A political monster

Subject: A political monster.

When I was a young boy we used to go fishing in the canal. It was pretty basic stuff a simple rod, a float and small lead weights to take the hook down through the water to where we assumed the fish would feed. The lure was worms which we used to keep in a tin and we would pick up the worms who had tried to escape and pop them back in the tin.
It was all so reminiscent of Brexit, a can of worms which once opened the worms escape Worms we didn't know were there, worms with such healthy vigour we now identify with the corporate body and are at a loss to imagine how the coronet body will function. A Pandora's box of worms which now, out of control we cast around for solutions where probably there none.
To be in, or to be out, that is the question since remarkably there seems no half way. The implications for virtually everyone living on this island mean change and usually not for the better. From simple things like visa requirements when you go on holiday to the assurances we have become used to when purchasing food, all of which is regulated by the EU. Every legal dot and tee has to be reexamined and redrawn. Complicated supply chains which have grown up as part of the manufacturing process will be broken and a reversion to 20th century uneconomic practice, recreated. From the drugs market to the legal authority to fly over and into Europe has to be renegotiated because the status of the parties to the existing framework has changed. In finance the system of providing a seamless trade between the financial centres is brought to a crashing halt with massive implications for our main income earner.
So what seemed as a relatively simple procedure to keep on as before with only a bit more form filling has been shown to be horrendously complex.
The world had moved on and we hadn't noticed. We assumed that the system of multi -national companies and global trade, were allegiance to national priorities was made irrelevant  by corporate boardrooms sitting in tax havens was as it was when we last looked. Parliaments have become largely irrelevant, limited in their power to influence these global juggernaut, even to make them pay tax on the profits on the products they sell within a nation. We have left for years now the nitty gritty of trade negotiation to the EU Commission where it collectively negotiates on behalf of 28 soon to be 27 nations. So bad is our position that we have hired people from New Zealand and Australia to teach us how to do it.
Perhaps when we first looked into sidling up to the trade area in Europe in the 50s and 60s first being humiliated with a rejection from Charles de Gaulle, our wartime ally who had spent the war in the relative safety of London plotting his return to France.
Cap in hand, we pleaded to join this alluring market place, ditching our loyal supporters, the Commonwealth in the process, swopped the paradigm we knew for  a political monster.

After Brexit what will be retained

Subject: After Brexit what will be retained,

One of the effects of Brexit was our desire to escape the clutches of German hegemony in the guise of the EU.
It's useful therefore to read European history, and the rise and fall of the Hapsburg empire with its seat in Austria but influenced by the German states and especially the power of Prussia.

The conquests of Napoleon which tore the continent apart led to the amalgamation of the countries lying to the east under the titular political control of Austria, countries such as Hungry, and Galicia, Transylvania and further south, Croatia. Metternich the German diplomat, the schemer the supreme fixer with his complicated political treaties, tying the threads with a semblance of legal continuity. And Russia prodding the surrounding nations, taking bits here and there through conquest and threat of conquest, a continent in continual flux with dynastic assumptions leveraging the imbalances.
Up until the two world wars these nations were always jockeying for advantage. Boundaries drawn and redrawn, nations one moment subservient to this power, the next under the rule of another. Flux and counter flux with the common denominator, men dying in their thousands and, as the killing machines became more efficient, in their millions.
The Iron and Steel Community, the Free Trade Area, the EEC and now the European Union have been a spectacular success in unifying all these disparate nations supplementing each with a common interest, a common economic union with trade and free movement blurring the nationalistic differences.
Sitting off the continent proper these islands were protected from the pervasive influence of national grievance and were allowed to evolve our own concept of parliamentary democracy. Our expansion was in the Far East, Africa and to a lesser extent the Americas. Trade and exploitation were our modus operandi, mainly driven by private companies it relied on a business structure based on the law of contract and a substructure such as roads and railways to exploit the trade.
As we seek to extricate ourself from our short dalliance with Europe we must understand the fundamental philosophical difference between the way European nations think. Their history of turmoil and confrontation, now reaching this safe harbour of economic and structural tranquility, which the EU represents.
Federalism, the subservience of nationalism is the corollary of a thousand years of conflict which we in Britain never felt the pressure to assuage in the same way.
Our nationalism will lead us into many false dawns but at least, like the child leaving home for the first time there is the excitement as well as the fear of the unknown which once again as we come of age we cast off the sureties of parental conformity with its structured "I know what's best for you" diktat. Our mind has become dull with the conformity, we have forgotten how to function as an independent nation, leaving much of the decision making to the EU Commission and the European Courts. This  has been a safe haven with many benefits. General high quality standards, good labour laws, a set of progressive environmental sign posts which might have been overlooked by our traditional obsession with dumping regulation in search of profit.
It can only be hoped that our brief flirtation with a large family, ( the nations of Europe) which of necessity requires compromise and a wider more consolatory view will be retained.

