Andrew into the workings of "Face Book" and see that in my profile, I'm entered as being born on the 11th.  

Yet another data error to add to the billions of errors promoted by data accounting firms each day. Try investigating the information they hold on you in the files of Experian, you will be amazed to find the rubbish which attaches to your profile, a profile on which others may take an opinion about your financial situation.
Anyway to get back to my theme. It's interesting to think of my mother, five days before I was actually born.
She, a tiny, slight built 4' 10'', and me, a bursting 10 pounder, I must have been an enormous physical discomfort to her,  mixed in with her thrill of becoming a mother. 

Five days to go before birth and what a contrary blighter I was. Not withstanding my size I seemed determined to stay put in this warm womb of a home. A nine months tenancy and I was doing everything a 'breech' baby could do to stop the eviction. 

On reflection "feet first" should be written on my epitaph. Leading with the feet and not with the head, seems to be something I  specialise in.
Reading, even in these high tech days, of the trauma of giving birth to a breech baby, it makes it all the more remarkable to think back in 1940, without the scans and the information readily available which pregnant mums expect, how terrified my mom must have been.
Perhaps we shouldn't celebrate "our" birthday at all, it should be, our "Mothers" birthday.

Being British

Subject: Being British.

It's a difficult balancing act being British, what in fact does it mean to be British ?
Is it an amalgam of Scotland, Wales and England with a bit of Ireland tagged on. Is it reflected in the centralised Parliament, the so called mother of Parliaments where we deal with recalcitrant members of the family with a democratic process, the envy of places such as Catalonia. Is it the dry observance of authority without the use to arms, even in our police force. Is it our talent for not only demeaning others but also ourselves.
If we examine our character, which section of our society are we looking at since we are so class-ridden it's hard to see any resemblance between people coming from a housing estate and those from a leafy village not 20 miles away.
Is it our obsession with history and the part we played in forming what we assume as civilised society,  in this instance I mean the laws governing behaviour, the structure of commerce , rules and an accounting process which doesn't only count money.
As a nation it is suggested that after Brexit we need to invent a plan to reconstruct ourselves, to become noticed and listened to once again. To sit at the high table and have our say. The concern is that we may become a minnow like one of the Scandinavian countries, admired for a working grasp of a just society.  But then we are at a disadvantage as a country. Pretty shambolic, lacking the emotional tools to  understanding how a successful society is made up of the 'sum of its parts' we can hardly be called a paragon  of virtue within our own shores and towards our own people.
Constant mismanagement of our affairs in both politics, in the field of business and in the task of educating our children leaves us ill equipped to weather the storms ahead. Perhaps our only salvation will be to disassociate ourselves from 'competing' and simply run the croft as we used to all those years ago. To isolate ourselves behind the 21 miles of water and make ourselves feel superior. Unfortunately to look and judge from afar is to miss the detail and, as in most matters, it's the detail which counts.
Walking the streets of Newham in the East of London the very essence of the multi -ethnic fabric which has grown here from the time the immigrants landed here. It resembles a Middle or Far East enclave, reflected in the shops and the food from lands far far away. But now there is a difference. A resilience of younger people, the sons and daughters of the immigrant, who are forging their futures in the schools and collages built for them. Confident, and determined they reflect a new generation, not of shop keepers or the unskilled cleaner but of future bosses. They, with the determination of their parents who had not fallen and become infected by welfare but instead had  sorted out a path of their own successfully  inculcated in their young, a work ethic and a will to succeed. In the '6th Form Collage' opened only a couple of years ago they are turning out 6 double star plus graduates, whilst the school not half a mile away, is struggling to teach their youngsters (mostly white children) to read and write in their mother tongue.
Is it in the genes or is it living in a feckless society, growing up on a diet of assumed "rights" that the indigenous kids fail so spectacularly . If everything is given as a "right" is there any point in working, still less studying to gain their own 'right of passage', or will it rather come my way anyway, as a right.
If the mind of the white person is seeped in the banality of the 'quick fix', supported by a mainstream tabloid  press which goes out of its way to coarsen the mind with its short term popularism, then the children of parents who themselves have not matured to any great degree, what chance then the children of these pitiful characters to become pitiful themselves.

Misinformed

Subject: Misinformed.

