IMAGINE

Imagine there’s no EU,

It’s easy if you try.

No Eurocrats above us,

our border rules apply.

Imagine all our people,

living now so free.

Oh, oh you may say I’m a dreamer,

I’m not the only one.

 

I am very glad that there is someone in the Eurostocracy with a sense of humour.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION

I am in the process of producing the first draft of my book, it has been a long time coming; to refresh your memories it is called “MY GENERATION, Revelations and Revolutions, Revelry and Reverie. The book falls loosely into two parts: the entertaining autobiographical part and the informative part, this extract is from the latter. I have decided to share it here as a taster and would welcome your comments, positive or derogatory, but preferably constructive.

Chapter Six

REVOLUTIONS

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao you ain’t gonna make with anyone anyhow. John Lennon.

You say you want a revolution, but what is a revolution? Well it shouldn’t be about Mexican men with droopy moustaches using violence to overthrow one corrupt regime and replace it with another. Or a Cultural Revolution, a misnomer if ever there was one, like they had in China. Or the Russian or French revolutions; or terrorists killing innocent people. To me it is about throwing off the shackles and living the life that will make you happy, as well as all those who are inter-connected with you. And, most importantly, living in harmony with the environment, and ultimately with everyone else. Actually I mean others of your choosing because initially you will have to fight most of “everyone else” as they will do their utmost to thwart you. It is also about “sticking it to the man” and living by your own principles, not his. Unfortunately, it is not possible for all of us to do this as there are far too many of us, and in any case the vast majority do not have the vision, will or determination needed to break out of the mould. As you will see they are all ultimately doomed, but you are reading this, there is hope you do not have to be one of them.

So, what is a revolutionary act? The penultimate is to be self-sufficient; you own your house and some land you have an independent water supply and can produce all your own food if necessary. Even better if you can do this in co-operation with others. You are as prepared as possible for whatever doomsday scenario may be lying in wait for us, there are many, and you have weapons to protect yourself from those doomed masses who have not prepared. Preferably you will be far enough from major centres of population not to need to use them. You don’t rely on technology, although you may choose to use it, while it is still available. You have some physical gold in case you wish to trade in a post-apocalyptic world. But above all you don’t need “the man” for anything and ideally you have gone “off grid” so “the man” doesn’t even know you exist. I am working towards it but it is the ideal, and can only be for a small minority. Most of the very rich already have luxury bolt holes in remote places and there are bunkers for governments and heads of state etc. In the meantime, for everyone else, there are many things we can all do to shake off some of the restrictions and dependencies in our lives and loosen the grip the Establishment has on us.

I would call all the following revolutionary acts:

EDUCATING YOURSELF. School and university have their place but are geared towards an Establishment view of the world. Always question everything you are taught and teach yourself some practical skills as well. How to cook, how to grow, gather and hunt to feed yourself, personal finances and practical DIY skills will all be useful and can save you a lot of money as well as making you more independent. Even if you are working towards self-sufficiency you will probably need to earn a living in the straight world initially, so work hard at school and pass your exams. School will be geared towards getting you to work in teams but don’t be afraid to develop your individuality as well. You may find it easier to do this covertly, displaying too much individuality will not make you popular with your teachers or most of your fellows.

For self-learning there is a huge amount of information available on the internet, but beware, much of it is false. Check and double-check. You could do worse than read some of the books in the reading list at the end of this book. Do you really need to go to university? It can be a good way of getting away from home for the first time and meeting new people, some of whom may become friends for life. But you will come away with a large debt so if you decide to go down that road try to make sure that your 3 years of work and the cost will be of benefit to you; a degree in media studies is a very expensive yet worthless piece of paper. Please don’t become a precious little snowflake, many university students surround themselves in a protective bubble and suppress free speech to an extent that would be admired in North Korea. You should, of course, continue to educate yourself throughout your life, and resist the dumbing down that is going on all around us. Again, if you want to be popular do it covertly or surround yourself with like-minded people.

