The Caged Prince Will Soon Be King

 

 

          I am only a few months younger that Prince Charles and I have watched his world from a distance like many others have.   I have always been partial to him and have admired the caged bird as he sang his song of global warming, conservation and so many other intelligent and well considered issues and causes that he has initiated and supported.

 

         From the beginning his destiny was sealed, he was the heir so didn't have the freedom afforded to 'the spares', and he had done a remarkably good job...in my opinion.    Alas I have never had the privilege of meeting him so I cannot speak of him in any way other than as a member of the British population over which he will reign, but I am happy at the prospect of Charles being my King.

 

         Throughout his life Prince Charles had been plagued by the newspapers and has had to live out his dramas in the public eye courtesy of our gutter press.   And it is that same eye that has been ever vigilant when his errors of judgment were universally published in order that money could be made out of his demise, and it has always boiled down to money.

 

         In his youth he was accused of being too weak to handle the challenges of being educated at Gordonstoun, a place that sounded very grim to me, and for someone of a more thoughtful persuasion I am sure it was unadulterated hell.   From puberty on Charles' every move has been analysed and monitored and he has been vilified in the press on a regular basis, thus influencing our collective opinion of him.  

 

         Imagine living in a goldfish bowl where your every move was observed and then have some sympathy for the man who has had to endure seventy years of disapproval for simply being who he is, while all around him consider themselves qualified to judge him, often for what we have done ourselves albeit that our actions have not come into public view.

 

         As a younger man Charles met a young woman and fell in love, unfortunately Camilla   was not suitable back then because 'she had a past' and our future king needed a virgin bride.   Their love has endured more difficulties than most of us can imagine, yet they did finally marry and I am sure Camilla will be a wonderfully supportive queen.

 

         The Diana debacle never ceases, we saw a gauche and ill educated girl selected merely because she was high born and virginal, and Charles' feelings were dismissed in deference to his 'duty'.   The marriage was a miserable failure because neither spouse had any real affection for the other and their only bond seems to have been the two sons that they both adored and who the public have taken to their hearts.    Diana made much of there having been a third person in their marriage and gave sideways looks as she revealed a very devious aspect to her character.   She seems to have naively imagined that he would give up the love of his life for her, but if any of you have had a love of your life, you will know that you cannot give them up, no matter how hard people try to keep you apart.

 

         Over time we learned that Diana had stalked a man, had very unwise liaisons with others and the ultimate insult and stamp of her foot was to begin a romance with Dodi Fayed.   I was sorry that she died but it was a rather large leap to imagine that Charles had her murdered, they were already divorced and she was on her hedonistic decline into notoriety for all the wrong reasons.

 

         The public loved Diana, they drank in her sad faced appearances and her seeming loneliness and we bought it hook line and sinker, it was all Charles' fault.   So, while she put the washing on the line and wore revenge dresses and retaliated with dalliances with wholly unsuitable men, Charles kept his mouth well and truly shut except to talk of global warming and non bio degradable plastics while founding the Prince's Trust and talking a lot of sense.    In her column today Anne Diamond reminded us that Prince Charles was guilty of 'dreadful blunders, the worst of course, being an appalling husband to Princess Diana' which was followed by a bit of faux deference to our future monarch.   I am sure Ms Diamond has made her own blunders, who hasn't?    but who know what sort of wife Princess Diana was, we weren't there so lets not stand in judgement of a couple who had an arranged marriage that failed, and remember that if he had had his way he would doubtless have married Camilla.

 

         The press and public don't seem to like that Charles has persistently talked sense and has been something of a trailblazer in terms of his ideas and remedies.  We seem to want him to be a sort of eccentric buffoon who knows nothing of real life, hence we read that he has an inch of toothpaste squeeze onto his tooth brush.   So what say I!  Does it matter?  After all he has a very busy schedule and works jolly hard.

