A good small-un beats a big-un every time

Subject: A good "small-un" beats a "big-un" every time.

They say that to live in this climatically bleak southern tip of New Zealand you have to be tough. I remember being in Dunedin, the equivalent of a dourer Spartan Scottish town, built of granite,  a piece of Scotland on this cold windswept southern tip of New Zealand's South Island. It was in 1964. I was living in a small canvas tent, no ground sheet, no mattress hitch hiking in (old T Fords) driven by delightful honest down to earth people who went out of their way to assist. There was no assisting today on the rugby field. The climate drilled into the people a toughness, a resolute toughness which showed its self in abundance in the match between the Lions and the Crusaders.
As with all provincial matches in this land of Rugby Football each game is fought with a self belief and a ferocity which makes each game like a test match. The sublime skills of the Maori, heir to a history of South Seas exploration, his balance and natural flamboyance encourage him to play an unconventional game, continually probing not in the set piece but with ball in the hand at full speed careering down field, jigging this way and that making it up as he goes along. Pure instinct, pure skill, poetry in motion and a joy to watch.
Our own warriors didn't play poorly. We saw the individuals who have entertained us at home on the five nation circuit do the things we expect of them but at times it was pedestrian, training field moves, worked out combinations, the best we can come up with but short of the creativity that the Crusaders showed.
This of course is not an All Black side, it's a side made up of local yokels. Drawn from an area who's  population of 120.000, a large component of which is made up of students attending Otago University. Dunedin and the only other town of merit, Invercargill are small pickings when compared to the populations of the Home Nations, from which the Lions are drawn but as is evidenced in this small but stable country, a "small un" beats a "big un" every time.

Do Buddhists Dream

   

Subject: Do Buddhist dream.

If you had a dream in which you were happy would that be happiness. If you dreamt you ate fish would that count as having eaten fish.
On one level no, since in the case of eating it wouldn't fill your stomach and you would wake hungry. But in the case of happiness could happiness be unrelated to reality. I mean what is happiness but emotion and what is emotion other than something which predominantly starts in the mind. If the source of happiness is in the mind and dreams, which are states of consciousness in the mind, if these states of mind bring happiness then it is what it says on the tin, happiness.
How much of what we assume to be specific to ourselves is a shared by ourselves as a common experience. If two people become happy together is that happiness instinctively separate. Is it my happiness or is it a communicated experience which without the other persons obvious reciprocity could not exist solely on its own.
So beyond the boarders of our sensitivity to outside stimuli, the smile we interpret as the other person being happy and wishing to share their happiness with you, how much else do we rely on to function as a human being.
Is the Buddhist right for analysing the person within you with such intensity that you only find purity of human purpose in the discovery of that singularity which is you.
Or is the human-being most pure when engaging in a shared emotion, when everyone they come into contact with feels that mental climate in which they respond with what we call happiness.

Tinkering with Gods Plan

Subject: Tinkering with God's plan.

It's a strange thought that the reality of any place in the world is made more relevant by the way you think of the people living there. It's not the scenery or the way the railways run on time, although that is tied up in the way the people go about their business and their sense of who they are in the great scheme of things. What I mean is the 'dynamic' that a nation attains through its people and their attitude.
Societies are young and old. Some relive their past as if it were the present, others only look forward, having little to reflect upon. Some hark back to better times others live in the moment. Success comes through 'adaptation' especially in such a fast changing world.
There was a time when a parent could pass on his or her skills but now-a-days, even an older brother or sister can struggle to understand and keep up to what the youngest are doing. Tradition has little value in the world of a teenager, the way we were, is for the history books and history is being written every day.
Listening to the themes developed in a program dedicated to genetics and the place stem cells play, not only in the treatment of disease but the eradication of the weak links which hereditary brings. From designer baby's, to defining an abnormality and making decisions as how to cope with it in the human genome, one is led to wonder where it is all going.
'Playing god' as some of the religious people would put it has consequences which are unforeseen. Nature, left to god, has all kinds of quirks,  some of them extremely unpleasant but it is argued it it's god's will and is part of the commonplace arrangement that defines luck and consequence. If we begin to tinker with god's purpose we are defining our role above his.
Of course the counter argument is that science continually interferes in all kinds of ways. If we find a cure for malaria have we denied the natural order of things by lowering the death rate, or an antibiotic does it roll the dice in a way the casino owner wouldn't like.
Are we sufficiently free with "free will" to use our judgement and change what we think needs changing, or is there something inherent in an embryo that it has to be allowed to develop unhindered as if this were part of a plan.

he concept that we are born of God and special, his Divine grace at work, even when a child is created with some sort of abnormality is all part of the religious story. Our tinkering with the genetic make up, the design plan, the tapestry on which we imprint our image for future evolution, has changing the rules of the game and will have unintended consequences further down the line. Will these consequences will be far worse than all the mishaps that natural selection is heir to.