ENLIGHTENMENT. If you have been around for a while and you understand others, most never do, you have gained wisdom. Much more difficult is understanding yourself and that is enlightenment; it is a state achieved by only a very small minority. If you do manage to get there you will be unassailable by the man or anyone else; it is the ultimate revolutionary act and transcends even self-sufficiency although it is quite likely that you would be both. Again, it is something I am working towards but I am probably too attached to earthly pleasures to get there in this incarnation. The journey to enlightenment starts with self-awareness and mindfulness and one of the few positive hopes I have for mankind is that more people are going down that road. My own journey started in the late 60’s, reading books written by those on spiritual journeys and then by using LSD and other psychedelics. I must confess my own experimentation began as entertainment rather than a serious quest for enlightenment, that came later. Using LSD as a shortcut to enlightenment is a bit like winning the lottery as a shortcut to wealth. Some can spend a lifetime of contemplation and meditation to get to the same place as someone who pops a tab of acid. However, the acid route is not entirely without risk and in the same way that some lottery winners go off the rails when they find themselves suddenly rich, LSD users can find they have too much enlightenment all in one go. In both cases it is going to change your life whether you want it to or not. I am very glad to have done it and wouldn’t put anyone else off from doing it themselves. Many worry about bad trips, I have been there, and they are horrendous. They often happen because people have been suppressing emotional trauma; one is unable to self-deny when tripping and it all bubbles up to the surface, however the process can be therapeutic. Unfortunately, in a small number of cases it can push you into full blown psychosis, but as a comparison would the small risk of becoming an alcoholic stop you from drinking? LSD does not cause any problems it just allows existing problems to surface, mostly for the better. However, if you decide to seek enlightenment the very best of luck to you, whichever way you decide to go about it.

NOT CONSUMING. The sleek gleaming car in the showroom, the latest i-phone, the £250 shoes are all ways of seducing you into the system, you don’t need it. Having a lot of stuff will not in itself make you happy; it’s a bit like heroin, the first rush is great but each time after that you are just trying to get back there and you never do. You just need bigger and bigger doses until you find you are dependent and you need it just to feel normal. One of the saddest things I ever saw was a documentary about Rodeo Drive, and I have been there and was not impressed. One of the stores opened after hours for Michael Jackson. He and his entourage swept through and he was just pointing at things and saying “one of those, two of those”. The store manager was walking along behind literally rubbing his hands with glee, but where is the pleasure in shopping like that, it was all vulgar, overpriced rubbish in any case. If you have plenty of money then the occasional expensive treat is fine, the problem is that most people get into debt by buying stuff on credit. Incidentally, whatever you do buy, try, if possible, to buy from local small businesses and avoid the environment destroying, tax dodging, management overpaying, worker exploiting, junk food producing multi-nationals and tell everyone why you are doing it. As someone once said, “why buy things you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people you don’t like”. Which brings me to….

SAVING, NOT GETTING INTO DEBT. The system wants you to be in debt; you borrow money to buy stuff, buying stuff stimulates the economy and the usurious interest on your debt pays for the banker’s obscene bonuses. But from their point of view the most important benefit is that you are trapped. You don’t dare complain too much about your crap job, you need it, you are two wage packets away from disaster, you are a wage slave. Interest rates are so high, only if you are borrowing, and wages so low that you will always be in debt. The only debt you should have is a mortgage, and buying a house makes sense because money spent on rent is just wasted, money spent on buying a house is an investment. If you have savings and you subsequently lose your income it gives you a safety net and time to try and find something you are happy with, rather than just having to grab the first crap Mcjob that comes along. If at all possible consider self-employment, skilled tradespeople can make £50k+ a year, or run a small business. Whatever you earn goes into your own pocket not towards some CEO’s multi-million-pound salary. If you can get together enough capital, property and property renovation/development can put you on the road to the good life.

