Ten Days Free Falling Tree

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This then is day one of ten without the news. It doesn’t feel a great deal different from yesterday except I missed listening to the two daily Economist podcasts I would usually listen to while driving. Not checking the BBC feels like absolutely zero loss which is quite a pleasant and reassuring feeling and without access to my Facebook wall I am unlikely to come up with any articles from independent or alternate media sources. Life doesn’t feel much different then as I said after one day, but then I wouldn’t expect it to, it’s after five or six days that I’m curious to see the affects.

This is not my first time without any access to the news. There have been plenty of opportunities for me to be ignorant of the worlds ignorance’s when travelling and either being away from the internet or just with better things to do. It is probably important then to get this straight; there are many more important things in life than knowing what is going on in the world, or a version of the world people you don’t know want you to see. When I have been away from the internet for a bit though my first thought is not to check the world or local news but is to find out what the score in the football was. That’s my weakness, everything else is secondary.

These moments of no internet are incredibly rare in modern times. We have access to the internet in ways unthinkable just ten to fifteen years ago. I do remember a time before mobile phones let alone phones with all this infinitely accessible information. I have no idea of the figures and will perhaps expose my ignorance but I imagine the majority of houses in the UK have wifi or at least access to a neighbours. Failing that a trip to McDonalds is the norm for some and even public transport has wifi these days. We’ve come along way from dial-up connections and it taking a minute to download one image.

It is probably a good thing. Long term it is unclear but then what the people of the future think is good will probably be different to what I do now. We apparently have less ability to remember information because we have Google as a surrogate memory bank. Our lack of real face to face connection has been shown to create feelings of loneliness which is surely the opposite of what a world of connectivity is supposed to do. Maybe we need to refine our understanding of the nuances of connection. On the flip side, unless we switch off our devices which can genuinely be really difficult, we are never fully alone and able to relax in our own company. We seem to be in a middle ground that does nobody any favours.

But I started out with discussing taking a break from the constant barrage of news not a one-sided take on the ills of technology. The news then makes us excitable in all the wrong ways and feeds into some primordial survival network going on in our brain. It undoubtedly leads to increases in anxiety and it’s only real benefit seems to be in allowing for a good conversation with someone about, well, the news. Yet being able to share information of massacres, injustices and private and state corruption is invaluable even if it does get drowned out by all the rest of the bullshit. In these ten days though I’ll be fine, as will the world without my observations for I suspect it is true; a falling tree does make a sound in the woods even when nobody is there to hear it.

A Bad World With Negative News

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I read an article last night about the future of schooling in the UK in regards the consequences of Covid-19. It was after I had written yesterdays piece on returning to schools and the possibility of fines for those who don’t, otherwise it would have been included in the article. I thought of writing about it today though but I won’t. I won’t for two reasons, a quite important one being that while my gut feeling from what I read was that they were teaching this generation a certain necessity to be controlled and it scared me, I can’t find the article or remember exactly what it was that made me feel so worried. The other is that today I feel a bit tired of writing these pieces damning some politician, political party or whatever example of systemic corruption that takes my fancy. I will again for sure but today my mind is in a different place.

Why then do we keep coming back to these articles which do nothing but confirm our understanding that the world is a corrupt and bullshit place. The obvious would be that we’re searching for some kind of confirmation or negative bias. We hear of research that social media companies use suggesting we’re drawn to and spend more time responding and reacting to bad news over good. There’s also the instinctive scared animal within us which is constantly on the look out for danger in our quest for survival. My direct experience of the world is not that it’s a dangerous place, quite the opposite, of course that is just my experience not one representative of anyone else or any collective group.

My view of the world through my news, political and social internet search history is an alarmingly different one to what I have seen through my eyes. Don’t get me wrong I have seen some shocking things in my life but proportionally these are but a fraction of the overall experience. What keeps drawing us back then to following a different vision of the world. Perhaps we know that there is more out there than our small bubble, maybe we just want to. There is a chance we just want some more excitement in our lives. Could these bad world experiences draw us in because we’re actually collectively deep down unhappy and they appeal to that. Certainly I’m online less and care less about world events – football aside – when I’m having fun, travelling and living more in the moment. There just seems to be something unhealthy about it all. The news has not all of a sudden become a negative thing but we now have a constant live stream of it and with their need to keep our focus, there surely can be little beneficial about it. With that in mind I’ve just had an idea. I will avoid the news and therefore my Facebook feed too for the next ten days and see not only how I feel but what it forces me to come up with on here. Oh god, I’m getting the shakes already. What have I done?!

