A history lesson

Subject: A history lesson.

It's baffling to think that in amongst the brickbats which are being thrown around between ourselves and the Europeans today lies the indubitably fact that we, the people are once more mere pawns in a game which only the political class play.
Pre 1939 the average German, Frenchman, Italian, Greek, Spanish man or woman went about their business with much the same endeavor as they do today that of putting food on the table and relaxing at the end of the day in a way which represented their culture and the weather. Prick one and they bleed, they were as peas in a pod much the same except that they had been brought to a boil by political mischief. 

We have names for the cults that were at play, Communist, Fascist, Nationalist, and the turmoil in Spain, a civil war with Spaniards tearing into each other with the ferocity of wild animals was only the precursor to the bloodbath of the Second World War. 
How can people with so much in common be led by a few to apparently hate each other, not even hate but disagree with, not even that but perhaps don't feel quite comfortable with, the mind boggles at the childishness of it all. What is it in the psych of men and women which leads them to pick sides and hurl abuse at each other. How are we so easily led, so easily influenced that we become like animals tearing at our boundaries like pit bulls striving to show how special we are, how strong and resolute.
As the Brexit Ferraro comes into its last stages and the politicos run for cover disclaiming their own part in it, the shambles which has occurred since 2016  are left for the people to shake their collective heads at as they pick up the pieces of what for some will be lives destroyed.
It won't be on the scale of 1945, it won't count corpses totaling 40 million 40.000.000, each an individual tragedy repeatedly mirrored in the tragedy at home, the loss of a son or daughter, father or mother, husband or wife, breadwinner or homemaker, the whole fabric of what we call society, destroyed by the ideological proclivity of a few.
Now as then, although fat less cataclysmic we wait to see what our masters will decide. The known structures torn down for the unknown, security for insecurity, freedoms trashed for the confine of a national boarder to promote our identity. It seems surreal and yet it is the condition of man ever since he gathered to socialise along the banks of the Euphrates 

Keeping us governable

Subject: Keeping us governable.

Is democracy on its knees as the crowds turn out on the streets in London. Is the use of a proroguing power, in effect closing down Parliament, by the Prime Minister against the wishes of the majority of parliamentarians, an act of treason. Should the will of the people be thwarted by those same parliamentarians or should they follow the instructions as elected representatives and fulfill what the referendum directed.
The power of a democracy lies in the willingness of the people and their political  rulers  to cohabit the same space. This ability to cohabit has always rested on a respect for parliamentary democracy in so far as it seems the best way of accepting a direction which might not be of your own choosing but which you accept is the choice of the majority. 
Trust then and a belief that the system is fair are the main ingredients but when either one or other is eroded then the edifice begins to crumble. 

When we go into the polling booth we do not elect a leader we elect a party from which a leader is drawn. The leader then is the choice of a small cabal, the parliamentary members, the MPs and the relatively small number of grass roots party members who register and pay their dues to the particulate party of their choosing.
The problem comes about when hand the choice to the cabal since their choice of whom becomes prime minister is clearly not democratic. Furthermore under our system the Prime Minister has unheard of power to do virtually what he or she desires. 
Unlike in the United States who elect separately their president and their party representatives, we have no idea who will come out on top, although it is usually the leader of the party. Over the course of a term in which general elections are held, there can be a number of people who push themselves to the top to become prime minister and, as has been seen in our last bout of self flagellation, the strangest outcomes occur. 
So is democracy flawed or perhaps our 'first past the post' variant has corrupted democracy to the extent the voter feels left out of the system and rebels when the opportunity presents itself. 
Democracy and the lack of a backstop in the form of a written constitution allows a sitting Prime Minister to ride ruff shod over the perception we had that these sort of things, like closing down parliament when we need parliamentarians to be locked up, 24/7 inside the Palace of Westminster until a decision is made as to how we handle the business of government from here on regarding Europe. How and why they closed parliament for holidays when the most important parliamentary issue for decades is due to happen in two months time, why and how they contemplate closing parliament so they can waffle away at their party conferences while potentially Rome burns is beyond me. Perhaps the issues are insoluble and no agreement reached then if so they must put it back to the people and assume that, as unscientific a vote is and more so, the collective vote of the people  it's all we have to save the democratic principle which keep us governable. 

I'ts Sunday

Subject: It's Sunday

It's strange how the weekend, especially Sunday has a feel about it setting it apart from other days. Back then Sunday was special especially so for Christians who's call to worship was the sound of church bells tolling their cheerful message, we are open, come and visit, it's free.   
In those days the whole tenor of the day was different. Shops were closed to ensure that staff had at least one day off from work and we the consumers were free to do other things. Just imagine it, no place to shop, today's society would go into melt down so addicted we have become to buying things as part of our 'off work' therapy. 
Five days working to earn enough to spend, two days to spend it. We profess our concern about the things science does to animals but never a thought about the mind games we play with our fellow humans. 


