Retail things

One of the benefits of the world wide web is that it by and large protects me from shopping. I have never liked it but my reasons for that have changed as I have grown older. As a youth, I would trail around with my mother, knowing that we could not afford to buy the things that I would have liked and always having to settle for what was affordable, which of course was never very much. Shops for me were placed that offered temptation and made me painfully aware that I was poor.

Of course things change, and for now at least, money is not an issue. I still trail around the shop, pushing a trolley and watching time passing so so slowly. My input is rarely required and mostly irrelevant and this morning I spent a while composing a list of reasons for hating the whole experience. Near to the top of the list are strangers. People with long faces, ambling around like myself, blissfully unaware of those around them, shuffling from aisle to aisle all probably feeling the same sort of antipathy to each other. There seems to be a rule, that wherever you happen to be you are always in someone else's way, so it is impossible just to stand in neutral and disengage from the whole experience.
Following someone while pushing the trolley is a nightmare, far worse than driving in a convoy. Take your eyes off the leader for one instant and said leader vanishes into the maze of aisles, evoking another rule, that being whichever way you go is the wrong way.
I hate trolleys - I always seem to get one that has a wheel that sticks, making steering difficult, and as the load increases, impossible. Mostly I am tempted to pick up the trolley and carry it around, though the ergonomics make that tricky and plainly it would be a stupid thing to do.
I hate the fact that it is impossible to buy just a jar of coffee without having to choose between hundreds of combinations of brand, type, size etc. I loathe the uniformity of fruit and vegetables and the fact that one store is much the same as any other.
I despise the appalling attitudes of some of the staff who in some stores seem to imagine that they are doing you a favour, and I loathe the use of psychological opportunism in the way that supermarkets display goods persuading people to buy what they do not need.
For me, the perfect shopping experience is to search through my favourite sites, make my selection and simply type in my credit card details. To enhance my experience i really do want an iPad, and that I will order online.

I believe

An accusation that is often thrown my way by those that have religious convictions is that unless i believe in something then my life must be without meaning. At this point in any discussion I usually bring things to a halt, as to argue further leads to a circular debate that goes nowhere.
It is impossible not to believe in something; it is part of being human, and with most people it is possible to change beliefs in the light of experience or when presented with evidence. Most of us at some time in our lives believed in Santa Claus, Fairies,the bogey man, God and the Easter Bunny, because we were told that these things existed. Parents pass on these untruths as a means of controlling their children, either by threat or anticipation of something good. Most of us grow out of these fictions and do not hold our parents responsible for misleading us, but some do not and hold onto those beliefs with grim determination. There are even those who believe that the earth is flat and many that believe that the holocaust never happened. Fundamentally some people can be induced into believing anything.
I am a natural sceptic and yet I too have beliefs, and there are many things that I believe that I cannot prove. I believe in Science as a process. Where Science scores highly is in it's scepticism. The scientific process is based upon hypotheses formed from observations. These hypotheses are tested experimentally over and over again, until the outcome of an experiment allows the formulation of a Law. A law might state that under circumstance A, B will happen, but with Scientific laws, this only applies until it can be proved otherwise by different experiments. There are many principles that have stood the test of time and can be accepted as truths, and even the most rabid fundamentalists cannot argue that.
I believe that there are probably other life forms in the universe, and that the universe is so large that we will probably never find evidence for their existence. I believe that the universe is eternal and that there is no creator nor need for one. I believe in energy as the currency of the universe and its transmutability.
I believe in the Atom and its structure of fundamental particles, and that one day we will understand the very nature and origin of those particles.
I believe in Evolution and that we are merely a part of an ongoing process that too few people understand.
I believe that people are intrinsically good and that some are made evil by the life into which they are brought. I believe that adherence to the writing in one book leads to a narrow view of life that hinders the moral progress of humankind.
I believe that capitalism is wrong, but as yet we have no workable alternative. The system has produced huge benefits but has also produced a world that is obsessed by property and material things. We have become greedy and self obsessed and this in turn has fuelled religious backlashes and the terrorism that is a canker on civilizations.
I believe that we are failing to make good use of extending lives and that many people are left to rot by the rest of us. We think more of pets than we do of fellow humans and many elderly folk die without dignity in squalid conditions.
I believe that our children are neglected by parents and society in general, and that many children should be taken away from their abusive parents while they still have a chance.
I believe in friendship, family and freedom of thought and expression. I also believe that there is no God but of course I cannot prove it, any more than I can prove that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! I believe that saying something is true, however frequently, does not make it true.