The savagery of the dispossessed

Subject: The savagery of the dispossessed

The concept of "democratic rights" as proclaimed by the French Revolution was also the prerequisite for the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Both were born on the back of terror. The Jacobean terror in Paris matched Lenin's tactic of irradiation by extermination of all opposition to the 'Parties' rule. Ideology over-rode the normal compassion mankind can feel towards its fellow man and millions of people were put to death or shipped off to the gulag, which often amounted to the same thing, without a moments thought. Ideology be it religious or secular has a habit of misunderstanding the means with the end.
In both, the revolt against their individual monarchies replaced one despotism for another, the aim, to release mankind from suffrage was subsumed by the acceptance of the violence needed to change the status quo. Violence begets violence and the freedom to inflict violence become persuasive, the fine balance between freedom and responsibility is broken.
On a less grand scale we see it in society today as the freedom to protest our rights overwhelms our compact with society to understand our responsibility to earn our rights by manifesting behaviour which contributes to the progress we all can make to ensure society is balanced and fair.
Society today is clearly unfair as the spoils of our labour largely contributes to the riches of a few. From this flows all the imbalance in health and opportunity which creates the dissatisfaction so many of us feel. The disproportion fuels this dissatisfaction such that our assumed entitlement buries any sense of cohesion and like a disturbed ants nest we lose coordination.
The revolutions of the past were based on just such as this, dislocation within society and a focus provided by a few silver tongues.
Only the false security of the credit card and the balm of consumerism prevents a kick back to that undemocratic, unequal and immoral concoction, Globalisation. The faceless multilateral organisations and the hedge funds who swop their financial allegiance at the whisper of a better deal, the conglomerate who's boardroom is made up of players with fingers in all the other boardrooms, the dissembling of truth such that the population is unable to make rational decisions. All this leads to the perfect storm where, with little to lose the general public revolt and dismember the artificial norms so carefully built up by an ordered but unequal society for ones based on the savagery of the dispossessed.

Subject: Within not without.

Subject: Within not without.

Today the debate was about the intriguing concept of believing in the "essence" of god without "believing in God". 

The complexity of the biblical story and it's time line, set in a period so remote from our own current thinking, makes the telling of this unlikely and complex story, which includes concepts  such as the "virgin birth" the "resurrection" even the concept of "heaven", difficult if not unfathomable. 

There are of course many religions. Some of them thrive on sticking firmly to the text and believing every word,  others try to manage their belief in "something" with a nagging doubt about the bibles specific veracity.
The Quakers, who were members of the audience are currently undergoing a re-evaluation of their teachings with a pragmatic sense of trying to put greater  emphasis on the 'human experience' on earth than with the god described in the Testament. 

Their personal striving for understanding through human love and human reconciliation, is reflected in their congregation being called "the society of friends" and that there is something of god in everyone, each human being unique and therefore their belief in god is tempered by their belief in their fellow man. 

This emphasis on humanities role in the practicality of founding a better place on Earth rather than the carrot of life beyond death is more atheistic than faith bound, although perhaps the Quaker would balk at the comparison. They belong to a pantheon of faiths which strive to understand the basis of humanity without mixing the image of God with their own, other than the belief that God lies within us.

Sent from my iPad

The Donald effect

Subject: The Donald effect.


