World Wide Willis

Jodrell Bank Telescope

2026-09-23T15:39:22.432+01:00

Jodrell Bank is set to lose the £2.8 million of its annual funding from the UK government.

The observatory was built in 1957. People could be forgiven for thinking that a much newer telescope is superior, that Jodrell Bank is merely "iconic," and an antique.

However, Jodrell Bank remains at the cutting edge of scientific research and it is also major contributor to the wider scienfic community.

The £2.8 million funding element that the UK government is cutting helps the observatory remain connected with e-MERLIN. e-MERLIN is a network of seven radio telescopes. To quote the eminent, award winning science writer, Brian Clegg, "real science is being lost to save the £2.8 million going to e-MERLIN."

The tragedy is that many people regard the closure as being inevitable. They believe we are science also-rans. Nothing could be further from the truth. The UK excels at science.

Every year, the UK government writes off an (unfunded) £100 billion per year to a special project that harms all kinds of enterprises up and down the country. A sort of reverse Midas you might say.

It's called Brexit.

That being said, I'd still much rather you signed the petition opposing the closure of Jodrell Bank.

THE FARAGE FACTOR

2026-09-14T22:18:30.989+01:00

According to a very recent YouGov report, Nigel Farage (or Nigel Mirage if you live in Clacton!) seems to have passed the point of no return. Barring miracles, he surely now cannot make it to Prime Minister.

69% of Britons now hold an unfavourable view of the Clacton MP.

His approval rating is now -17%.

Farage believed that by resigning his own seat and then holding the by election, the citizens of Clacton would, in effect, ratify his "right" to keep the £5 million. What was the donation for? In one interview it was for his security, then in another it was a reward because of his Brexit "present" to the UK.

Some present! Brexit has cost the UK economy about 6% of GDP over the past decade, according to a 2026 Bank of England–backed study using company-level data.

The same YouGov article, by way of a contrast, reports that Prime Minister, Andy Burnham is enjoying the highest favourability rating of any prime minister, 46%, for more than 6 years. By any standards, he's off to a solid start. It seems Labours' big gamble paid off. No pun intended.

You can read the YouGov article here.

38Degrees has published a petition entitled Take Big Money Out of Our Politics.

As if the £5 million donation wasn't enough. Farage seems to believe the by-election victory will also make the investigation go away.

Now a donation of £72 million has been offered to Reform UK, which, from billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, according them, merely “levels the playing field” with the bigger parties when it comes to funding.

Is there going to be another by-election in Clacton to ratify this gift of £72 million to Reform UK?

The petition is here, if you'd like to look at it.

Dolly Parton (1946 - 25 August 2026)

2026-08-26T15:35:00.000+01:00

I was very sad to learn of the death of Dolly Parton who was born in 1946 and died on August 25 2026. She was 80 years old.

Dolly, to me, is ageless, one of those people who is “radically alive” as a friend of mine once said.

Bearing in mind her stellar music business, not only a great singer, but an accomplished actor and composer too. There are, indeed, many other artists like Dolly. Dolly made great use of the time she had here. To establish organisations that will last forever. Ventures which give people a helping hand and change their life outcomes for the better. We may never really know how many people, touched by Dolly's helping hand, but I am guessing it's millions.

Down town with her mother when she was a little girl, Dolly's mum chided her and said don't look at that woman. That woman was likely a busty blonde, wore a clingy dress with low, low neckline. Hair dyed an impossible blonde that fails to turn up in nature. Dolly looked back at that woman and thought to herself I want to be just like her!

What was extraordinary was the level of philanthropy that Dolly contributed to the world. Not just to the United States but to the world.

For some while, I guess, it's going to be hard to envisage a world that doesn't have a Dolly Parton in it. There are very few people who celebrated life as passionately as Dolly Parton.

One thing we can all do to celebrate Dolly's life is to support her Imagination Library

Just one of her very many philanthropic ventures, touching more people's lives than we may ever know.

Oven-ready Brexit

2025-03-01T20:53:00.000+00:00

Are we there yet?

Er... yes, the Tories thought the best thing to do was to put Northern Ireland in to both the EU Single Market and the Eu Customs Union.

Otherwise, it will be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic Of Ireland.

Bad Friday agreement

See above.....

Red tape, more not less

The government are no nearer to achieving their target to hire 50,000 customs border agents. Assuming these new customs border agents are paid only £26,000 per year (which you can't live on these days!) then this will cost … wait for it! £18 billion per year, or approximately £350 million per week.

Source: ONS

Where have I seen that before? Never mind. I'm sure it will come back to me.

Magic Bus

Never believe what you see written on a bus. Where's the £350 million? The Magical Mystery Tour is waiting to take it away....

Brexit Benefits

2025-03-01T20:33:00.000+00:00

Ended free movement and taken back control of our borders.

The UK has welcomed thousands of workers with the skills the country needs to support our domestic labour market as we build back better* from the Covid pandemic, from doctors and scientists to butchers and bricklayers.

Source: The Benefits Of Brexit How the UK is taking advantage of leaving the EU. HM Government. * Whatever the hell Build Back Better means? It's a Johnsonism.

UK's shortage of lorry drivers. 100,000.

A Road Haulage Association (RHA) survey of its members estimates there is now a shortage of more than 100,000 qualified drivers in the UK.

That number includes thousands of drivers from European Union (EU) member states who were previously living and working in the UK.
The government has granted visas for 5,000 lorry drivers to work in the UK, although only just over 20 of the 300 applications have been approved so far, according to Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden.

When does telling someone to "get lost" ever encourage them to return to our shores? When I used to work in retail, I recall that they advised against that.

Added to that, the returning drivers will be dealing with a 1960's paperwork system, driving on poorly maintained roads, even worse provision of lorry parks.
But the EU has a shortage of 400,000 lorry drivers?
Yes. but a shortage of 400,000 lorry drivers is equivalent to a shortage of 14,000 drivers per EU country, and they also have complete freedom of movement too. So they could top up. We can't.
Seriously, we would be in logistics heaven if our shortage was only 14,000 drivers.

Private Schools and all that VAT

2024-06-13T17:53:00.000+01:00

When I went to college, (it was free in those days), I hung out with a guy called Howard. We touched on the subject of class and I mentioned that I identified as being working class. Howard looked bewildered by this. "You're far to articulate to be working class!" He expostulated.

I probably mentioned that many playwrights and authors also identified as working class too. Jimmy McGovern, a screenwriter and producer, was born in Liverpool in September 1949, the son of working-class parents. He was the fifth of nine children. He suffered from a stammer, for which he received no therapy and which affects him still. Jimmy, like me, also failed to get that memo.

Private schools. That Labour Party has decided to levy VAT on private school tuition fees, damn their eyes! Don't they know that parents who choose to send their kids there, work extremely hard and even go without Sky TV! I know this because a bloke who's got more money than the King, said so. So it might be true. (I haven't yet read it in the Daily Mail, so if/when I do, I shall know that it must be true!)

The key word here, about these parents who send their kids to private schools, is choose. As a working class man, I've never blown my entire income on scratch cards. I've never met any other people in my tribe who have done that either.

To be fair to these parents, I have never, ever heard this hard done-by bleating from them. I have only heard it from very right-wing Tory acitivists, who are presumably, bleating on their behalf! I believe that these hard working people accept the sacrifices that they make gladly, the same as I did when I was in retail, working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, during the Christmas/Sale period. I also had to take a cleaning job at a school, because my company couldn't give me enough hours. I was also diagnosed with epilepsy when I was 17, in 1967. Did this stop me working. No. We could all complain that we're hard done-by!

