Throwaway

Toxic waste is never far from the news, and in an ever expanding technological era, the disposal of it continues to be a problem.

Landfill sites are becoming harder to find, waste treatment facilities are few and far between, while the stockpiles of poisons get ever larger. Some companies are shipping the stuff abroad, paying others to take on the problem of disposal, and vast heaps of our garbage is inflicting harm on the poor of those nations, whilst those in charge reap the benefits.

The Chinese have the right idea. They export theirs by the container ship load, and we, like many other western countries, pay them for it. It is November so pretty soon the shops will be full of it, all ready for that unmentionable one day in midwinter.

I think that he likes my cooking.

a money saving idea

I have come to the conclusion that the world does not need health and safety inspectors. Just let loose a toddler in any situation and they will gravitate uncannily to whatever is not safe for them. This is instinctive and there is no training required. Admittedly they will need supervision but even so the saving worldwide could be enormous.

Wittering on

As I write, my grandson and his mum are on their way here. Emma needs a holiday and I am looking forward to spending some time with them both. The house has been cleaned and tidied and as much as possible has been made baby safe. As he is crawling now, that is not entirely possible and no doubt he will zoom in on and identify the items that I have forgotten about. Kids have an uncanny knack of finding the things that they are not supposed to touch and he is no different to anyone else.
So for the next week I will find my time taken up by a very demanding but very loveable little chap, and if past experience is anything to go by, I'll be pretty exhausted at the end of it.

I am aware that I have written little in this blog for a while. I guess that on some level i need an audience and often i feel that I am writing to myself and that gets a little dull. Then of course I have had little to write about. Retirement is not always wonderful, and I can go days without talking to anyone. My forays into the outside world are becoming fewer and further between and my tolerance of people in general seems to be wearing very thin. It is almost as if I am unconsciously withdrawing into my own tiny space little by little and I may eventually fear the prospect of leaving it. Rather like a dying star there may come a time when I implode.

An ex colleague imploded this week. He had been ill for a while and so his demise wasn't surprising. All sorts of people have written tributes on the usual social networks, and none of them seem to have any connection to the man that i knew and detested.
Perhaps it is a good thing that people look back at the positives and forget the hard truth when people's lives come to an end. To speak now of what I, as well as most of his colleagues knew about him would not be appropriate, though I will not join those who wish to see him in such a rosy light. I do feel sorry for his family and close friends, but I will not miss him.

Before long, no doubt, Margaret Thatcher will go the same way and the media will already be preparing for the event. Obituaries will already be primed and ready for release and as is always the case, she will be seen in a glowing light and people will mourn her passing with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I may be in a small minority that will not rue her demise and will probably celebrate the event.

I have no doubt that my own end will be a cause for celebration for some and i hope that they will have the courage of their convictions and do so in style.

The way it is.

There is a rumour going around that the word "Gullibility" is to be removed from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Human beings are programmed to trust other human beings and as a result the vast majority of us are easily misled or conned. Most cons are pretty harmless. The stuff that is reported in the newspapers must have some relation to facts but the pressure to sell forces the publishers to massage and manipulate in order to make stories more interesting or attention grabbing. I pity any scientist who's findings get seized by the tabloid press, only to be sensationalised and misrepresented in order to scare or to raise the hopes of the public.
Commercials, especially those for female maintenance products are truly awful. Outrageous claims backed by pseudoscience, are swallowed whole by desperate women trying hard to stay youthful, whilst others truly believe that a caffeinated soft drink can make you fly.
We laugh at the old westerns where, dubious characters made a living by selling snake oil or the elixir of life and yes these people still exist. Now they sell far more exotic products, at much higher prices to a population that, though supposedly more educated, remain as stupid as ever.
Politicians sell policies that are worth less than the glossy paper that they were presented on, and thrive on the ignorance that they preside over. Religious leaders, (Ok I couldn't resist it.) propagate their own mythologies and lies, and find no shortage of takers. Parents present their kids with Santa Claus and the tooth fairy...... and so it goes on. Lies upon lies are the natural order of the day and people wonder why it is that as we get older we tend to become cynical.
It is worth remembering that the system in which we live is dependent on the fact that many of the people can be fooled ALL of the time.

