A changing world

  

Subject: A changing world.

In a world vastly changed from the days Harold McMillan tried to get us into the European Coal and Steel Area made up of  West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium,Netherlands,and Luxembourg  and was excluded with the infamous "Non" pronouncement by the dictatorial President De Gaul. 
An alternate area, the limited Free Trade Area, EFTA made up of European states unable or unwilling to join the EEC such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Switzerland and the UK came into being with over time only Norway and Switzerland not being drawn in to the ever more powerful EU.
The essence of it all was to create blocks of common interest which economically would prosper better than a nation standing on its own. 
With the Brexit decision we are returning to the 50s again, standing apart in the hope we can negotiate a special deal and maintain some sort of connection to the EU 'Big Brother', and gain access to their huge market. It all seems a forlorn hope given that the politics can not condone a country leaving and still retain the benefits. 
Perhaps 'money' could persuade, although great play was made of the costs we were burdened with in the persuasion to vote out. The money we make by being in would, one assumes, have to be greater than what we pay but with our rapidly decreasing currency brought about by the mechanism of quantitive easing and our inability to keep pace with modernisation and the training required to equip our workforce with the skills it needs to compete, our "productivity" is way down at the bottom of the European league.
There are no, of old, titans of industry, in fact the industry's now sit in countries who hire people for a fraction of what we are permitted to offer and who enforce labour practices which went out of fashion here in this country in the 19th century.
Niche markets where our talented designers can sell products not yet thought of is an option for highly specialised manufacturing but it won't feed the masses.
What will the country, as our 'older generation' grows in numbers and lives ever longer and the 'working generation' have a myriad of claims to make on the Exchequer to support them "in a way to which they have become accustomed". 
It's a blind alley into which we shall have to accustom ourselves. The politicians will wriggle their way out of it with fine words and promises. Their get out clause will be the Referendum, a decision made which was out of their hands and whilst they willingly added material to the flames along with the 'press' who further ignited the spirit of rebellion,  no one from the Establishment will do a mea culpa.
Of course one can uphold that it was the correct thing to do. The European Union has many faults not least that it is becoming increasingly non democratic or accountable.
This democratic principle and the belief that the people matter and can be counted at the ballot box lies longer in our history than most others. Many European nations have only a fleeting experience of parliamentary democracy, many have had dictatorships many simply had aristocratic families deciding their fate. 
As the EU began to proclaim the need to Federalise and remove the instinct for nationalism which is seen as a danger for an amalgam of nations with disparate cultures and very different historical assumptions, we took fright believing our specific type of governance was valuable in the long run.
Our conception that we count for something as a nation a nation with its own values and priorities led many, including myself to vote to leave. 
The treatment of Greece, particularly by Germany was an omen. The sight of dictatorial power running rampant over the human beings who make up a society, people who had had no part in the financial mismanagement but were the flotsam and jetsam of the behind closed doors meetings with no sense of democratic scrutiny. It was this which persuaded me enough was enough.
Yes we were not told of the economic straight jacket which the EU weaves, particularly in Banking and it was not spelt out the effect of potential lost markets and the difficulty of trying to get into trading with those other monoliths the USA and China but never the less the freedom to make ones own decisions and spin a cloth which represents ones own values was more attractive.
Of course I am an old man with one foot in my historical experience and the other in the grave. It's different for someone young who have only experienced this new world of global contracts and an internet that transforms our ideas of individuality. They are the ones who will carry the burden of lower living standards which initially at least seems to be the outcome of our leaving the comfort blanket of the EU.   Only a few will concern themselves with being limited to employment within the Sceptred  Isle. They never had the vision of working in Germany France or Italy or even trying their luck in the wider world. The barriers have slowly come down to emigration to Australia and New Zealand The comfort of the Welfare State made them assume that their basic needs would be covered by the State and so long as Arsenal beat Tottenham all is well in their world. Perhaps in this brave new world of independence, the worth of a person will be seen once more by his or her inventiveness to keep afloat and for those who don't there are visions of a truly desperate poor on the streets of Mumbai to compare with.

Missed opportunities

Subject: Missed opportunities.