However, once you have some savings you need to think about where you are going to keep them and what you are going to invest in. Conventional wisdom would say stocks and shares, but all you have is a piece of paper that could become worthless overnight, and losing everything is one hell of a downside, even though the upside is better than cash deposit. Personally, I don’t even trust cash and the value of the pound the euro and the dollar; they are all faith based since they are no longer backed by gold. The governments of the countries that issue these currencies are all massively in debt and given to printing money, which further destroys the underlying value. However, if you have a mortgage the solution is simple, get an offset mortgage. Basically, you have a facility based in the value of your property, your income goes into the account and is credited instantly, reducing the balance. You can spend up to your facility so you have to be disciplined, but as your savings reduce the balance the interest on your savings is effectively the same as the mortgage rate and non-taxable; likewise, your borrowing. This method has worked well for me and others who I have advised to do the same. Once the mortgage is paid off and you have a pile of cash, where you put it safely becomes a little more difficult, but I have dealt with this “problem” elsewhere. Ideally, if everything goes tits up it is better that you owe the man rather than vice versa.

NOT REPRODUCING. If you want to be in a position to fight the system, you will be better able to do so if you are free from encumbrances and vulnerabilities. The cost alone of children, about £250,000 per child, will help to keep you in wage slavery and make it much more difficult to break free. The system relies on continual growth, of both the economy and population, to work; in a finite world this is obviously unsustainable. But such is the lack of insight, incompetence and short term thinking of our masters that they choose to be blind to this reality. Also, the benefits system encourages the feckless poor to have large families, all funded by the poor old taxpayers, who have to be more responsible themselves, they can’t afford to have more children! When the overpopulation train hits the buffers all those children will suffer, as you can see them suffering in many other parts of the world already. So, do your bit for the environment and make sure that your carbon footprint ends when you do. I am not condemning anyone for having children unless they have a lot, in fact there are those close to me who I intend to save, and their children, when everything goes tits up.

There are many who seem to think that your life will be un-fulfilled unless you reproduce; I have never for even one minute regretted being child free. Furthermore, when I looked at my work colleagues, brains turned to mush, dishevelled after sleepless nights, smelling of sick and poor, it just reinforced what I had known all along. How many times have I heard the poor, downtrodden buggers say, “it’s all right for you John”? Too bloody right it is. So, not reproducing will save you a lot of money, save you from becoming infantilised and benefit the environment, but is it a revolutionary act? The answer is yes; only a small minority remain child free so we are defying the norm and therefore going against the system.” The man” ideally wants a large population of dumb, docile wage slaves. So, anything you can do to deprive him of them and make it easier for you to resist is an act of defiance. It also sets a living example to the majority, when they see your lifestyle, that there are many other ways to fulfil your life than reproducing.

KEEPING YOURSELF HEALTHY AND NOT RELIANT ON UNNECESSARY MEDICATION. The National Health Service doesn’t keep you healthy, though it may keep you alive. Is all the vast amount of money poured into the NHS well spent and does it really need to be completely free at the point of use? It may not be deliberate but the unholy alliance between the medical profession and big pharma conspires to keep us dependent on ineffective pharmaceuticals that also help in the dumbing down process. The government’s own standards agency, NICE, has found that only 18% if all pharmaceuticals are effective, so why on earth are they still spending vast sums of money on the other 82%? All illnesses and even old age are seen as “conditions” that need to be “managed” by “professionals” with the help of medication. In fact, prevention is better than cure and yet very little in the way of resources is directed that way. Even cures are not profitable for big pharma, they want chronic conditions where patients are just kept alive, though not healthy, by a constant input of medication. This state of affairs is, of course, much worse in the US, where by far the biggest advertisers on TV are big pharma, exhorting viewers to demand the latest wonder drug from their physicians. It goes without saying that as well as being ineffective and often dangerous, this chemical romance is incredibly expensive and all drugs in the US cost many times more than they do anywhere else in the world. It also has to be said that the alternative side of things can be just as bad in terms of bad science and efficacy but is less likely to damage your health. I tend to agree with the original doctor, Hippocrates, who said “let thy food be thy medicine”. So, if we all try to keep ourselves healthy we are again depriving “the man” of a huge amount of funds, and we will be fitter and better able to fight the system. Avoid going to the doctor, most conditions clear up by themselves and there is a vast amount of information on the internet, often from people who have the condition and know more about it than the doctor. I was once quite amused by a doctor friend, somebody asked him about a condition and he said, “Oh I must Google that”.