Not just the self interest of the wealthy

Subject: Not just the self interest of the wealthy.

One of the questions asked of Jeremy Corbyn is "how will you afford your dream of socialism". How can we pay for hospitals and schools and affordable housing.
Who is to pay for it all ?
It's a question which in the distant past was never asked, it was assumed to be a matter for general taxation.
In the days before Margaret Thatcher, in the days of Jim Callahan and before him Harold Wilson and even before him Clement Attlee the question was never asked. Even as the ruins of the second world war lay around us and the equal devastation of our national finances were revealed, it was never asked, it was assumed it just had to be done !!
Mrs Thatcher changed all that and its one of the reasons why she is so beloved of a certain class of people and so hated by everyone else.  She deliberately disconnected the responsibility which government had towards society and created  in its place a 'winner, and loser society'.
If you won, you pocketed your winnings if you lost hard luck since in a winners society there was no place for the loser.
In 1990, the ratios of 20 to 1 for the winners, upper echelon salaries earners, compared to the normal employee in their firms. They were ahead but still in sight.
In the present day its risen to 200 to 1 and disappearing out of sight each year. There is never any suggestion of equity or fairness, we were sold the story of the "inevitable" gulf between us, that it was a law of nature for such a gap to exist,  that if we didn't maintain the gap the winners would take their bat home, move away overseas and leave us all behind to suffer in our squalor.

We are told that the rich pay more than we do in tax and therefore by implication we should be grateful for their contribution. The fact that 1% of the population earn 25% of the remunerable wealth, (salaries and stock options), a state of affairs which does nothing to reveal inherited wealth and the wealth tied up in the huge estates in this country. It's a situation which has been allowed to prosper since Mrs Thatcher and it's made worse by the fact that much of this wealth is held in tax havens overseas, many of them run as British Financial Protectorates, connected as Crown Territories but laying outside the jurisdiction   of HMRC. 

Nothing can be done, it's a universal law laid down by Milton Friedman and supported by Banks such as Goldman Sachs. Why can't we understand that immutable laws are just that, immutable, why don't we read and understand what the financial papers say about Globalisation and the inevitability of cross boarder deals and financial arrangements regarding the artificiality of the domicilium of a head office and it's tax arrangement. Don't we understand that the laws which apply to you and I don't apply to the winners.
Jeremy Corbyn has challenged all that. He has put a spoke in the wheel of what had become conventional wisdom. He reminded us of what a balance fair society should look like, when government, unlike in the USA which has minimal leverage over the lives of its citizens, when governance reflects the voting public not just the self interest of the wealthy.
remuneration

Ellis Park

 

Subject: Ellis Park

We are in Joburg care of the TV. The sun is shining as usual as the crowd stream in down the the streets surrounding the stadium. There was always the anticipation etched on the faces of the spectators of a contest, my guys versus yours, who would be the strongest, fittest, most durable in this game of physicality where nothing is left in the tank over 80 minutes of hard combative rugby.
Watching to day as the crowd gather one is reminded of ones many friends still left in South Africa, still making a living in a land of so many fond memories. It was a country where as an individual (and you were white) you were counted. It was not a place where power lay behind closed doors or where your sporting idols swept in to the training ground in expensive executive cars. They practised in the same nets alongside ordinary schoolboys, they had time for their fans, in fact they were like us in all but with those special skills which had made them famous world wide.
As I look at the crowd today it seems as if nothing has changed. The Apartheid is now in England and includes me. It's a financial Apartheid with the tiers of members and non members separated by astounding annual subscriptions which price the likes of me, out of the ground.  
The crowd at Ellis Park seem very cosmopolitan, drawn from all walks of life. They live in the satellite towns surrounding Johannesburg and drive in to the stadium down the roads I remember so well. Jan Smuts Avenue , Nicoll Highway, Barry Hertzog or from the South, Rosettenville Rd.  Homesteads now under the pressure of crime release these men and women for a day out to forget their troubles. It's a time warp where time unwinds to the 80s 90s and there was a semblance of law and order. These South Africans, the Rainbow Nation, people of all race and colour mix to cheer their team and for a moment or two, President Zuma is forgotten along with the exchange rate.
My memories take me after the game, along Louis Botha down through Orange Grove and into Norwood, destination Gardens. The drive into the dip, just before the veterinary clinic turn right just after George's Cafe and into Plantation Rd.   Home safe and sound, the noisy dogs barking a welcome, a cold beer and a good meal on the table what more could a person want.

