I had hoped to send you all a Christmas message with only good things, full of cheer and hope, but quite frankly I was unable to come up with anything. We are living in very dark times, it doesn’t help that 2018 has been the worst year of my life by a long chalk. Some of us are able to enjoy happiness at least some of the time but there is a huge majority in the world who aren’t.
I am more hopeful for 2019. I have been in limbo/purgatory but denouement is rapidly approaching. There are some known, unknowns that I think I can spin to my advantage, whatever the outcome. I can only hope that there aren’t any more unknown, unknowns ready to spring out on me. I fully intend to make the most of the rest of my life and I am fortunate to be in a position to be able to do so. I am also looking forward to starting my organisation that will fight “The Man” and help others.
I will be publishing my book early in the New Year initially
on Kindle and then as a paperback, much as I am reluctant to get involved with
Amazon but sometimes one just has to be pragmatic.
I have just published my first book, it is a trial run for when I publish my main book, MY GENERATION: REVELATIONS AND REVOLUTIONS: REVELRY AND REVERIE. It is ready, but I am just waiting until Christmas is over, so it doesn’t get lost in all of that stuff. The diet book however is very apt for this time of year, before you say anything, I will be applying it to myself in the New Year. Both will only be available on Kindle initially, but apparently one can also publish on Amazon as a paperback. I won’t be insulted if you don’t buy the diet book but it is only £2.37 and it contains useful information that you might not have thought of.
I don’t know about you, but I havehad enough of the cess-pit of corruption, inequality, inefficiency and environmental damage that we seem to be mired in at the moment. It’s bad enough here but many parts of the world are even worse. As most of you know I am in the process of trying to create an alternative for some of us, it is the only realistic way forward. “The Man” is in control again and most people are so downtrodden they have given up any attempt to fight back. It is the responsibility of those of us who have known better times, and who perhaps have the time and money, to motivate the downtrodden masses to, at the very least, protest at the way they are treated. We could take a lead from the French, who have never been backward at having a good demonstration or a riot even. The point is that it works, and the French government are busy addressing the issues that caused the rioting as I speak. The government has conceded, the rioters have continued to find more issues while they have the momentum. Viva La Revolution. We should try to only target direct action and property damage against our oppressors and their agents, but unfortunately in the heat of the battle everything can become a target. If we could be united we wouldn’t even need to do that. Obviously, some things are just wrong, and I would never condone bombing, killing and injuring innocent people.
In the UK they keep telling us that we are the fifth richest economy in the world, adding insult to injury to all those people sleeping rough, those on zero hours contracts and people who are working their butts off but still desperately poor. The statistics of just how many people are affected by poverty and the unequal distribution of household wealth are staggering. Of all adults in the UK, the bottom 9% have negative wealth i.e. only debts, the top 1% have £1.4 million each, and even that is likely to be an underestimate. This level of inequality compares very unfavourably with the rest of the developed world, even the US comes out better than us. The vast majority of our population are two wage packets from disaster, a substantial number are already there. I have no problem with people who have a talent or risk their own money to create a successful business, getting wealthy; so long as everyone else has a secure roof over their head, enough to eat and enough to pay their bills. In world terms the wealth of the richest 1% would pay for everyone in the world to have that security and would hardly even dent that wealth.
Bearing in mind that most wealth has been created by exploiting the less well off, I think it provides justification for taking some of it back by force and providing for the have nots. We need Robin Hoods, but all we have are robbin’ bastards. A huge amount of our money is wasted on projects that benefit only “The Man” and overpaid and unnecessary managers. I have just read that the army has wasted a monumental £475 million by outsourcing recruitment to Capita. They took on Capita in 2012 to secure their “expertise” in recruitment and marketing. It was so effective that Capita missed targets and had a shortfall between 21% and 45% every year since then. The army should have 82,500 trained soldiers but now they only have 77,000. I have no doubt that senior managers would have received their usual bonuses, based on the share price of Capita, not their effectiveness, and the usual backhanders and favours would have been handed out.
So, our government can’t look after us or spend our money effectively, and neither can our police protect us, only about 6% of crime is solved. It is not necessarily the fault of the police below senior management level they have had their funding cut to the bone. The copper on the beat is now nearly non-existent, like everyone else they have been buggered by health and safety and the paperwork demands of their managers. Most of them are sat at computers in offices writing up reports about crimes committed, instead of out on the streets preventing crime. If the police can’t protect us, we are therefore justified in setting up vigilante groups to protect ourselves. The rich already do so and can afford to live in gated communities with private security, it’s the poor who bear the brunt of the actions of all the scum bags. They even attack homeless people, WTF is that all about. As I have often said we could reduce maybe 60% of crime at a stroke by legalizing all drugs and even gain a substantial revenue, from the taxation on them. The problem is that our masters seem unable to think outside the box. The war on drugs is illogical, it is driven by ignorance and sentiment, you will never stop people taking drugs; accept that and put a positive spin on it. In other words, take criminals out of the equation and collect all that money as tax revenues, it would probably pay for the NHS.
