Thursday 10th September

Is that it is never perceived as fair.  The Beatles in ’66 opened their album Revolver with the George Harrison song “Taxman”, complaining that they were being taxed so highly.  And they were.  Super-tax was 98%, but only on very high incomes, but still….Gradually income tax rates have fallen, as personal and other allowances have increased.  I can remember paying 33% income tax and National Insurance and Graduated Pension; around a third of our wages used to go in tax of one sort or another.  Now, all major parties are almost forced to promise not to increase income tax before each election.  V.A.T. is, by one way of looking at things, a fairer tax – in that the more money you have the more you are likely to spend so paying more tax.  But everyone pays V.A.T, the unemployed, the disabled, even beggars – so is that fair.

The unfairest element of taxation is that there are basically two sorts of taxpayers; those who have no choice and those who can, to some degree, decide how much tax to pay.  Most of us are on PAYE, and have no control of the income tax we pay, even any paltry interest we might earn from a bank or building society is taxed at source, and VAT, though not shown separately is added onto most things except food.  But the self-employed, or company directors mostly declare their own tax, and it is very easy and tempting to under-declare your income; after all the chances of being checked are very small.  Directors can decide how much to pay themselves a salary and how much as dividend and often purchase large items through their companys, so avoiding VAT altogether.  Whether this is strictly legal or not is not really the question.  Is it fair?  Almost certainly not, but almost any system will be manipulated by those most able to.  Until we have a system where every financial transaction is seen by Government we will never have a fair tax system.  But do we really want that sort of scrutiny anyway?

Thursday 9th September

The French have a tendency for neatness in their gardens and parks, and the rows of vines are always in beautifully straight rows.  We are always delighted to see the serried rows of plum trees, all exactly planted in geometrical rows so that as you pass in the car they form straight diagonal then vertical and again diagonal rows.  Another difference is that there seem to be very few hedgerows and the verges are generally well mown too.  This means that you have lovely undisturbed views over the sometimes massive fields of sunflowers or corn-on-the cob.  Here in South West France we are surrounded by gently rolling hills too, so there are constantly beautiful views.

There seems to be an abundance of wild life here too.  We have seen wild deer a few times, once even crossing the road just a few feet ahead of us, and hares and rabbits are quite common too, and we have seen one or two foxes.  Lizards scurry along white walls in the bright sunshine and there is no shortage of insects.  There are multitudes of birds, now massing for their winter migration, sometimes early in the morning or in the evening you can see them all land on a certain wall and perch on the vertical sides before flying off en-masse.  We are also seeing birds of prey, either circling the fields, wings spread wide as they ride on the thermals, or perched majestic on telegraph poles; some are quite large too and may even be eagles.  We sometimes forget how vast France is, it is several times larger in area then Britain, and it is a haven for wild-life.  Driving along in England with tall hedgerows and overgrown verges we don’t seem to notice as much, but we love just driving along tiny country roads here, often high up on ridges and just marveling at the gorgeous views and trying to spot sparrow-hawks or other birds of prey in the sky.

Wednesday 8th September

Continuing in our series of people you have never heard of, we are pleased to present Carol Grimes.  I first saw and heard Ms. Grimes at a pub in Finchley with “JoyBells” in, oh it might have been ‘73 or ’74.  She had just released her debut eponymous L. P., which we duly bought and grew to love.  There wasn’t that much different about her, a standard mid-seventies rock singer, but she had her own band and did write her own songs and had a great voice.  That first L.P was not followed immediately by any others, and I have only occasionally come across her records.  Maybe she had bum deals with record companies, or poor sales – who knows.

