Nothing Special and Speaking Out

let me be clear about  one or two things:

first of all,i am nothing special,except in the sense that ALL life is precious and that we all tread a unique path,a unique journey from which we gather experiences and hopefully a little wisdom,and a few other important things too.none of this,i hope is false modesty,but i hope is a rational realism.i am just a"bloke",a man.One amongst billions of other people,most of whom i believe are trying to get on as best they can,doing the best they can to lead a decent life,help each other when we can and"live and let live".i hope i am humble in that,not least in placing some controls on my ability to be arrogant,which i hope is one of  the things about me that may have mellowed as i have got older.

there is nothing intrinsically important or special about my opinions either.i am not a genius,i am not even clever.i hope it has the value of experience in which we can all and any of us learn from each other,not least how similar and different we are to  each other-a confirmation of just how much we have in common,whilst confirming that your and  my road or pilgrimage through life cannot,as material beings-having some kind of solidity about us,i suppose,cannot be exactly the same.

at the risk of contradicting myself,it does have value as experience and hopefully some wisdom-not my own but learned and collected from life or those genuinely greater than me-and i don't mean names or celebrities,stars or intellects necessarily.at another level,it seems to me we live such atomised,alienated and often isolated lives that it is easy to be both intimidated and silenced by that wider life.it too has ben privatised,even from ourselves.it reduces us to lacking self confidence and daring not to speak at least in this culture.working class people in particular seem to learn what is not true,that they have no voice,no opinion,no talent-that we are reduced to our labour.i do not believe nor accept that to be the case,though for me"evidence"that  we are social beings is inherent in the reality that we need each other to encourage each other to be confident.i speak,i write in that effort and that belief.in addition,as a man(i do't like the dichotomy,i prefer a spectrum or continuity of gender identity,but that is another issue)i feel men do not speak out or share enough of ourselves or some of the issues that confront or affect us.so i speak out on that too.

i learned a long time ago,that sometimes,i suspect quite often,in situations where change is potentially quite limited it might be enough to learn that our neighbour,friend,comrade,even the stranger next to us shares some of the experience we are going through is if not enough,then at least a good start.despite some of us being still in control of much of the world,that has a price for us,and especially those exerting less rather than more power and control(i do not deny that most if not all men will have some power and greater in relation to other human beings).some of us feel uncomfortable with that power.many of us are socialised in particular ways which render us silent or at least inarticulate about our situation.some are silenced partially or entirely.we also self censor.i write,comment,speak in that context.

the rest,i hope will speak for itself...

d1/16092013

Fraternal Greetings to the Revolutionary Socialists Students Societies and their National Conference

i regret that i am now where i wanted and intended to be today,especially following my particular invitation.i will not bore comrades with a detailed explanation;suffice to say deteriorating health and disability,combined with it being"just one of those weekends"contributed.

i was only aware at all that the Conference was about to take place a few days ago,although i have been aware for some months of the existence of the Revolutionary Socialist Students,at least since i learned,that they were the phoenix that arose from the fire of the crisis inside the SWP in late 2012-early 2013.I also detect that there are students from other revolutionary socialist currents along with their might i call tem parent organisations too.For what my opinion is worth,i think this is entirely healthy and hope that the organisation will continue to involve and actively organise many from a variety of revolutionary socialist traditions.I consider it is not just necessary that socialists talk to each other in such difficult times,because i really do believe that if we do not then,if we do not stand together,we will fall apart.Not that unity or working together should  be at any price,but i have begun to  think that a multi-thread organisation is to be positively welcomed,and that we must seek new or at least renewed ways to talk to and work together.

i cannot know if there is anything special or particular to my invitation to attend,which makes my regret particular as i have been unable to attend.i want to note the welcoming and open attitude of whoever is behind the page/invitation of facebook and the website,as well as to particular comrades who contacted me to reinforce that welcome and to provide further information.

i think the invitation arose out of some comments i made that i intended to write a piece on what i see and experience as a deep-laid and indeed increasing level of disrespect in the media,in what passes for public debate and i'm almost certain amongst our so-called political class,and particularly unfortunately amongst too many older people.

i feel particularly strongly about this.i had a"good",though i do not mean privileged upbringing,and grew up feeling that i wanted to both share and spread that experience,as i saw from quite young that mine was not the sort of experience i saw or learned about happening around me.All of that was one influence which led me to spend around 40 years as a social worker.i like to think i have always continued and developed an at least open attitude to young people.i became a student at a polytechnic when i was 19 years old and undertook a degree alongside a professional qualification over 4 years.Whilst the experience was not perfect,both at the time and particularly now i look back and consider it to have been a fantastic experience,during the better time of the post-war "social contract"which might be said to have been overarched by the "welfare state"-with all its very real faults and problems,but which for too many years now,is not being renegotiated-but is being emptied,thrown away and destroyed.

i am now approaching 60 years old,and have been early medically retired for some 18 months.i like to
think i am still i touch with m open attitude,if not with the minutiae and detail of their lives,although i am also the father of two young daughters both of whom have or are about to enter tertiary education,with all its problems for them and indeed for us.

we have struggled together with the variety of complexities around student finance.i watch my eldest daughter deal with both having to work whilst undertaking study at a level well beyond what was required of me some 40 years ago.

These are all  things i can write about in more detail and effect,i hope at another time.

Now my youngest is about to start,but her difficulties are not just repeats of earlier experience,nor a reflection that the two of them are undertaking very different courses.

My youngest daughter is going to her second choice university.As results came out,i heard not just the usual stories,more of which in a moment but several other,frankly disturbing accounts.These include that having had the"opportunity"to resit,to improve grades over their A level and other course programmes,"the regime"(i refuse to call it a government)had used the opportunity,in fact to further downgrade where retakes on say one paper/course allowed/instructed exam boards to remark and regrade and prior achievement by a student.Where instructions specifically to mark down some courses,this effectively makes any retake or further effort counterproductive.i also heard of occassions when students had surpassed grades required only to find offers of places withdrawn.

When my daughter visited a certain university,prospective new students were given promise of accommodation.That promise was repeated in several places and forms.Until the place had actually been offered!The promise has been broken,which has caused my daughter considerable distress and anxiety,and us as a family a whole range of further difficulties.Whilst we think we have resolved this it leads me to ask and surmise

*.How much of this is going on?

*.The university will still charge its full fees,and it has broken its contract/promise!It seems we live even more in a society where the ordinary amongst us have less recourse set against a greater expectation of our own compliance alongside the reality that"they"make the laws/rules,change them whenever and as they wish and both without penalty let alone expectation that they comply or even that the law applies to them.

*.This also leaves students,families and carers even more powerless.The students themselves are being further marginalised and discounted,and rendered even more precarious(as per precariat).This is before they actually start their courses or studentships?So where is the NUS or the NUSS or indeed any campaign in this?

For what it is worth,our family have started talking about militant action and occupation to make its stick!

Last but not least,is the general issue that every year when results come out,whatever school and other students do they face negative press for not working hard enough or for exams being too easy,so that students can never see themselves as a group in a positive light,even if their individual performance is excellent.This to me,is shameful.To this add,the more recent coverage of"grade inflation",although i am certain the issue may or may ot have been present for longer.

i do not know whether any of this is within the compass of concerns of the wider student body,let alone in the mix of campaigns of the student bodies union(the NUS).i intend to explore further,so would welcome any help or comments.i am particularly exercised by the disrespect shown to young people which clearly has material consequences.

To return to wider issues;simply to say,i honour the initiative of the Revolutionary Socialist Students.In so far  as the initiative has come from SWSS members who either resigned or were expelled from the SWP,it is impressive that they have not simply at least partially recovered from that damaging experience but have gone on,i am sure with others to establish a new ititiative it seems virtually without the support of a wider,parent body eg SP and Socialist Students,labour Party and what in my day was NOLS/National Organisation of Labour Students,Communist Students or indeed SWSS!i cannot pass up the opportuntity to make the jibe that SWSS has indeed shown itself to be a"swizz",in which many must feel cheated by being treated as a stage army who count for nothing.

That is neither my experience nor my attitude.Whilst students because of their role and place in the wider society may not be able to be the motor and determinant of either class warfare or socialist society,they can certainly be the detonators as they showed once more in 2010,and being realistic about the possibilities is no  reflection on the talent or energies that any successful road to socialism needs.

It is is  that context,that i,just one of many committed both to my class and to a revolutionary socialist future both greet the Conference and the life of the Revolutionary Socialist Students but offer whatever limited help and support i can give.

Fraternally

paul summers
(member of ISN/international Socialist Network,and writer,LOSTbutnotreturning)

d1/08092013

Sad Old Tree

A few weeks ago,possibly months i wrote about our old plum tree.....

I am reminded about it by several things today.Although the connections are not always direct,let alone obvious,this is the way the subconscious,maybe the unconscious works.....

I have also written several,maybe many times,that whilst not a musician,i think musically.As i write i still have a hazy recolection of a refrain in a song,that i cannt pin down.I remember the line,probably wrongly as"...sad old tree".One of the things it makes me think is that i have done accidental harm to our sad old tree.

