Heads I win, Tails you can’t.

As Princetown’s academics prove America is not a democracy anymore, rather closer to an oligarcy, I wonder where we go from here. It seems the rules have changed while we’ve not been paying attention. The rules are now being made by the top 1%. It will soon be illegal to refuse to buy whatever they are making a profit on. If I don’t buy enough Coca-Cola’s in any one year they will be able to sue me for loss of income. If I refuse to purchase X dozen disposable nappies reasoning my children are pushing forty they can still charge me for restricting their future profits. This is heads I pay them, tails I pay them. It sounds ludicrous but if we’ve let them make the rules you’ve got to admit it’s a pretty neat rule. Imagine going to B&Q and the auto check-out machine says, “In order for us to maintain our projected profit growth for the current year your purchases must total £523.30. As your current total is £252.50 you must spend a  further £270.80 or incur a loss of profits charge of £221.15. This charge will be automatically deducted from your account on the 31^st December 2016. Thankyou for shopping at B&Q.” So there’s your choice, buy stuff or get charged for not doing. You can’t opt out because that’s the law, you can refuse but you’d end up in court. And anyway who are you to unfairly restrict corporate profit? A terrorist? So how can we put the shoe on the other foot? Interesting problem. OK their legal logic is it’s unjust to restrict the corporate right to earn a profit; if there is profit to be made I am legally obliged to let them. Now under the common law’s recognition of quid pro quo, where something of value must be exchanged for something else of value, this concession between corporate and individual must be exchanged for a similar concession between individual and corporate. Might this be, “It is unjust to restrict the individual’s right to take readily available goods even if said individual doesn’t have the money to pay for them.” That seems to even things up heads and tails wise. 

Taking it Out on Me.

Well not me: There’s been a rise of 70% in youngsters, 10 to 14, self-harming in two years. So how do I identify with that? A spokeswoman said, “It is the pressures of the modern world and some of these pressures are unprecedented.” Something about that reading irks me. It quietly condones “the pressures of the modern world” as noble and being unable to cope with them as failure. It’s a view of ‘us and them’ from our adult ego protecting itself. Where we as adults create situations these youngsters are in the hands of the situations we create. And we have created the toxicity, not pressure, that they are responding to, and not in ‘the modern world’ but a malignant world of our making. They are only manifesting ‘the toxicity of the malignant world’ of our adult creation. The answer is not in helping young minds cope with their problems but to blast the cancerous cobwebs out of our old minds. Not a few poorly performing parents, the next scapegoats on the list, but our minds. How are we in a miriad of different ways providing a toxic environment for this next generation? Kids often blame themselves because they haven’t sufficient understanding of what is being done to them and self harming, ‘taking it out on me’, is a perfect example. As a Rogers organism all they know is something is wrong. It’s up to us as adults to see the toxicity we’re creating and put it right. 

How to be the Centre of Attention.

Right now you’re probably thinking along traditional lines, telling jokes at a party, singing ‘I did it her way’ or disrobing due to surfeit of alcohol. Of course old school always works but TV has rendered them a bit samie what with East Enders and Big Brother etc. It’s all a bit keeping up with the Kardasians who, though I haven’t seen it, are probably congenitally programmed to grab the spotlight of one’s awareness like an oncoming drunk driver. But there are more subtle ways. Last week at Spirit Camp I decided to wear a mini skirt. It felt delightful, very free and flappy compared with the masculine tubes of shorts and jeans. It may sound feminine but, as I realised later, it was close to the look of the Indian braves I used to shoot as a kid; both apropos the occasion and decidedly macho. And it caused me much attention especially from women, who, instinctively knowing the greater availability offered by a skirt, took to sexually harassing me. Luckily as the gender roles were reversed it was mutually pleasurable rather than grounds for prosecution. But there’s an even subtler way to be the centre of attention. Buy a pair of reading glasses and leave the little sticker on showing the strength. Honestly it’s like moths to a flame. People have been queuing up to tell me I’ve left the sticker on. “I know!” I’ve had to explain countless times I bought two pairs, ‘2’ and another ‘2.5’ and to know which was which I’ve left the sticker on. It’s simple enough but no, it causes attention like you wouldn’t believe. I tell you if Paris Hilton ever appeared with a sticker on her glasses she’d break twitter and when Madonna wants to make a come back, forget the ice-cream cone bras girl, leave the sticker on your glasses! 