 

QUESTIONING EVERYTHING. So much is taken for granted and there are many “sacred cows”, e.g. the NHS, that are considered by the mainstream to be beyond criticism, but not by me. The vast majority of people take everything at face value, and yet very few of those things stand up to scrutiny. I will or have already dealt with them in other parts of the book so I am not going to go into great detail again, but I will just mention some of the main ones to refresh your memories.

Charities are not charitable except for the salaries of those who administer them. How much of all the money given to charity actually goes to the good causes? Not as much as you would expect. Much of it goes in administration and inflated salaries for the great and the good who tend to run these things. For example, there are several senior managers at UNICEF who are paid more than £500,000 per annum, each that is. Ed Milliband’s brother David is paid over £1million per annum for co-ordinating disaster relief.

Health and Safety does not keep us healthy or safe. It is 100% about organisations covering their backs. It provides jobs for zombies and mires us all in a slough of inefficiency and inertia.

Paid carers and care providers don’t care, except the providers who care only for the balance sheet.

Lawyers are the biggest crooks of all, they chase ambulances and will fan the flames of any dispute.

The word of the police would usually be taken above the word of a member of the public, this is not always justified. It puts the police in a very strong position to pervert the course of justice and they tend to close ranks when one of them is under suspicion. I very rarely have any contact with them these days and try to keep it that way. It was a different story when I lived in London in the seventies. I had several encounters with them then and personally witnessed corruption, poor observation, attempts to plant drugs on a friend of mine and a general belligerent attitude especially to black friends. I was once arrested for obstruction for dissing one at a demonstration. Fortunately, before he had time to caution me and snap the cuffs on, he was momentarily distracted so I knocked his helmet off and legged it into the crowd, which swallowed me up. My escape was doubly important as they wouldn’t have needed to plant evidence on that occasion, I had a load of dope tucked into my sock. Quite frankly in those days the Met were corrupt, ignorant, racist thugs and I wouldn’t have pissed on one of them if they were on fire. Nowadays my attitude has changed somewhat, they are, on the whole, better trained, less corrupt and have a more difficult job, hamstrung by bureaucracy and saloon bar lawyers. They also face more danger from terrorism now, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be facing terrorists on the street armed only with a truncheon. However, we still need to remember that some of them lie and some of those lies can get people into serious trouble.

Bankers don’t look after your money; they skim off as much as they can get away with and try to saddle you with all kinds of crap that you don’t need but they get commission for.

Financial advisors will ruin your finances, at one time they were even advising people to give up company and public-sector pensions in favour of private ones, which of course paid them large commissions.

When governments declare war on something it usually means it will increase. War on drugs, more drugs. War on terror, more terrorists, war on poverty, more poverty. War on cancer ignores nearly all prevention and natural cures and aims to keep cancer a manageable chronic condition like diabetes and asthma to keep the tills ringing for their pals in big pharma.

The multi-cultural society is often in practice apartheid and is destroying Western society.

The honours system is not honourable.

Scientists are not scientific, they manipulate the facts in favour of their paymasters, usually big pharma and multi-national companies pushing GMO’s.

Just because it’s on Facebook doesn’t mean it is true.

Religious faith usually goes hand in hand with ignorance and poverty; many religions, especially Islam, deliberately keep the faithful in a state of ignorance, and none of them like women very much.