Owen Jones

Subject: Owen Jones.

I have been a fan of Owen Jones since he burst on the scene as a young socialist airing his views amongst the more traditional views of the establishment press and media.
He defended many of the things I believed in.
Today he appeared in a regular news/debate program where reporters from press outlets from around the world discuss events as seen through their own nations eyes.
The subject was naturally the General Election and Mrs Mays alternatives as she defends her weakened position. To obtain sufficient votes to get bills through parliament
she has to seek an alliance with another party much like Cameron and Clegg did except that it was a proper power sharing arrangement with ministerial seats being shared between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives.
The arrangement that is being considered is between the Conservatives and the DUP (the Democratic Unionist Party) in Ireland. Unfortunately the DUP have some old fashioned ideas about women's rights, as far as abortion is concerned and their opposition to Gay marriage.
I didn't know until today the Owen Jones is gay. His ire at asking a party like the DUP to play any part in British mainstream politics is based on his irrevocable views on the DUPs views on the Gay community of which he is one. Suddenly this objective, quietly measured man is apoplectic with resentment about this party and it just shows  we all have our pinch point. He wouldn't listen to what the others had to say, the red mist was down as he tried to make a case for believing the DUPs position in Ireland, which is a domestic position heavily reliant on the churches position regarding Gays and abortion would somehow spill over into Westminster politics and infect the gains made by the LGBT community.
The fact that we have laws on the mainland, that abortion is tragically common place over here, that gay rights out score 'straight rights' regarding marriage arrangements and that there is no earthly appetite to set the clock back and yet he performed as if he were a teenager and had been refused the key to the door.
These issues go deep and distort our normal thinking. They are at the root of so much sectarian trouble and visceral hatred in Ireland and yet even here under the spotlight of the BBCs  platitudinal editorial we had a man blowing a gasket where none needed, all because he had lost it under the invisible pressure of some slight against his sexuality and the rights he has gained therein.

Taking the lesson to heart

 

Subject: Taking the lesson to ❤️

 

One of the things eerily accurate was the exit polls prediction of the final tally of seats in the general election. On the stroke of 10 pm when the voting stops and the counting begins a sample of the way people have voted is taken and then projected as the most likely outcome of the result. It takes hours to count each vote but they have the answer before they even start counting !! In fact if it hadn't been for the closeness of the Kensington vote where after three recounts the labour member was pronounced winner by only 23 votes. If it hadn't been for such a close event the exit poll would have been 100% correct in its allocation of seats.
Scary eh.
This of course is a far cry from the pundits predictions which in this as in the preceding election got it horribly wrong. Perhaps this indicates the political bias which all pundits carry around with them and use in an attempt to skew the result. Information which we the gullible public use to evaluate our own estimate of of how well a political idea is being received. Desperate not to be the odd man out we crave the acceptance of the crowd and if we are told that something is poorly received, we are shaken in our own estimation. False news or propaganda is used all over the place in this age of global communication. It's easy to make up a story, to make it seem factual since there are many people who make a living out of being experts when in fact they are nothing more than propagandists. News channels and talk show hosts who take calls according to their own preference to shore up their misinformation. I suppose we all like to hear others supporting our opinions and depending on our ego we search out these crutches which make our flimsy self analysis more palatable.
Of course it does no harm to listen to opinion which is so diametrically opposite. It gives a perspective which if warped, is at least valid from the other persons perspective. It does no harm to have ones own ideas turned on their head if only because you have to take time out to reconstruct what you really think and why. Too often we take things for granted living in our own bubble, listening to our own echo.
Well the deed is done and we now have 5 years of hyper activity to make the best fist of it. From that point alone it will shake us out of our complacency and force us to reignite who we are and where we could do better. Hopefully unlike the teachers report which was binned if not by our parents, by us, as irrelevant we will gain many lessons and take them to ❤️