Just a Thought.

America, Australia, South Africa and Israel show the propensity for one social group to subjugate another to the point of near extinction. It only takes a rhetoric and its beliefs to take hold. These historical cases hinge on the influx of immigrants of a different culture crushing the indigenous people. It seems those who choose to displace themselves bring with them a far greater need to exert their presence and claim to the territory than those who call it home. As in all these cases the incomers push the indigenous to the periphery and when they resist they’re labelled rebels and persecuted. They become poor, suffer from a great cultural malaise and labelled nare-do-wells who have brought their plight on themselves. The new order can then wash its hands of them. Originally this wasn’t a conscious policy, it was just how things panned out, but as it worked so well in marginalizing the poor and bringing more wealth to the rich it might now be deemed a rationally effective policy. In fact the writings of Ayn Rand advocating it has been widely read and lorded by major industrial and political figures. In doing so Rand moved the game from a geographical basis to the worldwide global economy. Instead of the European Founding Fathers marginalizing the Native American Indians global corporations have it in their sights to marginalize the people of the world in the name of good corporate economics. And it’s superficially true. Either you work and consume and create their profitability and wealth or become ‘nare-do-wells who have brought their plight on themselves’, and, as mechanisation requires fewer and fewer people, the numbers left to become depressed, drunk and marginalized will increase. I say superficially because this tightening spiral of wealth is unlikely to realise it is a noose around its own neck. Whether or not it is overthrown it will create a wealth of no meaning, dollars of no value and a happiness of no significance. Currently our ‘austerity’ measures are having the desired effect. The populous will be trapped into servicing their debts on lower wages and with diminishing state support. The wealthy will be cocooned in their own health, education and policing services, but as unpaid debt rises and demand falls in line with the proportion of those able to pay, circulating money will slow dramatically. The wealthy will find they can’t meaningfully circulate enough amongst themselves. They will find the services they rely on for support are no longer supported by the myriad of wider social services they have let fail. Universities with no students, private hospitals with no trained doctors, private schools with no trained teachers, even failing farmers without the necessary education. Surrounded by the starving zombies they themselves have created they will be trapped in ghettos of a wealth that rapidly becomes meaningless. Their ethos becomes unsustainable but generations of comfort leave them incapable of change. And all this because we are allowing sociopaths to make the rules, people with corporate rather than human values. Just a thought. 

The Islamic Terraces.

Iraqi Sonnys kicked off the second half before the international ref found his whistle and the Sheas are already back defending their box. The Islamic Football league plays the glorious game with IDEs and rocket launchers as if in some futuristic dystopian blockbuster. Roosevelt’s warning about the military/industrial complex isn’t far off the mark even though he didn’t have the Arab states in mind at the time. It is though reflected in Islam’s conflation of religion, state, law and jihad. It fills the terraces with those who worship the game, are zealous club supporters and have full permission of the manager to use anything sharp or explosive they can lay their hands on. Turn and turn about Shia’s, Sonnys and Alawites have grabbed state power to suppress whichever is the other two. It’s the bad years of football hooliganism with added incendiaries. So it’s difficult to know who you’re dealing with with Muslims. Some see it as a religion akin to Christianity, some as the best foundation of state and legal system, and some as their fundamental right to make war with whomever they choose. This intellectual amalgamation of war and peace into one unified whole is a 1,500 year old example of double-think, but then throughout history almost all factions have at times pursued war in the name of peace. The only surety is that oppression sooner or later will come back to bite you when the tide of time turns. So what’s the answer? Well if you haven’t already guessed, it’s all seater stadiums. 