As the labyrinth argument drags on about our future arrangement with the EU, a series of articles were commissioned by the magazine Prospect from writers putting a perspective on the UK which is not often found in the commentators who report the party line as it were. The writers sometimes Europeans, who had spent a number of years living in the UK and had a pan European view of this island and its people.
It's not been an easy read since we often dress up our existence with fantasy, a balm to reality.
All nations and nationalities do it, they concoct an image of themselves which is flattering and then proceed to sell this image to the population as a whole. It's not quite Orwellian brain washing rather it's a process of endlessly repeating the good and turning a blind eye to the bad.
The structure of our establishment, its reflection of the same old faces from the same old school illuminati has been our social downfall. Our basic insensitivity, describing elite schools as 'public schools' when nothing could be further from the truth. In describing society as egalitarian when your whole future prospects is tied up in the type of school you attended.   (It's interesting to note that in Holland, schools are not ranked against each other but share a common platform that of educating all children in Holland without preference.) The great tragedy is that we have been inculcated to believe that this discrepancy, that the rich can buy their education, is some sort of norm. That its right for money to be able to get away with tax havens by employing expensive accountants, that the rich can buy anonymity and justice by hiring highly paid lawyers to distort a law which is applicable to us. We have been told that having money places you outside the norms of society and we have swallowed it, hook line and sinker.  

The poison which permeates the tabloid press, the public schooled billionaires who own these papers and seep away at our common decency with rabid trash, day in and day out such that the man and the women in the street doesn't know right from wrong, truth from falsehood.
We are conditioned from an early age to respect our elders a view which is all well and good so long as the views come from a wide spectrum but if our opinions are formed by a half dozen or so of powerful men, each with an agenda unaccustomed to the life we, the ordinary person live,, then we are at risk of being led, like cattle to the slaughter.
It's a convenient metaphor today. armistice Day when wreaths are laid at the Cenotaph to commemorate the hundreds of thousands who have fallen in battle. They too were led to believe "your county needs you" until the bullet made them superfluous.

Inappropriate behaviour

Subject: Inappropriate behaviour

I'm trying not to become obsessed with this the Westminster groping scandal but since it has reached saturation point over here, with news bulletins, on the hour full of claim and denial about the behaviour of men towards women in Parliament.  I think it pertinent to point out that we are developing a schizophrenic set of values highlighting man's gross attitude towards women whilst ignoring the equally wanton part a women plays in the drama.
The headlines of a news paper which was flashed onto our screen to highlight the story also had on the same page, alongside the story a picture of a film star who's breasts were virtually hanging outside her dress. The two story's portray a separate set of values, separate but in so many ways, it illustrated the mess we have landed ourselves in.
Sexual explicit pictures in the papers and in television shows are full of this primeval subject. The shows on TV are nothing more than a total denial of the required behaviour expected across the land, in parliament, in the office, in any place men and women mix.
And so sexual gratification is depicted all around in a way it never was. The publications which held nude pictures on their centre page were explicit and exclusive. They could only be bought in certain shops and precluded children from seeing them by placing them on the top shelf away from young praying eyes. People who subscribed did so on the understanding that they were not left lying around and in a sense they were made to feel that they themselves were mentally deviant.
An exposay, in the old fashioned use of the word meant to expose a criminal act, the term to expose 'to exhibit openly' is now common in our daily experience, a sort of digest of what goes on in ordinary life. The who-hare in parliament and Hollywood takes place in the rarefied atmosphere of self analysis which these people continually indulge in. Their esteem is only topped by their egos as they jostle for centre stage.
It's a parallel universe. On the one hand, even the mildest innuendo can be misconstrued and a claim of 'inappropriate behaviour' levelled, whist the norms, in so far as the general public is concerned, behaviour, sinks each year. The appetite, shown by the ratings of these voyeuristic shows on TV and the numbers of copies sold with "page three nudity", confirms to me that the furore is synthetic.
We might do better to explore the sexual education our children get through the Internet and the sexually explicit behaviour of filming themselves in the nude sometimes performing acts mimicking the pornography they see at the touch of a key before sending their own pornographic offering to friends. This perversion is far more damaging than the hand on a knee or a comment in the coffee area and yet the same parliamentarians who are now clambering for recognition that they were some how damaged by the unwanted attention, seem strangely quiet in perusing the real damage done each day on the television and on the internet in glorifying sex in all its disturbing manifestations.
Sure there is something wrong in promoting and sexualising women but equally it can't be right, crying foul in some sectors of society whilst ignoring the influence of the 'sex industry' or the many women who are complicit in it.

Faith in being pragmatic

Subject: Faith in being pragmatic.

