Trump & The Unfillable Void.

Before I sign off for the summer I thought I’d post a final final (yes last week was supposed to be the final) quickie. And I know the heading sounds like an H. P. Lovecraft story but this contemporary tale of woe does fit something eldritch and inexplicable, barely describable.

It occurred to me, in all the fluff, drivel, hokum and swirling detritus surrounding the man no one can ignore, no matter how we try, that there’s one simple thing we need to understand about this malformed, shambling, chaos merchant and its this -

If Trump were to become a multi-vigintillionaire tomorrow, it would not be enough to fill the void where his soul should be.

Like Musk (and lesser manifestations such as Farage in the UK) and other creatures who walk among us fuelling hate, poisoning the well of humanity, exhibiting meanness, abusing women, revelling in spite and bigotry, stirring conflict and encouraging the worst impulses of the human race – the nothingness of the man is unfillable.

Trump is a black hole sucking in all that is good and wholesome leaving a path of destruction in his wake; from Iran and the global economy to the ridiculous mess of the Reflecting Pool and the devastated White House, from the women he’s abused and the racism he’s normalised to the children who’ve died unnecessarily due to aid and welfare and medical aid cuts. From the US citizens murdered by ICE to the babies incarcerated in cages, separated from their parents on the Mexico border he has left nothing but a trail of misery.

If we believe he and his ilk cannot consume us all in this oh so consumer world, we are mistaken...

FREE.

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From today (July 7^th 2026) for the next 5 days, most of my books are available free to read so do check them out by clicking the link 

MY BOOKS

(NB if the weird, presumably AI generated, 'gym' book is still there ignore it. Its nothing to do with me and has hijacked my page.)

And if you are living in this world you could do worse this summer than re-read E. M. Forster’s (1909) short story The Machine Stops. Look out for phrases that will ricochet around your brain;

The story opens revealing Vashti “a swaddled lump of flesh… with a face as white as fungus” who was “seized with the terrors of direct experience.”

“People never touched… the custom had become obsolete owing to the Machine”.

Meanwhile – here’s a piece to keep you til I see you again in the Autumn.

Grasping & Gasping

(colours of the world...)

Rotting hands grab green-backs

Star-spangled oligarchs enjoy renown

Stagnant blue bloods still leach off the people

Achromatic suits blame folk who are brown

Black ooze fuels purple fevered consumerism

Thwaites great white monolith warms its belly

Maroon liquid flows in Gaza unquenched

Blanks in nacreous garb spin and sparkle on telly

Yellow journos hold none accountable

Algorithms rush us straight to red

Spew beige sound-bites that don’t

And bile not worth being said

And The Grey multiply stumble stagger and shuffle

Skin eyes and lungs the colour of ash

All the poisons they drink eat and inhale

Urban armies of jaundiced zombies buying death for cash

My 60s childhood was indigo, burnt pink and emerald

Now most are in black or mourning shades of slate

Dazzling peach hot chocolate tart turquoise I remember

Today we practice denial but dress for our last date

As the lords of greed grasp and grab sealing our fate

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cheerio

Ebola; US/UK aid cuts, wilful naivety & the media's failure to give context...

If there is one plea I’d make to Western media its this, JOIN UP THE DOTS.

While Trump continues to rot before the eyes of the world and golden ballrooms and crypto currency obsess those with wealth beyond imagining and even sense and Netanyahu’s orchestration of the US/Iran not-a-war hits all the wrong notes and the struggle of Ukraine sinks further down the headlines – there is a little something else happening in the world. Something linked to my blog two posts ago concerning Africa and the West’s entrenched double standards and moral failures when it comes to that continent.

The latest, no-context story is one that’s been brewing for months. Ebola.

We are currently getting all the usual images of distraught Africans struggling with the newest outbreak of this voracious virus.

The WHO (dumped by Trump last year) has declared a public health emergency while The West continues as before; clogging the mediashpere with celebrity shite and platforming political dregs.