It ain't fair

There is so much babble in the press about fairness, level playing fields, equality of opportunity and so on. The forthcoming cuts are said to be fair and from the point of view of those about to wield the knives, they will seem to be. Those in charge tend to come from privileged backgrounds where they already have the advantages of wealth, intelligence and social placing. For them it is almost impossible to imagine being without those things, however in touch they might claim to be.
Life is not fair. It is nasty brutish and short and for some it is nastier more brutish and shorter than it is for others. People who crave fairness are disillusioned. The only true fairness lies within the legal system, which, on paper anyway, puts no-one above the law and our courts do make an effort to put that into practice. However, within any system there is corruption, and the wealthy, or well placed may find ways to bend any system in their favour.
We are the products of our genes, and they provide a biological lottery, with unpredictable outcomes. We have to play with what we are dealt and make the most of what we have.
Children need to be made aware that fairness is a rarity and that the best they can hope for is a bit of luck or a tremendous amount of skill in playing the game.

Teeth

Beginning the food adventure

Burning of books

The burning of books has always been a controversial act, and yet it is an act that can be interpreted or used in a variety of ways. It is the custom in some parts of the world to burn worn our religious texts as a mark of some form of respect. In other cultures it is seen as a form of censorship or as a snub. Pastor Jones used the threat of making a bonfire of the Q'ran as a means of sticking two fingers towards the mad Mullahs and getting himself on the map at the same time. There is no way that his actions can be justified in the current climate, and had he carried out his threat, goodness knows what may have been preciptated as a result.

The whole series of events raises interesting points though. Burning of the American flag seems to be an almost daily event in places like Kabul or Tripoli and yet such actions are not condemned by the world as being , pardon the pun, inflammatory. Again it seems that the world of Islam is the only sector of the world population that cannot be provoked without fear of some horrific backlash that is likely to result in the deaths of more innocent people.

I for one am tired of hearing that Islam is a religion of tolerance. Pick up a copy of their sacred book and open it almost randomly and you will find passages that suggest otherwise. It would seem that the worst thing that one can be is an unbeliever. Such are condemned throughout, to hellfire and damnation or just death in the short term. That doesn't strike me as being tolerant.

We have the military wing of Islam, refusing to allow elections to take place, threatening to cut off the ears or hands of those who vote. Then we have women sentenced to death for "crimes" such as adultery, or flogged in public for exposing their faces.

What exactly do they tolerate?

Respect

I have an old friend, a fellow teacher, whose views on life the universe and everything are very different to mine. He is a Christian and is a man for whom I have the greatest respect. I respect him for what he does and the way that he goes about his life, and because he was one of the best teachers that I ever met.

We are constantly told that people deserve respect because they have faith, and this is something that needs to be brought into question. Religious leaders are held in awe because they "have faith" and of course because they wear the fancy dress associated with their particular club. We are supposed to hold these people in awe and of course many people do.

Why should the fact that someone has a strong belief, give them the right to be respected? There are many who believe that the Earth is flat, others that we are constantly visited by UFOs and some that think that a conservative government is a good thing, and these people are rarely held up as pillars of society or as anything else other than figures of fun. Yet Barmy Bishops, Mad Mullahs and the rest of the leaders of those unwilling to think for themselves are held in high esteem by society at large.

One of the most dangerous men in the world is coming to Britain along with a huge entourage, and we as tax payers will be contributing three million pounds as a contribution to the expenses. The Pope will of course be welcomed by the masses, although he can expect to be met by some degree of protest. As leader of his dedicated band, he has a lot to answer for, but in his position he can justify anything on the basis of dogma, and so will probably stand aloof from the protesters, maintaining his stand on abortion, paedophilia and contraception.

I have never met the pope and have no wish to do so. I do not respect him nor his office and I fail to see why we as a nation are shutting our eyes to the perils that he and others like him are inflicting upon the world as a whole. Respect is not a divine right, but alas there are many who believe that is the case.

Irrationality

Anyone who knows me will verify that I am reasonably placid and not easily angered. For some that in itself is an irritation as i don't rise to provocation. However odd things do make me feel really irked and often it is trivialities that other people see no harm in that get me going.
The other night, whilst staying in my daughter's house, I found myself watching the X Factor on the TV. I should have left the room and gone for a walk or gone to bed but I chose to stay. For those lucky enough to live abroad, the X factor is a "Talent" show. The word Talent is in inverted commas as I feel that such a word has no links to the X factor. In this show, a panel of judges, none of which seems to have a shred of talent themselves, let alone personal skills or even charm, preside over appalling performances by anyone who has the brass balls to stand up on stage and make idiots of themselves. Occasionally someone crops up who can copy a current pop song and it is they that get the plaudits from the panel and the privilege of going on to the next round. As the weeks go by the numbers get thinned out and the TV viewers get to vote on who should survive. This of course costs them money which goes to swell the bank accounts of the judges.
I believe that talented musicians emerge from years of practice and study and not through singing karaoke whilst out of their heads on cheap lager. However this is not the feeling of X Factor fans and those fat cats who run the show. It is about raising someone from the gutter to pseudostardom, whilst making huge profits from those who can least afford it.
The parade of contestants last week, and most likely next and the week after was like a queue of unemployables with an audience selected from a care in the community programme.
This show is extraordinarily popular and represents the terrible state of the popular music industry that is pushing tasteless pap down the throats of the youngsters of today.
I feel better now!