Insurance companies attract new business by selling policies cheap to new customers and subsidise it by overcharging loyal customers. In fact, big business regards all loyal customers as cash cows.

The European Union is not united, it favours the rich countries at the expense of the poor. It is just another way for Germany to dominate Europe; they have tried and failed to do it by military means now they are doing it economically. Look at the way Greece has been shafted. Which brings me to…

 

NOT JOINING, OR SUPPORTING, POLITICAL PARTIES. Politicians and political systems are wasteful inefficient and incompetent, the upholders of democracy are not democratic, governments don’t govern, Popular Fronts rarely have more than 20 members, United Popular Fronts have 20 members who all fight with each other. Party politics is full of dogma and cant, it is stale and full of self-servers, an outstanding example is Tony Blair. The EU has become more of the same and is a very well paid second string for failed politicians, like the Kinnocks. As Nigel Farage said in the European Parliament “none of you lot have ever done a proper days work in your lives”. Which leads us on to the House of Lords, this is a club for those politicians and their associates who have played the game and been rewarded with a life peerage. There are also many who were lucky enough to have been born with or inherited titles or risen to high office in the law or the church. The Lords are not expected to do much; they get an attendance allowance of about £300 a day, and to claim it they have to sign in, yes that’s it, once they have signed in and planted their butt in the chamber they can go home, even before the cushion gets warm. If they have nothing else to do the chairs in the chamber are quite comfortable they can read or do their tax return and then go and have a good lunch and a few glasses of claret, all subsidised by the taxpayer of course, then back to the chamber for a sleep in the afternoon. Life is not bad for the great and the good.

 

ZOMBIES. Those who live off the backs of others fall into three easily identified categories; the top feeders, the bottom feeders and the pointless bastards in the middle. The top feeders are most of those on incomes of several hundred thousand pounds to several million, lawyers, bankers, “personalities”, footballers, top management of big companies and a host of other organisations including the EU, International Monetary Fund, Federal Reserve Bank, Bank of England, governing bodies of sports, charities, etc. The bottom feeders are all those feckless families with a lot of feral children, those who have been on benefits for years, decades sometimes, junkies and those who are in and out of prison. I sometimes think how much more pleasant our lives would be, and how much better off we would be if we could make them all disappear. Unfortunately, we couldn’t just kill them, that would be a bit too revolutionary but I do have some other revolutionary ideas for them which are aired elsewhere in this book. The pointless bastards in the middle are all those who form the foot-soldiers of the establishment and whose function is to maintain the status quo. Managers, professionals and experts are a luxury; the definition of a luxury, just to remind you, expensive, of little use and probably not very good for you.

Managers begat more managers, they spend most of their time justifying each-others existence and making themselves appear indispensable. In practice, they are nearly all paper pushers, who just slow down those who do the real work. If a manager goes off sick nobody notices, if the crane driver goes off sick work comes to a halt; and the reason there is no spare crane driver? Because managers are not only overpaid they are usually incompetent and have not seen the need to have one, or they have decided they can save money by not having one. In most cases the manager’s job could be done more efficiently and cheaply by giving the workforce more responsibility and this would also help them take more pride and interest in their work.

Professionals, I try to avoid using their services as far as possible, sometimes it is necessary and on those occasions they have made mistakes several times, in one case costing the Solicitors Indemnity Fund over £25,000 to put right. They charge enough for their services but again are often incompetent. They will always try to create jobs for each other; a solicitor will fan the flames of any dispute to create more work, then they say you need a surveyor’s report or a barrister’s opinion; an architect creates work for quantity surveyors, structural engineers, energy assessors, health and safety assessors to name a few. Even planners want all manner of surveys before you apply for planning permission, it can easily cost you over ten grand before you even submit your plans. Their jobs are now at risk of being replaced by robots and the internet; obviously I am a bit ambivalent about this but I can’t feel sorry for them.