 

         These weird little nuggets of eccentricity come from people like the truly odious Paul Burrell, a former servant of the British Royal Household, who crawls out of the woodwork every time he thinks he can make a quid or two out of some tit bit or other.   He was a servant, not Diana's best friend, he is a mincing toady who sought vicarious 'fame' by likening himself to Diana's right hand and, according to him, her confidante - methinks not!   After Diana's death he had to 'return' a number of valuable items that seem to have fallen into his swag bag claiming that they were 'gifts' until a court of law said that they most certainly were not.   The cringing fop apparently hasn't seen Diana's boys for years but pop's up whenever possible and tells the world that Diana would have been proud of them, do we really need him to tell us that, of course she would have been proud of them, as is their father.

 

         I must admit now that I am not really a Royalist, I just think that Charles has been taken apart too many times.   He is now happy with his wife and is going to reign to the best of his ability - so please give the man a break,  while I will be waiting in the wings waiting to say "I told you so!"

 

         

 

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Get Over It and Yourself!

This picture of a little tree had a profound impact on me when I saw it.

Dame Nature doing her thing, survival where none seems possible, all the elements of real drama and the struggle for life in the fact that that a little tree grew from the remains of another.

 

I look around our planet in the thoughtful manner that is the prerogative of the seriously over the hill gang that I now find myself in.   To younger people we 'old folk' are virtually invisible as they rush to their mirrors, telephones in hand to take yet another selfie.

 

 I must confess, now,  that I really don't get selfies, or pictures of your food and cups of coffee.   I don't get the desperation to be seen in every available location duck pouting with companions to convince followers that you are having a good time, or are the trying to convince yourselves?

 

We've all done it.  Back in my day, via conversation, we would blag and brag about the  fantastic times that we weren't really having.    Now, with the advent of social media this has become epidemic and has reach a level the madness of which has never been know.

 

I see endless cups, plates and pouts and wonder what the point is, I get that we like to put on a happy front, but really, who amongst us is truly happy with their lot?     Actually I am, but not entirely, and it has taken almost seventy years to reach my state of personal bliss.

 

One of the few human truths is that none of us knows what is happening in the lives of other, we cannot read minds and, for so many people these days, life is extraordinarily hard as they judge themselves negatively in comparison with the filtered images of their idols who look nothing like their alter egos in real life.

 

  Real life remains a constant reminder to media jockeys that they aren't thin enough, tall enough, or simply too much of what is not trending at the moment.   I see all these little sheep like girls desperately trying to clone themselves into look alikes of their heroines as they contour their faces, adding bizarre white spots to their noses where Rudolph's was red. They also plump up their lips and wear what looks remarkably like insulation tape placed a la Groucho Marx on their brows. And let me tell you girlies, most of your boys do not like the look, other than the over groomed boys that silently attach themselves to such super women.

 

  Fake will always be fake, my blue streak is blue as a testament to fakery, while my hair is almost white now which testifies to my age.    I recently got slammed by someone on Instagram who took offence at my invited comment to an Instagram post of  two tiny girls dressed to look like Kardashians, they looked awful, to me.    My critic then proceeded to tell me that when compared to their shit, my face was much worse.   My reply was simply that at seventy its supposed to look like this!   I cannot and will not apologise for being old, it is now my role on the slippery slope to my death.   I will also not apologise for having an opinion but I cannot forgive the stupidity of someone not comparing like for like.   I pointed out that if I were my critic I would be alarmed that such a venomous reaction was generated by a simple comment made by a septuagenarian, a stranger who has the right not to like something.  

 

   Such a mordant and visceral response to the trivia of modern life is what concerns me for your futures.   So much of modern life seems to be about obsessive and seriously compulsive narcissism  that leads to puerile terms such as 'influencer' 'creative'.   We all influence the people in our lives and most of us have a streak of creativity, indeed I have influenced people and can be quite creative, but I don't for one minute imagine that I am in a league set apart from the mere mortals because I can do either.   Such is the arrogance of some nonentity 'celebrities' that I recently heard one refer to herself in the third person as she entered a room.   The fact that she has nominal celebrity means not one jot to me, and I fear such arrogance will undermine the balance of one or many lives in due course.