Being Granddad

I have spent the last week, well a considerable part of it with Oscar. He is a lovely little fellow and as babies go, he is very good. Having said that he is also exhausting. How mothers cope, especially single ones, is way beyond me. A baby is a full time occupation and a drain on ones energy.
I seem to be able to get him to sleep now and then, but his mind seems always on the go and he wants attention all of the waking hours. It also seems that attention alone is not sufficient. I can carry him around for hours or even stand with him, but will he allow me to sit down? It seems that I must be uncomfortable in order for him to be settled. How does he know i wonder? He can be fast asleep in my arms but as soon as i sit down, he wakes up.
Having said all that, he is a joy to be with and most of the time he is a smiling chuckling little chap who is fast becoming a little boy rather than a baby. I already tell him stories even though he understands not a word, and i look forward to the pleasure of doing the same when he is able to.
I know that he won't remember me next time i see him, but there will come a time when he does and i hope that he anticipates seeing me with as much pleasure as I anticipate seeing him.

Innocence

Originality

I don't think that I have ever had an original idea. The vast majority of us are in the same boat, and what to us may seem novel is not and has almost inevitably been thought of my someone else. Someone said that there are only a small number of stories, and that all the novels ever written are just variations on that limited supply of themes, all new novels being dervatives of those that have gone before. Being original gets harder and harder as time goes by as each field of human endeavour must have its limitations. In the early 20th century an eminent physicist was quoted as saying that we knew all there was to know about physics, and of course that was how it appeared before the discovery of sub atomic particles and radioactivity. All of a sudden, physics became the new frontier all over again.
There are still vast areas of science that remain huge challenges and for the prepared mind there is still much scope for discovery and new ideas. An there lies the rub. So few of us have minds that are open and prepared. Modern society does nothing to encourage free thinking. We educate or children to jump through hoops and pass examinations that require little more than memory of facts, and because educational institutions are bound by accountability and the production of standardised products, this sausage production line continues through to the majority of universities. These are churning out graduates, some of which can barely look after themselves let alone get jobs and push the frontiers of knowledge back.
We are so fortunate to live in enlightened times. We have all the advantaged and are no longer suppressed by the stupefying blanket of the churches. Throughout our history those organisations have tried their hardest to block freedom of thought, and have failed spectacularly, with pioneers prepared to risk their freedom or even their lives in order to pursue that freedom. Only in recent years has Rome apologised to Galileo for jailing him for asserting that the Earth orbits the sun. It has taken them hundreds of years to reach the same conclusion.
No government wants a free thinking populace, and with the controlling element of the church losing its power, the media, Television in particular, has been the tool by which we are regulated and steered. I was at a dinner party the other night, where Gordon Brown was being attacked by many of those around the table. Not one of those people had any personal knowledge of the man, had never met him and yet, they were all able to say how awful he was. They were basing their argument on nothing more than what they had read in the tabloid Tory press and had seen on the television. All spouted the same lines and of course will have been led by the nose to the polling booths to vote for the ConDems, and for a while will think that the new government are wonderful.
Many times i have said that I have a yearning to write. I read a lot and admire so many that are masters of their craft, and when i sit down to make an attempt at doing so I find myself overwhelmed with my own lack of originality and so i get nowhere. I have ideas of course but cannot claim them as my own. Maybe the only way would be to forget everything that I was ever taught and start again from scratch; maybe then I'd even discover myself.