Two wrong assumptions fuel our lack of attention to what occurs on the continent of Africa - a. it has nothing to do with us b. it will not affect us.

In fact Trump’s cuts to USAID and consequent decimation of on-the-ground organisations slowed the speed of detection and reaction.

This outbreak of Ebola is predicted to be the deadliest so far.

Already the US is quietly re-routing its affected citizens to European and Kenyan quarantine centres though there have been protests in Kenya. Meanwhile, Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ threw 10million Americans off affordable healthcare.

This side of the pond – let’s remember that during COVID then PM Boris Johnson drastically cut foreign aid and the present Starmer government is taking further funds from foreign aid to put towards military spending.

And during the last Ebola outbreak the UK too saw its citizens fighting for the right to be treated at home leading one nurse to re-enter without letting on she might be affected.

This as schools are about to break and Westerners, happy to be treated like cattle at airports, start hurling themselves around the globe in search of cheap consumables, sun stroke and escapism.

Its a dangerous mix of public wilful naivety and a media that rarely gives context.

What could possibly go wrong...

Tony Blair is a war criminal…(539)

...sounds to me like saying rain is wet.

But its been oddly, quietly controversial since the catastrophic Bush/Blair Iraq atrocity, at least this side of the pond, the debacle being ruled to have been started not just on a false premise but on one that was known to be false at the time (ref The Chilcot Report).

So why am I writing about his now when I and innumerable others, have referred to Blair in this fashion for two decades while the rest of the world and much of the legacy media behaved as if with collective, selective amnesia?

A couple of weeks ago I received mail from the managing editor of Scotland’s newspaper The National informing me that IPSO (The UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation) ruled in the paper’s favour re certain complaints. One such was a letter of mine referring to Tony Blair as a war criminal. Something I do regularly.

Many papers that have, for years, published my missives were shy of using the WC tag and simply ignored those letters that did.

Notably, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Bush’s Freudian slip where he referred to that atrocity as the invasion of ‘Iraq’, there was a subtle change. The Guardian for example, for the first time, published a letter where I’d used the WC tag.

IPSO ruled in the paper’s favour and mine.

Its odd in a way as it makes little material difference to me. I and many millions like me, will always know Blair is a war criminal even though he’s protected by the colour of his skin his wealth, power and connections, from ever facing consequences.

But why does this matter now?

The answers to that dark question are legion -

Because we are repeating ourselves.

Because at some point the truth always has to be acknowledged.

Because we cannot continue in a world where only certain people face consequences for their vast crimes while victims always pay in blood, misery and destroyed futures.

Because Trump is in Iran.

Because Putin is in Ukraine.

Because Netanyahu is in Gaza and Lebanon.

Because its always about resources (see blog 483 All Wars Are Resources Wars).

Because power, like wealth is more unevenly distributed than ever and the two are more closely linked than ever and the powerful and wealthy are spending on war not welfare. (NB - in the US 40m Americans live in poverty while Trump’s war has so far cost the US tax payer an estimated $25BILLION).

Because vast swathes of the populous are malleable and easily persuaded to act against their (the majority's) interests even more so now by the tech bros who manipulate all narratives and those bot-billionaires are, in turn, pandering those who control government and military might.

Because we are at the zenith of the collision of catastrophic Capitalism and war-mongering. Greed and war have always gone hand in hand as those who have, continue to grab grab grab feeding their endless want want want, they need to be backed up by fire power.

Because carrying on regardless, we may (as per last month’s post) be the first species on the planet to bring about our own destruction.

Finally in this ‘because’ list which could go on, we must acknowledge the devastating AI/social media associated decline in that singular commodity most precious to civilisation and the counterweight to greed and violence - human empathy.

And so it matters to me that the man who has been a major 21st century catalyst to the normalisation of the heightened destroy and grab, dominate and subjugate process and is deeply embedded in it still via his Tony Blair Foundation and who, stretching irony almost to breaking point, was an early joiner of Trump’s Board of Peace – should be called what he is, a WAR CRIMINAL.