The harvest was late and poor this year,and in addition i have neglected it.It usually fruits in july,but when we left for  afamiky break in early August the fruit remained unripe,and  indeed was only just ripening when we returned.There was much less than usual and much of it was also much smaller tha  usual.My declining health also made it more diffcilt to harvest and left it quickly ferments and rots.caught on time the taste varies,pleasantly from mildly sharp and sweet to drunkenly sweet like it insists onfermenting.ther have been times when i have found the occassional bird,zonked on the grass beneath the tree.

Today i harvested the few remaining plums that were left,and felt sad that i have neglected it....though i cannot work out quite while i feel so bad.

Over the years,one of the joys has been the sharing of the fruit,some of which has sometimes also come full  circle as jam or filling or topping for cakes....Linda has given some away>i am pleased about that,but there feels to be something missing in that i have myself not been able either to harvest much or to give it away.i was indeed hoping and looking forward to sharing that harvest with the friends and comrades i have been working with over this last year or so,which could have been another opportunity to be together.But then perhaps this is an occassion when i just have to  buck up,pull myself together and look for another opportunity.There are of course apples and pears next in our own and my childrens grandmothers garden.......

Meantime,can i drag the memory of the song from the recesses of memory.

d1/230813

Wise Words-I

it strange sometimes where wise words can be found-in the script of a USA detective series,amongst other places:

"For a person of principle,caught between a rock and a hard place-chooses the hard place"

d1/07082013

In Brief-Question?(2)

Does anyone know anything about or remember ZG magazine?

The issue i have is from 1981,and is in folded A3 format(approximately)

d1/09072013

In Brief-Question?(1)

Does anyone know who was poetry editor of The Tablet,a catholic magazine between say 1977-1981?

i know his first name was John and his surname double-barrelled(had 2 parts)but for the life of me i cannot recall his name either by internet search or from my own clouded memory?

d1/09072013

Memories of Bears

Memory is very important,but its is not reliable.For some reason,i knew from being quite young that there is a connection between history and memory although that relationship will be complex and contested as history itself is and also so because memory is not reliable.

I suspect it is always selective.I note from even recent events that people who participate in something as simple as a meeting can come aware with radically different understandings of what has just happened. We forget,we mix,we muddle,we interpret and reinterpret and it will be  affected by feelings and perspective.i used to think that until some  time in the 1980s i had quite a strong hold on the detail and order of events that i myself had been involved in and that had occurred at varying distance from me.Since that time things have become much more foggy and unclear and i suspect more complex,as my head,like my house,fills with more stuff,and actually the stuff,some of which is kept as an aide memoire is nevertheless itself of limited value.

For the rest of this let me just try to focus on some observations about one thing.....bears.i will try to  think chronologically,though i suspect my observations will probably appear somewhat random if not bizarre but never mind that.What provoked this line of thought,if it can be called that it that whilst making notes from my reading,i cam across a reference that pointed me in this direction,because i realise bears must be of some importance to me as they keep popping up,and sometimes indeed represent ideas and memories and perhaps other important things in my life.

One of the life-stories that my mother told me some years after the event was that i had taken over 53 hours to get born(she had been in labour all that time).This seems so much at variance with how things would be now that I'm not sure i believe it,but her point was something else:"slow then,and slow ever since!",although i am absolutely certain it was meant much more kindly than it reads now,or else why would i tell it!Eventually,this was one of  the reasons i chose as a kind of nick name/nom de plume,"the bear"

Later i was given a"teddy bear",by my parents.i think before me it had been my mothers,so from the off,it was always battered and indeed bald-as the fur had been reduced back to the cloth,before e i ever got at it..i still have it,sitting in a bag hanging on a cupboard door.i don't actually remember what i ever called it,except in all my time as an adult-it has been and Edward.There seems to be a significance to this but i don't know what it is.

It does however remind me that there are psychological theories about this such bears in relation to child psychology and western culture,which partly involves that possessing and cuddling such a cuddly toy and perhaps bears or substitutes in particular is about how the toy substitutes for human contact,and might go some way to explain our"psychological"alienation and some of the oddities in"western"behaviours.This was highlighted for me,when i read a book by Morris Berman called "Coming to our Senses",which talks about a number of major shifts in attitudes to the  human body at  a number of key historical points.At some point the author observes that in some,indigenous/native cultures human contact is such that a child never touches the ground or leaves direct physical human contact until the child is at least 2 years old,and which has wider significance in creating a fully rounded human personality.

I was slow at picking the ability to read up too,i like to think because being introduced to reading via the Janet and John series of books,i was so bored,i wondered why i was bothering.Once i had"got it though"i remember reading every single Mary Plain book from the school library i could lay my hands on.Whilst i don't remember any of the actual stories what i do remember very strongly is that the main/leading character is(was?)a female,indeed mother bear.

I also remember from my childhood spending weekends with my grandmother,aunt and uncle.My aunt regularly played records on an old wind-up"gramophone"which included and introduction to Henry Halls "Teddy Bears Picnic".it remains imprinted on my memory,and brings tears of memory sometimes.Perhaps i would make it one of my 8 records to be taken to a desert island.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZANKFxrcKU

Many years on,in my teens,i discovered first of all the attractions of the hippies,counterculture and alternative lifestyle.Amongst other things we published a duplicated magazine.One of the best covers of one issue featured the character who came to be known as "HARP bear"modelled onn the bears in the song"Teddy Bears Picnic"and framed from combining the name of our organisation,somewhat pretentiously called HARP/Havering Arts Research Project,quickly and later shortened to Harp 70 with the image from the song.

Later i spent a number of years trying to conduct a life living between the UK and USA.I had hoped to live over there continuously but life rarely runs in a straight line for me.the bears are in here somewhere too,because whilst i never saw one,i developed this idea that somehow or other,at least in a place like California,i would blunder into a"scrubby little bear".It never happened.

Once i had settled back in the UK,i returned amongst other things to involvement in the TGWU,primarily active in the National Voluntary sector Combine,as its national secretary for approximately 5 years.Once a month,i produced a mailing that went to about 50-100 people in and  around the voluntary sector/white collar branches of the union.In this i would include minutes of and follow up on combine business,campaign pcampsin material,linked together with a kind of commentary writing as"the bear"

Over the years i have taken part in a number of guided meditations on courses or retreats.i have also undertaken self guided meditation alongside study and reading.some of these have explored either finding my own"questing beast"or familial beast.Sometimes this has related to Celtic or Arthurian themes/meditation practises.

In seeking  what i will call a totemic or familial animal,what comes up repeatedly for me is the bear.one of the emblems of Arthur and the Pendragon family line is not just the red dragon,but also the bear!

What has interested me in this imagery is that the bear is an animal which appears to be slow in its movements,although that is not   the  case,and appears both  cuddly,especially in the domesticated,child's cuddly toy,or in "cozy"pictures.This  is far from the truth.The bear is not a good enemy to make-there have indeed been several incidents over recent years where having drifted into"bears territory"the bear asserts itself very much to human detriment,although this is not from a determination to attack,for most animals unless domesticated to the contrary seek to avoid human contact not least because neither our motives nor our habits are trustworthy,and we are indeed the most destructive creature on the planet.it simply  reflects animals like bears seeking to protect either their young or their space,on which we as a species  increasingly encroach.

d3/08072013

Books:About Henry Fuseli

I guess that in the scale of things,anything,Fuseli is,rationally a minor painter,a minor talent.I recently read,and enjoyed this,Myrone's book about him and enjoyed it.My interest is i admitit in the strangeness  of his artistic interests,and pointedly in his connection with William Blake.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2684419-henry-fuseli

d1/08072013

Of Cottage Gardens-The Plum Tree

Whilst it may not seem that way,i do take some quiet pleasure in our garden.As well as its reality,it has several imaginary parallels inside my head.It is untidy and unruly at present,though that is not criticism intended especially as i do so little to tend it.Behind its overgrown untidiness,i like to think of it as a cottage garden,although the house it backs is simply a suburban house in one of the more prosperous neighbourhoods of this borough,not i think noted for the landfalls of the bourgeoisie.

One of the special places in our garden,is the plum tree.It is gnarled and twisted,not in the best of locations and not even particularly well looked after.It is pecial to me for several reasons.

Without meaning to be too mystical or otherworldly about it,it is for me a place of God.This may mean nothing to atheists or agnostics-i would not know,but i admit i still have a "foot"or something,in the spiritual and follow a spiritual path.As usual with me,it is an "odd" path.I say that simply because i can't help but see and experience myself as in some way at odds with,a misfit in the world.I often feel alien,alienated and like i'm essentially in the wrong place at probably the wrong time,and that i don't altogether belong here.

Anyone reading this might put that down to what i am about to say next,but i believe that it is deeper and reaches back further.I think i have carried a lot of these feelings most,if not all of my life.

When we moved here,some 22 years ago probably,the tree was in full fruit and it felt like a welcome to the house.It fruited richly without our bidding or participation.Large,sweet healthy food,produced by nature,almost without anyone's assistance.Yet it was 12 years later that it took on an even greater significance for me.It produced a rich harvest in the summer of 2002 as i was sent away from work,sick with my first episode of clinical depression,which was a frightening and further alienating experience as for a time i became increasingly disconnected from"the world",if not reality,and everything seemed like ash grey dust,seen through the strange brown red tints of a continuous dusk,that the song"At Night"by Shakedown highlights for me,and helped crystallise as an image,which gave me the insight.

So it must actually have been during the ensuing late winter or early spring that the tree took on anew significance>with no fruit,and only perhaps a few leaves,it showed itself more starkly.For some reason i would over a few days stand by it,probably briefly but for what felt like quite long periods.....

