Happy New Year

Subject: Happy New year.

So it's New Years Eve again, another year gone of the allotted time span, a year in which Brexit looms ever larger, with ever increasingly hysterical reporting about the doom ladened events which will occurs if and when we leave the safe harbour of the EU.
For me it's been a year of 'steady as she goes', negotiating the inevitable medical mishaps associated with old age, the trials of an unappreciated body which was left to motor on without any oil change or plug replacement, slowly starting to show its age. 
I resolutely refuse to acknowledge the benefits of exercise, assuming that inactivity has as many advantages as rigorous activity, and leaving aside all those doom Sayers who would have us out in all weathers, it seems to me that it's a little ingenious to throw away all those carefully cultivated years of sloth for a final tilt at exercise to stave of a premature end.
With the family, like so many these days atomised across the globe the internet allows us perhaps even more interaction as we throw into the discursive mix perl's of opinion dressed up as fact since we know we will not be interrogated as in a face to face conversation where philosophical opinion is given short shrift in preference for the practicality of independent bias. One of course does miss the pleasure of standing back and watching the product of your loins grow into throughly likeable people, clearly without much recent help, other than the 'genetic plasticine' you initiated all those years ago which has since been prodded and squeezed into the attractive shape you see today.
Where will next years New Years Eve find us, if at all. Will we be merely a photo on the mantelpiece an object gathering dust, a memory of what might have been, or will we still be on the list for a Christmas card. Will we once again be identified by the number of medical, appointments in our diary, and a constant worry for the kids who see their role as providing a backstop to a rapidly disintegrating NHS. The purple rinse set and a bungalow by the sea at Clacton, the daily stroll along the prom, a macabre routine as purposeful as ones inevitable demise. Is this the picture postcard we have become, a picture we would never have thought of as us, caught in that pause between life and death.

A more chilling thought is how many blogs lie ahead before the pen runs out of ink. That trail of verbiage, some would say garbage stretching back to 2012, an almost daily commentary on life as seen by one individual. Trying to delve behind the edifice we all present, questioning and cheering from the sidelines has been a throughly pleasurable exercise although perhaps for many, one in which the energy could have been used elsewhere. Every year I get them bound into a book with an appropriate photograph to enhance the storyline. It's interesting to recapture the sense of the 'moment' which stimulated writing my my thoughts down in the first place.

The blog address from which the book is drawn is :- twocents2012.blogspot.com

It has the title Random Thoughts.

New Adventures

New Adventures

When i switch on the news in the morning it's quite surreal to contrast what is going on in Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, Palestine, even the streets of Paris when compared to our own sleepy idyll where apart from the occasional peaceful demonstration with a handful of unarmed police to keep a watching brief.
The turbulence in the Middle East and the vehemence shown by the young men throwing stones or equally the intolerance of the authorities towards those demonstrating.shows that within and between some countries there is an impossible gulf to breach.
Our own news is benign in comparison. We  highlight some local tragedy on the roads or perhaps  a domestic incident which has flared up and tempers led to injury. There is no wholesale upsurge of discontent although our news papers do their best to work us  up to some incident in a hospital or old peoples home. There are thousands who will wake up this morning to merger rations, to the worry of bills unpaid but it's not disaster mode and the society infrastructure is there to help. There are of course people waking this morning and every morning, in pain or  feeling the pain of a loved one who is dying. There are untold circumstances where a personal crisis pushes the person into a realm of unhappiness from which they feel they will never emerge but a national calamity, we have non. Even Brexit, as complicated as it is will not, in my opinion drag us down. There will be winners and losers and adjustments to make but non as cataclysmic as opening your door to the sound of rifle shots and bombs falling. We will try to make out that the end of the world is nigh but really it’s just an adjustment to new circumstances non of them life threatening and who knows it may be the reawakening of us with the new adventures which lie ahead.

Waiting patiently for the meat to cook

 

Subject: Waiting patiently for the meat to cook.

I have been reading an article by the Irish writer Fintan O'Toole in which he lays bear the English hypocrisy about themselves and the flirting with death through Brexit.

The Irish have always been nipping at our heels, forever sniping at the English constitution for being successful when their own history is littered with self harm.

Nationalism came to the Irish late after centuries of family tribal squabbling and a refusal to coalesce into recognisable nationhood. Hot headed by nature, their gift for oratory has placed them in a juxtaposition between self harm and a Celtic history of rough living which they insist was imposed on them by others. A history full of cries for justice when justice was severely missing from their plebeian character. Fed a diet of injustice they have a fine ear for the winging of another nation, especially if it's from their traditional foe the English. 

Brexit is seen in Mr O'Tools eyes as an act of hari Kari, an act of supreme suicide by a nation who failed to adjust to their new position in this globalised, twenty-first century.