 

  The point is that we much continue to have an occasional reality check.   As those of you who know me are aware, I work at the sticky end of life, down among the dead folk.   I speak for them, tell their truth and say fuck and bollocks in chapels all over the place if they did, because that is who they are and I am not so prissy that I cannot use real words.   It actually amuses me to occasionally 'explete' like a trooper in the course of my work and the notion of being paid to amuses the fuck out of me!

 

From now on I think I will go into 'Get over it' mode when I blog, I see so much from this old vantage point that I would like to enlighten you all with the sheer inanity of thinking too much of yourself, because sooner or later you'll be the one in the box that I am attending to and I would like to be able to say good things about your rather than telling lies.  

 

So, please, remember to be real sometimes, life is never going to fab and wonderful for all of your life.   Learn from the shitty episodes and when your time comes someone like me will be happy to attend to your final reckoning.

 

I'm still loving this thing called, my life, please love yours enough to make sense of it, because at the end of the day, none of us will be here forever.    So try to do some good at some point in your day, it may be remembered and become part of your eulogy.

 

 

 

 

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My Heart Hurts

 

 

 









     For any of you who actually give a damn, I apologise for my silence, however I don't really want to bore your buns off with trivial chats and meaningless babble, but today I feel the need to speak to you all.

 

     It is true to say that my heart really does hurt today and of late there is a lot to be sad about.   Humans blowing each other up in the name of an artificially manufactured god owned and embellished by years of mass manipulation.   Political in-fighting and social manipulation for self-aggrandisement.   Men women and children exploited enslaved in our so-called civilised lands.  And last, but by no means least, the atrocities that we do to others and ourselves in the name of such puerile notions as wealth, fame and greed.

 

     Today I am going to tell you about a friend of mine called Peter, he is now seventy but I have known him since I was fifteen and he was around seventeen.   We were in the same group of youngsters that inhabited a local club, we were the Casino Crowd and we honed our budding social skills by fancying each other and shyly glancing across the big circle of Mods dancing.

 

     We were the post-war generation who had everything to live for and all of us imagined bright futures for ourselves.    The majority of the kids up at the Casino came from working class homes and their parents worked hard and had hopes for us.   My own background was a little different but when one is young one doesn't really see class as much of an issue, in those days everything had more to do with being a Mod, wearing the right clothes, mohair suits with single or double vents and panstick instead of lipstick and ultimately we were demonstrating our innocent mating rituals by dancing in a circle or a few girls doing their thing around their handbags.

 

     By modern standards it was all rather tame but inordinately scary, because we were, as I say, feeling our social feet.    Now, in this group there were movers and shakers who in later years became 'the A team' and others who were 'B teamers'.   Most girls wanted to be hairdressers or comptometer operators while boys wanted to be footballers and engineers.

 

     In amongst the group of boys was a bandy legged fellow called Peter, he was handsome (not my type} but he was fun and hung around with his clique of boys talking rubbish and chasing girls.    While we all went into deep crush over whoever was our favourite and almost took to our fainting couches if the object of our desire asked us to dance.

 

     I know that the social tensions today are different but remarkably similar on many levels, its all about boys meeting girls and the long term goal remains finding a long term mate.   I was not such a creature, my mother was on husband number three by the time I was eleven so I had a very jaundiced view of marriage, I didn't want to replicate either so I remained largely aloof.  I had romances with boys but saw none of the ones I knew as potential partners and, in reality, I didn't want one.   For me life was always going to be different, I was not interested in discussing babies and the price of tomato sauce and unlike many of my girl friends I didn't fancy marriage at all and certainly didn't see it as a way of escaping from home....I left under my own steam at about five minutes past sixteen and headed out of town.

