When I was born we had none of these.

Yesterday I was spurred into recalling my own brief three-quarter century of history. In my grandparent’s soot-blackened terraced house I was tin-bathed and outside-toileted. I remember street men, knife sharpeners, rag and bone men, men selling sugar and salt carved from blocks, milk and muffins, poes under the bed and sitting by their cast-iron range till my legs got red raw, school and Sunday school. We were good Lancashire mill workers, Methodists with no swearing or alcohol. My mother could lip-read because of the noisy looms and probably glowed in the dark from licking radium tipped paint brushes illuminating watch faces as war work. Car ownership was twenty years off, it was walk, cycle or bus. There was a radio with, for some inexplicable reason, odd foreign places like Luxembourg and Hilvers on the dial. Wages must have been around £5 a week, houses £300 and there was rationing. I was born chubby but soon leaned out. No one had a waist measurement over 32” except the mayor. By the time I was five things were on the up and by fifteen, 1958, I had a second hand bike, £3.50, we had a back and front garden, an ancient wooden garage and a black and white television, but my mum still wrote all weekly expenditures in a book. And then and then, and then now. And ‘now’ is both amazing and frightening, luxurious and wasteful, permissive and puritanical, comfortable and stressful, connected and disconnected, concerned and confused. Could our brains have been heated up by the lead in petrol or it’s toxic substitutes? A more prosaic explanation might be the Monte Carlo effect. In Monte Carlo they’re so wealthy they’re left with only their whims to consider, a sort of self-incestuousness. In a recent documentary on this wealth haven an oik had a T shirt emblazoned with, ‘Don’t make friends make money’. As well as being out of date before he was born, it somehow proves his only friend is money, which as everyone knows is the only remaining friend to those who have lots of it. So have we all over the years become to some extent self-incestuous? In short, American? Most likely. We can’t watch TV without its mandatory 15 minutes of lessons every hour, magazines with pages of them and now an internet dedicated to them. When I was born we had none of these.

Pillory Me.

This ‘tear down statues’ thing has made me re-examine my own past and it’s not pretty. My parents and grandparents worked in Manchester’s cotton mills profiting from the cotton picked by slaves. I myself felt proud to be a Scout leader for a short time, a movement lead by Baden Powell who has been labelled a Nazi sympathiser and racist. My parents were in the war effort under, a long way under, Winston Churchill, a man with dubious family connections. I personally made a lot of money out of American children’s pocket money. And finally I currently buy cloths and many other goods from high street chains made by children in far east sweat shops. Maybe even my pride in being British is misplaced. At least I didn't vote for Brexit and the Conservatives. Yes I’ll miss the bronze reminders of our British past, being able to read the plaque and mutter, “Scum” but in truth it would only be to heap on their heads my own smaller profiteering from those of lesser circumstance. And if I refuse to buy from Primark it will only lower the workers wages, as if they aren’t too low already. In the end I feel I must admit to being born into a species, I suspect the only species that knows the concept of slavery. And of shame, duplicity, usury, nobility and greed without end. These are my ultimate regrets. But then we can cherish, love, laugh, care and create amazing art and science: We’re not all bad. No, the past is always a mucky place just as this present will become in the years ahead, each one to be judged for our human failings and successes. The rich will be pilloried and envied in equal parts, but the past, if erased or cleansed, will not be there to lean from.

Covid Emotionally Speaking.

