Plot's Plot

Thanks for all the fish...

2011-12-11T04:13:00.001-08:00

Remove the Lady from Thatcher

2011-12-11T03:29:00.001-08:00

Remove "Lady" from Thatcher Petition | GoPetitionMy contribution to the petition is this: "Thatcher created the"underclass" and swathes of communities without hope. She wrecked industry & production & destroyed a UK with a working class that produced useful things-with pride & with living wages as recompense. In place of an industrious,well provided for population, she gave us bosses who stole from us by taking our rights & paying people low wages. She caused the current world economic crisis by legislating that greed is good. In years to come, people will wonder why we didnt jail her and her cronies."

I did it! A 50,000 word novella written in a month!

2011-11-30T16:55:00.001-08:00

NanoWriMo 2012 - present chapter...

2011-11-28T16:07:00.001-08:00

At present, I am 8000 words off completing the NaNoWriMo challenge... I'm reasonably happy with what i have written, but it needs a lot of editing and restructuring. This is a chapter I wrote tonight.

Un-posted letter, France 1917

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Mother.

I am well.

It is strange to think how keen we were to reach the front afew weeks ago. On arrival in Armentieres(have you ever heard of a place in Britain that is ‘Proud to be poor?’ That is their motto here!), we were in asmall bistro. We drank the local cheapwhite wine and met up with officers who had come from the front. they were a good crew, but the alarm bellsshould have rang when they were saying things like, “You’ll be looking forwardto leaving,” and “the sane ones are shot for desertion.”

I live with lice. Howhorrified would I have been but a few months back to think I would not careabout lice wandering over my body! butLice wash off. There are things I haveseen I will never wash away.

One day, I was asked to lead a firing squad. “What is the charge?” I asked.

“Desertion.”

When I first arrived I would have been horrified at Britishmen leaving their comrades to battle. But now I am not so horrified. These men are dying for Britian. dying for something not quite tangible. Something they will not benefit from in the way the owners of thearmament factories or other war necessities will benefit. Most of these men are poor men, come to losetheir minds. Or lose their lives for noprofit; only the desperate experience of this hell.

This is one duty we are allowed to refuse. I refused, knowing those who run are thebravest of souls. the people who aresensitive and human enough to know this is hell on earth and should not be partof living. Some; other brave men, placea part of their body above the line of the trench to be shot. Hand wounds, feet and some who are braver,legs are raised for the poor german soldier to shoot.

Now, mother, I know you will find it strange that I have anempathy with the bosche, but these men are as poor as our men. they are men. they are scared, just like us and they have been sent to fight in a warthey will not profit from. A war theywill be wounded or die in for nothing that will make their material lives anybetter.

Father was oh so wrong to make the women of Tullylishgrieve. He was wrong to send these bravesons of Ulster marching to their deaths or to losing their minds.

I met a man who is from Banbridge. A Silas Gibney. He was a good man. He speaks well of my father and the other menof the Bann who have been encouraging the young to come sacrificethemselves. He speaks of Ferguslie as aman of goodness, a man who implored, through propaganda and Minister, that allfit men in the factory should go to war. Although Gibney was too old and could refuse, he is here because his sondied here. He is here to avenge thedeath of his only son, sent here by Ferguslie and my father, who died at thehand of the germans who were sent here by their rich men of the Rhine. Men who place their hands above the trenchline for our brave men to shoot. It isalmost like a game of, “you do this for me, and it will be your turn when youare brave enough.” He will be happy whenmore German men are dead, he say’s to me half-heartedly, more and more healfheartedly as days procede because he is perhaps coming to the realisation ofjust who the enemy of the poor men really are.

Although this war is not how we read about war as boys, wedo come face to face with our enemy at times. Sending shells and rifle bullets into their trenches is not the heightof it. Sometimes their are pushesforward through the mud, blood, shit, bones and vermin. a whistle blows and this is the cue for boththe dancing ragdolls to push into the rain of lead sent on cue the otherway. Heads down against the storm, wepush. If we are lucky we stumble into acrater and wait until a lull and make our way, slowly back, through the mud, onour faces, as low as we can go. If weare unlucky we meet our German cousins face to face and gaze into their eyes asthey writhe and scream at the end of our bayonetts. My stomach hurts when I remember the firstyoung man I killed. He looked as if hehad just walked from the church turn tothe bridge and had been chatting happily to Scott or Wilson and was on his wayfor eggs at Dawson’s farm. He was likeany lad from Tullylish, with his life extinguished before it started and helike the boys from tullylish fell into the mud, mouth foaming, gasping for hismother...

The men enjoy only one thing when in the trench, and that isthe rum. I make sure they have twoladles full. I think this ration isgiven to them to keep them brave, but I watch as it makes them settle andsometimes snatch sleep, sitting on the muddy wooden walkway.

Sometimes, believe it or believe it not, we have a sing-songwith the Germans. One German used tosing English songs and we would join in. he knew the words by heart, we thought. We used to send requests over the line, shouting, “Mademoiselle fromArmentières” or “Memories” went thecall, and he knew them all word perfect!

When I was in the hospital and I read the press reports ofthe war and when you came to visit me and I couldn’t speak, well, I wanted tosay that what you all believed about this war was rubbish. This wasn’t a game of chase. this wasn’t colourfully dressed soldiersmarching in formation like cockerels, waving flags and tally-hoing. Father and you have no idea of thestrain. the stress of seeing people tornto pieces by a rain of metal from the sky or from below (the tunnels full ofexplosive are the other problem). Idon’t think England nor Germany will win this war. the winners are far away from the war, makingmoney from every boy torn apart or incapacitated. I needed the break. i needed the time to recuperate and think. I needed the time away from the real world ofdeath, blasts and whistles. You can’timagine as you sat with me, perhaps looking serene, that all I could see wasdeath and destruction. all I could seewas waste, and the faces of the men who I stabbed in the guts or shot in theface.

The raiding party that day had been as voluntary as any, Iwalked along the ranks and said, “you, you and you.” I had watched nearly fifteen of my men die inthat day, sitting on the toilet or casually lighting a cigarette and ping!their eyes would cross as the bullet entered their skullor their face woulddisintigrate as they spoke. We used ourmirrors to find the sniper’s nest. Wecrawled under the wire and slowly, oh so slowly across the darkess of no mansland and then down into the trench, stabbing as we went. He stood in front of me. “Kamerad!” He said and he put his hands onhis head. His sniper’s rifle besidehim. No-one was in the trench butus.

Fifteen men.

Kamerad.

I gritted my teeth and ran for him, his face registeringhorror, his hands out in front to try to stop my blade cracking his chest. I missed his heart and he writhed andscreamed. I withdrew the bayonett andstabbed at his open mouth and counted fifteen blows into his crown for everyman who had fallen at his hand that day.

I sat beside him. Ispoke to him. I told him it was over forhim. I told him he was lucky. We were the unlucky ones left in thishell. His pockets revealed his life. He was from Kiel. He loved to sail with his young son andwife. She was very beautiful. He was an Officer, but he was a teacher ofyoung boys. A photo of his school wasfolded in a pocket. A teacher of boyswho shot boys through the skull. He hadletters in his pocket, that smelled of perfumes which were tied up in littlepastel coloured ribbons. His mother andfather looked very distinguished. theywould be proud of this boy who was over here to parade up and down on a chargerwith white plumes in his hat, chasing the Britisher up and down the greenfields of France. Like every mother inthe world, thinking their son will be careful and their son is having theexperience of a lifetime.

The gas would clear the rats. But the birds would fall from the sky. If we found any struggling for life, we triedto save them. some would nestle in yourpocket until they were ready to leave, singing. Beauty in the beast. A break fromreality. One day when we were on R&Rin the barn of a french farm about five miles from the front, the King arrivedand we ordered the men to cheer. Ididn’t cheer, and few of them did. Perhaps the King’s cousin in Russia should have visited his men moreoften. Some of the Russian men whodeserted came to us and asked for directions away from the battle, but wantingto get back to Moscow. how long afterthis hell would the Tommy’s put up with a king in a car, parading past themexpecting some kind of thanks? some kindof worship? I am firmly of the beliefwhat is happening in Russia will happen in Germany and then France and thenEngland. Tullylish will no longer be anisland apart, I feel. the Russian soldiers are doing what our men, I fear, willdo and that is what their new political leader, Lenin says, “Convert theimperialist war into civil war.”

I grabbed the detris of his life and stuffed it into mypocket.

I felt oh so guilty sitting in that hospital while men inthe real world were scrambling for life. I had to return to hell. Back toreality. For them. And i did, and here i am.

I crawled through the shit and mud and rotting men and mulesand fell into the trench. none of theraiding party returned. The bullets thathad shot my arm in shreds were many. Ihad got a return to blighty. I thoughtif that ever happened I would be happy but the guilt was too much. But this was not my biggest injury. My injury in my mind was greater as you musthave sensed in the hospital. I rememberyou unclenching my fist and taking the sheets of music from me. We would not hear his voice sing again. Song had been slashed from his gullet and hissmashed jawbone. I remember you cleaningaway my tears as you read the words through yours,

“Round me at twilight come stealing

Shadows of days that are gone

Dreams of the old days revealing

Mem’ries of love’s golden dawn

Memories, memories

Dreams of love so true

O’er the sea of memory

I’m drifting back to you

Childhood days, wild wood days

Among the birds and bees

You left me alone, but still you’re my own

In my beautiful memories

Sunlight may teach me forgetting

Noonlight brings thoughts that are new

Twilight brings sighs and regretting

Moonlight means sweet dreams of you

Memories, memories

Dreams of love so true

O’er the sea of memory

I’m drifting back to you

Childhood days, wild wood days

Among the birds and bees

You left me alone, but still you’re my own

In my beautiful memories”

My first book on Kindle...

