Tag: Germany

A Second Chance

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Lockdown 2.0 is coming. France and German signed up last week. Athens will this week. England will be joining the club in the coming days. Scotland is persevering with it’s tier system instead with no regions currently in tier four and lockdown but it’s likely a watch this space thing. Politically if Scotland’s approach doesn’t work it will have a lasting effect on the Scottish elections in May next year but equally that is a long time in politics. As this most remarkable of years has shown; a lot of the unexpected can happen in a short space of time. Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, met with Micheal Gove the other day, along with the leaders of Wales and Northern Ireland to discuss the differing approaches and the potential financial aid necessary. He suggesting the government were listening and would give it some thought. Gove the ultimate in parodies, giving the perfect non-committal politician response. Issues have started to arise as it appears funding to prop up jobs UK-wide only seems to be on offer when the English in the south-east start to find themselves in need. The Tory government propping up their heartlands. It is an easy accusation to make but equally a very believable one on which they have form.

How then are people planning on experiencing these lockdowns. Boris Johnson says it’ll be only for four weeks but the previous one was only supposed to be three weeks and it ended up being three months. If people living in the Arctic circle can not just endure but actively enjoy a few months of winter darkness then surely we in the UK can survive some bleak skies for a bit. Apparently one method they have for remaining happy in these long winters is to find excitement in the things they can do instead which they can’t in summer months. They ski, they make fires, they go for night walks, they do indoor things. In Scotland because the weather can be so volatile it has always felt necessary to make the most of good weather and complete outdoor tasks, or even just enjoy the outdoors. When it’s raining and cold we do the jobs we have put off inside the house. It may not be the most exciting prospect but it creates a wealth of opportunities. With many having already experienced one lockdown in Spring they will be either daunted and fatigued by the prospect of a second or excited at being even better at their second attempt. What didn’t we get to learn in the first one, what didn’t we manage to watch on Netflix, what books didn’t we manage to get through and so on. Modern life has meant people rarely get to spend lengthy periods of time with themselves but it is crucial in our self-development as people. Aren’t we lucky we get a second roll of the dice. A hard six perhaps? What a glorious opportunity we have.

Split Peas & Split People

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This might end up being one of those pieces which becomes a few random thoughts that aren’t related but I feel are worth mentioning. To begin with I’m having a nightmare trying to cook split peas. I was hoping to make a nice soup with sweet potato and carrot but these bloody peas just won’t cook. I soaked them for over twenty-four hours and have now had them boiling away for at least an hour to no avail. I enjoy cooking. I also enjoy eating and this enjoyment of eating and of having no money over the years means I’m not a bad cook. I don’t make enough soups though. A split pea soup sounds just lovely.

I’m a total romantic. I’m listening to Spanish Civil War music and dreaming of what could have been. It was such a glorious and horrific time. We like to imagine antifa and the antifascist as some new phenomenon but it’s been going as long as the fascist gave themselves such a name. I have mentioned this particular war a few times but it really is another example of the people being screwed over by power. Not just power in Spain but through the neutrality of countries like the UK. Franco had Hitler’s Germans and Mussolini’s Italians, the Republic ended up having no choice but relying on the Soviets who took over as best they could and did more damage than help. France may have been a Republic but it was never built on the ideals of decentralisation and the anarcho-collectives. The European powers as ever showed their true colours, for old powers like the British, Fascism was infinitely more palatable than people having true power. These things are contagious, they must be quashed.

The Twentieth Century was just a long list of outside interference with vested interests. Allende, Chile and Pinochet is always an easy one to bring up but let’s not forget Cambodia and Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to recognise the new communist government that replaced the genocidal maniac Pol Pot. She was also a bit of a fan of apartheid South Africa. Let’s not forget the British influence upon the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran that wanted to nationalise oil production, the dictatorship of the new Shah, a western puppet, more agreeable. General Suharto in Indonesia who killed a quarter of the population but who provided the Australians, as well as the US and Brits, with cheap access to natural minerals. Yugoslavia, the last Socialist country in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union was never allowed to exist. It is always easier to control smaller broken up and angry states than one larger one.

Talking of apartheid, Palestine is another obvious one. Obvious because it is still going on not because it is ever really talked about. You wouldn’t know it if you just watched western media but Israel have been bombing the shit out of the Gaza Strip for eight straight days now. Apparently Hamas fired two homemade rockets out and the Israeli’s felt the need to obliterate them in return. Eight days and not a peep.

Anyway my split peas have burnt. I got carried away and forgot to check on them. I give up.

The Great Showmen

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What’s going on in the world then. A section of Trump’s infamous border wall with Mexico blew down. Apparently Hurricane Hanna got the better of it. Past wall failures include another section in California being knocked over in January following a strong breeze, smugglers taking minutes to saw, yes saw, through sections of the wall and another incident in San Diego apparently saw them doing this eighteen times in one month. Perhaps a series of the same incident would be more apt. It does suggest he has been making it on the cheap and undoubtedly this does fit in with the type of image of Trump we have. Doing things for show without any substance and grabbing everyone’s attention with another outlandish ‘project’ the moment the old one starts to fall to pieces. Why anyone thought a showman would change his stripes I just don’t know.

The plan wasn’t just to talk about Trump, it was to mention a few things going on in the world but it’s so easy to start with him and get carried away with whatever it is he’s doing now. I think the whole world knows what’s going on, although saying that having just quickly checked the BBC, even on the actual US regional page it doesn’t really mention a lot about how arguably troops, or their equivalent at least, have been deployed on domestic streets and quite violently against peaceful protesters. It’s almost more interesting to see what’s newsworthy and not being reported. The man is gearing up for an election as he tries to get everyone to forget about his handling of Covid-19, as well as the fact he’s still continuing to handle it badly, and focus instead on how good he is or would be at cleaning up the streets. The law and order campaign approach being one usually deployed by a hopeful incoming President criticising the current occupants job, how that quite works with a sitting President suggesting he’ll clean up the streets of not only a country he’s been running for four years but that he’s repeatedly said has “been made great again” is still slightly unclear. I’m sure he’ll all confuse us with his explanation.