 

     Back to Pete, he was in the crowd, I didn't know him well but I liked him, he was very handsome and in those days we didn't drink a great deal, though we did drop the odd pill or four if we went off to an 'all nighter'.   I never mixed with Pete's cronies much, they were all a couple of years older than me but he seemed to be popular and soon found his lady love and eventually settled down.   I left town and did my own thing returning for occasional spells but it wasn't until some years later that I found out what had happened to Pete when I returned from a long stint away and began to see some of the old crowd again.   In the meantime Pete had married his childhood sweetheart, she gave him two babies and he went into the world of finance.    

     As a youngster Pete and his friends had been a bit too 'cocky' for my taste but eventually I was to meet Pete again sixteen years ago and I was aghast at the transformation.  I could still see the vestige of his former good looks and his cockiness had been replaced with a rather skewed arrogance which is common in hardened drinkers.    Back in the day it was not as extreme but by then Pete was a full blown alcoholic and making terrible decisions.   The root is clearly in the liquid lunch regime that was prevalent and drink driving was common back then too.    In time liquid lunches began merging into early doors choir practise and lo and behold he had found his drug and we have been fighting his demons for some twenty five years or more.   

     At this point it is necessary to tell you that I am 'a mender' I hate to see broken animals or humans without trying to sort them out and that is why my heart hurts now, but it is who I am and I've rushed in where angels fear to tread so many times that I now just do it and think to myself there are only two outcomes and the worst one usually prevails.

     Pete isn't my first alcoholic, there have been at least four others, but he is the current one, while two of the others have died and the third is still exercising his very healthy thirst to the detriment of his own and the lives of all who are involved with him....as is Pete.

     In the beginning his marriage survived because his long suffering wife loved him so much but eventually she had to throw in the towel and the separated.   He moved into a flat near me and I would pop round to see him most days to see how he was, we would talk and I would try to convince him that he had a lot to live for and he'd tell me he was drinking orange juice, but when I tasted it the ratio was always in favour of vodka so I never visited after twelve because after that he'd become incoherent.    Every so often he'd try to convince me that he hadn't had a drink but like most drunks, he didn't seem to realise that there is a thickening of vocal tone in most of them that is easily detectable when they are talking to someone who knows them well, so the only person he was deluding was himself.

     I have no idea how he managed to convince his wife to take him back, but she did and although my heart sank when I found out I hoped, as all bystanders do, that this time he'd sort his act out.   In fact, I even renewed their marriage vows with them and we had a wonderful day with some of the old crowd in attendance all crossing their mental fingers when he vowed to be a better man, husband and father.    I am sure you can all imagine that it didn't take long before he was drinking again and coupling it with a lot of cigarettes.   At times he was almost bloated then he'd be ok for a couple of weeks but we all knew he'd lose his way because it's what Pete does.

     He is not a bad man, he is a man who has made countless bad choices and all of us around him have paid a high prices for his inability to handle his own life.   Three years ago his wife finally threw the towel in and kicked him out so he returned to a lonely life of cigarettes and booze, seemingly helpless to change his own destiny.   I like him a lot and we have had such fun together playing dominoes, sevens and four in a row and he's been alert and I have looked forward to seeing him.   But these days I visit because its what I do, but my conscience won't let me walk away and leave him, so I shop for him and generally do what I can.

     Of late things have become particularly grim, a year ago a friend of his found him unconscious on the floor and called an ambulance.   Pete was oblivious, he was put into intensive care where he was put into an induced coma for about six weeks and we all went to see and hoped that this would be the wake up call that could set him free from his demons.   His feet went black, his toe nails fell off and he was barely compos mentis when they revived him but amazingly he rallied and we got him back.   Ironically he has the constitution of an rhinoceros which actually works against him because his recovery is relatively easy.   

     Once released he went to a residential unit and they housed him, although he never got any counselling which amazed me.   We visited as usual and he was happy to be fed, medicated and monitored but it couldn't last forever and he went home to his flat and was fine for about ten days when I went in to find him off his face once more.   