2011-11-23T16:49:00.001-08:00

Download my book to Kindle/ a kindle reader - HERE

The Factory - Chapter 1

2011-11-06T16:15:00.000-08:00

I've joined in with the NaNoWriMo this year... I have wanted to do it for a few years, but have never had the time (I started last year and had to stop!) So, this is my second attempt. And this is Chapter 1!

Autumn

I know I'm dying. I've had a good, long, interesting life, I suppose. I'll be sad not to see my great grandchildren all grown up. I would love tohear their dreams and politics as young men and women. I hope their struggles bring a fair worldcloser.

I'll be sad not to see my ex-President arrested andimprisoned for what he did to the young people in Afghanistan and Iraq. For what he did to the young poor people hesent from here to kill their young poor people. But then the people who sent my family to war were never arrested, andour victories were few. We did scarethem, though. Our world of scramblingand scraping to live was allowed to change for a while. But then their greed brought us to ruinagain. Obama gives us hope. The hope she gave us way back then.

When I first let America know my views on war and hatred, Ithought I was old! Way back in the1960's. I had grown children, and littlegrandchildren. And my children were notsurprised I couldn’t stay quiet. When Igot up onto those podiums to speak to those crowds, well, I felt kind of dumbto begin with. But my writing and myletters to the newspapers and my going along to those peacenik rallies to hearthose eloquent, angry or serene young men urge peace meant that some of thempushed me up there. Going on fifth orsixth after those brilliant young black leaders and those women who knew whatit was like to be second class citizens was, perhaps a bit of a lull in theproceedings. I couldn't rant, I couldn’tshout. I just told them to standtogether. I told them that they would besplit from without if they didn’t hold their wit. I told them about Ally. I told them about Davie and my da'. I told them that none of them came back fromwar to riches and neither would the boys out in the east. I told them that the rich man’s war only bredmore hate and spawned a second war. Itold them that the people who had stoked this war would never go to jail. The people who profited from it would neverbe hurt. And the ties between the twowere many. I told them the people whohad driven me from my country to find liberty in the United States were theself same people who profited from war, and they were never brought to justice. In fact those who died and the families whosuffered the pain and the hardship were only too glad to send other generationsof young men and women out to die or to be maimed in order for these rich"patriots" to profit, again and again. And I told them America was smarter thanthat. And then I sat down. And I remembered her, because she brought meto these podiums, even though I hadn’t seen her in many years. But she did.

I stare out of the huge window at the autumn colours. I took some of the American accent over theyears, but some of my Ulster accent is there. And the words. "Fall." I'm told it wasa word that came from the old country and that my use of Autumn is more recent. But I dont know. We really called it the turn. The time when the spuds were dug, the fieldsfull of the withered stick like top of the stuff that would sustain us over thewinter. There was nothing like a moundof spuds after working all day in that factory. Steaming on the plate; big, oval, steaming balls of flour, my da calledthem. As a young man I likedautumn. Ma would make Black currant orblack berry bread pudding and we had shelves of jam from the summerfruits. Spuds and tea. And blackberry pudding. That's what I was brought up on. My ma would say, "just be glad you weren’treared in our day. When we were glad ofpinead!" I knew the hunger thatmade people live on pinead. I hadfriends whose houses served it still, and when da was still alive, well, therewere days the whisky bottle or Mollies Bar, or the greyhounds got the spuds andwe got the pinead. Pinead was, in ourbetter off house, a meal of bread soaked in tea. In the not so fortunate, it was bread soakedin hot water. A warm meal.

The carpet of golden and brown leaves in the garden beforeme brings me back to the autumn day at the Halt.

I remember thinking about Davie on the day I met heragain.

Davie was a wild man. He'd joined the army, like a lot of men his age in 1914. Him and uncle Ally and my da'. Davie was the only one of the three of themto come out the other side. Ally waskilled in action. That was the day mygranny became an old woman, when the singing was wrung out of her. She never got official letters so as soon asit arrived the thoughts were, "which one?" Ally was the youngest. The one who had been at her apron stringsonly a few years before. I remember himgoing, along with my da and Davie and the others from the factory. The drums and the fifes played at Church Haltand the red white and blue filled everyone’s hearts full of hate for thehun. The minister praised the boys fortheir patriotism and for standing up for democracy - a democracy most of themcouldnt take part in. Howarth, thefactory owner told the lads to go do their duty. And the minister and Howarth thanked eachother. Hankies waved and the big menblew kisses to wives and childer'.

Tommy, my da' came home. So did Davie. Tommy was full ofthe drink and he stayed that way until he was found dead in our chair by thehearth in 1920. My ma' in someway wasrelieved, but it was only the goodness of the Howarths in the big house thatmeant we could stay in the cold, damp, house. They gave her a job cleaning the stairs and their fancy bathrooms andhallways and she paid them the rent from what they gave her. I learned to hide the axe from Tommy when hehit the bottle, because he was for killing Howarth and the minister for sendingthem all to war.

"The aristocracy killed the young men," he wouldrant. "We had no business blowing Germanteenagers to bits. Our business is spudsand linen and whisky!" And then hewould go for the axe to kill the top-hatted factory owner who had sent them allto fight for God, Ireland, democracy and Protestantism.

Davie came back, wilder than before, full of plans to go toCanada and make a fortune, but his time was spent in "The BunchO'Grapes" drinking stout and sitting at "The Welcome" smokinghis pipe and, as my ma would say, "fraternising with the catholics like hewas one of them," until he got one of them in the family way. He told her he would marry her, but she foundout he was going to leave and she went to Banbridge station on the day, but heleft by Portadown.

My granny had letters from "the disgrace" fromDublin, Southhampton and Toronto, but she never opened them. And Ally became the Virgin Mary I suppose.

As I thought, I heard the train stop at the Halt. I was to wait here for a guest, Howarth hadsaid, and i was to take it directly to him. I had no idea the guest was his daughter.

The Parable of the Water-Tank

2011-10-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Equality by Edward Bellamy

The Parable of the Water Tank

There was a certain very dry land,the people whereof were in sore need of water. And they did nothing but seekafter water from morning until night, and many perished because they could notfind it.

Howbeit, there were certain men inthat land who were more crafty and diligent than the rest, and these hadgathered stores of water where others could find none, and these men werecalled capitalists. And it came to pass that the people of the land came untothe capitalists and prayed them that they would give them of the water they hadgathered that they might drink, for their need was sore. But the capitalistsanswered them and said:

"Go to, ye silly people! Whyshould we give you of the water we have gathered, for then should we become asye are, and perish with you. But behold what we will do unto you. Be ye ourservants, and ye shall have water."

And the people said, "Only give us to drink, and we will be yourservants, we and our children." Andit was so.

Wages and Prices

Now, the capitalists were men ofunderstanding, and wise in their generation. They ordered the people who weretheir servants in bands, with captains and officers, and some they put at thesprings to dip, and others did they make to carry the water, and others didthey cause to seek for new springs. And all the water was brought together in oneplace, and there did the capitalists make a great tank for to hold it, and thetank was called the Market, for it was there that the people, even the servantsof the capitalists, came to get water. And the capitalists said unto thepeople:

"For every bucket of waterthat ye bring to us, that we may pour it into the tank, which is the Market,behold we will give you a penny; but for every bucket that we shall draw forthto give unto you that you may drink of it, ye and your wives and your children,ye shall give to us two pennies, and the difference shall be our profit, seeingthat if it were not for this profit we would not do this thing for you, but yeshould all perish."

And it was good in the people'seyes for they were dull of understanding, and they diligently brought waterunto the tank for many days, and for every bucket which they did bring, thecapitalists gave them every man a penny; but for every bucket that the capitalistsdrew forth from the tank to give again unto the people, behold, the peoplerendered to the capitalists two pennies.

And after many days thewater-tank, which was the Market, overflowed at the top, seeing that for everybucket the people poured in they received only so much as would buy againhalf-a-bucket. And because of the excess that was left to every bucket, did thetank overflow, for the people were many, but the capitalists were few, andcould drink no more than others. Therefore did the tank overflow.

And when the capitalists saw thatthe water overflowed, they said to the people "Seeye not the tank, which is the Market, doth overflow? Sit ye down, therefore,and be patient, for ye shall bring us no more water till the tank beempty."

Unemployment

But when the people no morereceived the pennies of the capitalists for the water they brought, they couldbuy no more water from the capitalists, having naught wherewith to buy. Andwhen the capitalist saw that they had no more profit because no man boughtwater of them, they were troubled. And they sent forth men into the highways,the byways, and the hedges, crying, "Ifany thirst let him come to the tank and buy water of us, for it dothoverflow." For they said amongthemselves, "Behold, thetimes are dull; we must advertise."

But the people answered, saying, "How can we buy unless ye hire us, for howelse shall we have wherewithal to buy? Hire ye us, therefore, as before, and wewill gladly buy water, for we thirst, and ye will have no need to advertise." But the capitalists said to the people: "Shall we hire you to bring water when thetank, which is the Market, doth already overflow? Buy ye, therefore, firstwater, and when the tank is empty through your buying, we will hire youagain."

And so it was because thecapitalists hired them no more to bring water that the people could not buy thewater they had brought already, and because the people could not buy the waterthey had brought already, the capitalists no more hired them to bring water.

And the saying went abroad, "It is a crisis."

And the thirst of the people wasgreat, for it was not now as it had been in the days of their fathers, when theland was open before them for everyone to seek water for himself, seeing thatthe capitalists had taken all the springs, and the wells, and the water-wheels,and the vessels, and the buckets, so that no man might come by water save fromthe tank, which was the Market. And the people murmured against the capitalistsand said: "Behold, the tankrunneth over, and we die of thirst. Give us therefore of the water, that weperish not."

But the capitalists answered, "Not so. The water is ours. Ye shall not drinkthereof unless ye buy it of us with pennies." And they confirmed it with an oath, saying, aftertheir manner,"Business is business."

