Masters and servants

What sad times we live in.
As a statement it lacks the perspective of history. 70 years ago we were in such a mess and our citizens knew it first hand. Rationing, being bombed, the insecurity of being in a world war, all this was far more traumatic than anything we experience today. And yet today we are in a deeper hole having lost confidence in our politicians as we question many decisions made on our behalf.
It all hinges on the information we now receive about much that in the past was hidden. Our "Betters" knew better and we sort of, accepted it.
Today the conflicts unfold all around us, we have instant replay of the best sort, the sort that can not be denied, as thousands of mobile phone cameras provides a front row picture of what is actually happening. How inconvenient that the public can make up their own minds and not have to rely on the prism of a diplomatic despatch. How absolutely inconvenient that whistle blowers have the impertinence to reveal what underhand business our leaders are up to, how our trust in them is misplaced and they have embarked on a massive surveillance of every one of us.
The implicit integrity of the link between the people and their democratically elected "management", people who have been placed to run the country, has been irreparably damaged. 

The sight of an authoritative American Government pursuing the whistle blower across the globe, in pursuance of a vindictive crack down on someone who had the audacity to reveal the dirty mechanism of government. 

Its not as we would wish, or have been led to believe, a government, of the people, for the people, by the people but rather, it is, as it always was, a government by the elite for the elite, full stop. The image that because of the need for "security" they can do anything, they can rewrite the rule book, if necessary throw it away since they know what is best for us. 
How we need to inform these masters of the universe, that we are the masters and they the servants.                      

The Clegg Farage debate

We have just seen the second debate about whether we should be in Europe or not.
There is in this country what is called a Westminster Bubble a group of people who are isolated from the public in nearly every way.  Not only the politicians who continuously engage in the high school debate but also the bulk of the media commentators and pundits who refuse to acknowledge that there is a massive disillusionment with the political system and even the system we call democracy is at risk. The ordinary man and woman on the street has seen the Global Economy focus more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The agenda of the ideologues and the fund managers has little to do with the needs of society, (people at large) and slowly you see outright opposition through the only way left to them physical violence.
The debate tonight was not about violence.  We had, on the one hand, the 'political establishment' in the guise of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg with his establishment voice repeating ad nauseam the benefits of completely restructuring the way are lives are controlled and the opportunities that the new structure brings to the lives of ordinary people. On the other side, the maverick politician Nigel Farage who cuts to the chase and repeats the questions that the ordinary voter asks with his solutions.
Now you might not agree with his solutions but it is amazingly refreshing to hear some one articulate the things that are on ordinary voters minds, he appears to be one of us and far removed from the bland talking shop parliamentarian

The debate came to an end and the polls went out to a selected number of people who returned a resounding win for the maverick, Farage, by 70% of the vote to 30% for the Establishment. What was to me the most stomach churning sight of the evening was watching and listening to Danny Alexander the Deputy Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeating over and over what was obviously a pre scripted response, applauding his boss saying he thought that Clegg had won the debate and refusing to acknowledge that they had lost the popular opinion by a massive margin.
Talk about a head in the sand syndrome.          

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/

D day

The day was bright the cloudless sky brought out the sharp contrast between the rememberers and the remembered, the young and the old, the people who had benefited from 70 years of peace and the old solderers who had helped make that peace possible. Truly on their last legs these late 80 early 90 year old men were probably celebrating and commiserating their last rally with their comrades before their own personal last post is played. 

Its hard for us who have never known the threat of war on our doorstep to imagine the emotions of that time. The German war machine was thought to be too powerful for any other European nation and it was only the devastating events on the Russian front and the incoming freshly equipped Americans that sealed the Germans fate. 
The people on this island were in poor shape even leading up to the outbreak of the war and in this the leadership of Churchill, his rhetoric, broadcast to the nation, a nation of people who were more inclined to accept leadership and believe what their leaders said was important.
The bombing including thousands of V1 and V11 rocket powered missiles on targeted cities, brought death and destruction to ordinary men women and children, the equal of that experienced by the solderers and of course there were the terrible casualties amongst civilians on the Eastern Front running into many, many millions. Sadly we have no memorial to them.            

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/          

A sea of veterans

A sea of veterans matching on to the sound of the band, on to the swirl of the pipes, on to a distant memory of fallen comrades. The bands play the well worn soldiers songs who respond with one voice singing the songs they sang when moving down the road leading to the trenches. 

