It’s Not Complicated. (536)

Epstein’s legacy is simply the canary in the coal mine of The West’s deep, dark, depressing, subterranean cavern of human failings.

It’s a rotten, stinking, oozing, vicious, viscous, discordant, shameful, venal, sick, unholy mess…

I’m talking of course of the cabal that own the world; that have more power than national governments and influence our lives minutely. Their entitlement, greed and sense of invulnerability is not something us ordinary folk can really comprehend.

While we are rightly shocked at Epstein’s paedophilia and trafficking of young women, his hold over the seemingly endless numbers of powerful men who shared his view that any other human was theirs to use and own, is more broadly about greed, power and corruption. With the drip of information contained in the infamous Epstein files, we are simply getting a glimpse into just how deep the rot goes, how wide, how extensive the networks.

The perpetrators were overwhelmingly men and vastly, outrageously rich. And many of them, while riding rough shod over the vulnerable and weak, are responsible for running the world we live in.

Anyone paying attention is aware of the Oxfam statistic that

The world’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of humanity.

Solving the man-made problems faced by so much of humanity is difficult to achieve because so much is stacked against the required outcome.

Many structures are rigidly, deeply embedded in the status quo.

Difficult it may be but complicated it most definitely is not.

Many folk on our precious planet with its dwindling damaged resources are in need.

A tiny handful at the very top have wealth beyond imagining.

There are estimated to be 800 billionaires in the US and even the tiny UK boasts 156 according to The Times Rich List.

Our outdated systems focus tax on income and not wealth and that is the first and very least of things that need to change. But which government will do this with the billionaires and all their resources constantly stroking them and flunkies like Lord Mandelson ready to put their rich mates before their duty to country.

Humanity is now painted into a corner. The people we desperately need to get under control have all the power.

It’s tough but it is in no way complicated.

'It's complicated' is the biggest lie in town.

It’s painfully, clearly, heartbreakingly simple…

A handful of greedy corrupt nasty fuckers have it all.

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here are some old doodles in case we need illustrations to this very obvious point -

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And any regulars who check into this blog know I'm an old luddite and not on any social media.

My books are still floating in the ether - lonely - minding their own business if you want to check them out here Goodreads or listen to a lyrical, environmental tale on Bandcamp

Trump lights the global touch paper the day before legal Epstein discovery is due...

 ...with the appeasement and complicity of - well - just Sir Keir Starmer!

In light of the grovelling to Trump (the royal invitation obsequiously proffered from an inner pocket near his heart at the White House) and the disastrous and nightmarish following of the US, yet again, into Middle East catastrophe in Gaza etc - it should be no surprise that while the rest of the world watched in absolute horror, Trump's illegal invasion of another oil-rich country, Starmer should be hot out of the blocks fawning, eager to please and acquiescing to the behaviour.

Trump has gone full Putin. No surprise to anyone but Starmer. The rest of the world, including some who would love to perpetrate similar actions (Russia and China) have clearly condemned this heinous action.

As Emily Thornberry (snr Labour MP) pointed out, you can condemn Maduro's regime and still see that this action is abhorrent.

Apart from clearly wanting to emulate ex-PM Blair - deeply embedded in the Starmer government via the TBI (Tony Blair Institute) - it is a huge embarrassment to at least three of the four nations of the so-called United Kingdom - Scotland - that condemned the Israel/US/UK abominations in Gaza and called for an early cease fire, ditto Ireland and Wales. Albeit Wales did so without the support of Starmer's Labour Party in Wales.

No one but Starmer believes Trump’s drug trafficking excuse for grabbing Maduro (Trump just pardoned ex-president of Honduras and infamous drug trafficker Juan Hernandez) and Trump himself openly stated he wants Venezuelan oil.

This latest lack of backbone and failure to be on the right side of history from the UK Prime Minister should be a huge embarrassment and enormously saddening to anyone left with a moral compass.