I do not and have never had aural hallucinations-i do not hear voices.If i hear anything it i the sounds of my own body or imagination,and i have always known that.On this occasion,a voice inside my head said quietly to me"i give you your life back".I am clear with myself that this was(is)the product of my own imagination,but that it was not,at the same time my own voice.At the same time i had a sensation of intense light under the tree,and an equally intense impression that i should not look up.This was not our of fear,though it may have been in awe or something similar,somehow knowing that to look on the face of God would  take me somewhere else.Having with some sense of relief been given my life back,i was not about to give it up again quite yet.

I got better eventually,although getting better did not in any way it seems to me follow on directly from these moments,but i did get better,and it was as if it were part of the message as the result of my own efforts.This is not ingratitude,or  a rejection of God but if you like a living out of the idea that"God helps those who help themselves",which it seems is an element that far too many believers leave out of the account or their story.If creation means anything,we are indeed co-creationists with that God.

I do something to tend the tree every year although probably not enough.I go to it frequently.It does not need to be transformed aesthetically or any other way.It seems to me it reflects what it is,something useful and productive in a little bit of the mess of the world,tucked into a space between fence and a room and  a shed and at the edge where the earth/dirt meets concrete.it clings on,like much of life does,asserting itself until it does not assert itself.

And it is still the place of God for me.Nor some idyllic location but its just well here.or there.

Every July,like its never happened before it fruits.I always expect it at the wrong time and it always catches me out,like the God of surprises or a trickster God.The season is very short.From the faint turn from  green to red,to fat rotting and fermenting fruit is probably just two weeks.Sometimes the fruit overflows and i can't keep up,sometimes sit is less so,but partly because it is all special to me,i always try to share the harvest.I am nothing special but somehow i have always believed in sharing what i can and i feel particularly obliged to do so,in celebration of two things-that the fruit is freely there for me,and in honour,if not exchange for having my life back.

So it is July now.The harvest will come this month sometime.When i was employed i often took bags  of fruit to work with me to give away.Sometimes some came back to me again in fruits and pies.The last couple of years I have shared the crop with neighbours.This year i hope to share it with friends and and comrades and campaigners.whatever,it feels like it is important to pass the blessing and the spirit on.

So let me know,if you are in the neighbourhood and would like some,though as i write the fruit is still small and green so it won't be quite yet.Welcome.

d2/08072013

Music-At Night/Shakedown

I have written about and linked this piece before.

Whilst i will repeat the link,i don't intend to repeat much of what i said before except to say that i had the same  response to it today,as i have had in the past.

At its simplest,it relates directly to my own experience,especially on a day like today...

When i struggle out of bed at around midday still beset by both physical and mental discomfort,and at 8pm i'm still uncomfortable but perhaps approaching something more"normal"-although i hate even the word as i think it scrambles how both i and other people see the world:where normal is i suspect a  kind of average that i equally believe is not reflected in the world.i fear that it also consigns the rest of us o some kind of lesser,inferior,struggling status.That said i would still rather associate with the rest than the normal.I guess that takes me full circle,and might partially explain my own alienation,feeling at odds with the world,and leaves me with the song....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkTDXabhp90

d1/06/07/2013

Time Out on Time Out

I have found reading,buying,using,and indeed coming across Time Out and anything connected with it extremely disappointing over the last few years.Its more than that.

i suspect that my reaction is fed by at least two sources.One is a distrust of any enterprise that becomes so vast and indeed looks like or indeed is a corporation.The other is quite strong memories of how it used to be,although i of course recognise that memory is not always reliable.

Time Out is a vast enterprise founded in about 1968 by Tony Elliott and a group of countercultural/hippie/left activists producing initially i believe a duplicated magazine it now operates in at least 25 cities world wide.It certainly appears to behave like a corporation.

I recently contacted them on behalf of my partner to facilitate taking advantage of  a particular offer.It may just be coincidence but ever since i've been receiving loads of other completely unwanted and inappropriate emails,including cake web/web cake(or whatever they call themselves)employment,gambling,casinos etc etc.I'm afraid that rightly or not the curmudgeon in me will blame them,unless they act pro-actively to prove something different.

This reminds me too that previous"prizes"from said source,have always turned out to be promotions.On at least 2 occasions the free holiday turned out to be a promotion routine of several hours duration for some time share scam,where the expectation is that participants get to cover cost/expenses for some holiday in obscure places at obscure times where"our choice"is very limited indeed.Last time each payment was followed by a shifting of the rules and a further request/demand for money.When i/we lost interest,it took some time to get them to let go....and of course,there are no refunds of anything.

This is very different to when in the 60s and 70s it was the London listings paper initially regarded as part of a left culture.In the days before the internet and all it has to offer it was THE place to look for what was going on amongst left groups,campaign and political and cultural meetings,literature,film,music,jazz,food,and lots else.That was until 1980 when it turned on its workforce,to develop a much harder capitalist line,which resulted in amass exodus to the foundation of a co-operative,collective which put out City Limits for some years,when people like myself transferred our allegiances.

But i guess for along time now,City Limits has gone and so has most of that all too vaguely though still positive left culture. i find looking at Time Out online an appalling experience,so i don't.It's a pity though because alongside the mushrooming growth of sites and information that goes with the internet,come also an increasing fragmentation.These listings magazines used to be a kind of"one-stop"before "one stops"for such information.that is gone.I find that there is always one  more place to go on the internet to find our what i want,and its not always clear where to go,however well connected i think i am to such sources.Listings papers seemed,as it was their lifeblood to go out of their way to be accurate.i think,particularly on the left,we sometimes leave basic and important details out.

A look at an issue just a few weeks ago was extremely disappointing.in the"old days"each section was pages long.these days,the music section is 2-3,and jazz buried in just a coupe of columns devoted to several genres.There are no reviews of anything and its all gone up market.....

It takes me back...to days of living in Islington before and during its reputation for the living space of the upcoming new labour cohorts.A stroll from my home could take me to half a dozen major music venues,half a dozen radical bookshops,some cafes,meeting places,political campaigns and not least things like food coops.Times are very changed,and it is no good being nostalgic-but it does make me realise that so very much of that vaguely left,or left friendly culture has gone,just like whole sections of the welfare state have been eroded and corroded.

We had better do something about both.our society needs in my opinion,to defend the best of the welfare state as just one stepping stone to making a better,different society.The left itself,as well as developing urgently a new attitude to its own divisions and engagement with the working class we go on about so much,for our own survival and in  order to build a better alternative to THIS barbarism.It seems to me that alongside the public services of the welfare state,we too need a new infrastructure within which to organsise.Such space cannot just be carreid in our own heads or imaginations.

d2/06072013

A thought

There was a televisual advertisement some time ago,in which the voice stated as if it were a fact that we each had an average of a number of thousands of thoughts a day.

i suspect that is NOT fact and it would be difficult to demonstrate.It set me thinking,i suspect vainly,on what constitutes a thought.But never mind all that.All this time on,i thought i would simply try to record,one way or another more of my own thoughts and  musing......

d1/05072013

The Quirks of Capitalism-Of Labels and Language

When i was "done"yesterday i purchased a snack that included a refreshing cold drink.I read the label to see its sugar content,which is,in my opinion nearly always in numbers that are actually not as useful as they appear,with values relating to 100ml and 250ml,when the actual contents is 500ml,and where the "results"do not necessarily extrapolate easily.

Then my attention was taken from the numbers as i observed that all the wording was in French.This is odd,although i do not have any xenophobic,little englander response to it.My point rather,would be this:

To the best of my knowledge,in an economic system that has international,global reach many if not most transnational corporations have"local"footprints,companies they own in each territory.Most of the big soft drink manufacturers have such reach-producing their drinks in many countries and establishing partnerships or ownership of bottling plants,sometimes with local variations,where the product itself might vary and labels certainly do according to local regulations.

So why is it that in a city like London,i discover these drinks,and indeed other products,labelled as if it was produced in or for customers in Greece,or France or the middle east.If there are things like economy of scale an activity that such  companies exploit,not least to reduce costs,and in turn to protect  both profit and rate of profit-then how can this come about.Surely it cannot be some sort of simple error,that shipments end up somewhere other? If it is not a mistake,then what is it?Does this system still have quirks?

I know that such phenomena do not change the general sweep and dynamics of the broader sweep of the system,and the impact of this is probably peripheral but it is nevertheless peculiar!In this case,it makes little difference to the customer-who is not likely to be reading the label for complex guidance or instruction,but what if the description of the product"in the numbers"does not meet the requirements of local consumer law(i note that on products where there are multiple languages,any translation is not always direct-that what is described in one language,may not appear in another which i believe reflects variations,even across trade areas like the EU/European Union)

d1/300513

Analogies and Metaphors-Life just is....

When we think,speak,write,communicate it seems to me that humankind soon begins to explain the complexities and subtleties of  thinks as analogy and metaphor,with metaphor probably being the extended form of analogy.The way it comes out is that anything can become anything else,everything is everything else which might,wrongly give the impression that nothing is differentiated,nothings has meaning but then that would miss the subtlety and complexity of what humankind does and is.