Vigilantes could take back our streets they only need to kill or give a good beating to a few scum bags and it would deter the rest. It could even encourage the government to put some policeback on the streets. We shouldn’t overlook so called, low level crime and nuisance; the people who play loud music, park in front of your drive and generally make life miserable for their neighbours. It seems the authorities don’t regard this as a priority and yet it probably affects more people’s enjoyment of life than anything. Vigilantes could just do what is necessary; loud music smash up their equipment, nuisance parking bash their car. I have often thought how nice it would be to deal with nuisance parkers by having a beat-up old Land Rover. It could be hired to deal with the above and only needs to drive past the culprit and scrape all along the side of their car. If they left a calling card, then eventually all it would need would be to leave the card, and then if the miscreant had any sense they would modify their behavior.
Please also see my posts “Vandalism or Justified Sabotage”, posted 16th. March 2018 and “In Praise of Nimbyism”, posted 29th. November 2018.
A final lament showing how things could be if we could only be united. In the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable
number.
Shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you.
Well we have just witnessed a spectacular demonstration of how not to do Brexit. Are the government just incompetent? or are they cleverer than they appear and the whole process has been intended to bring us to the point where staying in has become an option again? Probably the former but it’s possible that some very rich person, persons or group in the shadowy background has hired very clever people to manipulate, spin and keep us in. Whatever, the crunch will be coming soon, and I hope that May’s deal will be rejected, I would rather a no deal or staying in than that, which would leave us in the worst of both worlds.
My own thoughts are that the pragmatic solution would be to stay in for now and think about having another referendum in about five years. In fact, better still we could have one now with three options,stay in, hard Brexit now or hard Brexit in five years if the EU fails to reform. We could use that five years to try and bring about a reform of the EU. The idea of a united Europe is good we have just allowed vested interests to take it all too far and in the wrong direction. Our negotiators have allowed the EU to dictate the agenda and bully them, but the EU are just as worried about us leaving with no deal as many of those in the UK. They wouldn’t be making it easy for us to stay in otherwise, you can bet your life that if and when it appeared that we were going to stay in they would start making it more difficult and asking for money.
They only want us in for the money in any case, they know we are only half-hearted about the European project. If we were to go for the third option and it looked like the EU was failing to reform we could start working on our exit strategy and be fully prepared for when the time came.Let us hope that whatever happens our negotiators keep that £39 billion as a“sword of Damocles” hanging over their heads, until everything is just how we want it.
For my part, I voted remain for selfish reasons, I was changing sides daily in the run up to the referendum. At my age it is nice to have easy access to the rest of Europe and I have plans for my organization that would be easier if we were still in. However, I think it would probably be beneficial in the long term for the UK to leave the EU in its present form. There will inevitably be chaos and short-term pain however we divorce from them.
I have just been going through my file and came across this poem that I wrote just after the referendum result, I think I put it on Facebook but not my blog, here it is again.
IF ONLY (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)
If only the remain side could have run a more competent campaign, when all about them were losing their rag and blaming the EU.
If only Cameron could have trusted himself when surrounded by Eurosceptics but realized they may have a point.
If only the remain campaign could have pointed to the positives and not relied on lies, fear and dodgy statistics.
If only we could dream of a united Europe but not at the expense of sovereignty.
If only we could have considered the implications of in or out and realized that neither option was the end of the world.
If only the few truths that we heard had not been twisted by so called journalists to trap the unprepared.
If only we didn’t have to watch the institution that has kept the peace for most of our lives, broken. And have to stoop and re-build it.
If only our Prime Minister, having recently won the last election, had not risked it all on a reckless gamble.
If
only we had not lost and now have to start again without complaint about out
loss
If only our idle youth had a bit more backbone and would get up off their fatbutts to go and vote in a draughty church hall with paper and pencil.
If only the government had seen this coming and let them vote with a phone app.
If only our politicians could talk with crowds and tell the truth,
Or talk with Brussels and explain the concerns of the common man.
If only they had ensured that friends like Obama kept their mouths shut.
If only we could treat all men and women as equal but not give any of them an automatic right to come and live here.
If only we could make them realise that we’re British the earth is ours and everything that’s in it.
Just thought I would share this with you. I was out walking on Monday and this guy decided to join me. He suddenly appeared and then walked along with me. You know how cats get in front of you and slow you down? he was doing that and even pecking at my leg. I thought should I give him a bit of my butty? But cheese sandwiches are not pheasant food and he looked plump enough already.
A bit further along there were fields full of sheep that all had coloured dye on their hind quarters. It reminded me of a conversation in the pub years age when I lived in Broughton. One of the people in the pub who I used to drink with was a young sheep farmer. He was talking about “tupping pouches”, apparently when the rams are let loose on a field full of sheep they have a bag of dye attached to their abdomen. This rubs off on the sheep when he is on the job and the farmer knows that the sheep has been “covered”, or “tupped” in the local vernacular. It sounded like a Cumbrian tall story to me but no it was true. Cumbrians have a tradition of tall stories, this culminates every year in “The Crab Fair” at Egremont where one of the events is “the biggest liar” competition. I sometimes wonder if the town of Ramsbottom derives its name from this practice, tupping pouches that is not tall stories.
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