The List

Oh dear.  It has been months again since posting.  Almost every day I think of topics but I just haven't been able to bring myself to write.  So I have been thinking about why this is.  I love writing this blog once I get going on a post.  And I have come to the conclusion that there is just too much that bothers me in the world at the moment:  

My fears about Trump are playing out - and then some.  Immigration, environment idiocy, war mongering, his general stupidity, his tweets, his attitude towards the rest of the world in general, the frankly endless list is horrific.

There is no sign that Brexit will be stopped.  Even in the current uncertainty about 'the deal' I have no real hope that the madness will be ended by us Remaining.  I actually feel sorry for Theresa May.  A new emotion to feel sorry for a Tory. 

The environment.  I have tried really hard at  home this year to do more recycling and buy less stuff and all of that.  But then you read articles and watch programmes which tell you that no progress is being made at all.  That most of what you think you are recycling is not being properly recycled.  That the Indian Ocean is flooded with plastic.  That we are losing species/forests/water ever day. 

Universal credit in the UK.  What a joke.  More people than ever are below the poverty line.  More people are homeless.  The NHS is collapsing.  Education is chronically underfunded.  But our government is spending billions on Brexit.  £4.5 million of taxpayers' money was apparently spent to renovate an apartment for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  Imagine what £4.5 million extra could do for one Local Education Authority?  One tiny example amongst thousands...

I could keep going ad infinitum.  Do you see what I mean?  Depressing.

So I have been focussing a bit more on things closer to home.  On being grateful for what I already have.  On thinking about what small things I can continue to do to help, so that at least I can look my kids in the eye and say 'we tried to fix this'.

With that in mind, could I ask you to make a donation this Christmas to a cause which means something to you?  (Not your beer fund or your ASOS account (!) either.)  A food bank, a shelter, a wildlife charity, an age concern group.  Even a local church or school.  Or to the Remain campaign.  Or subscribe to a fact checking site online and help to keep fake news at bay.  Then send a card or email in support of that cause to your MP or council.

We can't change the world right now, immediately.  It's going to take time and planning for the big problems but I am determined not to be overwhelmed.  I hope you are too.

Two Decades of Change?

It is nearly two decades since I got married.  How is that possible, I ask myself?  I mean, I got married last century for goodness sake! 1998.

So much has changed.  From where I live and how I work to having children and a dog.  We have sadly lost many people of course.  But we have also gained them - a wonderful sister-in-law and nephew for starters.  I think I lost myself for a while in the middle of it all.  I didn't mentally take well to babies and small children.  But essentially, I think I am now in a happy place.  I think I am carrying the twenty years okay.

Looking back, organising a wedding in 1998 was a very different experience.  No hotel websites, no travel planning, no Pinterest to plan complicated table decor or find the perfect dress.  Gift lists were done in person at shops.  Disposable cameras on the tables - no phone cameras or social media.  I have books and books of photos but nothing online to take reprints from!

But what about the state of the world in the last two decades?  Clinton was US president, Blair was UK Prime Minister.  Princess Diana had only been dead for a year.  Saddam Hussein was still alive.  The Twin Towers were still standing.  No such thing as smart phones and the internet was something you mainly used at work because the connections were so slow on home computers.  

And yet, when you Google '1998', the Wikipedia page is sadly familiar.  The details are different but the larger events are the same.  Massacres, plane crashes, 'authorised air raids', earthquakes, nuclear testing, North Korea, train disasters and tentative space exploration, to name but a few.  Even the 1998 World Cup final shows depressingly little difference.  France beat Brazil 3-0.  Same teams on the same merry-go-round.  And apparently fashion is currently having a '1990s moment'.  As if one go round at platform trainers, cargo pants and crop tops was not enough.

With twenty more years experience and twenty years of technological change, you would have thought there would have been more progress on the big questions like 'is there life in outer space?' or 'how do we deal better with earthquakes/floods/droughts?'  But no.  Humans seem to put more effort into arguing amongst themselves - often via violence - than working together to solve the problems facing our planet as a whole.  We still haven't even managed to feed everyone.  In fact the rich/poor divides are much worse in many places.

I'll be pushing seventy if I see our ruby wedding anniversary in twenty years time.  I may well be a grandparent by then.  I do hope we as a race have made more progress by then.  It's about time.

By the way, Friends was already on our television screens.  Do you like my 1990s 'Rachel' wedding hair...