     For the last few months he has been going downhill but this week he really did fall by the wayside, drunk, smoking and now getting passing kids to get him booze and fags because he cannot even walk to the shops himself.    He has been falling and recently broke his wrist but has no idea how, his doctor came out and he was sent into hospital for a couple days to have tests and another broken bone was discovered which was nothing to do with the wrist and it has mended now.   He came home from hospital and in the meantime I cleaned his flat up and discovered to my horror that he is having bouts of incontinence and is living like a pig.   I cried as I cleaned and was horrified that this formerly immaculately turned out and very dapper man had come to this.    He hasn't had a shower for at least six months and is generally grimy and unkempt but still he cannot act to save his own life.   In the past two days we have sought an intervention with his doctor who advised us to call in social services to provide care for him and find him somewhere sheltered for him.  

     We, his family and friends who love who he was, are distraught by his decline, he can barely walk and yesterday he drank a bottle of vodka and went off to bed, but he cannot even do that unaided so I found myself helping him into the toilet before he went upstairs and as he couldn't stand I had to get clasp my arms around his chest and hold him up as he pee'd,  then I had to yank up his trousers and get him up the stairs by grabbing him by the seat of his pants.   He is seventy and I am will be sixty nine next birthday and I'm too tired for all this drama.

     I will not apportion blame on his family, they did their best but had to withdraw from him for their own survival, the only person to blame is Pete for exercising poor judgement and mislaying his backbone.

     Today I went in as usual, he was drinking from a large tumbler of scotch and chain smoking.   He gave me a bogus story about having had the scotch for a couple of years but I know him, he would have drunk it a long time ago if it had been there, he admitted to getting kids up the road to get him cigarettes again and when I asked him to use his vaper while I was there he refused so I left.

     This is why my heart hurts today, throughout our lives we have the capacity to hurt ourselves and others.   Everything we say or do has the potential to hurt someone either momentarily or for a lifetime.    If you throw a pebble in a pond there are ripples, our actions cause reactions but still we break each other's hearts while hell bent on our own bubble existence.

     Please search your hearts and make sure that you maintain the appropriate balance in your lives, if you feel that you are endangering yourself STOP!.   I know addiction, when I gave up I was up to a hundred cigarettes a day and almost twenty years on I have never had one, but, I will always be a smoker who just isn't smoking.   

     For me proportion and balance in life are critical and we have the power to change our lives and grow from our own weaknesses.   All of us touch others in some way or another, we can change the course of destiny if we stop this ridiculous cult of  gods and personality. We are capable enabling people whose lands have been decimated by war and famine to rebuild, we could share the wealth instead of holding on to that which we can't even take with us when we die.

We could respect the planet upon which we live ...... but I doubt that we will.

Look around your life and the people in it, have you damaged any of them?

Then get out there and mend them and think about them more often.

      I fear that for my dear friend Pete it is too late, his time was a year ago when they fought valiantly to bring him back from the brink of death, I believe that then was his time for going.

I expect I will do his funeral, he has asked me to,  but what will I say,  

Here lies a once handsome man who made terrible choices and mislaid his spine...

... and it was nobody's fault but his own.

 

 

 

 

 

    



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People First - not god or politics.

     I have been watching recent events with absolute horror and fear that a lot of people are missing certain points whilst obviously seeking self aggrandisement at a time when we should be putting people, not politics, first.

 

     I have long feared the prevalence of  'My God Is Better Than Yours!' thinking because it reminds me of the very woolly playground idea that 'My Dad is Bigger than Yours!.

 

     I make no secret of having no faith.....in gods of any hue.   This is not because I hate religion, I just see it as a human construct and although I see the logic of the ten commandments I question their source.   For me religion is all about ideas and ways of securing superiority.   In my long life I have known some really appalling Christians and some wonderful Atheists and vice versa.   I am an Atheist because I have found that life without a god makes it easier for me to reconcile the disgusting behaviour of people in the name of what is really merely a bunch of ideas formulated over time but ones for which there is no empirical proof of source. I do envy the 'god's will' notion that reduces many to passivity, living without belief is certainly harder because I cannot fall back on god's will because we can exercise will too.

