Judgment Daze.

At five years old I had no electronics. We had electric light, I’m not that old, and a radio but that was it. Everything I did was physical. At 13 we had 2 hours of Saturday morning cinema, The Lone Ranger, which constituted our weekly diet of entertainment. Even graduating at twenty-one there was only TV but I was too busy. In the intervening fifty years average weekly entertainment hours have soared from 2 to 35 and now with fifty shades of social media in your pocket anywhere anytime it’s exploded even further to, and this is only a guess on my part, over 90% of our free awake time. That’s around 50 hours of being audio/visually entertained a week, or to put it another way less than 6 hours of what I used to spend 6o hours a week doing when I was 21: that being musing, learning and doing whatever I wanted. As a result I have a long list of competences and things I love doing. All very well but that’s not what this is about. Being entertained is a very special situation where we are the receiver. The onus is on the entertainer to skilfully satisfy the entertainee with whatever tricks and devices he or she has learnt over the years. He or she can only display their wares and hope, knowing full well any whinging about audience quality will not go down well. The audience is king and queen of the situation and thus enthroned will feel free to clap or boo as the mood takes us. We can change channel, unsubscribe, un-friend or in one form or another hurl abuse with little thought for restraint. So with 60 hours a week in this sovereign situation we have become fully fledged X Factor judges to a man, or woman. We watch, decide and proceed directly to our unchallengeable binary opinion; thumbs up or thumbs down. Now history suggests this imperial infallibility inevitably leads to mental illness where one either loses one’s mind or in more serious circumstances one’s whole head. Going forward this is not a good plan. This whole Brexistential phenomenon is a case in point. Everyone is a judge with a cast iron verdict, movement is impossible, agreement implausible and, well basically it just comes down to ‘who’s holding the remote’, and we all know who that is: Mothermouse, or, in a wider context, Facebook. 

When TM met DC.

Ah Teresa come in/ David/ Like a drink, whiskey, gin/ Have you got Feverfew/ Oh tonic, yes… there you go. So how are things/ Well/ Look I’m so sorry for all this mess, I thought we had it sewn up, a done deal but, well yes OK maybe I should have stayed on and dealt with it, but I was just too Remain/ And so was I/ Yes, yes of course but, well/ You thought Boris or one of them would, but the party didn’t want them did they/ No/ Didn’t you realise that? You just disappeared and left some Remainer to pick up the pieces: Me/ Yes I know I’m deeply sorry/ You were an utter fool David. A referendum was a terrible idea../ But they wouldn’t let it go. JRM was in my ear with that horrid voice of his, Gove, all of them/ But you were PM David/ I know, I know/ So have you got any bright ideas now?/ Strange you should say that/ Really/ No that’s why I asked to meet you today. You see, well back in 2016 when I was PM I called the referendum, it all went pear shaped and I resigned remember. Yes well of course you do. Well it wasn’t all bad. I disappeared and I’ve loved it. I mean no one even wants to interview me these days. It’s like I’ve got my life back/ Are you saying I should resign/ No, I’m saying do something unforgettable first and then resign. Your life must have been hell these last two years, you’re still in a hellish position, probably a no-win position, but you’re still PM. I’m saying you cancel Article 50 and then resign/ silence/ You can say only 37% of voters voted Leave, I’ve tried to get a better deal than the one we have now and it’s impossible. Every knowledgeable person I talk to proves that fact. I’m not going to let this country down due to a poorly judged advisory referendum when I know it will hit the poorest hardest. I’ve decided to bla bla bla/ Bla bla bla what/ Look if you don’t do anything lets say courageous there’ll be a vote in Parliament maybe your deal maybe another referendum. Your deal maybe the best under the circumstances but worse than what we have already. A second referendum will just prolong the pain and the whole country’s depressed enough already. People only want it because they believe Remain will win, and basically Corbyn and our lot are too cowardly to act before that. Revoke Article 50 as our strong PM and it all goes away. The majority of the party and the country will be with you and the feeling of relief will be palpable, the end of a bad dream. Then you say no one could have worked harder than me in these last two years to satisfy the will of the people but it’s proved impossible. The cost to our country would have been too high. I’m therefore resigning as your PM. You get your life back, clean break like me. I created this mess and you’ve cleared it up. You could go take some dancing lessons/ Oh God don’t remind me/ Sure there’ll be criticism but when the pound gains value, people start spending again and moral comes back. No, you’ll be remembered as diligent, honourable and most of all courageous, in fact the only one of us that was / Well/ And the country’s negotiating position within the EU will be immensely stronger. We went to the brink and could go there again/ I’m not sure what to say David. I can’t argue with what you’re saying. Maybe you’ve got something right for once. I’ll go away and think about it. Where did you go away on holiday?

2016 Referendum on reflection.

It was an odd affair. On the one side understated confidence that we’re a natural fit in Europe and we’d be mad to leave, and on the other a full on marketing campaign. Leave became its sexy sister, Brexit, battle buses roamed the country with misleading slogans, reportedly call centres were re-purposed to influence voters, Facebook’s personal  data was mined by Cambridge Analytica to target influence-able voters and millions were spent over the legal limits. It’s even conceivable Russia in its own self-interest weighed in to destabilise Europe. Bookies whose livelihood depends on getting the odds right were wildly out. 6:1 Leave and 1:10 on for Remain suggesting they were very confident in a Remain win. But they were watching the polling results where the margin for Remain appeared solid. They didn’t notice the surprising dip just prior to the referendum. It appeared something was happening outside everyone’s gaze, a covert influencing campaign. But being easily influenced, just like bad driving, is what no one thinks they are. Branding anyone as such would be considered an insult, even though it’s the sole purpose of our billion pound advertising industry. Then the results, labelled as ‘advisory’ suddenly became the unchallengeable ‘will of the people’ as if there was an overwhelming majority for Leave, not the marginal +/-2%. Skilful re-branding labelled any opposing voice as ‘Re-moaners.’ In fact only 37.4% of voters voted Leave, leaving 62.6% who didn’t. Strangely these numbers are rarely if ever mentioned, also the possible effects of Leave’s and possibly Russia’s jiggery-pokery. I suggest this was a referendum of sorts but not about the UK’s position within Europe. It was between our common man’s democracy and the holders and abusers of big data, and our common man’s democracy lost. Throughout this ongoing process Remain has consistently come up with the factual repercussions of leaving where Leave has offered rosy advertising dream-scapes of a brighter future like Thomas Cook selling a foreign holiday. Any reduction in immigration, even if it’s possible, will leave us with skill shortages, WTO rules won’t be advantageous and in the EU we can trade worldwide anyway. We are currently in the EU and with our own currency! What more could we ask for? But the will of the 37.4% must be obeyed. (even if it was based on a well sold fantasy) Really, well what about the well-used quote, “Follow the money”? Why would certain wealthy individuals lose out if we stayed in the EU? Maybe because the EU is, in 2019, introducing new laws to expose tax evasion and nefarious investment schemes. On reflection it all makes sense.

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.