Equally, I would never, ever have considered a private school route, purely because our family would have been financially crippled by the fees and I remain unconvinced that they deliver a superior outcome anyway.

No, the brain-dead Tories who send their kids to private schools because of how all of the crumbling state schools they read about in their Daily Mail. What they don't tell you is that as soon as the Tories gained power in 2010, they quickly spent the money* that the outgoing Labour government had reserved for the repair of schools confirmed to have Raac. A total of 231 schools in England were confirmed to have Raac, or reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, in the most recent government list as of August 2023.

“They (the Tories) are prepared to tolerate for other people’s children something that they would not be prepared to tolerate if it affected their own family,” I couldn't have put it better myself. In fact, that was said by Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary.

And now the positive. How about we Brits all get our sleeves rolled up and transform our state education sector into a national treasure, like the NHS? Remove the need for parents feeling the need to send their kids to a private school, for example, just because their boss does, or someone influential in their tribe does.

Both our children went to state schools, comprehensives and then went on to university. They both went on to get good jobs and they both managed to get mortgages so that they could have choices.

While I was at school, we had a couple of fantastic music teachers. Mr. Whitney and Mr. Upson who taught us to sing. We sang the "Agincourt Song" - very well indeed at the town's Corn Exchange, a quality venue, where we, I might add, wiped the floor with a posh school!

That £350 Million

2023-11-29T22:15:00.001+00:00

Running The NHS With "That £350 million"

NHS commissioning budget for 2022/23, excluding drawdown of previous years’ surpluses, is £153 billion. (Source: NHS England). So imagine most people's surprise when you tell them that, not only is that £350 million a week (£18.3 billion per year),

(on the side of the Vote Leave big red bus* is not only not going to get to the NHS, but also Brexit is costing the UK an ongoing £100 billion per year in broken supply chain issues. (Source: Bloomberg).

To add insult to injury, that £350 million per week EU subs (that we're not paying anymore) will not even cover the cost of the required hiring of 50,000 border customs agents that our new Brexited UK will now require, (Source: ONS). We require these agents as a consequence of leaving the EU Single Market and the EU Customs Union. (This assumes that we pay each border customs agent £26,000 per year before tax and National Insurance).

Brexit Saga continues

The UK is still not policing the borders. Goods are both leaving and entering the UK unchecked. How come?

This is not merely an EU requirement, but it is crucial to a treaty-based world trade on which fair trade has to depend upon. The EU has cut the UK some considerable slack. This is so that the UK could put into place adequate security and customs checks that are properly treaty compliant. The UK government does what it believes it is increasingly entitled to do. They enact a law at purely at UK level effectively saying they have a legal exemption from checking goods, which emphatically, they do not.

I'm sure that it has occurred to many people in the UK that a huge flotilla of illegal goods could be imported into the UK without being checked. Drugs, lethal kid's toys, substandard food etc.

Will We Rejoin?

Politically, it's impossible right now. The Conservatives have decided to become a Brexit Party. Labour, has avoided the subject. (Presumably, they don't want to be associated with "overturning the democatically elected result". I would like to rejoin in a heartbeat, but I understand the logic of this. Producing a poll saying that nearly half the people who voted Leave now believe this to be a mistake.

That they were lied to.

Because of that, as James O'Brien, LBC journalist/presenter says, "we should have compassion for the conned". Save our venom for the Brexit pushers, Nigel Farage,

I Campaigned To Remain In The EU - And I Have The T-Shirt!

I took to the EU campaign trail for Remain. The people who told me they intended to vote Leave fell into two categories:

They wanted to give the government a kick up the a**e.
They wanted the £350 million per week to go to the NHS.

I did meet some agressive people who couldn't wait to get their blue UK passport, which couldn't be made in the UK. The story is complex, like most Brexit news tends to be.

However, you can read about this here.

Was There A Plan "B"?

Nope! The government believed "remain" would win.

Which Names Are Still Brexiteers?

These people were consistently in favour of Brexit and still maintain their Brexit habit to this day.

Dominic Cummings - Vote Leave's equivalent of "The Master"
Boris Johnson - Vote Leave's Joker-In-Chief
Nigel Farage - Pre-referendun, in every fishing port. Post-ref. in no fishing port.
Paul Dacre - Daily Mail Chief. Need I say more?
Daniel Hannan - Irrepressible, Shakespeare-quoting MEP (former Daily Telegraph)
Julia Hartley-Brewer - hosts the weekday breakfast radio show on Talkradio.

These people were Brexiteers but token campaigned for Remain.

David Cameron - the twerp who tabled the referendum!
Jeremy Corbyn - JC's Labour hoped it would all go away!

Various Ranting Going On

2023-07-06T01:57:00.000+01:00

In 2016, the EU Commission offered aid from the EUSF totalling €60.3 million to deal with the consequences of regional floods occurring in the UK in December 2015

This aid was rejected by the Cameron Government on the grounds that it was better that the UK Government should provide such relief on its own terms, rather than with the "strings attached" by the EU as to how flood relief funds should be spent.

Perhaps the "strings" being that the EUSF money didn't find its way mysteriously into other folders, such as the "Nothing At All To Do With Flood Relief" folder. The EU know by now, that you have to be super-specific with the Tories! Some future Tory Prime Minister may need his or her Prime Ministerial abode redecorated with wallpaper that costs lots.

Needless to say, we know how David likes to put a bit of spin on all things EU. This rejection was spotted by at least one award-winning journalist of the time (Jon Danzig) as the "politics of pride" - which is certainly a matter of judgement, depending upon one's point of view.

I think I more than agree with Jon Danzig.

We were comprehensively lied to by the government about Brexit. Lower food prices, lower energy prices. Various Tory MPs had their trousers taken down by Jo Coburn, a BBC journalist on Politics Live. They claimed that the UK was growing faster, the economy was strong. In fact, the UK was "growing" by minus 0.4%. All the other EU countries had stronger economies and were growing faster than the UK. Still, easy mistake to make, if you have the graph displayed upside down.

I expect that these MPs considered this action to be reprehensible. "Dont the BBC know that they forbidden to criticise the government?"

I wrote to my MP about the scandalous conditions facing the immigrant workers in Qatar who, if lucky enough to have not died, haven't made a single rial from their labours. They were conned, perhaps even more surely than I would've been had I sent my my bank details to share in a huge fortune from a Nigerian bank executive, (using a Yahoo e-mail address).

The MP was obliged to send me the "we have confidence we can help reform Qatar, encouraging them to reform" letter. If I had taken the same stance when I was working in retail, I doubt whether I'd have had any stock left.

Brexit

2019-04-11T02:12:00.000+01:00

At the time of writing it's Wednesday 11 April.

Tomorrow, we would've been due to leave the European Union. Prime Minister Theresa May has asked the EU for an extension of the leave date for 30 June, 2019.

I would like to claim that prior to the EU referendum, that I knew all about the difficulties with dispensing with the EU Customs Union and the EU Single Market. That when the Leave result was announced I would say "Hang on a minute! What about the Northern Irish/Republic of Ireland border? Won't our exit from the EU cause a hard border? Won't that fly in the face of the Good Friday Agreement?"

Truth is, I didn't say anything about any of those issues, and I didn't even think of those issues. But then again, I am only a voter and not a politician.

What was noticeable was that many seasoned MPs and even Cabinet members were having the same struggles as me. One MP didn't even know what the Customs Union was. To be fair, I didn't hear of this term until about 2013, and even then, I wasn't really sure what a Customs Union actually did.