What else has been going on then. Well he’s still orange. He’s still the slightly shittier American version of a television series that originated in Britain and revolved around Boris Johnson performing a stage version of A Clockwork Orange. We thought it could never be topped but evidently in the most brash of American ways it has been. I wonder which one will run for longer without being cancelled. I wonder too what the spin-off would be; their best mate Nigel Farage losing all his money and having to hang out with the working men he pretends he’s one of. Or the ultimate twist of fate, through a loophole in the law he gets kicked out of the UK and manages to claim refugee status in Germany with his wife and kids. Now that would be both compulsive and car crash television. Maybe Boris, Don and Nige could be the three men to Dominic Cummings as the baby; probably doing his best version of an early Stewie Griffin when he was his in murder everyone faze. They just don’t make television like they used to. They don’t really make reality what it once was either though. Maybe it’s just those blurred lines confusing us all. Which is which, we just don’t know.

Generic Male Intelligentsia

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I’m reading a graphic novel on Rosa Luxemburg at the moment. I won’t go into it too much because I’m not finished and will write a piece on it when I do. There is just something worth mentioning now and it is the way Socialist intellectuals of that time look and are portrayed. There is a recurring theme in images and film that they all look a little like Lenin and Trotsky combined. For context Rosa Luxemburg lived at the beginning of the twentieth century and was deeply involved in the left wing intelligentsia of Germany and Poland. Possibly more places but I haven’t got there yet and my knowledge of her is not detailed enough yet to go out on a limb and make too many statements. Mixing in this world when it was really beginning to come to life with genuine importance she must have mixed with many ‘Lenotskys’ as I shall call them.

The look then is Lenin’s slightly round face, balding hair and goaty mixed with a little hair to signify Trotsky, similar facial hair and his glasses. Perhaps more of a Lenin but with glasses and a Trotsky air to him. That feels closer. Regardless there always seems to be this same character, it’s like the stock image graphic artists go for when they want to represent the archetype left wing intellectual. Of course this just could be how people looked at the time, and Lenin and Trotsky were merely fashionistas of the age, early twentieth century revolutionary hipsters if you like. The glasses would probably have been a style, the hair can’t be help and the goaty like the glasses could be a fashion. The soft accountant like look because they weren’t working men toiling in the field and under the sun. Maybe it’s not as straight forward as I’m trying to portray it.

One of the reasons I enjoy this image is that I have met a few people who looked arguably similar in features and style who also happened to be left-wing and saw themselves as intellectuals. Probably less Lenin but Trotsky has certainly captured the attention of those trying to style themselves on someone but that could just be because nobody wants to style themselves on a bald middle aged man. There’s definitely something less romantic about that than a revolutionary hero who died with an ice pick through his skull. It was a remarkable time in history, makes life seem rather mundane by comparison. Even if it did look like there were accountants everywhere.

An Opportunity Lost?

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The more I think about it the British General Election back in December was an even bigger loss than I thought at the time. Don’t get me wrong I was pretty desponded, as the annuls of this blog can attest, but this is a deeper realisation. At the time it was clearly a missed opportunity. The Labour manifesto was in places a sensation, an attempt to strip back years of neoliberal skullduggery and corruption. It was relatively radical by an measure of what depths British politics has sunk to, we were going to have drastic and crazy levels of social welfare in line with Germany and France. Perish the thought. Apparently that was going to be Communism in the heart of Europe, well the departing heart of Europe. This realisation that we were instead about to be dragged out of Europe and forced onto our proverbial knees by an aggressively self-serving United States. To sit by as those supposedly negotiating and supposedly on our behalf pretended they were going to act tough even though they had already admitted they had put all our eggs in the Yankee basket. The neoliberal con was about to have it’s one last job before going into retirement. Of course I was despondent.

And now as the world has descended into whatever we can call this shit show, it is beyond doubt that there will be lasting effects and change coming out of all of this. Nobody who says they know really has any idea because it genuinely is all open. All open in the way that power still holds all the cards even though they’re blank. Depending how long this goes on for will depend on how your average persons view of the world changes in an open compassionate way, and that means a lot of suffering I suspect. Right now after a month of this it’s far from long enough to have any lasting change and I must point out I’m not a believer in ends justifying means or innocent people suffering. I don’t want the world necessarily to change for the better if it means innocents dying. Anyone who believes this misses the point. But had power not been this corrupt bunch of self-serving scumbags then at least this rebuild may have been done with someone other than their own and the tax dodgers interests at the top of the pile.

What an opportunity. We thought it was going to be bad having five years of a majority government of some of the worst Tories in my lifetime calling the shots. Now these people will rebuild what comes out of this and I am not looking forward. Boris is no hero despite what the media are attempting to convince you, and I doubt he had an intensive care bed epiphany about the value of the NHS and freedom of movement despite his foreign NHS nurse holding his precious little hand throughout. Imagine the vitriol had Jeremy Corbyn been in charge, there is simply no way his government would be getting let off as easily as this current mob. They would most likely blame him for the state of the NHS despite only being in power for a few months after ten years of Tory austerity and ideological cuts. We could be about to move into a period of rebuilding society and the economy with people being put first, the whole populace, not the depending on bank account version. So it is a missed opportunity, but is it a lost opportunity? This is only something time can tell. We’ve certainly not made it easy on ourselves though.