From that beginning,for me,it might be said that Life itself can be seen as a long winding,narrow path.I do not see it as a straight wide boulevard or tarmacked road but like a path through the countryside,through the grass across the fields,that many of us have made along with the animal lives we share our planet with across time.These paths are familiar to those who use or know them,but they are not always obvious.Part of living is that we have to rediscover,and sometimes reinvent those ways,and we also have to innovate and develop them.

It seems to me that,that for those of us who have an activist view of the world-that we can make and change it,that we are not simply bystanders,acted on,watching others act on us,then we have a similar situation in relation to our own activism.It includes the remaking and refinement,a re-galvanising and re-energising of our activity.

At present,as an activist in a number of campaigns,it seems to me to apply to my own level of activity in relation to CON/counter olympics network-that is MY problem,and in a different way to the CSFHC/Counihan-Sanchez Family Housing Campaign.

What follows then are MY thoughts.I claim nothing for them beyond that,although i hope they resonate for other people.I have no particular authority in these thoughts.I simply think and write them in the hope that i can continue to make a constructive contribution to the growth and development of the campaign......

(work in progress to be continued)

d1/290513

Another admission to A&E-

Wednesday 9th May was busy for me.Apart from things to do at home,i attended an Atos Assessment Appeal at a Tribunal Court in central London with friends and comrades,before attending another busy and enthusiastic meeting of about 25 people at London SWAN(social work action network) in the evening.Whilst they are noteworthy,i will probably comment on them in another post but not this one.

Following that meeting,the evening took off in an unpredictable and frankly unwanted direction.I do want to write about it,from several points of view here.So now,i want to warn any readers of this blog,that it may well talk about material that is both possibly difficult and certainly intimate.I make no apology for either.

I am NOT writing this from I hope any egocentric viewpoint,nor in any belief that i am either special or important,in any other way than to assert that we are ALL important and special.Indeed,we all,i believe have talents that this sort of society under-develops and under-uses,but that too is another issue,the subject of another post.Indeed,i suspect as a man,that it is only men that would even think of putting those riders in,because i suspect that women have long had a way of talking about such issues that for men is at least much more problematic and ambivalent.I feel as one of those men,that we are only going to be able to challenge and change that sort of perspective if we do exactly that-to challenge and to change it.So this is an attempt to do so.

I want also to make clear that this is a very subjective and impressionistic piece.Whilst i brought my analytical and critical faculties to bear,i have not done further research nor have i approached this analytically,beyond my surprisingly still ferocious curiosity about my environment.I may have left social work,but social work has not left me-and on such occasions i still want to understand procedures and how things work,and again the sociology of it.

At the risk of pedantry,i admit i am going to talk about a health problem experienced by older men,so women would be less will to talk about it,though i suspect women tend to be more open to it,not least in their relationships with men,but also at  the more general level of health and emotional issues,and indeed even in relation to men's health issues.I suspect that many of the campaigners include women.

I have unintentionally been mysterious enough,so let me be clear,what i am talking about as i describe the events of Wednesday night onwards.

Towards the end of the meeting i was in,i began to feel uncomfortable but that once able to address that discomfort at the end,it would resolve itself.It did not.I walked to the station with my woman friend and comrade,and we got on the tube together to return home.We talked largely about our political activities and plans over the next few days.This is frequently about activities in which we work together,or failing that,in which we have a common interest,backed by a close relationship as friends and comrades.

I admit that when i am feeling fragile or vulnerable,i often feel less so in her company or the company of other friends,companions,comrades.I may not talk about it long or in detail but i don't hide that,and it does make a difference to me and the quality of my life.

When i got home,i could still not get rid of the pain,which intensified and within a short time i was reduced to being naked and pacing about part of the house as a coping mechanism.It was not long before my partner was consulting the internet,and making contact with the relevant"arm"of the NHS.

Early information indicated i might have an infection.She tells me now that a check on the symptom checker on NHS Direct,indicated that we should call an ambulance to get to A&E(accident and emergency).I was not able to make that call,but knowing that the NHS Direct telephone helpline(an 0845 number had been shut down she called the new 111 number.Over the next 2 hours or so,we had 3 conversations with the same person,who asked the same initial questions and then more questions and gave us both advice about what to do.I won't repeat that advice in detail except to say that whilst it seemed useful,it did not work,although i intend no criticism here.We were both told that if things got worse,or the symptoms developed in particular ways,we should call back.During the 1st call,i was told that a doctor would call within and hour or so.As things got worse,as the pain intensified,we made a secnd call which ended with another sort of medical assistant(paramedic?)would call in less than 30 minutes.I think my partner was advised that we could call an ambulance,she did so although that call ended with a message that an ambulance may not come but that we may recieve andother call.The pain quickly became so unbearable  that she made  a 3rd during which we were advised to drive to some kind of clinic in the hospital,which was not for emergencies but for"out of hours events".This was impossible because nether of us drive or own a car.No taxi would take us due to health and safety/insurance and other issues-we did not even try,but my partner asserted our difficulty and my pain.She made a further request for an ambulance having reminded them of their own previous advice.

At 11.55pm an ambulance showed up.I experienced some relief,though no pain reduction being in the company of(broadly)medical and calm,competent staff.Some moments later when i was in their ambulance,we had received NO call backs from helpers,paramedics, nor doctors,nor ambulance service although we did now have 2 ambulances at our door!

After a few minutes to settle and undertake administrative tasks,we made the journey to hospital.I answered a number of probing,intimate,personal questions most  of which i was happy to do,as precisely and concisely as i could given the"distorting"impact of pain and fear on me.If the calls were mildly reassuring the ambulance crew were very reassuring,calm and competent in both what they did and their attitude to us.

Partly because the pain "settled"though it did not reduce much,partly as a means of self distraction and partly because however ill i am on this or indeed other occasions,i am always surprised by my own analytic,curiosity especially in what might generally termed the sociology of it all-so we had a conversation along the way about their job as ambulance drivers.It became clear that busy or not such crews are constantly active,and that in a busy London A&E,like that night,they were already BUSY!This makes their breaks minimal in frequency and duration.One of them told me that there are now time limits of the time they can interact with patients!None of us had time to discuss some of the more"problematic"situations that the press/media like to report either as human interest stories or as disaster or"scapegoating"stories!

I commented that they worked for St.John's Ambulance Brigade.It seems that because LAS/London Ambulance Service cannot obtain enough staff,that it now"buys in"the service of at least 6 other organisations and companies,and that whilst no full time drivers for LAS,they had both started as volunteers for St.Johns and that they still were.I am NOT drawing the conclusion that LAS now relies on unpaid volunteers.Now am i challenging St.Johns as an exploiter particularly,although it is easy to see that this could provide further routes to the greater exploitation of labour.

I am guessing that volunteering for St.Johns is still about the provision of para-medical assistance on occasions when even in the best of times NHS services would only be applied in an emergency,such as at football matches and other public events.I think for example i have seen St.Johns staff at or near major political demonstrations although i cannot assert that.

To the best of my understanding St.Johns provide a service as a charity,which one way or another goes back to the MIlitary Orders of the Crusades,and to the Catholic Church.In decsribing it thus,i am at this juncture simply being descriptive,not critical although i might in another,and more informed context have criticisms.I am certainly NOT impuging the motives,commitment nor work of the 2 young men who took me to hospital.Indeed,it became clear these these men are trades unionists,dedicated public servants and to their professional tasks.It was a privelege to meet them,and to be in their care-and i do mean care.

Charm does not come naturally to me.I try to be good mannered.I also remain a shy man,but having long believed that good eulogies at gravesides/funerals have their place,and having long felt that often people do not appreciate each other,i always try to make a point of articulating what goes on inside my head when  that is appropriate.I hope i appreciate labour,and service and commitment-and said that i appreciated the NHS in general and the work done by its"representatives"not as some abstract distant category,but as embodied in the real people i interact with.So,i will say here,and not for the 1st or last time-lets do everything we can to keep the NHS and to keep it free at the point of use.Lets go on to build it into an even better service,where every detail of"from each according to their ability,to each according to their need"applies.

This is not the 1st time into this A&E department for me.I think this is at least the 3rd time since 2009 for me.I had previously visited other styles of "out of hours"services too.My partner has i believe been to both at least once herself in recent years,and both/either of us took one or other of our two children when they were children.We also attended with emergencies during my partners pregnancies at 2 of the local hospitals.

I am familiar enough therefore to observe particularly what is similar each time,at least in my own direct experience.What comes across most powerfully for me is how there are no managers about,although there is a hierarchy of decision making command which at least at some levels make absolute sense.I am not an advocate of hierarchy but a Doctor IS more trained than a nurse,etc.Secondly,it all seems to operate as if it is both organism and machine-which fits in with my view based on Karl Marx that we are social beings,and that we are at our best when active at that level.I am sure that people.staff know each other and become familiar as colleagues and friends which hones this phenomena.There is always a busy calm.Not least,we the patients are at our most vulnerable,and possibly our most difficult.We are strangers to them and yet i have always experienced it as tender and sometimes intimate care by strangers of strangers.Unfortunately the NHS is NOT fully operative socialism,but there is a lot there,and indeed here in the specific situation i experienced that is very close to socialism(Please remember i am not being particularly analytical here.i am NOT writing sociology or Marxism here,this is a subjective piece,although another time or place i could probably defend analytically my view.)