A Fine Mob

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Our current version of a government in the UK are a concerning bunch. I have spent these last six months largely unsurprised by their bumbling attempt at government. While it is possible to give them some slack over the coronavirus handling, their response has been slow, inept and ultimately a failure. It is not just Covid-19 though, having taken us out of the EU they seem reasonably content to do absolutely nothing about creating a smooth departure and transition. Apparently negotiations are non-existent to obstinately deadlocked. Of course the EU bares some responsibility for this but you do get the feeling that this is exactly what the government wants and this is playing out perfectly for them. We crash out, become an international tax haven for the wealthy and sell our arse to the Yanks. In that case my accusation of bumbling is inaccurate, they are clearly doing a great job from their perspective.

What grabbed my eye today though and what led to this piece was that they announced there would be fines for parents whose children didn’t return to school in September when they reopen. This is a remarkably aggressive approach to something which should be handled with far more care and which exposes the underlying approach to governance they feel to be right. If you’re unable to persuade people with your argument then bully them into doing it. Telling parents they will be fined for acting potentially against their own health interests is nothing less than bullying and will have disproportionate ramifications for financially poorer sections of society. Headteachers have called them out on it as have elements of the media. This is one more step on their road to handling the return to school issue so terribly. Was it the first of June, or maybe earlier, that schools were supposed to return and teachers unions who were demonised by some, forced the government into a rethink. It’s not impossible to see another Marcus Rashford style u-turn even though governments hate to be seen doing so.

A government which seems incapable of persuading people their arguments are right will eventually have to try a new approach, aggression in the form of fines being the form this time. Whatever happened to us working together. They are merely slipping deeper into their bunker and adopting an ever more aggressive siege mentality. Whether you agree with them ideologically, it is without doubt not a way to run government and while it may help short term survival, if it carries on like this it won’t be another four years until the next election. The problem is by then they can and most likely will have done enough damage that it’ll take decades to reverse it. This is a long war. Perhaps even an indefinite one.

“Quotes”

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“Of all sexual perversions, chastity is the strangest” said Anatole France the French writer. Someone said similar on a podcast a few days ago, incorrectly attempting to quote him. He may have said the wrong words but it was close enough to perk my attention and do a little research of old Monsieur France. He appears to be another of these intellectuals living around the turn of the nineteenth century. Involved in the societal issues of the day, he took on the state a few times, especially in regards the Dreyfus Affair. This was an incident when nationalistic and anti-Semitic elements of the French army made a scapegoat of a Jewish soldier and had him wrongly convicted of murder. France though seems to be an infinitely quotable person and while I was drawn in with the one above it is only apt to throw a few more in.


“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened“

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing“

“It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion“

Quotes are great things. It takes a tiny snapshot of a thought and imprints it forever. There is an intensity to them that allows people to feel they understand a whole concept or person with nothing but a short sentence. We use them to justify opinions of a person, to discredit a lifetimes worth of work with one passing comment, to immortalise a version of someone. I have wanted to tattoo a million moments of wisdom all over my body despite knowing better. I finally succumbed a few years ago in my own way and have “estas como una cabra” on my arm. It is a Spanish expression which translates as “you’re like a goat” and is intentionally the antithesis of tattooed wisdom. Yet we keep on coming back to quotes.

I used one recently when writing a piece on here bashing Winston Churchill. His quote was from 1937 and I used it to justify my accusation of racism. Yet I would be curious to hear his opinion in 1945 after the horrors of murderous racism became real to the world. Does that mean we form an opinion of his character at the end of his life, at a certain point in his life or try to balance out an impression of his character from squashing everything he ever said and did into one little box. We evolve over time in who we are and how we think but quotes freeze a moment in our lives and are used to define us for eternity. I suspect there won’t be many academics pouring over this body of work at any point but were they to I don’t doubt they could find enough ridiculous things I’ve said to justify creating an impression that I am three or four different versions of myself and morality. But then we live so many versions of ourselves in our lives that this must surely be inevitable. How then when quotes are everything can we ever let these parts of ourselves go.

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another” – Anatole France

F Is For Family

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I have found a new series to watch. I don’t watch many things these days but I’m fond of cartoons. The usual ones like Family Guy or Rick and Morty of course, I’m a fan of Bob’s Burgers and the new series by Loren Bouchard; Central Park, which is a musical of all things. I stumbled upon F is for Family a few days ago and I like it. It is based upon the childhood of comedian Bill Burr. I don’t actually know much about him and I suspect he’s someone far more famous in America than here. I simply recognise his name from the odd Joe Rogan podcast that I’ve seen but not listened to. Maybe I will now though. I think I may even find some his comedy and watch it. I hope he’s good otherwise it’ll just spoil the cartoon, it’s whether the risk of not improving it is worth it.

