European elections

Subject: European elections.

So the EU election results are in and the seismic changes expected in the UK have been reflected in many EU countries. Parties which are non establishment parties won in the UK, France, and Italy, whilst Greece has already called for a general election based on the results. Even in Germany the result of  spilling votes to the Greens has meant even there, the trend away from centre right (Mrs Merkel) and centre left has seen a move from the traditional European centre to out-laying parties with a large block of anti EU sentiment taking their seats in the EU Parliament.
We have of course to be careful for what we wish for since the more extreme parties contain some of the very nationalistic elements for which the European Union was formed to offset. Prior to the peace which the Second World War won in Europe, there was almost constant friction between the nations, ruining the economic competence  of many nations and of course taking many millions of lives. This culling of the Continental life blood was brought to an end by the creation of an economic block, The European Confederation of Iron and Steel followed by the EEC and then, with the creation of the Euro, the European Union with is directorate, The Commission taking the place of the national governments as a collective decision making body.
The issues regarding the economic imbalance and the lack of a federal method of dealing with these imbalances has led to social strains across the continent with, in some countries the unemployment, particularly amongst the young proving an impossible stranglehold on the economies of Greece, Italy, and Spain.  France has seen the continuous upheaval of the Yellow Jackets out on the streets each weekend, for weeks now, 'under reported' as the elite struggle to find solutions whilst keeping their pockets full. 
Marie La Pen is once again snapping at the heels of the right wing wonderkid Emanuel Macron having won this evenings EU vote and Matteo Salvini who is spearheading the ultra right project in Italy has also won this evenings election, defeating the incumbent centre socialist. 
In the UK the Brexit Party of Nigel Farage has trashed both the main establishment parties, the Conservatives and Labour, with the Conservatives coming fifth behind the Greens. The biggest gain other than the  Brexit Party has been the Lib Dems with their strong, Remain stance which only emphasises the turmoil amongst voters here voting to leave and to stay.
The traditional view that the elections for MEPs was always a side show to the real national elections underplays the massive discontent with 'ordinary politics' and if a general election were held it might well reflect this protest vote tonight.

Its a wake up call

 

Subject: It's a wake up call

One of the interesting things, as Europeans wake up to their parliamentary election results has been the usual spin applied to results which have gone against what the commentariat had hoped for. 
There are three elements to the political cake . The politicians and their slogans, the voters and their preferences and the media who report and comment about these things. The power lies in the media to concoct a story around the facts but which is biased to tell its own story. Listening to the French broadcasting service and then switching between the news channels, Euro news, RT, Al Jazeera, the BBC or Sky the flavour of the election is different depending on which academic or political hack is taking part as one voice on a panel of experts. 
For some it's been a disaster only mitigated by the fact that the far right didn't sweep the board. For others that the Greens did well indicates the power of the youth vote. Guy Verhofstadt the outspoken Belgian Liberal politician was at pains to applaud the high turn out in the election (over 50%) as a sign that the European ideal was alive and well. What he didn't say was that part of that vote was a vote against the European Union.
The liberal press, plus the liberal figureheads who appear on television and who this morning are twisting and turning trying to imagine the world a different place people like Alastair Campbell, that arch 'sound bite' manipulator for the Tony Blair government. He was in denial at the success of the Farage band wagon and one has to say if he and his ilk don't wake up and smell the coffee, issues such as Brexit or the lack of social funding for health and education which is leaving parts of the UK devastated, then the time for extremist politics will continue.
Europe has made its voice heard on immigration, LGBT rights, global economics and unemployment. It's not a conciliatory voice it's a rough and ready call from the ordinary people who live in Barnsley, Barcelona, Bologna and Budapest, the isolated, nearly invisible working class who came out in droves to vote for charismatic extremists such as the Italian Matteo Salvini, Marien la Pen of France and Nigel Farage.
Perhaps this ushers in another charismatic extremist, Boris Johnson to head the Tory Party but it underlines the fact that the age of old wise heads is over, that the masses wont do what they are told and those fence sitters, Labour and Conservatives had better wake up and decide who's side they are on, otherwise the voting public will do so for them.

Taking pills

Subject: Taking pills

One of the few things which remain on our, must do agenda each day particularly as we get older is to pop at least one pill onto the mouth, morning or evening. It's often more than one and the regime of which pill to take and when is sometimes the most challenging thing we do all day.

