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Tuesday 26 November 2019

328. Black Fridays will wipe us out before climate change…


Consumerism will wipe us out before we've made the planet entirely uninhabitable for humans. We now live in a permanent state of Black Friday.


I've railed against this on a global level and on a local level (here in Edinburgh, like a lot of cities, cutting down trees and hedges seems to be an addiction). I have written about it on this blog as well as in my fiction Casey & the Surfmen and Zero One Zero Two

But there is a dark race going on as a background to the more obvious self-harm of Brexit and societal conflict. Consumerism – the very comfortable bed-fellow of rampant Capitalism.

Consumerism is killing us directly at a startling rate, exponentially, efficiently and globally far faster even than climate devastation.

Right on your very doorstep there are people killing themselves by consuming shit for the financial gain of other human beings and we don’t seem to be able to get enough of it.

Car use is one of our favourite cancers – the one we hug to our bosom while chanting and fist waving about beating bodily cancers. As recently as the 1970s it was not the norm for most families to own a car (or two). We know car usage contributes both to obesity and poisons the air we breathe in a very immediate way and that is if you exclude the carnage that happens on our roads daily. We even seem to have gone soft on the more recent scourge of phone use during driving which is – as I pointed out to one driver when I knocked on his car window yesterday ‘dangerous, selfish and illegal’ (Yes, I’m one of THOSE women…)

Yet car over-usage has ceased to be a regular topic of conversation because we’ve collectively given up on the idea of reducing it, falsely mollifying ourselves with the dummy idea that electric cars are going to solve the problems. We are obsessed with the idea that we can carry on as normal and science will dig us out of this mess. Presumably we also think there is no environmental impact to producing new cars? Will they magically not run people over or keep them from exercise... Ditto air travel. We know it is a significant polluter and the tourist traffic it dumps on now- tourist-dependent poorer countries is an abomination, disenfranchising and reducing the local populous to tourist slaves. But you only have to spout about the ‘opportunity’ for everyone to have cheaper holidays and any environmental or social argument evaporates. Ditto the vile and ocean-polluting cruises ships. Because it all makes money – for someone.

Drugs – legal or illegal are wiping out thousands of us every single year and the figure is growing. But drugs are making money for someone somewhere and the ones that aren’t cooked up in factories are grown on land that could be used to grow food.

The stress of non-essential spending-related debt is taking its toll on people’s health. The scourge of of gambling has eaten it’s away into the epicentre of many families like a new form of heart disease.

Try challenging rampant capitalism or destructive consumerism and the ready mantra of CHOICE is screamed in your face. Choice is party of the holy trinity of this death cult.

Fast/processed/unhealthy food! How many, many ways is that killing us? Directly of course as the exponential rise in obesity continues – heart attacks – cancers related to poor diet but also because land clearance to grow meat and grain to feed cattle is devastating huge swathes of land leading to more floods and soil erosion. It is routine to pump cattle with antibiotics and this is helping medicine resistant strains of truly devastating diseases develop at a rate we cannot possibly keep up with in our disjointed fractured world.

Plastic surgery has become ‘normal’ for ordinary people where it used to be the preserve of aging Hollywood actors. Every few days another story hits the media (I won’t say headlines as it’s too regular for that) of a young woman being butchered at her own expense to have larger breasts or a larger bottom or a smaller waste or a different shaped nose or mouth. It's body consumerism. No, plastic surgery is not killing humans at as significant rate as other things but its increase is another symptom of the unspoken acceptance of any harm if it is lucrative. We have completely lost the plot on this one.

Every moment of every day someone somewhere is making a decision that money is more important than human life (Grenfell Tower?) The two Western democracies that could and should be leading the way on these vital issues are in socio-political meltdown.

Environmentalists I applaud you. As a non-car owning, non-smartphone owning – non dishwasher/microwave (etc) owning, non-tourist wierdo, I consider myself one. However, another human self-destruct mechanism is beating a path to Armageddon and I think it will get there first.



Saturday 23 November 2019

Sad Saturday...

What happened to progress? 
And as I'm lost for words this random post is in old doodles.