Reading a book is like conversing with a friend,  reading, as I do with more than one book at a time is like going down to the pub to chat to a number of people you know, each different, each with a tale to tell. Of course it's not a conversation like a normal one but often as one absorbs the events the author has in mind to tell, it stops you in your tracks and prompts a response to write, when triggered by what the fictitious character had said or done.
My Blogs come about in just such a way, the stimulus of events or more likely my own opinion /prejudice depending on what I've read, seen or heard.  It's a willingness to be effected by events which you can't personally effect but which never the less you have an interest. 
Our lives are consumed with narrow and superficial things which deep down we feel important. We live, not in a vacuum but in the turbulence of other people's lives and the effect these lives have on all of us. 
I'm not speaking of the particular but in general since depending where you choose to live, life goes on in much the same fashion with amazing similarity. The neighbours and the people in the shops are all similar in which ever hemisphere you live since for all but the rich 5% we all have the same issues to contend with. And so it is with books and the characters we befriend within their covers. We identify with them as if they were real and the craftsmanship of a good author is the way he makes them real in our minds eye.

Paul Scott is my present Guru. I love his precise development of plot and character.I love his use of language to develop the symbolism of time and place. His books are set in India in the 30s and 40s, a time of transition as India split along ethnic and religious lines and gave an almighty push to the outside influence of the British. 

Written from the departing Raj's point of view but with an underlying scepticism for what the colonial structure stood for he develops  characters who are preserved  in aspic and produced by a social structure brought over from middle and upper middle class public schooling, 'back home'.  A home which became ever more alien as the years passed but which never the less prevented assimilation into the fabric of the local people.  Playing roles directed from Whitehall, like Puppets they swirled around unaware of a life outside the bubble which they had created for their own, deeply prejudiced survival.
Scott does a magnificent job of reigniting the sights and smells not only of the bazaar but the dust and atrophy of the Cantonment, its rules of military and civilian hierarchy the snobbery of the people, especially the women with too little to do, brought over from "good families" to breed the next generation of Major Generals.
Like all societies raised in far off lands, these administers who became colonial by dint of service created an unreal, symbolic affectation which although it had the colour of a strong vibrant community, by its need to create a sense of superiority it lost its sense of being integral to the actual landscape which was evolving outside its influence.

South Africa was effected in this way.  The natural progression of a black middle class to share the responsibility with the whites was smothered by an ineptness to see and respond to a changing world.

The Tom and Gerry Show

Subject: The Tom and Gerry Show.

What I don't understand is the virtual silence from the 27 governments in Europe surrounding the imprisonment of the leaders of Catalan. There but for the grace of god go I should be on their minds since these parliamentarians of Catalan were elected just like them, by popular vote to represent the people who voted for them. The fact that the Catalans had a referendum in which a majority voted to leave Spain's parliamentary oversee was conducted in a prescribed manner through the ballot box, not the force of arms. 
The men who languish in jail are representatives of the Catalan people, not criminals. They sit in jail amongst the real criminals and no one seems to have the power or the inclination to speak on their behalf.
Of course Spain has a violent history of unrest and a willingness within its ruling class to turn on society with force. The Spanish Civil War was a bloody event carried out by hot headed parliamentarians and leaders of factions of fascism such as Franco, which were prevalent in Europe before the Second World War. The horror of the 'Inquisition' again brought out the worst in the Spanish character, or was that just the authority of the church and today we have the no nonsense sight of the iron fist again being used to flatten opposition.
Imagine if the leaders of the Scottish Nationalist Party were now lounging in jail because of their claim to independence.
A people's temperament, the German willingness to accept authority, the French, completely the opposite, their unwillingness to accept authority. Each society, the Greek, the Italian, the Rumanian, the Bosnian, and of course the Russian, all different, as if each genetic pool were different. 
We, isolated from the mainland, observers in some ways of what goes on "over there" have become prejudiced. Our inclination towards sarcasm leads us to presume we are better more able to win approval of our citizen by parliamentary means. Our class structure ensures a continuity of leadership largely from the same school as if the country was a club with its organising members not only incestuously joined at the hip but with a gift for deceiving even themselves. Of course, hand in hand with this goes a population who's  character is largely benign when it comes to matters of state and so the very acceptance of the status quo allows what ever is dictated by the parliamentary system to be swallowed hook line and sinker.
In some ways, we seek to compartmentalise our lives away from the issues of state. It provides a buffer where we are allowed even encouraged to think little of what goes on behind the walls of The Palace of Westminster. We think it has no relevance and we are lulled into an amorphous, shapeless, hedonistic culture which is as shallow as the result of the next football result.
The Catalans came out on the street in search of their identity. They believe that their history and their lineage is important and sufficiently different from their neighbours to demand independence. 
Of course one has to ask, different in what way. You wouldn't see any difference in the people as you would between a Londoner and someone from Beijing. A thousand years of culture have denoted different physical, dietary and philosophical differences which would be hard to determine between Barcelona, in the province of Catalan and Milan the capitol of Spain. There is no difference other than a type of tribal inference, a part of the historical propaganda perpetrated between the tribes who are then willing to fight like feline Toms. 
Perhaps related to Tom and Gerry, their ongoing squabble, with bully boy Tom unable to come to some sort of agreement with Gerry and Gerry, always having to be on the lookout, is a simple metaphor for our own lives. 