Is there a danger of over intellectualising things, of taking things to pieces and examining all sides before reassembling and passing them on for something else.
Does one in the process miss the under laying story, the emotional story, the story about belief which can't be examined and dissected, only believed in its entirety.
Faith in something other than the common sense which you see and ponder about, it includes  "the joy that passes all man's understanding".
To be described as pragmatic is never to be disappointed, never to feel let down or feel disappointment for things which are out of reach. The pragmatist believes himself to be the realist, feet planted firmly on the ground, he or she believes in what they can see or touch and rejects the assumptions made by the believers in their religious causation,  a method we have evolved of placing our lives in the hands of a benign creator with the true reward, after death.
It's difficult arguing for space to find your own salvation in this life here on earth. The intensity of religious belief or belief in rebirth is so strong that ones own muddled thoughts about your own life and death have little substance when compared to the collective assurance of so many.
But doubt for doubting sake is a characteristic of a thinking individual. To question even the syntax of a statement, the use of words which may evoke a different meaning in the secular world raises the ire of the believer because in his or her belief, these questions are answered in their commitment to unquestioned belief.
But for those with no footing amongst a quagmire of conflicting claims, the effort to remain grounded in the simple things and not embark in flights of fancy are what keeps us sane.
Never the less there is the lingering doubt that we could be wrong and in the face of such faith based positivity, it takes a stalwart to stay within the bounds of pragmatic surety.

Sexual gratification

Subject: Sexual gratification.

Harvey Weinstein has rightly received the ire of society for his behaviour towards women, especially women who in trying to further their career in the film industry succumbed to his desire to be sexually intimate.
It's an industry which was known for the 'casting couch' in which very attractive young girls and women were seduced to believe that bestowing favours was a way of getting an acting part.

It has to said from the start that I have no sympathy for the man who prowls the clubs and bars looking to pick up women and when rejected he resorts to force. Rape is a terrible experience for a woman to go through and men caught forcing their attentions on a girl deserve all they get.

Listening to the many caller's, talk show hosts and newspaper columnists, the world is awash with bad men who commit unspeakable violence on women. The callers  especially have horrific stories of abuse and one begins to feel distinctly queasy being a man.

There are of course the cultural practices in Africa and Asia where women are chattels in the hands of husbands. The second class nature within these societies of women goes back thousands of years and it's unlikely that much will change.

In the West there has been a slow burn revolution which has sought to empathise the doctrine of equality between people, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual proclivity and just about everything which claims to be part of humanity. Man from being the leader, the role setter has succumbed to being the onlooker as new and more extravagant claims are made for equal rights.

This is not a bad thing in itself but poses many difficult decisions, largely for men as their political and social hegemony is questioned. Under these conditions it seems a bit rich to decry men in the West who have come a long way in righting a wrong but a wrong which would be refuted by 4/5th of human beings across the world at large.

        Having recast the record in some sort of perspective ( a man's perspective), in certain societies it is no less true that from the time of Cleopatra to Bridget Bardot, women have used their beauty, their curvature, their sex appeal to help persuade men along a path of a woman's making.  

On the one hand sex is a commodity which can be used by a woman and turned to a woman's advantage, on the other, sex is used against women, (predominantly by men) as force majure, to effect their subordination.
It's a conundrum. 
It could be argued that part of a woman's emotional development, from childhood, is the belief in the need to accentuate their looks with products which highlight or hide their features. From lipstick and highlighter, to false eyelashes, Botox injections and at the extreme, 'the boob job'.  It could also be argued that this is a behavioural practice is to ensnare the male for purposes which they hope to benefit from in the future ?

Skimpy skirts, and ever more revealing blouses, young girls head out on the town, even on a freezing cold winters night. They stagger off preloaded with drink, their behaviour feeding the inbuilt voyeurism of the male, a process undeniably of overt sexuality.
Feminists scream that it is a woman's right to wear what ever they wish and that it is the man's responsibility to control his urge in believing that there is more on offer than there is.

The confusion comes when in fact everything is on offer and it's discerning 'when it isn't', that the problem arises.
How can men be expected to define a woman's intention ?
Do men assume that that the women he sees in the street and in the pub are only playacting, innocently  on 'Parade' as it were, even if they are scantily dressed, revealing  themselves as lewd and permissive, when in fact that is the last thing on their minds.