He grew up in an Irish American family in the 1970s when people were a bit tougher and life seemed also a little harder while still immortalised. What’s good is how he creates the characters not how they would have been generally but it seems how he saw them. His big brother is angry and little sister a devil, his mother loving and father scary. There’s a childlike understanding of who each character is.

The seventies is a cool period for cartoons because it’s so easy to be creative, especially in a comedic sense. It is a nostalgic, but tough period in modern history. The strange thing is it is not mine because 1970s America would surely have been very different to the British 70s. They both seem to involve a lot of hardship and strife. No jobs, no fuel. High food prices. But people starting to rebel a little, live life. This could just be the version portrayed in television and the vast majority just got on with a life which was uneventful. F is for Family seemingly is set in a period of Bill Burrs childhood which was relatively intense enough to need to write a series on. It revolves around the father losing his job but with elements of it being honourable, and the subsequent liberation of the mother as she has to go out to work. Yet it is also expresses the uneventful moments in subtle ways, like all of this was just normal. It is very smartly put together.

Out On The Water

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I’ve done a bit of sailing. Not loads but enough to be fairly proficient. I could survive I think, I say that despite the failed sailing exam. There were extenuating circumstance with the thirty knots of wind and a crew who had never sailed before, but I must take responsibility for panicking when a navy boat came up behind me in a small channel and me dangerously tacking into the wind, proceeding to get stuck behind an oil tanker as it started up it’s engines and then messing up my reefing as I tried to make the sails smaller. I needed to be better but it was a ridiculous and comedic situation. Anyway, I’ve enjoyed learning so far, it’s a good way to see the world in a whole new way. I hope I get to carry on again at some point once everything has calmed down.

The reason I bring this all up is I was thinking about the weather. It’s really hot and humid. I had to learn about the weather when learning how to sail because, well, it’s quite important. To avoid embarrassment I’m not going to try and explain it beyond that I think we’re moving through a period of low pressure, we should be getting westerlies and the rains are coming. Now I could be wrong but I think I’m right. Being able to read these barometric charts is quite cool in an uncool way but probably only if you’ve ever needed to know how. It’s actually really interesting knowing what weather is coming up by working it out for yourself. It adds another type of practical to the whole.

I’ll never be a sailing wanker but I am fan. It’s a very social way of life. Everybody is living on top of each other, working together, helping. It’s the complete opposite to living life in lockdown isolation. The calm and the space. I’ve experienced community in a few different ways and this is just another version. Mini communities for one week, one month. Strangers coming together with an intensity everyday society cannot match. This is something I actually miss, this intensity of interaction. Working together is something that can be hard because we don’t have to ordinarily. We will become better at it or lonely. You get to really know people. People are real very quickly.

I realise I miss the travelling community. I love the art of sailing but it’s the travelling that gives me the real kicks. I have arrived places I’ve previously been but this time by sea and they feel like whole new versions. You’re viewing everything from a different angle. I’m looking at places around the world I have never previously thought that much of before. I dream of sailing in the Arctic around Svalbard, the Antarctic, the fjords around Tierra del Fuego and the tip of South America. These are magical kingdoms. I can’t imagine there being a better way to explore them. But that will be then, for now I’ll just enjoy this moment and what it brings, I’ll keep an eye on the weather all the same.

The Right Attack

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In an entirely predictable move the civil war in the Labour Party reared it’s ugly head once more. Rebecca Long-Bailey the Shadow Education Secretary was sacked from her position today by the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer after she retweeted an article which suggested the Minneapolis police had learnt the method of kneeling on someones neck to subdue them, from seminars in Israel by the the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). This was not the entirety of the article but was a point made within it. This reignited the anti-semitism debate within the Labour Party and Sir Keir was quick to show he wasn’t like the previous Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who the British Press spent years smearing as anti-semitic. This being Jeremy Corbyn the anti-racism and anti-anythingthatdiscriminatedagainstanyone campaigner. Rebecca Long-Bailey was the main challenger to Starmer in the leadership race and represented the left wing of the party. Her position on the Shadow Cabinet no doubt being an attempt to placate those who didn’t support him and an attempt to present himself as a unifying force. Her sacking was always only ever going to be a matter of time.