I was handed over,and then had to wait over 4 hours for the attention i needed.I am not being critical when i observe,that whilst no-one rushed at anything all the staff i saw worked constantly and that standing about was either relatives or professional staff awaiting and usually doing something else manageable at the same time.Whilst there might be some unnecessary repetition,i believe that repetition to to check for mistakes or for security reasons.Mistakes and misunderstandings still occur-i saw though i am not sure i understood them,but this is in the nature of being human.

I am aware that at least for myself that it is often difficult to differentiate for example the "rational"experience of pain from psychological interpretation.Laying on a "trolley"eased my pain a little,being in the company or presence of medical staff at all levels was reassuring for me,and made the pain bearable most of the time but it reasserted itself.I found myself pacing again as i had at home,and i became increasingly desperate.I waited for over 4 hours for substantial relief with my treatment,which was radical in going well beyond tablets but did ease the problem.

Critical news coverage of the crisis of A&E both nationally and particularly in London indicates that 4 hour waits are not seen as acceptable,although bringing them down will not be easy,as it is not likely to be simply about money and resources.That said i do NOT want to cover up the problems nor the blatant  destructive damage of austerity and cuts so far.

It seems that whilst "innovation"to provide GPs out of hours services,combined with other ways to deflect from A&E have had at best,it seems,ambiguous results,whilst others report an increase or surge of A&E referrals/activity of over 1m people/incidents.

From a place like Northwick Park which is reporting already an increase of something around 40% demand,a 4 hour wait can be nos surprise already.Planned cuts across A&E in this area of NWLondon seem increasingly absurd and unfair,although protest does not seem to alter the view of consultancies,consultations,authorities or anyone else in power to decide.

Again I can only argue subjectively ro analytically to keep the NHS,to keep it publicly funded and to keep it free at the point of use!

From what i could see,it seemed that all staff were working efficiently and expeditiously in so far as this is ever possible in the midst of human need.I was confident that staff were making legitimate and rational decisions about human needs in the health context.At no time did staff run away or even run to do something else.I ay not have recieved preferred answers but i  did get answers.Only once did a doctor advice me to save my questions for a quieter time,as he had more acute problems to deal with.I had no problem with that answer,and my anxities were later more fully allayed.

After treatment a breezy young surgeon,responsible for urology during the night came to explain that i would be kept in for monitoring due to the problem identified.At around 6am I was taken to what i guess was a male general ward,and i probably fell asleep at around 6.30am.Before i left A&E i was tested for MRSA,which i think is one of those conditions that actually thrives in hospitals.This is not just an issue about ensuring their is adequate time,money and other resources to deal with it,but  arecognition that the environment will inevitably be faced with such difficulties by the nature of the cause of such conditions(i apologise i cannt explian more fully,i am not a scientist)

I admit then that i was neither best pleased nor at my best when cheery,fresh hospital staff at the start of their shift wanted"wakey,wakey"at the start of new shift,new day or their routine tests.I co-operated but determined to otherwise stay asleep!I understand their needs too,in that regular tests is both monitoring and contact,neither of which is yet entirely reducible to being"management targets".In relation to myself it was directly related to monitoring my condition.It also facilitates contact with patients.

Yet this does raise some very real conundrums and difficulties in and for hospitals.There is a tension between the demands on A&E staff,and the emotional and practical needs of patients and friends and family with them.These do not fit easily together.I may return later or some other time to this.Hospitals do not seem so beset as in the days of more authoritarian structures-in those days health was done and delivered to  us,these days we are increasingly seen as individually responsible perhaps in a way which replaces that previous authoritarianism with an equally unacceptable individuation.Instead the new routines,which  are NOT the old ones disguised in my opinion,but are driven by regular monitoring of  a diverse range of conditions,many of which might well be dealt with better,where once the crisis is over,in the community in at least notionally less disruptive as well as more economic ways.

When i did wake at a"more civilised"time in the morning i messaged a few people,tried reading,eat the food i had been carrying the previous day,and eventually fell asleep again after a visit from the Urology Team,and some further tests.A chance to allay my own fears with some questions,answered by a consultant who in manner and rank come across as authoritative,persuasive,trustworthy....It was agreed to my relief that i could go home when various processes were completed.Treatment would follow,along with further diagnosis.

Now,I admit that i'm from the question everything,trust no-one school which is NOT about trusting ordinary people in our everyday lives,nor doubting friendships but rather simply not taking on trust other sorts of knowledge,that claim to be fact-from advertising,to history,politics and especially not science.Incidentally whilst theology may have lost its rank as"absolute truth",i do NOT accept that science has earned or taken it,and is certainly not at the pinnacle of knowledge.I might accept that mathematics more closely replicates some of reality(though i could not articulate how,and i suspect that statement and admission both illustrate the very conundrum i am trying to articulate).If forced i would  say that philosophy would occupy that pinnacle although that would still be based on a kind of relativism,in which it questions and posits that knowledge is socially constructed)

In banal,daily practice however,we do,i think have to take some things on trust.I found myself genuinely reassured by the presence of ambulance crew.It does not require me to rely on their knowledge in detail over my own,but it certainly has a psychological impact-in that my psychological experience of my pain was reduced at least partially with their arrival and presence.I did not know them but i associate their role with obtaning some kind fo reassurance.I know and trust my partner implicity,and yet no matter what i tell or ask her about  my condition,nothing she says about this would give the same re-assurance.

I slept through most of the afternoon,though inevitably overhearing without intending to listen to other conversations.As an social worker,that comes as a kind of second nature.Part of that response is as an ever cuious social scientist and/or revolutionary socialist activist.

Another patient was a young man,usually a student at the local but very well know Public School.Usually i experience class not just filtered through my own experience but through those i mostly engage with as my clients in the past,through my political and social activist engagement through most of my life and not least through my own friendships and relationships.I also acknowledge that these overlap.Yesterday,i experienced at a distance,indirectly the other side of those class dynamics in observing someone of another class distancing themselves from what i guess is the ordinary and consciously or not"working class"of their immediate environment.I would not seek to judge the particular young man.I try not to be judgemental,and i do not know him.He seemed to wish to be obedient to his concerned father who was it appears on another continent.I picked up that his father wanted a more experienced/qualified surgeon.Despite reassurance from doctors and others via a woman who was both clearly in a position of authority over the youth but also of subservience to the father in relation to the school,it became evident that the father might be making assumptions that a free NHS might be an inferior service,as non-profit hospitals in say the USA might appear to be.It would  seem to me that this view is both clouded by distance-i myself  would not have a good hold on health services in Asia.Yet it might also illustrate another view too.

It is my view that the dominant ideas in society are the ideas of the dominant class.That does not make them either right,nor the majority view,simply the dominant view.Ideas also overlap and contradict.My impression from the way the media operate here is that they themselves are largely about the views and behaviour of their class.We,the others,the rest,the working class get told a lot about them,but"we"our class do not get the same coverage,and when we do,it is either when we are seem as"trouble"and stereotyped in various ways,or are quaint for our occasional ideas or for human interest stories.I think this comes down to,they really don't understand us.They just avoid,delete,don't understand us.Mostly we do not exist for them......I draw no firmer conclusions,yet.

Eventually but feeling a little fragile i got dressed to leave and was taken down to the discharge lounge,from where i made my escape and am glad to be home.I have heard of but not been in or used a discharge lounge,which i guess are marginally more comfortable places from which to arrange medicines,final instructions,follow up and transport.Staff and patients there were both very helpful.I felt a little disconnected by  this time-fragile,sleepless,still anxious and in some discomfort.

I got home,and after trying to settle and get used to yet more medicine i went to bed where i guess i did some catching up,starting today even later than usual,getting used to the strange mild discomfort i am left with i trust temporarily,and reviewing the experience.

So i'm still talking to friends and my partner about it.I stand strong in my commitment to an NHS(national health service)that i believe should be even stronger and more socialist and should close out all the creeping as well as the obvious private/profit/capitalist input and exploitation.The irony is that the very treatment i have received,good so far in all respects might contribute to me NOT being present on the London wide demonstration on 18th May simply because i feel weaker,and more fragile.Otherwise,i will be there in spirit,eager for us to keep an NHS,free at the point of need,and growing stronger and more public everyday.

Many of us on the left and who are activists in the campaigns to defend/save/protect the NHS spend a lot of time considering why people don't see the urgency of the question.I don't have any magic answers,and without wishing to avoid the answer or searching for one i would firstly acknowledge its complexity.The experience of the last 48 hours or so has however reminded me of one thing,that although many people value and indeed love the NHS,on the other hand it offers services that we do not engage with unless we have need or problem,and that is actually part of the problem.I suspect those mostly involved in it,are those who one way or another are most directly involved in it.

Let me end with something personal:my partner joked that it was a good job that i had a male crew.Me and one of the crew men responded that i did not seem to be the kind of man who would be bothered.I'm not,and that was partly driven by my condition.Fear and pain.Having thought a little more,i would only add that it was good to be in the presence of men who made no negative hint of any kind when they saw that i was afraid,in pain and very fragile.That i hope is typical of ambulance men and ambulance crew
  







    
d1/100513

Newspapers?

There was once but now there is'nt........they don't contain news and they are not paper.

