Robert Burns :"Why has Man the will and power to make his fellow mourn?"

Robert Burns wrote  "Man Was Made To Mourn" in 1784. He tells of the lives of suffering, hopelessness, sadness, depression, toil and failure which so many impoverished children and their mothers and fathers faced in the 18th century. For Burns the tragic irony was that the misfortunes of the poor were caused not by any universal and incomprehensible cosmic fate but by their more affluent fellow human beings.  Here in 2012 we can see that in many ways little has changed since 1784. We are all born free to think but we are not all provided with the same freedom to act.
Certainly as a Scot born with an  "independent wish planted... in my mind" I find it difficult to forget  "such a parcel of rogues in a nation." These were the absent " lordlings" who assumed and still assume the right to act upon us and to sell us.

Man Was Made To Mourn : A dirge by Robert Burns When chill November's surly blast Made fields and forest bare, One ev'ning, as I wand'red forth Along the banks of Ayr, I spied a man, whose aged step Seem'd weary, worn with care, His face was furrow'd o'er with years, And hoary was his hair. 'Young stranger, whither wand'rest thou?' Began the rev'rend Sage, 'Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain, Or youthful pleasure's rage? Or haply, prest with cares and woes, Too soon thou hast began To wander forth, with me to mourn The miseries of Man. The sun that overhangs yon moors, Out-spreading far and wide, Where hundreds labour to support A haughty lordling's pride: I've seen yon weary winter-sun Twice forty times return; And ev'ry time has added proofs, That man was made to mourn. 'O Man! while in thy early years, How prodigal of time! Mis-spending all thy precious hours, Thy glorious, youthful prime! Alternate follies take the sway, Licentious passions burn: Which tenfold force gives Nature's law, That Man was made to mourn. Look not alone on youthful prime, Or manhood's active might; Man then is useful to his kind, Supported is his right: But see him on the edge of life, With cares and sorrows worn; Then Age and Want - O ill match'd pair! -- Shew Man was made to mourn. 'A few seem favourites of Fate, In Pleasure's lap carest; Yet think not all the rich and great Are likewise truly blest: But oh! what crowds in ev'ry land, All wretched and forlorn, Thro' weary life this lesson learn, That Man was made to mourn. 'Many and sharp the num'rous ills Inwoven with our frame! More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame! And Man, whose heav'n-erected face The smiles of love adorn,-- Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! 'See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight, So abject, mean, and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil; And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn, Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn. 'If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave-- By Nature's law design'd-- Why was an independent wish E'er planted in my mind? If not, why am I subject to His cruelty, or scorn? Or why has Man the will and pow'r To make his fellow mourn? 'Yet let not this too much, my son, Disturb thy youthful breast: This partial view of human-kind Is surely not the last! The poor, oppressed, honest man, Had never, sure, been born, Had there not been some recompense To comfort those that mourn! 'O Death! the poor man's dearest friend, The kindest and the best! Welcome the hour my aged limbs Are laid with thee at rest! The great, the wealthy fear thy blow, From pomp and pleasure torn, But, oh! a blest relief to those That weary-laden mourn!'

Where has the Labour Party gone ?

Yes, where did the Labour party go ?   What happened to it?

The anger and love of a father

I remember a day during the early 1950s when we lived in Clement Park. I was 8 or 9 years old at the time. My parents had bought me some rubber moulds with which I could make Plaster of Paris figurines. When the liquid plaster I poured into the moulds had solidified I could remove the moulds, paint the figurines with poster paints and when the paint was dry I would varnish over the paint to protect the figurines. My intention then was, as I recollect, to sell these rather tawdry ornaments to unsuspecting adult relatives for sixpence or a shilling.


After supper it was time for me to go to bed and I hugged my Mummy and said "Good night" to my Daddy, but so excited was I about my new money making project that instead of going up to my bedroom as I should have done, I went into the kitchen which had been my workshop earlier in the day and as quietly as I could I continued to manufacture figurines. Some time later my father decided he wanted a cup of Nescafe and he discovered me in the kitchen. As I remember it he became very angry and told me that I had been deceitful in not going to bed and that I had broken the trust he and my mother placed in me. I was in tears as he peremptorily sent me upstairs. I lay in bed crying. I had let down my Daddy. After about 10 minutes my Daddy  came into my bedroom. He didn’t put on the light but he sat on the bed beside his sobbing son and he said, ‘Charlie I’m really sorry I got angry with you. I was really proud of you making your ornaments today and I should have told you that. I’m sorry son.’ He left my bedroom.


My "Daddy", as I grew older he became my "Dad", justifiably got very angry with me on a number of occasions after that before the time came for me to leave home, but I have never forgotten that evening. 