Experts, such as opinion pollsters are nearly always wrong, they tend to be in an unholy alliance with tabloid, so called, journalists, who need their opinions on just about everything to fill their papers. So, it is a revolutionary act to make sure they all see as little of your money as possible and I have described how to do this elsewhere. Also, you should take with a pinch of salt or preferably not read in the first place anything in the popular press. Which leads me to……

 

THE TRUTH. George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” We are bombarded with information 24/7, it has been postulated that the average person now processes more information in a day than someone in the middle ages would have processed in a lifetime. But how much of that information is true? Every time we turn on a computer, a tablet or a smart phone we are subjected to 21^st. century control; to surveillance of our habits and routines, and to lies and manipulation. Eighty years ago Edward Bernays invented the term “public relations” as a euphemism for “propaganda.” He wrote, “Those who manipulate this unseen element of (modern democracy) constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” The aim of this invisible government is the control of our political consciousness, our sense of the world and our ability to think independently and to separate truth from lies. Dissent has never been more important. It is probably true to say that my blog, this book (yet to come) and the website (yet to come) are mostly about truth, teasing it out from all the bollox and using it to improve our own lives and subsequently the world. Eventually, I hope to start an organisation that will not only give you access to the truth but practical help for dropping out of the mainstream. The big word here is alternative, medicine, organic food, investments, banks everything. Spreading the word follows on naturally from this, please sign up to follow my blog, which I hope will become a forum for alternative ideas.

 

 

NOT RELYING ON MACHINERY. Was there ever a better example of something really clever being invented but then having to find a use for it, than the smart phone. You can’t get Scotty to beam you up yet but you can do a lot of things with it that would not have been thought of, even in science fiction, when I was young. Unfortunately, most of those things or apps as they call them are completely unnecessary, complicate your life, remove you even further from the real world and stop you thinking for yourself.  The users of these devices can’t see that it’s just another way of keeping them docile and under control, and the thin end of the wedge for artificial intelligence, at that. The smart phone can take you to places where you can access nearly all the knowledge in the world, but what do they use them for? Having loud banal conversations and taking selfies (the word itself says it all), pictures of each other getting drunk and their dinners. Never have so many words been spoken with nothing being said and so many pictures taken with nothing being shown, except some unfortunate girl’s knickers when she is passed out on the pavement. In many cases they don’t even speak they “text” each other in a dreadful dumbed down shorthand. In my youth Andy Warhol said that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes, nowadays attention spans do not even run to that; so it might be more true to say that everyone will have the opportunity to bore for fifteen seconds; unless you are unfortunate enough to be stuck on a train with them when they can keep it up for hours. Many of them are completely lacking in social skills, they don’t know how to shake hands use a knife and fork or look you in the eye when they are talking to you. In fact, they will just stand there fiddling with their phones while you are trying to hold a conversation with them; take it from them and they would be bereft. They live their lives through avatars on social media. Their real lives may be crap but their virtual lives are perfect. Photos are enhanced, there is no bad news, everything is wonderful and their children are smart and beautiful.