Perhaps he is right. We have that propensity to dwell in the past, to celebrate our victories and make martyrdom out of our failure. 

Since the global reach of Empire faded away and, abetted by the economically powerful USA, we helped defeat fascism but at an economic  cost from which we never recovered. (Unlike the Germans and the Japanese who were rebuilt on the back of the US dollar as foundations for stability in the two war zones of the Second World War, Europe and Asia).

Apart from the miracle of the NHS and the Welfare State where, as a nation we recognised our responsibility to the people 'as a whole' living within national boarders, we have been insanely successful in relinquishing the hold we had on our economy favouring anyone who would come up with an offer to take the effort of running anything from us. The glint of gold in the financial markets held our attention when, for literally no effort one could make fortunes overnight on the money market. The picture of well heeled aristocrats bent over the roulette table, betting the house on a spin of a wheel is symptomatic of the English.  

We the people, fed as we are on a diet of false news became sitting ducks for Boris and his pals. History regurgitated as future fact made us feel that for the first time 'we' were being treated poorly by the new powerful kid on the block, the EU and especially by those unelected weirdos the EU Commission. For the first time we were made to feel the underdog, the equivalent of the colonised and not the coloniser. The rules were flowing towards us not the other way around and we didn't like it.  

The jingoistic tunes emanating from much of our media didn't help to make a dispassionate evaluation of the Referendum question, In or Out, the questions of economic sustainability were couched in the tones of 'business' and the effect on business and remarkably, most people didn't equate their own pay packet with that of business. When you are part of the Gig economy or living off welfare the source of funds to pay you the pittance you receive seems irrelevant. 

So our future is bound up in a historical picture of fortitude and eventual, muddling through. Our identity is secured, much as is the Faroe islanders, by the water around our shores. We trade by the skills we have to wrest from nature things which we are able to sell in a divisive  world of trade agreements and tariff barriers into the group consolidation of national identity which absorb much of the national character in exchange for economic leverage. 

Sound familiar. 

Out of the frying pan into the fire. At least then the pan was standardised, whilst the  fire, by definition will burn and be uncomfortable until we find a way of controlling the heat. Perhaps that's our new definition as a nation. 

 A slow, low heat society which turns tough decisions into palatable meals simply by waiting patiently for the meat to cook through. Italy comes to mind.

We are all in for a bumpy ride

Subject: We are all in for a bumpy ride.

I'm reading a book called "Whiteshift" which discusses the diminution of white people in favour of non white people across the globe specifically in places which, in recent history were largely populated by white people they include Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. The argument about North American Indian people and the Polynesian people of New Zealand, even the small non integrated Aboriginal people of Australia lie outside the phenomenon of the decline from majority status of white skinned people in favour of non white.
Does this matter. In essence no, the argument that people are just people, we all bleed in the same way we all procreate in the same way we love and hate in the same way why then is skin colour any reason to differentiate. 
Tribal ticks such as accents and specific customs assimilated into some sort of historical hegemony play a part in the recognition process and provide a useful short cut in the interaction between people. There is a suspicion that without these visible short cuts it's harder to establish rapport since subliminally we are struggling with a tribal recognition problem. 
The thrust of mainstream liberalism has been to play down the these visible differences in favour of the multi cultural/multi ethnicity angle which not only denies any difference but brands those who do not confirm to their view. As we hammer out any sense of whiteness in the panel beating workshop of political correctness we should ask, just before the final paint spray irradiates us forever if the boot were on the other foot, would the multitudes from Africa and Asia be as lenient with their latent hegemony.
In my own observance, black movements cherish their heritage even more than the whites do. Their music is full of folk law tracing their ethnicity and cultural heritage and leaves little space for others in the historical pageant of their past achievement. Given that religion curiously is tied to region and that the regions recognise ethnicity above much else in the Middle East and Asia then the happy coincidence of a relatively benign, if overly materialistic tribal cohort, disappearing from power to be replaced by a chaotic, mis-mash of competing religiosity, well we are in for a bumpy ride.

Paddy Ashdown, a thoroughly descent chap

Subject: Paddy Ashdown, a thoroughly descent chap.

It's funny when death takes away someone who you felt, although you had never met him, a thoroughly good chap.
Paddy Ashdown's death this morning was both a shock and a reminder that the image of "a jolly good chap" is fast disappearing from our public life. To hear Paddy speak and hear the common sense, unadorned with political side seemed oh so refreshing. He was a man who had lived a real life, one which allowed him to see the wood for the trees. His refreshing single minded non sectarian stance on many subjects made one tune in to consider what he had to say. He also had magnificent gravitas and represented a very British way of expressing his liberalism and his concern for his fellow man.
And so we wake up this morning to hear this totem has fallen at only 77 and one is left to reflect on the hole people such as Paddy Ashdown leave when they depart this life.