Pills for this and pills for that, pills to counter the side effects of another pill, pills which prevent us from becoming ill and pills which, in themselves, make you ill.
The pharmaceutical industry is one which has grown to be one of the most lucrative. Billions of pounds are made and spent each year as pharmacist design new concoctions and doctors do their bidding doling out these packages of pills designed to keep us alive but collectively, perhaps, adding to your chance of an early farewell.
As I lie in bed at night feeling the twitches of a body which is becoming 'past it's sell by date' the inclination to get up and take a pill to calm that bit down or ease the discomfort in that other bit is part of modern living. Simply leaving the body's immune system to cope with the problem is an old fashioned. To wait until the ache has gone of itself is thought to be dangerous since the ache might be something more serious and getting up to search amongst the shelves in the medical cabinet for something with ache written on it is preferred. 

Of course there have been immense strides in the pharmaceutical industry producing the miracle cure which save our lives. There is an assumption that there is a pharmaceutical pill for everything, if not now at least around the corner and It gives us hope for a comfortable longevity, and a provision against the terror of a painful old age. It extends our lives, in some cases by decades but of course it brings a cost. Whilst the body is being propped up, the brain is largely left to go its own way and apart from easing a head pain such as migraine, which my mother suffered and the only thing available was a dark room and a vinegar poultice laid over the forehead.

Today the body is encouraged to move into its eightieth/ninetieth year whilst the brain dissembles with memory loss and a lack of coordination, making us the infant again. 
They are working on a cure of course and one day, another pill will be added to our list of props to make the play go on.
Homeopathy, alternate medicine, Asian potions and pin sticking all have their followers. Who am I to doubt their efficacy but it seems this quest for a long life has become too pervasive. Life means more than just monitoring the heart beat and whilst one of the most difficult things in life is accepting old age, particularly if the mind still seems up for play, the thought of prolonging life has to be tempered with the inevitability of death.
The Buddhist have a life long discernment of dying they build it into their 'process of living'. They are aware of the importance of dying as an 'accompaniment' to living, not a thing to fear but something to understand and be prepared for. The process of living is not an end in itself but an opportunity to prepare for dying and their concern for an afterlife, where they expect to be reborn is always with them as they tender their actions in this life.
Other forms of forming a perspective on this issue of living and dying turn to 'eternal salvation', an existence beyond the threshold of death. Belief in God and ones service to god is their path and whilst it is more ethereal than the Buddhist concept of rejoining living creatures on earth, religions propagate a heaven where, on exiting life, you arrive in a better place. 
The atheist has non of these comforts as he or she contend there is nothing else, other than this life and that you had better make the best of it whist here on earth.
Who is right will only be revealed when we pass away. This life is the only 'experience' we have, rich or banal, elevating or venal, it's up to us in our independent ways to find out what is right for us and, as far as I know, there are no pills to take on the other side.

MPs Holidays

Subject: MPs Holidays

So they are off on holiday again, the parliamentarians who we reward quite handsomely and just at the moment when chaos descends the PM resigns and we are in limbo regarding Brexit off they go on another jolly.

MPs work 145 days per year, they spend 22 week in recess and are paid the magisterial sum of £59 per hour. Looking around the chamber in Westminster the benches are  often empty and those MPs who are in there place play no part, other than rising to their feet trying to catch the speakers eye so they can be called to speak next. What they say may be relevant or not, it's often a comment to support what someone before them has said and rarely pearls of wisdom. It is what most of us would call a waste of time. 
Time is what they seem to have plenty off given that their pontificated answers to most questions are oblique, opec or worse plain misleading. The art of answering a question with a party political platitude or providing an answer to a question which hasn't been asked, is their speciality. 
Parliament provides the theatre for an actor to recite the script which has already been written and anyway is in many cases irrelevant. Like a play it has its heroines and its demons, it provides a platform for men and women to chase causes without actually getting their hands dirty. All the high flown phrases are but words and, as chaff on the wind, the words are scattered amongst many who are the deaf who cannot hear and the blind who cannot see. 
The actual edifice is its self tragic. Purporting to discus and formulate policy, by which we pass laws to govern ourselves but seem more intent on creating a shibboleth, of protecting the outmoded and discussing in retrospect things for which the ship has sailed. 
It's an occupation designed initially for the rich and famous, a talking shop, a meeting place to ensure their own interests were aired and protected. It has only in the last 60 or so years that it has taken on the guise of a place where actual social problems could be remedied. There are members of parliament today who care deeply for some cause or other but the steady ministerial hand on the tiller is not much moved and the ship of state sails on 'steady as she goes'.
Get rid of them all and install a benign dictator is one alternative but the taste of power infects even the most benign.
Power corrupts and the indolence and disdainful power we see enacted in parliament on this national stage could perhaps encourage another series of Jeremy Kyle  where the contestants all come from the House of Commons.

