Wednesday, 24 October 2018
I could have done more.
Subject: I could have done more.
It's funny looking back. It's as if you were a bystander in so many things, somehow removed by the necessities of work, not being at home, not playing your part.
I suppose it's the lot of many men (and now a days, women), that the home takes second place to the immediacy of fulfilling someone else's calling. Each morning Into a car and out on the highway, like robots we fulfil our primary role if we are the predominant bread winner, leaving behind a wife and children to fend for themselves.
Now retired and encapsulated at home for much of the time I look around at the memorabilia strewn on the shelves and in the cupboards, even the furniture itself and have little recognition as how and when it was purchased.
Obviously a benign hand was guiding matters. From mealtime to child rearing, from house cleaning to the holiday arrangements it was "she" the mistress of all affairs which went on under the roof we call home.
Even today it still happens. My wife Marie and daughter Angela descended on me for a few days last week and immediately set about cleaning and rearranging, complaining incessantly about my lack of attention to those fundamental things which encapsulated were called a housewife's pride. Things which I had thought had been taken care of having, the day before given the place a quick run around with the vacuum cleaner soon revealed how inadequate I am. To a cleaning gestapo who took no prisoners they squirrelled around the kitchen, in the toilet, particularly the stove seemed to provoke as it often does, most opprobrium. Upstairs and downstairs they went poking and pointing, squirting and scrubbing until cast in the dog box with my tail between my legs I sat quivering, well not quite, but you get my drift.
This of course reveals a wider, deeper issue of roles not only in the family but also in the wider aspects of life itself.
The home is quintessentially the place to focus our lives. It's the place where we engage in those two great experiments, ‘being a parent’, and 'lover’ maybe both, each unique in their importance and laying well outside the confine of paid work or the aspirations of the boss.
The idiosyncratic journey of a child as it grows up and the supportive hand a parent can play in it are often stereotyped by the ‘perfect family’ who somehow retain their humour and that sense of the special moment when it came to reading a bedtime story or paddling in the sea and making sand castles.
Sadly I failed in much of this. Enjoying my work and the camaraderie of ones work colleagues I missed out on the 7pm bedtime performance. I was there at school events, cricket practice and refereeing the boys football but the fundamental parenting work (other than the two in the morning "winding" performance) was left to Marie. I don't know if the kids noticed my absence, you would have to ask them but looking back I could have done more
Democracy in progress
Subject: Democracy in progress.
So for the time being at least the weight of public opinion or should I say the fervent ferocity of the women involved in door stepping the Republican Senator in a lift within the Congress Building has halted the seemingly unstoppable progress of the Republican nomination of Judge Kavanaugh's election to the High Court. The emotional tirade by the women filmed by the press and others was something even a hard bitten political pro couldn't gloss over. The Senator in question seemed amongst the other Republican Senators the most uncomfortable with the way the Hearings had progressed and had intimated that he might vote against the approval of the judges elevation. The shrill heart felt appeal by women who, having joined him in the lift were pleading for constitutional protection against what they saw as a right wing takeover of the Judiciary and that the judicial opinion which supported women's rights would be eroded by Judge Kavanaugh. It was a moment when the "people" seem to have won, at least part a battle to secure a voice in the deliberations of these lofty, remote political henchmen who, hiding behind "procedure" seem able to drown out opinion that doesn't suit their political addenda.
It may only be a holding strategy which delays the proceedings but at least the Democratic insistence that due process in terms of a proper interrogation by the FBI of those supposedly involved in the molestation of this women, all those years ago.
What stuck in the craw of so many observers was the force of political procedure which seemed impervious to the legal rights we all expect in terms of legal procedure. The sight of these men from the Republican Party, in full spotlight of the nations media and watched world wide on televisions across the globe should compel ordinary Americans to consider, when the mid term elections come up soon, their allegiance to the party of Mr Trump who's track record so far has raised many questions as to the veracity of the American Constitution.
On the other hand America can hold its head high in having the political mechanisms to hold in full public view decision making which in many other countries is held behind closed doors. I doubt Mr Putin or President Xi Jinping would fare well under such scrutiny and instead shelter behind brutal authoritarian systems which 'weirdly' we rarely question as we see this "free world" version of democracy in progress.