Remain was where we remained in the EU. If Remain had won, then it would be business as usual and we could focus on things like the NHS, education, police numbers, affordable and social housing, Mental Health and employment. How exotic that sounds today. It's called running the country.

Leave was where Britain would leave the EU. At the time, it was made to sound as simple as giving your notice in at work. You'd start your new job and within two months everything would've been sorted out for good.

Leave required a plan "B".

We had then and have now - NO plan "B".

Today, pretty well everyone, whether they voted leave or remain understands very well that not only is Brexit hideously and impossibly complex, but we will be worse off, rather than better off.

I've always subscribed to the notion that if I change my bank, my insurance or my internet - the deal that I cancel has always got to be inferior to the one that I am signing up for. The one that I am signing up for has to be better than my previous arrangement. I know of no-one who thinks it's a good idea to do otherwise.

How will Brexit affect me?
Sadly, I have no Irish relatives, so Brexit will affect me. Otherwise, I would be off to the Irish Republic for a year and become an Irish citizen. This would be because remaining a British citizen will become inferior to being an Irish citizen. As an EU/Irish citizen, I will retain the same freedom of movement as I have now (until Brexit day, whenever that is?) and I will continue to have visa-less travel to the USA as well. (EU Britain currently has a visa waiver arrangement with the USA which takes just 20 minutes to complete online).

The post Brexit blue UK (non-EU) passport (You know. The one that's made in France!) will hopefully:

include a description of your nationality as a ‘British Citizen'
be an ePassport with the internationally recognised symbol on the front cover

What remains unclear to me is how visa-necessary travel is superior to visa-less travel.
I fail to see how restricting my passport privileges benefits me, or anyone else.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stop Press:

UK together with the EU27 have agreed an extension for 31 October.
Donald Tusk has told Britain "Please don't waste this time" - so sad that
we need to be told.

I wish we were better than this.

I've Been Wrong Before

2017-10-11T01:27:00.000+01:00

It's horrible when you're wrong. People say that it takes real character if you're strong enough to admit you're wrong. So how come I don't feel fantastic?

In September 2015 Jeremy Corbyn became elected leader of the Labour Party with a huge 59.48% share of the vote. I had voted against him. My main problem was that I believed that Jeremy Corbyn was not leadership material, and was not electable.

After the EU referendum, Labour MP's passed a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. In September 2016, Jeremy confounded the pundits by not only winning his second leadership contest in a year, but also securing a higher 61.8% share of the vote. During this contest I had been in a Labour Party meeting speaking up for his opponent, Owen Smith, to be elected as leader of the Labour Party.

So I had voted against Jeremy twice. I can't have been proved more wrong.

Over the last few weeks of this snap election, Jeremy Corbyn has proved that he is, in fact, a leader and capable of great statesmanship. He never raised his voice and he has always adhered to attacking policy decisions by the Tory government rather than personalities. Little wonder he has been and is now doing well in the polls. People now seem to be seeing his 'politics of hope' message.

It's a strange outcome for a general election where neither party has won. The Tories have won, in respect of the amount of votes cast. However, Jeremy has achieved 41% of the vote, which would have, in normal circumstances, delivered him to Number 10 with a comfortable majority. It gets more bizarre in that Theresa May actually won more votes than was won by David Cameron in the 2015 general election, which delivered a small majority of 5 seats.

So what has happened is a disaster. Theresa May sought to increase her majority by gambling on a snap election. She clearly didn't take into account how people might react to an exercise that seemed less than genuine in seeking a mandate. Judging by the growing popularity of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, people don't buy Theresa May's desire for continuity as a reason for staying at number 10. Add a very frightening manifesto for older people and it's easy to see why the result is a no-score draw.

It gets worse. Theresa May is now obliged to form a government with the DUP. A party which is extreme. Opposed to gay marriage, climate change and equal rights. Their thuggish, bigoted views have no place here in a much more free and liberal Britain. Even more serious than that, the DUP is one of the involved parties in the Northern Ireland Peace process. This Tory/DUP partnership explodes the UK government's impartiality that is crucial if it is to continue to broker the Northern Ireland peace process.

What is so important about Theresa May's government that it needs to flirt with both a circumvention of democracy (however temporary it may be) and also risk inflaming the DUP's political opponents?

No. This is simply a price that is not worth paying. We not only prostitute our democracy, our core principles, our ethics but we also gravely risk our continuing peace.

Bluestown

2017-10-11T01:26:00.000+01:00

If ever there was something that should never have happened, it was the referendum result on Thursday 23 June 2016. Usually, these things are mere political preference. where people see their colours roundly condemn the other colours and, once again, it's their turn, until the next time. On early Friday morning, (as I can never sleep when these contests are taking place), it became mathematically clear that Britain had voted to leave the European Union. I believe that Brexit happened because we let it happen.

When Labour, my preferred political party, loses an election, (which seems more often than not), I feel dejected for a few days and when I have concluded that my arms and legs haven't dropped off because the Tories won again, I can get on with my life quite normally. After all, won't we get another opportunity to chuck the Tories out in 5 years time? Of course! Moreover, I always understand why we've lost an election. It's almost always because our lack of party discipline and unity is worse than the Tories.

There is no such turning back, with this referendum result. The 'leaves' will be in power for the rest of eternity. I suppose it is possible that Britain will re-join the EU, but not very likely. Not in my lifetime, I am sure. Another possibility, after that time, would there be an EU to rejoin? Again, it's possible that the EU may fail after this. First, Norway and then Britain.

The other dreadful possibility is that a sizeable number of the vote leaves may well think differently now and if given the chance would vote remain instead. After all there was only a difference of: 1,269,501 votes between Vote Leave and Vote Remain. Hardly an electoral chasm.

I remember a schoolteacher in my secondary modern school telling us about Sir Winston Churchill having passionately advocated a 'United States Of Europe'. The then Conservative government also saw it as a force for good. We had won the war, at a terrible cost, in both human and economic cost, a war, that in all honesty, we so could have lost. If we had have lost, then the most evil forces ever seen during the entire history of our planet would have ruled over us. Britain, the USA and Europe could so easily have lost this war and was the drive to form the organisations that eventually led to the formation of the European Union.

If all European countries were traded freely, and dare I say it, we adopt common laws and a common currency as well, then I saw it as a case for us all being richer and stronger together. People saw EU common laws as anathema. I took the opposite view and regarded law making by the many as being safer, not more dangerous. We still had the power to make around 87% of our laws. Many of the 13% were laws that had a pan-European element to them. To afford ease of movement across the EU of people, labour, goods and capital.

A prolific paedophile Andrew Tracey was brought to justice after a 30-year reign of terror, Cory Baptiste, Craig Shaw and Jeremy Forrest were others who were arrested, charged and convicted under the European Arrest Warrant. A European Arrest Warrant takes typically 3 weeks to complete, an extradition can take between 6 to 9 months.

My feelings about us leaving the European Union therefore are of horror. It was so many people's (unfounded) fear of immigration that lost us the referendum. People voted leave because they perceive immigration to be completely out of control. 'Let us have our borders back!' they say, which much mystify everyone else in the EU countries as we're the only the only nation that actually has border controls similar to those pre-EU.

The vast majority of people who speak to me seem to believe immigration is out of control. And yet, Britain has had the toughest immigration controls. As tough as the USA and Australia and yet no-one here believes that.

Happy New Year! (a bit late, I know...)

2016-04-19T15:10:00.000+01:00

Ten feet snow drifts, the car is least likely to start and we’re marooned at home. We’re so angry at ourselves for comfort eating so early in the New Year that we calm ourselves down by going outside for a smoke. All over Britain, a New Year resolution failure meltdown takes place, often as early as 2^nd January.