The traditions of the Morning Service, or if you had had a late night on Saturday, Evensong, were repeated throughout the land especially in the villages were a close watch was kept on the community and you gained Brownie points for the weekly routine of passing through the church yard, passed the silent grave stones, and into the church with its serene atmosphere, a sort of lull in life's activities where you were afforded a moment or two with your maker. The hard pews and the cushion for kneeling, the hymn books and the organ playing quietly, cushioning the silence as we awaited the vicar. He ascended the pulpit his garments billowing around him, setting us aside, only his scruffy shoes and socks revealing his ordinariness. His voice plush with certitude was posh (unlike in the Catholic Church were he was inevitably Irish) an educated man called to the pulpit by a desire to save souls. 
The hymns were announced and the congregation sung with a rewarding gusto, 'Onward Christian Solders', as if the words were enough to ensure you at least had a chance of heaven. The highlight, for the vicar at least, was the sermon, that religious philosophical homely in which his intent was to weave together the lives of his congregation and a higher aspiration, their service to god.
As we broke once more out into the daylight, standing amongst the stones of those departed who no doubt had trod the same path each Sunday. We exclaimed pleasantries with others, whilst not friends they had become co-conspirators for a little while in this village ritual.
Mums with their sons and daughters, fulfilling their obligation not only to god but to the Mothers in the Institute and the loose talk around the post office. Status was everything and it took a strong head not to care.
Many husbands were also there alongside their families in this weekly show of religious and matrimonial strength but many were not. For them the daily ritual began at midday with the opening of the pub, a limited affair back then, closing time 3am on every day of the week to encourage at least some 'change' to filter into the household kitty. The talk was not of religious issues but of yesterday's game or the shenanigans brought on by drink the night before. Not for them the soul searching only the banter which a pint or four could ensue.
The bells would ring again at 6pm calling those who had slept in, a repeat of the morning session, a plea to forget the rough incidence of reality, for the joy of knowing.

Constitutions,conventions and power

Subject: Constitutions, conventions and power.

Watching the American TV Channel, C-SPAN I was struck by the fluency of the Academic speakers in their role of describing the apparent dilemma of President Trump and the American notion of the Separation of Powers in their constitution.
We are bombarded with everyday Twitter bombast from Mr Trump and we wonder at the danger, to us all as he rampages on many topics which we had thought protected by the Constitution. His populist diatribe seems to get to the root of a decision making process which pray on fear. Fear of the immigrant, fear of dissident cultures, fear of outside interference in terms of economics, of loosing face in a world which is itself more at odds with itself. 
Is Trump authoritarian. Not in terms of the sort of authoritarianism exhibited by Mr Putin or Xi Jinping of China. He is limited by Congress in his funding and whilst his bombast scares many liberal thinking people, his ability to set in motion many of his more scary ideas is limited. 
Russian and Chinese leaders are not constrained from carrying out what ever they dean necessary and even a British Prime Minister, with a majority is only limited by convention and we see, in the most recent addition, a willingness to throw out even tried and trusted Convention which has  placed parliament in a difficult position, having no written framework like a binding Constitution to limit him.
The frustration in America is that two ideologically opposed views as to what is good for the people and the nation sit at opposite ends of a corridor and without cooperation, nothing gets done. In Britain once an election is decided then for 5 years the party and more prosaically  the man or woman who that party elects as leader has untrammelled power to do much as they please.
The academics on C-SPAN were mostly law professors majoring in constitutional law and I was fascinated by their collective assurance that the worst impulses could be contained. Contrast this with the panic amongst the MPs in the Mother of Parliaments who seem, faced with an unintended impasse where there are no rules, only a series of conventions and that if Convention is trashed, they are powerless to do much about it.

The best we can hope is to be civil

Subject: The best we can hope is to be civil.

The Nobel Savage, the ghost in the machine, the concept that culture lives outside the individual as a force baring down on them, a super organic mind. All seek to imply that humans are organically joined by some sort of creative good, be it in our religious design 
or as the concept of the Nobel Savage would have it our most basic self is benign and seeks harmony.
The Blank Slate on the other hand suggests that we are creatures of our environment susceptible to the exposure of what we experience and moulded from birth by events.

Biology, and the genetic hand me down of characteristics and traits which distinguish each individual from the next seems to fly in the face of a 'divine collective' or even a non divine collective, rather we are pretty much on our own and each unique.