Desert Island Discs

We have a long running Radio programme called Desert Island Discs. The program selects someone of worth, a celebrity of someone eminent in their particular field, and during a fairly personal interview, they select eight records that they would choose to take to a desert Island, along with a book and one luxury item. This programme has been running for decades, and is as popular today as it has always been. Unlike most chat shows, it seems that those involved are more relaxed and more likely to share their memories than they otherwise would.

I will never be famous or eminent, but I often wonder what I would choose given the opportunity. Choosing eight records/songs is really very hard, and justifying those choices even more so, because to justify a choice is to give something of oneself, and that is something that I have become very wary of. To give of oneself is dangerous in that it makes one extremely vulnerable. In this Blog I do come close to that but as readership is limited to a very select few, I am prepared to take that risk - up to a point that is.

I am sure that my choices would vary according to time of day, season of the year and my own frame of mind but for now my list might, in no particular order, look something like this -

1. Bruch - Violin Concerto. This is one of the first Classical pieces that I ever owned. I played it over and over again. It is a sublime and very emotional work, and one that was very significant in some of my darker days as a young student.
2. Led Zeppelin - Whole Lot of Love. As a student I, like many others in the late 60s discovered heavy rock for the first time. There were two of us who owned the Led Zep 2 album and we would strive to play the song in synchrony at each end of our corridor. Alas our players operated at different speeds so we never achieved anything but the irritation of others.
3. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb. Probably the best ever live performance that I have ever witnessed was the last Floyd tour. I always knew they were good but that night I was transported to a different plane!
4. Monteverdi - 1610 Vespers. For me this is possibly the most wonderful music ever written. To hear this performed in ST Marks Venice would be the most remarkable of experiences.
5. Beatles - Hey Jude. A simple song but one that to me represents the end of those heady hippy days when we were yojng careless, healthy and happy.
6. Richard Strauss - 4 last songs. The last of these Im Abendrot (At Gloaming), was the last thing that Strauss wrote. It seems like he knew that he was dying and this was his farewell. If there was a last piece to hear then this would be it.
7. Beethoven - Symphony number nine. It is difficult not to choose something of Beethoven. Such a brilliant mind and such a tragic life. He strove though the most horrendous difficulties and produced the most sublime music. When he wrote this he was completely deaf and yet he was able to hear the whole thing in his mind. It reminds me that my own hearing loss is nothing compared to his.
8. Loreena McKennitt - Dante's Prayer. I discovered Loreena in recent years and even travelled to Brittany to attend a concert. She has the ability to move me, and this song rarely fails to bring tears to my eyes.

If I had to choose just one of the above it would be the Monteverdi, though the choice would be difficult.

A book? Well I'd have to choose something that would never become a bore so maybe it would be the Oxford English Dictionary.

The luxury item would have to be a supply of pens and paper. That way i could perhaps learn to write and draw.

Hidden shallows

Having more or less a Scientific bias to my thinking, life for me is full of uncertainty. Sometimes I envy those who, with their invisible man who moves in mysterious ways, as life is fully explained in the instruction manuals. For most of us though there are no sets of instructions and we must choose our way and live with the consequences.

One of my issues lies in a fundamental question, that being, What is Art? Apart from my flippant definition that it is what you can get away with, I really do find it hard to determine exactly what a great work of art really is. For some, paintings by Mark Rothko are seen as the bees knees, and others actually like the work of Tracey Emin and the Britart movement. There are plenty who will pay a lot of money to own things because they are attached to a famous name or label.

Art is largely in the eye of the beholder, and what moves one may leave another stone cold. Many people love to be surrounded by artwork, some because they clearly appreciate it, while others do so in order to be seen as having taste. What one displays on ones walls says something about the person I guess.

For some, Art is about making the beholder think or feel, whether that may be a positive or negative emotion, and this can apply to painting, music, sculpture or performing arts. I have certainly been moved by music and theatre but cannot recall being moved by a painting. Oh I appreciate paintings, and the tremendous skill that goes into the representation of ideas on canvas, but I could no more weep in front of a painting than slash it with a knife. In my view, some people are very precious about painting, to the point of being pretentious.

The point of this diatribe is that yesterday, for the second time, i went to see James Cameron's AVATAR in 3D. Ok it is a thin plot and the storyline is pretty predictable. There are no great performances, but the whole package is in my opinion a work of art that stands up against any other. It is a beautiful visual feast as well as conveying a message that is subject to any number of interpretations. It does make you think and produces a feast of emotional responses.

There are plenty that will disagree with me about this but i really don't care. I may be shallow and uneducated but I know what i like and there is plenty that I know that I do not like.

A case for docking?