Perhaps it's all only a game played with the male subordinate to a woman's intention,  the archetypal  dumb idiot, awaiting a signal which only 'she' can give and which, at any time, can be cancelled. 
Her actions, often ambiguous and potentially dangerous, place the man in a minefield, one false move and he is finished.
It's all so far from a  Brontesque drama where the convolutions required to make your intentions known would take weeks of careful planning.
It has to be emphasised, we are not talking of rape. We are talking of being encouraged to believe that sex is part of the consensual process,  only to find that a change of mind has taken place. 
Of course it was traditional that the 'perfectly normal', sexual arousal within a man is controlled by the woman. In the old days, contraception other than saying no, was not available and when a mistaken pregnancy occurred it was the woman who picked up the tab. Today the unwanted pregnancy should be a thing of the past. The Pill, the morning after Pill and the back up of the abortion clinic, leads one to believe that a women, claiming an unwanted pregnancy, was deceiving herself to deceive others.
Perhaps we have moved into the phantasmagoric world of "maybe" !!  

Perhaps it was always so. Perhaps the intrigue between a man and a woman has this dynamic tension at the heart of everything, the 'forbidden fruit' syndrome.
We still live in a world where the old fashioned morality of the weaker sex, identified by Bronte, is still valued and finds proper representation in law. From a time when the sight of a woman's ankle was enough to send a man crazy, is still assumed and that women need protection.

It's as if society is programmed to be blind to a woman's role in the inter action, its as if they are merely perfunctory, rather than adversarial.  The woman's performance is a routine which is theirs to perform without any sense of ownership, without any responsibility for the outcome.
Different societies have different views. The Muslim and the Orthodox Jews go to great lengths to prevent this clash of desire and orthodoxy, whilst we, in the secular West have presumed to muddle through, attaching great stead on 'personal control' which is presumed enough. 
Without any overt demand on one or other party, this works, but when one side decides to flaunt the rules and demands that they see no need for rules or sensible modes of conduct on their part, then the unholy alliance of 'luck' and the passivity of the newly 'conditioned' male must see them through the night. Unfortunately it still leaves the chance of that sour  taste of misunderstanding, even the pangs of regret in the morning which could lead to accusation and for all hell to be let loose.
Of course the main question is, "what happened to femininity".  Not the feminist movement, but femininity.   In their competition to 'out lad the lads' women have destroyed the mystique they once held. The mysticism, the coyness which is so beguiling, that quality of shyness and modesty which sets us so naturally apart.  As the girls reveal their own basic grossness, sex for sexes sake, much like that which traditionally depicts the male, then the unique difference, male and female, as friends with a potential chemistry to be more than friends, is lost in the urgency for sexual gratification. 

The question that should be ask is, what is sex ?  How is the non liner attraction, the driving force of our life on this planet to be understood.  Not in the context of our convoluted rules of engagement but in our understanding of its importance as the supreme creative force which binds us

The power of darkness

Subject: The power of darkness.

Our personal history and the importance of places, people and deeds is offset by our impotence to alter much of what we do because of the cultural and environmental stain which contributes so much of who we are.
It's hardly fair that society holds us in such a conventional straight jacket when the genetic makeup and the influences we experience is so varied. The relevancy of who we are is trounced by who we are supposed to be.
Our parents who hold the key to our up-bringing are themselves slave to their own up- bringing. The norms in place at the time of their and subsequently our childhood, the conventions, the attitude of peers and elders all contributed to who we are today. We are an amalgam of conflicting stories from which we were expected to sift and form our character and as the tide turned, not wishing to be left high and dry we shuffled around for new clothes to cover our nakedness. We reinvented our stories with ones the new people would understand or at least feel they could accommodate but in reality, it's all a sham.
Like the chameleon we try to fit in by altering our true colour and shape, we camouflage our intentions to fit the current norms and we fight many internal battles in our attempt to justify who and why we are, who we are.
The speed of change, of change for changes sake seems to an older person pointless. The certitude of our beliefs are now always countered and changed in a way that older societies would never condone. The experience of experience is no longer valued at all and one is in an echo chamber of one if we try to explain the values of the past.
Because today's values are fostered on us by forces outside our sphere, swallowed undigested without a moments thought, they are disconnected from our own homespun values which have stood the test of time, passed down from parent and grandparent. Today's values seem more a corporate response to the fear of litigation than a value judgement. We see them as an overlay on what we would call 'common sense', of rules and procedure brought in as a diktat, by an executives response to the lawyers.
And so as our history loses relevance and we become estranged from our sense of right and wrong, we drift into a no man's land of Orwellian proportions where, isolated, we have no strength to stand up to and oppose the powers of darkness, which if you haven't guessed, is anything you don't understand.