A few days ago i made certain comments about a certain newspaper,and in grudgingly acknowledging that for a hysterical publication so far to the right,they do sometimes exhibit some quality of journalism.i guess the linked material might illustrate my point,except i can't avoid offering that further opinion that this represents a further twist.i suspect that there will be some shadenfreude at this newspaper at the discomfort this is likely to cause at least some on the left of centre and perhaps even further to the left.

i wonder whether at some point in the past charities did ever run their own charity shops,or whether it has always been the case that capitalist"sharks"moved in from the start or fairly near it,to make such profits from others good will.i am pretty sure that when the Samaritan,in the New Testament story cared for the injured person in the street and left money for that person to be cared for,he did not expect a 3rd party to take a slice of the action/costs/gift as either administrative costs let alone profits.

i am also aware that of all the material "we" donate,a vast amount is disposed of as waste.This might be recycling but it still seems wasteful to me.It seems to me that,for example rather than consigning to recycled waste the many books donated,because of slight damage to covers or notes in the text there are many people out there who would rather have a book of  some kind than in pristine condition.I suggest that in these times when the poor are being rendered destitute and students so wighed down by loans that buying a book at say 50p or £1 would be a lot more helpful than seeing it trashed or paying say £5 for one in pristine condition.

And while i am at it,my heart breaks at seeing pictures of the poor,mostly black,in the USA being held back or beaten by police lines whilst unsold food is removed to be destroyed.And here in the UK too government pressure has ended cheap food distribution through food/soup runs to prevent food falling into the wrong hands,except via food banks,which whatever their good intentions can feel or look like it is humiliating.

frankly i would rather that a few who don't need it get to eat something rather than a lot who do need it,should go without.it also seems to me that for many of the agencies like the salvation army,st.mungoes and the simon community who used to do such"runs",it enables them to keep a watchful and caring eye on those who otherwise get little attention.Such services,were they allowed again might prevent those deaths that happenned this winter-where even 1 or 2,is 1 or 2 too many.They might alos bring other sorts of attention to bear on those in need.The alternative seems to be a phoneline.Thats good too but i have not always had that number to hand when i have come across people in need and in the cold.Nor do they neccessarilly have access to numbers or internet to call for themselves.I am sure that such"runs"directly identified those in need,and encouraged such information to be passed on by word of mouth.Somehow"word of mouth"does not get transmitted on the newer media.

It seems to me that there used to be multiple levels and layers to the welfare state,but that now as it all falls apart,it all falls apart and the complex of content is emptied.It really might be the case,that one day we wake up and none of it is there,anymore.Yes,we the working class,the left need to develop new forms but equally we need to defend,rebuild and build anew from what is still in place before it is all turned into what was,and it is gone!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1352343/Salvation-Army-millionaire-William-Booth-makes-fortune-donated-clothes.html

d1/200413

If it's Saturday,it must be Kilburn Square

It's Saturday.My brain stumbles out of sleep and tries to grasp what i ought to do today.Decisions,decisions.I half struggle to half remember.

An invitation to hear Jerry Hicks speak,the"rank and file"candidate for the UNITE the Union General Secretaryship in the current election.But then the venue has been changed,and i don't know the new venue-so that is out.I wonder though is there is some kind of sabotage or conspiracy here?A late invitation to a much  missed friends birthday party,but i don't know her new address,so that unfortunately is out too.

So its down to one of two then.My TUSC/trades unionist and socialist coalition friends have invited me to a showing of Ken Loach's new documentary,"The Spirit of '45",in Dalston.I know this is important,and I'd like to see the friends who invited me......i can't quite decide.

Then i get a call,and on the spur of the moment i decide to go to Kilburn Square for 1pm.It enables me to pass on the banner of the CSFHC/counihan-sanchez family housing campaign,which we can alo use to mark our patch/pitch by laying it on the pavement,and carry out the commitment i feel to this campaign.

I set off,feeling slightly feeble as i often do these days,as age and health problems take their toll these days but knowing that when i'm active and doing things with friends and comrades those feelings fade if not completely,then into the background.I also know,but am not daunted by the reality that this activity will take me fairly directly not just into"pain with the world",but into the more specific and individual difficulties of some if not all the people we talk to in our leafletting.

That is exactly what happens.I talk to a young man probably in his 20s,who thinks his parents may be victims of the"bedroom tax"and i like to think our conversation and the offer of a draft enquiry/appeal letter might encourage him to check with the parents he is currently resident with.An older man tells me that two of his older woman neighbours are"in the thick"of these anxieties,but he leaves me encouraged and armed with letters for his friends.A black woman comes across the street,sent by a fellow activist who has alerted her to the reality that she too is at the blunt of this essentially silly tax but which has such serious consequences for its victims.She too leaves armed with letters and leaflets,and my comrade is optimistic that we might have another"well placed"recruit to our campaign.I too,hope so.We need more people to do more of the tasks facing us,and as we do more,it is likely that further,greater need will emerge,in turn requiring more people to help each other.

We are joined by more campaigners/supporters,although inevitably some in turn are drawn away by other demands on their time.After a busy time,those of us left"wrap it up"and head to our favourite local cafe,who support our campaign anyway to talk before we too go our separate ways....And in that conversation we find that one of us,is also being victimised by this tax and that he has already had a deduction from benefits,without any notification of this.It distresses me again that someone already in other difficulties is also faced by a procedure which might also be called"institutional abuse"in that it seems to an an innappropriate and abusive application of procedures which are improperly applied.Yet its all functional.....

In the back of my head,is another thought.My primary commitment is to this campaign.I believe in it.And i share with my comrade/friend that,at worst it wil be better to fight,resist and lose,than not to resist at all.My other thought though,is that this echoes and mirrors some aspects of my experience as an adolescent.For by the time i was 15,i was beginning to find things to become active in,and having done so,"we"would all gather in the town square of my hometown on saturday afternoon,to be in each others company,to jst be,to organise,to exchange news.At its height,at its busiest that would include various members and associates of 3 or 4 youth organisations/arts labs,none of them in any way"official"and several political groupings of what might then as now be called the left,and others....none of us ever had the money for tea or coffee,but otherwise it was the same.And i realise what links the two experiences over 40 years apart is the sense of friendship and comradeship,that i realise is pretty central to my life.

Those were the days before the internet and mobile phones.Those new technologies mean that before i even get home,i can "check in"with my other friends about what i have missed,and about the choice i did not make.It also means that i can write about the experience and share it with an immediacy too.

In passing,there is something else in common-that like the adolescent that i was then,i could not bear to miss anything.And thats the case now,i might be 59 now but like when i was 17 i still can't bear to miss anything.I guess that these technologies enable me at least to catch the"echoes"of a second experience or event even if i can't immerse myself in it.And i can always try to pester those friends later too.....

d1/200413

More Living With Paradox

When Brent Council shut down 7 out of 12 libraries,i think they subsequently panicked when despite the superficiality of a new attitude to the community,the actual behaviour of the Labour leadership,in my opinion simply demonstrated that they were only capable of lying and obfuscation.Eventually,they put up a lot of wooden panels around the library in Preston(Park).

But it was a 2 edged sword.It provided campaigners with a "wall of shame"where our community indicated the many  reasons why we wanted a library here,amongst  all the closed libraries(we WANT them ALLre-opened).It was cathartic,a way to articulate pain,loss and rage.......

This idea also came up in a slightly different form during the process of organising the recent SWAN/social work action network-that we should find a way to acknowledge loss through cuts and austerity on the one hand and loss of comrades,in the context of recording our struggles and small but significant victories,including locally the Counihan-Sanchez family being re-instated to benefits and the campaign asserting successfully our right to demonstrate.We set up the walls at conference although i don't know how or if it worked as my attention was largely focussed on other things.I still believe in it as  a technique anyway....

Today,some of us,probably all activists in the community across Brent or elsewhere,have been incensed by that same"bunch of clowns"starting a book of condolence for a certain unbearable ex-prime minister.I will say no more,except this:

I was so incensed that i suggested that perhaps we start a book of condolence for our loss of libraries,benefits,housing,services.....having had a couple of people say its a good idea-it seems to that either on the internet or in the real world,we probably SHOULD find a way to acknowledge and record oru losses.It would be cathartic to do so and actually i don't think we have to accept it.The secret might be to work out a way to act on it for real.

Meantime,the family,friends,associates of that unbearable prime minister can get on with what they need to do,but do they really need to involve the rest of us,or for us to pick up the bill.I know that at too many levels the answer is yes because in a class society the dominant ideas must be the ideas of the dominant class and they can't bear or allow us to think or believe anything else.If we do the threaten to pre-arrest us,which itself is an interesting idea(no it is'nt).As far as i'm concerned i want to forget her and her entire class completely;all i and indeed,we need to know is how and why they oppress and destroy our class-simply so that  we can bring that kind of system to an end.Then we can finally put them,ideologically on the rubbish  pile of history,and frankly write them out of history completely.After all it is no worse than what they have done to the billions that make up our  class for several hundred years.This is not vindictive thinking,it is simply historical fact!

"We Have Flame"

Too many weeks ago to remember now was my birthday.A friend sidled up to me and whispered"i have something for you,but it won't be ready until next week!"OK.i was intrigued but did not ask.True to who he is,the next Saturday,when out campaigning together he gave me not just a CD but  his CD!......

I said i looked forward to playing it and that i would review it.For various  reasons it took me time to get round to playing the recording.Whilst i often have music playing,it is not there just to fill the emptiness.i both listen and put music to use.I have that very CD playing now as i write because its the subject but also because it helps in the writing both rhythmically and in terms of focussing thought.On this ocassion as the recording is the subject i hope i can be sharp and incisive.