But the capitalists weredisquieted that the people bought no more water, whereby they had no moreprofits, and they spake to one another saying, "Itseemeth that our profits have stopped our profits, and by reason of the profitswe have made we can make no more profits. How is it that our profits are becomeunprofitable to us, and our gains do make us poor? Let us therefore send forthe soothsayers, that they may interpret this thing unto us." And they sent for them.

Now the soothsayers were menlearned in dark sayings, who joined themselves to the capitalists by reason ofthe water of the capitalists, that they might have thereof and live, they andtheir children. And they spake for the capitalists unto the people, and didtheir embassies for them, seeing that the capitalists were not a folk quick ofunderstanding, neither ready of speech.

And the capitalists demanded ofthe soothsayers that they should interpret this thing unto them, wherefore itwas that the people bought no more water of them, although the tank was full.And certain of the soothsayers answered and said, "Itis by reason of overproduction." Andsome said, "It isglut." But the significationof the two words is the same. And others said, "Nay,but this thing is by reason of of the spots on the sun." And yet others answered, saying, "It is neither by reason of glut, nor yet ofspots on the sun, that the evil hath come to pass, but because of lack ofconfidence."

Tranquility

And while the soothsayerscontended among themselves according to their manner, the men of profit didslumber and sleep, and when they awoke they said to the soothsayers, "It is enough. Ye have spoken comfortably untous. Now go forth and speak comfortably unto the people, so that they be at restand leave us also in peace."

But the soothsayers, even the menof the dismal science - for so they were named by some - were loath to go forthto the people lest they should be stoned, for the people loved them not. Andthey said to the capitalists:

"Masters, it is a mystery ofour craft that if men be full and thirst not, but be at rest, then shall theyfind comfort in our speech, even as ye. Yet if they thirst and be empty, findthey no comfort therein, but rather mock at us, for it seemeth that unless aman be full, our wisdom appeareth unto him but emptiness."

But the capitalists said, "Go ye forth. Are ye not our men to do ourembassies?"

Starvation because of Abundance

And the soothsayers went forth tothe people and expounded to them the mystery of over production, and how it wasthat they needs must perish of thirst because there was overmuch water, and howthere could not be enough because there was too much. And likewise spoke theyunto the people concerning the sun-spots, and also wherefore it was that thesethings had come upon them them by reason of lack of confidence. And it was evenas the soothsayers had said, for to the people their wisdom seemed emptiness. Andthe people reviled them saying, "Go up, yebald-heads! Will ye mock us? Doth plenty breed famine? Doth nothing come out ofmuch?" And they took upstones to stone them.

And when the capitalists saw thatthe people still murmured, and would not give ear to the soothsayers, andbecause also they feared lest they should come upon the tank and take of thewater by force, they brought forth to them certain holy men (but they werefalse priests), who spake unto the people that they should be quiet and troublenot the capitalists because they thirsted. And these holy men, who were falsepriests, testified to the people that this affliction was sent to them of Godfor the healing of their souls, and if they should bear it in patience and lustnot after the water, neither trouble the capitalists, it would come to passthat after they had given up the ghost they would come to a country where thereshould be no capitalists, but an abundance of water. Howbeit, there werecertain true prophets of God also, and would not prophesy for the capitalists,but rather spake constantly against them.

Charity

Now, when the capitalists saw thatthe people still murmured and would not be still, neither for the words of thesoothsayers nor of the false priests, they came forth themselves unto them, andput the ends of their fingers in the water that overflowed in the tank and wetthe tips thereof, and they scattered the drops from the tips of their fingersabroad upon the people who thronged the tank, and the name of the drops ofwater was charity, and they were exceeding bitter.

The Forces

And when the capitalists saw yetagain that neither for the words of the soothsayers, nor of the holy men whowere false priests, nor yet for the drops that were called charity, would thepeople be still, but raged the more, and crowded upon the tank as if they wouldtake it by force, then they took council together and sent men privily forthamong the people and all who had skill in war, and took them apart and spakecraftily with them saying:

"Come, now, why cast ye notyour lot in with the capitalists? If ye will be their men and serve themagainst the people, that they break not in upon the tank, then shall ye haveabundance of water, that ye perish not, ye and your children."

And the mighty men and they whowere skilled in war hearkened unto this speech, and suffered themselves to bepersuaded, for their thirst constrained them, and they went within unto thecapitalists, and became their men, and staves and swords were put into theirhands, and they became a defense unto the capitalists, and smote the peoplewhen they thronged upon the tank.

Luxury and Waste

And after many days the water waslow in the tank, for the capitalists did make fountains and fishponds of thewater thereof, and did bathe therein, they and their wives and their children,and did waste the water for their pleasure.

And when the capitalists saw thatthe tank was empty, they said, "The crisis isended": and they sent forth and hired the people thatthey should bring water and fill it again. And for the water that the peoplebrought to the tank they received for every bucket a penny, but for the waterwhich the capitalists drew forth from the tank to give again to the people theyreceived two pennies, that they might have their profit. And after a time didthe tank again overflow even as before.

The Agitators

And now, when many times thepeople had filled the tank until it overflowed, and had thirsted till the watertherein had been wasted by the capitalists, it came to pass that there arose inthe land certain men who were called agitators for that they did stir up thepeople. And they spake unto the people, saying that they should associate, andthen they would have no need to be servants of the capitalists, and shouldthirst no more for water. And in the eyes of the capitalists were the agitatorspestilent fellows, and they would fain have crucified them, but durst not forfear of the people.

Their Message

And the words of the agitatorswhich they spake to the people were on this wise:

"Ye foolish people, how longwill ye deceived by a lie, and believe to your hurt that which is not? Forbehold, all these things which have been said unto you, by the capitalists andthe soothsayers are cunningly devised fables. And likewise the holy men, whosay that it is the will of God that you should always be poor and miserable andathirst, behold, they do blaspheme God and are liars, whom He will bitterlyjudge, though He forgive all others. How cometh it that ye may not come by thewater in the tank? Is it not because you have no money? And why have ye nomoney? Is it not because ye receive but one penny for every bucket that yebring to the tank, which is the Market, but must render two pennies for everybucket ye take out, so that the capitalists may have their profit? See ye nothow by this means the tank must overflow, being filled by that ye lack and madeto abound out of your emptiness? See ye not also that the harder ye toil andthe more diligently ye seek and bring the water, the worse and not the betterit shall be for you by reason of the profit, and that forever?"

The Evil Recognized

After this manner spake theagitators for many days unto the people and none heeded them, but it was sothat after a time the people hearkened. And they answered and said unto theagitators:

"Ye say truth. It is becauseof the capitalists and of their profits we may by no means come by the fruitsof our labour, so that our labour is in vain, and the more we toil to fill thetank the sooner doth it overflow, and we may receive nothing because there istoo much, according to the words of the soothsayers. But behold the capitalistsare hard men, and their tender mercies are cruel. Tell us if ye know any waywhereby we may deliver ourselves out of our bondage unto them. But if you knowof no certain way of deliverance, we beseech you to hold your peace, and let usalone, that we may forget our misery."

And the agitators answered andsaid "We know away."

And the people said: "Deceive us not, for this thing hath been fromthe beginning, and none hath found a way of deliverance till now, though manyhave sought it carefully with tears. But if ye know a way, speak unto usquickly."

The Remedy

Then the agitators spake unto thepeople of the way. And they said:

"Behold, what need have ye atall of these capitalists, that you should yield them profits upon your labor?What great things do they wherefore ye render them this tribute? Lo! it is onlybecause they do order you in bands and lead you out and in and set you tasks,and afterwards give you a little of the water yourselves have brought and notthey. Now, behold the way out of this bondage! Do ye for yourselves that whichis done by the capitalists - namely, the ordering of your labor and themarshaling of your bands, and the dividing of your tasks. So shall ye have noneed at all of the capitalists, and no more yield them any profit, but all thefruit of your labor shall ye share as brethren, everyone having the same; andso shall the tank never overflow until every man is full, and would not wag thetongue for more, and afterwards shall ye with the overflow make pleasantfountains and fishponds to delight yourselves withal, even as did thecapitalists: but these shall be for the delight of all."

How to Apply It

And the people answered: "How shall we go about to do this thing, forit seemeth good to us?" And the agitatorsanswered:

"Choose ye discreet men to goin and out before you and marshal your bands and order your labor, and thesemen shall be as capitalists were; but behold they shall not be your masters asthe capitalists are, but your brethren and officers who will do your will, andthey shall not take any profits, but every man his share like the others, andthere may be no more masters and servants among you, but brethren only. Andfrom time to time, as ye see fit, ye shall choose other discreet men in placeof the first to order the labour."

And the people hearkened, and saidthe thing was very good to them. Likewise it seemed not a hard thing. And withone voice they cried out, "So let it be asye have said, for we will do it!"

"The End of All Things"

And the capitalists heard thenoise of shouting, and what the people said, and the soothsayers heard it also,and likewise the false priests and the mighty men of war, who were a defenseunto the capitalists; and when they heard they trembled exceedingly, so thattheir knees smote together, and they said one to another, "It is the end of us!"

Howbeit, there were certain truepriests of the living God who would not prophesy for the capitalists, but hadcompassion on the people; and when they heard the shouting of the people andwhat they said, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy, and gave thanks to Godbecause of the deliverance.

And the people went and did allthe things that were told them of the agitators to do. And it came to pass asthe agitators had said, even according to all their words. And there was nomore any thirst in that land, neither any that was a-hungered, not naked, norcold, nor in any manner of want; and every man said unto his fellow, "My brother," and every woman said unto her companion, "My sister," for so were they with one another as brethren andsisters which do dwell together in unity. And the blessing of God rested uponthat land for ever.

The End

For a fair Scottish Independence referendum, please sign!