So for the time being at least the weight of public opinion or should I say the fervent ferocity of the women involved in door stepping the Republican Senator in a lift within the Congress Building has halted the seemingly unstoppable progress of the Republican nomination of Judge Kavanaugh's election to the High Court. The emotional tirade by the women filmed by the press and others was something even a hard bitten political pro couldn't gloss over. The Senator in question seemed amongst the other Republican Senators the most uncomfortable with the way the Hearings had progressed and had intimated that he might vote against the approval of the judges elevation. The shrill heart felt appeal by women who, having joined him in the lift were pleading for constitutional protection against what they saw as a right wing takeover of the Judiciary and that the judicial opinion which supported women's rights would be eroded by Judge Kavanaugh. It was a moment when the "people" seem to have won, at least part a battle to secure a voice in the deliberations of these lofty, remote political henchmen who, hiding behind "procedure" seem able to drown out opinion that doesn't suit their political addenda.
It may only be a holding strategy which delays the proceedings but at least the Democratic insistence that due process in terms of a proper interrogation by the FBI of those supposedly involved in the molestation of this women, all those years ago.
What stuck in the craw of so many observers was the force of political procedure which seemed impervious to the legal rights we all expect in terms of legal procedure. The sight of these men from the Republican Party, in full spotlight of the nations media and watched world wide on televisions across the globe should compel ordinary Americans to consider, when the mid term elections come up soon, their allegiance to the party of Mr Trump who's track record so far has raised many questions as to the veracity of the American Constitution.
On the other hand America can hold its head high in having the political mechanisms to hold in full public view decision making which in many other countries is held behind closed doors. I doubt Mr Putin or President Xi Jinping would fare well under such scrutiny and instead shelter behind brutal authoritarian systems which 'weirdly' we rarely question as we see this "free world" version of democracy in progress.
An idiots guide to enterprise, Indian style
Subject: An idiots guide to enterprise Indian style.
One of the complexities of living in a place amongst people of different cultures is the continual miss match between what is thought and what is said. The ritual of structure in a society such as the Indian society, cut and dissected into layers of patronage and prejudice by the system of caste is its foundation is beyond western apprehension.
The normal assumptions about how to understand and react to a socioeconomic nightmare (the caste driven determination of who you are) desperately full of contrived guile designed to make all parties achieve some sort of self respect are difficult to fathom brought up on a diet of so called social opportunity for all. The tricks and subterfuge within the society at large are played without too much malice and are part of the theatre of getting by in a land of such grotesque variances.
We struggle in this country to understand how people born on what we colloquially call "the wrong side of the railway track" can be cast out with few life chances and yet in India it is endemic, part of the twisted ladder of life with all its predetermined outcomes.
The feigned concern we in the west proclaim for the underprivileged is but a charade which we play to the wider audience. In reality we distance ourselves from the outcome of being born into an unjust society. We say the right things to ease our conscience. The reality and the enormity of bridging the gaps in understanding are fudged when the chasm between us makes understanding a relatively meaningless concept is played out ad -nausea on our media and in Parliament.
At least in India there is no such concern and the pyramid, one of the strongest geometrical shapes, is intact and given sanctity right through the different layers. The tonga-wallah, or the 'untouchable' enduring mind clotting work, takes relief in disconnecting the work function, which is deemed enough, from the actual absurdity of keeping things clean. He does not engage in the actual "overview" of what is the desired outcome of the work. Instead his work is without purpose but work never the less.
All the various classes of work are dictated by the caste you belong to and permeated by this lack of an overview. The piles of box ticking paperwork in an office, bulging files on even the simplest bureaucratic procedure, the anachronistic office hierarchy where islands of protected function are allowed to stay in place because of the prudence of keeping people employed.
The inter woven acceptance of the backhander at all levels in society amplifies the importance of the personal interplay in the market for jobs and favours. These replace the structure of corporate responsibility with the corporation taking the place of the individual as the mainstay in any transaction and the caste system predetermines what one can expect to profit out of life, not a degree or the corporate nameplate on the door.
.
Sent from my iPad
One of the complexities of living in a place amongst people of different cultures is the continual miss match between what is thought and what is said. The ritual of structure in a society such as the Indian society, cut and dissected into layers of patronage and prejudice by the system of caste is its foundation is beyond western apprehension.
The normal assumptions about how to understand and react to a socioeconomic nightmare (the caste driven determination of who you are) desperately full of contrived guile designed to make all parties achieve some sort of self respect are difficult to fathom brought up on a diet of so called social opportunity for all. The tricks and subterfuge within the society at large are played without too much malice and are part of the theatre of getting by in a land of such grotesque variances.