"No blacks, no coloureds, no Asians, no Irish, no children." Three cheers for Diane Abbott

I don't like the idea that anybody should be "dressed down" by another person and so I was disappointed to learn that Ed Milliband has apparently administered such a thing to his colleague Diane Abbott for her remarks about us white folks. I was disappointed because I have up to now admired Ed Milliband for his  unfashionable take on politics that it is about intelligent discussion and not about the cheap, too often repeated cliched soundbites, and moral diktats that appeal so much to his immature opponents, the leaders of the Conservative government, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Yes, I did write Nick Clegg and to be sure, I did write  "Conservative government."

Back to Diane Abbott, who in my view has never done herself great favours by her often inconsistent views and actions, but on this occasion I think she got it right. We white people, including my wonderful self, who read The Guardian*  and who think of ourselves as nice non-racist centre lefties  are, it seems to me, just as racist as anyone, whether of white, yellow, black or whatever hue, religion, language or culture.  It mystifies me that those who tell me they know better about all things of import have got so worked up about Diane saying whites "divide and rule" on matters of race, when what she says  has manifested itself so immediately, dramatically and clearly in the responses to her remarks made by the media and its subservient operatives, meaning, well,  most politicians really. This has been a disproportionate reaction. 

I guess like most white British people I have never been the subject of a racist taunt.

To agitate against Diane Abbott's observation at a time when, we still have not resolved all the issues underlying what happened to Stephen Lawrence and what happened in the aftermath of his murder, when, an Indian visitor to our country is murdered because of what the colour of his skin may have represented to the impoverished and deprived personna of his assassin, and when, overwhelmingly  both the most subtle and overt expressions of racism are made against non-white ethnic minorities, the vehement condemnation of Diane Abbott's remarks represent, certainly for me,  a worrying exercise of denial.

When I was a student in the 1960s looking for accommodation in Muswell Hill*, London, I would often see notices posted on the door of potential lodgings which read, "No blacks, no coloureds,  no Asians, no Irish, no children." I sometimes think this notice is still pinned up there on many a door in our country even though it is clothed in a sophisticated disguise.

___________

* I am  dubious about my association with The Guardian which now appears to be the official apologist for the Conservative government.
* I am hopeful that Muswell Hill is now a more accommodating neighbourhood than it was then. 
   

Almost an encounter with a fine man : on being near Vaclav Havel

Early in 1990 my wife and I were in New York. We were staying at the Chelsea and one evening returning from a show on Broadway we decided we would go for a drink at the bar of El Quijote, the Spanish restaurant adjacent to the hotel which acts as the Chelsea's unofficial watering hole. As we approached the hotel we noticed  there were many police cars parked outside. My wife counted 22 of them. As we walked  to the entrance of  El Quijote our way was  blocked by policemen. They told us we couldn't go in. We said that we were guests at the hotel. Fortunately the head waiter, who was standing at the doorway,  recognised us and he confirmed to the policemen - I am tempted to write "he told the cops" - that we were guests at the hotel. We made a little more progress towards the bar when a number of  tall and bulky men who were not in uniform blocked our way. Fortunately they looked at the head waiter and he nodded, and they let us by. El Quijote was usually busy at this time but on this evening it was jam packed and buzzing. We asked a man by the bar why it was so busy. "There's some guy called Vaslav or something in." He looked at the woman standing next to him silently questioning her. "It's Vaclav Havel," she said. She nodded toward a table about 10 yards away and there he was sitting smoking a cigarette  with a group of  7 or 8 others.

I learned later that this was not  an official head of state visit to the USA but a private visit which Vaclav Havel had arranged in order to meet his friend Milos Forman and other artists, musicians and playwrights living in New York City who were friends or whom  he admired. This absence of grandiosity confirmed Vaclav Havel's place - he was already someone I admired -  in my pantheon of heroes.  Here was the president of a state - one which was  a symbol  for democracy gained by peaceful means  -  on a private visit not seeking to promote or glorify himself but simply to meet friends and fellow artists. We were told later by Richard, a friend of Stanley the hotel proprietor,  that Vaclav Havel had not asked for the level of security which surrounded his private visit. The New York City and USA authorities had demanded it.

Vaclav Havel, as well as taking a major role in leading the 'velvet revolution' against the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia,  showed humility, dignity, insight and more than anything respect for the democratic wishes of the people  when the Slovaks and the Czechs decided to take their own avenues  and form separate states.  This is what my late father in law would call "statesmanship."

How different this is from the tawdry, pompous two dimensional front bench prigs in the House of Commons who consider themselves our political leaders and who seek to score cheap  points at "PMQ" - as the prime minister David Cameron now calls it  -  in an attempt to get  their show higher  ratings than the X Factor.

Well, Vaclav Havel, the politician,  you were a dramatist too, but you were sincere, humble and one of us.  You died today, and I didn't quite meet you, or did I ?


Comments
Jeremy Millar writes, "a lovely story Charles, not sure if I'm more impressed by the proximity of Havel or how you dropped in 'we stayed at the Chelsea.' I guess you were aware of his love of the Velvet Underground and that is probably why he was at the Chelsea too."