2011-09-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

this is a HM Government e-petition I feel should be signed.

HERE

Not a review. Reviews are Bourgeois

2011-08-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

My Latest Huffpost submission:

One positive thing the current Tory/LibDem coalition is doing here in the UK is boosting protest rock and pop. To look at the charts you wouldn't think it- but unlike back in the eighties when for example, The Clash, Paul Weller and The Specials could make it in to the charts with anti- government songs, nowadays the charts themselves (and what music is deemed fit to be part of them) are controlled by the music corporations through the Entertainment Retailers Association and The British Recorded Music Industry ran "Official Charts Company." Those who control the corporations are unlikely to allow mass dissemination of something that nowadays truly "shouts to the top," especially in an epoch of squeezing the last drop of exploited profit from chanteuses' and boy bands with a shelf life of a couple of years. Most of the protest music is outside the charts...

For this reason we are unlikely to see "Thee Faction's" second album, "Up the Workers" in the UK charts - the other reason being that this group do not see themselves as a group in the sense Echo and the Bunnymen or JLS are groups. Thee Faction see themselves as a guild - a collective who create, market and sell the fruits of their members labours for a fair price. A fair trade, socialist guild. A group unlike some of the groups of my youth who promised much, but have disintegrated or ossified without delivering. Or worse still, have taken the money , thanked the fans and now lie beside their Californian pools, calcifying their arteries with the stolen spoils from disaffected, optimistic youth. I sound bitter, and perhaps I am. Ian McCullough nor Jim Reid have led the revolution and Morrissey has become as establishment as spam and The Big Yin's bum joke.

You see, I was a political indie kid back in the eighties. Unlike the Goths and the desperate, dispirited youth of today, the indie kids of the eighties, us Thatcher hating, angry young people, had hope. We had groups and singers who even if they didn't sing political lyrics, the movements they seemed to be part of seemed to challenge the status quo. Even Spandau Ballet not only had a name influenced by the most infamous political prisoner in history, but they released an album influenced by the Troubles in Ireland.

Thee Faction was a group in those days who along with the more famous Red Wedge collective, spat and shouted at the conservative mayhem meted out on the population of the UK. The Beat sang, "Stand Down Margaret." Elvis Costello, "Shipbuilding" and "Tramp the Dirt Down." Billy Bragg promised us a "Great Leap Forward," Dammers "Specials" warned the world of the Ghost Towns created by the monster that was last ditch capitalism and the Smiths wanted to chop Thatchers head off in "Margaret on the Guillotine." Thee Faction implored people to join a union and railed against the capitalists manufacturing consent through keeping us ignorant. (See HERE for a review of their first album "At Ebbw Vale.")

Alexis Petridis, rock music critic for the Guardian said of the 1980s, "Britain was turning, in a really dramatic way from the liberal, post-war consensus. Thatcher was far right enough that the National Front vote collapsed. [Thatcher] was a very easy figure to demonise." But then Petridis also said, when asked if a similar wave of anti-government sentiment would ever stir the music scene again, "People are pretty much contented with their lives now." To be fair that was a few years back when New Labour was giving the people just enough to keep them from rioting. Now we have a vicious Tory Government who is seemingly unafraid to throw more and more people into the clutches of poverty in order to feed profit.

And we have a re-awakening of interrogatory culture. As Thee Faction say on their sleeve notes, "Bourgeouis "Lyrics" will always lead up a cul-de-sac... [we] strive for a pure aesthetic with meaningful communication and a sense of beauty."

Thee Faction are a lesson - an independent spirit, who cannot be identified with Thatcherism in the way the independent labels back in the eighties could be. They own their means of production. They Rock for enjoyment, and they rock to share an interpretation of the world that we need nowadays - one that also shows an alternative path. Real alternative music that sings, "Capitalism is good for corporations; that's why you've been told socialism is bad all your life."

Guthrie and Seeger, Lennon and Baez, Dylan and Crass changed views through song. Thee Faction do just that through sheer force of polemic, joy de vivre; fun. 366, their opening track, shouts at us that we have to be unafraid to speak out. Be a nonstop agitator, 366 days of the year - shout to power - until we have a competent economic system right here! Deft Left tells those who may have thought we had gone away to look again - we are still here regardless of the onslaught by the capitalist press and media. It opens with the lines, "what happened to the anger, when we were fighting Mrs Thatcher ... we are going to make a new start..." and now is the time to do that.

The Left are coalescing in the fight against the cuts in local "Save Our Community Centre" type organisations, through to the UK wide, Coalition of Resistance and the strengthening unions (lets not forget that Unions are the biggest working class organisations we have, even after the Thatcher/Major/Blair years of attack and anti-union legislation). And Lefties can still coalesce around music.

Music is dangerous - as the frequent banning of records and bands through the eighties and nineties should illustrate. Bands challenging the ideas of the ruling class like Crass or even Frankie Goes to Hollywood were kicked off the middle class Radio One airways. The Sex Pistols could not be seen to be the number one rock group of 1977 as they were challenging the accepted hegemony - that of "we the British People LOVE our Queen!" Frankie was holding one defiant finger up to Mary Whitehouse and the middle class ideas of hidden sex - wrong sex - outlawed sex. Our country is very much a country dominated by the ideas and sensibilities of the class that control all. In fact this can be said of the Neo-Liberal, globalised capitalist world we live in. Conservative ideas rule supreme, and Murdoch, Lord Rothermere and Richard Desmond ensure, to paraphrase Marx, the rest of us who have no way to disseminate ideas to the masses are subject to the ideas of the rich and powerful. Cameron et al are recognising this hegemony is under threat, and already calls for social networks to be closed down during times of civil unrest are becoming the thoughts that are being promoted as the ideas of society. This is a plain lie. Society wants and needs a more democratic media - and it is creating one. Society is bigger than Cameron, Murdoch and the marketplace. Thee Faction have recognised this and sing about our state of being - "you are just a Customer, you consume..." consuming all, we are told is what we need. The illusion of choice. 25 different but the same washing powders sold by the same two companies. More anti-union laws. More anti-young people legislation. More censorship. More Cowellesque pop nasties. They only rule supreme because our legislation protects property first and profit is the new god.

Thee Faction warn the Tories not to make us Angry - we are not going to be fooled any more that we are "all middle class." Fewer and fewer people are fooled as more and more people realise they are paying for the bankers crisis. £700bn of our hard earned taxes bailed them out. They have paid us back only £2bn, yet still ensure they get hold of bonuses that most of us won't accumulate from our main salary/ wage in twenty years of buckling down and accepting the guff that "we are all in this together."

What's the solution? Well, Thee Faction has one. They are not wallowing in the now. They don't sing of the current dystopia and leave it at that. They believe industry should be controlled by the unions - or guilds - worker collectives. They believe we should challenge the current hegemony and they believe we should be coming together in socialist political parties to do that. Their songs are permeated with references to the Socialist theorist, historian, economist and writer of detective novels, GDH Cole, a man whose ideas are worthy of promotion. A man who once said, "I became a Socialist because, as soon as the case for a society of equals, set free from the twin evils of riches and poverty, mastership and subjection, was put to me, I knew that to be the only kind of society that could be consistent with human decency and fellowship and that in no other society could I have the right to be content." A man who so hated capitalism, he would not accept interest on his money from the bank. A man who wanted the capitalist system smashed. A man who said socialists should not give up being levellers. Something the current Labour Party seems to have forgotten (amongst a few other founding principles).

One of my favourite songs on the album is "Only," sung by Kassandra Krossing. "Voting on its own wont set you free. Smashing Starbucks windows wont set you free..." timely lyrics in the time of the coalition Government made up of the Tories and the party people voted for so they could protest against the Torification of the Labour party. A time when people are totally dismayed by the capitulation of the Liberal Democrats to the vicious austerity the Tories are imposing on working class people. A time of continued unrest from student riots through to the police violence sparked/ consumer/customer themed riots a couple of weeks ago. "I want to wake up in a world where no one has too much... voting alone won't set you free, nor will singing this little song along with me..."

Perhaps the kudos of Mike Reid or Mike Smith banning a record won't set us free either.

Thee Faction URGE you to do something - whether it be joining the party or agitating 366 days of the year or dumping your Conservative, UKIP friend. "What you have here is anti-capitalist music... Wage Labour? Their idea. Boom and Bust? Their idea. The waste, the inefficiency, the boring illusion of choice, ALL THEIR IDEA. You want Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Join our party." I agree. "Up the Workers."

This record is a joyous celebration of socialism a definite five red stars from this reviewer... or are reviews bourgeois?

I disagree on one political point on the record only, and that is, feedback is NOT bourgeois.

The Jesus and Mary Chain were banned by the BBC twice, comrades.

Owen Jones at Glasgow University

2011-08-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

On sunday 22 August 2011, Owen Jones, the author of "Chavs; the demonization of the working class," visited the student occupied Hetherington Post Grad Club in Glasgow. This video is an hour of a much longer conversation that was led by Jones.

These yobs were badly brought up...

2011-08-14T03:31:00.000-07:00

Latest HuffPost opinion piece.

Watching the responses to the riots and the behaviours they have demonstrated, I have come to the conclusion it is how they were brought up. How can anyone who has been brought up in a loving household do what they have done and are continuing to do?

The Judges who have been passing sentences on behalf of the Cameron Government to those involved in the riots last week were mostly (if not totally) middle class Oxbridge educated white men. At a guess, quite a few of these, just like our Cabinet Ministers, suffered at the hands of the disgraceful Private Education System, and by having just too much money..

David Cameron, a man who has little to look up to, and acts that way, is a perfect example.