Back in December 2009, Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire led this analysis. His team had asked 700 people about their strategies for achieving new year resolutions. Many of the 78% who fail in their plans are focusing on downside of not achieving goals, his research found. Giving up smoking, gaining a better qualification and also a better relationship were the top January targets.

Doomed to failure, most of ‘em, I would imagine.

How many of us can be properly mentally prepared to succeed with our resolutions by a specific date? However, I did manage to give up smoking in January 1977, although I panicked, because I believed I was ready on December 26^th 1976 and I worried about the spotlight of the first day of ’77, thwarting my success.

The first recorded New Year's Resolutions were made by the Babylonians around 4000 years ago.

(If the Babylonians are anything like me, they probably meant to do it 4020 years ago).

Henry Moore ~ I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the year's.

Mark Twain ~ New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody, save, as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.

Then, there’s the advertisers of gym membership discounts and the publishers of self-help books. We usually roll our eyes and tut, while at the same time admiring those same advertisers for their enterprise and their seizing the moment.

Why on earth am I writing about New Year resolutions in April? After all, anyone can write about New Year resolutions in January! Obviously, I am going for the creative high ground here. Although what that creative high ground is, perhaps I will know in January?

I am sure that April is a good month, however, to see how well we have done.

A New Kind Of Politics

2015-09-14T00:11:00.000+01:00

Jeremy Corbyn is now leader of the Labour Party. The thought of a left-wing socialist securing the Labour leadership has been, for decades, unthinkable. I'll be honest. I didn't vote for Jeremy Corbyn, for reasons I will try to explain later. There is no doubt that a huge shift has taken place within the Labour Party. Although a sea change, took place 40 years ago, in 1975, where the Tories elected what they considered to be a rank outsider for their leader. This rank outsider became the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

British people are amenable to change in either political direction, where they believe that beneficial social and economic change is possible. Margaret Thatcher's government was clearly not Ted Heath's or Harold Macmillan's 'one nation' Conservatism where the nation's prosperity would surely 'trickle down' to the working classes.

Sadly Margaret Thatcher's government brought about no meaningful social change. The only radical changes she brought about was generate the huge gap between the rich and the poor and the isolation of the poor and the sick. The only prosperity she did bring about was the promotion of the already fairly comfortable working class to more comfortable middle class people. Margaret Thatcher said she believed that there is no society. She believed that the needs of the individual were sovereign, outweighing the needs of the many. A posh way of saying it's OK to be selfish and hang everyone else.

After Jeremy won on Saturday, September 12, 2015, a number of Labour MPs, who find themselves insufficiently 'Corbynite', are now 'considering their futures'.
While many Labour MPs may well agree with Jeremy's aims and objectives. (It is, after all, like stating that you're in favour of holidays, ice cream and sunshine), they may disagree about the method.

Jeremy Corbyn supports:

no tax cuts to the rich, (in addition, asking them to pay more tax).
closing of the non-dom tax exile loophole
quantitative easing to facilitate growth, which can be consolidated later when the economy improves
opposing air strikes over Syria
yes to remaining within EU (although looking to renegotiate terms)
re-nationalising the railways and also the big 6 energy companies

All of the above enjoys huge public support right now.

All of these actions, if successfully executed, would bring about much needed additional tax revenues, without hurting jobs. Indeed more likely to create jobs. So any studies into this, which the Corbyn leadership has done, will be shown to be practical and not merely ideologically driven. This may explain why the Tories are curiously quiet on these issues at the moment.

A few hours after being elected, a recovered Jeremy Corbyn, began to spell out the success story that he believes is unfolding, which will enrich the Labour Party. For years, people have been complaining that New Labour was so close to the Tories in terms of manifesto content and pledges that it was seen to be over-cautious and more importantly, too Tory. This has translated into people voting for UKIP, BNP, Green and Respect as well as socialist-alternative parties.

I think it is fair to assume that these voters, voted the way they did because they felt that Labour no longer spoke for them. Many believed that Labour seemed to speak more for public sector workers who were probably middle class as well. It seems to reasonable to assume that many of these wayward voters seem to be returning to Labour as Labour is now their preferred party, which they feel, now speaks for them.

More importantly than that, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership has already been talking of truth and reconciliation. Familiar themes, in Nelson Mandela's post Apartheid South Africa. These ideas are very necessary ones for a party who has lost touch with its grass-roots. Further, it is vital to establish a meaningful dialogue to enable the people we have lost, to return to Labour and make them feel welcome again.

Labour Party membership has reached the highest in its entire history. A few hours later he supported the protest through London which supported the welcoming of the refugees. Even the Conservatives admit that he is a conviction politician. He seems to be a politician who is in politics give him an opportunity to bring about real change for the better in British life, both social and economic, for all.

I was left wondering why I didn't support Jeremy Corbyn as he supports so many of the core socialist values that I do. I made the mistake that because I don't share the same space on the Labour Party political spectrum as Jeremy, well.....perhaps I will never know! Perhaps I was wrong. What is certain is that I can use my my time and energy and my financial resources, with renewed enthusiasm to back a Corbyn victory in 2020.

I believe that Labour's future will be best served by supporting Jeremy Corbyn, however we voted. I believe his contesting David Cameron for the number 10 job is perfectly achievable. Why shouldn't it be? It's true that people may feel that a more left wing brand of Labour wouldn't fit comfortably in the increasingly middle class Britain now.

But given the higher levels of austerity to come, and this governments' inability to create a solution that works, then I truly believe that given high public support already in 2015 for Jeremy Corbyn's aims and objectives then by 2020 he could not only achieve a Labour victory, but a substantial Labour one.
My conclusion? My Labour Party has just got more exciting!

Prejudice

2014-12-07T20:12:00.000+00:00

The other week I heard something astonishing. People say that they are prejudiced but only at times where there's a queue for housing, schools, food and jobs. In other words, all of the necessary things all of us need to make our proper contribution to our society. Presumably, they are no longer prejudiced when it is no longer necessary to access the queue for housing, schools, food and jobs.

I am reminded of Mark Twain's view of bankers, which is remarkably similar to our people who express this prejudice with conditions. 'A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.'

These people who express this 'conditional' prejudice seem able to state that immigrants are simultaneously taking their jobs and also spongeing off our benefit system, which is very clever of them.

All political parties have robust very anti-discrimination rules both in their party's constitution and also in their manifesto. The BNP (British National Party) pledge that they are not racist. Although, the BNP do not buy into the the idea that immigration is a valuable contribution to not just our public services but also to our communities. In the 1950's, immigration was very necessary as there was a huge number of vacancies that the indigenous Brits didn't seem able to fill, for one reason or another.

Many of these West Indian families have settled here and despite their encountering prejudice, even while they were in the process of helping us heal our broken post war, nearly bankrupted Britain, they went on to grow their communities. A substantial number of them grew businesses and grew local employment. Pretty well all of them started at the bottom, cleaning public toilets, hospitals and schools.

UKIP have recently done very well in elections. Perhaps the same UKIP voters were well aware that using the Euro elections as a means of protest is a different thing to voting UKIP in a parliamentary election. Otherwise, they would need to be certain that they are OK with paying to go and see their doctor, having their paid annual leave reduced to 14 days, having Employment Acts amended so that they have fewer rights of redress than now.

The Autumn Statement?

2014-12-07T02:16:00.000+00:00

Remember Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years? Like the enormous supercomputer's answer '42' the government is not going to like the answer because it has been asking the wrong question.

