England

I watched the game last night. Experiencing England playing is like having surgery without anaesthetic and also having to watch it.  It was a poor performance at best and Iceland did very well; their style of football much less predictable and refreshing to watch.  The English team let their fans down is so many ways; some have paid a small fortune to attend the games and to indulge in their ceremonial jingoism, some even having gone to the trouble to beat hell out of rival fans. Nothing like a few scars to bring home as souvenirs.

Our football players have inflated egos as well as salaries and see themselves as something special. They are paid a lot of money and when the chips are down they fail to perform. You can blame the coach but the reality is that the team are no good. A team is more than the sum of the parts; egos get in the way and that is why Iceland were by far the better side.

2016 has been a dreadful year so far, so many good people have died and now we are witnessing the death throes of English football along with democracy, the labour party and common sense.  An historic year and so far for all the wrong reasons.

Class

The word class is coming back into fashion. I have seen many references this week to the term Class Traitor, relating to the chaotic state of the labour party and the alleged organised coup against their leader.

I am reminded of the  wonderful sketch with John Cleese and the two Ronnies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2k1iRD2f-c

Upper class, middle class and lower class seems to have blurred a little since the sixties, though underneath the divisive categorisation still exists.  The upper classes still exist, detached from the rest of us and from reality supported by sycophantic followers who consider them a wonderful thing. The real blur lies between working class and middle class. I always considered myself to belong to the working class; I was brought up in a council house and my father worked in a factory. Then I became a teacher and overnight my classification changed in the eyes of society, if not in my own. Surely those who work for a living should all be part of the same group if we are to have such ridiculous classification.

The labour party was born from a need to protect the rights of working people. It represented them and was backed by trade unions, without the unions and the labour party, working people would have far fewer rights and lower incomes than they have today. Naturally the capitalist elements of society abhor the unions and Labour party alike and have been undermining these organisations since their inception.

Now the working class are abandoning the labour party and incredibly they are flocking towards an ultra right wing UKIP, in the mistaken belief that they will in some way be better off.  It seems likely in the light of our exit from Europe, that many companies will be leaving the UK and jobs will vanish along with them. UKIP will not want an increase in benefits and so the working man will be consigned to the scrap heap again.  Meanwhile the upper classes carry on as normal.

At the end of the day we are all the same, we are human beings, though some by accident of birth are more privileged than others.  Without a moderating influence though we are returning to the dog eat dog world of the past.  Sad days indeed.

Results

Well it is done and dusted and now we await the fallout and the consequences of going it alone. A small majority has decided that we should break our ties with Europe and stand alone in the world.
It would seem that the motivation to leave has been complex. Immigration seems to have played a significant role as has dubious statistics regarding the amount that we pay into Europe. Some believed that that money will now be ploughed into the NHS or used to fund pensions or to benefit ordinary people, but of course that will not happen.

I do not pretend to understand the complexities of our membership of the European community, nor do I grasp the full implications of going it alone; I suspect that most people are in the same position. I do feel though that we are embarking on a dangerous journey, with a population seriously divided and becoming even more disenfranchised and disillusioned with the system that we have. We call it a democracy, but it really is a bit of a sham. A large and significant proportion of our population vote according to the wishes of the tabloid press and the media in general. Most of which is owned and controlled by the political right. They had done a good job of destroying the Labour party, and the Liberals died a death when they became Lib Dems. UKIP is on the rise and the electorate will have to choose between the far right and the ultra far right. That is not really much of a choice for the majority of the people but it is realistically what we have to face up to.

Party politics is no longer working and yet we still go through the motions of electing representatives, who in the main represent their own self interests.  To go against their own party is political suicide and so they don't.

I feel for our future generations, whose horizons have shrunk almost overnight. The value of the pound continues to tumble and more and more companies are considering relocation to mainland Europe. There are increasing attacks on foreigners as we sink into the quagmire generated by Farage and Johnson.  It is possible that Scotland and Northern Ireland will go their own way and stay in Europe, leaving us stranded like seals on a mid atlantic outcrop.  I hope that I am wrong.

Goodbyes

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for my boyhood best friend.  I was best man at his wedding, and so this was the second time that I had sat in the same church.