Interestingly, most of the major players in Silicon Valley don’t allow their children to use the devices that they make their $ billions from, and they have technology free destinations where their workers congregate at weekends to enjoy the simple life, drinking beer and barbequing and no emails or social media, which should rightly be called anti-social media. There are those who think there is a deliberate conspiracy to make people dumb by subliminal messages or that the microwaves fry your brain. When you see nearly everyone all the time texting, talking, listening to music and playing games, anything to avoid interacting with their surroundings or those around them, you wonder if there is some truth in this; or are they just complicit in their enslavement.  Edward Snowden refuses to use an i-phone because he says it has hidden software to spy on you. Certainly, with any phone, you leave a trail of data; where you have been, what you have searched for and who you have been in contact with. If you have a fitness app. those who record, keep and sell all this data even know your level of fitness. Apparently, Facebook messenger can turn on the microphone of your phone and listen to and record your conversations even when you are not connected. Facebook can also read your phone’s call log and read data about contacts stored on your phone, including the frequency with which you’ve called, emailed or communicated in other ways with specific individuals. You have allowed them to do this by agreeing to their terms and conditions, most apps on Android and Apple devices include similar terms and since the vast majority of people will agree to these terms without even reading them, cellphone users are agreeing to let Facebook and others monitor them 24/7, green lighting the kind of open ended wiretap that would make even GCHQ jealous. Other app companies are also requiring you to allow them to approximate your location, send SMS messages from your phone that cost you money, read your contacts, read your phone status and identity, get “full network access” to your communications (in other words listen to your phone calls), modify or delete the contents of your USB storage, and disable your screen lock (the 4 digit code that password-protects your phone). Embedded microphones in everything from Xbox Kinect consoles to high-tech street lights that can record private conversations in real time represent the final nail in the coffin of privacy as the ‘Internet of things’ becomes a part of our daily lives. Fortunately, you can easily avoid being spied on by hiding your identity; if you need to have a phone at all, buy a £25 simple phone and a pay as you go SIM card from ASDA, for cash. just as criminals and spooks do. GCHQ have long been lobbying the government to ban pay as you go SIM cards, so make of that what you will. Then we have CCTV with facial recognition to watch our every move; unfortunately, as population and terrorism continue to grow out of control these measures are probably necessary.

Then when we think about the extent to which most of our lives depend totally on machines, not relying on them becomes more than a revolutionary act; it is about our very survival. Most of us have no choice in the matter; the water that comes out of the tap, power, energy, communication, the food we eat, just in time shelf stacking in supermarkets, payment of salary, pensions and benefits, access to cash, all depend on machines, especially for those who live in cities. As I write this I have just heard about the cyber-attack on the NHS computers and the British Airways computers crashing at Gatwick and Heathrow, remember what I said about managers and experts? Not long before this fiasco some manager had sacked 1600 IT staff and outsourced it all to India, I have no doubt that the original staff would have been able to sort out the problem in minutes. When will those in charge see the writing on the wall? And this brings us round, full circle, to the beginning of the chapter. Survival itself becomes a revolutionary act.

We have revolutions to bring about rapid change but historically has there ever been one that improves the lives of all, or even most, of the people? I can’t think of one. So, on the whole revolutions don’t work, what we really need is a revolutionary revolution, it nearly happened in the late sixties early seventies. When my generation was young we had great optimism; we were going to make the world a better place, we had just invented sex, or so we thought at the time; and everything was being challenged. Probably youth had been invented a couple of generations earlier but we latched onto it and we were running with it. There was revolution in the air, also in the air were clouds of hashish and marihuana smoke; we were maybe a little bit too intent on enjoying ourselves to topple the Establishment. We gave them a shock, but they did have several hundred years start on us and had learned lessons from the previous large social upheavals after both World Wars, where many of the young had been cut down in their prime. They had to make compromises and we were not entirely crushed but many of the revolutionaries were seduced back into the fold and are now firmly ensconced. They were mostly the earnest, joyless, politicals, who were always going to political meetings and are probably now the backbone of the liberal, leftie Establishment. Old acid anarchists like me are still a thorn in their sides, well I do my best to be. However, they were heady times, exiting to be a part of, see the anecdote above about one if my encounters with” the heat”, there are more, as you will see or have seen, in the more entertaining parts of this book.

Incidentally, this liberal leftie Establishment has now taken over from the old money one, or so it would seem. However, they are still there and still own most if the wealth, but they are now happy to let the new ones run things for them. In fact, there are many Establishments now and we still need to overthrow them all: as this is unlikely to happen we should distance ourselves from them and set up our own alternative: are you with me? VIVA LA REVOLUTION.

THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON 2017.