How can we create an environment where we can deliver income tax Black Friday give-aways just before the election so we can get in again?

The question the government should be asking is, how can we regenerate demand? They don't ask this question for two reasons.

They won't like the answer
They see low paid working families benefiting as being anti-recovery.

The answer to our problems, in part, is to increase demand. After this has been achieved, the government can quite rightly focus on reducing the deficit and debt.

For demand to increase, a very sizeable number of extra people have to be earning a lot more than the National Minimum Wage. The 2014 (current rate) is £6.50, with 18-20 year olds receiving £5.13, under 18 year olds receiving £3.79 and apprentices receiving £2.73 per hour.

Add to that, the number of people on either temporary, short-term and of course zero hour contracts, then it is small wonder that such a large number of people are effectively frozen out of the plan to move Britain forward. A Britain fuelled only by Black Fridays. And it is small wonder that the economy is so slow to move out of recession into a recovery, of sorts.

There is a compelling business argument to move people up, in these income brackets, to receive what is called the Living Wage. The UK Living Wage for outside of London is currently £7.85 per hour. The London Living Wage is currently £9.15 per hour.

Paying the London Living Wage is not only morally right, but makes good business sense too. There are now over 2,200 employees working for companies with contracts from the GLA who are benefiting from the London Living Wage.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

Even Boris doesn't view this as unpalatable, it's just that all these years employers have been claiming it would bankrupt the country and also cost jobs. That seems to have changed. For productivity to change, workers need to see that there is a future for them. Otherwise, why bother? They can surely get more on benefits? The government's argument seems to be that benefits are far too attractive!

An inconvenient truth for the government is that sadly, working for a living, in many cases, isn't not only not attractive, but also not viable. When you are lucky enough to leave benefits behind and get a job, you are pushed towards a financial cliff of around a £300 to £600 shortfall while you have your benefit stopped and you wait for your first salary. Looking at it from a coalition government perspective, the best plan is to cut social benefits on the pretext that these are too high. It doesn't occur that salaries and wages might be too low.

Just as we think we're hearing a new spring of worker appreciation from Boris, winter draws on from the CBI.

Labour’s rather modest commitment to raising the national minimum wage (NMW) to £8 per hour by 2020 should it win the next general election, has been condemned by business groups like the CBI.

This is at the same time where bankers are given millions of pounds in bonuses to deliver a bank from 2011 to 2012 with no significant improvement whatever. The Libor scandal has further undermined trust in banks. Barclays has been singled out for fiddling the Libor rate to increase its profits.

The deputy governor of the Bank of England went so far to call the Libor market a "cesspit" which seems to imply that Barclays is not the only bank "at it!" These same people who line their own pockets also seem bent on denying hard working people of the chance of earning decent money for extra effort, These bonus laden bankers, who often also get their income tax paid for them as well, seem oblivious to the thought of even 'setting a moral example'.

Contrast this to families who have had their salaries frozen for 5 years, it is clear that 'setting a moral example' is something that the low paid, hard working people alone must comply with.

A little bit less 'we're all in this together' then?

Google, Starbucks and Amazon avoid paying any UK tax at all, due to fancy fiscal footwork. Starbucks alone paid £20 million back to the UK government in 2012. So out of their $13 billion revenue they will get to keep $12.9 billion. We Brits really drive a hard bargain!

Suppose the Chancellor succeeds in taxing all these companies' profits at just 10% each? (Just under half of the income tax % of someone earning £25,000 per year).

That's still a lot of new hospitals and schools.Also libraries we could re-open (that the Coalition government closed from 2010 onwards).

Wouldn't the government be doing us all a favour as tax payers if they helped the poor keep more of their income? Not enough income for poor people means that we force them to choose the rip-off pay day loan companies that are unbelievably allowed to advertise on ITV with interest rates of 1700% APR. These legal loan sharks, suck any benefit that the government may have given them.

The government could also do the community a power of good by:

injecting cash into development grants for licenced Credit Unions.
taking away the licences of all payday loan companies who charge above 40% APR.

If it sticks in the craw of this coalition government that they're actually giving a helping hand to low paid, hard working people, then they could at least console themselves that it would actually do the demand-starved businesses in this country a big favour.

Consider:

Britain should move toward being a fair and equal opportunity society

'A fair days' pay for a fair days' work'.

Surely, if we did that, won't we all be better off in the end?

Time to de-clutter

2013-10-04T08:54:00.001+01:00

It's not that I don't have a clue why I'm an Atheist, it's more like I never had a clue why I was religious. I'm pretty sure a need to conform, born out of my being bullied for being "different" is certainly in the mix.

There is a grieving process involved, that's for sure. You are saying goodbye to a part of your life. Having said that, you're saying hello to a new life. It's a bit like going into a new, uncluttered flat. The luxury of being able to, well, find things! It's much easier upkeep, a "minimalist" flat.

You have plenty of people with cluttered flats aspiring to minimalist. Not so many, wanting to aspire to clutterdom.

I saw an interesting Intelligence Squared Debate on YouTube recently. "Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuzYwzGoXw

Speaking for the motion, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe MP. Speaking against the motion, the late Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.

The Roman Catholic Church uses its wealth to procure a holy clutter not just of artefacts but also religious dogma. A significant part of this Roman Catholic seeks to demoralise and demonise the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual and Transgendered community. This community, according to the Roman Catholic Church simply do not deserve the same human rights as their faithful.

'Let he who has not sinned, cast the first stone'

The road from Atheism to whatever the Roman Catholic church is, seems to have a bloody great big rock on it.

Chances

2013-10-04T08:44:00.002+01:00

Whenever I wake up in the morning, I am always astounded at how different the weather can be. As I was driving to work, the skies were overcast. There seemed to be no sunlight breaking through.

A little further on, I could see the vaguest patches of light whose presence could only be seen because the trees, still clutching on to their summer green, had changed to a different colour.

Clouds, (taken here on a different day), often have the capacity to surprise. Who would have thought that there would be a woodpecker cloud? I've seen countless Poodles, quite a few British Isles and Ireland has been shown on different days too, no doubt sensitive to the Republican cause in Northern Ireland, but riding roughshod over the feelings of the Loyalists.

Today, although you would think it would be very cold, mostly because it's October, (because it's England) and because the Sun is shielded behind these thick clouds, raining down indecisively upon us, it is unbelievably mild. It's also that weather which throws the settings of your windshield wipers into horrible confusion.

I can't help but wonder, how much longer than the 63 years I've already spent on the planet, do I have before it becomes less surprising? 100 years, 300, 500, 1000? I'm also very aware that I spend a lot of time looking up at this odd weather and I'm always surprised at how many other people don't look up. Am I on my own here? Or is it that other people are quieter about it, because they feel it would be a bit odd to talk about it?

Life, generally, is very weird, when you take time out to think about it. It's very much more like that movie 'Sliding Doors' than we often think. I did very badly at school. I had a succession of retail jobs. I drifted. However, I am within months of retiring, having been able to secure continuous employment since August 1965. The choices I'm made, appear to have been brilliantly inspired. I may have been found wanting in that I failed to achieve my dream job, but I came amazingly close.

Now then, coming to how I come to write these words, on this particular morning?

I wonder, I thought, if I can produce an entry on my blog based solely on an idea, that I get from browsing through forgotten pictures on my digital camera? The woodpecker pic was the Genesis. I would not have written this otherwise. That is amazing, isn't it? Hope the Blog is too!