Charles Sharpe responds " I can see what you mean Jeremy but be assured what I've written is utterly about a man, Vaclav Havel.

A few words from young grandsons

Grandad, I love Bambi.

Dog got wet.

Many years later Mango gets wet

Are you stupid Grandad ?

What are we going to do about this Nana ?

Voices from the back seat of the car.
S to J : J can I have a wee shot of your tractor ?
J to S : No
S : to everyone in general : I think he said "Yes"
Nana, in the front seat of the car : I think he said "No"
S (sotto voce) : I think he said "Yes."

Clegg, coward or ditherer ? : the questions

Why was Nick Clegg initially deafeningly acquiescent about  David Cameron's and  William Hague's failure to negotiate in Brussels ? Why didn't he insist he should be there in Brussels to be at the negotiating table?
Why did it take persuasion from the few remaining sincere Liberal Democrat parliamentarians before he could, over a day later, admit that he was not pleased with Cameron's and henchman Hague's non-negotiating approach ? Why didn't he voice his disagreement at five o'clock in the morning immediately after the Brussels debacle.
If he is genuine in his opposition to the Conservative government's (that's what it is folks) position on the Euro crisis why did he use the excuse that he "would have been a distraction" for his failure to be in the House of Commons today when David Cameron tried to explain away his negligence in Brussels? Why couldn't Mr Clegg be there to face Cameron up front ?

Well maybe because he and his shameful lieutenants are hoping that if they can stay in power for the full term, we  -   the poor suckers who voted for them because they persuaded us they were utterly opposed to the greed mongering City of London worshipping Conservatives  -  will have forgotten about how they deserted us just for the sake of hanging on to the coat tails of power. Have no illusions however, we'll remember.  When the Liberal Democrat party decided to join in this coalition - sorry -  Conservative  government, the notion of conviction politics was dealt a mighty blow.  We may not know hypocrites when we see them but we certainly do recognise them when we see their self-serving action.
Love him as I do all of suffering humanity, in my view Clegg is not now a distraction, he is, in  political terms, a nonentity. 

Dundee Courier and Advertiser Shakespeare Scoop

This is a photie taken by the Courier man when Oor Wullie visited Dundee in 1602 to see one of his plays at the Rep. After the performance he said it would not be a good idea for James to go down to England and be the king as it would cause a lot of shennaniggins in the 20th and 21st centuries. He also predicted that Dundee Football Club would win the Scottish League in 1962 and that just shows that even though he was English he must have been a genius because when he said it Dundee Football Club had not even been invented. He did not however predict that Claudio Caniggia would play for us, so he couldn't have been as great a genius as our own bardie Rabbie who predicted that pandas would spend a while in the zoo in Edinburgh 252 years after he was born. Now that's what I call genius.

Is oor Wullie posin' doon here withoot his pail and dungarees ?
Ye cannae' really tell, cos the photie's cut aff well abin his knees.

Oor Wullie's lookin sae affie auld
Maybe that's because his pow's gone bald.

Love and achievement in foster care : a story from the 1930s

       Recently on a professional network to which I belong a question was raised about how well foster carers help the children they look after to be successful at school. The underlying implication which had initiated the discussion  was that for less well educated foster parents the educational achievement of the children they foster was not a principal priority. This being so, it could be concluded, many children in foster care were being disadvantaged. Discussions like these have a high profile these days because of the shift in emphasis in government policy about children since the coalition government came to power in the United Kingdom. There is much more emphasis on children achieving and less on thinking about what children need. This may be a valid stance. I am sure no one - consciously at least -  wishes any child to be disadvantaged or to be left trailing behind life's peleton. I am sure we all desire that all children get all the learning they need to ensure  they develop the capacity to cope well enough with life's vicissitudes.

     I tend to go along with AS Neill's view that if parenting adults get the emotional support for a child right then the child's full potential will be freed and educational achievement will naturally follow. This is even more the case for children who are fostered ; children who first and foremost require emotional compensation. The current stress on a child "achieving" may lead to us losing sight of what all children really need and that is a consistent, nurturing and loving relationship with an adult. The latter is in my view overwhelmingly the primary function of foster parents.
Learning from a very wide natural curriculum is clearly necessary for the healthy development of a child but this current emphasis on "achievement" tends to insist that children must achieve in education in those areas which are defined by, and meet the needs of, a minority of powerful adults whose principal intention is that their political and economic interests are served. It may or may not be right that these interests should be served but in the first instance we should insist on aiming to provide all children with a caring, loving environment which allows them to be children, where they are given permission to learn and develop through their own discoveries rather than being enslaved by a curriculum prescribed by a particular political culture. I think foster parents should be freed and supported to provide this environment. I guess I am saying that foster parents should primarily be assessed on their capacity to be consistent, tenacious, tolerant, flexible, sincere, concerned and loving.

