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Plagues Then and Now.
25 November 2007 .
I really do believe that my planet, never mind my nation, is in clear and immediate danger.
The question I keep asking myself is, Am I just sandwich-board mad, or am I seeing more clearly than too many of my fellow citizens?
I'm not alone in seeing the possible (likely?) imminent end of the environmental paradise which the human race has enjoyed at least since the end of the last ice age; but it is also true that folks have been foretelling the end since the time of Christ and no doubt much longer. What, if anything, makes me any more right than all those who got it wrong before?
The particular problem I have is with the 14th century, when millennial feelings as the Black Death swept through Europe were as powerful and perhaps, at least in a sense, as well-founded as they are now. The end of the world was visibly happening, yet society recovered, continued and in fact very soon flowered in the High Renaissance.
It is too easy, I think, to say that in the face of the plague, eschatological feelings were the result of visible horrors and a terror of the god who seemed to be inflicting them, whereas now we are warned by science.
There is one tool which science has which gives it the power to seem more powerfully right than any philosophy which went before: its power to predict the otherwise unexpected; yet the Christians of 650 years might have pointed at the book of Revelations and said, 'we have that too'.
I know what I think; I know my belief in scientific method, and that that underlies my fears for the near future. But I do wonder if, as I foresee catastrophe, I ought to be careful to examine very closely why I do.
Comments Received (a): Blair Babes:
22 November 2007 .
I haven't launched this journal upon the web yet - I have to be sure that I will enjoy keeping it up, and anyway launching it will, I think, present me with a learning curve....
However, a few charitable friends have cast a glance or two, and less charitably have leapt to argument or even - gasp - criticism.
Anyway, straight to the first criticism received (based on objections which I'm sure don't need explaining), that I use the term 'Blair Babe'. I half accept the criticism, but defend myself thus:
We have been accustomed, for too long, to place-men and apparatchiki among the more depressing levels of our politicians, faceless suits who flit briefly into our gaze - and occasionally rise inexplicably high - before sinking into footnotedom. We hoped that the new wave, of women MPs, might lead to something different: with honourable exceptions, our hopes have not always been requited. My understanding of 'Blair Babe' encompasses a certain type of woman in New Labour:
1) There is a certain uniformity - almost as if they were clones.
2) They seem to be given to mouthing party platitudes with a peculiarly patronising air.
3) I feel - rightly or wrongly - that they sometimes front a party line in the house, without really understanding what it is they are talking about and, more importantly, without seeming aware of ramifications and consequences.
4) They can come across as extraordinarily complacent.
5) Some of them appear to share with the Supreme Leader a poor understanding of how organisations work. [I admit that I would not easily be able to argue this; but it is my perception, which I think is shared.]
6) I, who am not much interested in party politics or personalities anyway, find it inordinately hard to distinguish them or to remember which one has which name.
I'm sure I'll think of more of their characteristics, if they have any. I admit that I may be being totally unfair, and certainly un-PC; but the point of this site, for me, is to explore, inside myself as well as out in the world: therefore, I feel justified in writing as I see. If nobody agrees with me I will sink without a trace. If what I say strikes a chord, then maybe it's worth saying.
Perhaps, after all, it really doesn't matter.
19 November 2007 .
Two comments almost in passing in today's Independent on Sunday.
One was that to the Facebook generation, all the arguments about ID cards are never going to be anything more than yesterday's news. (It seems that Facebook is using personal details of members to advertise goods, eg using their faces on visual ads or harvesting info in some way - and at most 25% of the membership is expected to express any interest at all.)
The other was that so many government actions have passed with so little objection or comment (specifically mentioned was the apathetic response to Jacquiquiqiiiiii Smith's admission - after an attempted cover-up - that 10 000 illegal immigrants had been given security clearances up to and including protecting the pm) that the government is entitled to draw a very clear message - not to the advantage of our freedom.
Perhaps there's a lesson for me; People don't care.
Well, there were Jews in Nazi Germany who assisted in the exterminations, and by no means all were forced into it: there were - Jews - who said it would be wrong to resist, even as they entered the gas-chambers. There were probably those who, as they lost their jobs or were banned from marrying gentiles, said of the Nazis, "Well, you can see their point of view."
There are Muslim women who have their hymens sewn - revirgination - or who wear purdah, or who circumcise their daughters or granddaughters.
The human race does whatever it is told, so far as I can see, and it is sometimes most vociferous in support of its own oppression.
Britain, and some of the nations once born from Britain, have a mixed but sometimes glorious history in the development of Freedom and respect for the individual. If this generation doesn't care, if it is choosing to walk away from its past, to allow corporations and the state (with their databases and incompetences) to take over, do I have the right to object, let alone the possibility of any success?
Punished for Paying Our Taxes:
08 November 2007 .
As yet another group of citizens makes the news for withholding some or all of their Council Tax, I've found that I still have a grudge about the end of the Poll Tax business.