Being single

2013-06-27T03:48:00.000+01:00

Finally, I thought, some intelligent debate about the positive aspects of being single.
A documentary was on TV tonight.
Sadly, No.
It was a question about why some single young people hadn't found mates.

I must admit, had I been still married, I might also probably be buying into the warped view of singleness as being a somehow deficient way of living. My marriage came to an end. To use the conventional vocabulary, my marriage had 'failed'. Our RELATE counsellor described our marriage although having ended was, nevertheless, a 'success'. Look at what we got from it! We found each other. We were a happy couple for a time. We produced two wonderful sons who have grown into amazingly fine young men who we're both very proud of.

A new chapter in both of our lives began. For me, it was a flash-point where I was amazingly fortunate to be able to buy a one bedroom flat on a 15 year mortgage. I was nearing my 50th year. November 1st 1999 was the day I left work for the day and went to the estate agent's to pick up the keys for my very own flat.

A female friend of mine who lives in the USA articulated an almost evangelical zeal for her singleness, which inspired me. However, I accepted that singleness does take women differently. Women often have an emotional strength of character that seems to equip them well for a single life. Men, studies have shown, don't seem to fare so well. Although I did play back a voice-mail from Dateline which seems to contradict the strong women ethos. This lady wanted a man to 'complete' her.
I declined on the grounds that only you can make you complete.

Early days and happy indeed at having my own flat, but I prepared myself for the possibility that my happiness may not last. Perhaps it would be a 6 month thing and I would be climbing the walls?
No, 6 months came and went. I still came home from work, happy that I actually had my own flat.
A year, then? No. Ah! perhaps it's an anniversary thing, like birthdays and Christmas?
No, not really. 5 years and the 10, still very happy being here in my bijou flat.

My ex- and I had parted very amicably. There's often an 'awkward' phase. It's not knowing quite where the new boundaries are, I guess. We morphed into a different kind of 'family' again, but this time with different addresses. If I was ill, my ex- would go shopping for medicines, food. She would make sure I was OK. My Mum adores her and is pleased to have gained a new daughter.

I did briefly deviate from my singleness. I moved away, discovered I was, in fact, one of those ghastly blokes that couldn't commit and then moved back into my flat.
10 years have passed since then and I won't be moving again anytime soon.

When you tell some people you're single, some people look crestfallen, just like when you've told them someone you love has died. 'Oh you poor thing!' Next, I try to guide them from their depression and assure them I am OK, more than OK. I have to be careful with the emphasis otherwise I find I've convinced them I'm putting a brave face on things. Then when I have managed that, they believe I'm gay. Of course, trying to state you're not gay means you're in denial and oh dear... only trying to be clear about what I want.

That's how ingrained this view of singleness misery is.

Single, even in 2013, means:

you are lonely (climbing the walls)
you are socially inept
you have no social life
you are emotionally incomplete
you have self-esteem issues
you aren't really 'normal'
you're happy on the outside, but crying inside

What singleness means for me is - none of the above!

I still have a nice family life. I call in to say hello and have a cup of tea round my ex-'s. I visit my sons without the need for a social worker, a police officer or a solicitor. It is so nice in every single respect. The only difference is we live apart.

I am not against marriage. I think it's wonderful. Perhaps it isn't for me? I don't know. Maybe one day, I will meet a woman who I just can't imagine my life without and I will want to marry her. I will not waste my life searching. I am pretty convinced that searching for love is wrong-footed.

'Love is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention towards other things it will come and softly sit on your shoulder'.

It's the turning your attention to other things. Learning how the cosmos works, why diet coke still makes you fat, what makes music so amazingly wonderful, why coffee beans disappear so fast (that might be just me). Putting up all those shelves you've been meaning to do for the last 5 years.

I am reading a surprisingly enjoyable book 'Happy To Be Single' by Liz Hodgkinson with a delicious subtitle 'The Pleasures of Independence'. Don't be put off by the 1990's style cover. The writing is still as fresh as a daisy.

Part of what probably equips me for enjoying my singleness is that I have been loved.
Strangely, I felt that I had been alone, or lonely, for a great part of my life, despite having lots of people around me. Having my own place, ironically, I feel less lonely.
With solitude, you learn a self-sufficiency that perhaps others miss out on.
Loving a woman who you know you can never have.
Equally, finding the courage leave when you don't love someone in return.
Both of these are so hard. You will get over it and you will have grown so much.

The longer I live as a single man, the more natural and right it feels.

Being single is cool!

Taxing Times for Families

2012-04-05T14:31:00.007+01:00

Up to a million families each stand to lose an average of £511 a year under tax and benefit changes, according to research.

Anti-poverty campaigners dubbed the start of the financial year Bad Friday, warning cuts totalling more than £2bn were taking effect over the Easter weekend.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said the impact calculated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS (SES: E1:I49.SI - news) ) was proof of a "tax credits bombshell" with up to a million households losing eligibility entirely. Mr Balls said the IFS figures revealed a "bombshell".

More than 850,000 families stood to lose their child tax credit - worth around £545 per year - from the start of the financial year.

Child Poverty Action Group chief executive Alison Garnham said: "Some of the poorest working families will lose thousands of pounds from their annual income, leaving them in a desperate struggle to pay for basics like groceries, clothes and household bills."

This sounds slightly out of step with the Coalition's "we aim to be the most family-friendly nation on Earth" objective - which you can read on page 41 in the Conservative's 2010 manifesto here:

Make Britain the Most Family-Friendly Country in Europe

http://media.conservatives.s3.amazonaws.com/manifesto/cpmanifesto2010_lowres.pdf

The key phrases are here:

"We will make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe.

We will support families in the tax and benefits system, extend flexible working and improve parental leave.

We will help parents cope with the commercialisation of childhood and give families more control over their lives.

We will support and improve Sure Start, and introduce a new universal health visiting service.

We will give targeted help to disadvantaged and dysfunctional families".

While the Conservative's intentions are good, the reality is that the brakes are applied too fiercely on benefits, when a family member is lucky enough to secure a job. There will be a shortfall in the first 3 to 6 months where the adjusted economy takes effect.

I encountered one young woman, a single parent, at a village hall who had a monthly shortfall of £400. It is hard for me to believe that this woman's circumstances are that unique and aren't frequently repeated almost everywhere in Britain.

The economy of single people is critical, to put it mildly.

The Tories have previously, never given much thought to single parent families and single people's only acknowledgement that they are up against it is the single person's Council Tax discount.

Now they are even failing to give even their much preferred one man, one woman nuclear family a helping hand in these most difficult times.

Science the poetry of creation

2011-02-28T22:55:00.002+00:00

“Why do you have to keep reducing everything to science?” asks Jackie Tyler of the Doctor in Doctor Who, Series 2 “Army Of Ghosts”. Jackie’s way of thinking about science has never occurred to me.

I’ve always viewed science as being a portal to a truly beautiful cosmos. However, Jackie’s view is not unique. To many people, scientists are not real people, they have no sense of humour, very few social skills and always wear white coats.

This could be a masked fear people have, not of science, but of the more terrifying aspects of cosmology. The supernova of a star, a massive explosion which often has a blast area of several light years reminds people that we are very fleeting beings and even our planet Earth, is a temporary home for us humans.

Poverty, famine and wars seem to be constant companions though aeons of time. Technology affords greater life spans. We have a burgeoning population of 80 to100 year olds but our financing of retirement pensions does not afford the greater number of people who are no longer working. There is little that young people in the 1960’s could have done to manage and provide for their old age now.

At first, when I listen to Gustav Holst’s The Planets “Saturn” I am reminded of Saturn, the bringer of old age. It sounds distressing at first, but the piece evolves into calm and serenity. It is at this point, that I view old age as being a chance to smell of that coffee we never got the same chance to, while we were working and raising families.