I next saw her in Hackney, at a venue (now closed) called Ocean.  This was mid-nineties and she had obviously changed.  She was now heading a revue of what I would almost call “flappers”, dressed in twenties or thirties gear, four ladies played piano, double bass, cello and Carol mostly sang.  Very Jazzy songs, nothing rock’n’roll at all; but the voice was still strong with it’s looping swooping half-screams, half-yells.  I decided to try to locate any records she might have released.  I now have found about six, and a strange bunch they are.  One, a soft jazzy late-night cabaret style croon with a guy called Ian Shaw, called ‘Lazy Blue Eyes’ and a couple rockier on record but not on CD.  The two other CDs are rather mixed really but I am still, just as I was back in the seventies, haunted by her voice; deep and full of emotion and an incredible range.  Another failure – you might say, but I suspect that Carol has made some sort of a living from music all those years, and simply records exactly what she wants to.  And there must be a few fans like me, out there looking for her every now and then and sometimes stumbling across another little gem.

Monday 7th September

The Summer is almost over.  And for the French it certainly is.  A few decades ago France closed down for the whole month of August and everyone went on holiday and a residue of that still remains.  The schools were closed for two months actually and students have now returned.  And a strange quiet has descended.  The madness of the Marches Nocturnes and Gourmande Evenings is over for another year; in fact we went to the very last Night Market in Duras on Thursday and it was one of the best, very good food and another accordion led disco with everyone of all ages up and dancing the Madison, and jumping whenever the DJ/Accordion player shouted “Jump”.  Madness indeed, but great fun too.

There will still be music in the pub on a Friday night and this week it is the Barker Boys, Geoff and his son Liam, so something to look forward to.  A few of our friends are away too, in Paris or Spain, and the Café is a bit quieter as well.  The weather has turned much cooler the last two days too, although it should be warmer by the weekend, and I am sure it is a lot better than England.  As the nights draw in, and it is now dark when we wake in the mornings we are reminded more than ever that Autumn is on it’s way.  As we drive around the sunflowers are all burnt brown and hanging their heads waiting to be harvested, large bunches of grapes are hanging from the vines but it is another month before they will be gathered in.  The markets have long since finished with cherries and the plums are coming to an end too; it will soon be the pumpkin festival.  What a year we have had though, two months of almost non-stop partying.  So, in a way the quiet is welcome.  At least until next year.

Sunday 6th September

-[How simple Janek makes it all seem.  Of course, in essence he was right, the con-gloms did create jobs for people.  But only because we forced them to.  He has still failed to grasp the delicate balance of our society.  The con-gloms and gov are not one and the same thing, but each knows they have to work closely with the other.  The con-gloms only trade with Gov permission and complete control of their profit and prices, and Gov only exists because someone needs to control the whole show.  The world’s economy has survived for almost thirty years without a major catastrophe; this was unheard of in the oft-lauded Twentieth Century.

Unseen by the likes of Janek though, adjustments are being made constantly to keep the whole system in some sort of balance.  Of course we turn a blind eye to the occasional small farmer employing people and paying them in food.  We tolerate a little slack in the situation at the edges in order that the centre remains strong.

In life everything is a compromise, although of course our long-term objective is to eliminate all risk and create a perfectly harmonious and sustainable society, we know that that can only be created with patience and a few failures along the way.  At least we have a plan, imperfect as it may be.  What sort of plan does Janek have?  What has he really discovered; that humans left to their own devices soon degenerate into alcohol and drug dependence, prostitution and working for scraps of food.

Some discovery – we could have told him that for free.

For the moment he seems content, but as you must be aware, this won’t last for that long.  Our friend will soon discover that life amongst these misfits is less than perfect.  Let us leave him for now in what he thinks is a new-found freedom.]-

Saturday 5th September

Is that it isn’t by the people and certainly is not for most of the people, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, who by the way never really was a politician at all, but a wise man nevertheless.  For a start far less than 50% of M.P.s and Cabinet and other Ministers are women.  The ethnic mix of the House of Commons does not reflect the countries varied minorities.  The proportion of Public School and University educated M.P.s is far higher than the general public and most of them have never had a real job, far too many are ex-businessmen or lawyers and far far too many are rich.  And how have we come to this pass, how is it that even the Labour party has far too few ordinary people as M.P.s?  The reason is that Politics has become a public relations exercise above all, and candidates are chosen not for what they might bring to the House of Commons if elected, not for how clever or committed they are, but for how they might appeal to the voters.  Or more importantly for the image that the party wants to project to the electorate, smart good-looking managers who will toe the party line and not scare the children, let alone the opposition.  This has been happening for some time now but reached it’s peak during the New Labour period and even the Tories have copied Labour.  Only UKIP allows odd-balls through the net.  So no wonder these professional politicians fail to understand what life is like for most of us.