Mrs May

Subject: Mrs May.

Once more we have seen pathos and the theatre of Downing Street as a Prime Minister steps down from office. The power of high office in which decisions are made, which effect us all are made by an individual who is much like us, with strengths and weaknesses, ideological hang ups, susceptible to their own interpretation of the world around them and to the events which unfurl beyond their control.

Breaking down emotionally in the last passage of her speech she revealed, once again the patriot she is, a Tory version of a patriot but a patriot never the less. 
It's uncomfortable to see someone who has always appeared so steely when at the dispatch box in parliament or delivering a speech to the Mansion House in London. Even as Home Secretary she stood her ground in front of the Police Federation as she announced her swinging cuts to the Police Force. 
In her dealings with Europe she always carried the flag with dignity, dealing with such  Machiavellian characters as Jean Claude Juncker with poise whilst unable, at times to hide her distaste for him. Another distasteful leader Donald Trump, the antithesis of Mrs May the vicars daughter was assimilated by her in Washington as part of the office she represented.
It's often said she is not a clubbable person, she doesn't seek sociability and seems very content in the company of her close confidant, her husband Philip. They content themselves on holiday, walking the moors and paths of the UK rather than tagging onto the rich and famous, a weakness attributed to the Blairs. Philip and Teresa always seen to be happily in each other's pocket, will weather the the disappointment together but with the nagging doubt, 'if I had done this or that perhaps the outcome would have been better.  
She was handed a poisoned chalice from David Cameron who clearly not up to the job, slithering off into the grass at the earliest moment. Her poor reading of her popularity made her go back to the electorate when she didn't need to, a move which hobbled her position from then on leading a minority government just at the moment she needed all the power to put the Brexit bill through its stages. In her speech she made mention of Nicolas Wintertons advice about the power of compromise, as if that was one of the things she was known for but just the opposite, she often appeared stubborn  to the point of being obsessive, listening to no one in her self belief to fulfil the will of the people. How often she repeated that phrase but she was seemingly blind to the almost equal number who had voted to stay in the EU. What about their will, where was the commitment to acknowledge that 15 million people voted to stay and 17 million voted to leave. It was never envisaged as a binary decision since what the winner wanted was diametrically opposite. The need to bring the other side along was never politically engaged as policy. It's the Westminster mentality of a 'first past the post' system of governance in which the losers are ignored. Mrs May seemed oblivious of the fact that the parliamentary mathematics were against her from the start and perhaps, with that whiff of Churchillian make believe, her patriotism obscured reality.
Give me the patriotic backbone of Mrs May anytime to the incoherent deceit of Boris Johnson but sadly, Middle England seem determined to inflict more pain on themselves and us for the foreseeable future.

Voting for the European Parliament

 

Subject: Voting for the European Parliament.