To IPSO I am perhaps a little grateful for one thing, a tiny amount of vindication. More importantly, we must finally acknowledge the ‘war’ (illegal invasion) for the atrocity it was and Blair for the abomination that he is even though we continue to blindly repeat.

Its the least we can do for the dead, displaced and traumatised. Without even that small thing, we are all shameful and shameless.

The End. It starts with Africa… (538)

In my dystopian novella Zero One Zero Two (e-book and paperback) – there is a background landscape where Africa has been quietly abandoned in a world where humanity effectively works its way to destruction.

The forsaking of the historically abused, gruesomely exploited cradle of humanity is not new but Trump’s war-not-a-war, already out of control, begun to distract from his vile past with the infamous paedophile Epstein, is a hugely significant catalyst.

And who have the world’s historically ill-used got to rely on in The United Nations? Well – the five permanent members – the ones who have always carved up the world and done so little for the exploited and the poor; the five who have in fact, historically been the worst colonial abusers, oppressors, warmongers and abusers/destroyers of the globe’s resources; The US, The UK, China, Russia, France.

Yes, in the short term, a world addicted to oil will focus on economic pain and their own inconvenience rather than on human suffering but this is so much bigger than another stupid Western slaughter fest in The Middle East.

Our own bargain basement Trump, the ultimately buffoonish Prime Minister Boris Johnson, chose to cut foreign aid DURING COVID while his government were dishing out government contracts to dodgy mates. And while his behaviour at home led to huge suffering and further loss of confidence in national government – this barely reported act of extreme injustice and cruelty had a much more far-reaching relevance. It was one of the first overt, almost boastful and blatant cruelties without the usual sugar coating and it mattered not a jot, barely registering with the public.

One of Trump’s early actions in his cataclysmic second term was to cut US AID. In 2025 The Centre for Global Development estimated that these cuts would lead to 700,000 additional deaths annually – many in Africa.

Of course there is plenty money for the war machine and Trump’s golden ballroom etc…

But this snake eats itself. Our very denial will be our downfall.

According to organisations such as Debt Justice, Africa subsidises the rest of the world to the tune of around $40billion PER YEAR in both repaying debt that often outweighs aid significantly and in the way its resources continue to be exploited.

Another interesting but ignored figure is the Action Aid calculation that Africa is owed around $36 trillion in Climate Debt by rich countries – countries like the US and Britain that have chosen to cut aid, have been at the forefront of the resource/asset gouging of that continent. However, they continue through politicians and a lazy media to portray Africa as an eternal aid sponge. The hard truth is the exact opposite.

There may be some short-term positive side-effects the Trump’s Iran horror such as more intra-African trade and a shift away from reliance on the unreliable West. Also some African exporting countries such as Libya may get an economic hoist – but whether this will benefit those ‘on the ground’ in a country still without necessary infrastructure and security to provide stable services to all, is not a given.

But as Trump’s stupid war gets away from his stupid rotting little hands – I believe something much bigger has been triggered than just more disruption to the black gold that fuels the comfortable lives of the soft, easy-living-uninterested West. Not least that in this latest sad, humanity-disregarding, episode of Actuarial Warfare – a Middle East country appears for now to be getting the upper hand. Or at least holding its own. 

Iran is not Gaza.

Two tiny choke points – The Straits of Hormuz and The Bab-el-Mandeb Straits could take the globe closer to that infamous tipping point. Both are significant for moving huge quantities of the stuff that literally fuels global trade and both are embroiled in Trump’s mess.

The White House malignant narcissist’s blasphemous, incoherent, expletive Easter rant will not ease the situation.

One piece of barely acknowledged news is the immediate crises caused in places such as The Philippines. Much of the cheap labour wealthy countries rely on comes from this small South East Asian country and its overwhelming dependence on imported oil has meant The Philippines was one of the first to directly experience economic disaster.

