Four's Enough

We have four cats due to Mothermouse’s compulsion; Allen, Harry, Betty and Ruby. The first two play fight like young lads should, the third is a partially demented great aunt and Ruby is a tart with a heart and 7Kgm of sitting power. Allen and Betty are from good homes where Harry and Ruby were rescues. Harry will eat everything and anybodies and get through all sorts of packaging. You’ll never know if you like Lemon Drizzle Cake till you try it, so our microwave is constantly full of items needing protective custody, butter, sausage rolls, Lemon Drizzle Cake, steak and gooseberry crumble. Anyway four is the max we can cope with. So friends of friends are not welcome alright. First it was Big Jinge, an honourable gentleman of the road who Allen had struck up an acquaintance with in the back garden. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’ ‘Oh thanks, yes they’re lovely.’ ‘Any chance of some grub if I hang around?’ So Mothermouse put a bowl out for him. After that his hind quarters could be seen exiting the cat flap when going for a midnight bowl of Muesli. Domino, our ex cat who’d gone to live next door because he never got on with his brother, Dave, who sadly died, also comes round whenever next door doesn’t feed him because they’re young and prone to gallivanting about the country. Another mouth to feed. Then a week or so ago another black and white cat, BW, started hanging around angling for a comfortable squat. One night, Big Jinge and BW, were queueing at the cat flap to beat a hasty retreat. Since then BW has been playing the, ‘Hello Mister, lovely cat I am, knows mi place, no trouble just, you know, down on my luck. Can happen to anybody’ card. Last night he was curled up on a red cushion in the dining room. If cats had a forelock he was touching it. The one thing worth noting is they all get on so well, no this is our gaff bugger off, or this is my bowl of Gourmet, or you’re Ginger, I hate Gingers, or we have a comfortable suburban house and you’re homeless. OK so I’m the one with hang-ups but please don’t invite any more in, we can’t afford the vet bills. And before you ask, yes we do have an electronic cat flap, but Ruby won’t use it because it clicks when she puts her head in it.

Who’s the Racist?

So there’s been a right royal racist controversy between Ms Ngozi Fulani and Lady Suzan Hussey. The three races involved are the English, English royalty and some unnamed equatorial country. Being myself an indigenous English man, white skin, black garb, flat cap etc, I would bristle against royal condescension but understand Lady Hussey at 83 would have certain attitudes. Our conversation might go, ‘Where are you from? / Bolton mam / Really, where’s that? / North Manchester mam/ Lovely. Do you like it there? / Left when I was five mam / Really.’ and she would move on. Her conversation with Ms Fulani went, ‘Where are you from? / Utoxiter mam.’ Lady H, seeing before her a black woman in the bright colours of something like an African national dress, continued, ‘Yes but where are you really from?’ Ms Fulani in a flat denial of her African roots, which we are led to believe she would be rightly proud, continued, ‘I was born here, I’m British.’ This perplexed Lady H so she pursued the matter. This has now become evidence of institutional racism at the heart of our Monarchy. Actually it brings into question whether the status of being an indigenous English man has any meaning whatsoever. My family struggled over at least six generations through wars and the industrial revolution working in cotton mills, continuing a culture formed over 2,000 years. These are the roots I am proud of. Well not all together proud. We English went to America, India and Australia and assumed supremacy over their indigenous people so it’s only coming full circle. I don’t doubt Ms Fulani is a good person but accusing people of institutional racism contains an element of racism in itself. I know many people who deny being racist but few who are not.

George Eustice takes One for the Firm.

Carrying on from Matt, please let me wear long trousers, Hancock, George Eustice, relieved of his duties as Minister for Food and Rural Affairs, is now saying the great trade deal with NZ and Australia he personally delivered is in fact a bad deal. He’s saying he thought so at the time but because of ‘collective responsibility’ he lied through his teeth to Parliament to get ‘any old deal’ in order to make his Brexiteer party look good. This is like going into an Auto Spares shop and asking, “Will this part fit my car?’ The guy says ‘yes’ and you waste a day proving it’s won’t. You take it back fuming and he says, ‘Sorry mate you’ve opened the package, you can’t return it now, it’s company policy.’ This is how the farming industry is feeling right now. The whole idea of ‘collective responsibility’ effectively makes nobody personally responsible. Outside Westminster we have laws to stop this shystering behaviour but apparently not in the Department of Food and Rural Affairs; just change ministers and ‘no harm done’. But it’s one thing selling the wrong Renault Scenic lower control arm and another selling a whole industry down the river. Just like Matt Hancock, it’s more proof that Westminster is in the grip of the corrupting influence of bullying.

Matt Hancock in the Jungle

So Matt Hancock’s in the jungle hoping to prove he’s a decent guy worthy of public forgiveness. Good luck with that. But he is achieving something we should thank him for. We never get a true insider view of the Conservative Party and Parliament, just prepared pieces to camera for general consumption. In the jungle Matt’s become a voluntary POW under the interrogation of a million viewers. Now we know what the enemy’s made of, have a true picture of the toxicity of Westminster. Matt is a version of my fourteen year old self, gawky and ungainly, scrabbling for some understanding of the adult world ahead of me, painfully aware that what I’ve pieced together thus far is insufficient but perplexed by what it is I’m missing. It was a profoundly uncomfortable time. ‘Who am I? What are girls for? What are my beliefs and boundaries? How should I and my face react?’ Etc. That Matt is the same at forty four I put down to schooling and his time at Westminster. So much arrested development is due to bullying, fear and constant uncertainty, but it’s hard being stern with a puppy who can’t understand a word you’re saying. No my anger is squarely aimed at Westminster and the Conservative Party. The whole place is based on bullying. The front benches bully the back benches, the two parties bully each other, and together they bully the country. Their only excuse is, ‘it was ever thus.’ And the result? The whole country is in a state of arrested development! Like Matt Hancock we’re all running round trying to do our best held in a grip of constant confusion, unable to reach our true potential because of politely spoken bullies like JRM. So in a way thanks Matt, your personal exposure might expose a far more important corruption in our political life.