I sense we’re feeling emotionally attacked by this pandemic. It’s become a background bully, miasmic and impersonal, a constant frightening odour we can’t discern the source of. So in a conscious search for a culprit we just become emotional and attach it to some one or something we can be emotional at. Emotions are like that. They’re just there and our conscious attributions to them are, well quite frankly irresponsible. But we do it anyway. Domestically, governmentally, even racially we’re attaching this growing Covid emotional miasma believing they are the true source of our feelings. I for one can’t stand the icy interruptive white female voice of BBC 4’s morning news, I want to stab her with her own icicles. And now the brown smirk-faced professor on Piers Morgan’s morning inflammation who wants to tear down all our bronze historical figures on account of they were imperfect. Sorry fella history’s like that. The only way to be perfect is to do nothing. To imagine we automatically admire every bronze man on a plinth is simplistic. Mostly we just think, “Man on plinth, nice sculpture”, but even if we read who he is, ‘Best UK slave trader, 1795’, we don’t think, “Mmm nice idea!, why didn’t we cover that on my MBA.” So maybe as time goes on we’re becoming increasingly the victims of Corvid induced emotions and our consciousness's inability to sort the wheat from the chaff. If you find yourself crying or your homelings making you consider divorce I suggest you shout, ‘Fuck you Coronavirus’ as loud as possible. I do seriously wonder if emotion will be the demise of humans though. In one Star Trek episode Captain Kirk sent his crew out to get the dead body of an ex crew member while, wait for it, being attacked by numerous ferocious 30 foot animated telegraph poles. “An unfortunate decision Capen” said Spock. “That’s the difference between us Spock, we have feeling, we’re not just logical like you” Kirk replied. Thanks only to the script writers no one else died but I certainly wouldn’t fancy my chances against even one 30 foot animated telegraph pole.

Time to watch Metropolis Again.

Stock markets up, Prospects down.

Strangely stock markets are still rising as the whole world goes into recession. Very odd. If you have a pension or investments the people who look after them are very keen to make your pot grow, otherwise they’d be out of a job. TINA stands for ‘There Is No Alternative’ meaning the only game in town is stock markets. Basically a huge amount of cash is chasing the best return and as that’s the stock market it’s driving prices up. I’m trying to get my head round it all by typing this. OK but shares are in companies that are busy trying to survive, laying people off and closing plants etc, and we’re all acquiring ever more titanic government debts by the day. I have to say this smacks of Trumpian economics; ‘This is going to be great- invest in me- Oh sorry, unforeseen problems- I’m off- thanks for the cash.’ I imagine he’s currently working on some Martian real-estate scam. So what does the future look like? Mmm, scratch. I think we’ve created a system where the old adage, ‘the rich get richer and the poor etc’ has gone into overdrive: A sort of aggressive slavery (slaves aren’t always black) where the poor, however hard we work, become more indebted and the rich reap the benefits of our labour AND the interest on our debts. Of course this is unsustainable and probably the underlying reason for the current mass demonstrations. Mmm, another scratch. So what can be done? OK what did the black slaves do? Oh this is even more depressing. They couldn’t do anything, and those that did got strung up. They were categorised as lesser beings and subject to different disadvantageous rules. Their subservience was treated with abject fondness and their objections as ‘thugery’ in Preti and Boris speak. It’s the same old ‘ruling logic.’ So? It’s all a jigsaw puzzle where the picture shows ‘Home sweet home’ but the pieces have been rammed into reading ‘Homo swet heet me’. Not great but I am making this up as I go along. So now I’m seeing the working poor demonstrating, six abreast, together in a slow deliberate swaying march like that classic old film Metropolis. It looks hugely intimidating; an organised, unstoppable mass of bodies. No random, disjointed, frenetic, outwardly aggressive milling crowd, just unstoppable. Not leader and followers just homogenous humanity. It would make a great graphic too. We’ll get Stormzy to do the music. Interestingly Fritz Lang’s original screenplay for Metropolis was altered in the American version to show the down trodden workers as the villains. Surprised?

Privilege Matters.

Just watched an American video; a field, a line of young people, a man saying “if …...take 2 steps forward.” The questions were about your start in life, parents married, often hungry, that sort of thing. It was pretty clear by ten or so questions the disparity of starts, the poor at the back, the comfortably off at the front. It was also clear there was a bias towards black people at the back. Of course there are many famous people who had poor starts and made something of themselves and others who squandered good ones, but the majority are profoundly influenced by it. Poverty causes stress which in turn causes family arguments and break up. It provokes lawlessness in an attempt to make ends meet and promotes anger and fear in equal parts. But again it sometimes doesn’t. It often limits one’s horizons and possibilities leading to the helping hand of alcohol and narcotics. But often the reverse is true. And in time there arises simplistic labels that in no way truly reflect the individual. So what is Black Lives Matter a response to? Poor parenting, poverty, skin, race, the dubious validity of law versus lawlessness, prejudice? For me it’s the destruction of human values by overbearing deviate states. We want almost viscerally a good home, loving parents, equality and fareness, understanding enough for a decent life, if fact the return of decency itself. Maybe Black Lives Matter is a French revolution of sorts, a fight for universal privilege. If that’s the case Donald, Boris and Dominic had better take heed.

