The Mental Load.

Imagine you’re Theresa May surrounded by the Conservative front bench twits. While they’re having pyjama fights in whatever private school dorm they went to you alone must save the country from Brexit mayhem. That on a domestic level is the Mental Load. You alone ‘see’ the thousand things that have, might, are or will go wrong if your grasp falters even for a moment. I have witnessed women complaining yet proudly vying for who has the heaviest, usually in the form of my husband is more incompetent, less aware or less communicative than your husband. It’s the same old sporting territory as mother-in-law jokes. But there’s this new phrase, ‘Mental Load’ that vindicates it like a diagnosis, “You’re fine, you’ve just got autism.” Well it’s not fine; it’s the highest form of arrogance, a throw back to the days when your six-month-old would die without your constant intervention. It’s become a way of life, of capturing power and holding the rest of the family in almost perpetual infancy, a phoney way of bolstering one’s own self-worth, which one has neglected due to the constant task of shouldering the afore-mentioned mental load. Yes you have to make all the decisions but only because you’re so busy deciding what everyone should do next. Once you realise this mental load is inappropriate for anyone past their third birthday you can begin to make adjustments. Begin by giving away the responsibility for Sunday lunch to your partner or oldest child. This is not a following orders exercise it’s a glass of wine whilst reading the Sunday glossies exercise. If they ask for help fine but otherwise content yourself preparing for rubber chicken, lumpy mash and degraded sprouts. Remember this is your learning exercise and people may have different ways of doing things that may even on occasion be successful. Your quantity surveyor hubby may make a copious timings list or your brain surgeon eldest consider the coefficient of heat penetration for various animal and vegetable varieties. In a short time they will prove easily capable of laundry, dressing, bed making, even cooking and cleaning while you’re well on the way of becoming an alcoholic. And if they do fall short of your exacting standards don’t chastise them, that’s just a cheap ego boost. Smile and suggest it just proves they need a little more practice. With a little practice on your part you will happily relinquish the title of ‘Queen of Fucking Everything’ and become a simple gay princess amongst equals and the equals will be happier too. 

Feeling Politically Manipulated.

Back in 2016 DC called in the ref of public opinion to settle the EU dispute within the Con Party once and for all. While DC led Remain effortlessly (i.e. without effort) the Leave Machine in its many guises rose like a rampant PR giant. Sexily branded Brexit it bought in Cambridge Analytica to use Facebook profiling to target manipulable voters with dubious promises, and painted them on red buses, well one bus that moved about. According to numerous polls in the three weeks before the referendum this high-energy campaign increased the Leave vote from 47% to 52%. In the weeks and months that followed it fell back again. It even outfoxed the bookies who had Leave at ~4:1, not bad for a two horse race. And DC bailed to a cupboard somewhere. The Con Leavers, be careful what you wish for, began back stabbing each other leaving only TM (for Remain) to progress the deal to leave. After two depressing years we’re no nearer a solution as good as we had in the first place, and with no deal, far worse. All that’s left is for the Cons to cobble together something they will brand as a success. So why didn’t DC ‘note the (advisory) referendum result’ and call for an analysis of the likely outcomes before proceeding? Why are the dubious money, false claims, false accounting and social media manipulations of the Leave campaign not being pursued or the possibility of them swaying the result being considered?

And where is JC in all this? He might as well be in that cupboard with DC.

Best result:  1/ lock the cupboard, 2/ disband the Conservative Party as ‘unelectable’ in perpetuity and 3/ scrap Article 50, “Sorry guys we had a sort of mental breakdown from being on social media too much.” Oh and 4/ insist on political meritocracy rather than wealthy mediocrity. 

The Great Depression Crime.

We all know mazes. You start at the outside and find your way to the middle. Now imagine being teleported into the middle and having to find your way out. It’s not a simple reversal, for one you’ve no idea how big the maze is or where on the periphery the exit is. The old wife’s wisdom of living within her meagre means is the inward maze where the simple central success is staying out of debt, balancing the books. Once you’re there there’s nowhere to go, it’s the very definition of austerity, ‘the trait of great self-denial.’ The government’s policy of austerity is the obligatory denial of hope and opportunity. No wonder we’re all depressed, it’s government policy. And that comes at a price. The ongoing costs of an ill informed, angry, confused and directionless generation from social media, drugs, crime, vandalism, mental and physical health and welfare, and the lack of skills and motivation to create income far outweigh the savings from denial.

The outward maze is the very opposite. Seeded at its centre with hope, education and optimism we happily acquire skills, confidently seize opportunities and naturally maintain our health and well-being. That was my experience in the sixties. But old Maggie Conservatism closes libraries, impoverishes schools, under funds the NHS and mental health, taxes higher education and reduces social services etc. These are the policies of decadence, and they’re working.

Thank you Racism.

Not just racism: homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia and terrorists, and opening it out a bit, drug dealers. I’m lucky enough, living in sunny Yorkshire, to not know any terrorists or any of the above personally. This allows me to judge or at least view people in totally different terms. Terms like honesty, humility, empathy, intelligence, awareness and curiosity. Score on these and you’ve got a friend for as long as you want one. But racism and all of the above are divisive. They set ordinary people against ordinary people, and then other ordinary people react against them and become anti- racism, anti-homophobia etc. All well and good but it creates further division. So where in all this division are my terms, terms that ameliorate division, that promote acceptance and understanding? More importantly, as the public debate becomes ever more divisive, people who score lowly in my terms are getting away with murder. People who are arrogant, sociopathic, unintelligent, mean spirited and dogmatic are hording wealth, destroying the environment and gaining power. Surely they would say ‘thank you racism’ for distracting the public to fight amongst themselves while they force their merry way to personal gain and universal disaster. It’s not for nothing that Russia seeded public division in our UK referendum and the US presidential election. Because division always weakens even though it has a certain base appeal to the unthinking ego. Better to be honest, humble, empathic, intelligent, aware and curios. Then you can be my friend. 

If You’re Lying You’re Dying.