I apologise that it has been a long time before i have settled to write about it.That is actually because i wanted to do it properly and thoughtfully and to do it justice.I think my friend and me have the kind of relationship where i can say what i like and what i think but then i don't think he has need to worry.

Getting it as a gift was a surprise,and it is a good gift especially trusting his own work directly into my hands.I like these little jewel cases that open at least partly like a book,although having been part fo that vaguely militant album generation in the days of gatefold covers and sometimes more,and liner notes over expansive"pages"cds even when reproductions/facsimilies of previous vinyl/album recordings are always dissappointing because a lot of the detail is either very small or dissappears completely in re-editing.New material often just does not have what i like to find.

I am talking here about Steve Dobbs aka Crucial Steve aka Emoticon recording "We Have Flame".The spine gives artist and title.Front and back photographs in black and white or reduced from colour,is of interest as its a pine forest with a glow of light which i suppose is the flame.That marks it already of interest to me,reminiscent of a dream i still have occassionally of being in a forest/woodland glade near a fire around which a number of people gather in what appear to be similar to monastic robes....but then that is perhaps another story.

The type face of text of title and tunes is as if from a typewriter.Although liner notes would probably not have answered me,i am intrigued as to why and how the title came about.T.he individual titles are descriptive or enigmatic or not,but there is not adirect enough conection for me yet between titles and the actual pieces so i think i will have to concentrate harder and revisit to review again at some future time,when much more immersed and familiar.Production details indicate this album is from material recorded between 2003 and now,which suggests it includes material he was recording at approximately 16 years old,which is impressive in itself.I could not trace a direct line of development or progression but that is no criticism.It is a pity there is not more information.Perhaps i could contribute to the notes of any re-issue or future similar recordings.

I started wondering about the instrumentation,the more specific dating of pieces,something of the production.this does not suffer from what constitutes the notes on too many compilations,are details of production and copyright that would only be of interest to technicians and corporate lawyers.That said this is not a compilation.Not enough tracklistings contain anything of real interest.

I have not actually started talking  about the music yet.So"getting to this"the nub of it....

When i first put it on the CD player it was with 2 other pressings from my collection and i did not pay particular attention to either what i had put on,nor the order.So when music started i registered it as an Eno recording,although it became clear within a minute or two that it was not.That should not be taken as a criticism.If it is imitative of Eno at all,it is only in so far as that for me,Eno was one of the pioneers of this sort of music.If Eno's word ambient means anything,then its applies not only to his own music but to this.Ambient shoudl NOT be taken to mean aural wallpaper.Such music can be highly meditative,all surrounding and evocative for both body and imagination.This music reminds me of dreams,of dreamscape,or deep space,and haunts my thoughts.

as well as notes,these pieces contain pulse rather than rhythm,which is fine by me.i think something that connects with the human heart beat is important in most music and i think is why i find much of the classical tradition so difficult,but that too is another questions another story.......here it seems to be in the electricity too.

some of the pieces are too short for me.some of the piano seems like an excercise rather than  at unity with the whole album but then for me liner notes would help to pin reality to imagination in away i would find helpful.Although this is Steve's music,i'm afraid once i have it,it is up to my imagination what it decides to do with it.It certainly feeds my imagination.Whilst i do not require this music,Steve's in particular or this music as a form to paly tricks on me it is one feature of it that i like.Gottschings E2-E4 for example i am almost certain,sets up mental expectations such that my imagination places material into what i hear in away that may not be there.

For now,i will say this.My comments are too short.That said,in any selection of 3 discs on te player at any one time,this is one that stays there for a week or so at a time.It does also haunt me when i'm away from it,although it is not something that mymind can yet replay for me.The recording does take me inside itself-in both an intellectual and emotional challenge.

Whilst i never claim to know people very well,which is a lesson i learned early on from my own profession.i do see us all as works in progress although things about ourselves may or may not be connected.This may be ambient but like some other aspects of Steve i am familiar with,being meticulous does not sacrifice emotion to precision.I do not yet know whether this is material to meditate within,but it does take me to a different mental place.i would be interested in Steve's own view of that too.

That for the moment takes me back to something closer to my starting point-the title,and the image at the edge of a forest glade..."We Have Flame".

I will end with for now,a thank you.i look forward to the next piece.




d3/010413

Life with children

i don't know what those before me thought or how they thought.i don't think i ever asked my own parents what made them want children or love and parent us.i guess for me it was so obvious it did not need asking,or perhaps it was unaskable,not even possible to formulate the thought et alone the question.

i knew then as i know still that we were loved.i rarely if even doubted it.i was i think,fortunate.i have seen and worked with too many of the unloved since...to have any doubt.

i suspect however,i am not alone in coming from a generation who had more doubts.i surmise that perhaps our parents,were so relieved to have survived one way or another,2 decades of downturn and depression,followed by war and a slow recovery,that as part of that recovery many had children.the development of the welfare state must have meant new optimism that led to the baby boomers born after world war 2 that came to adolescence and adulthood in the  1960s.i also surmise that my own generation were more demanding,not just as a function of capital which latches onto creating new markets,but impatient with the grey,banality of Britain and rising expectations with boom.we wanted it and we wanted it now and we demanded that it was better.We were no,probably are not grateful for the crumbs of a life.

But we were faced by new threats and new questions.Warfare may not be in the form of World War,all consuming conflagration but it was slow burning,semi if not actually constant and saw the playing out of a number of aspects of imperialism.We,well i determined to lead life and our relationships a different way,and not to have children.Could we really bring them into this world of constant horror!?

We compromise,we settle into something.For me it is mostly finding a content with my own discontent,alienation and strangeness.In the 1980s,when i hit my 30s,i was"too busy doing other things",and into the early 90s,still living in a difficult political landscape of relative inactivity and relative fear and despair that World War 3 or nuclear winter could take us out at anytime.The coming down of the wall and the ending of state centred Stalinism offerred some kind of hope,although that went from the false glister of the limited social provision of the Stalinist states to a false dawn of a new world order,that is only a new world order,then the neo-con,now the neo-liberalism of the capitalist world,which is failing and in crisis not seen since the 1930s.

It was however,not quite like this in 1992 when i became  a father for the first time,nor the 2nd in 1994.Besides,i think the purely rational calculating can often be and excuse for doing or not doing something,and it is not the determining factor.Is there some biological imperative that drives us to recreate an perpetuate our own species our own line.I do not know,especially as a person who believes that however slowly,we are a species capable of profound or at least significant changes in our own collective psychological orientation.

to be continued...

Activists Calendar

Monday 25th February-Lobby of Brent Council Budget Meeting,with CSFHC,suporting Brent Fight back

This means i won't be able to attend the Platypus reading group discussing Lenin's"What Is To Be Done?"

Tuesday 26th February-evening meeting cancelled.this is unfortunate as it means trying to be in 2 places at once now on Wednesday evening!

Wednesday 27th February-5.30pm Camden United For Benefits Justice organising meeting,which seems to have been postponed from the previous evening!in my opinion a very important meeting.this presents me with a conundrum,as i also have another pre-arranged and equally but differently important meeting.

6.30pm SWAN Workshops and Papers Group.I pushed for the meeting tonight to avoid a clash with other meetings.That worked then did'nt it?

Thursday 28th February- Irish Republican Prisoners Support Group Public Meeting,Central London

Preston Park School Consultation about school expansion/extension

-i don't jest when i say"decisions,decisions?"

Friday 1st March-i hope to be off to Manchester to see friends and attend a conference......

Saturday 2nd March

d1(250213)

LOST.......again

i have had certain notions,that seem to float about like seeds on the wind,for most of my life,or at least amongst the times and memories i can recall.

One of these is the notion of being Lost.

It gives me a multi acronym,that i might come back to later.

It crystallised into something more material when i needed an email address and then a nom de plume.The specific form of my email address emerged from my determination to use the primary word that described how i felt not just in that moment,but indeed most of the time.i was determined not to be reduced to a number,unless it was very clearly obvious that i had chosen it.After keying inthe same word multiple times"the system"seemed to relent after 4 times.

That was several years agao now.In the meantime,i've found that my chosen identity gets some attention because its distinctive,although it seems to worry some people that i seem to have such a negative or forlorn orientation to the world,and that somehow they want me to be found.Not everyone's anxieties are allayed by my explanation....

That everyone is lost,there are no maps,for life itself except for those we make up as we go along,and that the difference might be-between you and i,whoever you are,is that i know i am lost.Indeed,i go a step further and consider that mostly,whatever,"the world"thinks it has to offer has little or no attraction.Yes,the world is facsinating and dangerously beautiful but i don't hav eto buy into it,and i try not  to.

i have learned to be content with my discontent,and i think i understand at least in part my strong,sometimes overwhelming sense of alienation.

