Rickshaws for London

 Subject: Rickshaws for London

If there was ever an indication that we are economically heading downhill it’s the debate in the House of Commons which  I have just been listening to, an hour long diatribe on the floor of the House of Commons by the Right Honourable Christopher Chope, MP for Christchurch, describing in great detail a parliamentary bill regulating ‘Pedicabs’, known in other country’s as Cycle Rickshaws.

From insurance  issues regarding the insurance of passengers to whether the Pedicabs should charge for the ride (as in the hire of a taxi), regardless of the number of people on board, an  important element in a persons ability to peddle the Rickshaw 🛺 .

The importance of finding a companionable alternative to the Taxi is yet another brick in the wall building on the efforts of Transport for London to remove polluting vehicles from our streets, perhaps, in my scepticism one should also consider the matter of  ‘cattle’ meandering on the road or for pedestrians having right of way to wander across and up and down the roads at will so that we merge fully our own image with that of other countries in the third world.

I know I am being obtuse comparing our green and loverly land with Mogadishu but we seem determined to extend the hand of a secure homeland to people who have used the rickshaw or bullock cart for centuries. Perhaps mayor Kahn has a romantic nostalgia for the ways of sub continent where his parents grew up since there is something appealing about the rights of the cow on the street of Islamabad where the value of livestock overrules that of a Mercedes.

With chickens in their roost at the bottom of a garden, a goat munching the daffodils and the religiously protected cow chewing its cud what better scene to offer as a counterpoint to our hurried increasingly disconnected way of life.

Nationhood

Subject: Nationhood

In a country which seems determined to abolish the sense of nationhood in an effort to substitute it for a generalised global approach, where everyone is the same regardless of culture or what used to be called “birth right”.

Wales are playing Italy in Cardiff and the traditional singing by the fans of the anthem ‘Land of my Fathers’, is a beautiful rendition of national sentiment, which always makes me gulp with emotion. It was especially so at the start of this game as George North, Wales’s emblematic wing/centre  lined up for his last game.  George North has for season after season been one of the strong man and played such a decisive part in many of Wales‘s games. To see the tears streaming down his cheeks as the anthem rang out through the stadium was very moving.

But we are now in our localised world encouraged to ignore the vast difference between the goings on in Pakistan or in the Middle East generally, including the Jewish state of Isreal and reveals to me that we are not all singing in from the same hymn sheet and that our differences are more fundamental than we wish to admit. I believe the goal of a truly ‘unitary state’ is political pie in the sky in countries like Palestine for instance, human beings are far to susceptible to being influenced by views that are the antithesis of coming together. Religion is implicit, in its various rule books, handed down hundreds of years ago and based on what today we would describe as mysticism. It  prevents the coming together (other than in a superficial way) of harmony without first committing those it oppose to its view on the unique relationship it has with god.

I t could be argued that Gaza (Palestine / Jewish hegemony) is a religious war and the whole of the conflict in the Middle East is a hand-me-down religious conflict in the cloth of political posturing.

One of the deepest issues is the inconvertible aspect of religious and political zealotry, even within a religious movement, such as the centuries old enmity between the Sunni and Shia sects of the Muslim faith. It  is deeply dividing and dangerous because it brooks any honest discussion and any sense of give and take.

It’s the journey which is important not the destination.

 Subject: It’s the journey which is important not the destination.

How important are the 'creative' arts in the school curriculum. With the likely election of a labour government, they have put forward more funding in State Schools to offset the money currently spent in Private Schools.

The argument that we need engineers and chemists in this modern world rather than poets and actors is a reflection of the 'bang for buck' and the need to manufacture things instead of entertainment, whether it's for yourself or to appear on a formulate Stars discovery show on the telly. There's a discussion about the type of schooling your child should attend, one which focuses on exams and the attainment of A levels and the one which allows the child the freedom to explore its interests on the assumption that learning improves with enthusiasm and ownership rather than rote learning.

