Hogmanay, 2018 : I'm tired of news

    I hoped this would be a comfy recollection of 2018 reflecting on humankind's desire to be a world community. Alas, it is not so. In every direction my mind goes towards seeking harmony in the human predicament it is brought to an abrupt halt and I become apoplectic. I am rendered speechless and thoughtless and that  makes me feel worthless and weak.
    Here in the United Kingdom (?!) we are ruled by pettifogging little emperors more interested in filling their own coffers by sycophancy to the wealthy who fund the Conservative Party, than in opening our portals to desperate refugees who need the help of the sixth wealthiest country of the world. We are ruled by those who punish their own - the less well off in our country - in order to make the rich richer and of course themselves richer. Let's see Jeremy Corbyn's bank balance compared with that of any Conservative MP's and then you'll see what I mean. 
    We are citizens of a state which allows the production of armaments to kill the innocent in Yemen and Palestine and other places. You and I acquiesce to this. Why do we accept being killers?
    Why can't we celebrate being in a wider community like the EU or even better a world community? Why can't we accept that the poverty of any of our fellow kind and the cruelty meted out to the  endangered of any species on our planet is our responsibility. That we can't seem to own up to this is symptomatic of our self-interest and greed.

A global community on a torch procession, Edinburgh, 30.12.18

    I didn't mean to go off on one like this but every time I think of what has gone on in 2018 my mind explodes into highly dudgeonised and unspeakable despair. In order to articulate these feelings, I rely on the words of a gifted author. Here is Elisabeth -  the main character in Ali Smith's superb novel, Autumn, giving forth:

  "I'm tired of the news. I'm tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren't and deals so simplistically with what's truly appalling. I'm tired of vitriol. I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of meanness. I'm tired of selfishness. I'm tired of how we are doing nothing to stop it. I'm tired of how we are encouraging it. I'm tired of the violence there is and I'm tired of the violence that's on the way, that's coming, that hasn't happened yet... I'm tired of liars. I'm tired of how those liars have let this happen. I'm tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or on purpose. I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring.

   I hope, with little optimism I'm sad to say, for a better 2019.

_____________________________________________

Reference : Autumn; Ali Smith, published by Hamish Hamilton, London 2016.
See also : https://leavingdundee.blogspot.com/2017/12/and-i-would-walk-500-miles-and-i-would.html

Where's its mark? Clement Park

Blow me up in old Al Ghouta

In Parkland, Florida shoot me doon 

Or put me on the eternal roller coaster

So Eh'll dodge the mortar bomb 

And maybe the gunman winnae catch me 
As I stare straight intae his eyes 
And see a lad wha's completely lost here
Cursin' a'body other's road sign. 

Tie me tae a one way bungee 
Let me mak meh final plunge

Seat me on a rocket that can post me

Far awa’ fae Mr Trump.

Eh'll be taught by Dotty Chalmers

And Eh'll get fou wi' Muggie Sha'

Find me Barak and call for Bernie, 

Jeremy and Nelson an’ a’.

Tak me tae a place called kindness

Free me fae a cage in the rich fowk's zoo

Land me near tae where Eh come fae

Where the Law looks o'er Tay and toon

Though the jute mills are now apartments

And the Dens Road merkit's a' claised doon

Eh’ve tae get back some day some way

Eh've got tae get there very soon. 

Where’s its mark? Clement Park

Dear fellow members, re-Jeremy Corbyn and PLP Labour MPs who abuse power.

Here is the text of a letter I sent on July 1st, 2016, to the secretary of my local constituency Labour Party in Totnes, Devon, in response to the proposed agenda for our next meeting. It may be somewhat emotional in nature but I think the message within it is a reasonable one.

Dear fellow member,

I am rather saddened there is no agenda item to discuss firstly, the behaviour of those Labour MPs who are attempting to ride roughshod over the wishes of a substantial majority of the Labour Party’s members and secondly to consider what to do about their inhumane humiliation of a decent man. Like many people I did not rejoin the Labour Party last year to be under the screw of self-important Blairite media sycophants, who take the stance that they know much more about things than us ordinary folks and who feel it is their right to bounce us into doing what they decide must happen.

I also knew when I rejoined the Labour Party that a number of Labour MPs did not like the members’ decision to elect Jeremy Corbyn. You’ll remember for instance the nuances of Ben Bradshaw's* contribution at the meeting for new members that was held around Christmas at the Royal Seven Stars Hotel, in Totnes. Certainly at the time of that meeting it was clear there were people at Westminster who would work against Jeremy whatever he did.  In my view the attack against Jeremy Corbyn has been orchestrated by a number of Labour MPs for some time and the referendum result offered them an opportunity to do this when the entire community was in disarray. The funny thing is Jeremy Corbyn had a very good referendum campaign being perhaps the only leading political figure on either side who was honest and did not manipulate figures in order to generate fear. I can’t actually remember any great contributions made by other leading members of the parliamentary party, though no doubt there were.