Africa may partially benefit from its recent growing economic ties with China especially as the economically legendary Petrodollar loses much of its global punch and even shipping securities and insurance companies begin to quote in Yuan. But Africa has already taken massive hits from Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine even though China is on the side – sort of – of Russia. Supplies of both wheat and sunflower oil to the continent have been massively disrupted.

Much of Africa’s farming is Middle East dependent i.e. its fertiliser comes from The Gulf states. And unlike rich countries, poorer areas of the world cannot shield themselves from these shocks. Cuts to aid along with the latest hits to oil/grain and fertiliser are just piling on already unsustainable pressure.

What is being felt immediately in The Philippines has been a long term drip drip effect on Africa and is now exacerbated by the Iran war. The fast, the slow, the short, medium and long-term repercussions will be catastrophic.

What the selfish, insular West should realise however, as in my novella, abandoning The Exploited Continent in this vicious way will ultimately effect those who think they are invulnerable to crises. We are all interdependent.

For decades The West has ignored the in-our-face climate crisis – because it could afford to. The results of Western greed and lazy, disinterested comfort were felt mainly by the poor of the world in countries The West saw as either holiday destinations or cheap resource suppliers.

Just as the West largely ignored the 2008 global financial crisis that it created – because it could.

The West ignored many of the major global health crises until it was touched – AIDS and COVID being the best examples. (I have written on this blog more than once how typical that the world had viagra but no cure for Malaria).

The insulated, cosy West has ignored common sense, logic, history and humanity in such adventures as the illegal invasion of Iraq. Both Bush and Blair prosper free, wealth, at liberty and taking no responsibility for what followed – the destabilisation of The Middle East [again] – mass migration, the rise of the Right Wing in Europe and the tragic knock-on effects we see today.

But there is always an end game. I envisioned a possible one in my novella.

Trump began his distraction war by bombing an elementary girls’ school killing 170 while negotiations were supposedly ongoing. So the suggestion that Iran will return to the negotiating table any time soon is just another Trump fantasy. Why would Iran partake?

The idea that The US is ‘winning’ is also a Trump fantasy. This is Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and other terrible etceteras.

But this time I strongly argue – the END GAME may not be simply another spectacularly costly US military blunder.

And remember the numbers -

While it costs around $13 million to launch one THAAD missile interceptor. The Iranian missiles it is trying to intercept cost a fraction of that – around $35k. Some of the mines laid in The now infamous Straits of Hormuz cost as little as $1,500. Oh – and approximately 3 THAADs are needed to down one Iranian missile.

I understand those who claim there is some sort of plan behind all this. It’s human nature to look for logic and a comfortable narrative. However, this view seems to be broadly based on the assumption – ‘surely no one can be this stupid’ and if they are ‘surely there are clever people in the background’. To them I say – I have a time-share on Mars to sell you…

Yes, we are hearing about global disruption to oil and rising costs. But here in the UK you’d barely believe the Ukraine suffering is still ongoing let alone this abomination in Iran. This weekend the legacy media were covering the usual slush. Easter eggs, Royal outings to be viewed by the zombie public, celebrity shite, holidays...

We’ve been here before many times.

Too many times.

We have not learned.

This time Trump may simply be painting the background story described in my novella.  

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For my regular readers remember I’m on no social media and never have been just existing in my tiny unnoticed corner of the real world. Do feel free to re-post on your own platforms.

Also, check out my other books HERE.

Apologies that the main link is Amazon but they bought the publishing platform I was on.

My books are available on wider distribution from alternative good online book stores. 

The Great Regime Change Irony. (537)

The sands of time only run one way which is something humans ignore.

Yesterday in The National (Scotland) and The Guardian (England) this letter of mine was published -

Dear Editor,

As the usual tragic civilian casualties pile up under rubble, including 170 blown to bits in a girls' school in Tehran in first wave US bombing, the world faces perhaps its greatest irony.

Trump has illegally initiated a war that has no congressional approval while calling on the people of Iran to rise up - in part because of the abuse of its own citizens.

No one would argue that Iran hasn't committed atrocities against its people but this from a regime that has its own masked thugs murdering people in broad daylight on the streets of US cities and 'disappearing' them into camps. 