So at last the dog is beginning to at least recognise the fleas. Islam4UK in all of it's various guises has been proscribed, and proven membership of said organisation can be met with ten years in prison. Now I would be prepared to put money on that law never being put to the test. All that these young and ignorant radicals will do is to regroup under different headings, and I am sure that none of them will carry membership cards. Proscription of such organisations simply drives them underground, and in the eyes of the deluded and simple minded, they become even more attractive, and so the hideous tumour that lies within our society continues to grow.

Surely it would be better to allow such organisations be seen for what they are, and allowed to go their deluded way, exercising the same free speech that they would deny the rest of us should they get their way. They had planned a tasteless protest march in the town of Wooton Bassett, where hundreds of locals, routinely show their respects to returning bodies of British soldiers. It should have gone ahead. At least then, the membership could have been identified. Their protest seems to be about Muslims being killed by British troops. They make no mention of the fact that huge numbers of their fellow Muslims are killed each day by fellow Muslims who seem unable to discriminate.

Anjem Choudary on the radio this morning spoke lucidly and with the confidence and arrogance of the fanatic that he is, about bringing Sharia law into the country, and his final words were "we shall prevail." Unless the people of this country get off their apathetic bottoms and wake up to the realities of fundamentalism, then I fear that his confidence is well placed.

A question

Five Muslim men who protested at a home-coming parade in Luton where soldiers were called murderers have been convicted of being abusive. Does anyone else see the irony in their defence, which was that they were exercising their right to free speech?

Divorce

When I was a kid, I hoped and prayed that my parents would split. There was only peace in the house when my father was at work, and when he was home there were either rows or long periods of silence where we either left the house or were too afraid to speak. In those days people did marry in haste and repent at length and divorce was very uncommon. So they stayed together, fighting and regretting until at the first opportunity My sister and I left home, and not long afterwards my younger brother die

Since then divorce has become much more straightforward and indeed common, with something in the region of half of all marriages ending within not too many years of that special day. As a result of this, many choose not to wed in the first place and now we have single parents as more of a norm than those who are married. Consequently many children have missing role models and this is having a profound effect on their behaviour and the structure of society as a whole.

So why do so many relationships break down? In my view, much of what we are and how we behave has a biological explanation. We are products of both biological and cultural evolution, and roles of men and women have developed over thousands of generations. I know that I am politically incorrect in my attitudes but I do like to speak my mind, and I have always believed that men and women are different. The failure of society at large to accept this, has led to a situation where the roles of men and women hardly exists as separate entities, and this has happened faster than we are able to cope.

Women's liberation is all very well but it has come at a cost. Women are now the achievers, the national curriculum favours girls, as do the systems of assessment. Women are routinely the subjects of positive discrimination, in the workplace and recently in Parliament, where seats are limited to those with two X chromosomes. Many women are becoming like men in their attitudes and ways of thinking and living, and putting homosexuality aside, most men don't want to live with another man. Sisters doing it for themselves is destroying the natural order of things and producing a vast number of young men, who have nothing to draw on other than their natural biological urges. Education has failed them, society has failed them and worse, women have failed them so what are they to do?

My parents stayed together until my father died. I am not saying that they made the right choice, both might have been better off apart but then, society was far more stable, one partner could provide for a family and a mother could devote her time to looking after her children. There was full employment and equality of opportunity of sorts. I suspect that people's horizons were narrower, but I also believe that people were happier.

Going postal

I admire the post office enormously. I can write a letter or wrap a parcel, shove it into the mailbox and within a couple of days the said item will be delivered to it's target address. I can order stuff online of an afternoon and have things delivered the next day, and that I think is marvellous. What is more the service is cheap.

When i was a boy, I collected postage stamps; I still have them, and if I can be bothered to look through them I can still recall buying some of them and sticking them into my album. Faces of the young queen, countries that no longer exist, leaders long since dead or deposed are all represented in those tiny scraps of coloured paper. To some people those bits of paper may be worth something in monetary terms, but I don't suppose that I will ever get around to having them valued or putting them up for sale. It was a phase and like all phases it was pretty short lived.

In those days people wrote letters and sent each other cards via the Royal Mail, there was a lot of it and deliveries, even out in the wilds where I lived, were twice daily. Every village had a post office and many towns had several. Now of course we write very little. i think I have forgotten how to use a fountain pen and for me at least letter writing has become a thing of the past. I email of course and pick up the phone from time to time, should I wish to talk to someone.