 I write this all because these issues are not addressed in the agenda, in a very middle class English way it seems almost to have been denied, "Let’s ignore dirty things like an attack upon a properly elected leader of the Labour Party by those who seek influence in an  undemocratic way." Meaning: let's not pull out our Blairite roots, let's cultivate them."

As for the referendum, I believe there should never have been one. It came about as a consequence of the difficulties the Prime Minister was experiencing within the Tory Party and yet such is the power of the Westminster/ politico/media clique, and some elements of the Labour Party it ends up that the person who is targeted for  humiliation by this - is, an honest man, our elected leader.

I hope to be at the meeting on July 7th.** My temperature may have come down by then!

Best wishes,

Charles Sharpe


Notes and post script.

* Ben Bradshaw, Labour Party Member of Parliament for Exeter

**  September, 2019. Since I sent this letter a motion deploring the action of the MPs of those Parliamentary Labour Party MPs who openly oppose Jeremy Corbyn has been placed on the agenda for our next constituency meeting on July 7th.

*** September, 2019, David Cameron in his memoir For the Record claims he did not call a referendum to save the Conservative from breaking up. I don't believe him, any more than I would believe that other smootho Tory Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Sailing on the good boat JC

     In my work I meet up with lots of people. In these last weeks I have been surprised how many  tell me that at some time or another or in some place or another, they have met Jeremy Corbyn.  
      
     As the kind of politician who has always made certain he does get about meeting people, I am sure it is possible my acquaintances and friends have met him, but even if they have not, surely there is a new feeling abroad, invoked by JC, that people can be involved in politics rather than feeling that politics is something that is 'done' to them. He and those around him have also reminded us that politicians are to be found who are both ordinary and unique persons genuinely interested in working with, and for, those other ordinary and unique people who worry about paying their rent, feeding, clothing, sheltering and otherwise bringing up their children, or those who struggle to get through the day and who need practical and financial help.  Corbyn's approach suggests that a politician need not necessarily be, as many are, the type of person - invariably from the rich or not too badly off minority of our nation -   who tells us humble folk about the harsh austere life which they, however regrettably, must impose upon the rest of us.

On the matter of meeting up with people, no one has ever told me they have met David Cameron nor, indeed, that they have met Tony Blair, but that may say something about the quality of the company of friends and acquaintances and I keep. 

     I have encountered Gordon Brown on two occasions, once on the Lomonds in Fife when walking with my nephew, C, and on another occasion when rambling around  in Kirkcaldy town centre with my elder grandson on the day of his brother's, my younger grandson, birth, but that's a story for another time.

     I don't think Jeremy Corbyn and the crew of helpers who have so successfully achieved this overwhelming democratic Labour leadership victory are unsullied paragons but they are pioneers navigating the river of life who have caught us by surprise and sailed their small boat well past that little island stuffed full of a shipwrecked cacophonous crowd made up of the self-satisfied which includes among others : capitalists, the chatterers of the printed and broadcast mass media, members of the Conservative Party and, New Labour Blairites. For a moment one is almost tempted to pity them as they huff, puff and strain, stranded on their isle of patrician politics.

     Still those of us who want a fairer more altruistic way of dealing with the world must be on our guard because these "know alls" on the island are, as I write, fighting among themselves for any odd spars they can find that will float them to the river banks where they will desperately romp and stomp their way down the embankments in an attempt to gain back control by damming the river before the good boat JC is able to reach its next berth.

     We mustn't let them do this but we need not panic.  It is so easy to distract and stall them. Tell them that JC  will refuse to kneel down in front the Queen, or better still inform them that in a recent secret ritual he carried out with a coven of socialist witches, JC recited the words of the national anthem backwards. Providing them with these sorts of scenarios is guaranteed to arrest the attention of the smarty-pants and occupy them for days in mindless discussion and so allow people who lead real lives to get on with their daily struggles as well as giving them the time and space to make decisions for themselves free from the imperative filled babble of those who in their grandiosity really do believe they know what is best for us. It would be helpful if some of these 'unco guid' found a shady rill by the river and sat down for a while to reflect upon their pomposity. Some may already be doing this but I see no obvious signs of it yet.

The Tay Ferry

I am sorry to be paddling around in these political waters but right now it seems important for me to do so. I will try to forgive myself for all this counter-pomposity and I hope I will be back soon sailing on the Tay Ferry in 1950s Dundee.