The Influencers

And hopefully I'm back in the blogging game. It's not that I haven't been thinking.  I have all sorts of post ideas buzzing around.  It's just the habit/confidence to get them down.

Anyhow.  One thing I have been considering a lot is the concept of influence.  I have still been posting regularly on Instagram and on that, to be an 'influencer' is this whole career idea.  There are many people paid (or wanting to be paid) for posting pictures of clothes, travel, beauty and homewares on their social media and blogs.  They want the #freeshit (as one particularly grasping Instagrammer puts it).  They say they're 'real'.  And of course they all start 'real' because they start small.  But as they get more followers (influence), more opportunities present themselves.  So it all becomes less and less real.  Their chats about family, work and life in general are in themselves influenced by their new positions.  They are regularly photographed in cheaper brands they would now never wear in their own time or they post 'paid for' (not #freeshit) outfits which are way beyond the budget of most.  (£1500 Loewe handbag, anyone?) They moan about being busy but in actual interviews it transpires that they can now afford PAs and nannies.  It's the way of the world.  It's a new social media world but it's old world social climbing.  Personally, I have come to the conclusion that it isn't healthy for the rest of us to be constantly looking at what we 'ought' to have/dress like/look like.  Therein lies dissatisfaction (to say nothing of the credit card bill).

But the term 'influencer' is very interesting in these weird and worrying times.  'Influence' is claimed to be responsible for election results, Brexit, teen angst, male suicide rates, you name it.  Of course, influencing people is nothing new.  It runs the spectrum from basic advertising, through PR and social media to propaganda.  Electioneering.  Canvassing.  Manipulating.  Prompting.  Guiding.  Pressuring.  

Except it's not the same as before.  Because the influence is 24/7.  In our pockets or handbags, on our watches.  As we work, 'appropriate' ads pop up on our laptops.  And the lines are increasingly blurred.  Is that Instagram post an ad or isn't it?  Is that tweet real news or not?  And there are often global implications turning on one tweet or one post.

I recently read Travellers in the Third Reich.  An account of visiting foreigners' experiences in Germany prior to the Second World War.  It is fascinating and disturbing in equal measure.  The Nazis excelled at sowing doubt in people's minds.  In influencing.  'Fake news' at the top of its game.

And recent tweets by Donald Trump really got me thinking about the fascism parallels again.  He was ranting about 'bias' by Google.  He and other ultra right wingers claim that Google's search engines prioritise 'left-wing' material.  (Click here to see an article about this.)

What Trump did with this series of tweets was to water the massive seeds of doubt already carried by his main support.  But also to chip away at the minds of others unfortunately.  Not many people seem to know how these big tech companies really work but millions of us get our information from them.  Alongside Trump's attacks on the traditional media, he is now telling people that they cannot trust their main online sources of information.  Massive influence.  Immediate impact.  Fascism has previously been established with 40% support. His true believers will not check the sources he claims to use for his 'facts'.  But more importantly, the middle ground of undecideds will start to question their use of Google. 

So it's time we started to make better use of OUR influence.  Unfollow social media people who don't make you feel good or whose motives you questions is a small way to do this.  Without us, they are nothing after all.  But more importantly, start questioning the news.  Use fact checkers.  Read a broad base of media.  And check out The Perils of Perception: Why We're Wrong about Nearly Everything by Bobby Duffy.  You will be shocked.  And that's a true fact.

Protest, protest, protest

If there is anyone still out there checking on my blog, you will know that I have not written for months.  This was not intended but somehow seems to have continued far longer than I would have wanted if it had been planned.  I am not even really sure why!  But I am back and ready to start spouting my stuff all over again.  I haven't stopped reading, Instagramming or thinking since I last blogged.  I have a whole load of subject matter to whitter about, don't worry.

The above is a screenshot from Facebook.  It is utterly horrifying if you just read the list and compare it to the news coming out of the US.  And the news from other places too.  Italy for one.  One article which has spurred my return to blogging was by Fintan O'Toole in the Irish Times.

In this piece he argued that far from being an off-the-cuff tweeter/policy maker/speaker, etc, everything which Donald Trump says or does is carefully calculated to see what he can get away with.  It is not aimed at the more liberal press or at people who would never vote for him.  He is only concerned with maintaining his ratings with the voters who brought him to power.  For example, the use of the abhorrent term 'infest' in a tweet about immigrants.  Widespread disgust was reported.  But Trump's approval ratings with his core supporters went up and the (to him) important far right news outlets (Fox etc) loved it.  O'Toole says that 40% of voters is the typical starting point for Fascism.