It is impossible to cover everything in the space of five hundred words. This is an enormous issue. Sir Keir represents the right of the Labour party, or as is more apt the Tory-lite element. He has barely challenged the government on their negligent attempt at doing anything worthwhile in the fight against the coronavirus. The press now all of a sudden seem to have no problem at all with the Labour party after being positively terrified of them for the last few years. The Board of Deputies of British Jews who are a right wing group with connections to the Conservative party and who the British press decided represent the whole of British Judaism have decided they like him. Perhaps his politics is not that far from theirs? And not to mention the fact that they managed to get the definition of anti-semitism rewritten to include criticism of Israel. Which is ultimately all she did. I don’t know whether the Israelis trained the Minneapolis police but it doesn’t matter. The story can be factually inaccurate but she’s not been sacked for that. Various far right groups may use criticism of Israel as a thinly veiled excuse to attack the Jewish people but it’s pretty obvious when that is happening. This was not that. This was the silencing of any criticism of the Israeli State, and the culling of a political opponent in the process.

The problem with British politics is that it currently offers few differing options, the same as in America with the Democrats and Republicans. Ultimately they represent the same thing, as do the Tory Party, the Liberal Democrats and now Labour under Sir Keir. Whether you agreed with Corbyns politics, at least he offered a different approach and attempted to hold a corrupt government to account. That cannot and I doubt ever will be said of Starmer who is proving to be nothing more than another establishment stooge. I was devastated when Corbyn lost, like many were, but I won’t be voting for Labour at the next election. I most likely won’t be voting for anyone. You’re not voting for change when they’re all offering a continuation of the same thing, the very thing which is the actual problem in the first place. Today’s events merely underline this. It appears we’re back to the great fraud of Democracy.

The Coors Family

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Today’s discovery revolves around the Coors family. For those unfamiliar with shit beer, they’re the ones who invented ‘Coors’ back in the nineteenth century and who still insist on pushing it on ignorant confused people who presumably don’t know any better. This is an episode of the podcast The Dollop, which I think I’ve mentioned before on here, but it’s premise is two comedians, one telling the history the other with no knowledge of the usually bizarre subject, making jokes and taking the piss. They’re quite long episodes which can put people off, this one is over one hundred minutes, but there’s worse you can and will do with your time.

There are a few companies I’ve boycotted over the years, from Nestle to Coco Cola to Amazon, and now after listening to this I can add Coors to the list. Thankfully I wouldn’t go near it as a drink anyway but now I have an ethical reason not to. The problem with that though is like any of these mega corporations they also own virtually everything else and while a lot of their range is equally mass produced crap there are a few beers I have enjoyed over the years such as Caffreys, Staropramen and Cobra, and when desperate Blue Moon – Coors own the Blue Moon Brewery itself. They also seem to own the old Mitchell and Butler brewery but I can’t find confirmation whether they also own the pub chain by the same name or whether they’re now two separate entities. Admittedly they’re not always great pubs but they can serve a purpose. Over the years my boycotts have never been one hundred percent successful but my beer purchasing habits will certainly now be affected.

What’s he talking about I hear you screaming. Yes this is such a long winded intro into the Coors family but I don’t really want to give too much away. Adolph Coors emigrated from what was Prussia to America and set up the Coors brewery in 1873. The family itself seemed to be loveless and hateful towards each other, and once his son Adolph II took charge he ruled the family through dictatorial fear. Some members of the family suffered from debilitating extreme right wingness, while others found God and became Christian extremists, or Evangelicals if you so desire. They lobby vehemently against women’s right, racial equality, LGTB rights, workers rights and so on. William Coors who ran the company in the latter part of the twentieth century once gave a speech to a room full of black businessmen on how the black mans brain was inferior and that they should be grateful their ancestors were brought across as slaves as it allowed them to become civilised. His brother Joseph was the right winger who he described as “being slightly to the right of Attila the Hun”, which coming from a racist is quite the statement. Joseph was also a special adviser to and part of Ronald Reagans ‘Kitchen Cabinet’. They were even involved with Oliver North and the Iran-Contra scandal. The family currently fund right wing think tanks and other organisations trying to challenge equality in all those forms mentioned. There is more but I both can’t remember everything and don’t want to give it all away. There were murders, suicides and such hatred that it does suggest there may be some truth in the idea that right wingers are just projecting their own self-loathing and anger onto the rest of us. The Coors Family are just vile, unfortunately very powerful, people. I’m amazed that I have never heard about them and all they get up to. Clearly it was a very informative podcast.

Most of the juicy stuff mention above comes towards the latter part of the podcast with earlier stuff just discussing the internal workings of the family itself. They seemed mainly to just do damage to each other and themselves until about the 1960s at which point all the above happened. Seriously, fuck them. The world doesn’t need people like that. They make the human race worse.