     Just before the beginning of the second world war the father of a friend of mine saw his father killed by the Gestapo. His mother was taken away from the family home and he and his elder sister never saw her again. The tragedy took place in a central European city and the two siblings were helped to escape from where they lived and were brought to the United Kingdom. At the age of 6, he, and his sister (who was 2 years older than him) were fostered by a family who lived in a city situated in the midlands of England. The foster parents were almost illiterate. There was no history of educational achievement in the foster home and as far as my friend's father could recollect there were no books to be found in the home. The children were sent to a local school and  were soon speaking English. They flourished at this school, as they also did in the secondary school they later attended. The boy  became a distinguished member of the medical profession, and his sister grew up to be an accomplished musician who performed in many of the great concert halls of the world. My friend's father told me that he and his sister were shocked by the material impoverishment of their foster home.  It was barren of things which would provide intellectual stimulus for the young siblings. He often wonders why he and his sister flourished from this unpromising home base and when he does so he comes to the conclusion that it was because of the emotional warmth and the love that their foster parents gave his sister and him.

     For the sake of maintaining privacy I have altered details of this story but it remains in essence true. Of course an anecdote does not prove a theory but I think the story demonstrates that together with the children's inherent ability, in this instance, the foster parents' love was enough.

Totnes, 2011

St.Vincent of the Emasculate Conception : government plans to chop workers' rights

The saint formerly known as St Vincent of Our Two Ladies now claims the title St.Vincent of the "Emasculate" Conception. You'll remember him. He's the Adonis who boasted of his prowess to two attractive incognito newspaper reporters. He's the prophet who two years ago told the then New Labour government (oh! Fates! can you ever explain these latter day sinners because its difficult for us to forgive them?) that it could "cut" bankers' bonuses at a stroke. Now that St Vincent has governmental responsibility for this particular kind of snipping we still await its enactment with bated breath. To be sure, given the determination of our coalition government to make certain the wealthy as well as the reasonably well off are looked after,  there will be no such hesitation over St. Vincent's plans to chop the rights of less well paid workers. Yesterday, November 23rd, 2011, St. Vincent announced his intention to increase employers' powers by making the process for getting rid of staff "simpler and quicker " and without risk of the employer being taken to a tribunal.

No doubt supporters of his own party are impressed by the way St.Vincent has emasculated the concept of what it means to be "liberal" and democratic.


Reference :  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15844614

Keep on warring for the free world : the fate of Libya and Gaddafi

Anyone seeking the truth about what exactly happened in Libya this year may well wish to read Hugh Roberts' essay "Who said Gaddafi had to go? " published in a recent issue of The London Review of Books.
It's a long read but it offers an opportunity to reflect on the history that lay behind the soundbites emanating from the  mouths of the democratically elected leaders of the free world about the events leading to the regime change in Libya during 2011.

In the following brief excerpt Roberts considers the UK'S, the USA's and France's statements in February 2011  about Gaddafi's acts of "genocide". Some may find it uncomfortable, as I do,  since I can't accept  the concept of any state being  able to "legitimately" kill its own people but there is another point here and it is that powerful states arrogate the power to decide arbitrarily that the people of other states  are expendable and may be slaughtered. 
(The full text of the essay can be found here : Hugh Roberts: Who said Gaddafi had to go? ).


‘Killing his own people’ is a hand-me-down line from the previous regime change war against Saddam Hussein. In both cases it suggested two things: that the despot was a monster and that he represented nothing in the society he ruled. It is tendentious and dishonest to say simply that Gaddafi was ‘killing his own people’; he was killing those of his people who were rebelling. He was doing in this respect what every government in history has done when faced with a rebellion. We are all free to prefer the rebels to the government in any given case. But the relative merits of the two sides aren’t the issue in such situations: the issue is the right of a state to defend itself against violent subversion. That right, once taken for granted as the corollary of sovereignty, is now compromised. Theoretically, it is qualified by certain rules. But, as we have seen, the invocation of rules (e.g. no genocide) can go together with a cynical exaggeration and distortion of the facts by other states. There are in fact no reliable rules. A state may repress a revolt if the permanent veto-holding powers on the Security Council allow it to (e.g. Bahrain, but also Sri Lanka) and not otherwise. And if a state thinks it can take this informal authorisation to defend itself as read because it is on good terms with London, Paris and Washington and is honouring all its agreements with them, as Libya was, it had better beware. Terms can change without warning from one day to the next. The matter is now arbitrary, and arbitrariness is the opposite of law.'


Hugh Roberts, London Review of Books, November 17, 2011

Freedom's dead on Ludgate Hill

Riot cops and the Lord Mayor's calling

for a show where Boris'll get his fill

of folks jailed as tents are falling,

freedom's dead on Ludgate Hill.

We didn't die for it
we were dragged from the ground,
they tried to occupy our soul.
We're still alive to it, Johnson won't change our goal  .