I have also re-read The Handmaid's Tale this year.  Margaret Atwood's scarily worrying novel of a fascist future.  If you haven't read it, do so.  (Or watch the excellent TV adaptation.)  And marvel/quake at how many elements of it would appear to be coming true, three decades after it was written as fiction.  No wonder this was one of the books being widely shared after Trump took power.

We live in frightening times.  As the mother of two teenagers, I am chewed up by thoughts of their futures.  Trump is, in my humble opinion, on track for a second term - that's six more years legally.  But with a Supreme Court nomination to come, could we see a move for more?  Brexit is going through regardless (note 'fraudulent elections' on the above list - a nice little trial run there with the Brexit referendum).  Countries like Italy are turning to the far right.  And as for Russia...

I leave you with a couple of quotes I have found during my reading this few months.  Read them and weep.

Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it. - Goebbels

The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping.  It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude. - Aldous Huxley

But when you have wept, remember...

The need for protesting will never end. - China Achebe

Making the Connections.

There have been a number of news stories which have been sort of coming together in my head in the last week or so.  The first was about Elon Musk's car going into space using reusable rockets.  The second was the story in The Times magazine which saw an undercover reporter working at an Amazon warehouse.  Thirdly, I saw a report about the treatment of women in 'Silicon Valley'.  And finally, apparently a great many billionaires - especially from Silicon Valley - have decided to prepare for the coming apocalypse by buying huge tracts of land in New Zealand.

Can you see the link?  Abuse of wealth and power by the mega-wealthy?  I had been musing about how I really have problem with private space exploration after I saw the SpaceX flight.  I don't think we, the human race, have done anywhere near enough to further our exploration of space.  I don't think governments spend properly on it either alone or with others.  But to see a private company able to achieve so much in such a short amount of time and for lower outlay?  Frankly it is frightening.  It smacks of the trade beginnings of colonialism and look where that got us.  It also made me think that only billionaires and their friends will have the power to escape if something terrible happens on Earth.

And then I read the story about the way many of these geeky entrepreneur billionaires behave towards women and I got more angry.  The general gist of the article was that, prior to their financial achievements, these Silicon Valley men had had little or no success with women.  Therefore sex parties, coercion and harassment are now the accepted norm if you want to be part of their  scene - both social and business.  Women are damned if they go to the parties as an attempt at networking - women have a tiny percentage of start-up capital there - but damned if they refuse.  For example, a women seen at a party is then subjected to slanderous gossip and harassment from colleagues.

When you add this to the stories about billionaires buying citizenships and land in New Zealand, investing in 'seasteading' (artificial ocean islands), having private jets on standby in case of nuclear war, etc etc and a whole lot of even creepier stuff about how they regard themselves as a race apart because of their 'superior intelligence', it gets really worrying.

But to finally add that many of them - of whatever nationality - are running companies with appalling conditions like those in the Amazon distribution centres, you can see a picture of people who think they are above the current governance of our planet.  Who believe they will be leading - or their descendants via supermodels will be leading - some kind of evacuation eventually.  Whilst blinding the rest of us 'inferior' humans with fake news about what is actually happening.

I'm sounding all David Icke, I know, but these are stories which have been in the mainstream press.  Not Facebook or Buzzfeed.  Actual reporters for once.  We need to start making the connections.

Home Sweet Home

Not posted in a while.  Been lots happening both personally and in the news of course.  But despite starting two or three posts, I just wasn't feeling it.

However, today I went for a short drive around the area where I used to live.  So I thought I would briefly muse on that.  I have very rarely gone back since I left home completely.  It is not a particularly nice town and I had little attachment to any friends who had not also left.  Maybe one or two but that was it.  My parents divorced a short time after I left and that was that.  House gone, no need to visit the place.

There were a couple of things which really struck me today, in the suburbs where I was brought up.  The first was the complete de-greening of the place.  Nearly every lawn where we had played has been turned into a double driveway.  Many trees and hedges have vanished.  And a lot of grass verges have been co-opted into people's properties - and therefore their driveways.  It wasn't a posh neighbourhood but I remember it as leafy and pleasant.  It was rather odd to be confronted with such mass environmental change and it worries me to think how many other places are now the same. 