We struggle in this country to understand how people born on what we colloquially call "the wrong side of the railway track" can be cast out with few life chances and yet in India it is endemic, part of the twisted ladder of life with all its predetermined outcomes.
The feigned concern we in the west proclaim for the underprivileged is but a charade which we play to the wider audience. In reality we distance ourselves from the outcome of being born into an unjust society. We say the right things to ease our conscience. The reality and the enormity of bridging the gaps in understanding are fudged when the chasm between us makes understanding a relatively meaningless concept is played out ad -nausea on our media and in Parliament.
At least in India there is no such concern and the pyramid, one of the strongest geometrical shapes, is intact and given sanctity right through the different layers. The tonga-wallah, or the 'untouchable' enduring mind clotting work, takes relief in disconnecting the work function, which is deemed enough, from the actual absurdity of keeping things clean. He does not engage in the actual "overview" of what is the desired outcome of the work. Instead his work is without purpose but work never the less.
All the various classes of work are dictated by the caste you belong to and permeated by this lack of an overview. The piles of box ticking paperwork in an office, bulging files on even the simplest bureaucratic procedure, the anachronistic office hierarchy where islands of protected function are allowed to stay in place because of the prudence of keeping people employed.
The inter woven acceptance of the backhander at all levels in society amplifies the importance of the personal interplay in the market for jobs and favours. These replace the structure of corporate responsibility with the corporation taking the place of the individual as the mainstay in any transaction and the caste system predetermines what one can expect to profit out of life, not a degree or the corporate nameplate on the door.
.
Sent from my iPad
Did he or didn't he
Subject: Did he or didn't he.
There are few moments when you see a politician with their guard down. Even less the sight of a high court judge, visibly unhinged, one moment nearly sobbing as he read out his prepared text the next his face contorted with anger and disdain.
The man President Trump wishes to promote to the highest judicial post in America where decisions on matters of law can effect the passage of jurisprudence for decades to come I found chillingly emotionally incompetent. Heaven help the man or woman who comes before him when he is having a bad day.
The hearing in Congress to adjudicate on the accusations that he molested a woman who also appeared in front of the committee to give her evidence achieved moments of high farce and shrill vitriol from Senators who are supposed to represent all that is civilised in American politics. Some on the Republican side were almost incoherent in their condemnation of the Democratic proposition that the FBI be given the time to investigate properly each accusation by properly interrogating witnesses who were not at the hearing but who's testimony would be crucial to finding who did what to whom.
It was a spat of two parts. The first when the plaintive gave her testimony of what had happened to her more than 30 years ago. Her demeanour and clarity in what she had to say was telling and one would have thought this an open and shut case. In the second part the judge came out swinging. He became almost incoherent in his condemnation of the claims laid against him and to my mind appeared as far from being 'judge material', let alone to be elected to the highest court in the land. He was more representative of a uncontrolled football fan who's judgement was unhinged when the opposition scored a goal.
The political hatred was clear to see particularly in the Republican camp and one wonders, with so much ideological angst how any sort of rational government can take place in America today.
There are few moments when you see a politician with their guard down. Even less the sight of a high court judge, visibly unhinged, one moment nearly sobbing as he read out his prepared text the next his face contorted with anger and disdain.
The man President Trump wishes to promote to the highest judicial post in America where decisions on matters of law can effect the passage of jurisprudence for decades to come I found chillingly emotionally incompetent. Heaven help the man or woman who comes before him when he is having a bad day.
The hearing in Congress to adjudicate on the accusations that he molested a woman who also appeared in front of the committee to give her evidence achieved moments of high farce and shrill vitriol from Senators who are supposed to represent all that is civilised in American politics. Some on the Republican side were almost incoherent in their condemnation of the Democratic proposition that the FBI be given the time to investigate properly each accusation by properly interrogating witnesses who were not at the hearing but who's testimony would be crucial to finding who did what to whom.
It was a spat of two parts. The first when the plaintive gave her testimony of what had happened to her more than 30 years ago. Her demeanour and clarity in what she had to say was telling and one would have thought this an open and shut case. In the second part the judge came out swinging. He became almost incoherent in his condemnation of the claims laid against him and to my mind appeared as far from being 'judge material', let alone to be elected to the highest court in the land. He was more representative of a uncontrolled football fan who's judgement was unhinged when the opposition scored a goal.