Terminator agrees… (534)

I decided to go full dystopia in the last blog of 2025 albeit the cringe Hollywood type.

This is a logical progression from the previous two posts and also letters I’ve had published this year on the subject of our at-risk humanity – as increasingly a majority ‘choose’ to hand over their lives, their privacy, information and even biometric data their very selves in minute detail to the tech oligarchy.

The dehumanisation of humanity by tech is a long running theme on this blog – check out – post 147 More Less-Contact Is Making Us Horrible

The jury is no longer out on whether social media is robbing us of our creativity and empathy. Its no longer out on whether the use of screens is robbing our children of the ability to concentrate and there’s no longer any doubt whether the use of AI is dimming human intellect.

SO – I refer to the Terminator films. Things I’ve always regarded as popcorn viewing at best.

RE-watching a 20p DVD over the weekend of the one I considered the weakest, I was struck by a quote from the character Kyle Reese when faced with the Cyborg version of John Connor. (So – no - I’m not doing the obvious one from Terminator 3 The Rise of The Machines “Skynet IS the virus”

It’s from the 2015 Terminator; Genisys and it relates to the way all human IT devices become connected, interactive and therefore easily under the control of the tech behemoths. And the juxtaposition of reality and fiction causes it to make sense.

Those who control the real AI systems are themselves malformed humans lacking decency, empathy and those things that in the past we valued about humanity. No need to lay out the current hideous examples.

Kyle Reese says something I’ve said in many forms many times about the current human willingness to give up autonomy, individuality and humanity…

“These people re inviting their own extinction in through the front door and they don’t even know it…”

And – of course when I’m in dystopian mood – I’ll recommend books of mine that I always do on such occasions.

The novella Zero One Zero Two

The calmer and more hopeful audio book/narrative poem - Casey & the Surfmen

Merry Christmas.

OUTSIDE (534)

 This month - a poem. I've not done one in a while - topical, reflective or humorous - and it occurred to me that considering the previous post there'd be - if incomplete, at least sufficient context. 

OUTSIDE

On the outside I remained

Perceiving those contained

Legitimacy feigned

Truth strangled cold constrained

Expression ever reigned

In

From the outside I observe

Absence of verve

Survive dodge swerve

The good lose their nerve

From the fight they always curve

Away

Yes it’s strange out here

But it’s painfully clear

The front’s the same as the rear

The driver – always fear

No 5^th gear to

Escape

This dreary gilded age

Of complicity not rage

Lives made of beige

The self constructed cage

Your soul for a wage

Slip

All-new pay-to-die

Pretty vapes your lungs fry

Mine the earth pollute the sky

Accept some Netanyahu lie

The end is nigh

Not just an old guy with a cardboard placard

So why not chuck it all away

And come outside

With me...

Slaves To The Machines & The 21st Century Choice Delusion... (533)

Admittedly, I’m that Luddite who’s rejected everything from TV (since last century), the nonsense of time-saving devices like dish-washers and microwaves up to and including the ubiquitous smartphone (what a euphemism). I’ve never had credit cards and returned the contactless payment card to my bank. I’d never requested one. Many forms of payment now require contactless cards including the means of getting around used by us Luddites the most - public transport.

In 2025, choice is a marketing illusion boiling down to comply or bye bye.

Increasingly – all that matters to the tiny percentage at the top of the unstable socio-economic pyramid – is how efficiently the masses can be separated from their money.

Meanwhile the inconvenient truth of the vulnerability of overwhelmingly automated systems is entirely ignored.

And – as a quick aside – while we’re tricked by the idea of choice. Did anyone ask for this? Did anyone vote for it? But no one resists…

I am still aghast when I have to have THAT debate in the supermarket because I’m forced to use the self-service tills I was assured would be optional. Occasionally the response is aggressive/ sneering/irritated when I insist on a human-served till. This from the very people who are seeing their colleagues made redundant - their stores employing fewer staff. The ones who are employed, do more mindless work – with little human interaction – often just standing near the self-service checkouts watching for shoplifting or to jump in when something goes wrong.