Thrown into care at the age of seven (in Heatherdown Preparatory School), he excelled in his academic work, but made terrible choices in his private life. He got into trouble over drugs and fell in with a bad crowd. Any working class boy at that time (circa 1980) caught as part of a cannabis dealing ring as has been alleged, would have went to court at the very least. The thing about this is; his family were minted, so even though he was part of a crowd who regularly smashed up commercial premises or set fire to them, he managed to scrape by without the equivalent of an ASBO.

But why the trouble in the first place? Surely there was no lack of male role models? Yes - an absent father and mother, but surely the institution into which he had been incarcerated at such a young age had lots of men teaching and gardening and cleaning up after him... hmmm... perhaps the fact the role models were cap doffing and relying on the Cameron family dosh explains a lot?

I wonder what he thought of those who bowed and scraped and laughed at his stupid jokes? Did he realise they were wanting to please so his family would not stop paying his way through their place of work?

I watch Cameron every week in Prime Ministers Question time, and he very eloquently bullies and rarely answers a question. There lies the valued in his circles. Debating is rarely something to be won by logical evidence. It is to be won using literary devices and verbal insult. Can you imagine how conversations went during his time at Oxford as a member of the Bullingdon Club? How those old Etonians bantered? How they verbally jousted? How they bullied and how they classified those with less than them (a telling tale of Cameron's thoughts of the "lower orders" comes in the book, "Chavs - the Demonisation of the Working Class," by Owen Jones, David Cameron was quoted making a comment about his daughter coming home from a party looking like she'd "fallen out of a council house.")

The trouble with those who have been fabulously linguistically educated is they brilliantly, eloquently speak and write absolute drivel, though well hidden in the fat, trite words. More and more I listen to the Old Etonian gangs who are in power speaking in calm, measured tones, telling us using almost poetically, which makes it oh so convincing- the most illogical mince you could imagine.

"Sir Causal Dyslexic-Moronicham, what do you think caused the riots?"

"Oh, most empitatically superfluent wibbleness and Huber-octacolly rubellanestically jumpulagressively evil lack of morality and hoodies. Jail them all for 50 years and pour me a G and T, theres a good chap!"

Now, when these morons speak, because we have been tuned to think posh accents and fat words are good, and working class accents, and smaller words are less good, people defer to the posh accent. Listen to Boris as a prime example of a prat saying nonsense in a posh way and then getting his way!

These poshos who have been brought up by teachers and nannies and who have been told by all around them, "Oh Tarquin, your mummy and daddy would be so proud!" (if they weren't out shooting some dopey animal that has been bred to fly into their gunsites in order to be praised by the paid lackey who collects their killings for them) have a problem. When these people, educated to think they are never wrong- and educated not to think beyond the FACT they are better by the sheer FACT all in sundry around them doff the cap and clean up for them and tell them how wonderful their night with the Buller men, blowing up toilets must have been, then you end up with people who are devoid of empirical logical empathetic thought.

Listen to how these so called educated arseholes speak to each other. It is all about linguistic upmanship. Presentation, rather than any empirical evidence. Prime Ministers Question Time in the UK is all about that- and Cameron is the worst at it. When he can't answer a question with a rational answer, he resorts to name calling. It's how they talk to each other from the moment they are thrown out of their house by their drink sodden parents and into boarding school to the day they are carried out of the House of Lords.

The ruling class (because that is what we have again after a twentieth century in which there had been a little progress in having working class representatives) are calling for army on the streets; teenagers to be locked up for months and months on end; Wembley Stadium to be a huge, holding centre and there are calls to make poor people even poorer by slashing their benefits and turfing them out of their homes. Also- these poshos have jailed people who said something silly on Facebook for four years; someone with no previous convictions who stole a bottle of water for six months and all sorts of other serious over reacting (weird how the racists from the BNP or EDL who post on Facebook are never arrested).

Boris Johnston said it is foolish to give economic and sociological explanations to understand these riots.

Listen to Boris as a prime example of a prat saying nonsense in a posh way and then getting his way!

Perhaps it wasn't poverty that made him set buildings on fire and trash businesses. At a guess, his income wasn't slashed, nor his home taken from him and he certainly was never given a custodial sentence. And as for Nick Clegg, the arsonist who went on to be the Deputy Prime Minister nodding dog... I wonder can any of these men empathise with their victims or with those who committed similar crimes last week? Clegg, in a radio interview certainly could not see the similarities to his own larks at setting other people's property alight.

But, hey!

They became the trouble makers they are only by chance of birth. It isn't their fault surely?

To understand the ills of our society, one has to look at how these arseholes view us, and in turn treat us and perhaps relate it to the diabolical way they were brought up. The disdainful language they use to describe working class people has turned from the language of demonization (Chav, Ned, Oik.Pikey etc) to the recent description of protesting youth both during the student protests and last weeks riots as "feral scum" (feral is a word used to describe animals - a word for a section of our society that describes them as animal - less than human. We exterminate feral animals. Dangerous times or stupid words?) through to how they truly believe that "we are all in this together" - them directing the theft of our taxes to pay off their banker chums and their "mistaken expenses" and us coughing up with barely a peep. Don't forget Cameron was found to be wanting during the expenses robbery, but instead of him "doing time," he got off with paying it back. Perhaps that option should have been given to the 23 year old woman who had NEVER had a previous conviction - who had NEVER been let off the hook for a drugs offence and trashing restaurants - who was handed a six month jail sentence for stealing a bottle of Evian.

Turf them out of Number Ten, I say. Cut their benefits by imposing a 70% tax on their massive incomes and judge them harshly on the harm they are meting out on working class people across Britain.

Or perhaps I am just an inverted, intolerant snob who can't see that they really need our help?

Thee Faction... get some socialist R&B

2011-08-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

I reviewed Thee Factions previous album At Ebbw Vale, HERE and will review their new album Up the Workers OR: Capitalism is good for corporations; that's why you've been told socialism is bad all your life, in the coming days.

In the meantime, if you would like a free copy - I have one to give away! To claim it, send me one sentence on how you are fighting capitalism, to plottracer@googlemail.com. The winner will judged by me to be the person who has a suggestion that we can all take up and use. Ends 18 August.

Share this - the BBC will never play it again...

2011-08-09T11:26:00.001-07:00

Darcus Howe, London political activist (and pensioner) tells it as it is...

When I ask why are they poor, they call me political...

2011-08-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

Published on the Huffington Post site.

The statement from the journalist on News 24 brought on a familiar feeling of paralysis. He said to a local commentator amidst the Tottenham/London riots, "It's not the time to be making political points."

Back in 2005, as a political activist, I was giving out leaflets as 225,000 people converged on Edinburgh to protest about Poverty, advertising a political meeting later in the day and with information as to how poverty could really be made history. Geldof and Bono had rallied all of these people together to click their fingers and wear white (we, on the other hand, were wearing red teeshirts with "Make Capitalism history" emblazoned on them). They had been told by texting their names to a special number (yes, we had mobile phones back in 2005), their name would appear on a big electronic list at the front of the rally in the Meadows. This would ensure that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair and George Bush and all of the other world leaders would bring an end to world poverty. People believed it. It seemed at the time, that the whole world had come together to change the world for ever. And all done by the non-political act of a click of a finger or sending a text.

Lots of people took a leaflet from me. Some thanked me and read it; some shoved it in their pocket along with the tens of other leaflets from all of the other campaigns wandering around Edinburgh. Some dodged me, or in Glasgow parlance, "dingyed" me, which didn't offend me. You see, when you are an activist giving out leaflets, you are giving something valuable to another person. Educating them; inviting them to come and learn. This small act of philanthropy, to the activist, is one small way to change the world. It makes you feel good.

When you are walking in the street and someone thrusts something in your hand, you have been given another piece of pocket junk.

Some people spoke to me and asked me questions, which was fine. I liked to chat to people about the issues. I felt quite happy standing in the sun, amongst that crowd who were there for noble reasons, imparting our knowledge.

And then three people dressed in their best white teeshirts and with well coiffed hair and expensive trainers approached me. One well spoken guy was obviously their spokes person.
"Hey mate. I really think what you are doing is disgusting!"

Disgusting. There was I, like him, making poverty history by texting and clicking and giving out leaflets (ok, he wasn't giving out leaflets - he was someone who was to receive knowledge from me in my act of benevolence).

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"This isn't a time to be making political points. It is a disgrace you are trying to make this political!"

Now, to be honest, I can deal with political hecklers. I have no problem in debating and discussing ideas and opposing ideology. But I wasn't ready for that. How do you explain to someone, succinctly, that of course Poverty is a political issue? That those world leaders in the big fancy hotel in Auchterarder are making political decisions about money we have all earned and about how much of our money should go on arms/border controls and wars and how little of it to give out to people who need it. It hadn't dawned on me that people at this demonstration didn't think that the issues were political.

The same kind of paralysed disbelief hit me this evening when BBC reporter, Julian Worricker was interviewing someone on the streets of London. During the interview, he said to the guy that, surely this was not the time to make political points after the interviewee had mentioned the poverty and joblessness and how the cuts were hitting hard in Haringey. All evening we had heard statements from Tory politician after Tory politician saying the riots were caused by "bad people," yet to try to contextualise the unrest was being wrong... being political.

What has led to this strange idea that we should not politically analyse problems of poverty? That we should not disagree over solutions? That we should not hold people to account when they take wrong or mistaken decisions?

This problem of fear of making political battle does not seem to be equal on both sides of the political argument. It is the left who seem to be hampered by this political paralysis.

Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara said, "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist." The new derisive term used is, "you are politicising this."

In America, the only people who were seemingly allowed to make political announcements or accusations over the debt ceiling were the right wing, Fox TV lauded Tea Party, while Obama struggled to come up with concession after concession. His trying to compromise with them led directly to the biggest fall in the stock market since 2008 and a down grading of the USA's credit rating. We were subjected to hardass Republican after hardass Republican condemning the democrats/commies, yet after the Tea Party led crash, there have been no Democrats spitting tacks at the sell out - no political lefty bulldog saying "enough of this!" Just more concessionary words from Obama the castrated communist.

