The Eurovision Song Contest. (A Storm in a Teacup)

 Subject: The Eurovision  Song Contest. (A Storm in a Teacup)

Only if you are a nightclub techno dance freak will the Euro Song Contest make sense to you with its largely repetitive drum and base sound tracks and the wild gymnastics of the dancers as they circle a scantily dressed singer blasting out what some describe vaguely as a songs complete with pyrotechnics.

I’m usually found hiding behind the couch, all that noise and energy can’t be good for you, it’s the antithesis of what I like being so synthetic, the display drowning out the melody if melody was ever included or intended. It’s the shear active volume of it all the overhyped promotion. From a slip of a “man” ‘in a dress’ balancing on a terrestrial dish to a goth resurrected from an Irish bog, the songs and costumes are bizarre as is the cryptic commentary by the British television presenter, we masters, as always, of the art of delusionary taste.

This years contest has been peppered by the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and their right to perform. The Russians were barred last year for their invasion of the Ukraine and it’s hard to justify Isreal’s presence but their calm civilised performance both on and off the stage is a lesson Benjamin Netanyahu could learn from.

To further illustrate how far I am from mainstream thinking and following on the trend where I am usually nonplussed by judges on our popular media show ‘Landscape Painting’ who score points for daubing the canvas with unrelated images to what I clearly see, so the judges in this international song contest seem to think from a different box, a different value pack to mine.

Nemo, the winner sees him/herself as what’s called non binary, belonging to neither gender, man or women which, looking around the wildly shrieking fans in the audience and could describe so many of them.

Perhaps it’s time for me to bow out from this confused world with its determination to overturn century old concepts for an overcharged hyped up existence sustained by drugs and hormone therapy.

Wild Earth

 Subject: Wild Earth



The South African game park television program Wild Earth comes to a close at the end of the month. No more escaping into the Mental tranquillity gained by watching animals in their near natural habitat. drinking at the waterhole, lions stretched out dozing in the midday heat after catching and dining on fresh  kudu. This is the gathering place for the socially inclined elephant or flighty zebra the ever alert deer the pugnacious buffalo, or  the lithe leopard.

The beauty of the program is that it’s not a manufacture game program driven by the need to be dramatic, the shots we see as we wait, with the ranger to observe respectfully how things pan out and become immersed in the natural tableau of life and death. We simply switch off and out of the hurried life we live and connect, with the help of the rangers their simple life of animal husbandry

These rangers have their own idiosyncrasies.  The endearing chuckle of Cedric who seems in constant  mirth with himself, to the sharp inflection of the South African female voice it’s cadence different to the European as  Amy ever oohing and ahhing about the baby elephant as it runs towards the camera whilst Amy soothes  its mom, who isn’t far away keeping a beady eye on proceedings with a relaxed “it’s ok” . There’s something maternal in Amy which is infectious.

Too soon, at the end of the month in fact, the show will close for lack of funds. It’s the usual pursuit of ratings and the incessant draw of advertising revenue. To hell with other values, especially the pleasure we get on of it.

The Met

 Subject: The Met

How can the Met Police serve so many masters. They are constantly in trouble for either not enough or too little employing the "move along please" when it comes to dealing with the public and who are the 'public' today, do they represent the Palestinian Arab cause or the Jewish diaspora in Stamford Hill, do they sympathise with the West Indian community in Notting Hill or the Bangladesh community in Tower Hamlets. Each segment represents people and cultures formed overseas who over the last  100 years have come to identify areas of London as their home in which minorities including the ethnic British people (I know that the definition British has been corrupted) are in effect second class citizens and the police, aware of this, play a game of pass the parcel so as not to upset the local majority. The Jewish man wearing a yamaka wished to thread his way across the road through a crowd of Palestinian supporters but was politely warned that it was unsafe and he shouldn't. The policeman broke a rule, which has recently come into place, that you can't refer to the characteristics of dress to depict their race or religion even though the apparel is meant to do just that. The Hasidic Jew with his costume and long sideburns, the Arab with his dishdash and taqiyah are symbolic but mustn't be mentioned to distinguish them from other people. I wonder if the flat cap would pass muster or is the Yorkshireman/Lancastrian simply to self confident in his own ideals not to worry about what others think.