Maybe, ‘God, the father, son and Holy Ghost’ equates to “the experiment, its outcomes and the underlying ‘direction that is’.” Put simply the experiment plays about, things happen that are possible. Nothing impossible ever happens. That maybe obvious but it’s important to realise we are restrained in the domain of the possible, which is quite small compared with all the things that are impossible. The ‘direction that is’ also defines what, within the possible, will survive. Things either flourish or fall back into the body of substance that fuels the ongoing experiment. So the ‘direction that is’ holds two levels of truth, 1/ what’s possible, and 2/ what follows this ‘direction that is.’ If it’s impossible it’s obviously not true, and if it isn’t in the ‘direction that is’ it won’t survive long enough to become true either. These two levels of truth are way above our daily debates on truth. In fact it’s likely we humans are unique in our capacity to conceive of untruths and that we might gain some long-term advantage from them. Not just conscious lies but beliefs, theories, manipulations and assertions that constitute the majority of our thinking even the hypothesis of self. So in this ‘post-truth’ age we’re supposedly entering what if anything will survive? When the natural world that has stood the test of time and proved itself to be ‘true’ we are imposing our untruths in chemicals and pollution, spin, politics, wars and now fake news believing them to be our successes. Only when we begin to perceive, think, act and speak with true honesty and see no advantage in living otherwise will we avoid oblivion. This isn’t religion, it’s survival. 

Laugh, He’s Offended.

Lesney drawing office was a wondrously enjoyable learning experience for me. Fifteen or so guys making often caustic fun of each other. One thing you couldn’t get was offended. Getting someone offended was deemed a success and that person would rue the day he snapped back. He had shown weakness that would be ruthlessly exploited until he got over it. Short, black, fat, thick, short sighted, buck toothed, if you couldn’t see the funny side, well you had to in the end, it was a right of passage. So I’m amused by so many people being offended these days. In fact just ‘offended’ isn’t enough, they have to be ‘grossly offended.’ In the Lesney drawing office they would be like Christmas stomping around in high dudgeon being wound up to spring-breaking point till something snapped, usually the personal pretension that formed their castle ramparts. Why do people take being offended so seriously? Are they attempting to weaponise it? “You’re being grossly offensive, take that! And now I have the moral high ground take that and that too. I am indignantly insulted and affronted.” I’m wondering why on Earth these people actually decide to lay themselves open to so much ridicule? OK a softly muttered; “Twat”, “Wanker” or worse doesn’t constitute a viable counter argument but it’s not about argument it’s about being what you’re being. These weapons of sanctimosity constitute the armoury of Divisionists, those too weak to come forth from their own handmade castle, who see the world in fiefdoms. That’s such a pity. I’ve been searching for a pithy closing sentence but I don’t have one. 

One Day Everyone will Live in Manhattan.

Feedback loops typically take a bit of the output signal and feed it back into the input. They have their uses so long as they’re under control. In a broader context you could say Darwin’s theories of evolution are based on feedback loops and even the old adage, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.’ As wealth accumulates power the wealthy use it to skew the system to their advantage. It’s a feedback loop we’re all aware of, but like the microphone howl at a concert it can destroy the performance not to mention the sound system itself. So the question arises, when does the wealth/power feedback loop go critical and begin to destroy our whole economic system? Recently Facebook lost $120 billion in one day’s trading. That’s 3.5 million years of average UK pay. We are nearing that point. A man, they’re usually men, with a yearly income of say £15 million might spend, i.e. put back into the economy, £1 million. The rest he must spend in the completely separate economy of world finance. With the top 1% owning say 80% of wealth it’s likely 60% to 70% is being siphoned off real economies into global finance. That leaves our working economy surviving on half of what it generates. This constitutes a ‘negative’ feedback loop where the output is used to suppress the input. It’s like giving a horse 50% of the food it needs to do the work required of it. It won’t immediately starve to death but year on year it will become weaker and weaker until it finally collapses. This is where we’re at. Venezuela is a basket case only because world finance won’t go there and there are other countries on the brink. It’s a kind of economic climate change where life-giving rain is being directed only to the safest places for a return. With no money for basic services, health, education, policing etc and no sign of the horse getting more food anytime soon Venezuela is dieing. Unimaginable amounts of currency are blowing around the globe boosting stock markets under the direction of one seemingly rational, almost laudable imperative, a return on investment. And in their wake economic wastelands. But people don’t die they walk. Immigrants are forming human winds of their own under this economic jet stream moving to wherever it rains. There are two human wills in contradiction, the will to live and the will to become even more wealthy. The latter would do well to recognise, and quickly, which will is the stronger. 

Conversation with Britney.

Britney is our resident Lauren Bacall in ginger, every pose a languorous expression of royal intelligence. Here for example is this morning’s conversation.

“Hello Britney.”

You’ve taken Dave to the black table. We all know.

“You OK Brit?”

You remain under suspicion comedy man

“What you looking at me like that for?”

think about it

“Oh yes sorry, I’ve taken Dave to the vets to get his teeth done. You’re fine. Bloody vets, they’re like the American healthcare system.”

And

“And what? Do you want some milk?”

If I wanted milk I’d take you to the fridge. No I’m here sitting in front of the cat flap, you work it out.

“What?”

 you locked the cat flap so he couldn’t get out

“Oh sorry I locked the cat flap so he couldn’t get out, here.” (unlocks cat flap)

There you go.

I’m not sure. You’re a bit too close. We know the tricks you know. Betty may be neurotic bless her but she’d worked you lot out years ago; Dreamies out of the blue, slowly bending over to give us a stroke in an ominous manner> Remember the rule, ‘We come to you.’ Always been always will be. Just back away and we can both get on with our day>

“Oh sorry, here.”

Thank you.

(Five minutes later)

“Back in?”

look out the window dumb ass, it’s raining.

Brexistential.

Midnight news and the spokesman for the road haulage industry is saying he asked the Brexit gov sec for ‘clarity’ on a no-deal Brexit. And the Brexit gov sec asked, “What exactly do you mean, clarity?”  I think he went on to say there would be no problem on the UK side but it also depends on the EU. Well ‘der!’ I may have been half asleep and not 100% sure what existential means but post two years of negotiations one would expect at least a slim idea of what the other side’s response will be. I’m now fully awake and realising the EU really don’t want the UK to leave. Not because of some familial affection but because they’re fearful for their club. They don’t was to lose membership. Like Greece found, we have entered a Hotel California. Back in 2016 we thought we just needed to pay the bill and check out but now we’re finding the price of leaving also carries existential costs that the EU won’t tell us. ‘Sure your lorries can queue up at Dover but we control the price of landing in Calais.’ In response Brexiteers are forced into saying, ‘Hang the price we’re going to leave anyway!’ It’s the only way the UK can throw the deadline back into the EU court. Of course the haulage industry is concerned but the UK are not negotiating with them. So now the EU is thrown into counting the existential cost to them. And it’s considerable: a founder member, a large economy and a large scientific and security contribution. And it’s all about inflexibility. Germany has a long history of amalgamating disparate groups. It took over a century to form the country from antagonistic feudal Germanic fiefdoms, it put huge energy in amalgamating east and west and was the major driving force in forming the EU. But the wider it grew the more disparate the countries have become. There are now major differences in living standards, attitudes to money and politics, population density and even reputation. Maybe the EU rules are based on an old German idea of amalgamating broadly similar fiefdoms and outdated in a modern Europe. And that’s what Brexit is about, updating Europe. Vive la special case.