Acknowledgement to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  "Four Dead in Ohio"
Lyrics and melody by Neil Young, 1970

Democracy and Marketocracy

When we see two western democracies like Greece and Italy forced to appoint unelected national leaders because the international trading markets have demanded it we may begin to be anxious for democracy. When we see our elected leaders running up and down ever faster while shouting ever louder at financial problems they are powerless to influence, our fears for democracy are further confirmed. Yet the kind of democracy which we have seen develop in Europe and North America over the few centuries when capitalism has grown to predominance has never been an idealistic journey towards the freedom and enfranchisement of humankind. The wealthy and powerful have tried to persuade us that it has, and, by manipulating the media, they have largely succeeded. No, the democracy we have now is a servant of capitalism. This democracy, we are persuaded, is underscored by the 'principle',  "that whatever befalls, it is the market that rules." Democracy of this kind, that is, marketocracy, is intended to achieve the acquiescence of the poor and not quite so poor by keeping them in the thrall of an illusion, or more accurately a delusion, that the vote and its concomitant  'freedom of speech'  has somehow empowered them.  What this does is leave a space for those with power and wealth to continue to become more powerful and more wealthy. 

Received wisdom advises that though there is indeed an unfair distribution of the earth's gifts, we just have to accept it. This argument goes on to say that we are too enmeshed in capitalism to unravel it.  At the same time it is noted that socialism was tried and it failed. It is puzzling for those who have the temerity to suggest that capitalism  has also failed the vast majority of people on our planet to find that their view is considered naive. 

Finding other fairer ways for humankind to live will not be easy but it is not naive to suggest there may be an alternative and surely the gap in the life experiences between rich and poor has become too much for any pure democrat to bear. There is a need to return to purchasing only those things which our labour has earned for us.


So three cheers for those Greek protesters who continue to eschew marketocracy and who would wish to unpick the damage that it has done. These Greeks are bearing gifts which we should on this occasion trust and accept.

© 2011 Charles Sharpe

What my Mummy said about the nature of my goodness

During the 1950s when we lived in Clement Park,  my Mummy would often ask me to go for a message down to Tom's, a wee corner shop just by Liff Road School. She'd be wanting a quarter of a pound of tea, or three and half pounds of tatties, or a plain half loaf. Sometimes she'd run out of fags and send me for 10 Woodbines. In those days it was common for young kids to be sent out to get their parents' cigarettes. If all my weekly pocket money was spent,  I'd ask her if she would pay me a penny for doing her messages. A penny could buy me a big gobstopper or four sticks of hard liquorice. Most times she would give me a penny but when she was hard up and didn't agree to paying me, she would win me round with a little aphorism in praise of the nature of my goodness. In loving tones she'd say, "Charlie, some boys will only be good if you give them sixpence, some will be good for a penny, but you, son, are good for nothing."


I puffed out my chest, took the money for the fags and marched proudly down to Tom's.

St Vincent of our two ladies speaks to us again.

Yesterday, September 19th, 2011, at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Birmingham, St Vincent of our two ladies told us we were at war with money or the lack of it. Perhaps a colleague in his party who still holds sincerely to liberal values will tell him that many of  our community have been waging this battle for much much longer than the time it takes to boast to two pretty girls about a man's power and prowess. The financial crisis, which for as long as he could hold out, St Vincent has blamed entirely on the previous government, has now, according to "his sanctity, the Vincent" segued to one which lots of foreign people have caused. Not to worry though, St. Vincent is going to sort it all out by making sure that the Chief Executive Officers of big private companies will in the future spit out more in taxes than us poor to middling people have already been coughing up for some time. Yes we can really feel assured. This is the same St Vincent (though he was not at the time suffixed by the epithet "of our two ladies") who said before the last general election that the New Labour government could if it wished to do so, "immediately" cut the undue amount of bonuses those pirhana-like money grabbers at the banks were paying themselves. He said that's what he would do if he were in power.  Well folks, it turns out what Vincent, the Sanctified  meant by "immediately" was that he was gambling on the hope that in seven years we will have forgotten about asking the unduly rich to stop awarding themselves untold sums of spondulak  made upon the backs of the labour, as well as the tolerance and patience, of us poor folks. Let's not even mention the rather awkward embarrassment of those who are not just poor but who have nothing at all and who feel they have nothing to lose.

Except, that in all this I forgot about Mr Clarke's feral underclass which riots and steals and burns down big shops. Well, I declare, that's just unforgivable and very hurtful to those who fleece  us, in supposedly legitimate ways, of the rewards of our efforts.

So we pray to you St.Vincent of our two ladies, please don't tax those who own big houses too much, just make sure that they allow the homeless to live with them in their houses and that they share with them, their food, and the money to buy it. 

Dylan's den

Dylan left this shed twixt lunch and eve
and trudged towards Brown's Hotel
to scrounge some money for a drink,
then sup,and give poor Caitlin hell.

She liked the juice with near equal thirst ;
it energised her for other fellas,
while he sank deeper in the jar
for fear of appearing jealous.