Russia and England.

History’s a long game; imagine walking slowly from say York to Shrewsbury. Adam Curtis’s current documentaries about Russia show an arc of desperation where the leaders have changed from the Tzars to Communism to Oligarchs in the almost city state of Moscow while the populous outside remain steadfastly feudal, knowing life only in the micro joys of hopelessness, hunger and poverty. The central Oprachecs of all three regimes know only the joys of a grossly fat bank account, there is no centre ground. They have created a legality of crime where heads or tails, they win, and have induced in the surf population, like cattle, no capacity to object. Between the late 1800’s and up to 1960’s England needed an educated populous for the industrial revolution and the later wars. Since then teaching has lost its kudos, schools their funding and higher education has been structured to provide ‘future money’ from student loans, and to provide bums on seats, like customers at McDonalds. Only the wealthy gain a ‘recognised’ education and social media replaces educated thinking by popular memes of prejudice masquerading as information. There is thus a growing feudal and often feral ‘outside class’ of ‘the poor’ incapable of effect or paying their gas bills. Above them our UK Oprachecs are spinning so fast their latest PM has only lasted three weeks. Last night one actually stopped for a moment he was so livid. Today Liz Truss made her last U turn to take over Boris Johnson’s holiday let in the Bahamas. OK it’s an exaggeration but I think the UK is taking over the Russian model. What’s super rich is Liz’s budget to cut tax for high tax payers to ‘grow the economy’ was so badly received by the high tax payers of the financial sector. Why? Because they know better than most that reducing tax for high tax payers won’t ‘grow the economy’ at all, just put the country in more debt! They’re not scrabbling round for a tin of beans. Ukraine is beating Russia because Putin’s in Lala Land and the ordinary people of Ukraine have a higher moral than Russia’s ordinary people. It’s the ordinary people that have always grown the economy and won the war given half a chance, not coke snorting city types. Give them tangible hope not handouts.

Putin Bombs Music.

In lockdown I turned to Youtube to improve my music education. People like Rick Beato and Adam Neely are amazing (human) musicians with an honest desire to pass on musical knowledge. They are now both livid (my word) at Universal Music Corporation who police their ownership rights by taking down any video containing snippets of existing players and songs in a Putin-esc land grab for territory. Their weapons are algorithms that analyse audio to spot facsimiles. At college I read textbooks from our long history of scientists and mathematicians daily but as music exists as sound, once it stops there’s nothing, silence. Great players, singers and song writers exist in their performances and without hearing those leaves a huge hole in education. And UMC’s algorithms aren’t perfect either. But Universal Music Corporation has a bank of lawyers and money enough to kill any counter claims, the other weapon in their armoury. Like libel law these two weapons in combination become unchallengeable to lesser mortals. This will become the universal powerlessness of us all. Forget government and the law they’re outdated and hopelessly slow being human based. An algorithm will have you in court quicker than your solicitor can pick up a pen and who’ll likely advise you have zero chance of winning anyway and losing will take everything you own. We humans are already behind the curve and it can only get worse. Aspiring musicians will not be allowed to hear these works in an educational context and without it know only the basic rudiments and create our future music in that fashion. Already current music is unengaging, elevator music’s elevator music and it’s likely future music will be created by algorithms to avoid paying a (human) creator’s royalties. It’s a farcical example of shooting oneself in the foot when the Universal Music Corporation curates the universal death of music. I’m livid too.

The Faustian Pact.

Just been watching Sajid Javid responding to questions on Good Morning. He remained implacable throughout, each answer considered and positive with no trace of emotion. He was a steamroller in its lowest gear flattening the road ahead applying a resolute glaze over whatever lumpy detritus in his path, be it human, animal, vegetable or mineral. To some eyes he might have looked statesmanlike consummately capable of re-framing every question and awkward fact into a pleasant still life of apples and peaches lit by his very own pink spotlight. But there was a giveaway. Still lifes take time to assemble and light appropriately. It’s only one to two seconds, the time of a possibly necessary intake of breath, but you can see it happening if you look closely. The eyes still to a wide open glaze as items are internally rearranged for the right effect, like a deck of cards where every fourth needs to be an ace. Once placed animation returns and the deck played. There is no truth, no real response in the silent placing of cards. One knows the trick, the corruption, but the slight of hand in the mind is never provable. (black is white in certain lights) “If we all just keep saying positive things over and over again with not the slightest hint there is any other truth it will work”, and it will, like nursery rhymes to children. Ask them where did Jack and Jill go? And they will all shout, “up the hill”, and we will smile and say, “Exactly.” But we must never tell them the truth of what we really think. This is the commitment, the bargain. If you can’t you must leave. Of course this is a Faustian pact but it will underpin our success. We will succeed as the world about us fails; we wouldn’t want it any other way.