Is there another country on the planet that needs 'regime change' more than The US?

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And this was hot on the heels of another letter that went like this -

Dear Editor,

There are many works of fiction that echo or pre-empt real events to the point that their prescience is unnerving.

At the moment I struggle to not chew over Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’.

In the film version of this sci-fi thriller, the actions of the psychic school teacher John Smith, played by screen favourite, Christopher Walken, saves the day although not in the way he imagines.

The lunatic right-wing populist politician Greg Stillson, perfectly captured by Martin Sheen, is a one-man wrecking machine whose rise to the top is so eerily Trump-parallel, it gives me goose bumps.

President Greg Stillson (Sheen) in a mad midnight craze – is future-seen by the psychic to press the nuclear button in his catastrophic, self-obsessed, if-I-go-everyone-goes narcissistic, sociopathic literal end game.

Just as Trump is now ramping up wars and conflicts both within the US and around the world, simply to cover his vast and incalculable failures and corruption actions, so did Greg Stillson.

Many Western politicians and even more folk in the media continue to behave as if there is something normal about /workable around this US administration. But I see no John Smith/Christopher Walken to save the day…

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Since that letter was published, Trump has started his war, egged on by Netanyahu (Israel of course a state with nukes, albeit outside of any international agreement) and according to sources in the US, the Saudi Crown Prince – Prince ‘Bone Saw’ – he of the brutal murder and dismemberment of American Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This is further monstrous distraction from the infamous Epstein Files.

But over-arching all this seems to be the unspoken assumption that some repair will magically happen in the future. Trump will leave office (!) or – eventually die…

This is not the fix people think it is.

Situations do not revert to what they were before a cataclysm. No landscape looks the same after a landslide or earthquake or volcano.

A new situation exists based on the trauma that has happened.

Add to that the cumulative trauma that our fragile planet is subject to on a daily basis and even the fabled ‘rebuilding’ cannot possibly, logically, realistically ‘take us back’.

The world will move forward with the baggage, destruction and more limited resources. We will not be in a post WWI or post WWII situation. We have deliberately destroyed so much of the ‘gains’ of those horrific sacrifices and those lessons learnt were not just forgotten but trampled underfoot after mere decades.

The sands of time move in one direction and they run out…

Do check this out… Zero One Zero Two

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PLUS this Friday March 6th it's

So why not download the audio version of

 Casey & the Surfmen

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.

Throwing it all away... (531)

At the end of the hugely under-viewed 2021 film Don’t Look Up – the character played by Leonardo Di Caprio says this line

“The thing of it is… we really did have everything didn’t we”

But its importance is far more than a memorable ending. What the character is saying is that we threw it all away. You’ll find similar lines in other dystopian and post apocalyptic films and books. The main protagonist, played by Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli says “We threw away things people kill each other for now…”

And that is exactly what we’re doing.

It seems to epitomise what we have done for decades and are doing faster now than at any time in human history – even including the world wars that left human and infrastructure carnage across the globe. We are throwing away everything we have, everything we think we value and more importantly – everything we need.

The US under Trump continues to throw away the economic stability clawed back by Obama during his 8 year tenure, its international credibility along with its global influence and it is literally throwing away the lives of desperate children and the ordinary workers of America – with the cuts to US AID and Medicaid.

Here in the UK – after the dreadfully hard-won and only briefly enjoyed gains secured for ordinary people after the sacrifices of WWII – the ‘throwing away’ begun with Thatcher, has not stopped.

Everything that was in public hands has been privatised. As a predictable and oft predicted result – services have plummeted in availability and quality and prices have sky-rocketed. The wealth gap in this country has widened exponentially and in poorer areas longevity has fallen for the first time since these things were monitored by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Wages have fallen in real time and – the same horror who gave us the illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq, with all its grotesque and ongoing consequences, introduced university tuition fees in a country where higher education had previously been free. So, having decimated an entire country on the other side of the world, Tony Blair can also take credit for economically crippling the lives of generations of young folk in his own bit of the globe.

