Client for Hire.

Another month and another Therapy Today arrives in the loo. Interesting reading but so difficult keeping up with the ever-expanding lists of acronyms and modalities especially when one has even forgotten what BACP stands for. Anyway I flick to the back third. It somehow reminds me of the gold rush. Prospectors, in this case therapists, humping and sifting through gravel to find nuggets whilst a host of peripheral industries attempt to fleece them. Initial training, ongoing training, training in new modalities, training in new niche areas, supervisors and rooms to rent. There are some ads for jobs but not many as it’s a struggle for services to pay minimum wage let alone for an advert. So my thoughts went to cat skinning. Bingo, clients. In the midst of all this plethora of training what is missing, clients. Most trainees train on other trainees. We take turns unburdening our insecurities etc amongst ourselves, which though useful is unlikely to provide complex issues seeing as we’re all comfortably off, well adjusted middle class types. Enter the Stiffmouse Client Agency. Now the key to making money is synergy, the bringing together of two elements that have a natural magnetism for each other. And who might have a synergy for the roll of client? Out of work actors. Other than Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman most actors are out of work, desperate for cash, hugely insecure and would salivate at the prospect of playing a middle-aged child molester with anger issues. I can smell the money coming in already. It’s a win, win and win situation. It’s like staffing a cleaning agency with OCD sufferers. In fact I’m beginning to think there could be many more opportunities marrying together desperate disparates. But for now I’ll just put an ad in the back of Therapy Today, “Write off today for our catalogue of teaching course clients showing photos, specialities and recent TV appearances. 

Please Deviate.

Eurovision first semi-final, Tuesday evening, Ukraine. Three smartly suited young men, the introducers, follow their scripts. It’s painful to watch. Old jokes, practiced reactions, false emotions, no belief, no honesty, all things awkward. The acts on the other hand had more authenticity and substance than usual suggesting a growing pan-European confidence in their audience. But the introducers were: Well sometimes things are so bad they become good again but they were so bad they went past good again back to bad again. They screamed, or at least I did, ‘there is a life to be lived here, don’t waste it in poor acting and hackneyed platitudes. Please deviate from your script and become real!’ But who am I to talk. I slunk into my own habitualities, dribble at the mouth with what I think might please, write a script to navigate my vicissitudes and let gayety and pleasure pass untouched. I wonder of the instances past where some meagre performance clamped shut such opportunities. Comfort is so easily done. I mean I’m not one for poking fingers up people’s noses, that sort of thing, but the simple uncluttered being of a bouncing mind. That for me is spirit and from that spiritual, the process of becoming uncluttered. Uncluttered by the tenets of the performing personality, the mundane manager, of intruding voices; the art of half listening, of taking note but never following. So the second semi’s Thursday and the final Saturday. Lets hope the auto-cue brakes. 

Cambridge Analytica.

It’s impossible to notice that if one buys or shows the slightest interest in possum catchers there will appear as if by magic ads for them on every page you visit. The internet knows you intimately not only for your desire to catch possums but your individual character traits, political views and intelligence. With this information on a huge database a whole populous can be categorised. Have you ‘liked’ a fracking protest, a Conservative leaning item, NHS cuts, immigration controls etc; all logged and searchable. Do you show no interest in politics or anything intellectually demanding but emotionally flit from starving cats to BMWs? All logged and noted. And are you ignorant of the implications of Brexit or in a swing seat? In seconds millions of voters can be searched for uninformed, emotionally driven, easily led, undecided targets in marginal seats. So why not create Facebook items aimed and delivered specifically at these people so you can win any referendum or election. Have you every seen an informed levelheaded Trump supporter? Without exception every one I’ve ever seen interviewed is not an ‘on balance’ supporter but a full-blown bigoted believer. Brexiteers had the same fervour. When 49% of the UK and US electorate thought the world had gone mad could there be a reason for it? Cambridge Analytica is a company, experts in the above, that worked for both the Trump and Leave campaigns. In the UK they allegedly worked for the Leave section of the Conservative party to subvert the alleged policy of the party as a whole. Who’da thought it was the Conservatives who secretly funded the analytics work that swayed the few percent in favour of Brexit! The 1975 referendum result to continue in the EU was 67% Yes and 32% No, so why the 20% swing in 2016? Has the EU (with us in it) really upset us so much? Sure we griped about Brussels but far less than about our own government, so even Leave supporters thought theirs was a protest vote and Remain thought it was a foregone conclusion. The odds at the time were 1/4 on for Remain and 3/1 Leave; that’s pretty long odds on a two horse race. Odds on Trump were 150/1 but shortened to 14/1 with Clinton evens. How can all the experts and all of us be so wrong? Surely only if there was something in play we didn’t know about; like the rest of the field having coal and concrete for breakfast. So we’re not talking a small influence here, it really is the size that can dictate the result of any democratic election. 

What Have We Become?

Last night’s French Presidential election debate apparently continued the theme of Brexit, the Trump election and our own upcoming General election. Macron and Le Pen spent two hours insulting each other, all negative emotion and no content. The electorate were disgusted with both performances. Theresa May, in a similar vein, has said nothing but her personal opinion that, ‘I will be a bigger bitch than Corbyn’, to which few would disagree, but the EU negotiators see her as simply a disagreeable, in-your-dreams, out-of-touch bitch with a much smaller stick than they have. Does she really believe riling our 27 ex-partners into snarling adversaries with little of a leg to stand on is a good negotiating ploy? Surely setting a spirit of friendly, intelligent, unwavering fairness will garner a better result. But current politics is zero-content emotionality and Corbyn’s calm, rational and genuine concern just doesn’t fit the mould. He’s clearly a powerless irrelevant nonce and evidence our definitions are turning on their heads. Vacuous assertions are powerful arguments, rational expertise is a boring irrelevance, power is callus-ness and caring is weakness. We have become the children of the worst parents on the estate. They ignore us, tell us nothing, live in their own world of belligerent beliefs, neglect our health and education and leave it to charity to feed us. They squander the family’s money on their own egos and then blame us for being a drain on their resources. And how do those children turn out? They become ill informed, unsure, unskilled, demoralised, unwell, depressed and stressed. They, we become moribund. 