We are in an Orwellian nightmare where sensitivities are right for the picking on media platforms and online chat rooms, where commentary becomes the news of the day which it would have been if the Jewish guy had been harmed as he pushed his way across the road. The difference between common rights and common sense has been lost as we trade punches as to who has right on their side. There are many parts within  many cities where I would not walk after dark, but I don't shout "but it's my right".

I accuse many women of being under a similar misapprehension on the basis of their rights, there will always be situations where unless you are Mike Tyson you do not go and if we could free up genuine debate on rights instead of wasting time on phantom idealism then we might get somewhere.

The London marathon

 Subject: The London marathon

What a refreshing change to listen to ordinary people describe their personal journey into marathon running, the causes they run for and the camaraderie it generates between them. In a world distorted by conflict this microcosm of diligence over, in some cases, great adversity in the wheelchair race for example, to simply dressing up in crazy costumes to highlight their fundraising effort. It’s a sort of collaboration of the best in human collective endeavour, from the steely determination of the elite runners who do this as a living to the thousands who flood into London from all over the country each with their personal story some even nursing an incurable disease.

It’s a lovely day for running, if a little chilly and as the elite ladies set off, almost immediately the African contingent move away from the Caucasian girls signalling the gap in the ethnic division between black and white, both male and female. It’s strange that ethnicity rules the competition at long distant racing, it’s not even close as the gap between the runners increases to divide the race by what appears to be an act of genetics. I suppose if’s the same as that between men and women but I myself who balks at running for a bus, even for me the enthusiasm is infectious and whilst I feel well past it now I wish I had not been so sceptical toward gifting time to my body in training. I used to see people out in all weathers running along London road as I drove off to work and thought it had become more like a fetish than athleticism. It was the time given over to training which I balked about although, in my teens, I was out most nights in the cold and wet, after work and at the weekend training or simply cycling on my bike

through the winding lanes in Yorkshire.

Once the elites were off it was the turn of the ordinary runner, each determined to get close to a time they felt capable of and yet at the same time each carried along by the occasion. There were plenty of improbable contraptions under which to hide the runner but the most memorable in 2002 was a guy named Scott who ran (stumbled) around the course in a deep sea diving suit in 5days 8 hours. Mr Scott was no stranger to the unusual having run through Jordan dressed as Indiana Jones, climbed Everest and pulled a sled to the South Pole all in the aid of raising money to combat cancer.

Tonight with aching limbs they will relive their race and on Monday morning no doubt feel somewhat supercilious of those who had stayed in bed.

Sue Perkins in Japan

 Subject: Sue Perkins in Japan





The cult of shouting, subordination and self depreciation in a Japanese business school where the gifted few are weeded to further eradicating any weakness which interferes with the corporate goal was graphically illustrated in a show meddled around the likes and dislikes of presenter Sue Perkins. These disciplined middle class worker bees who famously queue up to be ignominiously pushed and squeezed into the already overcrowded rail carriages (a concept of subordination unknown outside of Japan) jostled and pushed into the city along with thousands of others, each headed for a long day of corporate slavery.

The acceptance of this mind set, along with the inevitable postponement  of a child bearing family life makes the oriental mind a significant adversary when it comes to competitive business practice since in the West we should be aware of our obsession to equate our citizens, irrespective of cultural and political and religious acuity, to a corporate bottom line without demanding  a high level of corporate sensitivity. To the Japanese respect is the same as sensitivity and respect you earn. Their use of work committees to inform management of the views of the shop floor, has produced a collective so different from the ‘tell’ of British management and instead of one of ‘consultation’, and collective decision making.

Religion rates highly in Japan and the two major ones, Shinto and Buddhism coexist harmoniously. Shintoism places great importance on purity, harmony and family respect plus the subordination of the individual to the group, the very antithesis of our own cultural and religious belief.  Although the word 'religion' cultivates the idea that each religious calling is unique  and each group has the certainty of it being right, the substance of culture is much more divisive since it balances 'its certainty' on locality and local practices. Wall Street in its global obsession with costs a cheap goods has drawn us all into latter day slavery where, for the bulk of us, the path has been that of national decline as we seek, or are forced into competing with labour from systems with the lowest common denominator. China with its communist doctrinaire approach, India with its indifference and Russia with hubris about its place in history.

In the case of Japan its strength was not exploitive cheap labour but an unusual conformity, a pride in country and a self centred deprivation which saw the worker willing to be  manipulated for the corporate and therefore the national good.