 

    For me religion is often used to control large groups of people whilst elevating the social position of 'those in the know' the ones to whom their god speaks, the ones who claim to be rewarded with 'the word' and leader status because they are better or more pious than the hoi polloi upon whom charismatics feed.  

 

     As a child the house next door was the Manse for our local Methodist Church so I met a series of vicars and their families.   The vicars were nice, some of the children were too but for some years I was swept up and taken to church each Sunday and I sat listening to sermons about loaves and fishes and Lazarus (logically a man in a coma).   Those sermons were impossible for me to believe even to my pre double figures brain. I never bought it and have survived this life for almost seventy years without any sort of faith except in the frailty of humans who claim dominion over animals.

 

     By mind set I lean towards an Hobbesian interpretation of people, life being short and people nasty and brutish.   I cannot subscribe to Rousseau's notions of people being in a Miss World Contest collecting chocolate box tops and saving the world because it will take more than nice to save this world....from us.    Once we own possessions we tend to build fortresses around them thus separating ourselves from 'the others' who we decry.   True socialism works for young people, idealists who possess nothing, but ask one if they'll give you their i-phone because you don't have one and you're likely to hear their mental draw bridge go up as their goodies are threatened.

 

     As a former sociology lecturer I am keenly aware of how easy it is to generate labels that condemn some and elevate others.   Factions develop, people elevate themselves by comparing themselves to others deeming themselves better although so many of those labels are subjective and based on ignorance.   Queen Victoria couldn't comprehend the mechanics Sapphic love (being somewhat randy herself) so while male homosexuality was criminalised and driven under ground female homosexuality was not and lesbians were not imprisoned for their crime against our sensiblilities.

 

     We are still aiming to make our gods better than those worshipped by others, so obviously the tribe that worship Prince Philip are numpties.   However, they aren't killing us in the name of their god so I would suggest that although I don't get it, it is harmless and there's the rub - supporting modern faiths and sects seems to lead to hypocrisy and its bed mate mayhem.

 

     Of course I judge people too, there are many things about modern life that I don't like but when the events of Grenfell Tower become so politicised that people are seeking to blame a particular political leader I despair and fear that joined up thinking is dead and mourn the demise of logic.   I watched with horror as Piers Morgan harangued Michael Gove the other day, Morgan was vociferous in espousing his opinions and his crass grandstanding made him look even worse than usual in my book, while I have never admired Mr. Gove I did that day because he didn't rise to the bait and remained calm and objective which is what all good politicians need to master.

 

     There are numerous factors involved that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster, but it goes back more than ten years to when another block of flats burned, an investigation was made and a report returned to the sitting Labour Government advising them that if they wanted to avoid a repeat of the events remedial action was imperative otherwise it would happen again....and, having ignored the report,  it bloody well did!

 

     This isn't an issue about Con/Lab although I will point out that despite the young vote the Labour party did get less seats than the conservatives, something that the Corbynites studiously ignored while gloating over their non-triumph.    People in councils make decisions and demographics are significant, had Grenfell Tower been in another part of Kensington and Chelsea it would, doubtless, have had better fire doors etc.   People in power are susceptible to corruption as are many of us.   For example I conduct a lot less non-religious funerals because I do not include any form of religiosity while there are many celebrants who will dance with snakes if you pay them enough and people do like to hedge their bets 'just in case'.   My argument is that I am not trained or ordained and believe that the average person would prefer someone down front with Nanna who actually cared rather than someone who looked at her coffin and thought 'Kaching!'     Payoffs are not rare, they are common, local government is rife with graft and people seeking plaudits and knighthoods.   There is always at least one Popette who come out of the woodwork to object to this and that and to sing on charity records which, incidentally, is why some celebrities go into the Big Brother house - because of 'career sag/flag' or a book that needs promoting.   Yet others visit quietly and without fanfare genuinely intent on handing out a hug and a pat of support.