Like a lot of people at the lower end of the economic ladder, I was hit hard by Poll Tax. Foolishly, I felt that nevertheless I should pay my whack; the others in my flats did not. In the end, the tax collapsed... and many those who had not paid were simply amnestied - and did not have to pay. 15 years ago, now, but a couple of thousand pounds, and to add insult to injury, those who did pay had to pay an additional premium to cover the shortfall of those who did not.
Oh, how they did laugh, my neighbours.
On The Beach:
14 October 2007 .
I read Neville Shute's "On the beach" when I was eight or nine years old. I was probably too young for it, but I was avid for science fiction. I may have been young, but I was old enough to be gripped by the oppressive sense of foreboding in the book that grew into inevitability as the society faced extinction, and as each individual became ill and died.
I became so involved that each stage I thought, or hoped or prayed, "This may not happen, there might be a miracle". As an adult, long after Cuba, I saw the film starring Gregory Peck. I felt the same claustrophobia. I found the revivalist meeting, with the banner announcing, "There is still time," and then later that same scene, deserted and windblown, with the sign still hanging but in tatters, very poignant. When Fred Astaire entered his final race, I felt that, in the film, there was still time, and life to be lived. But the end was inevitable, and suddenly all the time had gone.
When I came out of the cinema, I was able to say to myself, "but it never did happen."
Except that I think it may be happening now: it is not radiation that is killing us, but it is just as much the consequences of our own actions. When I look at some of our grand plans for the future - Tony Blair's airports, for heaven's sake - I wonder if they will be the revivalist tatters blowing in the wind after we are gone.
'Last and First Men'; (Olaf Stapledon):
08 October 2007 .
Published around 1930, this book was of a genre with 'The Shape of Things to Come' by Wells. Roughly contemporary, each was a launch into the future, an extrapolation of those nervous times with the same fear of war and the loss of the human soul, and ultimately with the same utopian optimism; but Stapledon's covered a heroic time scale (I read it when I was ten, and I believe it gave me my first inclination of the sheer vastness of time). The 'First Men' of the book were us, before our fall and subsequent evolution into something new.
The First Men by the 1930's are developing a civilisation based on oil and later an all but religious devotion to flight. When the oil runs out - 2000 years in the future! - the race has lost its power and willingness to adjust, and collapses into a dark age: in fact, in the face of disaster, they dedicate even more of their last oil to increasing their flying - for psychological reasons that seemed a bit unlikely to me years ago but which I can now watch not in fiction but in reality. Because our resources have been exhausted, this dark age is massively deeper and longer than anything before, and when a new civilisation does develop it is a pale and timid Indian Summer, before the race goes under for millions of years before emerging as something different.
I always felt that by the time I read the book, it was clear that flight was not going to dominate quite as in the book, but substitute the motor car and the book was spot on. Consequently I have always seen resource exhaustion rather than climate warming as the one that'll do for us. As I grew up, I also realised that the 2000 year scenario was several orders too optimistic.
Tony Blair with his techophiliac dreams of airport development - billions in cash and in environmental devastation to build runways and airports that may never be used because the oil will be so expensive by the time they are ready, unbelievable investment in Airbus, the Gadarene madness of cheap air travel.... I take it back, Mr. Stapledon: we worship flight to the point of blindness, just as you said.
Too much of a Good Thing.
30 September 2007 .
I was in the café today. The young woman (about 19 years old?) next ahead of me in the queue was wearing a narrow top over low cut jeans. She was dressed to be appreciated, and I make no apology for doing so (from, as I was,) behind her: she had long, thick hair, good skin and an attractive waist and small of the back.
While she was waiting for her coffee to be made, she part turned toward me. Fortunately I wasn't staring, but when our eyes met, she smiled - which was nice. Then I glanced down, hoping I suppose to see if her tum was as attractive as her back - or possibly just not wanting to look into her eyes for that moment too long.
Unfortunately, her trousers were cut so low that, in the brief glimpse before I averted my eyes, I was able to tell exactly what type of waxing she had.
Strangely enough, the encounter quite suddenly ceased to be charming.
If I had shown any reaction to her come-hither attire, I would at best have been called a dirty old man. Why was she dressed like that in the street? If it's a sex thing, she's going to get all sorts of hormones going and then leave them flat. If it's a power thing, it's not a million miles from a sort of rape.
What would be the reaction if I walked around with an inch and a half band of genital hair showing? I assume that I'd be chatting with the Peelers in an instant.
Elections aren't for us:
30 September 2007 .
Letter to the Independent:
Over the last few days, pundits have been analysing the factors that the Prime Minister might take into account when deciding whether or not to go for an early general election. Predictably they focus on his party's electability - poll findings, the opinions of MPs in marginal constituencies, public perceptions of Brown's financial record and so on.
It is a pity that the question of when it would be in the public interest to hold an election seems to figure so far down the list.
(Comment received: Gordon Brown almost certainly believes that he is a good man and that therefore whatever he decides is, almost by definition, in the public interest.)
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