Another Day, Another Ramble

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Today is one of those days in which I can’t think of anything to write about. One of those moments the mind feels stagnant. But I write everyday, there can be no excuse, 365 days won’t reach itself. Incidentally I’m definitely over six months now, maybe even seven or eight if I could be bothered to count. I just know come October I’ll have to start checking the exact date I started and try to avoid writing endlessly about how close I am to completing a year and how nice it’ll be not to have the constant thought in the back of my mind that I have to do something. Some days I enjoy it, some days I just can’t be bothered and some days I wish I had written something earlier as I’m tired and want to go to bed. Rarely I don’t enjoy it though.

I’ve still not written a poem, that was one of the things I thought would be interesting to try. I’ve not written a short story either. I can’t remember the other things I excitedly thought I may do. I think I misunderstood how my writing would go down. I don’t take the time to write creatively like that, life can be busy and I generally just give myself an hour to bash these out. I suspect this will be a little less but that’s because it’s one of those filler pieces. Yet I’m still writing.

I thought about mentioning Covid-19 and the political implications of todays relaxing of lockdown rules but I’ve been talking too much about that already recently. I even checked RT.com to see if they had anything outlandish I could talk about. They don’t seem to think too highly of Meghan Markle and I’m not entirely sure why. What ever she did to piss off the Russians is beyond me. Maybe I should have checked Al Jazeera, I could have compared their stories, RT’s stories and the BBC’s to create a balanced version of the days events. I’m sure you could add all their stories up and together they would create a reputable version. Either that or the average of what total bullshit could look like.

In personal news I’ve been fantasising about living on the canals again. This is not a new one and I nearly did it about five or six years ago until I realised I wasn’t quite ready for such a sedate life. Sounds lovely now though. Nothing against the village, but I suspect small insular communities don’t quite have enough to hold me. Not that I’ll find the opposite all along a canal. It’s times like these though that I remember how being oblivious to the same type of thing but in foreign countries and therefore foreign languages, made places seem so much nicer. There’s something lacking in forever being on the periphery though. I wonder if people come here to the white sandy beaches, castles, monasteries and walks, and think how lovely the locals are, unaware to how they really feel about outsiders. Perhaps they just resent them because they know they depend on them.

But I shouldn’t be too unfair because I don’t know everybody and I don’t know they all feel. Also nobodies really done anything directly to me it’s more that I just feel sadness at witnessing such a beautiful little area stifled by idiots who can’t see outside of this tiny little whole universe of theirs. And I’m judging people I don’t really know again which I shouldn’t be because it’s unfair and that just makes me a dick. It’s just the frustration that’s all. This place just isn’t the best version of itself it could be. But then what and who is.

This Way Please

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Well we’re one step closer to a tyrannical regime. They’ve decided which direction we can now walk up the street. That would be an example of using an exaggerated statement to belittle a potentially legitimate argument on something ridiculous. Of course we’re not one step closer to a tyrannical regime because of this but it is ridiculous. I should probably explain a little more on what I’m talking about. As you can see from the picture they have created a one way system on the pavements. On one side of the road you can walk up the street and on the other you can walk down. Apparently it’s okay to go into shopping centres and queue outside Primark for hours but god forbid you face someone on the street as you walk towards and pass them. I had a similar opinion on having a one way system in the supermarket, all it seemingly did was confuse and stress people as they did huge laps just to pop back one aisle because they forgot something, or lingered behind as they weren’t sure if it was acceptable to pass you. Saying that I’m not dismissing the fact that statistically even if minimal it could probably have help prevent the spread in some way but it seemed like slight overkill. Outside on the street though; give over.

It’s very easy to get excited by something like this and use it as another example of people slowly being controlled, or getting used to being controlled in the most minute way. But all this is is some bureaucrat sitting in an office somewhere trying to justify the existence of their job and people spurring them on because they know they can use it as an example of some kind of action. Make no mistake something like this is for nothing other than appearance sake, a cosmetic little plaster to cover a deep wound. Actual action would be proper testing not just smudged empty figures, it would be actual PPE for nurses, doctors and care home assistant, it would be a contact tracing app that is ready before November not nearly a year after the first official case in the UK.

This nonsense outside on the street is nothing other than a local version of the same thing we have on a national level. Everything, literally everything, the government have done in combating the spread of Covid-19 has lacked even the remotest amount of substance. It has been enforced reactive empty action for nothing other than appearance sake and we have the highest death rate in the world as a result. Now we have a supposedly skint, when it suits them, council taking two days and four workers to put up and spray a few signs on one little street. Three months of nothing and now just as everything is reopening and the two metre distance rule probably dropped, they finally act. If as the Economist described it; “The government played a bad hand, badly”, the local council it appears don’t even know how to play. Or at least not the game they should be playing.