 

     By now I imagine you realise that I am a cynic dear reader, but lets not kid ourselves that the world is full of Ghandi's and Mother Theresa's - there are a lot of people out there with some serious blood on their hands.   We must not blame Mrs. May for this disaster, I don't envy her, the poor woman cannot do right for doing wrong as she becomes the object of the collective wrath of people who don't know what to do.   There is now talk of a group intent on rioting in protest, how stupid is that?  Surely they've noticed that the killing by IS and others has not generated support in the west, we must maintain the civilised façade that we pretend we have, otherwise we are no better than the animals that are intent on killing us.

 

     Retaliation was inevitable, when the troubled man drove a van into a group of people at their local mosque it was evident that he clearly needs treatment and a better understanding of how many Muslims are peaceable and decry the acts of the men on the bridge who stabbed people at will - they are not supporters of any god, they were just sad disenfranchised creatures with no ties to reality and even less hope of improving their lives until they meet the seventy virgins they are promised in the afterlife - although the prospect of an inexperienced man enjoying the favours of seventy virgins makes no sense to me - seventy hookers yes!.

 

     Too many people have died in the name of greed and/or gods, I believe that adding an 'o' to god = good, I can try to do that,  but  I am only human and it is tempting to imagine that I know better than you, but I don't.   I've just lived a long time and see the futility of so much that we have done to the planet.   We don't own it, we just spend time here and it deserves to be left in the same condition that we found it.

 

      When I see a baby of any hue, I fear for what sort of world it will grow up in.   I will be gone in a few years and have thoroughly enjoyed being here but I do not like how things are going.   Are we entering a new epoch, a facsimile of The Crusades of yore?   Do we need to blow up all the buggers who threaten us?   

 

     We need to find a common cause that unites us and that will not be achieved in tit for tat retribution by bully boys who really just want to break windows and rip doors off.    We need to open doors not rip them off their hinges, we need to work out exactly who our enemy is before we seek to destroy anyone who resembles who we think he is.

 

     Disasters will always happen and lives will be lost but it is seldom one person's fault, it is a culmination of ideas formulated by disaffected people uniting to undermine that which they do not have - but that which they want.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

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When Will The Carnage End?

 

THE Manchester Arena suicide
 bomber struck four years to the
 day after the brutal murder of
soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby.

     I write this with the heaviest of hearts and am sickened by the horrors of the wholesale slaughter of innocent people at the Manchester Arena by a Manchester-born suicide attacker - the death count currently runs at 22 - with 64 wounded (some very badly).

     I was born four years after the end of WW2 and I have no doubt that after six long years of war, devastation and losses it was hoped that mankind would learn.   When I was young we dealt with IRA atrocities and back then I was concerned about the repercussions that might be experienced by my delightful Irish step-father who had no ties to terrorism of any kind, fearing that he might be 'tarred with the same brush'.    The Manchester attack is  the most recent, but undoubtedly not the last, in a series of horrendous acts of pointless violence perpetrated by mindless radicals and thugs who want to rule our world by force in much the same way that they rule their own people using intimidation and cruelty the goal being total control of our world for their leaders.

     Now my concerns are for all of the innocent Muslims including some of my friends and neighbours who may have to face retribution from the British population and I beg their religious leaders to come out in force to decry extremism and publicly distance themselves from this monstrous conduct by a few because the many need rational direction from their Imams.   The majority of Muslim people are not bent on killing us but radicalised youngsters, both girls and boys, must be surrendered and apprehended to prevent future horrors.

     Religion has always been problematic for me because it seems to divide societies and cultures when adopted by zealots.   In my opinion God is a human construct and as such has been managed by a few to gain power and wealth.  When used wisely such notions can be used for good but so often they are exploited by power crazed elites so I prefer to add an 'o' to god and focus on good.    Extremists coerce gullible and ill-educated people into acts that are disgusting to most of us by suggesting that they will inherit the earth ....in the next life, although there no proof of progression to such state and that is the essential flaw for me, they sell fantasies that cannot be assured while we should do our best in this life.  Such marketing has proved highly convincing in lands that have little education, natural resources and food, but if the promises are so alluring why do so many Muslims migrate, some aim to infiltrate but I am always surprised at how many of them come here and settle and then choose not to integrate or learn the language of their chosen hosts?