World Cup Willies

Apart from the really dedicated fans, and the multinational community that live here, the World Cup is over and done with for another four years. Our team, so feted by the press before they left, have returned this morning, creeping into the country at sparrow fart, unsurprisingly without a reception to welcome them home.
The excuses will be made and the deep analysis will begin, millions of words will be written about why our national team was so deplorably bad and yet the truth of the matter is that fundamentally we are just not good enough. The rest of the world has improved and we have not.
England was once a major world player in more or less everything, but those days are long since gone and there are few fields in which we can claim to have some sort of lead. We are still there in the arts, and hanging on by the skin of our teeth in some aspects of technology, but sadly we no longer excel in very much at all.
We have become a society driven by greed and the desperate urge to acquire as much material wealth as possible whilst doing as little as possible to attain it. We are alcohol fuelled has beens, with a whole generation prepared to settle for poor standards in more or less everything and it is no wonder that so many prefer virtuality to reality. Thatcher's declaration that there is no such thing as society has borne fruit and with the CONDEMS in power, the fragmentation of what little remains will continue.
We need people to accept rewards that do not involve vast sums of money, job satisfaction should be a reward in itself and those that work should be paid a good living wage. Is a football player worth more than say a doctor or a policeman?
Our players have become vastly overpaid and overindulged, and like overfed animals they do not have the hunger to win. I'd like to see a world cup in which all the teams were comprised of amateur players. They would train together as a team and play together as a team, and although we may not see the dazzling individual performances of the likes of Messi or Ronaldo, we may see more sides either winning or losing as a team.

A narrow thing

Well England managed to squeeze a result from the game and will go through to the last 16 in the finals, meeting the old enemy on Sunday and probably having to suffer the traditional penalty shootout. The press and the country are of course rallying behind them again because this time they did their jobs properly and so they ride on a small crest, that is until the next game.

There did seem to be a reduction in the number of St George's flags everywhere, especially on cars, but that I reckon had more to do with the facebook story that the government had requested all men with small penises to sport a flag on their car so that a survey could be taken. That seems to have been forgotten very quickly - oh the short memory span of the Sun reading Condem supporters!

Grandson

World cup woes

Writing is a strange occupation. Some days it is easy to sit and write a few pages, the words just seem to fall out and assemble themselves appropriately , or not, onto the page, while most days it is a real struggle. I often feel that I have something that I want to say but cannot seem to generate the energy needed to express myself.
Since I last wrote anything, the world cup has been the all consuming news, in such a timely fashion burying the fact that we have a "Condem" alliance running the country. The machinations that will see us all suffer from a death of a thousand cuts are going on largely un-noticed as everyone's attention, The England Team excepted, have their attention on football.
South Africa is under the world microscope and so far, things seem to be going well. The pitches and stadia seem to be good, crowd behaviour has been benign, buried under the roars of the awful vuvuzelas, and there have been good games as well as bad ones.
The English press of course have been up to their usual tricks; building up the team as if they were the next best thing to gods, and then as soon as they fail to produce miracles on the world stage, condemn them as the worst things since sliced bread. That is the price of fame here and it is no wonder that some refuse to join the bandwagon and set themselves up for the merciless attacks from press and fickle public alike.
At the moment, the St George's flags are still flying hopefully. They adorn the walls of the housing estates and flap noisily from the roofs of bay racer's cars, and a lull of disquiet reigns waiting for the decisive game on wednesday afternoon, that could see the England squad of ridiculously wealthy ball kickers either save their embarrassment or leave South Africa to the teams that are able to put that new ball into the net.
Should the unthinkable happen, it will be the first time since 1958, and the players may have to sneak back into the country under cover of darkness or individually through various backdooors. The manager, so feted by the press in recent years will have to resign and the flags will come down and no doubt litter the gutters for weeks.
Football needs to come to the attention of the axe weilding chancellor, and the ridiculous wages that these primadonnas are paid need to be taxed heavily. Maybe then, like many of the filth rich, they will leave the country and some proper footballers who love the game can be used to replace them.

Vive La France

I have just got back from a trip to what has become my favourite country, France. As we all do, I found myself making comparisons with home, and although being on holiday is not the same as living somewhere, I find France to be a refreshing change. The roads are excellent and driving on them is a pleasure compared with say the M25 or any major road at most times of the day. Drivers seem more courteous and considerate of other road users and maybe this has a lot to do with the low traffic density as much as the attitudes of the people.
I love the way that the people, wherever you go, acknowledge your presence. People talk to each other and greet each other, something which we seem to have forgotten how to do.
On the downside, France has a number of drawbacks and I am slowly learning that for most of France, work is something that they like to keep in perspective. Sundays are hopeless as everything is closed, not that ther was much to be open in the village that we were staying in. Lunchtimes are impossible too - again everything closes for at least 2 hours from midday, so you might as well just go back to bed or go for a long walk until things start to move again. Many places also close on mondays or tuesdays and then there is the half day closing on wednesdays. Most of the time we were there, people were notable by their complete absence, and frankly that suits me very well.
The ferry crossing was tolerable because we had booked a cabin on the way over, and on the return trip the boat was free from the infection of school parties. I was reminded though of the huge drawback of public transport - that being the public!
However, my love affair with France continues and I will quite happily go back there at any opportunity. One day I might even learn French, though that would mean that I'd have to speak it!