W.A.R.

W.A.R., the commonly used acronym for ‘We Are Right’ looks on the cards again. In this case Donald Trump is right and Kim Jong-un is right, China’s kinda right and Japan doesn’t want to be wrong. Possibly, after the fabulous documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pWTBJ9r3ns on Stuxnet’s success in unaccountably blowing up Iranian centrifuges, Donald has the power to make Jong-un’s missiles go off like prematurely released balloons, provided someone’s taken the trouble to tell him. It’s impossible to overstate the game changing consequences of Stuxnet, malware so sophisticated it can find its target software, manipulate it make a desired malfunction whilst making everything appear normal and, before the Israelis let the cat out of the bag, be completely un-attributable. That error converted Stuxnet from US covert brilliance into a worldwide case study in how to weaponise software. We might still think we’re right but now we’ll never know what pressing the button might do. And as everything other than the Donald is now under computer control it’s possible to weaponise anything against its user. That’s sixty years from an enthusiast’s box they couldn’t find a use for to a ubiquitous weapon. You’ve got to hand it to us: we’re pretty smart. But flawed. 

War like Water.

The speaker began. “When I was a kid I dammed streams in a field by my parents house. I was maybe five. The earth was sandy, you could build dams pretty quick and form little pools but as the level rose the sand gave way and whoosh. When one country decides to invade another they move troops to the border and in response the other country does the same. Rising pressure is contained by a damming resistance all ready for a fight. I noticed the bigger the dam the greater the flood when it broke, and it always broke in the end. If I didn’t build a dam the water just trickled on through. So now I’m thinking a fight is caused as much be resistance as it is aggression. It made me wonder, what if there was no resistance?” The audience buzzed with thoughts of capitulation. “What percentage of a population are in the army? Typically it’s around 0.4%. In the UK, population 65 million, there’s 120 thousand; that’s 0.2%. So if a country invaded a similar sized country in a fight they, being prepared, would have the advantage of slightly more armed troops but if they entered unopposed they would simply advance and disperse through the whole country. Each armed man would have to control around 300 people. In a foreign country and only trained to fight how would they fair? Could 30 thousand troops control London sustainably? In the countryside could one man control a village of 300 people, be supplied, not feel lonely, not succumb to going native? I’m suggesting the aggressor country fundamentally relies on the defending country to resist in order for them to win and take it over. If that country didn’t put up any resistance they would be so far stretched it would be impossible to have and sustain enough troops to run it. They would trickle on through like the water in my stream and dissipate all their efforts in a futile exercise.” A voice from the audience said it didn’t work in WWll. “That’s not strictly true. Every invaded country put up a fight of some kind, the resistance in France for example. That resistance allowed the Germans to retaliate brutally and subdue the population. They did form a government with the help of collaborators but again this caused a fracture in the population leading to resistance. Admittedly the 6 million German Jews put up no resistance and were slaughtered but a fair proportion of the 69 million German population was negative towards them so that situation is not representative of what I’m suggesting here. I’m suggesting that unopposed a 100 thousand troops would advance so quickly throughout a country it would be a logistical impossibility to supply them, and unopposed they would wonder what they were supposed to do and why they were doing it. They wouldn’t have the intent or
kudos of a conquering army. In time they would simply go home back to the town they knew and their loved ones. It would be like the hundreds of thousands of tourists that invade Greece every year. Sure it would be brave to allow this to happen but if I’m proved right it would be the end of territorial wars.” My friend turned and whispered with a smile, “The man’s crazy.”

Brexfix.

You know what a divorce is like. You have at best half of what you had before, conveniently forgetting it never was all yours in the first place, and lets face it no one is exactly feeling generous when it’s going down. Then there’s those soliciting people to pay, what are they called? Ah yes solicitors; what was I thinking. And alimony, which is something like paying for the right not to drive your own car. And then there’s friends. These osmotically divide into yours and hers. If as usually happens they are all her family and friends you’re left with Jim your drinking partner and Simon who you’ve never really liked anyway. And finally from experience the one who wanted the divorce in the first place often comes off worst. If the reason this unhappy turn of events was because you didn’t like the in-laws overstaying their welcome, even though they were terribly useful around the house, then you have Brexit in a nutshell. We will have to pay nearly £1,000 per man, woman and child in alimony, god knows what in legal fees, Europe will be mean to us and all our old friends are more friends with Europe than us. Theresa May is reduced to hold hands with Trump, drinking with Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, and is probably considering a middle-aged boys fun weekend in Prague with Kim Jong-un. We will all go into a morose decline eating takeaways and watching re-runs of Top Gear bleating, “eeh they could never replace Jeremy Clarkson” and spending our weekends, port in hand, sobbing over the condition of our 1973 Vauxhall Victor, still unable to admit “they don’t make ‘em like that nowadays” because they were shit in the first place. And, though we’d never admit it, be thinking Aunty Joan was, well preferable to Brenda in many ways and made the most amazing meat and potato pies. If only we could Fexit.