196. Sharing the world is the only answer.

Sharing. We tell our children to do this but the adults can’t, apparently…

Sir Frank Whittle (inventor of the turbojet engine) and I shared a house and also a public library – albeit a few years apart.

During WW1, a young Frank Whittle moved with his family to 9 Victoria Street in Leamington spa – where, later, I lived with my family from 1964 when I was born until about 1968. He also did engineering research in the reference section of the same public library where I indulged my love of words.

Sharing is the obvious right thing to do. Time. Space. Food. Resources. I do not understand why it is so out of fashion. I’m glad and intrigued to have shared some space with this man and I am glad I am sharing the world with you.

I love sharing this city with diverse peoples. Nothing lifts my spirit more than walking out and hearing the fast energetic patter of young Polish men and women, seeing little Asian girls dancing along in the wake of their parents, watching Italians and Spanish gesticulating and smiling. Old couples strolling in the park and young whips skateboarding; they are all part of the world I am privileged to share.

OK – let’s be honest. I don’t feel that way about everyone…

Trump and Farage and Marine le Pen and the other turds that floated to the surface when someone kicked the human sewage tank, advocate hate and exclusion. And those two corrosive ideas have become powerfully popular; catastrophically so. I don’t like sharing the world with them. But I am pretty sure I am forgiven that.

But why are they thriving? Why do they have so much purchase at present? For the same reasons these people have always risen – fear and instability.

Fear and instability are the bastard offspring of gross inequality.

Flabby Arab princes squander their nation’s oil wealth on Disney style palaces and ski resorts in the desert while their people live on dirt. Sir Philip Green asset-stripped a major (previously healthy) UK business over here and is happily buying yachts with the employees’ pension funds – having put 11,000 jobs at risk. And if you want a real view on what is wrong with the world look at the UK government’s response to this nasty greedy little monster. They have thrown around the idea of stripping him of his title (!) and now they are publicly begging him to throw a little money (from his multiple billions) into a pot for the people he robbed. The government is begging this thief.

Whether its Russian and Chinese oligarchs buying up parts of London with wealth creamed off state resources or African dictators buying fancy cars with aid money it’s all about NOT SHARING. The globe is overrun by spoilt brats.

There is something so dreadfully wrong here and deep down we know. Huge numbers of young people, in this country of plenty, are currently on anti-depressant medication (lots of money for the drug companies...) A significant percentage of the remainder are self-medicating with alcohol and dope (just wander down any suburban street and smell it).

I have said this many times before but it may stand saying again – THERE IS ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE. There is enough for everyone – even as the global population exceeds 7 billion – but only if we share.

If you are hungry it is not because there isn’t enough food on the planet – it is because some people are over-consuming and/or exploiting food growers. Too many people are taking a cut and it’s the poor always bleeding.

If you or your children are sick and cannot get medical care it is because, across the globe, governments choose to spend billions on weapons rather than health care. Also Pharmaceutical companies develop drugs based on profit not human need (see blog 97 Viagra – yes – Effective cure for malaria – no).

If your child cannot get an education it may be because there is not enough security and stability to establish schools and create long-term learning programmes because of war (see blog 190 – War. What is it?)

In the UK we recently uncovered a scandal where police – paid for by the state – were infiltrating left-wing pressure groups. British police officers were having full relations with unsuspecting women for years and even fathering children. There is no evidence that anyone in society benefited from these tax funded state rapes. Imagine how society might have benefited if those resources had been spent on trying to stamp out the endemic child sexual exploitation that is rife here and across the world.

These are all choices human beings in positions of power have made.

It didn’t just happen

It doesn’t have to be like this

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Do check out My BOOKS thank you.

195. a Little Shop of Horrors

Theresa May’s new administration is a government of liars, incompetents, deluded fantasists and racists – and that’s just Boris Johnson.

Let’s recap as UK politics has been moving faster than a Russian athlete.

Cameron - the person who kicked off Brexit to try to fix internal  Tory party bickering has resigned and is off to his temporary accommodation – a pal’s £16 million abode.

Nigel Farage - the man who brewed up a dirty racist storm and got ordinary people voting for Brexit out of fear the same way Hitler got people voting for the 3^rd Reich – has also resigned. He said he “wants [his] life back” well – so do the rest of us and there is no chance of that any time soon.