The Congo

Subject: The Congo

The question one has to ask, which beastliness was worst. The colonial beastliness which kept the trains running on time from Leopoldville to Salisbury, and maintained the roads and the ports in the Belgium Congo or the beastliness of inter tribal warfare with its wholesale massacre of black on black for reasons which are indistinct.

 The history of the Congo like that of much of Africa is played out according to the age of the teller. For the young person today, brainwashed by a rights culture  to do what they want and have opinions untainted with historical necessity. Their Africa represented by the Congo of today is the result of exploitation by the white man, in this case the Belgian, by keeping the indigenous African impoverished and in check if necessary by heavy handed policing, bordering on brutality. 

My own memories of the Belgium Congo, (actually the French Congo and Brazzaville)  although fleeting, and my memories of Mozambique, were of a vibrant market place with intriguing, sometimes baffling African customs but on the whole, a smiling crowd of people engaged in their own lifestyle. 
The white immigrant in these countries were usually clustered with their own kith and kin, also engaged in their own lifestyle but also engaged in a wider concept of social responsibility where the buildings were kept fit for purpose, roads in good repair and the railways ran on time.
I suppose this image of colonial efficacy is an anathema to someone who sees exploitation at the hands of the white man everywhere and wishes for the natural characteristics of the African spirit to be free. The story is embellished by many authors with a humanitarian tale to tell, they weave a story of exploitation and an unnecessary dislodgement of centuries old tribal hegemony.   
It could be argued that there is no greater exploitation in our own, down-at-the-heel towns in our own country but the same authors don't find the same sense of indignity to write about these people, perhaps the sunshine and the open savanna inspires a wider more technicolored vantage point to pontificate about the natural order of things.
The so called hegemony (if it were ever present) was soon replaced by the ferocity of tribe on tribe violence knows no better example than what happened in the Congo or neighbouring Rwanda. So bad was the butchering that the West quietly turned its back unable to make any sense out of the blood bath. But it wasn't only in the Congo and Rwanda but also Uganda, Zimbabwe,Angola, Namibia and Chad. The violence cost over 4 million lives and still counting and has devastated any semblance of civilised conduct.
It is such a far cry from the crimes laid at the door of colonial exploitation and usually leaves aside any question or consideration of the infrastructure which the colonial period had built and left behind, now rusted away. Or the cities, now cesspools of decay all this is ignored by the ideologues who see nothing but bad from the period named Colonisation. 
According to the continents apologists, the decay is due to a lack of training and foresight from the colonial powers towards the African population to make them ready for control and governance as the Continent demanded independence in the 1960s. 
There were many contributing factors but the despots who sized control when the Europeans left were partly a result of absent parenting and an almost immediate downturn in the economic health of each decolonised country. We see it to a lesser extent in our own western society today, absent parents blamed for the irresponsible and irresolute nature of many of our own offspring and who themselves also battle against the effects of poor education and negligible  employment opportunity.
Everything has scale and the scale of impoverishment in the UK pales against the tormented lives of the people bordering the Congo river. The senseless killing continues to this day with 'war lords' using children to kill and be killed. It's a phenomenon not repeated elsewhere, other than when religion creates religious ghettos where hatred runs deep, propagated by religious self interest. 
Only in Africa does the schism between the different tribes draw so much blood. Perhaps European history runs it a close second but then it was largely the work of an imperial clique whilst in central Africa the touchstone seems an across the board  lust for blood with a total breakdown of civilised norms.

Jose Mourinho, Is everyone else wrong

Subject: Jose Mourinho, is everyone else wrong.

So at long last we have chucked Brexit off our radar, at least for a day, not by any political super star but by the sacking of Manchester United's manager Jose Mourinho
The airways are buzzing with excited commentary, vituperative vitriol and only a few plaudits. Few friends came to his rescue, this sour man, a man who always seemed to want to blame someone else, the referee or the linesman, the players and club management and even the fans themselves. I suppose it was the classic case of believing ones own hype, and therefore he was hung by his own petard, gone in the twinkling of an eye
So much was hoped for when he signed to manage the team. Jose Mourinho a man who had had so many battles, on and off the field with that old master Sir Mat Busby, Mr Manchester United, a living legend, it was an impossible pair of shoes to fill. 
His Achilles heel seems to be his man management. He lost the support of the Chelsea players and now has lost the support of critical players in the Manchester team. If his surely looks and clear inability to put up with people who don't see things his way filter onto the training pitch is it any wonder that people like Paul Pogba, who had played such a crucial part in Frances success in the FIFA World Cup early this year has been a failure under Mourinho. 
His appearances in the post match press conferences are seen as contests, contests against football punditry and someone who lives in a bubble of his own making. He balks no criticism, is rude and acerbic to anyone who contests his view of the game. His sarcasm is legion and we the public are left to choose, "is everyone else wrong".