I am not holding my breath

Monday 21st May

Common sense may prevail one day, but I am not holding my breath.  We are on the brink of momentous decisions being made in the Eurozone, with the possibility of the collapse of the entire edicice, of a decade of decline in what has to date been by far the most exciting and creative continent on earth, the fate of millions of young people all over Europe hangs in the balance and the politicians seem to bumble along as if the G8 was a weekend jolly for old mates at Margate.  There seems to be no real sense of urgency, just a lot of platitudes from our leaders. They said that they all want a stable currency with tight fiscal rules but an agenda for growth too.  As if the two were old bedchums all along, and the Tories do actually purport to believe this.  They might as well have said they wanted Apple Pie covered with rich creamy Curry Sauce.   It seems as if they were all far more interested in being part of the group photograph than in coming up with any sort of an answer.  The Germans look as if they are waiting for the result of the Greek election, hoping against hope that a pro-austerity coalition will somehow miraculously appear.  Cameron never looked as if he was really serious anyway, and Barack Obama just appears to be too nice.  Do they not realise that the old sticking plasters will not even cover the wounds anymore, let alone start to heal them.  But the markets will not wait, and what they hate most is uncertainty.  If Germany had said unequivocally that Greece would not be leaving the Euro then at least we would have known they were serious.  So, I fear that any decision has once again been shelved, maybe because it is so difficult to actually come up with the obvious solution.  Greece must be both saved and reformed, not punished for earlier mistakes; the rich must pay their taxes, the politicians must be honest, and the banks must be controlled and run for the benefit of the people and not for a few shareholders.  The same must be true for Spain and Italy too.  And the Eurozone must move towards a single United States of Europe, maybe some sort of Federation but with the same taxes, and the same benefits throughout.  It is just commonsense, and it must break out one day, but I am not holding my breath.

Watching the Olympic Torch relay. I came over all sentimental

Sunday 20th May

I had slept badly; another night of fidgets and two o’clock insomnia.  The glass of water beside my bed was empty, and I knew I should go into the bathroom and fill it, but despite this obvious solution and my dry mouth I just lay there tossing and turning and looking desperately at the clock to see if yet another five minutes had passed yet.  Eventually I must have dozed off, but as soon as it was really light I was awake again.  I managed to stay in bed until 5.45, then slipped downstairs, fully intending to just make a cup of tea and bring it back to bed, read a few pages of Jean Rhys and slip back into slumber.  But I made the fatal error of sitting on the sofa, and switching the TV on.  They were showing the arrival of the Olympic Flame from last night, and even though I had seen it, I sat and watched it all over again.  Then the cameras were at Lands End, and the Torch relay proper was about to begin.  And despite my reasoning that this whole palaver was such a concocted piece of theatre to try and drum up some interest in the Olympics, I suddenly felt the first pricking of tears in my eyes.  Why on earth should I be crying, and especially at this item.  But it really tugged the old heart strings.  All those times I had watched the Olympics before as a child, Rome and Tokyo in fuzzy black and white, and Montreal and Moscow, and showbizzy Los Angeles, and beautiful Barcelona, and more recently Sydney, Athens and Beijing, I never once thought it would be happening in London.  And even when we won the bid, a degree of cynicism was always circling at the back of my mind.  But now, suddenly it was here.  And the joy of the public was palpable, even Ben Ainslie looked stunned, and as each runner took the torch on a bit further I was so excited.  For an hour or so I became again that small child marveling at the Olympic Flame being lit in far away stadia, and it was lovely.  Just that, a bit sentimental, but lovely all the same.

Ben Ainslie

What it all means

Saturday 19th May

With all the confusion surrounding the present Euro crisis, banks being downgraded daily, Greece as chaotic as ever, David Cameron turning on and off the euro-sceptic tap depending on who he thinks he is talking to, is it any wonder that it seems that no-one has any idea what is actually happening or more importantly where we are headed.  We are in unchartered waters to some degree, but one is reminded of the words of Alistair Darling almost four years ago when he said that the fiscal crisis of 2008, which he was caught in the middle of, was the worst shock to the world financial system since the 1930s.  Actually he was wrong, it is probably worse than that.   What caused the crisis is one story, and in a way it almost doesn’t matter – we are where we are and no amount of analysis of previous errors will tell us what to do now.

The G8, one of many many talking shops is meeting in America over this weekend and share prices are tumbling.  I believe we are at a turning point, or rather a crossroads.  Going straight ahead will be driving blind into the oncoming storm of a euro-zone break-up.  To the right there is the road of continuing austerity, which many believe has made the problems of countries like Greece, Spain and Portugal far worse.  To the left is a possible new injection of money from, well to be frank, no-one really knows, to drag the euro-zone back into growth.  The car is in danger of stalling and being swept away.  And maybe, just maybe we are on the brink of something even more momentous; the possible creation of a new state, a real political and financial union with unified taxes and spending plans encompassing France, Germany, Denmark and the Low Countries.   We are also maybe on the verge of a revolution, but one in which barricades and guns will be absent.  There may emerge out of all this mess a revolution in the way we, the public, monitor and relate to politicians, and the way those politicians regulate and control banks and the financial sector, which since 1984 and the Big Bang has run amok, with the acquiescent nods of government – as long as they were making money nobody cared exactly how they did it.  Interesting times.