Of course in a world where work and the skills required by the various professions a person might try and are very important, not only for self esteem but also the potential to earn more money which then allows one the freedom, in later life to enjoy the freedom you feel your child might have lost in having to pass those blasted exams.

Playing the oboe in a national orchestra pays £30.000 a year whilst the person on the minimum wage, flipping burgers is £20,000.

Self esteem is crucial in life What ever you do. The poet in his garret has a sense of his worth in the use of words through which he captures his sentiment but it hardly pays the rent. The obtuse reasoning towards what's most valuable, a sonnet or a legal phrase

is best captured by comparing Dickens to Hansard the one memorable the other factual and dry. Unfortunately there aren't many of the genius Dickens displayed and we do unfortunately need Hansard, if only to keep track of the lies politicians tell.

Can a person, in this tick box society, where character is purportedly revealed by the school tie (a misnomer if ever there is one) and the car you drive, be satisfied with  connecting with nature, shunning materialism, taking pride in being different and finding your own destination. Schools which encourage self discovery rather than following a purely academic path are rich in opportunity but not necessarily in the opportunity to later engage with the majority who seek materialism as their goal in life. Since we are communicative souls and usually need some sort of acceptance in what we do the Bohemian lifestyle needs bohemian pals, not the drop-out failure who often carry tons of baggage but the confident person who, on a small boat, living on an atoll in the Bahamas has found solace in the sunset and a bottle of rum.

To plough your own furrow in a confused world of perpetual interference is perhaps something to strive towards and maybe a 'Steiner School', which purports to set its pupils along the right track and is a way to protect your child from the vagaries of group think.

Does the value of independently working out life’s concepts through a more hands on exposure to the fundamentals and not forced fed like battery raised chicks in an under resourced education system competing with the much better resourced Private School sector. Children from poor backgrounds do succeed but often against the odds and in an increasingly “don’t care” environment, obsessed with short cuts to success which usually, like the lottery lead to failure.

Perhaps, as is often said, it’s the journey which is important not the destination.

Facing up to change.

Subject: Facing up to change.

“When money is short, language takes up the slack”.

We see and hear it in every political  utterance on all sides of the political landscape, words to mesmerise us into believing someone is doing something about the craven lack of attention into the plight of our economy.

As we descend into a 'second world' order, sliding down the snake on almost any measure you wish to compare  us to we are like an aging aunt who once commanded attention for her opinion but is now virtually ignored.  We rank close to bottom regarding so many of the economic and social bench marks, from the provision of education to the provision of health, from the capacity to make and invest in things, to our understanding of the importance of social cohesion through the failure to rebuild the stock of affordable housing sold off my Mrs Thatcher and the lack of standards which we once formulated as a world leader in virtually every aspect of public life.

History tells us of our decline, the corruption of government and the civil service, once the gold standard, now corrupted by inertia and apparent ineptitude appearing not to care for the plight of the unwashed majority. A police force mired in claims against it regarding its sloth to investigate ordinary crime and worse, the crimes that actual policemen themselves commit covered up by senior colleagues in the force.

Everything has become tainted by ‘gesture’ politicking. Conviction’ politics has virtually disappeared under a welter of commissioned focus groups which weigh the pros and cons of political gain rather than following a path which might lead to the overall betterment of the majority.

Our economic frailty has reached a point where the protection of the many as well as the wealthy, choosing harsh tactics on a nation which has grown up molly coddled by the rights of minorities over the rights of the majority. There are swathes of people living on the Benefit System who should be contributing in some way or another but who have become untouchable by the provision of rights. A cold douche of reality would be in order for those not willing to train to do jobs and which the economy needs. Properly taxing unearned income on those who are protected by the corporate body. Investment and training in not only a skilled workforce which adds to the collective infrastructure and becomes part of the growth we need to make the things we are currently reliant on from other manufactures, based in countries which are critical to our national need but are critical of our political aims. Here we have been far too reliant on a lez-faire attitude by assuming, when we buy it more cheaply from others rather than make it ourselves there isn't a cost to bare. The cozy global supply chains, created at the turn of the century which are faltering as authoritarian regimes take over have made us vulnerable and much more reliant on the potential enemy for sensitive parts in our economic structure which has laid ourselves open to exploitation.