Theresa May is Prime Minister. So for all those whining about un-elected politicians in Europe (which is untrue as MEPs are elected) here is a totally un-elected Prime Minister. A PM who was happy, when she was Home Secretary, to preside over the abuses of Yarlswood detention centre, the incarceration of pregnant women and the sexual abuse of female refugees and who refused to help migrant children alone in Europe fleeing war.

The liar and bigot who racially insulted President Obama is head of the Foreign Office. (see blog 184 Boris Johnson racially insulted President Obama. Why is that ok?)

Let me run that one by you again - 

Boris Johnson, the liar (and that is official – he was sacked as a journalist for lying) and spoilt brat bigot who racially insulted the American President, is head of the Foreign Office.

Bo Jo apparently likes limericks so her is a new one of mine…

Boris the racist and liar

Survived on the politics zip wire

You think it’s a joke

He’s a pig in a poke

But its true and your pants are on fire.

Andrea Leadsom, would-be PM, has been put in charge of The Environment. This is a woman who thinks you can only care about the future if you have children of your own… Oh – and she’s also a proven liar.

Sajid Javid who, as Business Secretary, did slightly less than nothing to save the steel industry in Wales is now Communities Secretary. I bet the Wales ‘communities’ are dancing for joy. Javid rushed in at the 11th hour just as the industry collapsed. The collapse had been on the cards for years – exacerbated by the UK government’s failure to support France and Germany’s request to protect Europe from Chinese steel over-production. So Javid's key skill seems to be closing stable doors long after the horses have bolted.

Add to Javid’s appointment that of Priti Patel and Theresa May shows her 1980s genteel internalised racism. Each of the brown skinned politicians are in positions that white establishment have historically seen as ok for the darkies. ‘Communities’ (obviously because ‘they’ are not really part of Britain but a sub-set) And Priti Patel gets Aid – feeding black babies…  or not. Let’s see if P.Patel – who is an unapologetic advocate of cutting foreign aid to all the countries we exploit (oh and used to be in favour of the death penalty) –  can live up to the nastiness of that oily smug  Rees-Mogg. (see blog 24 - Cut Foreign Aid – what a spiffing idea).

NB Rees-Mogg recently enjoyed himself sneering at Mark Carney – the governor of the Bank of England. Rees-Mogg slated Carney for his pre Referendum predictions about the UK economy. Most of those predictions have already come true!

Jeremy Hunt, the total bad joke of a boy who has no political or moral credit among health professionals stays as head of the National Health Service.

The new Secretary of State for Leaving the EU - David Davis - has made it clear he is prepared to use EU workers, resident in the UK, as bargaining tools when Article 50 is invoked. Let’s see how Hunt manages when health workers from continental Europe leave and the ques at A&E and in operating theatres and surgeries grow and grow and grow.

Creepy Liam Fox is head of International Trade. Yes, the same Liam Fox who had his own personal MPs expenses scandal abroad with his wee pal Adam Ferritty – sorry Werrity…

I would go on but the nightmare pantomime is just too ghastly.

And where is the opposition?

Where indeed…

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On a positive note, Surprise Success

Thanks to all those (214,000+ readers) who in the last couple of weeks found their way to my online children’s mixed-race fairy story. Well done for finding it and thanks for reading.

Ella & the Knot Fairies can be found at www.ellaandtheknotfairies.co.uk

And thanks to Webmeister David for putting it on the web for me

194. Beside myself Beside the sea…

I tried, I really tried…

To be positive (see last post below)

I had a lovely 4 nights in Cornwall – yup – no airport queues and being treated like low grade cattle for your green brown girl blogger.

I swam in the Cornish sea which, compared to the Scottish coast was like bath water. Though I did notice that my daughter, mum and I were the only swimmers not encased in rubber wetsuits.

For once I tried to avoid the news. There was no internet access where we were and my daughter’s mobile phone spent the whole holiday in rice in a tub as she tried to coax it back to life (unsuccessfully – hooray) after an adventure down the toilet.