And another roll of the anti-european dice

Friday 18th May

The only time that David Cameron has won any voter confidence has been when he has ‘got tough’ with Europe.  Last time he used his veto to prevent an agreement that was absolutely no threat to Britain and also in our long-term interests; result – the others went ahead and agreed it anyway and we limped along behind.  But from the Tories’ point of view it was a success, their poll ratings soared.

History has a strange way of repeating itself.  When the Tories last won power in 1979, after two years Mrs Thatcher was the most unpopular leader ever, and their policies of austerity were throwing people on the dole and the economy was sinking fast.  Then along came the Falklands crisis, and emotion overcame common sense; in the scheme of things it made little difference whether we defended the Falklands or not, it was hardly central to our identity or our economy, but defend it we did and despite the thousands who lost their lives it secured Margaret Thatcher’s re-election.  And now we are facing a different threat; Europe is in trouble, and as well as Cameron insisting that Europe has a choice to make, so too do we.  We can either help them and work for the common good or we can stand on the sidelines and try to protect ourselves from the waves as Greece sinks.  I have a pretty good idea what Mr. Cameron will choose to do, and he may well get a bounce in the polls for his stance.  But I am not sure if the trick can be pulled off twice, even if we go so far as to hold a referendum to leave Europe I am not so certain that the decision would be no.

And ‘B’ is of course for Beatles

Thursday 17th May

There are some people who purport not to like the Beatles; they just don’t get it at all.  But what is not to get?  Almost everything they ever committed to tape was of a quality and excellence that has rarely been matched before or since.  Maybe you had to live through the sixties though, to appreciate just what Beatle-Mania was, to have shared with your friends and family the ever-growing love we all had for the four mop-tops.  There exists a certain snobbish belief that high quality and excellence cannot sit in the same sentence as commercial success; that somehow if everyone likes something it cannot be any good.  I must admit that at times I too have held this attitude, which is why I have never read any J K Rowling or seen any of the films, but I know deep down that this may well be because I do not want to end up admitting that they are very good rather than because I know they are rubbish.

The Beatles were (to me, a twelve year old at the time I first heard them) like the older brothers I never had, and we grew up together throughout the sixties, that most creative of decades.  They expressed in song and in their interviews a cheeky insouciance and disregard for the status quo without ever openly rebelling.  They were also at the cutting edge of new music, interpreting and amalgamating all the disparate ideas emerging at the time into their own constantly evolving music.  Say what you like about Madonna or Michael Jackson, but they never really changed music that much; they were very good at what they did but after a certain point of technical proficiency they tended to rest on their laurels.  Just listen to songs from ‘With the Beatles’ or ‘A Hard day’s Night’ and then listen to ‘Hey Jude’ or anything from ‘The White Album’ or ‘Abbey Road’, and it is hard to believe that just four or five years separate them.  And even these later songs, with all the psychedelic sounds and strange melodies were loved by everyone; they seemed to have the knack of carrying us all along with them.

And though their dissolution was bewailed by us all, you cannot deny that they left at the top of their game, before having to resort to constant re-recordings and live albums of their earlier hits as so many others have.

Will Greece actually have to leave the Euro

Wednesday 16th May

Will Greece really leave the Euro, as all the commentators are now predicting?  Not necessarily, it may be in both France and Germany’s interests to support Greece and to significantly soften the programme so that Greece can actually recover while still being a member (maybe with special allowances) of the Euro.  They may conclude that the price is worth paying rather than the unknown price of Greece leaving the Euro.   Sometimes in life, when everyone is saying something is a certainty, it isn’t.  A game of bluff relies on someone blinking first, maybe the blinking can be synchronised this time.

And there is a mood of change sweeping across the continent, against austerity.  Of course, in an ideal world countries should not have to borrow and all budgets should be balanced.  The trouble is that there are two sides to the coin, income and expenditure, and the problem with austerity is that while it should reduce expenditure if the price of that is diminishing revenue it may quite soon becomes self-defeating.  Also, it is miserable, with people being thrown on the scrap-heap, living standards eroded and a general lack of self-confidence that is debilitating and can become a self-fulfilling doom machine; as things get worse people expect the future to be bleaker still, and so by their actions it becomes so.

After both World Wars the solution was in effect to create money and debt, and build new infrastructure and in effect subsidise industry until the world economy recovered.  This was also the solution after the great depression of the early 1930’s.    We will see what happens this time, but the Greeks leaving the Euro it is not a foregone conclusion at all.

Do you ever catch yourself remembering a moment

Tuesday 15th May

Sometimes when I am not aware that I am thinking at all, in some un-selfconscious moment I find myself back in another time and another place.  Usually this is quite unrelated to the here and now situation I am in, so removed in fact that I have no idea what should have triggered these little moments of recollection at all.  It is as if for a moment I am transported and an episode, a little scene which I had no reason to have remembered consciously at the time is replayed in sometimes crystal clear, but sometimes a dream like hazy state.  And then it is gone, and I can sometimes concentrate and bring it back, or if my thoughts are disturbed and I have to attend to something else, I have lost it completely and all I am left with is the vague feeling of unease that for a moment I was back in time, not merely thinking about the past but actually there in it.