In this crazy 'political comedy' it's Election Day. An electoral outcome which may have a shelf life of only a couple of months but as at the Mad Hatters tea party which we mistake for our constitutional parliament the rules say that we must elect MEPs to take their seats in the European Parliament, irrespective of whether we come out in two months time. It's a farce I know but today I am invited to cast my vote for a phantom, an imaginary representative who's tenure in the job is similar to that of the manager of Brighton Hove Albion.
The candidates are the usual suspects. Conservative (half in, half out), Labour (half out, half in). The Brexit party (the name on the tin says it all). UKIP (ditto). The Lib Dems (desperate we stay in) and the Greens (ditto).
The Conservatives who's proposal to leave is crouched is so many 'still to be negotiated' provisions that it makes no sense other than there is sense in that it takes us part way out without telling us what the baby will look like. 
Labour have sat on the fence so long playing the political waiting game they have lost any sense of proper leadership as they wait to see the number of casualties when the smoke clears, by which time it will be too late.
The Brexit Party is clear, it's in the name and is run by the charismatic, one trick pony salesman, Nigel Farage who's bluster only reveals an ideological deficit since, like all fanatics, his mind is warped by the splendour of winning but unable to think beyond that.
UKIP are a right wing, busted flush, without the charisma of Farage (their former leader) and seemed to have burdened themselves with a number of questionable people who's Fascism and  Islamophobic views puts them outside the pale as far as centre ground political thinking goes.
The Lib Dems have, under their leader Vince Cable been resolute in saying that the idea of Brexit is economically crazy and we should do all in our power to stay in the EU. They simply refuse to contemplate that 17 million people should have their say and from the moment the result was announced have campaigned against it. Of course unlike Labour or the conservatives the number of strongholds who voted to leave are not part of their calculation and so they can afford to be bullish.
The Greens who see Europe as a beacon of green ideals are also, with only one seat in Parliament, free to shout their view from the rooftop pretty much with impunity.
Today's election if it means anything is an opportunity to kick out at the two main parties by electing a Brexit candidate, or a Lib Dem candidate, as it were a rerun of the Referendum.   In effect there are three elements. An opportunity to confirm if you want to stay or to leave and the third, to indicate the voting publics disgust and rank dissatisfaction by ignoring both Labour and the Conservatives. 
I hate protest votes and would prefer to vote positively for something I believe in not by some sort of proxy. The implications of voting for a Farage with his shallow agenda of getting us out at all costs seems to fly against the reason of voting to leave in the first place. It was never an act of self harm since it seemed reasonable to believe that through negotiation a deal, in the interests of Europe and the UK could be achieved. Poor negotiating tactics have hardened attitudes and limited the room for manoeuvre. That doesn't mean one capitulates. The reasons to wish to leave are still there. Lack of democratic accountability. The power of the Bundesbank to say what goes and what doesn't was always a hard pill to swallow. The temperament of the French and the underlying instability of the Euro as it effects the weaker nations within the group plus a economic hegemony which favoured certain nations over the others. My feeling is that whilst there is talk of providing an equal social environment across Europe, the powers that be in the 'Commission' and in the power house which Germany has become (in part through its favoured nation status vis a vis the USA since the end of the Second World War) when the opportunity to show some sort of economic mercy to Greece it singularly failed  to do and instead allowed its banks to screw the last euro related pfennig out of a country already bankrupt by the Machiavellian dealings of Goldman Sachs when the Greek state first tendered to join the EU.
So who will I vote for. I have always availed myself of the vote since being back here but perhaps this is one I will give a miss until the real political questions are on the table

The blank slate or something more subtle

Subject: The blank slate or something more subtle.

Can ethnicity produce characteristics which determines behaviour. Can gender predict emotional outcomes which are wholly the province of th

at particular cohort of gender species. Can we in fact describe gender as having a specialised characteristic or are the variables in the character of the combined gender so varied as to make any such characteristic meaningless.
Does the concept of us starting our lives as a 'blank slate' a slate on which the 'environment' writes its prose and determines who we are and what we will become does this expose us wholly to the caprice of where and to whole were born.
Is the notion that there are fixed norms in our behaviour patterns which come from nature, not nurture and that the eternal nature of the mind lies outside our involvement with the environment.
These questions are at the bedrock of our understanding of an individualistic/ collective 
social community which we attempt to conceptualise in our western set of values. Even the word values sets us thinking since where do values come from. 
Clearly they are different in different societies or, is it a case that values are all the same but that environmental bias holds them back for political and religious reasons. 
Do our values which might encompass, honesty, love, compassion, fairness, and so on, are these values innate in mankind or are they learnt. 
Is it a genetic component passed down through our parents and therefore a variable, given that the mutation between the actual male and the female chromosome arrangement, which manifests itself in the actual concept of male and female, does this arrangement of chromosomes determine everything. 
The religious concept of freedom (free will) defined by Eves choice to take the fruit of the tree rather than the dictate of god has enormous social implications since, if it has been decreed that we have free will to decide our destiny then the inherited traits which are locked in our genes make freewill almost impossible. We become determined by a chemical imposition which the concept of good and bad clearly has no meaning.
Our whole sense of a 'moral component to ourselves' in which ethical decisions are at the base of who we are varies from person to person, not just by our exposure to the philosophical test but by something much more innate, the structure of our chromosome chain.
As human beings we have prided ourselves with the idea that we are different and that the difference lies in the way we think and especially in the way we transfer these thoughts through language. It can be construed from this that language is an equally important component and that languages determine the way we transfer our thoughts and ideas. If a language is simplistic then the opportunity to progress with thoughts and ideas is also limited. 

The Bushman of the Kalahari, the isolated tribesman, living in the jungles of  Papua New Guinea or the Aborigine of central Australia are all limited in their language which largely describes only the day today experiences around them. They do of course have their strong affiliation to a spirit world but this is perhaps a more colloquial concept of life and death, life and death, one of the commonalities which we all have in common.