I am not one to feel comfortable in churches but sometimes it is necessary to show respect and love to those who have died, or at least to their families and friends.  As always the building was old, steeped in history and overwhelmingly gloomy.

I last saw Martin last autumn. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was in considerable pain.  He managed however to be himself, the old Martin that I had spent so much time with as a boy was still there and we had a lot of laughs. Even then I knew that it would be the last time I saw him.

The church was filled to capacity and beyond; people stood at the back and every pew was filled. I have never seen a memorial service so well attended. Martin was clearly loved and remembered fondly by a lot of people.

The service began with Albatros, by Fleetwood Mac. An old favourite from the late sixties, and a song that I will never be able to dissociate from his memory. The rest was readings from his family and friends along with the usual religious reading and hymns,   which passed over my head as is usual.

There were several people there that I had grown up with and it was so nice to see them again after so many years. But I did wonder which of us would be next. It feels like standing on an escalator and getting closer and closer to the top - or maybe the bottom. Life is nasty brutish and short, so the saying goes, it certainly feels that way today.  Cheers Martin - Happy times.

Conflict

So very sad to hear about the awful massacre in Orlando. I am tempted to say that it was a mindless act but that is unlikely. The perpetrator was acting according to his belief and that is far more scary than imagining a mindless act.

I cannot imagine any of my beliefs making me want to harm another human being, let alone murder dozens of fellow human beings, and yet every day we hear of senseless barbarity being perpetrated in the name of a belief.

As a species we are divided in so many ways. We are divided by national borders, by colour, by religion, by gender  and by political persuasion and it is the divisions that seem to dominate and dictate world events.

There also has to be someone to blame when things go wrong. The FBI are under scrutiny now for not recognising the perpetrator as a threat, his family, if he has one may also be held culpable, but it is doubtful that the authorities will put any blame onto his beliefs; to do so would be to threaten a very fragile stability and to fall into the hands of the likes of Donald Trump who see the very existence of foreigners in his country asa a threat.

Fundamentalism of any sort is dangerous, but they all have roots. Most of the terrorist activity that we hear about has the same roots, and it seems that the roots are growing very comfortably with new shoots and suckers popping up everywhere.  The war on terror is not succeeding and each act is simply driving wedges into an already stressed situation.

We are rapidly approaching a referendum in which all eligible will be able to vote on a monumental decision and yet most of us have no real clue as to possible outcomes. It seems that the big issue for many is that of immigration.  Most will vote on purely selfish grounds, their decision being led by their belief, which in turn has been manipulated by the media machine. Few will give any consideration to the future and the implications for their children and grandchildren. The likelihood is that we will be leaving Europe in the hope that we can become great again. Echoes of Donald Trump and his nationalism that seems to be whipping his supporters into a Nuremberg-like frenzy.

If we go it alone, it is likely that we will become as insignificant as countries like Canada, and will be in the hands of the Tory party for decades to come.  May your God help us.

NHS

It is somewhat disconcerting when a GP tells you  that the NHS is fucked. Yes she used those exact words. She is young and looking to do something else with her skills and talents; whether she can find anything that pays as well remains to be seen.

I have had a lot of contact with the health service throughout my life; I have spent a lot of time in waiting rooms and in wards, the prospect of repeating the latter terrifies me now.

Getting appointments to see a GP is pretty hard. They seem to have endless lists of patients, each of which is probably a bundle of issues that can only present one problem in the allocated ten minutes. There was a time when GPs at least pretended to be interested in the patient rather than the problem but maybe that is just me. Much of my childhood was spent in the hands of the NHS, and although I remember a lot of waiting around, I always felt that someone cared.

The modern NHS is now in the hands of managers, with the structure being tiered; managers appoint underlings and so on, jobs are manufactured as the whole thing becomes a business ready for a takeover by the private sector.  Hospitals are no longer friendly, welcoming places. They are anything but. Car parks charge a fortune and retail outlets abound. Far more employees are there to run the building than to care for patients and the salaries of those in high office bleed the purse.

We are in danger of losing a wonderful service that we have all paid for and made use of, and that many of us owe our lives to. The current government is made up of many wealthy people who have interests in private health care and would love to give away the whole thing so that their friends can profit from it.