I suppose we shouldn’t complain since the history books describe, that’s how we rose to prominence.

The power and the demise of attachment.

 Subject: The power and the demise of attachment.





Is the value of a politician found, not in his rhetoric but in his background and upbringing. Do any of us learn to move away from entrenched views formed in our youth, even when subsequent experience tends to tell us a different story. Are we simply Pavlovian creatures moving through a field of nostalgic thoughts. Is free will a myth closeted as we are by preferences formed when growing up and are mothers largely to blame for our proclivity and bias.

This sea mist we call our mental understanding is founded on marshy ground, it ebbs and flows with the proverbial weather, seeking surety where non exists. If we thought less of what we know and acknowledged more of what we don’t know, if our minds were instead filled with conjecture and mystery rather than our trying to nail our colours to the mast of a ship which is sailing in the wrong direction with a captain and a faulty compass.

The books on my shelves have encourage me to think this way or that way but in essence it doesn’t matter, I am but the flotsam floating on the tide, my mark is either high or low, ever changing because in this noisy world we have to create a purpose in our lives to make sense of how to cope with time, that period between birth and death. It’s as if we had been in a coma, reacting to stimuli, living on impulses, some good, some bad but always external and driven by events.

Even a thoughtful, driven brain, is adrift amidst the fashion of our time, the incessant prodding of the media, the cataclysm on a distant shore is the life blood of an active mind but is not of our own making. Even the monastic mind is driven by thoughts of god and the reward in heaven.

The Buddhist concept, of living a solitary life so as to be able to achieve peace and through peace gain understanding, minimising the suffering, and releasing oneself  from the desire of attachment, corralling the mind in some sort of containment, lending to structured thought and a measure of passive reflection.

The making of an icon.

 Subject: The making of an icon.



I just don’t understand all the hype over Tailor Swift. She’s not a particular beautiful woman, more gawky than curvaceous and having listened to some of her songs I’m not particularly impressed. So what is it.

What makes Donald Trump appear to his followers a person they will follow to the end of the earth and yet to me he impersonates the fascist Mussolini , what attracted the Poms to a man like Boris Johnson, clearly a man without critical substance or a ethical code and instead trades on an ability to quote Homer. What is it in our gullibility to pick a bad un rather than analyse the person properly and see their failings.

Of course behind each person there is the publicity machine which amplify the things we want to hear, “make America strong again” or “get Brexit done” in their world determined to see us wholly as a market of consumer’s.

Marketing and packaging is a deceitful industry and as with so much of the business

of promotional advertising, what you buy is not always what you thought you were buying. Now a days with ‘influencers’ in our homes 24/7 we are like animals in a pen moved around according to the tag attached to our ear, or at night, an infer red sight, just waiting to be brought down with a bit of the copyrighters skill at stretching truth and reality. We are either gullible or simply just ignorant wishing things were better and like the lottery ticket purchaser, not willing to consider the odds.

Of course by calculating the odds every time we wouldn’t get far in life but we might just avoid the heart rendering failures which pock mark our lives.  Some people chose amphetamines to get through the day, or a glass of wine others seek adventure and the adrenaline of high speed danger, others it’s simply a good book and a mug of coco. We are all different and so long as our decision only effects ourselves there is no harm done but as America sleep walks towards a second term more extremist Donald Trump Presidency with the US playing a critical role in all our lives in the world divided once more between the democratically elected and the kleptomaniac who wishes to hoover up nations to inflate their ego.

The Donald is already threatening Nato, our one consolidated deterrent against ideologically powerful forces, although I do confess the ideological substance of capitalism has screwed and distorted the world because at source it relies on human beings to be fair and considerate towards each other, but sadly ‘power’ corrupts us all. What were the democrats thinking in allowing Joe Biden to seek a second term, surely the Constitution had pre-empted an unfit person taking over the reins but of course, once again we are drawn again into the area of perceptions of what a leader looks like. Biden’s onset of age related frailty describes us all at some stage and so long as there is support, then life goes on. Given the personality of Biden v Trump I would much rather trust Biden to make a reasoned decision.