The political hatred was clear to see particularly in the Republican camp and one wonders, with so much ideological angst how any sort of rational government can take place in America today.
The definition of who we are.
Subject: The definition of who we are.
Once more the "minorities" win out. Girl-guides will be forced to accept transgender kids as girls irrespective of their physical appearance.
How confused we become as we discover the complexities of the physical world and instigate rules that everything is normal given the broad brush approach to 'normal'.
If normal has lost its meaning and the double headed newt has, amongst the hierarchy of newts gained equivalence then there is no end to this story. A case can be made and the outcome assured since to oppose the case is deemed unethical. Nature in all its glory is but a genetic sequence and it's this sequence which is deemed the source of normality not the abnormalities it throws up in its sequencing.
There are many instances of shall we call it inappropriate genetic sequencing and medicine is continually fighting the case where a chromosome is misplaced or missing altogether and the outcome disastrous for the host. The unfortunate abnormalities are the price we pay for the complexity of life and if the changes can be accommodated by firstly acknowledging their existence, society has the gift to be accommodating.
This act of accommodating has its detractors in the sense that they say the norm has been displaced and that the consequences have implications and it's this denial of any consequential effect which troubles many people.
Society has many norms and these norms change over time. Many norms can be traced to social pressures which determined a perceived threat to sections of the society and one of the strongest has been the segregation of the sexes. The primeval urges which arise in the male or the female are the building blocks for our continuance as a species. Procreation is built on the system of physical attraction working and unlike the animal kingdom we homo-sapiens have developed a game of charades where the inherent urge is displaced by social rules which contrive to disguise or in effect amplify the difference between male and female. The whole edifice is built on the recognition of who is what, who is the male and who is the female. If this division is made opaque then the eventual consequences of the abandonment of what we used to define as "the norm" will have far reaching consequences.
In our obsession to be inclusive we will lose the definition of who we are.
The 11 plus exam
Subject: The 11 plus exam.
There are few more emotional sights than to see the happiness or the disappointment on the faces of primary school children when receiving the results of their 11 plus examination. A program tracing the path of these young kids as they prepare for the 11 plus showed the inadequacy of pinpointing a child's academic progress on one exam with all the weighted emphasis on their 'life opportunity', concertinaed into a two hour burst of academic reasoning.
The children from all backgrounds, were filmed in the lead up to the exam and afterwards, as winners and losers. The tragedy of failure writ large on some faces was made more moving as the Mom, an African lady couldn't read the text message, her illiteracy, concealed up to that moment, gave even greater pathos to her story as she working all hours godsend for the minimum wage and yet still made the sacrifice to pay for extra tutoring to give her daughter the chance to aspire to reach both their dreams. Other Moms in 4x4s wheeled their kids around the tutor circuit confident that their efforts would pay off, instilling in the child this aura of 'can do'.
Some children fizzed with innate self esteem and it was these kids who shared their doubts after the exam as to how well they had done. The young African girl seemed confident and even went so far as to say it had been easy but as her Mom asked a member of the television crew to read what was opaque to her, the tears which initially fell for the embarrassment of not being able to read turned to real anguish when she learnt her child had failed to win a place at the grammar school. Even more telling was the look on the child's face as she tried to take in the enormity of the words she was hearing, trying to digest what failure meant. Her confidence flattened and her life in tatters she stared into an abyss of lost hope and difficult mediocre education.
Now we all know that life is full of opportunities, many of them not tied to academic scholarship but are part of the fundamental character which provides the chances we make for ourselves. But having said this she also knows that most of the professions are out of reach as is the featherbedding of respect one obtains by having a profession rather than a job.
At 11 this is a far too early a moment to contemplate becoming "second class" in a society which is so bound up in ratings. It's cruel and so deterministic to choose a moment in time and in so doing in effect closing a path or a pen, cattle this way, pedigree that.
I have long advocated spending the most of the educational budget on the losers on the basis that the cleaver children will prosper anyway, especially when surrounded by like minded achievers. They could virtually self teach with prompting by a centralised Open University electronic style class tuition.
The losers, the Comprehensive School children, need the hands on tuition, the smaller class size the latest in educational stimulation to develop after the pinch point of the 11 plus exam and as a society we want them to succeed before they gravitate into the benefit culture.