Slaves to the machines.

Human fail-safes have been gouged out. ‘Customer care/service’ is history, now just part of marketing speak. Try submitting a complaint (there is rarely a phone number with a human on the end) you’ll get nothing or an auto reply; your issue is ‘important’ and has been ‘passed to the relevant department’ as I recently had from LNER. It isn’t and it hasn’t. Its in the cyber bin.

Yesterday while waiting the dreaded 5 hour window for an internet engineer I got a text, obviously automated, telling me they were ‘outside my house’ They were not. In fact even after waiting 6 hours - still no one. Well done Openreach, arm of BT, our biggest communications company...

Meanwhile, hacking is a global unresolved problem. In the UK recently, companies as diverse as Jaguar Land Rover and a private nursery – were hacked out of action – to add to the airports, shops, banks, hospitals etc. that have been paralysed.

We are constantly lied to that the issues of online abuse, and predation are insurmountable. One huge step would be to stop anonymity. From racism to child sexploitation – the person behind the vileness having their name right there – would alter things significantly. Social media moguls will not do this because the rabidness on these sites is their bread and butter. Governments will not call for this because they are scared of the tech giants.

Here in the UK – in his ugly attempts to out-Farage Farage – Starmer has started banging on about digital ID cards in relation to tackling migration. Of course – whipped-up fear of foreigners is always a good way to push through stupid things - like BREXIT.

The man Starmer emulates in so many unfortunate ways – the old war criminal Tony Blair - suggested this during his unfortunate tenure. It was rejected wholeheartedly by the public. Now, however, when most folk unthinkingly give their most intimate personal and biometric data to faceless multinationals for free through their digital interfaces (facial recognition, thumbprint, voice ID) it’s caused only the slightest ripple.

NHS data – the patient records of millions going back decades (in England at any rate) is available for sale. Are NHS patients happy with this? Do they understand what it means? No one knows. No one cares.

Mass personal detail harvesting by the data vampires and our naïve over-reliance on faceless, fearsome tech and the billionaires who thrust it randomly on the world without our say so, is foolhardy. They know everything about us, we know almost nothing about them.

Yet we stumble towards AI domination with – of all people – Elon Musk one of its architects…

Apart from greater chaos, mass global unemployment, endemic poverty, further dehumanisation, societal disintegration and more rabid extremism – what could possibly go wrong?

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Not being part of the social media jungle, never having dated a celebrity or had a public ‘accidental’ wardrobe mishap – I’ve no means to promote my stuff in the over-heated 21^st century – however, as always, I still link some of my books. See below. And while Amazon bought the publishing platform used for some of my work (of course they did) these publications are avail on wider distribution which means if you like anything (Ella & the Knot Fairies for Christmas?) you can buy via other good online book sellers. Click HERE to view.

Thank you.

BANDCAMP Friday 3rd October

 

And - yes - they sent some wee funky graphics this time. So, just a reminder - Bandcamp run this scheme to support artists and in fact BC got a special mention my previous post re the mad Trump tariffs. 

On Bandcamp Fridays - artists receive un-docked revenues. SO that could be as much as 20p extra for me for a story I wrote over a period of a decade - 

Casey & the Surfmen

This mythical environmental piece is composed in verse and available to download as a 25 minute audio from BC (click on the title above).

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Also - if you are already thinking about the C word - my illustrated children's book about mixed race families, mother love and the knotty issue of hair - Ella & the Knot Fairies is on offer so you can check out the the e-book and think about buying some copies for presents from any good online book store. Just click on the title.

Cheers 

Amanda

Trump; ‘Rotting Old Fart Trashes Everything.’ What’s new? It may be too late in humanity’s day to fix this… (532)

 

A frenzy over the temporary disappearance of Trump from his permanent spot in front of a slavering media, ended all too soon with a golf-course sighting - of course.