Don’t put your daughter on the course Mrs Worthington.

Apparently student complaints about their university education has increased 10-30% and a solicitor specialising in legal cases has seen his enquires rise from two a week to ten a day according to a BBC program last night. And these aren’t middleclass teenage gripes about poor coffee in the refectory. One chap was faced with an unannounced 100% rise in his tuition fee for year two, 23 out of a class of 27 complained of ridiculously poor content and paying £250 for ‘special materials’ they never got. Another signed up to a local uni for easy travel and was informed the course had been moved to another college forty miles away. The list went on. Every student lucky enough to get some redress had to sign a gagging order as part of the settlement. Official reports of bad practice excluded the names of the universities concerned. The picture is of middleclass establishments forced into the cut and thrust of commerce unable to reconcile the ethos of education with the necessity to cover costs by bums on seats. Their rhetoric is of providing an ‘exceptional educational experience’ whilst their actions are to do whatever’s necessary to satisfy their huge overheads. Twenty years ago I suggested Ford should go into FE. Their capacity to design and manage a quality, functional mass-market product seemed much needed, but perhaps I was wrong. University education is about letting your mind wonder and also wonder, being curious, contemplative and argumentative, even objectionable. Though underpinned by acquiring necessary knowledge it’s about what you will do once you’re standing on the shoulders of giants. All this requires a gentle reflective atmosphere to produce fruit and only suited to the most fertile minds. But where many polytechnics have become universities by renaming in essence universities have become polytechnics focused on the mass-market teaching of trades. And at £27,000 a pop plus expenses. Anyone with a university education will consider this utterly stupid, not because we got ours for free but because mass training needn’t cost anywhere near that much when it’s the student doing most of the work, and the resulting product, a degree, doesn’t have anywhere near that market value. It’s a £1,000 coffee percolator. So don’t put your daughter on the course Mrs Worthington. 

Worms Postponed.

I’ve just awoke from a sad depressing dream. I was being cruelly spurned by my nearest and dearest. Even Graham Portermouse, my best friend at school, made a surprise appearance after a gap of some fifty odd years. I was about to go down the garden, and probably far further, to eat worms. It rather made nonsense of the current glib advice to, “just be yourself, act naturally.” It’s rather lovely but anthropologically, which as it happens sounds worryingly like the psychological study of my ex wife, we wouldn’t have spent eons evolving a brain the size of a planet if it was that easy. We would be limited to socialising in small hierarchical family groups governed by the dictates of gene proliferation. Even a dog wouldn’t come near unless we discarded a morsel-clad bone. No our large brain is testament to the complexity of being ‘in relationship.’ And I guess there are times, like last night, when it cries enough, the war is lost, it’s worms for tea. Well breakfast chronologically. Far from ‘being myself’ I am in a whirl of considerations, lost in a melee of conflicted reasoning for what’s best to do. I’ve been at it for seventy years and thus acquired far too many misconceptions to mention. I’m jammed in the cleft of a viciously clefted stick. Unlike an alligator who acts naturally and lives in a swamp the best I can hope for is to unravel enough misconceptions to be happily acceptable jointly to myself and others, and that’s no mean feat. At this point, namely 7.30am, I make a coffee and return to the attic to a fluttering of wings, a thump on the window and Britney magically appearing from under the bed beadily looking for her escapee. I’ve only been gone five minutes and nature ‘acting naturally’ has taken over. But anyhow I’ve done enough art, music and theatre to know something magical occurs when all this conjecture is put aside. Something true is recognised across these isolating boundaries of considered reasoning. We needn’t be as facile as a sportsman’s interview after the match. Anyway the coffee’s drunk, the bird is in here somewhere keeping quiet, Britney’s locked out and scratching at the door, the sky is blue and all’s well with the world, though it’s getting a tad cold with the windows wide open (for the escapee). So it’s toast for breakfast, worms postponed.