The other very clear situation was house building on a large scale.  Developers have finally managed to get access behind some of the classic 'ribbon development' roads on the outskirts and are taking full advantage.  But none of it looked to be 'affordable housing'.  And I could not see how the infrastructure is going to manage.  New schools and roads will be desperately needed from what I could see.  And the huge swathes of fields which have gone was quite shocking when you had not been there for such a long time.

It all appeared to be a microcosm of the sorts of issues facing many towns in the UK.  Not enough housing for those on lower incomes, lack of investment in everything needed to sustain modern life apart from these houses, the one hospital is on the other side of the town.  And the car is king.  It is already king in the existing estates and will have to be king on the new ones because you will not be able to get anywhere without one. The only public transport is buses.  Similar issues are happening where I live now.  

Once again on this blog, I must go back to 'this is not a poor country'.  We have money.  It is just not being spent properly.  Theresa May leapt to the defence of the NHS when Trump attacked it.  Brilliant.  Now spend some money on it.  Ministers pondering on the housing crisis - sink estates, hundreds of people in B&Bs, the issues following the Grenfell tragedy, etc?  Cancel Trident and spend the money on houses - council houses.  As for the environmental changes I saw, I don't see how, at present, we can escape from the car trap.  Homes are built further and further away from facilities but there is no other transport.  Many houses accommodate at least two working adults.  Unfortunately, it is the green in our lives which is having to give way.

Actually, I lived in that place for so long that I remember there being fields in places which are now thirty to forty year old estates.  Change has to happen.  Of course.  But I don't think nearly enough thought is being given to the planning situation now and that is something which should worry us all.

Alien Lifestyles

Imagine we have finally managed to get off this planet properly.  Like in Star Trek.  Long range ships with gravity and all that good stuff.  What would we think if we found a planet where one percent of the ruling beings had control of eighty two percent of the wealth available?  (The total population of that race being 7.6 billion.)  With forty two of those beings having the same amount of wealth as the 3.7 billion poorest.

Wouldn't the Starship Captain report in their log that the planet seemed a trifle unfair and undemocratic?  And what would our explorers think about extreme poverty over huge swathes of another planet?  Lack of awareness of environmental damage being caused by the population, threats to use horrendous total wipeout weapons.

I think human explorers would be quite judgemental to say the least.  Yet here on Earth, right now, the number of people controlling 1% of all our wealth has actually got smaller, according the latest Oxfam wealth report.  The world's richest man increased his fortune by $6 billion in the first ten days of 2017 (Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, in case you haven't guessed).  Yes, in just ten days.

I wrote about the last Oxfam report on this blog.  Unsurprisingly nothing has changed much in the year since.  Other than the gap widening between wealthy and poor.  But once again I must also rail against our capacity for accepting this as 'the norm'.  We are being conditioned to see huge wealth for the one percent as nothing to be concerned about.

Yesterday saw the first anniversary Women's Marches.  I am so glad that momentum is being kept up on inequality and abuse.  Now we need the same momentum on redistribution of resources.  And on democracy.  The 'show' of democracy is often a front for the purchase of elections - whether by candidates or parties, media tycoons, oligarchs or whatever.  Electoral systems work against the voters.  And in many countries, there is not even an attempt to have democratic participation.

Again, let's think what we would be trying to impose on planets we discovered.  'Yes, [alien race yet to be identified] you must live in this way - so much more beneficial for all, so much fairer.'  Because obviously telling other people how to live has worked so well on our own planet.  

And we should not forget that currently it is the super-wealthy who are investing in space travel.  Unless we take action, maybe in decades to come the Oxfam report will be that one percent of the population now lives off planet whilst the remainder are struggling with smog, skin cancer and lack of natural resources....

Plot Predictions

Thirty years ago I was doing Economics 'A' Level. Thirty years!  A good few lessons were devoted to ‘the ageing population’ and the looming pension, health and social care crisis in the UK.  I remember being shown predictions for, well, about now actually.  I remember thinking 'my own parents will be retired'. 

Let’s just say that again. Thirty years ago students were being taught about a well-documented and researched certain future event - our working population would not be able to provide for the increasing number of aged people. This was not hearsay or a teacher cutting an article out (remember that?!) from the press. It was part of our syllabus. 

  

A couple of years later I found myself in a British Politics lecture at university. One of the main themes was the excellent continuity our civil service provides.  The whole ‘Yes Minister’ culture of gently steering whichever party happened to be in government.