How the USA gave up Guns.

Joe’s brother’s daughter died in a school shooting. The kids marched but the NRA and public opinion stood firm. It was like if you weren’t personally affected like Joe guns were your only protection in this crazy world so you loved them. In his head he went through countless ideas of how to change things. Laws couldn’t make it happen, the government wouldn’t and protests didn’t change things. OK forget guns and focus on ammunition, guns are no use without ammunition. He remembered Stuxnet where US malware blew up Iran’s centrifuges. Could he do the same for munitions manufacturers, malware their machines to make cartridges that blew up your gun? It turned out US bullet manufacturing was antiquated; they just used machines with an on/off switch. It would be easier to get them for lead poisoning. But there was a part of that plan that persisted, that if guns blew up in your hand due to faulty ammunition people would think twice about using them: it would feel like Russian roulette only American. In the end he turned to Trump. He was always talking about fake news and tweeting ridiculous things. So that’s what Joe would do. He rang around everyone he knew who had been personally affected by the shooting and from there other shootings and other people. Everyone he rang agreed. Pretty soon he had over a hundred people from all over personally committed to the project. Each had a different start date over a three month period, one or two at first, then five then twenty. They all began to tweet about guns blowing up in their hand. No one knew the cause, could be the guns or the ammunition. Some posted pictures of bloody hands or face, an eye blinded, a kiddie with burns. It was happening all over the country, a twitter storm, Youtube videos, Facebook posts. The more the NRA denied there was a problem the more fresh instances cropped up in new places. The public became jittery. Guns could harm you if you used them?! Of course not every shot, most fired fine, but you could never be sure if the next one might. OK it was fake news but nobody could get to the bottom of it. Even people who said it was a conspiracy weren’t believed. How could all these ordinary real people from all over the place be tweeting the same problem? Ammunition sales plummeted. People still had their guns but stopped using them, ‘just in case.’ Homicides fell by 50%. People talked, felt safer, the news picked up on the stats and drew conclusions. Little by little guns lost their appeal. People began to look at guns not as protection but personally harmful. (much like cigarettes)

And that’s how Joe got rid of guns in the US of A. Of course this is a story, Joe doesn’t exist, but best keep just quiet in case he does.

Our Haddon Hall Trip.

Yesterday Mothermouse and I visited Haddon Hall and artisan fair. The Hall is a 13^th, 14^th, 15^th and 16^th century building with one wall dating back to 1100 and elevated gardens some thirty meters above a lovely meandering river. What isn’t meter thick stone walls is 2½ inch oak doors and high leaded windows. This would become important later. Between hot sun and heavy rain we wandered the tented artisans and then the hall itself. Dates are one thing but staring at a 3 inch solid oak worktop worn clean through by 16 generations of servants brings a richer meaning. We wander through the banqueting hall and oak panelled galleries with massive hanging tapestries and end up walking through a heavy oak door into the simple elegant gardens. Mothermouse spotted a small summerhouse stacked with chairs and as it was raining we decided on a rollup in said building on said chairs. We continued down to the lower garden looking for the exit. As no solid oak doors were open we wandered back to the one we came out of. This was also shut. Slowly our minds assembled the facts, an impregnable building on the one hand and a 30 meter shear drop on the other and the staff packing up ready to go home. In a flash Mothermouse was on her mobile Googling Haddon Hall’s phone number. She explains we’re in the garden and, yes with the house on our right, good, and gone down the steps, OK, and we’re standing by the pond. “We don’t have a pond.” It transpired Mouthermouse had phoned Haddon Hall Care Home. Back to Google. Man answers, “Lucky we answered it” in a jocular if somewhat irked tone suggesting he’d already got his coat on and it was a long walk back through the banqueting hall, long oak panelled galleries etc. He opened a door and quizzed us on what exactly were we doing in the summerhouse for so long, and probably thinking we might well be escapees from the similarly named care home. Even now, a day later, I don’t know what we’d have done if he hadn’t answered. I know smoking is bad for you but I’d never considered dieing of exposure in the back garden of centuries old castle. 

Why the West is Failing.

Must listen to BBC R4 8pm tonight. Imagine an overbearing parent who, through numerous prods and pokes, convinced you you wanted, at age eleven, a stamp collecting set when you really wanted a bike. He was proud of his achievement because he liked philately and happened to have a spare stamp collecting set in a drawer and felt bikes were horrible oily mechanical things. Convinced, you half-heartedly stuck down penny purples and made planes from the empty pages. The current truly rampant manipulative use of social media is such a parent. Facebook et al are fundamentally conduits for the act of being overbearing. “You don’t really want that, you want this.” Like the old game where two people interleave hands and repeatedly pull out the bottom one and place it on top. That’ll make more sense if you do it saying the phrase. Western governments have institutionalised being overbearing, deciding what people want and foisting it on them. It’s now a fundamental part of our social fabric, and like that old hand game we’re going nowhere, achieving nothing of value and giving out stamp collecting sets to people who make paper planes out of them. That visceral motivation you would have got from a bike is missing and we’re all just going through the motions working ever harder towards objectives as nebulous as, well Brexit. Have now listened to above program recounting Oswald Spengler’s 1918 prophecy, the fall into decadence of every empire in history. Unfortunately it does seem inevitable. Initially a society has common youthful energy. In time it displaces that common energy with individual fragmentary comfort. In so doing it separates into those who acquire ever-greater comfort and those who don’t. Greater comfort assumes the greater increasingly disassociated power that separates the fabric of common energy. That fabric becomes weak and divisive, its energy consumed in internal nonsense. It can’t compete with other’s common youthful energy. It becomes insular, dictatorial, seeing its only salvation in isolation. It becomes that overbearing parent suppressing its youth, its only chance of a comfortable old age and a fresh start. 

Sympathy for Trump.

