2016
April 6
Up the canal without a paddle
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What is the big C doing? The big C of course is our Prime Minister, David William Donald Cameron, son of Ian Donald Cameron. Ian Cameron was a stock broker. Do I hear alarm bells? I should.
It would appear, from comments and stories elsewhere that Ian Cameron may have attempted to place some funds in offshore trusts. In many cases, repeat many not all, this is not illegal. It could be argued to be immoral because you are avoiding paying tax like the poorer in society have to do and it could certainly be argued to be unpatriotic as you are wilfully not contributing your fair share to the wealth of your country. However, it may not be illegal. In some cases though, where money laundering is involved, this type of activity is illegal.
At this stage I have no idea which dealings of all that came out of the leak of the Panamanian papers were illegal and which were immorally opportunistic.
However the big C has not made things better for himself. First he says it is a private matter. Not really, big C. If you are Head of a government which claims to be trying to put a stop to this off-shore trust behaviour, it doesn’t seem a good idea if your own father has been involved in it. Then he says he has no shares or income from offshore trusts: now. Then Downing Street says that Mr Cameron, his wife and his children “do not benefit from any offshore trusts”.
I am afraid things are now becoming so devious that I would need a definition of the word benefit to know what this means. The money, from something other than shares, comes in and he gives it to his mother would seem to satisfy both his and the Downing Street statement.
Now I may, at some stage in the future, be proved totally wrong on this but I find it hard to believe, and at this moment there is nothing in evidence, that Jeremy Corbyn has any immoral tax dealings. For that reason I see him as a man fit to run my country. I may not agree with all his policies and, as such, I have a vote to give to some other party, but, as a man, as a person, I would be happy to accept him as my leader and accept the result of our so-called democratic voting system.
The big C, however, has a major problem following these leaks and he will only gain my respect when I believe, and can see, that he is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It would appear however that the bubble has burst and this time, and in different circumstances, it is no longer in the South Seas but somewhere in the central Americas. The big C has somehow become embroiled in this, whether guilty or not. He would do well not to go down the route of John Aislabie who, although only Chancellor of the Exchequer was, following an investigation into the previous bursting bubble in 1720, expelled from the Houses of Parliament. Again he had not really done anything illegal just presided over a whole lot of gullible people being taken in. Oh.
Panama, until now, was most famous for its Canal. At the moment, that one word, suitably split, may best describe the behaviour of the big C.
April 14
The misused power of the press
I have made the point before about the misnomer that applies these days to the word newspapers. You would have hoped that these were papers upon which was printed, for the readers information, news about events both in their country and wider abroad. No such luck and a few recent events prove, quite blatantly, the level to which they have now sunk and the manner in which they believe freedom of speech and freedom of the press should operate.
Leaving aside the Leveson report, just like the government has done, I want to look at how newspapers, these days, seem to operate. Freedom of the press is important, don’t get me wrong, but it is a freedom that it would appear, only honest people can be trusted to operate. Freedom of the press does not mean you can put in print anything about anyone. Freedom of the press will only operate satisfactorily if those purporting to use it realise that the invasion of an individual’s privacy comes above it.
There is a similar premise for freedom of speech. Again, I totally agree with the basic principle. People, within certain pre-ordained rules, should be free to express any view they wish. But, freedom of speech does not allow the freedom to lie, the freedom to opionate as fact or the freedom to offer as a fact a mere suggestion or thought held in your own mind. In other words, freedom of speech should only be allowed if comments made are either proven facts or clearly stated opinions. Furthermore it is important, to me at any rate, that the person making their point, exercising their freedom of speech, is clearly identified.
So, having established these two points, what is my concern with today’s newspaper and , indeed, today’s journalists.
Firstly newspapers, in this digital age, are desperate to sell copies. So much information, I deliberately don’t use the word news, can be found on the internet, why buy a newspaper. Headlines are either designed to bring out the voyeur in everyone or to appeal to a certain age group. This voyeurism, or a need to gossip about someone else, has been with society for centuries. These days so many people are craving that 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol said they would that we have a plethora of so-called celebrities, all with a private life that newspapers delight in feeding us with. Headlines on front pages, the pages you see stacked on shelves, are designed to be so outrageous, so compelling, that you simply have to buy the paper.
Either that, or, newspaper editors and proprietors have calculated which age group are least likely to have internet access and pepper their front pages with headlines designed to attract this group. Stories about the weather, a cure for dementia, a cure for arthritis are really only aimed at one age group. Sadly by pepper spraying these headlines the paper(s) are blinding everyone to the truth of what is going on in the world.
Enticement then is one thing, bare faced lying is another. Once upon a time, as all good fairy tales should start, I believed what I read in the press. I thought “a source close to the Prime Minister”, meant just that. Now I know it probably means we couldn’t find anyone to say this but it sure enhances are lie-based story so let’s put it in. Freedom of the press means I shouldn’t have to disclose this source anyway.
The reason I have come out with this blog this week is very simple. It’s the newspapers, or gossip rags as they now are, new idea. Is a story in the public interest; a public interest decided by them and with little or no regard for public interest or privacy of any sort.
Some papers have been up-in-arms over the fact that they cannot name the partner of a celebrity who has had, shall we say, a slightly interesting extra-marital sex life. Who, quite frankly, gives a damn? There is absolutely no public interest in this at all. No law is being broken, no threats to national security happening, no acts of depravity being committed; someone has a slightly different lifestyle to most of us. However, I can almost guarantee that there are others, who are not celebrities, who indulge in something similar and that is not newsworthy either.