As if i needed reminding,i do get almost daily reminders of being lost and alienated.Not least in having such difficulty accessing my own blog!(and whilst i'm at it,the feedback mechanism to report such problems does not work either!) 

anthems and love songs....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNi7F1tBWoI

valentine's or warm fuzzies?

st.valentine's,as i have written before has been reduced to yet another sales opportunity.it sells a twee saccharine version of love and affection,in which human emotion is reduced to product and commodity.just as coin and paper and cheque and other forms of money are not the thing itself but an alienated and abstract representation of it,which in turn banalises human work and creativity into something transferable and exchangeable,perhaps human affection is headed the same way.that"token"-the card,the flowers,the chocolates....are not the thing itself,although i suppose as human beings we do still manage to squeeze something of the reality in there somewhere.one of the things marriage services remnd us of is that affection and love have deeper and more difficult aspects including"in sickness and in health"-through the difficulties as well as the bad time,although i still think a lot of it is distorted and alienated in the culture,the society we live in.for me,for example it"pushes"our feelings into"boxes"that do not neccessarilly fit,and it isolates those feelings,so that in many respects we become a bulwark against the world.for too many this hides violence and abuse which goes well beyond "in sickness and in health"

i have also written about a more muscular notion of love promoted i believe by Valentinus,who may or may not have been abstracted into valentines day.that was initially in the context of human affection being expressed within a wider community.however,that community would not look like today's society,nor would it neccessarilly look like the visions of some socialists for the future,as in the writings of Alexandra Kollontai.that too,is another story i might tell another time.

meantime,i will end this piece with another account of "warm fuzzies".there are a variety of tellings of this story.my version is remembered and abreviated from an account introduced to me by my friend Robert O.,told to me then in the context of a(radical)mental health conference.

imagine,then a society of human like creatures,possibly not unlike hobbits born with or carrying something like a backpack attached.each time they meet another creature they reach into the back pack and give their friend a warm fuzzy.....until someone spreads the idea that maybe the warm fuzzies are in short supply.that"idea"spreads the notion of scarcity,and each creature becomes more circumspect in its giving.....there are all kinds of negative possibilities here....but in time,i would guess quite quickly,eache time a creature reaches into their bags they pass on something that turns from warm fuzzy into a cold prickly.

.....and that's enough said really.it seems to me to be a metaphor for what happens in the world we live in.except the warm fuzzy turns not just into a cold prickly but has very real implications for the others in the transactions...the love becomes more conditional,and more and more qualified,restricted,limited.....we give less and we give less freely.

yet all kinds of things tell me it need not be this way.i am not pessimistic about this.human beings have changed things over time,often very radically indeed.what we make,we can make again,and remake.and whilst,i do not have a"silver linings"approach to life,i do believe that because life is paradoxical and contradictory and dialectical,that often our actions and our beliefs contain the seeds of something new,and often those new things are something approaching the opposite of what was before,and if not then they are a synthesis of the contradictions.

as i write,we are indeed living in"interesting"if not difficult times.as some of us meet to talk,organise,dissent,resist,struggle,make changes-whilst we mostly do not command the whole process,other things occur in the process of the tasks we set ourselves.and one of the dimensions in those dynamics is the potential to change,and perhaps radically the social relations and relationships we have with one another.

that is so for me.at least in some of the things,the activities i engage in now,i find myself less in formalised routine in which too much,too many of my interactions are formally proscribed and limited so that what might be presented as fomal care or concern,might be backed by a less than substantial human contact,backed nly by the good will and capacity of the individuals involved.i find myself more frequently in relationships which although they might occur in the context of human distress and may be embattled,those involved and engaged,are i like to hope,more open to each other,more welcoming of each others talents,creativity,and yes falibilities and frailties,perhaps the essences of our humanity.i am not utopian about this.the wider socio-economic system creeps into everything,and yet for now-the moment is indeterminate-we have the potential for something different.without being trite,the possibility that strangers are simply friends we have not met yet,might be an increasing posibility.

reflecting as i am,on what i am engaged in now,the very limits that might impose themselves make thesemoments even more precious,and present the importance of refecting on them in order to remember and value them.i also realise that looking back on my life so far,i have had a rich experience of this so far,though perhaps i did not know it at the time.

for me,i think in the last year of so the months are littered with such experiences.some of them were almost literally moments,some are ongoing.looking further back,there have been lean times,when retreating into family and close friendships has been a bulwark against the worst of the darkness.but then that too makes the richness of other moments all the richer too.that i guess is one of the paradoxes of human life.i'm glad however,that i have a lot fo those positive experiences.and i share them more now at least as memory and stories told,not to boast but in the hope that others will realise of their own experience that what we each take as ordinary and possibly banal,in the process of seeking what we see as greater goals,gives us experience which is richer than i/we think.

life itself,like revolution is process not event.and the means are probably just as important as the ends.the means have meaning and value in itself.

biography?

i don't really want to write an autobigraphy.that seems far too self centred and egocentrc.besides which i am,or try to be as thoroug-going in my view that we are social beings as possible.

and then i have to start somewhere.one place would be at the start of my own own self consciousness except that hangs on memory.so i will start a little with background and then refer to my earliest memory...

the background.i am the eldest son of a solidly working class mother who had been brought up in a district of east london herself the only daughter of a railway worker,nominally a member of a railworkers union and a working mother who was mostlya prfessional cook all her working life.my mum was 13 at the start of the second world war,refused to leave the london of the blitz and married my father in 1948.my father was the 3rd of 4 siblings in an essentially downwardly mobile upper working class family.my grandfather ran what must have been a small specialist stationary company that must have existed for some time,but which became both increasingly a general stationer but increasingly irrelevant to the development of that trade.that business was taken over by my uncle who continued to earn enough of a living from it until its closure with his retirement,for him to maintain my grandmothers household.

i was born in on australia day in january 1954,which was always of significance to my father,as he was fond of the country he had been demobilised into at the end of world war II.arriving on the wrong side of australia in 1946 he then walked and hitchhiked to see family on the other side of the country and eventually returned to britain.

in 1948 he married my mother,much to my paternal grandmothers dissapproval who did not attend their wedding.

unsurprisingly i have no recollection of my 1st 3years,as most of us dont.all the evidence is that most people start recalling at about 3 years old.the precocious few start early at around 2 years old.

i still tell stories about earlier events but i think those are recollections of my mothers stories about my early childhood and not my own.i think my 1st genuine memory is of sitting on the living room floor behind furniture in my mothers cousins house,playing with a large model aeroplane,when my dad visited me.i guess he will have told me of the birth of my sibling.i dont recall much else in detail for some time.i do however have general recollection of playing in the garden particularly with certain toys and also of a wider range of games in the house.

.......to be continued...

will the real Valentinus please stand up

i said i had a very alternative,different vision of 14th february

i think it should be Valentinus day.the saint accolade does not particularly matter,not least because the notion of sainthood has shifted spectacularly over the centuries-and that too is another story.

Valentinus was a Gnostic teacher and leader during the early"christan centuries",when christianity would itself have been one of the larger and more successful religions,with the trappings,paricularly of"church"or state or"political power.it was disparate and linked where possible,though not all parts would have been aware of all others.it had neither unity nor disunity.and there was a diversity of"currents"and"traditions".unlike islam,christianity did not have a single founder or author and it was may centuries before the bible was both established and agreed in its content.to this day the content is not entirely settled.so latter day christians who ask sternly"why did they not read the bible?"icould be asking at least an ahistorical question.for many centuries,any group of believers may have had radically different ideas about what constituted holy writ.im not even sure they would have reverenced it in the same peculiar way that some fundamentalists do.

Valentinus nevertheless became leader of many gnostics-christians who believed in finding the path through knowledge which is closer to wisdom than knowledge through books.it would have includede reading,but referred directly to mystical/spiritual experience,which was both shared and individual.

gnostic churches did not have time to "crystallise"in the same way that more literalist christianity did.they were some of many threads,who tended to be"outmanoevred"when christianity "hotted up".i am not going to claim that gnostics were either correct al the time or perfect or better.in the end too many/most gnostics were eradicated.

at least some of the communities would have stressed that they were communities of love,and their "love"would have been more muscular(though i dont mean more aggressive)than the twee images of st.valentines days.it would have meant a vibrant commitment to making communities which held together based on largely democratic and in some ways more egalitarian practice-goods in the eraly centuries would have been held in common.even later in the 11th century,people may have had greater or lesser resources and status,but they  would  have been treated  more simply and equally.all social groups mixed.so that when the populations of albi and beziers were massacred in the 12th century crusade against them,the local aristocracy invited the survivors by the 1,000s into their towns and domains,without differentation.this would however have stretched resources especially when those communities themselves came under seige

gnosticism remains because it is the underground current that feeds the springs and rivers that rise above this into the world,as gnostic or otherwise.

more orthodox dominant strands took over and dominated.rome established a pattern of sainthood,and one of those was st valentine who may or may both have been based on several people.it is possible that st.valentine is a creation which may be an amalgam including a stripped down version of Valentinus,left with a twee goodness and minus his muscular,organised gnosticism that i like to hope placed love and then gnosis at the centre of it all.

this IS part of my gnosis.

and in asocial context it taught me...."a society that does not have LOVE,has law!"

i can only add that we also seem to live in a society in which those who make that LAW,do not obey it but eagerly invent even more to impose of the  rest of us.and that LAW is not even about justice but about making it very clear indeed that PROFIT rules all and that LOVE and care is rendered.

gnostics like me do need need a hell elsewhere-we are living in it now,and where appearances are not always the truth.and that little is reliable.we probably only have each other in this material world and our best step forward is helping each other to make the best of it we can....and it could be a lot better than this,though MATERIAL and PERFECT may not go together well.

some of us,then hope that we can go home.......