Victim blaming is still so popular...




and these are the types who brought us Brexit






The world's wealthiest democracy!



Re Trump, Johnson, Prince Andrew (etc) will this be known as the era of the privileged, creepy rich white bloke?



And when are working class people going to reject the xenophobia and wake up and smell the coffee?



Oh - and international shit



'Stupidity wrecked our futures' discuss...



Tuesday 19 November 2019

327. Prince Andrew/ Flooding / Train Fights - basket case Britain laid bare!


Andrew Prince of Pervs is just one unpleasant symptom of the disconnect between the fantasy of Britain and reality.

Even the blessed state of being TV-free for two decades didn’t allow me to entirely avoid the hideous staring-eyed bollocks being babbled by Britain’s dimmest royal (and that’s saying something). Did he learn that blank-faced fibbing from Tony Blair? The bigger the lie the emptier the look?

My take from the snippets I picked up while scanning for real news on the internet and listening to one friend who was genuinely mesmerised by the appalling performance, was that – no - our Prince of Pervs couldn’t remember anything about ever having met the 17 yr old pimped to him by the known paedophile Epstein, but he had vivid memory of taking his kids to a very specific fast food joint at that time.

Then there is the flooding. After nearly a week of claiming there was no national emergency, Boris Johnson finally took a load of troops to Yorkshire and attempted to show some synthetic sympathy for the non-Etonians suffering more environmental carnage or at least generate some damage limitation TV footage. Whether the troops were there to help the flood effort or protect posh pig man from angry victims was unclear. And as more housing estates are built on floodplains and developers are allowed to simply plug into already over-used infrastructure and more land is denuded of natural vegetation, directly increasing the chances of future flooding, there seems no plan to deal with what is going to be an increasingly regular feature of UK life.

Meanwhile – babysitting in Bramley for my grandchildren, we had our own mini drama when my daughter was delayed getting home because there was a serious fight on the commuter train from Leeds train station. As with a lot of local train routes there are never enough carriages. Rush hour rolls around every day but that seems to come as a huge surprise to the privatised, profiteering train companies whose local trains regularly have just two carriages despite there being at least four carriage loads of passengers. This time it was too much for one angry man who sadly took it out on the hapless guard and a nasty brawl ensued.

What these three things tell us loudly and extremely clearly – in case anyone hadn’t noticed – is that Britain isn’t working. Britain is currently the basket case of Europe; like a slobbering, senile, incontinent pensioner grabbing at a nurse’s bum, still under the impression he is no end of a devil.

The Brexit nutters who keep banging on about how Britain used to rule the waves and can again, are not only wrong, not only dangerous, not only deluded, not only dragging the whole country down the sewer with them they are completely insane.

The first story tells us that our archaic institutions and ‘traditions’ are a sham. The second story tells us that there is one enormous issue that could finish us all while the most mediocre bunch of English politicians we’ve ever had the misfortune to see in high office piss about staggering blindly from one catastrophe and waste of time to the next. The Third story tells us that the people are at the end of their tether.

It is not going to end well and the saddest thing of all is that it didn’t need to happen. We could have spent the last three and a half years dealing with the things that matter and make people’s lives better…

*
If you don’t read The Independent here are two more of my letters they published – one yesterday and one the day before.
Sunday 17th The Independent
(re; the ludicrous electioneering)


Dear Editor,
As a mother and granny, watching the myriad of political mediocrities wreck Britain and our families’ futures has depressed and worried me.

The added irony of knowing that those doing the damage will, due to their positions and income and in some cases inherited wealth, be cushioned from the catastrophic effects, rubs much salt into that wound.

Imagine my joy as the electioneering gets into full swing.

If I’ve followed things correctly then, apparently, come December 13th, regardless of the acknowledged economically disastrous effects of Brexit (with or without a deal), we will all be given a free tree, a free foot massage once a week and gold unicorns for breakfast every Sunday.