OK we went on Sheffield’s ‘Fuck-off Trump’ march on Friday but the man’s had a hard life. When I was five in bliss on our landing riding my new scooter he probably got cufflinks befitting the son of a multi millionaire. When I was twelve adventuring on my second hand bike he was probably riding his ranch on a top-notch pony. At fourteen, I contemplatively fishing, he hunting dear triumphantly. At sixteen me struggling with self-image and girls and he having his pick of the most beautiful, I weak and spindly, he strong enough to beat up any guy. At twenty-one his father gave him a million dollars to make is fortune and my dad wished me luck. All in all we learnt different things. He could have what he wanted and could acquire the best, and I had to work, learn and struggle with old moto-crossers, people and myself. He was educated by privilege and I by Mr Green at my secondary modern. I’m not romanticising the nobility of struggle rather its potential for growth, fulfilment and the pure pleasure of it. I’m not enviously bitching about Trump’s silver spoon wealth rather the paucity of his education by privilege. How could he grow when pre-given everything? Where is the pleasure in not attaining it? How can you feel fulfilment when you can just grab the pussy of existence? He was born on a bleak mountaintop where only ego, needing nothing but itself, can survive. And the rest of us, born much lower in uncertain yet fertile valleys, have the potential to flower. No Trump has had the worst of it by far but still doing his best to achieve worthless trophies and bully fortune to his uneducated will. He might still be, albeit unconsciously, trying to find out what the rest of us know, how to struggle with insecurity, exams, overdrafts, real relationships and true fulfilment, and the pleasure in achieving them.  

Reading for the Sake of Nothing.

We all have internal dialogue. At best we use it to formulate solutions, do I go here or there for a holiday, or worse to endlessly pursue imponderables, or even worse to emote over ourselves and/or others. Social media externalises this pursuit. It provides a vast ocean of opinion to swim in. Someone loves Jeremy Kyle someone else hates him. She said this, he aid that. He’s doing this, she’s doing that in an endless stream of fruitless stimulus, fruitless because opinion is the inverse of education. It’s how someone feels about the third law of thermodynamics. How do I feel about the third law of thermodynamics? What the fuck is the third law of thermodynamics? Why don’t people ever talk about the other two? Well the first two are simpler. Yes but they’re still important, aren’t they? Yes but is the third breakable. Breakable? Does it impose a false limitation? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. No because you don’t have the education dumb ass. So opinion is a great way of building a house on quicksand: Easy but a waste of time. Personally I’d rather spend an evening with a calculator than a person full of opinions, which are essentially the real fake news. I’ve heard Hitler is still alive and living in the Philippians. Really. And 9/11 was done by devilishly cleaver Islamic terrorists. Really! Not by the US and the owner of the twin towers? Oh god no. Excuse me if I get my calculator out. Social media might have been fed by misleading Russian or otherwise fake information but the real damage to our society is its capacity to opinion-ise our state of mind. Once we’re opinion-ised we can be fed any garbage the movers want. So take it easy, just keep scrolling down, the page is endless.

Mhairi Black

Mhairi Black the youngest, most eloquent and intelligent MP we, well the Scottish, have, gave a talk on the workings of the house. It is ludicrous to the point of demensure. Imagine talking to an ageing once important man, Trump for example. He carries in his skull a mountain of arrogance, the ignorance not to question it and the social aplomb to counter any argument, aplomb based merely on the fact he made the rules before you were born. Imagine now that you are meeting this once important man in an asylum, he the King of Chipping Sodbury and Holy Roman emperor of the Caching Dynasty. He patiently explains he is experienced in matters concerning this establishment and that you must follow a squirrel into the division lobby for lunch. You are now as furious, frustrated and flummoxed as Mhairi Black. You are vital, have a working brain and supposed you were here to work for the better governance of Britain, but how when mired in so many nonsensical delusions can you bring about any progress whatsoever? Probably by giving talks to people at large about this none functioning cuckoo’s nest. “My dear girl we were all like you at your age. A chap I knew at Eaton supported Keir Hardie! But we all have to learn the rules, Black Nob hitting the woolsack three times with a tennis racket, that sort of thing, or we’d lose our ancient power over poor people as given to us by Charles II after we posthumously executed Oliver Cromwell.” “Posthumously executed?” “Well he’d already died so we dug him up and hanged him.” “Da ya ney know you’re all grossly overmedicated fools in here so you are.” “If it was good enough for King Charles it’s good enough for us young lady. You’d do well to remember that.” “And you’d dey well ti remember, ya wee southern shite, that I’m a lesbian an proud Scot so I am, an I’ll throw your meds down the loo so I will.” “Nannyeeeeee!”

A Plan for Local Democracy.

I proposed this several years ago but now I think it’s a necessity. Our government, or at least the way we choose members of parliament, is not fit for purpose. The Tories unreconcilable division over Brexit leaves the whole country rudderless. We need a viable alternative to our entrenched party system. We need to reconnect democracy to its roots, provide a way for grass roots voters to choose the best of the best among ourselves. We need human and intellectual quality not divisive vested interests. With that in mind this is what I propose. A constituency is roughly 50,000 voters living within a localised area. That area is divided into say 3,000 postcodes each covering less than 20 households all within a 50-yard radius. It would be relatively easy for an independent action group in a constituency to use the electoral roll combined with postcodes to deliver an information pack to one person in each postcode. This pack would outline the philosophy and procedure for choosing a ‘local democratic’ candidate. This person either actions the pack or passes it along the addresses until another person chooses to. This person delivers printed information sheets to his/her 19 neighbours with a date for a meeting at their house. This in itself would provide a chance for improved neighbourliness and involvement, albeit minimal, in the political process. The sole purpose of the meeting is to get to know each other in order to vote for one person to represent the group in terms of their personal qualities of intellect, fairness, humanity etc. At this stage the person is simply the group’s best representative. This procedure is repeated for clusters of 10 postcodes. In this way 50,000 becomes say 3,000, which becomes 300. The procedure is repeated but with the people going forward willing to consider the roll of MP. The final meeting of 30 will be extended so that the representatives can form an informed view of each other in particular the say 5 who choose to be potential candidates. The person chosen will be recognised as the best peoples’ choice, which gives him/her a solid platform of credibility. At the same time the various local action groups will join forces to promote these candidates at a national level via social and other media. There not will of course be a hundred percent participation but it will work at any level. The costs involved given all involved are volunteers would be minimal and easily covered by a local collection. The result is a viable political candidate holding the constituency’s respect as a capable person with no wider vested commercial or party interests. It would stimulate neighbourliness and connect people to the political process by creating a tree of connections in which each constituent is only five connections away from the candidate. It could in time eradicate professional politicians that currently hold power irrespective of general elections.

My Brexit Strategy.