Then we discover that a now Minister of the Crown has had an affair with a sex-worker. Newspapers get hold of the story and, once the soon-to-be Minister learns his new partner has this job, he stops the affair immediately. Again, I would argue this is not newsworthy. The Minister is single. Within the laws of our land he can do what he likes in his private life. Unfortunately this man was then appointed to a position where he would be responsible for implementing aspects of the Leveson report on press behaviour. Four newspaper groups decide not to publish details of the affair as, they claim, it has no public interest. In that respect they are correct.
The public interest, and why these men who seem to have dual standards and no morals, should publish is this. The newspapers know something bad, or at least something they will gleefully portray as bad, about someone who is going to decide on matters relating to their future behaviour. They, it would appear to an honest person viewing this, want to have a little lever, sometimes called blackmail, with which they can persuade, sometimes called force, this man to do their bidding. The fact that they seem to wish to behave in such a way is in the public interest.
With that other story, about the celebrity who has a lifestyle that some others share, there is not only no public interest, but it is also actually accepted by many. No one finds someone possibly trying to blackmail, force, coerce or simple influence a Minster of the Crown acceptable, It is in the public interest to tell that side of the story. The behaviour of the Minister before he became a subject of press interest was acceptable and others in society have probably done the same. The behaviour of the press, the media barons, the editors is not acceptable and, for the last decades, has never been. Dodgy Dave needs two letters added and one removed to show the true situation in our press.
April 20
The best reason for voting to leave
I have no liking at all for UKIP and I can happily say I hate Nigel Farage. I assume that the United Kingdom Independence Party was set up to make the United Kingdom independent again.
With that in mind I must therefore ask you all to Vote Leave on Jun23rd. My simple little brain tells me that if we do leave the EU, there will be no further need for UKIP and/or Farage. A greater reason or more compelling argument against remaining in the EU there cannot be.
VoteLeave it is then.
April 28
IDIOTS?
I worry, seriously worry, about the direction in which the world and society are heading. In England, and I assume in many other countries, no one can go anywhere without their mobile phone and hardly a moment goes by without them talking or texting on it. You go to an event to watch something and have this seemingly uncontrollable desire to phone someone and tell them about it. Everyone is in non-visual contact with someone else almost all their waking lives, at least when phoning or texting is allowed. Failing that they are in visual contact, in a virtual way, with something or someone else. Being alone and silent, being alone and thinking, are long lost habits.
Sadly that means we are rapidly losing our communication skills and our thinking skills. At this point I must point out that to me communication, real communication, is not just about saying words into a microphone to someone miles away. Communication is being aware of facial expressions and body language when you are listening and indeed when you speak; it’s about catching those subtle nuances and intonations within the voice of the person to whom you are speaking.
In our modern world, our “selfie” world, we don’t have time for that. Everything is bite-sized. Intros to sports programmes are a wonderful, and woeful, example of this. Sometimes they last well over a minute with what seems like hundreds of clips, each one about a second long. Then they will show highlights with strands so short they actually make no sense to a conscious mind. I guess the dumb people who put these together think they are so clever, probably in possession of some media degree which means they know how to stick a load of clips together, add loud music and call it something. To me it is a waste of money. Find these twats something interesting to produce and make them earn a living. You and I both know any idiot can take a load of bits and stick them together and call it a montage, kids do it as play in nursery schools.
How wrong Andy Warhol was in saying everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. Five seconds maximum, cut to someone else and of course there is a vast difference between fame and public exposure.
When I was young a good evening would be sitting with friends and talking, discussing, philosophising about life, the world, our hopes and thoughts. The discussions would go on into the early hours and we would listen to each other as we expostulated on some matter not bite-sized but a full portion, with cheese and biscuits too. Now these thoughts are either given in a succession of 140 character exchanges or a slightly longer text message, suitable abbreviated issw. That’s “in some stupid way,” in case you didn’t know.
Today, instead of going for a walk and seeing beautiful landscapes, buildings, views, you could if you wanted take a google maps virtual stroll almost anywhere. Hardly any place takes any effort to see, find out about and people prefer a virtual visit to a real one.
Why? I don’t pretend to be able to answer this nor do I really think it is worth an answer.
I once read a poem, the first line of which was :
I was born in a time that has sadly gone by
When people lived on our earth.
I’ve grown up to be a child of tomorrow
Yet I constantly ask what’s live worth?
It was written some 30 years ago but I feel it is even more apt today.
It isn’t living to sit in a chair all evening texting or facebooking your friends with your likes of other people’s thoughts. That is just the technical existence the technical boffins have brain-washed you into thinking you need
It isn’t living to have, at your fingertips, a boxed-set of almost every TV programme ever made. That is just the existence the TV moguls and their boffins have convinced you is what you need.
There will come a time in your existence when almost everything can be done from your chair. It will be a full-circle of evolution as, having sat all our lives, we walk around stooped again.
We have reached the stage where an individual making pictures of funny faces using an app that anyone can use is considered funny by people who spend their existence bothering to check these out.
I know I am generalising here but my worry is that soon I will speaking about the vast majority and when that happens life as I knew it, a life I made into something, a life filled with real journeys, real visits, a life where I always want to be creating something, never mind if it’s no good and no one wants it, will be gone. Everyone will just be existing and my major worry is that it may happen before I stop living.
I have no idea if Einstein really said this but if he did he was cleverer than I thought and that takes some effort btw.