Twitter is being blamed for the London riots. But my twitter feed (usually full of lefties whispering about how bad the cuts are, while the left political establishment sit on their hands as, in actual fact, they believe in the same cuts agenda, only slower) had loads of Tories blaming the poor for their situation. Some of the vile comments I read blamed "socialism" and the "socialist" councils the areas are run by.

"Society doesn't ghettoize these people. They gave free education which we pay for. Do it to themselves expecting state to pay."

"10yr old looters? Created by scum to live as scum. Don't make pathetic excuses for criminality"

"Poor boroughs maybe burning. Fires are the progeny of the people you think should get taxpayers money.Scum rioting!"

"London does not need police lines! London need police batons to deal with these vandals & criminals. Put them in concentration camps."

These are tweets from one prominent Scottish Tory supporter. Others from right wingers urged a fight back - a call to arms, arming the shop keepers and bringing in the troops.

War.

But there were few - if any - Labour Party members spitting tacks at how the cuts have closed 8 out of the 14 youth clubs in Tottenham in the past week alone- and the target to meet the cuts agenda is 75% of them; or the fact that only back in September last year, Home Secretary, Theresa May said, "We can cut police budget without risking violent unrest;" or that the firemen and ambulance drivers risking their lives on the streets of London have had their pay frozen and pensions decimated.

Or no-one was asking Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister, does he feel the Liberal capitulation within the coalition has allowed the Tories to bring on this summer of violence as he said they would in April 2010?

Where were the people shouting that this place has the biggest unemployment in the city? There is 1 vacancy for every 54 jobseekers? An unemployment rate of 8.8%, the highest in London and eighth highest in the country? Some of the worst deprivation ion the UK?

Instead we had local Labour MP, David Lammy making statement after statement after the initial riot, that this would harm property prices in the area, that this would harm business.

And nothing, in his first reactions, about the social causes of this unrest.

Where are the Bernie Grants, the old style Labour politicians who stood up for the people who have been ghettoised and demonised for years and years? Where were the political leaders calling for heads to roll because the disgusting cuts -political acts - that have made living in these areas even more intolerable? Where were the politicians calling for investment in jobs and education in the area? They were no-where to be seen because they don't want to challenge the seemingly obvious fact that this was caused only by bad people, or so the rightwing tabloid (and BBC) narrative says. Bad poor people who need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. And to say otherwise would bring the wrath of the only people allowed to make political statements - the right.

Where are the Politicians with the policies that will make poverty history?

Don't politicise poverty. They are bad people. We are all in this together.

We need our politicians to start spitting tacks, shouting, banging tables with fists. We need angry women and men verbally hauling the politicians over the coals. We need to hear people asking the right questions over and over and over again. We need to ensure the right who have taken over the Labour Party and the Condems do not get away with making statements that these riots were caused by some bad people.

This was a situation that came from a build up of social factors inflicted upon this community by Thatcher through to Cameron. We need to "politicise" the argument and stand strong.

Compromise with the right has led us to where we are financially and socially at present. We need people standing up for the good people of London and Birmingham and Glasgow - the victims of the trickle up society - the people who have been forced to live in further austerity as the bankers debt is socialised and the riches are held tightly by sociopathic offshore island profiteers.

Scottish Independence – it’s up to the Working Class.

2011-08-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

(this is my first blogpost for the Huffington Post UK )

When I first came to Scotland from Northern Ireland, I was struck by the political engagement here.

Where I was used to Republicans and Nationalists, and as an addendum, lefties (including the Labour Party) being castigated as nothing more than filthy, murdering, dirt, the political engagement here and honesty around independence and working class politics was refreshing.

Now, there will be some of you thinking, "of course if you have come from a divided place like Northern Ireland, anything else will seem normal." Well, perhaps, but what I noticed was that almosteveryone was engaged in class politics. When I lived in Northern Ireland, the middle classes were the only people represented by the political parties, from the Conservative Unionist Party to the centre left SDLP. Few people talked of "the Working Class," or indeed, "class" at all. Politics in Northern Ireland is changing, what with two predominantly working class parties in power, but still with problems of sectarian identity.

People in Scotland have the same identity markers as Northern Irish people, that is, lots of them know their religious tribe. I have had rabid Orange neighbours here in Scotland, as well as grim faced, "Our day will come," Scottish accented Irish Republicans. The thing is though, even though Irish sectarian politics pervade Scotland, from its football teams through to its straggly Orange and Republican marches - the "politics" change when you talk to people about Scottish politics.

Two aspects of Scottish politics struck me having come from a very middle class mid-Ulster town. One was the predominant self identification of a huge proportion of people as "working class," and secondly a real sense of engagement with their working class history.

Two examples. A couple of years back, I was sitting in an A&E department in Glasgow's Southern General Hospital after an accident with a screwdriver. The Southern General is in one of the most deprived areas in the UK, a place where the Thatcher Government ensured became a place of desperation as they destroyed the UK manufacturing base. Having worked in Govan, I knew it as a place with real cultural depth, but also a place where all of the social "problems" came together in one large town.

A drive through Govan, 14 years after the manufacturing hating Tories were driven from power (to be replaced by the genetically corrupted New Labour Party), the scars are all too clear to see. In the afternoon on any given week day, young men and women can be seen ducking and diving their way through survival. Govan is a place devoid of work, and today's teenagers and twenty-something's are two or three generations down the line in a world of survival in a community without work. Govan was once a proud, thriving community where families were raised on incomes from the Shipyards of the Clyde and where young people followed in their parent's footsteps into apprenticeships and lifelong work.

Young people in Govan are some of the cleverest I have ever met. This is not shown in school results - but in survival skills. When I worked there nearly ten years ago, one of six year old girl I knew, who lived with her drug addict mother and older brother, used to manage to get herself and her brother to the school breakfast club every morning. This was in despite of the fact her mother may at times have been completely out of it for days. What middle-class child of six walks to school, never mind gets themselves ready and in school for 8am?

The shame of the present Government is that the programmes that were making a difference to this young girl and her family are being eroded or stopped. Breakfast clubs are no longer free and the universal free school meals (probably the only hot, nutritious meal she and her brother got in a week) have been stopped. I have many stories of young people "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" despite the decimation the right wing Tories and their off-spring, Neo-Liberal New Labour have meted out upon their communities.

Back to the Southern General. As I waited for a doctor to see me, two guys dressed in the colours of one of Glasgow's teams that have, let's say, "problems with Irish sectarianism" and smelling as if they had been on the Chablis until the early hours of the morning, sat down beside me. One of them had what looked like a white sock, soaked in blood, wrapped around his hand. Their accents were pure mad Weegie. The derisive word for working class, young, poor and casually dressed in Scotland is Ned - a title not unlike "Chav" or "Poor white trash" or "trailer park," all terms used to denigrate the poor. Most Glaswegians are proud "Weegies."

These guys, chewing their chewing gum and speaking to each other loudly, slurred and unselfconsciously will be the types the Tories and BUPA will price out of medicine. One of them looked at me. I was wearing a teeshirt with a picture on it of a working class Glaswegian political figure from the early twentieth century.

The potential patient smiled a gappy smile and said, "John Maclean, man. He gave an immigrant his last coat and then died of pneumonia. He wiz a good guy, man."

As we waited, we had a superb conversation about Maclean and socialism. These guys knew the problems they were immersed in and they knew what had led them and their community to destruction.

My second example was just recently. In the past few months we moved house to a place where teachers, doctors, Scottish Daily Mail reporters and engineers live side by side in streets of red sandstone houses. A place where when I lived in a similar area in England, people called themselves "middle class." A place that would have no identity problem in Belfast. It would be a Unionist area, a place voting for a Conservative candidate. It would be a safe place to openly identify as Tory in either of those other contexts. When we first arrived here, we felt like imposters. My dinged, scraped 10 year old car sat (sits) on the driveway in silent or broken exhaust roaring competition with huge 4x4's and large German company cars.

During the Christmas break, one of the neighbours invited us to a party where we met the rest of our neighbours. We spent most of the evening chatting to a group of people who had lived here for times ranging between 20 years through to a few months. As the conversation developed, as always with my wife and me, it turned to politics and the upcoming Scottish Election. Thinking I was going to be the only lefty in the room, I made a few general "controversial" statements about what should happen in Scotland (Independence, socialism etc). No-one batted an eyelid. One Engineer said, "I always vote left. I'm working class." Another small business owner agreed. And what was universally agreed was that the Scottish New Labour Party had let the Scottish working class down.

My point in my first blog-post for the HuffPost, is that Scottish Independence and consequently a left wing Holyrood Government is inevitable - but only if it is an independence fit for the working class.

The Scots are very canny political animals. They vote for what makes life best for the majority, rather than the politics of the individual. And this has a long lineage. People here remember their working class history from the women led Rent strikes in the early 20th Century, through to the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. They remember the fact that they haven't voted for a Tory Government in generations, yet have Tory policies imposed by their English neighbours over and over again, or at the very least have the party they DO vote for diluted by so called "middle England." Some things are unforgivable.

Presently, the party that reflects the aspirations of the working class is the SNP. The SNP, the nationalist party, have in the past few years, taken a veneer of working class values and policy and were rewarded at the Scottish Elections in May with the whole of Scotland. The SNP are not a natural lefty party - in fact their old nick-name was the "Tartan Tories" - they are a coalition of people who want Independence, and the leaders of the Party have realised that in Scotland, the only way to take the Scottish Working class with them is to cloak themselves in that identity.

As soon as the SNP give too much to neo-liberalism and the rich, they will crash and there are signs that the Scottish people are noticing cracks in the party with their corporation-tax policies and their love-in of the billionaire Donald Trump.

But what they have to know is the working class in Govan and Bearsden are paying attention.