Despite all of the competition, the mail continues to work, and work well. Oh yes people complain that there are few post offices and that the cost of posting a letter keeps going up, but it is still a small price to pay for what you get. Having said that, there have been no deliveries for a couple of days, I guess that the mailmen are all snowed in too.

let it snow

LIving on an Island has many advantages but there are real disadvantages too. Today we are covered in snow and the place has come to a grinding halt. There are no buses, the roads are impassable, schools are shut and most businesses will cease to function until the roads are cleared. As I write it is still snowing and I just remembered that I have no boots or wellies. We have no milk and so a trip out is essential.

Days like today are a stark reminder of the fragility of the system under which we live. One tiny push and the house of cards could easily come crashing down. We are fortunate because we live in a society, which though mightily flawed, still hangs together because the glue of tolerance is still in place, that and the adherance to the law. Anarchists would love to see all of that break down, and like most fundamentalists, they think with their testicles rather than their brains. If the house falls, then what would replace it?

Some people think that a brave new world would grow swiftly from it, and maybe it would but what a primitive world it would be. The average person would be completely helpless without a supermarket. We have become incapable of doing things for ourselves, we buy everything ready made and cannot even repair things any more let alone make things from new. Should the worst happen, there would be a terrible dog eat dog society in which the strongest might survive, but once supplies of basics ran out, even the survivors would find it hard to maintain anything but a primitive way of life with lower standards of living than our ancestors enjoyed in the dark ages.

A huge proportion of the world population live is such conditions already and even more are thinking that way. Perhaps those with the medieval mentality will be best able to perpetuate the species.

Aspirations?

I don't think that I have ever had much of a sense of direction. Mostly my life has happened to me, and although i have a natural tendency to fight against the flow, I get swept along on a pretty well worn channel. I cannot claim to have had no opportunities, as I was lucky enough to have been born with a higher than average intelligence and a strong instinct for survival. I went to Grammar school but didn't know why and basically squandered my time there, drifting aimlessly into a career in teaching. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy working with students and like to think that I was able to help some along the way and even steered some in directions that I might have followed with the right kind of guidance.

Every time I read a book, especially one that really grabs me, I aspire to be a writer. I cobble together this blog on a fairly irregular basis and that is about as far as it goes. Oh I have written a few short stories and even done a short course in creative writing but I cannot seem to manage a long term project. I lie in bed at night and have great ideas for stories but when it comes to applying myself to the task of setting down those ideas my terrible sense of direction fails me again and again. I must have started a dozen or more novels, and have yet to get past the first chapter.

They say that everyone has a novel inside them just waiting to get out. I suppose by that, whoever came up with that meant that we all have a different story to tell. When it comes down to it though, most of us lead fairly dull lives; we exist and our presence means very little to the world in general. Only a fortunate minority manage to make a difference, and their stories would be worth reading.

Rarely do I have any idea what I want to say when I start this blog. Today is no exception. If you have read my entries before, you will realise that I don't even proof read and no my writing tends to be full of errors. The reason for that is fundamentally idleness and I apologise to anyone who is affronted by my apparent lack of care. I do in fact care a great deal about what people think of what I write and value your comments and criticisms. I don't suppose that I will change too much in respect to my frequent rants, but hey this is one place where, for now, I can say what I want.

Maybe this year i will make a greater effort to write better and more frequently. Perhaps , just perhaps I can develop one of those dormant ideas into something a little more worthwhile. I'll keep you posted.

Happy new decade

Well the noughties are over and done with and will probably be remembered for all the bad things that have happened as mankind continues its spiral into inevitable oblivion. Financial meltdown exposed all that is wrong with the system that we all depend upon, politicians, our representatives were shown to be liars and cheats, and the western interference in the Arabic world has opened a chasm between the west and the world of Islam that can only get bigger with the growth of its greatest export - terrorism.

The new year has been heralded with an attack on a Danish cartoonist by an axe wielding fanatic, and the continued decline of Yemen and Somalia, along with other failing nations. How long must it be before people realise the direct link between blind adherence to ludicrously outdated dogma and the inability of nations to govern themselves in an increasingly complex world.
Airport security has had to be ratcheted up again because someone was mentally ill enough to fill his underpants with explosives, and allegedly there are other loonies willing to shove bombs into their bottoms simply to blow up aircraft and kill innocent people - all in the name of a peaceful and tolerant religion of course.

Anyhow - the sun is shining again today and although it is very cold, bright days such as this one are a bonus in probably my second least favourite month of the year. I am determined to write more frequently this year and I will try not to rant too much about the evils of religions, but in my humble opinion the men in silly hats have gone unchallenged for far too long.

May my reader have a good new year and do keep up the feedback - I love a good argument.