And talking of Blair, the Bush/Blair fiasco in Iraq threw away the chance for stability in the Middle East. Its tempting, if you listen to the drone of Western legacy media, to imagine that, for example, ISIS sprang out of thin air rather than growing rapidly in the Petri dishes of the illegal invasion of Iraq and the disturbing events in Guantanamo Bay.

OF course now we have the genocide in Gaza, also facilitated by the UK/US.

We’ve been throwing away our planetary resources at an ever-increasing rate. Consumerism is out of control but the beast of late stage Capitalism needs to be fed. The more it feeds the more it hungers and the more we feed it. Chucking our resources down its dark deep endless maw until we’re cannibalising ourselves.

As humans, its often seemed to me that we are throwing away one of our most precious traits – empathy. Empathy, broadly speaking, is what makes us human. It developed with our ability to communicate, store information and accumulate knowledge and understanding. Empathy allows us to function as civilised beings. (Check out post 308 Get your face out of your phone.)

The unfettered invasion of technology and remote, robotic interactions in our lives seems to be driving empathy out. Now, regular readers of this blog may have an eye-roll. They may recall I am a Luddite. No smartphone – no social media. No TV since last century. No car, no microwave/dishwasher, no flying abroad for over 20 years. Etc. What does she know? Well, I still live in the world. A world where I am in an increasing minority (can minority increase?) A world where eye-contact seems rarer, children pointed in the direction of screens from babyhood struggle with language and concentration. I see it.

(Oh and the phenomenon of the childish tech-titan lunatic is beautifully dealt with also in Don’t Look Up.)

Is it this reduced empathy that allows us – in a world where we cannot not know how others suffer, to nevertheless ignore the traumas of our fellow human beings and carry on shopping, consuming, throwing away?

Our governments have increasingly thrown out the idea of regulation. That thing that protected ordinary people from the worst excesses of the Greed monster and the consumerism that is eating us. (check out blog post 383 Regulation is not a dirty word)

Recent examples of the devastating effects or the shunning by the rich and powerful of protective regulations are all around us but perhaps the best/worst example in recent living memory is the financial crash of 2008. In a nutshell – a catastrophic global financial failure brought about by rapacious avarice and the ability of the rich to pass the results of their failed risk taking down to those at the bottom of the economic food chain in secretive unregulated market practices.

Many parts of the world and many towns in the US where Wall St kicked off, for one example, the sub-prime nightmare, have not recovered to this day. Peoples futures were torn and thrown away as the Future’s markets grew fangs.

In fact, as the crash of 2008 is the main global economic trauma of my life-time, despite the ever available lessons of the 1929 Wall St crash and Great Depression, it feels as if even reality was thrown away.

Just consider that then Treasury Secretary Paulson in the Bush administration, gathered the heads of the richest US banks together and handed over a total $125bn as part of their self-induced-crisis bail-out while the victims – those who lost jobs and homes - got nothing. The final bill was $180bn and that is on top of the trillions those banks were borrowing from the Federal Reserve.

The top financial/social trauma this side of the pond recently was the 2016 self-harm of Brexit. Arguably as much to do with the desire of the wealthy for de-regulation as it was about rampant xenophobia. What throwing away our embedded and successful economic ties, educational, cultural, intelligence and research relationship to our closest block trading partner actually led to, was a massive hit to GDP and loss of global credibility. What we could show in return – even when we had the hideous splinter Jacob Rees-Mogg as Minister for Brexit Benefits - was a different coloured passport!

In 2016 we also seemed to throw out the notion that leaders should be even vaguely competent and at least apparently decent. That was when we got Trump I in America, Bolsonaro in Brazil and here in the UK, hopeless Theresa May who paved the way for the even more disastrous chancer Johnson.

Despite the film quoted in this piece and as we’ve just had the hottest year on record, its worth remembering, as per blog post 364, in reality Armageddon will not be televised.

But soon – very soon – there will not only be nothing left to throw away...