There are few more emotional sights than to see the happiness or the disappointment on the faces of primary school children when receiving the results of their 11 plus examination. A program tracing the path of these young kids as they prepare for the 11 plus showed the inadequacy of pinpointing a child's academic progress on one exam with all the weighted emphasis on their 'life opportunity', concertinaed into a two hour burst of academic reasoning.
The children from all backgrounds, were filmed in the lead up to the exam and afterwards, as winners and losers. The tragedy of failure writ large on some faces was made more moving as the Mom, an African lady couldn't read the text message, her illiteracy, concealed up to that moment, gave even greater pathos to her story as she working all hours godsend for the minimum wage and yet still made the sacrifice to pay for extra tutoring to give her daughter the chance to aspire to reach both their dreams. Other Moms in 4x4s wheeled their kids around the tutor circuit confident that their efforts would pay off, instilling in the child this aura of 'can do'.
Some children fizzed with innate self esteem and it was these kids who shared their doubts after the exam as to how well they had done. The young African girl seemed confident and even went so far as to say it had been easy but as her Mom asked a member of the television crew to read what was opaque to her, the tears which initially fell for the embarrassment of not being able to read turned to real anguish when she learnt her child had failed to win a place at the grammar school. Even more telling was the look on the child's face as she tried to take in the enormity of the words she was hearing, trying to digest what failure meant. Her confidence flattened and her life in tatters she stared into an abyss of lost hope and difficult mediocre education.
Now we all know that life is full of opportunities, many of them not tied to academic scholarship but are part of the fundamental character which provides the chances we make for ourselves. But having said this she also knows that most of the professions are out of reach as is the featherbedding of respect one obtains by having a profession rather than a job.
At 11 this is a far too early a moment to contemplate becoming "second class" in a society which is so bound up in ratings. It's cruel and so deterministic to choose a moment in time and in so doing in effect closing a path or a pen, cattle this way, pedigree that.
I have long advocated spending the most of the educational budget on the losers on the basis that the cleaver children will prosper anyway, especially when surrounded by like minded achievers. They could virtually self teach with prompting by a centralised Open University electronic style class tuition.
The losers, the Comprehensive School children, need the hands on tuition, the smaller class size the latest in educational stimulation to develop after the pinch point of the 11 plus exam and as a society we want them to succeed before they gravitate into the benefit culture.
Value and worth, are they the same thing
Subject: Value and worth are they the same thing.
Twitter is becoming the barometer of opinion from Donald Trump to Elon Musk and a substitute for what is taking the place of rational debate. The instant throw away comment is seemed by the Twitter audience as reason to become over excited as if the tweet were a proper measured of an opinion of someone they hate or admire.
This short handed commentary has become for many a substitute for the real thing, (a proper thought out exposee of what a person thinks about a subject) but which for many is just too hard to digest in its detailed format.
And so our diminished attention span is accommodated by short hand. Unfortunately shorthand is best understood by the person writing it since, by its very definition shorthand leaves out the guts of the proposition. All we are left with is the vague idea of what the person thinks, which in the case of Donald Trump is probably a blessing but with a mind like Elon Musk it leaves much to be desired.
Bitcoin and the crypto currency platform which seeks to transfer value using a different format to normal currency has fluctuated enormously over the years of its inception and provided speculators with spectacular gains which themselves feed the frenzy. The move against the traditional consortium of banking house controls used ostensibly to curb fluctuations in the currency market has also skewed global wealth into the hands of a few. The proposition of trading a currency, (a red rag to a bull for many), the crypto is seen as a more pure form of trade unsullied by control. The block chain was the device which gave these currencies respectability, a sort of trading house which electronically keeps track of crypto universe and acts as a balancing factor in the day to day trade.
I of course balk at even the concept of trading currency. I see it as amongst the greatest ill in the financial system on a par with derivatives at least. The trade between the super fast computers which have been cobbled together to exploit the minute time difference measured in nano seconds between the stated value of one currency against another and the ability of some to exploit this difference, racking up enormous profits seems to me to be obscene. It's pure manipulation and has nothing to do with real worth.
But then real worth is a fast depreciating commodity these days. The word worth is used as a comparative. Is it worth a visit. Is it worth my time. And of course the worth in money terms I put on something. If worth is a comparative should it not more accurately describe our attitude to wealth and poverty. Should we not see through this obsession of distinguishing our values by attaching a designer label to everything and rather see mankind, or at least the ones we see around us as having a far greater value, far greater worth than the Bitcoin in our electronic wallet.
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