Anyway it looks as if we will be faced by what I consider an unstable influence far greater than Biden’s age since it is more accurately represented by  a phycological issue, megalomania the obsession of power and self important grandiosity. He potentially is a dangerous man  and that’s the last thing we need in a dangerous world.

A line of reasoning.

 Subject: A line of reasoning.



Is our greatest enemy, within.  The government or the sclerotic civil service which is supposed to enact its wishes seems  time and again to fail and we become trapped in a minefield of implausible obfuscation.

Last night the Prime Minister faced an audience in County Durham and, with a straight face and lots of panache told the audience everything was on course for success under his stewardship, it implied that much of what we hear about the economy, the schools, the NHS, our armed forces, the police and the legal system as a whole (and so much more), was all a misconceived illusion put about by evil forces.

He bounced onto the stage like a youthful marketing executive full of verve, surrounded by a well turned out North of England audience , like a messiah, eloquent and versed in the finer arts of explaining the unexplainable. I have to admit that I was impressed by his showing but as I gained my breath unable any more to explain to myself our abominable showing on virtually any measurement we choose to take, his oratory had transmuted fact for fiction, wishes for reality, it was all so plausible until you came back to earth and asked the question why so many of the issues are not as he said they are.

Words and sentences plus the a person willing to deliver those words and sentences, when expressed with a positive cadence and go back in time, well before Shakespeare. The great bard was master at conjuring  up a speech to defy evil which was amongst us even making the perpetrator the hero of the story. From Mark Anthony to Churchill the  storytelling was the most important part of the act in duplicity, a masterful exposure of the human condition, a construct of being amiable whilst plotting to kill, of setting out a story of moral rectitude whilst despising the person caught up in the bloodshed.

We are not on the field of Agincourt or in the head of the prince of Denmark as he struggled with his mortal compass, we aren’t at the stage of General Haig’s cry “ Your Country Needs You”  but we are in the presence of men gifted to ignore facts of penury and present them as a positive aspect of our life here in this country.

This morning, on another issue, the media commentary about the removal of the Rochdale labour candidate for anti Semitic opinion regarding the Hamas invasion of Israel on October the 7th and the murder and abduction of so many Israelis. The usual pro Israeli lobby in Westminster have been up in arms about what it sees as antisemitism but that lobby, including the Israel religious leaders are strangely quiet about the genocide which is being conducted by Israel in Gaza. The horror of October the 7th has been and is being repeated by a country which professes a special status not only in the eyes of God but in the political aftermath of the genocide committed against them by the Germans and yet the Israeli state inflicts terror on a civilian population in Gaza, laying waste by a force from which the Palestinian's  have no defence and worst of all are revisiting the same dreadful crime the Germans had in acted towards them between 1930 and 1945 and was the very reason that the political state of Israel was created out of the state of Palestine.

Mankind for all its wisdom still has a basic bias against others who it does not regard as equal and whilst promising to rain hell and damnation on those ‘opposing’ the Jewish line of reasoning as to their determination of a right to nationhood there is little room for manoeuvre.

The Labour Party ran into a great deal of opposition, not least from the Jewish rabbinical  leaders in the Synagogue who become extremely political in ‘demanding’ that the Labour Party, under Jeremy Corbyn stop questioning the Jewish community with regard to the Palestine. The term anti-semite is today banded about as if, having once claimed anti semitism, all rational argument must stop. It has a corresponding influence in the Muslim faith regarding the Prophet Mohamed which suggests that ‘faith’ still has an over-weaning influence in the affairs of a Secular society.

It will be interesting if the voters of Rochdale lend Mr Ali ( the MP at the centre of the anti semite trope) their support, much like in Pakistan where Imran Khan is still supported even as he languishes in prison.