An undoubted begging  flirt himself,
life's voyage tossed him fore, then aft,
and he drifted from Caitlin's harbouring arms
to dock beside an historian's better half.

Power tae the lassies : a moment at Waverley Station

     This August just passed while I was waiting in the queue at the taxi stance in Waverley Station, Edinburgh,  I overheard a conversation between two women who were, I suppose, both of an approximate vintage of 25 years. They talked of their respective partners. As they were about to get into their cab one remarked to the other, "What he's strugglin' tae understand is that I'm no askin' him, I'm tellin' him."

Dundee's, Scotland's and the world's scariest ever gang

    The Lochee Fleet is the stuff of legend.  The memory of the Hulltoon Huns still raises the hairs on the back of the collective neck. Cosmo and the Shimmy even now are thought of in Herculean dimensions but for me there can surely be no doubt which was the most awesome of the gangs around Dundee through the 1960s,70s and 80s.

     If from about 1980 to 1990 you drove out of Dundee along the Perth Road and you reached the roundabout where, if you turned right, you headed up the Kingsway,or, if you went straight ahead you were on the dual carriageway towards Perth, well, there, if you were to bear left and head towards Invergowrie, you would see daubed in black paint on the back of a big road sign, the truism, "Even Hitler was scared of the Gowrie Boot Boys".

"A short back and sides ?" "No, just give him a trim."

     It can surprise you how sometimes things don't change that much. In late May of this year, 2011, I retraced my steps and found J.W. Peters, which is a gentleman's hairdresser's shop at the junction of Lochee High Street and Bright Street. The way most places change so quickly these days I was astonished that there was a barber's shop there, and that it also still bore the name,  J.W.Peters. As I peered into the shop window even the interior looked as it had  over 60 years ago with its wooden screen about five foot high which guarded the privacy of the customer having his hair snipped by the barber's long thin steel scissors and that of the other customers who no doubt were sitting waiting for their turn. 
   Although so much had remained the same, the barber was different.  I could just catch a glimpse of the top of  his head above the screen as he manoeuvred around a customer. It was the top of the head of a young man with short black hair,and not at all like the head of the man I have always considered the original J.W.Peters who, when I first encountered him in the August 1950, was a tall young man of about 30 years of age with a full head of blonde hair which had a series of natural parallel waves running across his head from one side to the other. This might sound quite exotic but I remember it as a style a number of men favoured in those times.
     On a sepia day, so long ago, but still so present in my mind, my Daddy took me into this very barber's shop and we sat together on a long bench to wait while the people who had arrived before us took their turn to have a haircut. Nobody sat in any particular order and so it was a puzzle to me then and remained so for a number of years on subsequent visits how people calculated whose turn it was to be seated at the barber's chair. It seemed to me that an amazing feat of memory was being performed. When it came to my turn to be presented to J.W.Peters, the latter rested a short wooden plank on the arms of his barber's chair in order for me, a very wee boy at the time, to have a platform to sit on which would raise me to an elevation sufficient for J.W.Peters to set about his work. Daddy sat me on the plank and returned to the bench.  J.W. Peters wrapped around me something that appeared to be a white cotton bed sheet and tucked it into my collar. He turned to Daddy and asked, "Short,back and sides?"
     " No," Daddy replied, "just give him a trim." I don't recollect much about actually having my haircut but I remember the distinctly sweet, slightly medicinal smelling hair cream which J.W.Peters rubbed into my hair before combing it. I survived all this without undue anxiety. When the ritual was complete,  J.W.Peters turned to Daddy and ascertained whether what he had done to my hair was satisfactory or not. Daddy nodded and I was lifted from the wooden plank and stood on the brown linoleum covered floor. Daddy paid him sixpence.
     That was the first haircut I ever had in a barber's shop and though I didn't really know then or indeed don't today with any certainty just what "a trim" was or is, it is what, since then, I have always asked for when I have gone for a haircut. I am sure it is a sanctified phrase in the lingua franca that barbers have spoken over the centuries. Every time I sit in the barber's chair and the sheet has been wrapped around me, I say, "I'll have a trim, please," and without a question asked, the barber proceeds.

More unsent letters to editors (no.1946) : The Guardian gets it wrong again....

Dear Editor,
The Guardian got it wrong when you advised us to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the last general election - and your continued desperate and failing attempts to rationalise this blunder fools no one. We now have a Conservative government which is propped up by limp and I hope embarrassed Liberal Democrats and which is intent on wiping out any hope those who live in poverty  have of gaining access to opportunities which will improve their situation.