In our quirky sense of individualism and rights, we in this country place our own needs first and so water down our power of the collective to one of the individual kudu wandering the plains waiting for the predator to take us down.

It’s the price of freedom, the price we pay to do, or not do, according to taste and as the world settles into competing groups, is sadly out of kilter to compete with the collective and their group think.

The power of direct action.

 Subject: The power of direct action.

Listening to advocates of direct action especially if they represent an ideology you don't agree with, or in fact fear, one is struck by the conflict of ‘humanitarian issues’ versus ‘the power of the status quo’.

In the conflict between the Palestinian and the Israeli, the Russians and the Lithuanians, the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar each has a common denominator, the populist uprisings  against local oppression or a cohesive outside force wishing to represent an ideology or religious group.

Who's side do ‘we’ pick when we see state force used against civilians trying to go about their daily lives. Our humanitarian principles (if we have any) cry out at the spectre of a lack of human compassion with strikes to kill, amongst others, innocent children.Part of the optic of course is the result of not acting in the past when the threats were embryonic and listening to each side one is struck by the reasoning, each laced with hypocrisy making it very difficult to get to the truth.

This question of seeking the truth as if the truth had some sort of arbitrary value available to all sides in a conflict is plain silly. One can hear chapter and verse from any side in a conflict as to their particular verification since we are all guilty of hubris. The arrogance of the Israeli politician, the pious self righteous belief from the religious leaders in Iran, the hasty distain of outside criticism the Chinese adopt towards opposition to their grab for power, particularly in Taiwan, the pomposity of Vladimir Putin as he seeks to resurrect the USSR. Speak to any Russian patriot and he has his backing, speak too a member of the Chinese Comintern and the island of Taiwan is Chinese, the fundamentalist religious confirmation of Islam by the Ayatollah as the true word of god and therefore inviolate as conversely the historical sanctity of Israel is worth dying for.

We in Britain have lost these 'sureties', so overwhelmed have we become in the minutiae of the individual. There are no Churchill's guarding our land or language, we have succumbed to the experiment of 'universality' where nations, given the chance, will see things our way and if not, we are at a loss what to do.

Our parliamentarians are plagued by only following what the pollsters say and seem to have lost any conviction of their own, in fact conviction is extinguished by the party whip in their desire for party conformity.  

We now stand alone having escaped the economic safety blanket of the EU and having been rebuffed by the Americans from whom we expected trade concessions, we tinker with the idea cosying up to India but that comes at a price of unfettered Indian migration. Some encouragement  in the conclusion if a small deal with Australia and an even smaller one with New Zealand is all that’s come from the proud claim that having been released from the stranglehold of EU bureaucracy we would be out winning orders from all points of the compass the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, we are well past our best and have little to offer other than or fast diminishing purchasing power for goods we can no longer manufacture ourself.

We still have compassion in droves for the poor, uneducated people in who wish to come and live here and direct action amplified by the media platforms has never been so strong but it reminds me of the pitiful sound of a caged animal before it goes mad.

Changing taste.

 Subject: Changing taste.

Having breasted the finishing line over three years ago, I'm now living on borrowed time and each day brings with it a mixture of fresh aches and pains, luckily they are not too debilitating and each an essential part of the drama of old age.

There was so much in the past regarding the many human issues, usually hidden behind what we called 'good taste'. From female dress and hygiene products to humour and what used to be called smutty jokes, those famous  double ententes of the 1950s. The fear of crossing arbitrary red lines, from the whiff of misogyny to any sort of comment regarding race and disharmony there indeed hundreds of mines to blow the innocent to smithereens.

For the person who has lasted beyond three score and ten this changing world makes a mockery of old beliefs and concepts of what is acceptable and not acceptable. We have moved towards the Iranian/Chinese concept of mind police where to think outside the party box is an offence. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) have just brought into law wide sweeping rules which prohibit, even in your own home, enticement to go against and pronounce your feelings on race, misogyny, and aspects of gender proclivity, someone has come across Orwell’s 1984 or one of Arthur Koestler books about life in East Germany. Tread carefully my haggis eating friends lest your national instrument is the last er hear from you.

The question which has to be asked is change a mark of progress or are we regressing into “group think” the comfortable repose of an authoritarian mindset or in our effort to be all things to all people we loose our own identity.