Having an opinion on life

Subject: Having an opinion on life.

There is a philosophical presumption that we exist, not as we seem to others but as a piece of elemental stuff which has its own uniqueness. This life force is what we must drill down and find in an effort to seek some sort of peace. 
The life we live, in the gaze of others, beholden to others, seeking the acknowledgement of others is false since it posits an image that is distorted by the gaze and the contamination of too many presumptions, made my others. Each distillation of who we are is distorted by all kinds of assumptions usually based on incomplete information and therefore itself distorted. 
How can we, as individuals find solace if we feel and seek the confirmation of others who themselves are bedevilled by the same sort of misinformation about themselves.
It's grotesque, the distortion piled on more distortion when all the time there is a grain of us which lies at the base of who we are.
Of course we are not just a point of light, a single element we are also the result of that combative engagement we call living. The living process has implications. The innocent baby becomes embroiled  in the process of survival and it's this process which runs through the animal kingdom, "know thy enemy". The interaction of one species with another determines, through the power of evolution who is fastest, who the most powerful, who has the better disguise. There is no case for the individual, no case for not keeping an eye out, no case for philosophical judgement only a route to the nearest  tree or hole to bolt into when threatened.
Mankind, through the process of civilisation has produced a sort of hide a way, a security blanket to feel a sense of comfort, where time can be set aside to contemplate. Of course amidst all this self preservation one has the Achilles heel of death, normally through longevity, and unheard of in the rest of the animal kingdom, except perhaps for the Wale. The issue of life and death, where life is taken as a gimme and death, an unknown,  from which we invariably run scared.
Our mental capacity, not having to spend it's time providing survival, can luxuriate on the issues of where do we come from and where are we going after death. The added issue of what we do with our time on earth and how we define that time in terms of what we arbitrate as 'good time' or 'bad time' leads us into all kinds of side streets and back ally's and is a conundrum.
Perhaps it would be better to accept who we appear to be and congratulate ourselves that we have got so far as to even have an opinion.

Sent from my iPad

Reunification of Ireland

Subject: Reunification of Ireland.

Listening to the popular program, "Any Questions" which this week comes from Northern Ireland one is immediately struck by the vitriol which comes across between the various Irish speakers. Political antipathy one understands, religious tribalism one understands but the apparent total disdain between one Irishman and another is beyond reason. 

The history of Ireland is splattered with violence, not only the violence between the Irish and outside nations wishing to invade the emerald land. The Vikings were a major thorn in their side, the Scots also rampaged with force across the Irish Sea and of course the old enemy, the English, were all fought with good reason but the major source of conflict was, and still is, between the Irish themselves. 

Their family based tribalism, the O'Connor's, the O'Rourke's, the O Brian's were all families who spent all their energies and the blood of their followers in trying to defeat each other. It went on decade on decade, centuries even, with one family gaining ground only to loose it as an alliance between another group of powerful families formed.
Antiquity tells us that the Irish were ungovernable.  Not, as is normally recognised ungovernable, because an outside force has stepped in and tried to rule the Irish but ungovernable because the people themselves do not get on. Centralised governance seems to have been impossible.
Having recently had a short holiday in Ireland I was struck by the under laying friendliness of the people and yet also the under laying political strain in their conversation if, as an Englishman, you sought to offer opinion. In pubs, famous for their rough justice by the nationalists, one was aware that there were men in the pub who had a deep reservations for no other reason than that I was from England. We were fortunate that we were the guests of a well known local family who's influence was sufficient to ensure we were well received but without their blessing I wonder if I would have been as lucky. Their is a ruthless tension in the Irish which contradicts the humour they are famous for, a threat which makes their presence (outside sporting events) a watchful experience. 