You got it wrong in your cowardly promotion of the bombing of Libya. Certainly by choosing the easiest target you took an expedient rather than a principled course. Otherwise you would have insisted that we in the United Kingdom from our unquestionable democratic moral high ground should not only  assault Libya but also that we should batter to smithereens the leaders of Saudi Arabia,Bahrain, Syria, and China to name but a few. Sadly it is nearer the truth to view the United Kingdom government as a school playground bully who picks on those he knows don't have the power to retaliate.  Yet you at The Guardian have on many previous occasions reminded us that military intervention seldom works and always causes human suffering. So, shame on you now. We all know that what follows from our exercise of force upon Libya will not bring peace or uncorrupted democracy. Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan.

And now for your final error : you are in no position to advise the Scots as to whether they should participate in a UK Olympic football team. Given your pitiful advice on the other two much more fearful issues considered in this letter, I respectfully advise that you retreat to your editorial home "tae think again."
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sharpe

Coronation Day, Dundee, June 2nd, 1953

On Coronation day in 1953 we lived on the Clement Park housing scheme in Lochee and our family were the first and only people in the street who had a television. My Dad (I called him Daddy then) was like that. We also had the first telephone, the first car and the first washing machine. The day dawned cold and grey and it was still like that at about half past ten when it seemed like everyone in our road as well as all our relations poured into our living room to watch the coronation on our brown bakelite nine inch screen Bush television.  Mum (I called her Mummy then) put out cakes and scones. My pal Gerry Laing and I watched the royal carriages rolling down the London streets for about 15 minutes until it got boring. The television screen was tiny and in black and white and the picture was spotty. It wasn't as good as seeing a technicolor picture down at the Rialto. Gerry and I sneaked out of the house and sat on the back steps. The coronation wasn't all that bad. At school we had been given a free mug with a picture of the queen on it but better than that we'd been given a bar of Cadbury's chocolate in a tin box. We'd also got a day off school.
Gerry went around to his house and got an old tennis ball and we decided to play football on the back green. It wasn't great playing football with a tennis ball but it was better than nothing. He was Charlie Tully. I was Billy Steel. It stayed cold and grey for the rest of the day.  

Is wisdom gobbledygook or gobbledygook wisdom ?

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Laurens Van der Post, The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958)



What about you Laurens, did you think you were right ? Personally, I like to think I'm right because I know I am often wrong.

"I'm not fooled by that," you reply. "It's easy to see through the poor smokescreen of your false modesty."

All right I am hiding my real intention which is to gain world dominance and I can only achieve this by admitting I'm wrong ; after all who would  believe, never mind follow, someone who always thinks and says  - it is, though I may err, usually a man - "I am always right."

By accepting that I am wrong I am therefore right which makes me quite frightening whether I'm right or wrong.

The brothers' song

Where sandstorm blasts to a leaden sky
Where sunlit days let the dhows sail by
Where voluptuous dates fruit the tree
That's the place for Spike and me !

Where rocky mountains hold scudding cloud
Where rushing rivers sing out loud
Where eagle soars by rocky scree
That's the place for Jed and me.

The Lochee Gangster

     Throughout the early 1950s a thick set bespectacled man with wavy dark reddish hair wearing an olive green suit and a white open necked shirt would stand just by the Dundee Pasteurised Milk shop at the junction of Bank Street and Lochee High Street. His trousers were kept up around his substantial girth by a wide brown leather belt. As I remember he was a man in his late 20s or early 30s. He always seemed to be there whenever my friends and I went down from Clement Park to the shops to do some messages for our mothers. He never spoke to anyone and he always carried a lit cigarette in his left hand which he would occasionally puff. We always gave him a wide berth. We knew he had a gun hidden under his suit jacket, tucked into his belt. He was the Lochee gangster. How we came to know that is lost in the mists of time. Maybe it was one of those bits of information that 8 or 9 years old boys pass on to the next set of 8 or 9 years old boys.

     Anyway he must have been a pretty smart gangster because I know for a fact that between the years of 1950 to 1957, when I lived in Lochee, the police did not catch him for he stood outside the DPM shop day in and day out and was never apprehended.

     It seems amazing to me now that we never heard of any bank robberies taking place in Lochee at that time.

The death of Osama bin Laden, part 2 : Nicky Campbell makes a naive observation.

     Well, it turns out that Osama bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed. It ends up that he did not cower behind his wife when his assassins approached. It comes about that he was shot and not brought to face justice. Experts tell me how naive I am and that I should understand that these incidents can be messily violent and sometimes I just have to accept that's the way it is. I think they tell me this because I don't really know as much as I should about being a member of the human race, but I am learning. I may become wise. I may come to understand that two wrongs make a right. In the meantime the experts have their cynicism and I am left with my weak sarcasm.
     On UK BBC Radio 5 yesterday morning (4th May, 2011) a former commander of the USA special services section, the SEALS, I believe they are called, said, while being interviewed by the radio presenter Nicky Campbell, that he did not think it was a good idea that photographs of bin Laden's death should be broadcast since they would be fairly gruesome and he wouldn't want any children of his exposed to these kinds of images. This seems a reasonable argument and in a cheap below the belt response to the former SEAL commander Nicky Campbell observed that bin Laden's 12 years old daughter had witnessed her father being assassinated. In a world filled with this kind of hatred that was a naive thing to say Nicky.