Entrophy (2)

2011-08-02T04:49:00.000-07:00

I've been painting...

Entrophy (1) HERE

More "Poor Baiting"

2011-07-31T04:49:00.000-07:00

I see Jane Horrocks, an actress who makes lots of money on her working class accent, has attacked the class she once was part of. I commented on this article by Barbara Ellen in the Observer

Inverted snob - Jane Horrocks

"Excellent article. Some of the worst snobbery and poor bating can come from those who have escaped the working class. Horrocks and those like her, actually seem to have started to believe they are a breed apart from those struggling masses "below them."

This kind of Chav/Ned/Poor white Trash bating gives the likes of the disgusting Letwin and his "whip them into shape/make them crawl on glass for their pennies" policy making, an air of credibility.

The inverted snobbery of the middle classes have led to the present situation of a return to 19th Century politics - the "noblesse oblige," rich patriarchal "strong medicine" will help you pull yourself up by your bootstraps outlook of our privileged leaders.

The sooner the old Etonian boys network is deposed and something of a fairer system we once had with working class people close to power, the better.

The sooner our tabloid press is no longer made up of public school boys having a laugh at the expense of the poor and working, and written by more of the people who the tabloids are aimed at and with more people like Barbara bursting the bubbles these snobs are in, the better."

A reply to the Guardian writer, Martin Kettle...

2011-07-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Martin Kettle –

I read your article (The Guardian comment and Debate; Thursday 28th July 2011) about your father. I hadn’t realised the connection between you and Arnold. I owe Arnold my education, as do many working class people like me. Let me explain why.

I was brought up in Northern Ireland. I was from a working class “unionist” family – unionist with a small u. My families reading didn’t really go beyond the Belfast Telegraph and the tabloid press. I did not pass my 11 plus, so attended the very working class “Intermediate” school in which all the social problems of the area were brought together in one building (those who could pay and those from a middle class background with enough time and money to fill their children’s lives with books and experiences ensured their children went to the local Grammar School).

I seem to disagree with you on a number of points – and you can thank your father for this. During my time in Banbridge High School, (a school I gained few qualifications from as every day was a day of struggle for survival and when this is the case, education comes a poor second) I stole a chink of light. One day as a 15 year old in 1980, in the school library I came across a book called, “Karl Marx, Founder of Modern Communism” a Pathfinder Biography written by Arnold Kettle.

Stolen - Arnold's Karl.

I don’t recall why I was in the library – but I obviously had some time on my hands as I read chunks from the book. Now as someone from unionist Northern Ireland, Marx and Marxism was equated by the right wing unionist Parties with the evils of the IRA. Socialism; socialists; communism and communists were evil red book carrying bombers (and I remember a teacher in my school saying just that!). Political working class representation was zero in the unionist/protestant communities with the exception of the reactionary DUP. As I read, it felt as if light was shining through the grey, working class monotony and violence. Through what I read that day – and subsequently when I stole the book (I remember feeling I would be fingered as a terrorist sympathiser if I took the book out officially!) I was able to apply a rudimentary lens to the events going on around me and the working class area and Province I lived in. I was also able to understand better, the changes going on with the closure of factories, destruction of manufacturing and the miners strike across the water. And with the help of the then fairer tax system and the benefits that society gained from that, I was able to leave the factory I was working in and re-educate myself and go to university (how many of the Digby-Jones working teenagers would be able to extricate themselves from low-paid jobs and pay for accommodation, food, fuel and college/University fees in the future Cameronian UK plc?)

There are a number of things I think you should reconsider in your article and your view on the past. Although I never supported the Soviet Union, I could see why it was seen as something to support during your fathers time. Until the mid-sixties, the Soviet system seemed to be pulling itself away from the dreadful Stalinist era (the Communist Party’s support for the Stalinist show trials was not a great time in it’s history to say the least). In fact Kruschev’s socialist new dawn seemed to be a threat to capitalism. Of course there was a terrible cost in lives of “dissidents” and those who challenged the managerial system – including Kruschev’s own career/reputation.

Perhaps the emergence of the Soviet managerial elite should ring alarm bells when people praise a “meritocracy?” A meritocracy for whom? The off-spring of the middle class? I don’t think your father was wrong to look to the good, or the perceived good in the Soviet system as something for us to aspire to. I think the aspiration of a fair “communist” or socialist society, however we decide those systems are ran (or are labelled), is a much better aspiration compared to the universally unfair and presently obvious unstable capitalist system. I believe your praise and support of Blair and Cameron are no more than praise for their smiles rather than their policies- and this is where your father had a better approach than you. Through my lens of experience of working class community and life, and through the political lens inspired by your father’s book, I am on the side your father thought he was on. He looked to the aspiration of equality and the sharing of resources as a citadel. He saw fair education and equal exposure to life opportunities as a need. He saw that hierarchy and elitism as not something to tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and aspire to climb, but as something to level. He believed in I suppose, in what Richard Wilkinson writes about in “The Spirit Level” – a more equal society that shares resources and ensures daily struggle for food and fuel is not necessary. He believed in reforming our way to a society free of poverty, injustice, economic exploitation, war and competition for the scraps trickled down from the owner’s tables. A society free from the struggle facing more and more people in today’s post capitalist credit bubble Cameron/Clegg robbery.

Perhaps where you differ from your father is your divergence from New Labour regarding the wars. I believe your father would have taken the same stance within the Communist Party, but different from you in that if the majority within the Party EC had have voted for, he would have, quite wrongly, stayed quiet. Perhaps the anti-war Blairites/New Labourites should have been more vociferous. At the same time your father would not have criticised Harry Pollitt/Palm Dutt/ Ken Gill, just as you don’t criticise your friend Tony or his new friend, David.

Finally, I believe your father had the big picture correct. He believed that resources and power and working time should be shared. Socialism – or a system nodding towards a socialist system WAS working. 1976 is a time when our society was more equal. It was a time when Labour policy was more about egalitarian income and less about keeping people bouncing along at the bottom while the rich “claimed” more of the pie – a time when Gini coefficient was at its lowest and health outcomes and “happiness” were measured at their optimum in the past century. These were policies influenced by Communist Party members in the unions (people through the 60s and 70s such as John Tocher, George Wake, Dick Etheridge and Cyril Morton (AEU) Mick McGahey, Arthur True and Sammy Moore (NUM) Lou Lewis (UCATT) and Max Morris (NUT). Ken Gill, Hugh Scanlon and here in Dunbartonshire, Jimmy Reid) and therefore connections with the Labour Party decision makers.

The Communist Party made a difference, and had rattled the upper echelons of the hierarchy so much, they launched the denigration of working class society/community/organisation now known as Thatcherism upon us. The working class, thanks to the Tories in the 80s and 90s, and subsequently the Blairites, no longer have representation close to power. Now we have the Chipping Norton set taking over from the previous public school led Government and with every passing week, more and more people fall into the politically unrepresented, demonised and undervalued poor working class lower end of the hierarchy. A world of debt and struggle, insulted and denigrated by ignorance and prejudice led by the Chav bating Murdoch/Rothermere/Black owned press.

I would like to thank your father, posthumously, for perhaps being the spark to my becoming a mature student and the Communist Party’s role in influencing a now lost Labour Party in creating a society back in the 70s and 80s in which there was hope.

Your father was right. Blair, Thatcher and Cameron/Clegg are wrong in destroying hope in order to make the rich even richer at the working peoples expense. We need more like your father, and less of the Cameron’s, Osborne’s and Blair’s of this world.

Sincerely etc.

Jon Stewart Summary of the Hackgate scandal

2011-07-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

More on the BREAKING Gordon Brown story HERE

Virtual Writers Dash

2011-07-11T05:12:00.000-07:00

The word today was "relax" - as usual, no time to relax, as you only get 15 minutes to write!

This is my effort:

Relax, don’t do it when you want to…

Well, relax if you want the world given over to the most powerful and rich 2%. Relax and allow yourself to be further exploited in order to make these people become more powerful and rich.

Words? Only words? Well, think about it. YOUR food has become more expensive to buy. The poor are being blamed for being poor as jobs become as rare as hens teeth and less tax is being used for the relief of the poor.

Tax on, and the cost of, the things you need is going up, while the tax on the millionaires and billionaires – those who can take the burden of the expense of good quality services for all, is getting lower. And they, the rich, are charging you more and more money for your electricity and heat and water…

YOU are paying for what this world has produced to sustain us. YOU are working harder and longer in order to afford the necessities of life. YOU are being victimised by Fox; News International; the Sun; the rich… you are a chav, a ned, poor white trash, scroungers and lazy – while they sit in their ivory towers making more and more money and power. The bankers and investors and Murdochs and Warren Buffet’s and Carlos Slim’s of this world can be as nice as they like by going out percentages of their income to their good causes – but what if the amount they are pulling in was given out to people across the planet in services and free energy and agricultural programes?

I live in the UK and 52p (under a dollar) of my tax a year goes to paying for a few individuals to have a wonderful life. Our Royal family travel the world and eat fantastically and have all of the material wealth they will ever need plus plus – at a cost of 52p a year to me. Not much? Well, with everyone in the UK paying that 52p a year, we could be paying for 1200 more teachers or 2000 more nurses or 6 new schools A YEAR. How many Doctors and nurses and teachers and schools and hospitals a year could be paid for if Buffet, Gates, Murdoch, Arnault, Ellison and Slim were to pension themselves off with a few million to allow them to live out their years in luxury while their billions were shared out across the world?

The real greedy, lazy scroungers are plain for me to see. And I won’t relax until the balance of the work and wealth is tipped to the majority rather than the minority.