“Creation” means something a little different when you’re an Atheist.

Not a God created universe. No-one can explain now or before, (and they may probably never will), how the universe came into being. That flashpoint, in order to have an existence, must have straddled the boundaries of our physical universe and that point where time and space were yet to exist.

While I’m pondering that, I’m looking at clouds. Rather a lot to look at in an English winter. I’m struck how beautiful they are. They are only water vapour. Now why do I have to keep reducing things to science?

Oh…

The Coalition

2011-02-26T20:34:00.005+00:00

I well remember people saying "why can't we have a coalition government?"

We were a bit niave in those days. A coalition government would be about parties all working together for the common good. And not about the Tories telling the Lib-Dems to get stuffed, after all.

In life, I've always noticed that it's a tiny minority of families on estates who bring down the reputation of the estate. This eclipsing of the decent majority has a lot to do with our media, hell bent on selling their newspapers, because for some reason, they judge us to be only interested in bad news.

School bullies are probably no more than about a dozen, out of a school roll of 1500. In the course of my union work, I've met a great deal of people who have been bullied at school. Again, bullies seem to be very far reaching, given their very small numbers.

I have always believed that politicians, (of whatever persusaion), go into politics because they believe that they can make changes for the better. I still believe that today.

I can't help but wonder how so many would be councillors or MP's feel when they have these great ambitions steamrollered by some pompous political grandee's desire to replace their ludicrously expensive bird table, have their moat cleaned, or supply their husband with a porn DVD courtesy of the tax payer.

So are these the same MP's who've frozen for 2 years public sector worker's pay* (who didn't cause the recession) and allowed bankers bosses (who DID cause the recession) to collect huge bonuses?

*(That's of course, except for the 425,000 public sector workers who will be losing their jobs).

Ah yes, we're getting a day off on Friday 29th April. The wedding!

Come on, it's not as though we're paying for it, is it?

Happiness

2010-11-28T18:38:00.005+00:00

Our government wants to know if we’re happy.

This is refreshing news.

I can’t recall any previous government before asking us this question. Our governments seem to be permanently locked into a continuous battle of capital versus labour. Occasionally, they say they've seen a "third way" - but I notice that it's still all rates of mortgages, unemployment that figure in their election leaflets, defining their successes. So it's not suprising that we’re still left with the same old questions. We still have a society that bases itself on citizens being enriched by hard currency, alone and not being happy, after all.

“Are we happy?”

“Is being happy what we’re supposed to be here for?”

“Are we supposed to be happy?”

We, in the west, are pretty sold on the idea, that happiness isn’t about money. I’m not at all sure about that. As someone who’s never had much money, I can tell you that there is little happiness in being poor. I have been happy, in spite of being poor. If I suddenly became rich, I predict that I would use money to free myself and those who I love, from the stress and worry that goes with not having enough money to pay the bills.

We babyboomers were not poor in a sense that our parent’s generation understood. Being poor, these days, is often a very relative state. Our parents did not have enough money to buy enough food. Actually, pretty well all parents in those days were poor. Our generation feels deprived when we can’t send our kids to school in the same trainers. So we’re aware of a bigger rich/poor gap. The pain we feel is not because we don’t have the same, it’s because we are made to feel excluded because we’re told we have failed to have the same.

If our society were more “poor-friendly” we would feel no pain about not having the same material wealth and things as our richer peers. We would simply be living different lives and we wouldn’t be feeling that our lives were somehow “inferior” just because we were poor.

Being a socialist, I am much more inclined to believe that if we were brave enough to try for a much more equal society, not only poorer people would be happier, but rich people would be too. Poor families can often be very creative when it comes to being happy. An evening with a box full of clothes, where people can dress up as a pirate or a policeman can be sometimes surprisingly wonderful. We are truly playing.

That's not to say that I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the latest Nintendo Wii, Playsation or X-Box, but neither would I turn my nose up at the box full of pirate costumes either. Or a game of "shove ha'penny".

Consider these quotes about happiness:

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.”

Groucho Marx

“The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.”

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

The surprising thing is that each of those quotes could’ve been written by the other author. And yet, how differently we view Groucho Marx from Tenzin Gyatso the,14th Dalai Lama. We appear to be very much in unison about what happiness really is.

I can bear this wisdom out personally.

"Have no friends not equal to yourself."

Confucious (551 - 497 BC) Chinese philosopher.

Nothing is more miserable than when you don’t feel equal to someone who you’re trying to be friends with.

My life has been very varied. I have probably done it all, compared to a lot of folk. I have been married, and now, I am single again. My single life is not spent in miserable isolation, which is what many people have wondered about, when I tell them about my singleness. Perhaps I am happy being single and living alone, with no intention to become part of a couple again, precisely because I have had experience of being married. I have, like my mother, spent most of my life, living a life where I am often alone, so emotionally, that I am used to it and now have the emotional intelligence to actually relish my aloneness.

As an atheist, my idea of happiness is not seeing this life as a prelude to a better life to come. Suppose there isn't one? Wouldn't we feel cheated about.... Oh, I suppose we wouldn't know whether or not we had lived our lives not in a way that we could have chosen, had we known what would be in store for us, if you see what I mean?

A terminally ill patient usually lives life to the full. Somehow a mental, emotional focus, that eludes many of us, takes over. They do say live your day as though it were your last, don't they?

Aloneness is not interchangeable with unhappiness. It’s simply a different way of living. I found that out from a friend who is truly inspiring on lone living at its best. She packs her art, her love of creating it, learning all about history and making it her business to know about the fascinating city she lives in. Learning and the excitement you feel as it evolves you, really rocks her world. You could say that she is living life to the full, as though it were her last day.

Happiness is universal. The pathways to it are myriad. Mine is music, writing and astronomy. One never really knows why we are here. Created, evolved, sent here, who knows? It's a fair bet that while we are here, the pursuit of happiness is probably a pretty damn good shot at guessing the right reason as to why we're here. And even if that's the correct reason, well, who cares?

The government may well define happiness in a completely different way to me. So now, if the government really are serious about wanting to know whether I'm happy, what do I put on the flippin' form?

Writing

2010-02-27T01:08:00.002+00:00

Yes, writing.
I seem to spend most of my waking hours writing something. It’s one of those magical pursuits where you can dream up a story, taking place 210 light years from Earth, in a different time and under two suns instead of one. Err.... not too much detail... you’ll have to buy the rest!

If I ever finish the thing!

On the other hand, my story could be just down the road, a few minutes walk from the Post Office, or the Co-op. It could be fiction, or fact. Writing about people, places and events is always interesting. I was sitting in a car, just resting, from a hard day’s work, waiting to go into Tesco’s supermarket. I thought of a story about the car parking space I was in; the lives it had seen, the life I was leading at that time. My story would follow the lives, events, the heartaches and the joys of the people who use that car park space.

Writers have a hard time getting life into their books. Every now and then, a writer conveys that spirit of life into their story. You can put yourself into their space, their place and feel their wonder, their fear, their incredulity of the fantastic things that happen to them, as well as the mundane, the everyday things. These things are just as amazing, and just as hard to do well, when I set them down before my reader.

Sometimes, it’s not just one story, but the other that follows it that enhances the whole experience. I’m talking about Doctor Who, the new series, series 2. I’d just seen “The Girl in the Fireplace” set in pre-Revolutionary Versailles. An alien race from the 50th century was stalking a young woman in the 18th. Although very sci-fi, the story belonged firmly to the 18th century.
The Doctor, Rose and Mickey, left 18th century Versailles and materialised on a parallel Earth, in a parallel modern England and met parallel versions of themselves and their families. At their new destination they were also facing an old enemy in “The Rise of the Cybermen”.