The unlinked deaths of Osama bin Laden and Jean Charles de Menezes : acts of democratic justice ?

If Osama bin Laden actually carried out the heinous terrorist acts of which he was generally accused, or if he actively promoted and supported their carrying out, then he should have been brought to justice. He should have gone on trial to answer the charges. I have always been told this is the democratic way.
However if he died as a consequence of violently resisting his arrest then those servicemen involved in his "capture" - surely it was not his "assassination", that's not the democratic way - may have had no alternative but to defend their own lives by firing back at their armed assailants but it there is evidence to suggest that was not the way things happened.
I suppose this is why in 2005 the entirely innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes had to be killed by police on a Saturday morning in the carriage of an underground train following the horrendous 7th July terrorist attacks in London. The difference between the two killings was that de Menezes hadn't ever been accused of being a terrorist, had never supported or committed an act of terrorism, hadn't got a weapon and didn't violently resist arrest.
So should that be the price unfortunate individuals have to pay for the honour of living the democratic way ?

The Breaking of the Clock

Yes, I did paint grannie’s washing a nasty glossy green,
I did tear off the loose wallpaper where I thought it unseen
I stole the biscuits from the barrel in the press
And I sold the ragman Dad’s best suit as well as your pink dress,
But I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t break the clock.
No, I had nothing, NOTHING to do with the clock.

Yes, I was in Dad’s study from ten til quarter to,
And I do prance around a lot like a monkey caged in a zoo,
And I haven’t always owned up when you’ve thought it really mattered,
But I didn’t break the clock.
Even if you say I did, I didn’t break the clock.

You’re right, it’d be so ridiculous to blame it on Dad,
He never, ever breaks things, what would we think if he had ?
And Mum didn’t do it and she’d never lie.
She insists she tells the truth so much and I don’t ask why.
But I didn’t break the clock.
Reason, bludgeon, torment, sneer – I didn’t break the clock.

Look, if it makes you happy, I’ll say I threw it down.
May I go to bed now or do I still have to sit around
Until you wring it out of me, just what took me so long
To say that I did it and that you couldn’t possibly be wrong ?
Well, does it really matter ? I’ve said I smashed, bashed, thrashed your stupid clock.
Someone must be happy that I’ve said I broke the clock.

Unsent letters to editors (no.1945) : The Guardian doesn't get it

Dear Editor,
your luke warm, "two cheers" response to the TUC protest which is so evident in today's (28.3.11)Guardian editorial "After the March" as well as in the copy of your reporters and commentators, demonstrates that like the rest of the relatively wealthy, chattering classes, which you now seem to represent, the Guardian newspaper just does not get what is happening to people in the UK. The not so wealthy, the getting poorer, the poor, the soon to be unemployed, the unemployed, children, young people, disabled people, ill people and retired people are genuinely and justifiably fearful about their future,
At the same time your newspaper in its superficially balanced editorials tries to rationalise its decision to advise it readers to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the last general election. I am sad to say I was persuaded by your advice. Like the majority of people in this country I did not vote for a coalition government to carry out a vicious and vindictive assault on the services to fellow citizens in this country - real palpable suffering individuals - who do not have very much. If what has happened since last May is democracy, then democracy stinks.
I am not a member of a trade union but I would like to thank the TUC for organising Saturday's impressive and moving event and I still hope that the Guardian as well as the rest of the media will respond to Saturday's protest as sympathetically and as doggedly as it has done recently for protests in other countries.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sharpe

Anarchy is OK

Our media seems to think that an anarchist is anyone who, when in attendance at an event which has previously been announced as a peaceful protest march or rally, is : throwing stones or cans of paint,setting off flares, wielding sticks, wearing masks and damaging property.
Let's put the record straight. A true anarchist is far more likely to be a pacifist than a terrorist. Anarchists might not even care to join a protest event but if they did they would almost certainly be peaceful and quiet. An anarchist believes that we can all get along quite peacefully as a community without the undue influence of political figures who gain power through ownership of property. Now some might think that this is an unrealistic ideal and against human nature as they understand it but creating an anarchic community is intended to be a morally good aspiration.

Born in the DRI

Born in the DRI, Eh wus born in the DRI

On October 1st back in forty fev
Eh fell fae Ma-ie's womb n' cam oot alev

Eh wus born in the DRI, born in the DRI

Eh lived in Lochee, went tae Liff Road Schale
got the dux medal but Eh wus gonnae fail

Cos eh wus born in the DRI, a red hot baby fae the DRI

In '57 Pa took us tae Coventry
naebody unnerstood me n' Eh lost meh way

Cos Eh was born in the DRI
Eh wus a red hot baby fae the DRI

Eh, born in the DRI, born in the DRI

Dundee Royal Infirmary 1798 to 1998

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