And because the M.P.s are not ‘by the people’ they have successively failed to govern ‘for the people’.  Or only for some of the people, for Big Business, for the Bankers, for the so-called ‘Wealth Generators’ when in reality the ordinary workers are the ones generating the wealth for the few at the top.  Maybe, just maybe the extraordinary popularity of Jeremy Corbyn may begin to change things.  Only a few days now to discover if real democracy has for once succeeded against the Political Machine governing us all.

Friday 4th September

This has been going on for some time now and there seems little hope of resolution any time soon.  Europe’s borders are proving more porous than we thought.  Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people, some bombed out of their homes (maybe by us) and many others from war-torn or extremely poverty-stricken parts of Africa are desperate enough to pay human traffic smugglers vast sums and risk their lives to get here.  And you cannot help but feel for them, many are women and children, who have nothing while we have so much.

But of course the dilemma facing Western Governments is that any act of compassion, any mercy shown to these poor people will only encourage even more to seek shelter on our shores.  And it gets more complicated as some European countries are closer to either the conflict zones, or like Italy and Greece have outlying islands in the Mediterranean quite close to Arab North Africa.  And these countries are bearing the brunt, financially and actually in temporarily trying to both stop the flow, rescue the drowning and process the unfortunates, while our Government blithely says the answer is not to take in more Asylum seekers.  Well, we know that Mr. Cameron.  But what else can you do?  And of course the British public were so concerned about Immigration that four million of them voted for UKIP a few short months ago.  Although I do believe that the tide may be turning.  People did not flock to the Tories with any great enthusiasm but because they had lost trust and hope in Labour being any different.  Now, with Jeremy Corbyn shaking up the Labour Party, and the SNP led by a Socialist sounding Nicola Sturgeon, maybe things are beginning to change.  Compassion may be on the rise.  Also the realization that not only did we largely cause the problem in the first place (thank-you Mr. Blair) but that simply bombing ISIS and incidentally killing and displacing thousands more is not the answer.  Not that the answer is easy, but we are humans first and foremost, and purport to be Christian too.  “Love thy neighbor” is a Christian message that seems to have got lost of late.  We need the politicians of Europe to step up to the plate and provide real help and assistance to these people.  And strangely we have been here before.  When the Jews were being persecuted in Germany thousands found shelter here and contributed to our National well-being, as did many Nigerians during the Biafra war, as did many Asians out of Uganda and as did many Bangladeshis when that country was at war.  Maybe selfishness and greed are beginning to have had their day, and sharing and caring are coming back into fashion.  Let us hope so.  Any bets on when Mr. Cameron will start changing his message….

Thursday 3rd September

I am in the process of trying to publish my new book “The Philanthropist” and part of the process is an Editorial Evaluation.   There is initially a disclaimer stating that this is simply an opinion and that the Author (me) has the right to ignore or to take any advice given and amend ones manuscript accordingly.  Well, I have been down this road (sort of) before.  My second book “wot I rote” I was unhappy with.  I liked certain aspects of it and thought there were some good bits in there, but it didn’t seem to work somehow so I sent it off myself for an independent evaluation, which only confirmed my suspicions.  I haven’t abandoned that project completely and will try to re-write it taking those comments on board.