A deep bond built into and between them, born of fear and tribulation a fellowship which can not be broken, an alliance of the living for the dead.
 It's a funny thing the past. It holds our memories of the actual life we lived, along with memories and aspirations of the life we wished to have lived. The people we knew and thought we knew the dreams of attainment the attachment and the dis entanglement of relationships, these are all the province of the mature citizen and whilst today the spotlight is on the fighting men and latterly women, their memories dismembered by the acute strain put on these people, people who were asked to risk their lives, but who came from a class of people, the amateur, out of character since these men were largely conscripted from civilian life.
 The act of living is the act of dying and between these two posts our memories are the fabric of who we are. They reflect our passage and, if we are sufficiently at ease with them they amount to who we are and the standards we hold, therefore memories are important.
Maturity has, of right, plenty to draw on. Youth, still girding its loins, will fight the battles and gain the experience which will, in the end, identify that person.
One of the reasons we ask our youth to wait and harness its time and energy is that 'improvisation' is not enough to run anything. 

New faces

One of the interesting revelations which has come out of this election, has been the projection of non parliamentary people onto our screens representing the minor parties. The comparison of these "ordinary" people to the professional politician is remarkable. One can recognise them as people we know in the street whilst the politicians seem to be from another place who we can't recognise. The endless obfuscation, ducking answers simply lying with a straight face to the public. If one were to engage in a conversation with someone who constantly told porkies about every subject to simply pull the wool over my eyes so that they would give me their vote.

Talk about second hand car dealers these guys and girls would sell their grandmothers !

No it is refreshing to listen to people who are not of the Westminster political class.
The issues that describe the British life and the problems of living here are addressed from all kind of ideological positions with possible solutions. The main parties bat the same ball between each other as if it's a game and of course to the incumbents of a paid job in Parliament it is a job rather than deeply held belief which should be the impetus driving people into politics to alter the system and benefit people at large.

The other India

I've been reading a book about, amongst other things, the incompleteness of our lives how the jumble of unexpected events make up our day and continue to exaggerate the  disconnect between what we plan and what occurs.
The book ( A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry ) is set in the turmoil of Indira Gandhi's India and the Emergency Legislation Period, as she attempted to modernise the mammoth that was the everyday India with its myriad layers of humanity. The heavy hand of bureaucracy, the vicious control measures designed to effect change but which only brought misery to the ordinary people. It's a story of ordinary people. How that phrase is so incomplete when describing India's layered composition of humanity with its religious mix and the iniquitous caste apartheid delivering to people at birth, a preconditioned straightjacketed existence, for some, opportunity for others simple none.

The book captures you by befriending you to the characters who's individual torment, which is accepted by the people in the story as part of life's tapestry, becomes your own as you struggle, looking with Western eyes for a good ending. There is no good ending only the rites of a predetermined subservience, an inevitable mourning from the moment you recognised your position and of having to endure a life of pain and disdain in equal measure. 

One wonders at the complexity of the political dynasty's which have ruled the country and the undiluted rage meted out to the Sikhs after the Sikh bodyguards were accused of assassinating Gandhi.
One wonders at the totalitarian methods used to produce birth control. The mutilation of the beggar  community and the system of bribes used at all levels to get things done.
Sitting in my armchair I am transported into a world of demons, not of their own making but of a need to survive, be it on the pavement or in an alleyway. Structure there is, too much of it, but where is the humanity.
With a 'civilisation' stretching back long before we in the West had cast off our rudimentary lives, with religions like Hinduism which preaches tolerance and understanding, how can it have escaped the intellectually driven establishment that such huge social disparity is morally wrong and in this modern world of internet transparency, is unacceptable !!

Mother nature

Nepal has been the scene of an unmitigated disaster. When we first heard of the earthquake that had hit Kathmandu we thought how lucky we had been for Angela to have spent a month there and returned home only two weeks beforehand. Life is a throw of the dice when you move away from the security of your home surroundings and having taken all the foreseeable precautions one can still be tripped up by an event no one predicted.
Every day the death toll rises and it is only now do we see the devastation further down the Kathmandu Valley. Whole villages smashed by the systemic shaking, people crushed under the rubble. And now with water in short supply and food running out the Nepalese authorities are out of their depth trying to cope.

In years gone by we in the West would not have known of the disaster, weeks would have elapsed before the full extent of the trouble revealed its self and still longer before help could have reached them. At least in these days of Internet connection,the same connection I was happily chatting to my daughter over as she arrived amidst the problems of the plane which had run off the runway in Kathmandu and had caused her to be holed up in Delhi, this same internet now brings us the reality and the extent of the disaster.

These so called natural disasters are a reminder of the fragility of the world we live in and make us aware of how vulnerable people are to nature. Climate change is predicted, temperatures set to rise only a few percent but sufficient to alter the natural climate patterns which, apart from causing the ice cap to melt pushing the sea levels up, also will make areas that grow certain crops unable to produce, forcing whole societies to have to search for alternatives.
Governments of the emerging industrial nations still argue and post the claim that, because the Industrial World of the 20th century, largely Europe and the USA had a hand in the creation of the pollution that led to the 'green house gas effect' they can continue to pollute until they are on a par !!! What sort of a crazy notion is that when their grandchildren will be the ones to suffer equally. There are no winners, as the earthquake in Nepal showed when Mother Nature shows her hand and reminds us of how puny we are !!!