Does this happen to everyone?  Is it some sort of short-circuit in our memories filing system, or is it a memory dying to be relived, maybe something I need to be reminded of, something I should never have filed away under ‘useless knowledge – do not disturb’, something I am missing in my life?  Or worse still, did it ever really happen, is it just my imagination playing tricks again.  And because I wasn’t consciously thinking when the time-slip happened, for the life of me I cannot really remember the remembered memory I just had, only that it was real and vivid and I was there reliving it again, if only for a moment before real life, or the life that we call real, the here and now, overtakes me again, and my usual routine is re-established.  Pity, because I think I might actually prefer it if I lived always in those little moments of recollected reflection.

Let’s hear it (or not) for Diffidence

Monday 14th May

Don’t you just hate self-believers; you know, where they are all so sure of themselves, so certain of their ideas, so full of ambition and a desire to succeed, and above all else a burning sense of self-righteousness.  I have heard this expressed above all else in sport, where winning is everything, coming second is losing.  Do they really carry this attitude into all aspects of life; the guy who gets the prettiest girl is king, the rest are schmucks, the man (or less likely – the woman) who get to be CEO is a success, mere heads of division are bums.  But you see, we cannot all be winners, and in that case why should we all strive to be.  And anyway how do you really measure success, is it in the number and quantity of material possessions, is it in the number of sexual conquests you have made, is it in the size of your home, the size of your bank balance, the number of medals you have won, or should we not be looking for something a bit more subtle; how many people really like you, how many people you have helped in all sorts of small ways, how much time you have given to pleasing others, or even less obvious things like how much you have understood the pain of others, how many books you have read and enjoyed, how quietly and unobtrusively you have lived your little life.

Does diffidence count for nothing, does uncertainty not have a place too; do we all have to know unerringly what we want to achieve in life, or can failure (in the worlds eyes) count for nothing.  If one has simply lived one’s life as best one could without causing too many waves, without breaking many hearts, with a touch of kindness, with a propensity to give ground, to defer to those noisier and greedier than one, quietly and unassuming but understanding life and it’s sleights, are these uncertain and hesitant attributes not far more valuable than all the self-confident winners of this world.

So, amidst all the bombastic self-praise and self assertiveness, let’s hear it (or not – if you choose not to) for diffidence, for amidst all the disappointment of those achievers who did not quite reach their goals, neither did we diffident ones, mind you, we never expected to anyway.

At last, a little touch of the sun

Sunday 13th May

After all the rain and cold, thank goodness for a little touch of the sun.  You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief, and not only from the sellers of garden furniture and barbeques, but from just about everyone.  Even the farmers who had been praying for rain are now wondering how they are going to save their drowned crops, standing water in fields is now a common sight.  And how these experts do lie to us; only two or three weeks ago they were insisting that it was the wrong sort of rain, and even a washed-out summer with rain from here to September would leave us still in drought.  Only yesterday the drought was lifted in the South-West and the Midlands, so obviously they had the right sort of rain there.

But enough griping, let us just sit here for a moment longer in the sunshine and warmth, let us soak up just for a day or two the goodness of the sun before the rain starts again.   The simplest and (to date) the cheapest of pleasures; to sit and simply bask for a while in the sun.  Skin cancer causing or vitamin D essential, I really don’t care, all I want is to feel a little touch of the sun on my skin.

The Nature of being Human

Saturday 12th May

Why, of all the animals, of which we are undeniably one, are humans so different.  Why have we, one single species, developed to the extent that we pretend to rule over all the other species.  It may actually be true as some anthropologists claim that there were a few different types of humanoid apes which emerged around the same time, and we, homo-sapiens simply wiped the others out.  Whatever, we were all essentially the same, sentient intelligent and ruthless apes who have developed a sophisticated society and have harnessed natural phenomena like fire and water and metal and electricity to fashion a totally different world for ourselves than any creatures before us.  Was it the larger brain, or the use of a thumb at right angles, giving us such dexterity and hand control, was it the development of language, the articulation of complex thoughts and being able to pass on knowledge to younger members of the species, was it even, as some think, the discovery of cooking, which meant we did not have to spend most of our time looking for food; or was it none or a combination of these things that was the trigger to propel us from just another grunting ape and into being human.

Or was it something else, was it maybe the innate nature of being human that has elevated (or relegated, take your pick) us above the other species.  Was it the development of a consciousness, the fact that we saw ourselves as a species apart, as thinking creatures rather than relying on instinct to get ourselves through life.  Was it our awareness that we could think about the world we saw around us, and to ask questions both of the world and of ourselves that made the difference.  For all of dolphins assumed intelligence there is precious little evidence that they have a view as to the creation of the universe or the meaning of life itself.  Some chimps have been trained to use language to communicate with us, but would they have bothered or even thought about this possibility without the language we have given them.  So it is the nature of being human that is maybe the clue to why we have come so far.  It may also be the reason for our eventual downfall too, so watch this space.