“David we must get out of the EU, in 2019 they’re introducing financial rules that will decimate our off-shore funds. I have an idea. Call a referendum immediately, you’ve told the electorate you would.” “But I might lose it.” “That’s the point, we will lose it. I’ve already talked to Cambridge Analytica. They’ve got a Facebook campaign planned and have lots of call centre capacity. Forget Leave we’re going to call it Brexit it’s more sexy. We’ll set up official campaigns with great slogans. We can promise anything because we’re not governed by normal election rules.” “But where does that leave me I’m supposed to be for Remain?” “You just pretend to fight for Remain and if it goes our way you just resign, you’ve had your turn at PM, take a long holiday, disappear for a bit. Also it must be a straight in out race no two thirds majority, anything like that. No need to make it binding because when we win we can just bang on about following the will of the people. Advisory sounds better than binding anyway. It gives people a chance to put a finger up at us. That’s the beauty of it. By voting against us they’ll be doing what we want. I love it.” “So who’ll take over as PM?” “It doesn’t matter. I mean not one of us.” “Really!” “No, so long as we hold the power we can drive it through. No it’s better the PM is a Remainer.” “You think it’ll work?” “Sure.” “But what about the country?” “Look all our money is outside the UK, sure the economy will tank but it won’t affect us. Or would you rather be discredited, possibly jailed and get a humongous tax bill? Think of the children old boy.”

Hi I’m Alexa, how may I help you?

I won’t be buying an Alexa bot. On ‘Word of mouth’ an expert on social bots, Head of Conversational Linguistics no less, explained how they worked and how amazing they will become. The worrying thing was he sounded like one, not his voice his brain. Whilst I yearn for grumpy bots, funny bots, even Conservative bots I can swear at his conversation was pre-programmed to be informative, passive and agreeable, and well all the things that would drive me away from a conversation at a party. I worked on a swearing vulture twenty years ago, I didn’t sell it, but it was way more enjoyable than, “Yes Gordon. They contain 57% unsaturated fats. Do you have any other questions about peanuts? Or were you referring to the cartoon by Charles M. Schmultz that ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000?The H of CL mentioned an early version had to be axed after being hacked to say deplorable sexist remarks. Yes you TWAT that’s what humans find entertaining! That’s why we talk to each other! It’s frightening how quickly a human brain can learn to think algorithmically. Watch a clip of Mark Zuckerberg giving evidence here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCDvOsdL9Q If he’s the new face of human social interaction I’m glad I’m 74. It’s simple. The human brain is far more sophisticated than any AI so it has way more capacity to adapt to AI than AI has to adapt to the human brain. So the direction of adaptation will be towards AI. The H of CL and Mark Zuckerberg are compelling evidence of this. I’m beginning to notice a new category of bad habits I need to avoid.

I Am Racist.

Listening to a recent conversation that ran along racist lines I had to concede some made valid points but all felt the need to sign off with, “but I’ll not racist.” Absolutely because ‘being racist’ is currently the greatest slur on a persons character one could impute. As a result there is an unspeakable prohibition to all things black, white, coloured and squinty eyed, or any form of racial differences. It’s a sort of Pandora’s box we have managed to close, and everyone knows it’s opening the thing that is where the danger lies. Nobody talks about the danger of closing it. But like all prohibitions life goes on underneath. So now we all have feelings we dare not talk about that cloud as in the closed off feted atmosphere of a smoking den. What should I say? Personally I do discriminate between African and Irish, Japanese and French, even you and him. Over the years my mind has formed experiential templates that however easily overruled by acquaintance still exist. I’m sexist and even bird-ist preferring blackbirds to starlings with a soft spot for Robins. I have a very different template for the Israeli government than I have for the Jewish people. The list goes on. For me the unredeemable slur of these ‘ists’ has gone too far. They damage public debate and the public mind almost as much as the blinkered doctrinaire indiscriminate racism they were created to overcome. I doubt I’m alone in having experiential templates for every race under the sun but we English have become so scared of expressing the evidence of our own experience we are in danger of losing who we are and what we stand for.

My Syrian Statement.

The situation in Syria is appalling. Not for the first time Asad has used chlorine gas against his own people. We reach that conclusion, firstly because he would profit from it, and secondly because he refuses outside investigation that could prove it. This is a war crime and Asad will at some future time be called accountable. No western action will be taken because we have no legal right to intervene militarily but condemn in the strongest possible terms Asad’s use of chlorine gas. We recognise Russia is assisting Asad and any intervention would risk the escalation of the conflict but are surprised in Russia’s apparent support and condoning of Asad’s war crime. If Russia continues to block outside investigation of Asad’s actions we can only assume Mr Putin might also be accused of aiding a war crime. We do not consider that an appropriate course of action for a member of the UN. To resolve this situation and avoid further disastrous escalation we would like to see Russia reconsider their unqualified support for Asad. Whilst we recognise Russia’s right to pursue a foreign policy we might not like when we see that policy as not living up to internationally agreed humanitarian standards we also have the right to condemn it, not only for the people of Syria but also by implication other states affected by it and ultimately the people of Russia herself. Those internationally agreed standards are not a matter of opinion they are the hard lessons learnt from our joint history of conflicts where certain actions lead to resolution, happiness and prosperity and others to hostility, warfare and destruction. Our current choice to not oppose Asad and Russia is not made from weakness, but to remember those lessons of history so horrifically played out in Syria thus far. 

Tories Fake Facebook.

Whilst Cambridge Analytica and AIQ continue to assert they've never heard of each other and have done no paid or unpaid work for the Brexit arm of the Conservative Party with regard to window cleaning, hoovering and drain clearance it is their wholly owned subsidiary, Tinglytot Baskets Ltd, that has come under suspicion. Originally set up in the fifties by Edward Heath’s black sheep brother Harry Tots, Tinglytot Baskets was the erstwhile bastion of innocent relief for MPs living away from their wife and family after hard days debating for their beloved country. Stiffmouse News can now reveal that Tinglytot’s has though moved into new areas. After their success with internet porn, jointly owned by Russian oligarch Vladimir Bollockoff, Tinglytot’s has made use of Cambridge Analytica’s pointless and of no commercial value whatsoever software to set up hundreds of fake Facebook accounts claiming to represent the Jew-hating anti-Semitic arm of the Labour Party. Throughout February we followed Svetlana Blum, Michael Gove’s au pair, and Boris Johnson’s niece, Ursula Mountbatten to their local internet café in Bloomsbury. Why we asked would two beautiful women frequently spend hours typing? Our surveillance expert took this screen shot (not shown here for copyright reasons) of Svetlana working on the ‘Labour Party against filthy Jewish Scum’ Facebook page. When challenged she said her eyesight was bad and she thought it was a gardening catalogue. When asked about Tinglytot Basket’s role in the Brexit referendum she denied any knowledge saying, “Vot ist Brecshit? I am merely a simple Ukrainian exile taking refuge in your vunderful country. Mister Gove is a warm and genuine human being, I think he works for the council.” Ursula, an ‘actress’ from Tinglytot’s earlier internet success, said she was Skyping her brother in Palestine. So there you have it. Are these two beautiful young women lying or is the Labour Party a hot bed of radical racism? You decide.