What does it say when millions of pounds have to be spent to protect a visiting dignitary, in this case Donald Trump, from contact with anyone except those specially vetted by the security industry.
Our leaders in this country have minimal protection, a special detective, a chauffeured motor car and it's expected that our MPs and Ministers rub shoulders regularly with the ordinary man and woman in the street.
The sight of Robert Mugabe's motorcade rushing him through the streets of Harare on his way from his home to his office depicted a man who had become a megalomanic, who saw himself as a messiah leading his people to the promised land from under the yoke of colonialism but In the process he had lost sight of who the people are.
Sadly the history of America is peppered with assassinations and attempted assassinations on the streets of America. The freely available firearm makes it relatively easy to take a pot shot at anyone you don't like and since the nature of politics and the political animal is to oppose as many as it seeks to help, the politician is certainly vulnerable.
Our airwaves are red hot with commentary about what Trump said in his interview with the Sun newspaper prior to his meeting with our Prime Minister Mrs May in which in essence he was extremely derogatory to Mrs May describing the nature of her proposed attempt to leave the EU as precluding any deals with the US and then to rub salt in the wound, suggested Boris Johnson, the person who has just resigned in a huff over her proposal to try for close trading links with Europe, would himself make a good prime minister. Not 8 hours later, Trump was transformed, lovey-Dover with Mrs May, extolling her virtues and suggesting that his words had been misconstrued.
He is a Jekyll and Hyde character, a representative of the fake news he so condemns and yet he can be a breath of fresh air when compared to the choreographed diplomatic double speak we are so used to when listening to any politician these days. With him the lies and deceit are blatant it's like talking to the guy in the pub. He may change his mind half way through talking to you, he may deny having said something but at least for the moment "it's true for him". He hasn't been intellectually neutered to say what he has been programmed to say. He isn't under the politically correct  constraint which most of our politicians and media seem to hide behind. He doesn't call a 'spade a shovel' in an attempt, not to upset people or be as tortured as so many of our tv journalists seem to be, afraid not to tow the line
If one hears them talk about immigration, race, so called misogyny then there is not a cigarette papers width between any of them and yet in the 'real world' there are wide divergent views, openly discussed when free from the PC ideology held by many organisations such as a municipality.
The truth in terms of sociology is an individual thing since the thing being discussed is a moral or ethical assumption and there are no hard and fast rules so long as the discussion takes all views into consideration and doesn't assume that some views have some sort of divine exclusivity.

It's not coming home

Subject: "It's not coming home"

"It's not coming home" The competition for the English team is over in so far as winning the cup is concerned but at least it has left many productive memories, not least of a new and fresher perspective of Russia.
When Keiren Tripper stepped up to take the first free kick of the game in the 6th minute and slotted a beautifully controlled shot over the heads of the Croatian defence I thought "Its coming home". This young inexperienced team were repeating their previous games with episodes of football opportunism that wins games.
The team have no real playmaker, Kane is a brilliant poacher but not a tactician who can guide and dictate the game like Paul Pogba. There is no one of the brilliance of Mbappe to split a defence apart by running at defenders and turning them with his ferocious speed and ball control. Our players have the exuberance of youth to try anything but when up against an experienced side of seasoned professionals their ideas began to lose potency and with it the verve which had served them well in previous matches. Croatia are not a great team, rather they stuck to their task and wore down the young English bloods who became dispirited as the game wore on.
Refreshingly the North European teams, who have come through to contest the final stages of the tournament have done so without the theatrics  of the South American sides. The grappling in the goalmouth, the writhing on the floor for the slightest tackle all this had begun to bring the game into disrepute and make it a farcical spectacle.
Eventually the game won out with in my opinion France the clear leaders. Their game against Argentina was the best game of the tournament and the tactical display against Belgium was masterful.
A great tournament played in near perfect conditions to full house apparently happy crowds. As a piece of propaganda it replicated the London Olympics in organisation and public appeal and whilst the mastications of political life in a dictatorship bear no relationship to a democracy with all is public spats and upheaval played out daily it has caused many in the West to question our continuing diet of uneven media protestation.
How much is false news or perhaps have our senses become so blunted with scepticism that we wouldn't be able to evaluate anyway.

Quaker's

Subject: Quaker's

Today the debate was about the intriguing concept of believing in the "form of the essence" of god without "believing in God". 

The complexity of the biblical story, set in a period so remote from our own current thinking, makes the telling of this unlikely and complex story,  including concepts  such as the "virgin birth" the "resurrection" and the concept of "heaven", difficult, if not unfathomable. 

There are of course many religions. Some of them thrive on sticking firmly to their individual  text,  every word precious , others, try to manage their belief in "something" with a nagging doubt about the stories or their absolute veracity.

The Quakers, who were members of the debating audience, are currently undergoing a re-evaluation of their teaching. They apply a pragmatic sense of trying to put greater  emphasis on the 'human experience' on earth than with the god described in the Testament. 

Their personal striving for understanding through human love and human reconciliation, is reflected in their congregation called "the society of friends". Their philosophy is that there is something of god in everyone, each human being is unique and therefore a belief in god is tempered by their belief in their fellow man. 

This emphasis on 'humanities role' in the practicality of founding a better place on Earth, rather than the carrot of proclaiming "life beyond death", is, in some ways more atheistic than purely a faith bound religion, although perhaps the Quaker would balk at the comparison. They belong to a pantheon of faiths which strive to understand the basis of humanity, its needs and never ending conclusions  without mixing the image of God with their own image, other than the belief that God lies within all of us.