However…..the new book I am happier with.  I can see that some of the comments might be useful but some I initially disagree with.  The main point I have an issue with is POV or “point of view”.  The book is written by an unseen observer in the third person, but that narrator does relate thought processes in the characters minds.  Now the criticism is that on a few occasions I offer the reader two different points of view close together, sometimes on the same page or even in the same paragraph.  For example James was thinking x, but Fiona had something completely different in mind and was actually thinking y.  Now I don’t see this as a problem; in fact it was deliberate, to show the differing viewpoints (POV) of the protagonists.  The Evaluator thinks that this “head-hopping” is confusing for the reader, whereas I think that it is simply explaining what goes on when two people are talking or thinking about a mutual situation.  I quite clearly state who is thinking what so the reader will always know which head I am inside.  So who is right?

I hesitate to say it is me.  But in a way I think I am right.  You see I don’t want to write to any given formula, where in Writing Class it may be taught that this or that is good or bad writing. And while it is extremely difficult to be objective I do sort of know when something I have written works or not.  So, I am not going to make an instant judgment but will think about these comments for a bit, and who knows I may make the changes suggested.  But don’t bet on it.

Wednesday 2nd September

I am old enough to remember (just) life before television, or to be more precise – the arrival of television into our lives.  Father switched it on (we weren’t allowed to) and I was permitted to watch maybe one hour of TV a night.  Then gradually they started broadcasting all day Saturday and Sunday and then Breakfast TV came along and then 24 hour telly.  Finally we had SKY with literally hundreds of channels and i-player, so that no matter how busy our lives, how many screens we were watching, we could re-run anything any time.  Now kids not only have 24 hour CeeBeeBees but a multitude of channels, and the TV is always on; even this is not enough as almost every child has more DVDs than I will ever own and knows how the player works.  And even this is not enough, many have access to, if not their own, their parents i-pads or game-players.  And even this is not enough, they know how to switch on Mummy or Daddies mobile phone and how to access their favourite App (something I have never achieved – hahaha).  So they are practically stuck in front of a screen for most of their days.  By the time they are teenagers they have their own mobile phones and are constantly looking at the tiniest of screens (living their lives in a miniature screen universe).  As young adults they will be nigh-on un-separable from their screens, even scrolling down during meal-times or while watching (Oi – I was watching that) TV.  Then they will have children of their own and to keep them quiet they will stick them in front of screens….

No use complaining about it, it is the modern way.  And I too will shortly finish writing this blog on one screen and switch on my Kindle and read another screen….If things progress we will all end up stuck perpetually in front of a screen, communicating by keystrokes or the faintest of nods of our heads, our whole world encapsulated in that little screen; maybe a more virtual reality than any of us will be capable of actually living.

Tuesday 1st September

At least in England, or so it would seem; here in Eymet it has definitely been, and continues happily to be, Summer.  It has been quite splendid from some time in May.  June and July were really quite hot; the first two weeks of August were a bit cooler but nobody could deny it was still Summer, and we have just had another hot week about to break with the usual thunderstorms.  But we do watch British TV and the weather forecasts have been pretty awful as wave after wave of rain has come in from the Atlantic.  This morning (Monday) I watched as hundreds of holidaymakers were stranded at Calais and Dover as a protest by workers being laid off by a French ferry were stopping ships from entering or leaving Calais.  And what struck me most was the atrocious weather.  People were stuck in their cars for hours and hours as drenching rain pelted down on them.

I have been back three times in what should be the English summer; June was actually quite hot but both July and Augusts visits were full of rain and quite chilly, you would think it was early spring or late Autumn weather.  I seem to remember from childhood lots of hot sunny summers, and cold snowy winters; even one Christmas day when there was snow.  I wonder if that is just memory playing tricks again or if the seasons really were more defined back then.  But of late Winters just seem one wet and windy passage of months before the late spring, and this year must rate as one of the worst Summer’s on record.

The only hope is that September and October will bring a change and all of you in England can at last have something resembling a decent summer.  The seasons are no respecter of the calendar so there is still room for a little hope, but don’t hold your breath.