Grenfell Tower: as a blogger, partly about current affairs, I couldn’t let this appalling tragedy go un-remarked. I have always been very uncomfortable with high buildings, and the thought of being trapped in a burning one is one of my worst nightmares. We maybe could expect this sort of thing to happen in the third world, but to happen in a city like London beggars belief. To add insult to injury there are now many who are seeking to score party political points from the suffering of the victims, and to find someone to blame it on. In fact, there is rarely just one cause for any accident or incident, and they usually only happen when several factors all come together. At the end of the day we have to look at those who are responsible for these things and as usual we come back to all the professionals, managers and “experts”, who in most cases are overpaid and incompetent and there are far too many of them. In this case there will be architects, politicians local and national, planners, building control, chief fire officers, police and I am sure there are many more who are all partly to blame. However, the main fault lies with all of us; we are breeding our species into extinction as well as destroying the environment and other species. If we had been more responsible in the first place we wouldn’t need to live like battery hens in high rise blocks. To put this into perspective there are about 200,000 extra people coming into the world every day; I don’t know how many people lived in Grenfell Tower but for the sake of argument say 300. So, the world needs to build over 600 similar blocks EVERY DAY just to house the increase in population.

 In the aftermath it seems that the local community were far more effective in dealing with the situation than the authorities who, as usual, were left floundering. Now we have those who should know better baying for the houses of the rich to be taken over to house the unfortunate dispossessed; perhaps the Houses of Parliament would be a better choice? Carol came up with a much better suggestion, university halls of residence, surely all these liberal leftie students would be happy to put these unfortunate people before their own education. We could start the Summer vacation early.

My very best wishes go out to the survivors and the loved ones of those who weren’t so lucky. Let us hope lessons will be learned.

 

A GREEK STYLE TRAGEDY

What a shambles, the Tory party should be hanging their heads in shame, they are supposed to be intelligent people. I know a week is a long time in politics, but that is about how long it took to turn a 24 point lead into a loss of overall majority. May has turned out to be about as effective as Diane Abbott. So much for the leader, what about the manifesto? While Jeremy was handing round the sweetie jar and making it cool for young people to vote, for him of course, the Tories were busy alienating their core supporters. If you have been reading my blogs you will know what I think about “leaders, managers, experts and I will now add advisors to the list”, the Conservative manifesto was spectacularly incompetent even by their standards. Now they have had to climb into bed with homophobic nutters just to survive. These DUPS want a soft Brexit, THERE IS NO SUCH THING!! 

Although I am not a Tory I was hoping they would get a large majority in this election as our only hope of standing up to Brussels. Personally, I would like to see Nigel Farage as chief Brexit negotiator, and have you ever noticed that he always gets the better of aggressive TV interviewers? He would make mincemeat of the soft flabby eurocrats. As it is the soft Brexiteers will make so many concessions that we will end up in a worse position than if we had stayed in. I would even go as far as to say there is a case to be made for another referendum with a choice between staying in and HARD Brexit. Or perhaps we should take up Jeremy’s offer to form a government, at the very least it would be interesting to see how he would put our money where his mouth is. To form the government at the moment is a bit of a “poison chalice” in any case. This is how Greece got ‘into such a mess, politicians getting elected by making promises to the electorate that were unrealistic. Perhaps the Tories should have offered to double old age pensions.

Having said that, there is quite a lot in the Labour manifesto that I would agree with, but there is no way we could pay for it all just by “making the rich pay a bit more tax”. We have to admit that Jeremy has come out of this election very well, only a few months ago many, even in his own party, were saying he was unelectable, I’m glad I never said that. It was a clever move to create over a million new Labour voters by promising to write off their student loans, much like Thatcher selling off council houses cheap to create Conservative voters.

So, where do we go from here, I think May is toast, probably to be replaced by Boris. The problem is that even if the Conservatives get their policies right and a more charismatic leader they will be hamstrung by the lack of a majority. I forsee another election probably with a Labour victory, maybe soon. We shall see, either way as far as Brexit is concerned we are probably Donald Ducked, In fact we might even be better just to stay in for now.