     Being civilised is hampering our responses to campaigns of violence, we seem to simply 'clean up and carry on' while we observe and try to outwit these 'soldiers' of a cause that we cannot begin to fathom.   Like many of you I am nervous of people who clothe their bodies in full niquab or burkas because we fear that identifying them could be highly problematic, while people who choose to wear the hijab present significantly less of a threat because we can, at least, identify the gender of the wearer.   I see many Asian women of all faiths not covered but nowadays I see far more who are completely covered than I used to and the latter group certainly don't assimilate with ease which begs the question of what is desired in those patriarchal cultures though the holy book of Muslims, the Qur'an, does not state that all women should be dressed in that manner, it is merely a matter of interpretation and it isn't rocket science to work out who gains from said interpretation.

 

     The Manchester bombing has devastated the whole of the British population and we are disgusted by the slaughter and targeting of seemingly innocent kids.   I have to confess I had no idea who the star of the show was, why would I, I'm old, but the villain of  this particular piece was the British born son of Libyan extraction whose parents fled the Gaddafi regime.  I feel for them, not only do they mourn their son, they must be ashamed and appalled by his shameless conduct attacking members of a population who took them in....I prefer to think that than consider that they might secretly be proud of him in any way.

 

     We have tried to be peaceable and we have tried to protect people from the tyranny of their leaders yet still these episodes recur with alarming regularity.    I fear that the inequalities between cultures is a thorny issue, after all a lot of these people are availing themselves of a British education then turning on us and I fear that it is because qualifications do not provide a passport to paradise, they merely give the means by which one can work and earn the luxuries that make us the infidels and the object of their loathing for zealots.

 

     Wholesale equality is notionally flawed, differences of intellect kick that into touch and modern life seems to be creating more problems than it solves.   As a youngster we had some chickens for eggs and the occasional meal until a fox got at them and killed the lot.   I fear that extremist foxes are now in our metaphorical henhouses doing what they do so well - wreaking havoc while achieving very little so their victories are merely pyrrhic because eventually they will push us too far, if they haven't already.   The majority of us will never support terrorism, but we do need to stand up and say so with enough conviction and volume,  we cannot keep muttering about how awful it all is and do nothing because it has been awful for such a long time now.

 

     I do not claim to have the answer to what is happening, that is for us all to work out via United Nations negotiations and, perhaps, a united show of strength and commitment.    Tony Blurs The Facts sent people to their deaths on a fool's errand and he paid the price, although it wasn't high enough for many of us.   We need to stand up and say to people seeking to live amongst us that they must learn about, swear an oath of commitment to us and learn to speak our languages.   Failure to integrate is inherently divisive and we need immigrants to assimilate, pay taxes and respect our lifestyle, thus contributing to the economy of their hosts.

 

     I am happy for people to live amongst us if they become part of our society, but I am not happy if they hold on to outmoded values and beliefs that disenfranchise them from our communities.   Our economy is not there to be exploited by medical tourists and spongers of every hue  who remain intentionally unemployable  by failing to speak our tongue.     

 

     Today my faith in humanity falters, because what happened in Manchester was inhumane, I had hoped to end my days in a more peaceful world where balance prevailed and each of us could express our beliefs without leading to the homicide of opponents.   I am glad that I was born in easier times and I feel so very sad for all who have lost loved ones and are fearful for the future of their children.   It could be such a wonderful world if human kind would let it be, surely it is time to simply think of others and live and let live because 'my god is better than yours' and political in-fighting simply don't work...they never have.  

 

 

 

 

 

THE Manchester Arena suicide bomber struck four years to the day after the brutal murder of soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby.

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