It was for good reason that Sinn Fein were feared both in Ireland and in England. They held an almost masochistic delight in inflicting pain on people who crossed them. The infamous kneecapping, crippling someone from the 'other side', left a trail of terror within the society of Northern Island, a fear which still remains even though the Northern Ireland Assembly is in place and Sinn Fein are the second largest party on its benches. They still carry the threat of violence on the street.
Martin McGuinniss represented the ideological embodiment of Irish Politics. His logic had a short fuse and his history of using any means to get what he wanted,(Home Rule), made him a feared adversary. The Nationalist cause is littered with people like him as is the history of Ireland. From the time of the Easter Rising and before the extremists seem to hold sway over the population on both sides as, tit for tat atrocities were carried out regularly. It wasn't a polite Catalan banner waving parade but guns and explosives and above all, terror waged within the ordinary community.

The Tony Blair "Good Friday Peace Agreement" was a concessional political deal which brought the factions together around a table and eventually into a formal Parliamentary setting where old enemies could cross each other with words not bullets. The leverage to obtain an agreement meant that Sinn Fain, the Unification of  Ireland party had their violent past buried, much to the unhappiness of the victims of that terror. A truce was brokered by Blair which, tenuous as it is, lasts to this day but a new fly in the ointment has been the issue of Brexit and how it effects the boarder between Northern and Southern Ireland. The hope of Sinn Fein is that the difficulty of setting up a proper boarder between North and South will drive the parties to consider the reunification of Ireland as a solution.

Scottish and Old Time Dancing

Subject: Scottish and Old Time Dancing.

Society is made up of so many parts. I tuned in by accident to a gathering of Scottish people celebrating an evening of Scottish dancing. The Reel and a Barn Dance were two of the dances as the accordion led band, with fiddle, drums and piano struck up to play each tune. The tunes themselves were a part of Scottish mythology, written to perhaps mourn a failure of a crop of barley, or the sad tidings of a ship wreck off the shore. 
The rigour and the formality of the dance and the strict time keeping of the band didn't hide the enjoyment and fun these people were having. The rolling rhythmic cadence of the band, an automatic foot tapping experience was a pleasure made more so by the homogeneity  of the people taking part. Amidst the Internet and the explosion of cultural activity on the 'web' this backwater of traditional interest remains very strong amongst the older generation.
I remember over 50 years ago in Cape Town being introduced to "Old Time Dancing" as it was called then, now renamed "Modern Sequence Dancing". The sequence of steps and the importance of knowing, not only which way you were going but who you were receiving to dance the next sequence with as the old sequence ended and a new one began was a bit of a strain.
Once a month the formal 'black tie' and women in 'ball gowns' would parade the floor in Bergvliet's Community Centre, as my Aunt and Uncle would meet with long standing friends to enjoy each other's company and dance the night away. The formality of manner extended to carrying a card on which a member of the opposite sex agreed to partner you in a dance when that dance's turn came to be played, so that your night was planned from the outset. The Valeta, the Boston Two Step, the Military Two Step, the Waltz, were all danced with grace and gusto as the dancers swirled around the floor, eyes alight with the fun of the occasion. A tipple or three at the table between dances drew the people together in a way that, in today's disco dancing, where people seem disconnected apparently doing their own thing in the dark recesses of their own mind, is not so apparent.
Back then to the jolly sound of the band and the whoops of the dancers as they swirled around the floor. A different generation and a different set of values.

Can I have the next dance

Subject: Can I have the next dance.

Freedom is a starting point not a goal. We are always fooling ourselves we can work towards being free but like most things, it is not an end, only a work in progress shaped by the will to succeed.
With freedom one starts to progress in a direction more to your own liking and although the destination you desired may remain out of reach the journey is yours and no one else's.
And so as we foxtrot our way with an unhelpful partner who seems keen to trip us up at each opportunity, we have to remember we chose the foxtrot over the quickstep in the belief that not only the band knew the tune but that at the end our card would be marked for another dance with another partner.
Brexit seems to be an occasion where married to the chap, we have to dance to his tune. His innuendo and blatant foot-stalling, his claim to want to dance to another tempo without your having had a chance to practice, seems rude and boorish. You were warned of course but the ritual of divorce seems to bring the worst out of people.
It's not the money or the house it's the hurt of past opportunities blasted on the rocks of expediency.
With good will anything is possible but the bad will of divorce only creates hurdles placed as a means to hurt.
Human beings being what they are, are stereotyped and the worst are the political class. It's hard to know a more self opinionated lot other than self serving bankers. We expect them to uphold our best interests but history tells a different story. Opportunists they are out to exploit the situation they find themselves in for ideological reasons rather than find practical solutions. The Party machine has been known to destroy its self through dogma and historical precedent, what chance the man and woman on the street entering their calculations.