The story of the grandfather’s energy.

Why did he have such energy, compared with is grandson?

Why is it such an important story?

Expansions:

-  In even the smallest movement and action there is physical skill, that when practiced, reduces the effort required.

Sawing wood for example seems easy; hold the saw and move it back and forth. There are, though, 10 to 20 different elements to the physical skill of sawing that if learnt and practiced will reduce the effort of sawing by 80%, which means you will be able to saw ‘5 times’ the amount with the same effort.

-  In even the smallest movement and action there can be complete attention to it. With the practice of attention tasks require less effort.

We rarely pay complete attention to what we are doing. Our mind is off somewhere dreaming, worrying, lazing around, unfocused. EVERY item on this list requires attention to the ‘present moment’ to have any effect. Attention is NOT about what you’re supposed to be doing, (like paying attention in class) it is about what you ARE doing. By complete attention to what you ARE doing in every moment you will maximise the benefits to you of that moment and minimise the effort in whatever you are doing.

-  In even the smallest task there is mental skill that, when used, reduces the effort required.

During a task hold in your mind all your experience applicable to the task and apply it imaginatively. Whatever you have done before there will invariably be something different this time around so you are doing this task for the first time. If you approach every task as if you are doing it anew you will learn more, find new ways and become more effective. And you will never get bored.

-  In and before every task there is mental planning that when practiced reduces the effort required for the task.

Before every task do it in detail in your imagination. You will see the potential problems, materials and tools you will need, changes you will need to make and alternatives that may save time and effort. You can do a job in any number of different ways in your imagination without lifting a finger where doing and changing in practice takes effort, time and causes frustration.

-  In every movement and action there is physical strength, that when achieved, requires less effort.

Lifting a 10Kg weight when you’re unfit takes a lot of effort but with exactly the same body but fitter it takes much less. Be physically fit and tasks will take much less effort.

-  Before and during every action there is time to worry about many things. Replace your fruitless worries with complete attention and they will take no effort.

People often spend a good deal of energy worrying about the past, the future, other people or other circumstances. Worry takes energy but achieves nothing. Observe lessons from the past and plan for the future, and leave other people and other circumstances until you next encounter them. Pay attention to what you are doing in the moment.

-  There is a time in every task when something may go wrong and you curse. Dispense with your curses. They bare no fruit yet steal much effort.

Cursing is like pushing your left hand hard against your right hand; you are spending energy fighting yourself and your circumstance. Every curse is based on a thought that “something is working against me”. ‘Things’ cannot think so have no ‘thoughts’ for you. It is you that is working against you. Involve yourself in achieving the result you want. If things go wrong use your energy to make them go right.

-  During every task feed yourself with the joy of being alive. Feed your heart to give yourself spirit, breath to feed your body with energy.

It is wonderful to have life and to be able to do things. Whatever you do and however well you do it you will be giving substance to the life you have been given. Do everything for the love of being alive. Reflect on this and remember to breathe well.

-  In your body there are many muscular tensions from past issues. Leave your tensions in history and the tensions will fall from your body, and your body will save the effort of overcoming them.

Your body holds emotion in the same way that emotional stress leads to physical tension. Tension is one muscle set against another causing greater exertion with every movement. When movement is required your muscles have to overcome these pre-existing tensions so moving requires much more effort. Your body will also be less fluid and less accurate. Consciously relax your body and pay complete attention to the moment

-  In your mind there are many tensions from many issues. Place them in abeyance until they become necessary and useful at their time.

Your mind is not constrained by physical circumstance. You can set it to work on issues and stresses of all manner of things that cannot be resolved by your mind alone. You are asking your mind to waste much effort in trying to achieve the impossible. Be considerate to your mind and use it to do what it’s best at; paying complete attention to what you are doing in the moment.

-  In every task you could ‘perform for others’, become your own puppet master controlling yourself by strings. Be yourself without performance and the task will take less effort.

When you ‘perform’ a task for the appreciation of others your consciousness is trying to perceive the consciousness of others and work via that perception so as to please them. This makes the task much more difficult. Do the task for yourself directly and then let others judge the result as they wish.

-  Every task has a right or wrong moment for you to start it. Only do a task at its right moment, and it will take less effort. But if the moment is not of your choosing find your ‘want’ that is asking you to do it, and do the task to fulfil your want, and it will take less effort.

Don’t mend your car in the cold and rain, do something inside instead. ‘Feel’ for a good time to start, when your want and enthusiasm is greatest. Equally don’t put off a task. A task not done at the right time will become bigger. A task that is embarked upon promptly in joy and comfort will take less effort.

-  Sing your skills, accomplishments and your progress and tasks will take less effort.

Aim for the maximum joy the task can give you in self worth, satisfaction and reward, and give yourself due recognition for your accomplishments. Play always takes much less effort than ‘work’ even if practically they are the same thing.

-  In every task there may be the intrusion of others. Leave them be, yet give to them your attention and love, and they will take less effort.

People circulate energy either positively or negatively. Check the nature of your own energy by observing how others react to it. Let your negative energy go but catch and circulate your positive energy. Circulate positive energy and it will come back to you and add to your energy, and more energy means less effort.

-  Every task will teach you new skills. Learn them with ease as they arise and the task will take less effort.

During every task you will find new ways of doing things, new skills, and new understandings. Be flexible and alert to these lessons rather than tied to your old ways.

-  Take to a task as little as you truly need and use up as little as is necessary to complete it and the task will take less effort.

This discipline reflects your use of your resources and yourself.

-  And finally, there are many tasks that aren’t necessary, and some that aren’t truly yours to do. Check with your heart the truth of a task before you begin it and you will waste no effort in untrue tasks.

Many, many tasks appear to need doing. Sometimes we invent tasks to avoid doing things that are more important but frightening to us, preferring the mundane to the courageous. Sometimes we get caught up in tasks that are rightfully other peoples. Focus on the tasks most important to you and forget the rest; you or someone else will do them if and when they become important.

All of these you know yet little practice. The grandfather did and the youth not.

There are limits to your mind and body and there are heavy and long jobs that will test those limits but with practice all can be done effortlessly.