But where have we been steered to? Thatcher fell during my first year at Uni (oh the hangover after that) and huge damage had been done in terms of council housing, benefits, etc.  But there was still time for someone influential to say hang on, we are teaching about a looming crisis. How are we doing to deal with said crisis?  Sad to say, after John Major's floundering, Blair’s New Labour seem to have made little dent on social care, council housing, the NHS.  They went for private finance initiatives. And then the banks had their own crisis.

To say nothing of the feeble coalition years and the recent Tory disasters.  Simplified version?  Yes.  But the fact remains that this was expected to happen yet still we have hospital beds clogged with elderly people who desperately need full-time care.  In the midst of what may well turn out to be the worst winter in seventy years of the now teetering NHS.  

Thousands of people still have no real idea how they will fund their retirement.   Many probably don't realise how bad things are going to be.  Retirement ages have been increased but there have been decades of mismanagement.

We are in 2018. With a broken social care system, a breaking NHS and pension problems a go-go.  All predicted.  At least six Prime Ministers and thirty years ago.  Something has gone badly wrong with our system of government.

More Action Required

For this first post of 2018, there is so much I want to write about, I might burst.  So many subjects  which I have previously covered are still at the top of the news agenda and not for good reasons.  

• There is no resolution in the Middle East -  thanks in no small measure to Trump.  He makes everything worse.  An expected outcome.  But somehow even worse than we feared.
• The NHS is buckling under the weight of the social care crisis, budget cuts and systemic issues like GP changes, staffing, etc.  No change.  In fact - again - worse.
• It is a year since the women's marches and there has been some progress thanks to women speaking up.  But how much has actual change permeated?  Very little.  We are only seeing the visible, brave tip of the iceberg with those women who are going public on harassment, pay inequality, discrimination.
• There are more people in the UK using foodbanks than ever before.  A disgusting statistic for the year 2018.
• A news programme the other day was quite seriously discussing the likelihood of nuclear war with some expert or other.  I was so horrified, I didn't register the details.  As I have written before, how did we reach a point where this is a normal discussion again???
• Our pathetically poor representation of what a female Prime Minister should be has placed serial misogynist Toby Young in charge of the new Office for Students.  Yet another reason for Theresa May to be ashamed of her record.  
• Only a year until we 'Brexit' apparently.  And we are absolutely none the wiser as to the consequences for any areas of our lives.  Other than getting blue passports again obviously.  Don't.  Just don't.

And yet there can be some hope.  

• At last night's Golden Globe Awards, during her fabulous (in so many ways) speech Oprah Winfrey made some very powerful points about the importance of the press, of investigation.  Despite the distortions of social media, there are truths to be told.  The Watergate journalists had no access to Google or Twitter.  But they managed to prise out the truth and bring down an administration.  It can be done.  We have to chip away and ignore the distractions.
• In 2017 Rose McGowan began the Hollywood backlash by standing up to one of its most feared moguls.  The movement continues to spread.  Time's Up!
• It is not inevitable that the NHS should collapse.  It is staffed by amazing, dedicated people and situated in a 'first world' country with plenty of money.  Protest, protest, protest.  On social media, by email or snail mail.  March if you can.  But protest

Let's make 2018 a year of more action.  We want a decent NHS.  We don't want nuclear war.  We don't want men to believe that harassment is 'a bit of harmless fun'.  Whatever the issue, we have to stand up and be counted.  This year,  it is one hundred years since the end of the 'war to end all wars' definitely didn't end all wars.  But no-one has pushed the nuclear button since 1945.  An achievement which must be defended.  It is also one hundred years since women got the vote.  But there is so much more to do.

Start small.  Here are some ideas:

• Send a postcard every week to your MP asking about the same one issue.  NHS, fracking, food banks, you decide.  Don't be fobbed off with a standard letter back.  You need only write one sentence a week.  The address for all MPs is House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA and a book of 25 plain postcards is £2 on Amazon.  [You can do the same in other countries of course!]

• Don't follow Trump @realDonaldTrump on Twitter.  If you want to see his madness, unedited, follow @UnfollowTrump.  They retweet his stuff without you adding to his followers and therefore his ego.

• We all have coats in our cupboards that we don't wear and keep 'just in case'.  Imagine not having one at all.  There are lots of places focussing on coat donations this winter - for both UK and refugee people.  Google for a local organisation.  Or simply hand it to a homeless person.

Wishing you an active and fulfilling 2018. XXX