There was TV which, as regular readers are aware, is a novelty for me having been without the zombie box since last millennium. Yes, I watched some foody programmes (there are more of them and they are more stupid than ever) I watched a bit of Wimbledon. I caught a programme called Dance Moms which, if you are interested, is child emotional abuse with choreography. I even watched France beat Germany with many in the French team, clearly ancestrally from the African continent. People seem a whole lot less racist – haven’t you noticed – when someone with dark skin is helping them win at sport.

I ignored the revolting UKIP song – sung at me in a shop in Leamington (en route). I ignored the comment about ‘more foreigners’ in a shop in Cornwall. I was determined to be up-beat.

I tried to forget about Brexit even though snippets of news which invariably snuck through, informed me that another architect of the final solution – Farage - had, rat like, left the sinking ship he helped to scupper.

I tried to stay optimistic as that social basket case – America (if you were wondering which one) had more recorded evidence of police officers shooting black American men. Only last blog I commented how shooting black Americans in America almost seemed legal these days.  And then the dreadful, but frankly unsurprising reprisal. Unsurprising in a country with a massive weapons fetish, huge social inequality and no gun controls.

Close to home I tried to tune out the self-pitying whining from Tony Blair, as he was vilified in the Chilcot Report for the invasion of Iraq. Last week alone over 300 civilians were killed in bomb blasts in Baghdad as Bush and Blair’s legacy continues unchecked. When asked to comment, an American aid stated that the US government was distracted trying to defeat ISIS and would not be drawn on the findings of Chilcot. Which is a bit like saying ‘We’re trying to stop a man-eating tiger killing people, don’t ask me why we released it in the first place – thank you – we’re busy’.

The international community recently celebrated the conviction of Chad’s ex-dictator Hissene Habre and also the sentencing of African War Lord Jean-Pierre Bemba for crimes against humanity. Together these guys haven’t caused one fraction of the devastation and global misery Blair is responsible for.

I wonder why this white, wealthy, British ex-public school boy with international contacts is not going to be indicted… (er - no I don’t).

I tried not to think about the total absence of official opposition in the UK, a vital part of true democracy. The arrogance and vanity of Jeremy Corbyn has to be seen / heard to be believed. The Labour party bickers and breaks around him and the country remains in shock after the exit vote he did precious little to prevent.

As his woolly has-been-history-teacher (no offence history teachers) persona rolls on, the only display of iron-will is in relation to his own position. Ironically, Jeremy is even prepared to compromise on the issue of Trident.  ‘The rank and file voted for meee’ he bleats as he glues his arse to the top seat. No they didn’t. They voted for a left-wing leader. Jeremy Corbyn was simply the only option put up by Blairites to make the competition seem fair...

I’ve tried not to focus on the fact that as we face the prospect of another female PM in Britain it is not a strong, compassionate, focused, imaginative, feisty, forward thinking woman from the Left but a Thatcher-esque Conservative. Theresa May is a woman who felt no discomfort in refusing refuge to unaccompanied migrant children in Europe fleeing war. She is also happy to use EU citizens living in Britain as bargaining tools in our negotiations with Europe.

But looking out to sea with an unbroken horizon gives a sense of wonder and calm that is utterly compelling. Then I looked down to the sand and pebbles and seaweed and driftwood, letting my eyes wander. As a very young child I used to love to beach-comb. I try now to be restrained and not collect / remove shells or stones. 

Initially my attention was drawn by small dots and spots of bright colours. They were everywhere. Also shiny glinting discs and irregular jauntily coloured shapes. Then I realised it was not the iridescent inside of a shell lined with mother-of-pearl. It was not an array of natural ocean gifts cast about like speckled jewels. The colours decorating the shoreline were bits of plastic bottles, containers, bags, broken down into fragments by the rocks. They were everywhere, spewed up by the sea-sick retreating tide.

As I focused properly, it was like seeing a botoxed, surgery-enhanced woman, alluring seen from a distance but repulsive up close.

The occasional whole bottle, can, lid, tangled with the seaweed, drift wood and bits of net and nylon rope. Looking closer there were the more unsavoury items including syringe casings and condoms, food wrappers, baby wipe containers, bits of nappies and dog pooh bags and so on and so forth. And this was on a beach that had a current blue flag for cleanliness.

I lifted my eyes back to the sea to watch the bravely performing waves, and the enticing horizon and thought...

…whoever steers the ship now, it’s just a matter of how hard we hit the rocks…