A Very British F-up.

It’s actually happening, running its course, like a nose. We have a class system, obviously, as exemplified by the famous pre-Monty Python, “I look up to him…..but down on him” sketch. Upper - Middle – Lower or Public school - University - State school or Nanny/Mother – Mum - Ma. I’ll omit the colonials though they did a jolly good job in the war. This breaks down to one’s use of; privilege - intellect – cunning, which in turn is exemplified by who one runs to in times of trouble; nanny/matron (paid professional carer) – mother (unpaid harasser) – ma (jovial unpaid sporadic harasser). So this is how the British F-up runs. To begin with we’re all led by the Upper class as they have the bravado and necessary cash but lack the competence and experience. As they fail to deliver the Middle technocratic class step up to organise the muddle having had the foresight to study epidemiolanodigology at university. They though realise that everything is imprecise however much one knows, but set out a better plan of action. This gives the lower class a basic framework on which to apply their cunning. Being used to jovial unpaid sporadic harassment this takes many forms. Most use their initiative to stay safe, look after their mum and family, tighten their belts, and save/acquire cash wherever possible. The minority, thankfully, believe what they heard while they weren’t listening and flout any useful advice. But luckily knowledge and awareness, unlike money, does trickle down with time. So in the pandemic we’re now in the latter stages of this process. The upper class have proved useless, the middle class have shown the way and the lower class have a decent grasp of what’s going on. And the final stage? This is when the cunning of the lower class and intelligence of the middle class join forces to create a bottom-up solution based on locally based action where local GP’s, health care professionals and co-opted organisers arrange testing, tracing and lock-downs virtually street by street. Lets face it we’re all pretty computer literate by now, we’ve local knowledge, got the pandemic picture and most of us are sitting at home with time on our hands. We form the greatest single (unused) workforce we’ve ever had and most of us would do it for nothing! So for god sake forget the 20 thousand centralised tracers watching Netflicks at £10/hr waiting for some expensive centralised computer system to work. I could write a spreadsheet for 1,000 people in a few hours and email it to every GP in the country for nowt. Sure China has draconian powers but we have the great British nous. We’re known for it. (along with a world crass government)

Dominic Cummings.

I watched Dominic Cummings in front of a select committee hearing. My view? A severely damaged individual. What do I mean? He disassembled every question like loosening the wheel nuts on an oncoming car making it career off the road before it got to him. Time and time again they tightened them and he loosened them making it appear it was their own machinery at some kind of irrational fault leaving him untouched in the middle of the road like some blank faced Midwich Cuckoo. This is not acquired political expediency, it’s a childhood survival mechanism. A lot of kids try it on but for it to remain the survival mechanism of a full grown adult suggests a fearful overbearing parent and a very damaged child. If anything I was damaged in the reverse way. In the face of overbearing illogic I now use logic as a means of survival; harming but not as dangerous. So Cummings will never show weakness or contrition and will use his considerable intellectual abilities to defend and manipulate anything that he perceives as overbearing, importantly irrespective of its rights and wrongs. As a hired gun he’s perfect. Tell him Remain is the overbearing establishment and he will cut it at the knees, Corbyn is soft, ditto, and the British public are clods and he will coral them like sheep. Caught in Durham he will concoct a heart warming explanation. And when Boris is pressured to sack him? Who knows, but what he’s given can be taken away, ‘know what I mean.’ No one’s born bad we just achieve it by our learnt defences. That Dominic dominates is forty years historical. What I’ve learnt in seventy odd years is however it’s explained certain people are best avoided and definitely not exploited for their childhood damage.