Monday 18th The Independent
(re Priti Patel [a resignation due to scandal in 2017 no bar to her serving as home secretary in this government...] boasting about abandoning British Children in the Middle East)

Dear Editor,
We are increasingly gripped by the fear saying the wrong things – while constantly doing them.
So, if anyone is wondering whether they dare say that it’s worse to have a woman with brown skin – Priti Patel - bragging about abandoning British children caught up in the middle east conflict we helped fuel – the answer – from a woman with brown skin is – YES – it is worse.
*
And remember for my books check out my author pages

Tuesday 12 November 2019

326. Extreme Brexit coping strategy… (do not try this at home)


I thought Lib Dem leader Swinson erred badly in pushing the other opposition parties to an election.


Then, since a pact between the two nasty parties was ruled out by Johnson, things looked a little different and I fantasised about the possibilities of a hung parliament leading to a genuine alliance of all Remain MPs from Remain constituencies – including Labour – finally lancing the suppurating Brexit boil.

Sadly, if no one else – some Brexiters may have read my blog last week and my fantasy was short lived. Farage again proved that he is as adept at swivelling on a stick and ignoring anything he may have said three minutes previously as the leaders of the two major parties. His democracy botherers will now not stand – he says – in direct challenge to Tory seats in Leave voting areas.

Plus, you only have to note the stepping down of Green candidate for Filton as he near fainted like a Gothic heroine in a bad Victorian novel at the prospect of the Leave alliance “rank opportunism” to see why the right almost always get their way in these circumstances. Opportunity is EXACTLY what sane folk need right now.

So – incredibly weary and lost for words as I am – here is an old doodle. It pencils the way the elite have crapped on ordinary people since 1983 when Thatcher began selling off what had been retrieved for us after WWII. And yet still the nasties enjoy the votes of huge swathes of the very people they are screwing.




And here is my extreme granny’s coping mechanism which I recommend if you are truly truly as desperate as I am. The water is Loch Long - Ardentinny. That is me (you can just see my head in the first pic) at the weekend – and yes I am swimming in a loch  here in Scotland in NOVEMBER…





I was so cold when I got out, my skin felt as if it was on fire but at least I could not form a coherent thought about Brexit - or anything else for that matter…

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For light relief check out my new (to be launched early 2020) comedy novel Sex Violence & the Wrong Mobility Scooter or if you fancy a dystopian peek at where we are headed try Zero One Zero Two or if you want a fantasy adventure for your young reader that actually stars a girl hero all the way through – one who doesn’t fade out – check out the Eleanor trilogy starting with Eleanor & Dread Mortensa by visiting my author page -

Tuesday 5 November 2019

325. Brexit - The Great Escape. At a polling station near you - December 12th


Reclaiming NORMAL on 12th December is doable thanks to the delinquency of Johnson and the ego of Corbyn and the stagnant mediocrity endemic at the top of our political system.

If we play our cards right.

Yes – suddenly there is a break for the sane people. The tunnel hasn’t come out in the grounds of Stalag Luft III. Instead, it may have come out in the woods with the sweet air of freedom already wafting down the dank dirty tunnel of what has been our lives since June 2016.

The combined entitled lunacy and uselessness of posh pig Johnson and spineless, fence-sitting useless Corbyn has led each to plump for the election that could put both parties in solitary for some time while releasing the rest of us from Brexit incarceration on one single day on 12th December.

In case you haven’t worked it out yet, if you want to be free of the ruinous right-wing populists and the dithering Corbyn idiots and have a future, voting could not be simpler on Dec 12th.

Votes for the SNP up here in Scotland are likely to go up significantly so no issue there.
Many of those unlucky enough to live closer to the Westminster sewer, if they think it through, will hold their noses and vote Lib Dem or, if Remainers actually organise themselves this time and are canny with placement of Remain candidates – the Remain alternative.

We can worry about everything else when we have regained NORMAL.

It may have seemed that, with another snap election, we were being served a rancid, cold, stale tripe sandwich but, for decent folk, this could be the warm, wholesome Christmas dish of delights of all time.

Bring on the BRUSSELS sprouts…

*

NB - and - yes - I see the irony of using a metaphor of a German prisoner of war camp but if you want to go down that path (or tunnel) its s triple irony because the Brexit headbangers have clearly forgotten ALL the lessons of a divided, xenophobic Europe.