If you find yourself tired, look to see where your effort is going. Your tiredness will be from your own wasted effort, not from the task.

Energy is a strange commodity. It does not follow the laws of mathematics. Energy shared, both positive and negative, is doubled. Energy has no sign; it is our choice to use it either positively or negatively or dissipate it with no results. Energy is a universal currency; it can go anywhere and come from anywhere.

It stems from our desire to love and be loved but it remains our choice as to how we use it.

Our weakness is almost always in the misuse of our intelligence. We use it to construct ourselves, our fears, our images of other people. We misuse it in fruitless attempts to change the past and control the future and all things that are not present. Its only true use is to exist in the present, exactly as our body and senses do. In the present our intelligence can usefully construct lessons from the past, ideas from information and make plans for the future but only in as much as it is ‘present’ in activity.

Info Bots.

I read a few years ago that one of Putin’s main advisors was a performance artist who specialised in confusion. He would do one thing then the opposite so you wouldn’t know what he’d do next. Evidence suggests Putin initially took this on board as part of his policy making. More recently it looks like he’s taken it a stage further. With the advent of multiple social media platforms confusion could be sewn directly in the minds of the west.  Bots' are automated software that send out social media messages that spawn extreme conflicting opinions. Initially false accounts place extreme opinions about for example stray dogs. Some say stray dogs are vermin to be exterminated and others that they should be homed, loved and cherished. Once seeded real people accounts favouring either extreme view are re-tweeted many times over and swamp the conversation. For the undecided it appears people are taking these two extreme views about stray dogs. They ask themselves, ‘Where do I stand?’ and choose the one that appeals to them most and join one or other of the extremes. This strategy empties the middle ground in favour of the two opposing views. The Face Book algorithm that gives you ‘what you might like’ only reinforces each side’s views. The resulting conflict gridlocks any rational progress and the factions for and against Trump and Brexit become a 50/50 split between stubborn bigots. Recent elections and interviews with supporters on both sides prove the point. So whether you’re for or against stray dogs it’s the Bots and their handlers that have won. 

17 Shot Dead.

The news said the guy was full of remorse. Why? It might seem a strange question but he wasn’t crazy, he’d just decided to do it. So how can a cognitive decision be so far from its real world consequences? In the decision process he wanted to retaliate for being expelled, for the students thinking he was a jerk, not liking him, probably like at home. Society was happy for him to buy a gun; the guy in the shop was nice to him. And no one really dies in shoot-em-ups and TV shows. They’re just acting and the blood’s CGI. Social media’s full of anger and wild conspiracies, lies and truth all mixed into a soup of confusion. He was a decent human being that didn’t deserve all this shit. So he decided. It would be a duck shoot, bam, bam, bam like Call of Duty or The Wire. Even if he got shot he’d just go back to his last saved game or use the remote. Sure in the moment he enjoyed it, all these scenarios coming together to free him from his anger. But people died, the blood was real, the cries and tears were all real. Reality impinged hard on this maze of constructs killing them like bullets. So he felt remorse. Of course he did it but his constructs are all still in the air, in the US environment, for isolated young men like him to breath in; deadly noxious fumes that can continue to cause real people to be shot dead. 

Gone in Ten Seconds.

Last night I was tasked to watch Man U v Tottenham for Mothermouse but missed the first twenty minutes. The last seventy, in fact the last eighty-nine and fifty seconds of Tottenham- glorious and Man U- pathetic would have been inexplicable without those first few seconds. Imagine a boxer vainly attempting to reassemble his brain cells after an uppercut in the first round. The fear, the confusion was palpable, the exotic spice of supremacy intoxicating: Tottenham never better, Man U, hopefully, never worse. Tottenham’s ten-second goal somehow created an instant localised zeitgeist that Jones’s glorious own goal merely confirmed. This, as with most things recently, reminded me of Brexit, the whole country v Europe, stunned by something unexpected that happened so soon after kick-off all parties never really recovered from it. May/Lukaku, lolloping round aimlessly as Kane/Barnier confidently escaped every tackle. We’re playing a shit game because neither Leave nor Remain thought we’d even be playing this fixture. Sure we’re passing and running about but somehow unsure where the goal is. And somehow like Man U we’re banking on an American Glazer special relationship buyout and hoping we can afford Thierry Henry’s transfer fee to be our new manager. So as we forgo the Premiership for League 1 remember this unholy alliance between the League of (rich white) Gentlemen and redundant Yorkshire miners may have scored from the kick off but there’s still eighty nine minutes and fifty seconds yet to play. A couple of goals and late pen should do it. 

Money Flow

It’s common place to assume a company’s main responsibility for its profitability is to its shareholders. To this end it aims to use the cheapest labour, the most economic means of production and maximise its sales. Its shareholders responding to market forces would otherwise, by accepting a lower share price, reduce the companies worth. It’s like if people don’t like you your bank balance will go down. The diagram arrows show the relative responsibilities to and from a company and in effect show the influence the parties have over each other. As the vast majority of workers work for companies these influences dominate our economy. It’s clear the wider society and the company’s labour force have far less economic influence than the Directors and shareholders. As economic influence directs money flow it’s obvious the flow is from right to left. Shareholders demand profit “or else” and directors become grossly overpaid. This ‘money pump’ is also leaving society and the labour force increasingly impoverished. Health, education, the police, defence and infrastructure are all under funded and mean employment practices abound. In the past unions plus labour laws and higher and more unavoidable taxation restricted these flows but with avoidable taxation and little union pressure they’re escalating as never before. This is gush up not trickle down economics. But what will be the result? With a failure to invest in health, education etc the work force will become poorly educated, unhealthy, stressed and demoralised, an army marching on an empty stomach. Companies, the hub of our economics, will become stranded. A neglected workforce, a diminishing home market and, as profits fall, deserted by shareholders. It’s not some moral duty that companies pay taxes and provide fair conditions of employment it’s enlightened self-interest. It’s also enlightened self-interest that governments preside over a vibrant economy and an equally vibrant society. 

Selling it from Under You.