It rather blows a gaping hole in our wish to form social cohesion when we are all different, other than the force of self protection which suggests that Christ's call to "do unto others as you would have do unto yourself" is a good plan. There's no suggestion of an innate brotherhood rather a recognition that we are separate but need to recognise the 'otherness' in each of us.

In today's reflective world, with the boundaries drawn in to a daily storyline on television we see the myriad cultures drawn from the practical experience of living somewhere else and we try to find a social thread to tie ourselves into some sort of social commonality. But what if there isn't any commonality, what if our unique genetic variability defines us as separate and the most we can ask of each other is to be civil.

A right old putsch

Subject: A right old putsch 

So last night the drama and the vitriol, as members of the Conservative party vented their spleen on each other on that most fundamental question for the Tory Party, whether  to remain in the European Union or to reform, as they see it, to a sovereign nation free to carry out its business without EU interference.
Things had come to a head with the election by party members of Boris Johnson to be our  Prime Minister. Johnson that unlikely choice with his apparent lack of what might be called Prime Ministerial gravitas, an apparent lack of being able to hold a cohesive view or reason his brief without peppering it with inappropriate and inane frivolity.
There was nothing frivolous in last nights exchanges as the party MPs tore lumps out of each other with thinly veiled contempt.  These are people who had in some cases shared a lifetime together in the confine of the Palace of Westminster, who daily rubbed shoulders debating the matters of the day but tonight, their persona revealed that on this matter of EU membership they belonged to a different gang and would not have been averse to sticking the knife, real or imaginary, in to their colleagues . 
Party grandees, household names clung together for support as they said they could not in conscience support Boris in his scheme to crash the country out of the Union without some sort of economic deal.
Ken Clark, (the father of the house), Nicholas  Soames (Winston Churchill's grandson). The ex Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, Philip Hammond the ex Chancellor of the Exchequer, Greg Clark, Rory Stewart and David Gauke all ministers in Mrs Mays government. All respected household names, each week they spoke to their brief at the Dispatch Box and irrespective of whether you agreed with their political persuasion you respected their right to do do. These were not backbencher they were the elite of the parties first eleven, in football parlance who were being threatened by this upstart clown, Johnson and his shadowy backroom boy Dominic Cummings (the unelected power behind the throne) with having the whip withdrawn and in effect kicked out of parliamentary life. People with 40/50 years of service who had rebelled on a matter of conscience were threatened with their cards.

The sight of the louche Jacob Rees-Mogg, newly promoted to Leader of the House reclining virtually horizontally on the front bench said it all.  A disdain for parliament and his fellow parliamentarians, he is one one of the architects of the group of Tory MPs, the ERC (European Research Group) who made Mrs Mays position in the job, hell, is an internal clique who's life's work has been to get us out of Europe, irrespective of the consequences. From a handful to roughly 70 hardcore members, out of, plus 300 sitting conservative MPs, they have temporally,  inherited the Earth by infiltrating  their party with the one aim, to leave Europe, coincided with the election of Boris, who to my mind borrowed the opportunity in his megalomanic thirst for power and the pop job.
If Boris carries out his threatened putsch against the rebels it's comparable to  Pep Guardiola firing his first eleven and fielding his second eleven in the European Cup. 
The political reverberations will be felt for a long time as the threat of a 'dictator' willing to use his dictatorial powers within the construct of a democratic institution, is felt, reflected on and eventually repudiated by the nation 

Selfish self absorption

Subject: Selfish self absorption.

It arguable that much of what we call intelligence and reasoning, things which we applaud the mind for and elevate the mind to distinguish ourselves from animals is nothing more than a computable process. 
Ethics and morality are set pieces in our evolutionary story distinguishing us from other primates. We assume that as mental processes they came into being as thought which we defined and developed into a code of conduct based on principles which set us apart as intelligent beings.
But what if this were not true, what if these fine lauded first principles of social cohesion were nothing more than, an observation of what worked, a mechanistic evaluation of what is good for us. If this is true and we are nothing more than a computerised observation platform, sifting through the incoming material that our senses provide, recognising what know and remember, trashing much of what is new as unknown and therefore irrelevant. That cognisance, awareness, perception are nothing more than the mechanistic operations of the brain and the elevation to mind status is flawed. Perhaps all our romance with the uniqueness of the mind and its position somewhere outside of our brain is also flawed. 
Perhaps we are nothing more than the sum of our observations and even our thoughts which seek answers outside the realm of our perceived world are but the variations  of the 'what if' question, no more rational than the thoughts which formed the basis of early man's thinking, or the religious thinking of two thousand years ago. 
Perhaps the idea of intelligence and education which is supposed to form the basis for our uniqueness is nothing more than an internal device for checking what we perceive to be useful and are main claim to uniqueness is our selfish self absorption.