I was very conscious of the story it had followed, and I think it was a very powerful illustration of how incredible the Doctor and his TARDIS is. It was sheer brilliance to follow the “The Girl in the Fireplace” with “The Rise of the Cybermen”. It showed how amazing travelling though space and time is, let alone falling out of our universe altogether and ending up in a parallel one.

Like many rookie writers, I suspect, we are like the stereotypical American tourist, who is, in my opinion, is very culturally honest when he says, “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like!” As though we are supposed to have read all the classics, all the great works of literature. If I read all that I’ve been told I am supposed to have read, as my literary ballast, I would have live as long as Doctor Who!

Learning all of the devices, like where to end the narrative and let the dialogue do the story telling is a skill worth knowing. Omission, where you allow your reader to imagine for them, is a very powerful technique and a holy grail for the writer. There’s a parallel in art, where you leave white space, which adds dimension to what you’re drawing, or painting. I read a review from last Saturday’s Guardian of an eclectic band of writers who give advice to the aspiring writer.

Some of it appears contradictory and yet taken together, it, nevertheless, makes sense. A bit like that last sentence! I’ve heard of stream of consciousness, studious outlining and then drafting before committing to the main road writing. I get the idea that there are, after all, as many different approaches as there are writers. This would appear to lead one to assume that there is no right or wrong way. Just a way as individual as you are.

There is some wonderful core stuff the writers all seem to agree on. Make a space for your writing; Physical space being a kitchen table, a desk, preferably in a private, quiet study. I have a desk listening to music from KCRW an eclectic radio station that streams from Santa Monica College, before it streams over the Internet to me. So I hope that’s a recommendation.

Mental space, or schedule space. Do your writing at specific times. It should be inked in, (as opposed to pencilled in, which you can rub out!) After all, wouldn’t your writing evening class be inked in?

The other thing is to do the writing.

It is amazing how many of us tell people of our writing. And yet, the finished product is less grand than our enthusiasm. When I’m not doing the writing, it does seem to be something you seem to want to put off. This makes you conclude that you can’t be much of a writer and you lack that vital dedication. This might be true. If you’re like me, you’ll find that perhaps it’s the daily routine that detunes you as a writer. Usually when you write regularly, you find you can re-tune back quicker and you can enjoy it quicker, even though it is very, very hard work indeed.

My enthusiasm is very genuine, otherwise, I guess, I wouldn’t be able to write. What I do lack is a solid grasp of project management, which plagues many writers, I am certain. Effective project management seems to go against the grain with our artistic and creative natures.

Why? Is it real? Or is it something we tell ourselves?

I can’t do recipes. Never have, never will. Instead, I learned some very rudimentary ideas about ingredient combinations, (usually based on my being reluctant to visit the supermarket!) I’ve developed an instinct about food. I learned one day, I was doing “art” with food. This empowered me to try other things with food and it occurred to me that I could transpose this to letters and paints too. The “storehouse” idea, where you store your ingredients for your writing, crops up quite a few times. So yes, those books on writing were right after all!

While I’m writing this, I am not finishing the story I’ve started. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not I’ve learned from my experiences, or my mistakes!

Happy writing!

Science and God

2009-08-09T23:55:00.004+01:00

I've never been one for this Science vs. God thing.

I much prefer the science is the" how?", and God is the "why?"

Stephen Hawking's book, his first one, (that I also haven't yet finished!), "A Brief History of Time" has a foreword written by Carl Sagan, which implies that Stephen's work and the predictions that arise thus, leave little for a God to do.

As I grow ever weary of organised religions, I find that they have no place in either my values, morals and ethical system. Perhaps it's better to say that my ethical system seems to flourish without a God. However, I do dismiss the cliched "religions are the cause of all wars". I find people are much more of a help to global disintegration than religions.

Why is it that whenever you read the Bible, or the Koran, they do start off with the idea of a perfect world, God and then we enter the picture, and from thereon in, it all goes pear-shaped?

We can all point to things in the Bible that appear to justify our values, or, even our bigotry.

Anti-homosexuality, and transgenderedness, is dealt with in Deuteronomy 22:5

"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man,

neither shall a man put on a woman's garment:

for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God."

And yet, we're told as Christians, we do not follow the Old Testament? Even if we were required to follow this tract, "abomination " is pretty strong stuff from a God that loves us like a father. If parents loved us as conditionally as this, they would be viewed as pretty lame parents.

When parents find their son or daughter is gay, or they find that their son or daughter needs to change from their born gender, they try to overcome their shock, they usually fend off attacks from people with negative views about their child and in the end, hopefully, they arrive at a place where they can find the love in their hearts again.

It really does seem that God, thus described, really does believe that there is little for a creator to do. Perhaps what is meant by this, is that God would not be involved in our day to day lives. He would love us from a distance, the way a mother or father would, when their child is away at university? Like a parent, God will have done the work earlier. It is up to us kids to use what our parents taught us. More about us being wise, loving, peaceable and stable in an unstable world?

Parenting still goes on. But the work you did early, still counts for most of how the kids turn out. You can't make hasty revisions when they are 14. It's too late.

It is a fact that the Earth is 4.3 billion years old, (there is astounding forensic evidence to suggest that it is indeed that old), and not 6,000 years old, after all. We came about, through a bewildering chain of events where whole species were wiped off the face of the Earth. Had this not happened, it is likely, we would be astoundingly a different species ourselves. If we were to exist at all?

The Solar System, according to our best knowledge at the moment, perhaps evolved the way it did partly because there was a succession of planetary collisions. Hundreds of different planets, radically different in size, existed in the early dawn of our Solar System. We Earthlings nearly did not get here, but even more amazingly, also the very planet Earth itself nearly didn't get here!

The planet Uranus orbits the Sun lying on its back. This was almost certainly due to another planet, (possibly an Earth-sized planet), smashing into Uranus and causing its North pole to point slightly downwards while slightly tipping up its South pole.

The evolution of the universe, from where time, space and matter began, would appear to be not the territory of a Creator after all. Perhaps, a Creator's job was completed just the moment the universe exploded into being? And not governed, after all, where Brian likes to dress as Brianna; or where Gary hasn't got Diana as his lover, but Steve instead?

Perhaps that's why a Creator has little to do? It was already done before?

Radio and writing

2009-03-14T01:23:00.002+00:00

Quite a lot going on at the moment. A few months ago, I joined Gateway FM, which is a community radio station in Basildon, Essex. I'm learning how to "drive the desk", which is a strange feeling, after having become so familiar with the desk at Hospital Radio Chelmsford for the past 4 years.

Gateway FM, is a fairly new station. It is not on FM at the moment, as there is a licence application going through for a full time licence. There is to be another RSL (a 28 day broadcast) on FM, which is expected to be the station's final RSL. The station broadcasts over the internet. I did have a go on the air and it was a strange feeling to know that it's possible that I could be heard anywhere in the world.

I can't wait to get hold of a recorder and do some interviews. Making radio programmes where the people of Basildon are the stars is very exciting.

The other thing I am doing is writing two Doctor Who stories. I have no idea whether they'll ever be published. The prime motivation for me is to have two good Doctor Who stories, good stories, that have been written by me. Although, just in case, I am writing them to an existing publisher's format!

Wouldn't it be great if I could progress further in both these ventures and become a writer and a broadcaster!