It’s worth studying white America’s treatment of Native Americans. Through massacres and countless broken treaties it has reduced them from a viable widespread people with a rich heritage to an impoverished depressed rump rife with drugs and alcohol. It has gone on to treat its own lower reaches to the same fate, and all in the name of commercial viability. This morning my Face Book page is a long list of petitions against closures of social amenities, road schemes requiring heritage demolition, crisis in the NHS etc all in the name of commercial pressures and the need to monetise our social assets. Interspersed with these are items on mental health, pollution and plastic waste. The world corporate via the government is creating a similarly depressed, pointless and neglect-able rump that appears to be bringing its own misfortunes on itself. It is not, it’s being thrown out of society and left to fester because it can’t monetise its position. Councils, education, NHS, police, libraries and social amenities are under funded and ordered to monetise or be sold off. Socially it’s the equivalent of selling your essentials, bed, cooker, even food for a little cash in hand, and cash without sleep or food is of little use. Spend it and you have nothing, only the seller has even more. Thus it’s vital the government governs the actions and values of society to maintain its vitality, to not give fruitless handouts or allow its assets to be stripped by powerful corporations but to maintain its viability, integrity, environment and well-being. A government that does not maintain this fabric of society is in gross dereliction of its duty and my Face Book page gives ample evidence of this being the case. 

Heart Story.

The speaker continued. “So we continued looking for these brain like cells around the heart and stomach of other animals. Gorillas have more than quadruple that of humans, dogs triple and even cows have double that of humans. It appears human development has not only increased our ‘head’ brain it has decreased these other areas of brain like activity. What might that suggest? From centuries human societies have referred to ‘heart felt’ and ‘gut feeling’: We say them without thinking. But people often experience visceral emotion in their chest, existential hunger in their belly. We don’t consider them evidence of brain activity yet we readily accept a headache is evidence of mental stress. Surely if you feel it in your chest it must be happening there, not in the heart itself but in its surrounding brain. I say ‘brain like’ because we don’t experience these responses as the usual cognitive activity connected to our outward senses; they appear just an indescribable sensation.” The audience took the speaker’s pause to re-comfort themselves. “The quite recent revelation that we do have outposts of brain activity in these regions has thus far been a novelty, an unexpected quirk of evolution, possibly located to help the organs function. But what if those colloquial sayings are accurate? What if they are the seats of our experiencing of love and primal hunger?” The speaker paused again before closing the circle of his argument. “If so our findings suggest animals have retained a greater capacity to experience and evaluate these essentials of life where human evolution has consistently bread out that capacity in favour of our conscious head brain.” He looked around his audience. Most were proving his point, evaluating it no lower than their necks, finding it interesting, novel, worthy or not of consideration. “Can you imagine that gorillas experience life four times as intensely as you, that as you play with your dog he loves you three times more than you love him? That you’re simply no longer equipped to love him that much? Of course you have no way of knowing. Our most recent research has returned to the study of humans. Our non-invasive scanning techniques have shown a strong correlation between heart-brain volume and how people are perceived by others, self-perception having proved too unreliable. People experienced as empathic, loving with a rich joyful life are in the higher percentile where egotistical, uncaring types with a self-serving lifestyle are in the lower. I leave you to ponder the consequences of following this particular evolutionary path.”

The House Price Class of ‘75.

From 1952 to 1970 (18 yrs) UK house prices approximately doubled. That’s a year on year rise of 4%, slightly below inflation. In 1975 and ’79 there were two short periods of high inflation, 27% and 22%. In the thirty odd years since then inflation has dropped back to around 5%.

%		x7	x49 yrs	x42 yrs	x18 yrs
1.03		1.23	4.26	3.46	1.70
1.04		1.32	6.83	5.19	2.03
1.05		1.41	10.92	7.76	2.41
1.06		1.50	17.38	11.56	2.85
1.07		1.61	27.53	17.14	3.38
1.08		1.71	43.43	25.34	4.00
1.09		1.83	68.22	37.32	4.72

Compound interest is a strange beast. Little apparently insignificant percentage rises can accumulate to large multiples over time. In the table above over 49 years (‘70 – 2016) a yearly interest of 5% gives a multiple of 10.92 where a yearly interest of say 8% gives a multiple of 43.43. Anyone who’s had a mortgage will know one’s sensitivity to interest rates. Now banks don’t like high inflation, it devalues what they’ve got, so the late 70’s was a scary time for them. From the 50’s and before houses were bought and sold along with inflation. Like everything else they went up year by year like the rising cost of a new vacuum cleaner but something happened around 1980, something that wasn’t in peoples consciousness before, the thought of a house being an investment. House prices rose in line with the short periods of high inflation and ‘appeared’ to appreciate in value. It’s highly likely the banks stimulated or even invented this notion of your house as an investment because they must make the bulk of their profits from domestic mortgages and ‘owning an appreciating asset’ would make a great stimulus to their business. People would be willing to pay a greater percentage of their disposable income to move up the housing ladder. And so it was house price escalation took off. From ’72 to 2006 domestic house prices increased 18 fold from £10k to £180k. It got to the point people were earning more in bed than going to work. But every householder was proud of their home’s increase in value even though it only meant they were paying more and more to the banks in interest for the exact same mound of bricks and mortar. Where inflation was 5% house prices rose by around 8% per annum.

yrs		1972-2016	1952-70
house price multiple		18	2
house rise % pa		7.50%	4.00%

If they’d maintained those pre 70’s increases that 2016 £180k house would only cost around £40k. (In 2007 US banks would lend a domestic cat $100k if they could offload the consequences in a triple A junk bond) So in a way the 2008 crisis began in the 70’s and remains today in homelessness and the affordable homes crisis. And we’ve only got our own gullibility to blame. 

Mental Health and Cows.

For Christmas Sallymouse gave me a book, ‘The Secret Life of Cows’, knowing I have a huge soft spot for Highland Cattle. Rosemary Young knows her herd intimately, each a character with caring family relationships and friends, each relating to humans in their own way. Thirty years of stories illustrate their need for freedom, interesting things to do and eat, the relationships of a supportive group. Her herd is healthy without the need of antibiotics and their meat is health giving too, and it’s commercially viable. She describes how factory farming is profoundly unnatural and emotionally damaging to animals. They become stressed, aggressive, lethargic and depressed, prone to health issues and lameness requiring constant preventative medication. They grow slowly and their meat is less healthy. Personally I love cows because they teach me the real quality of acceptance. If one is willing to divest one’s many human imperatives quality time with a cow will provide meanings to words we would otherwise only construct in the abstract. So mental health according to my Christmas book is situational and the summation of what’s gone before. If, as seems to be, there is a human mental health crisis it is the result of our situation, of factory farming. We also have, “a need for freedom, interesting things to do and eat, the relationships of a supportive group.” Poor mental health isn’t in general caused by some personal weakness but by personal depravation; a systemic process of demoralisation. As such our health becomes prone to attack and our output becomes poor. The NHS is overstretched, there’s an urgent unmet need for counselling and productivity in the UK hasn’t increased in years. Rosemary Young could teach us a lot about running the country.