As Trump’s authoritarianism takes root in America ‘Rotting Old Fart Trashes Everything’ is hardly a new phenomenon but no one as completely stupid has done it as brashly, and with such naked connivance of people who should know better.

The carnage wrought on Britain by the Brexit lunatics is as nothing compared to the US national and global collateral damage since January of this year.

Some Trump supporters are bleating – this isn’t what they wanted. Many – now being thrown off basic healthcare. To them I say – as it’s phrased here in Scotland - ‘get tae f--k’, they did this.

Trump was never subtle. Not sensing the latent now blatant authoritarianism is to be so naïve you should be in nappies (like Trump). Or its wilful ignorance because of a blind addiction to bigotry.

Britain’s weevil Trump, Nigel Farage is also successfully enriching his privileged self while targeting migrants. Note the ugly protests outside migrant facilities, ostensibly because folk are ‘worried about their women’. Meanwhile no protests outside police stations despite the problem Britain has with sexual abuse of women by serving police officers. No protests outside the BBC despite their terrible record of shielding sexual predators (e.g. Jimmy Saville) etc, etc.

My personal teeny tiny trigger this week was an email from an old site I inhabit Bandcamp, popular mainly with musicians but also a few of us poets who do (did) performance poetry, poetry stories and spoken word - click here Casey & the Surfmen (audio)

Bandcamp provides a platform for the sorts of artists who used to be able to get by at the lower end of things and who now find it almost impossible to break through the solid celebrity crust that has formed over both the arts and entertainment industry. Like much else in life – its ALL or NOTHING now, no middle ground. Success has less and less to do with talent and more to do with have you managed that relentless social media frenzy or have you shagged someone who’s been on the telly.

Tariffs – just one part of Trumps wrecking ball approach – reached their poisonous tentacles into my tiny corner of existence this week with Bandcamp having to explaining to artists (mainly musicians) how to suspend sales of merchandise to the US so that they/their fans are not caught in the hideous tariff trap. Until when? Who knows.

Newspapers reported gleefully that last Friday a US appeals court ruled that many of Trump’s tariffs are ‘illegal’. Er – yeah – because the 32x convicted felon and multiple sexual abuser and CLOSE pals of one of the worst known paedophiles in recent US history really cares about the law...

Many artists – including me – find imaginative ways to pay our bills so that we can continue to do what we love / are driven to do. It was hard before covid to make a living from creative endeavours. And in the post-covid, more reactionary, right-wing world – no one in power wants creative, critical thinkers clogging up the route to riches by seeing, saying, singing or sonnetising their truth.

For myself I’ve done cleaning jobs – including public toilets. Currently I work minimum-wage zero-hours contract agency work (the very type I’ve written and cartooned about on this blog) to pay my bills because to go back to Law would mean giving up writing, creative thinking, political examination and all that I value.

So, on behalf of my fellow artists – especially the ones, unlike me, who do the merch thing, while it may not be edifying or subtle - to those who follow, support or supported the rabid wreckers of this world, because they couldn’t resist the gross bigotry, even if it meant the destruction of everything good, they are a massive pile of fewmets who can yes ‘get tae f--k’.

R.O.F.T.E is not a new phenomenon – it’s just spread faster, stinks worse plus – as per my previous post - it may be too late in humanity’s day to fix this time...

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NB; this was a pre-post as I’m busy Tues so – I was picking up on poor economic news Sunday and of course there is always Ukraine, Gaza, starvation, environmental catastrophe so if the world ended between Sunday and Tuesday – SOZ.

* And – because I’ve not said it in a while and folk are asking again – I am NOT on any social media, never have been, do not have a smartphone – in effect I do not exist other than in the fading ‘real’ world… but you can check out my very obscure old scribblings here My BOOKS and my environmental story poem audio on Bandcamp - above.