Doleman's Downfall

2011-07-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

On reading James Doleman’s review of Alan McCombes book, “Downfall,” I have to wonder, did he and I read a completely different book? Like all of James involvement with the SSP, it is a definite dodgy dossier he has concocted. His criticism is made by selecting detail from the case in order to criticise not the book, but some of the detail McCombes inevitably had to leave out (only, perhaps, a self confessed “nerd” like Doleman could have read a book full of the kinds of details he mentions – the resulting tome surely would have made Downfall double the size of War and Peace!) The details of the case are available elsewhere – McCombes account was a personal view from someone who not only knew Sheridan, but wrote his articles and produced his press releases.

Unlike Doleman, I was here, in Scotland, a member of the SSP during all of the major incidents this book portrays. Unlike Doleman, I sat through SSP Regional Councils in which Keith Baldassarra begged Sheridan not to go through with his reckless course, only to be told, “They have nothing on me.” Unlike Doleman I was here, in Scotland for the original case, and seemingly unlike Doleman, I have spoken to members of his own political faction, the SWP, who admit they knew what Sheridan had done, but had been told by their London Central Committee to hitch their harness to “the mothership,” (their words). Unlike Doleman, I have spoken to ex-members of Solidarity who enthusiastically had gone with him out of the SSP in order to, and again in their words, “be MSP’s.” People who knew he lied – and in fact were told by him this fact. Some have expressed regret – and some have made moves to rejoin the party – or at least acknowledge the fact that the battered SSP is Scotland’s only remotely viable Anti-capitalist, Socialist Unity vehicle at the moment. Unlike Doleman, I was in Scotland and a member of the SSP on the lead up and during the split – I attended meetings of the SSP were one or the other faction was prominent, and some where people were abused for not backing Sheridan and his want for adulation both in the Scottish media and within the party.

I joined the SSP after following the fortunes of the Party – and after attending meetings and then voting for them in 2003. I decided to join after Tommy was joined by five other MSP’s in the Scottish Parliament. I was an ordinary member – unlike James, I was not aligned to any platform or left sect ideology.

I hadn’t always liked Tommy’s style, and in fact always thought his style of rhetoric was not only old fashioned (I had been brought up amongst shouty politicians in Northern Ireland), but very clichéd – his constant – sometimes tenuous - references to John Lennon and the song Imagine always made me cringe, for example. But his success in the first Parliament and the success of the party to go beyond his one man show impressed me enough to join.

On joining, I learned about the structure of the party, and of the various “platforms” within it. Doleman was a member of the SWP – a London based faction mostly made up of students and teachers. Their strangely middle class make up is due to the way they recruit – usually at universities. Other platforms I investigated were the SRSM, a group of socialists who put “independence first,” and the CWI who were the remnants of the group that had been expelled from the Labour Party in the 1980’s, Militant Tendency. The largest platform in the SSP was the ISM, which was the biggest faction remaining from a split in the CWI. The ISM dissolved itself into the party. This group included people I went on to admire politically, people like Richie Venton, the union Organiser of the Party; Alan McCombes, Colin Fox and Tommy Sheridan.

I found the SWP and CWI factions full of their own importance – and in the case of the SWP, I found them patronising and totally devoid of any connections to real working class people. During the G8 preparations I overheard prominent members of the SWP group discussing the fact that most young people in the party supported Scottish independence – they dismissed these people as “misguided” or “barely educated.” I witnessed at various conferences their snide remarks from the floor (during the huge conferences the SSP were having between 2004-06 while Doleman was in New Zealand).

CWI Scottish Organiser, Philip Stott

The CWI were a little different. I met their organiser, Philip Stott on a number of occasions. Our first meeting was in a bar in Glasgow. I sat and sipped a pint as Stott basically lectured me on what a good Marxist and a good Marxist organisation was. I could see, like the SWP, this was not to be a two way conversation. The CWI “analysis” was THE analysis, and moreover, Stott as the organiser and propagandist for the Scottish carload of members, had all of the answers. As an aside, I also met Peter Hadden, a northern Irish CWI organiser – and, at the time, liked his analysis of the Northern Irish peace process, and the CWI proposals for a New Ireland. I proposed in my SSP branch that he should be invited to speak at a “Socialism 200?” meeting (I cant remember exactly which one- but at a guess 2004). When he came over from Ireland, Stott, Hadden and I sat in a bar in Glasgow for what was to be another shot at grilling me, but when I told them why I disagreed on their analysis of Scotland and the Scottish Independence issue (the CWI were against independence) I watched as they signalled to each other that I was beyond their clutches – I was a lost cause and they would not be able to recruit me! This was typical sect behaviour. You are not a member in order to think. You are a member, so you listen to how you should think.

Although the SWP have distanced themselves from Solidarity and Sheridan, the CWI have found this more difficult. I believe this is because of the small size of the Scottish branch of the CWI – they need something bigger to hitch on to – the problem is they hitched to the wrong vehicle. Rather than listening to the majority of working class people who made up the SSP, the CWI decided to tweak its internal analysis to one of “we should lie for a socialist in a capitalist court” (an excuse later used by members of the SWP). This tweaking was done so they could soon have members in the Scottish Parliament on the back of the "socialist icon," Sheridan. The problem is, their history has been so changed and tweaked by Stott’s “analysis,” they find it difficult to admit their knowledge of the fact that Sheridan lied (and tried to force his party to lie), not for any political reasons, but in order to keep the mahogany veneer of the socialist messiah- and in my opinion, to save Stott’s job.

What their analysis fails to do nowadays is face up to the fact that Sheridan is now a complete pariah to the Scottish electorate and to the working class people who have been desperately let down by yet another lying politician. At least the SWP privately acknowledge that – yet cannot seem to take the logical next step and admit their folly. Perhaps this has more to do with rallying around their members who may have perjured themselves in court.

The sad thing is – the left will never make gains if it cannot admit where it made mistakes, or expel wrong doing or wrong doers. The “left” is no better than the right if it is lying to those it purportedly represents – and the fact is, the class know they have been lied to. The unelectable status of the anti-capitalist left in Scotland will continue if vociferous organised components cannot even admit their knowledge of one man’s lies. The message of the left is still being drowned out by the fogging of Sheridan and his fans.

Frank/James Doleman

Frank Doleman, as he was known when he was a member of the SSP, is trying to forge a career in “Tommymania.” His articles and tweets and reviews are becoming as mad as those coming from Philip Stott from the CWI – only the difference is, Stott is almost intelligently covering up his own Tommymania by interpreting all around him through his own David Koresh style lens of “Marxism.” Stott is justifying his London salary as Scottish Organiser of the CWI/ Socialist Party/Socialist Party of Scotland, or whatever they call themselves this week. This is managerialism perhaps not quite on the scale of the manager class within the Soviet Union who stymied progress in order to hold on to their wee bit position – but he is stymieing progress of the organisation he represents.

Doleman is just hitching his wagon to the mothership of Tommy – but for what reason? There is no doubt Doleman’s nuanced blogging of the trial – and his careful editing of comments made each day (something he and I clashed over on twitter), enamoured him with the Sheridan’s. During the trial, Tommy's mother, Alice - along with other members of Tommy's family, was seen many times, greeting “James” with a hug and ensuring the blogger had a seat.

Doleman is now sure of access to Tommy in order to write his eagerly awaited fanbook of the inmate of Castle Huntly Open Prison . His constant fogging of facts – a device used by Sheridan himself during both trials, is only a self serving one – one that makes this story run further in order to increase his “fame” as a blogger/writer on Tommymania. Doleman won’t make a fortune out of a book, and won’t make a huge amount writing in the papers. But I guess it is something for him to do (he was unemployed during the trial, hence his ability to attend court most days), and it gives him a wee spot in the glow of the decrepit tanned one.

Philip Stott's view HERE
James Doleman's view HERE

Heart

2011-06-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

You are all asleep. The streets are quiet. Streetlights cast a yellow haze across the ghost city. This is when I come out.

You have never met me, and you don’t know to thank me. Because to you, I don’t exist. I know you. You don’t know me.

From my home, I watch you in the mornings, open your curtains and then later, emerge from your home and follow you to the station. I note every piece of clothing, everything you hold, from newspapers to fruit to bags. I know what you ate last night, because I have been in your garbage.

I wait for your return by train and follow you back. Sometimes I know you feel like you are being watched. You are. By a friend.

They will never bother you. No-one will violate your home. You are safe. I keep you safe. You stole my heart with the chicken carcass at Christmas.

Your bedroom light shuts off. I sit on your wall and preen my red brush and growl at anything that moves near to your door. Your protective renard.

(todays virtual writers title was "Heart")

remember this..?

2011-06-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

http://plotsplot.blogspot.com/2011/05/rawa-fundraiser.html

Well - we raised $500 USD - or over £300. Not bad. All of this goes to RAWA.org and will be sent at the middle of August after the Yard Sale is finished (hopefully raise another £100) :)

Summer Holiday

2011-06-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

“One needs to enter sobriety gradually…” he explained in clipped tones. “Entering a state of reality too suddenly can create problems.”

I could see by his shopping basket, he meant this. One large bar of chocolate, a large bag of crisps and a bottle of supermarket own brand malt.

“I’ve been on holiday for a month in Toronto and drank nothing but Crown Royal XR,” he guffawed, “A good attempt by the colonies at a whisky.”

He must have been in his seventies, dressed in jacket and cravat; one eye bloodshot.

“I bet the weather was better than here”, I mumbled back, looking out of the large supermarket window to the dreich summer Glasgow street.

“Oh, it was something the same. We are on the same latitude, you know.”

He unpacked his basket and smiled sadly, “Not that I saw much of the weather. I looked after the grandchildren and sat on the veranda at night, talking to my daughters and their family.”

“I always think it is nice to come home from a trip, even though it might have been great!” I said as I unpacked my trolly.

He laughed and paid the man behind the till.

“No, dear boy. It is damn sad.” He lifted his plastic bag and walked out into his lonely evening entertainment.

The Village - The President

2011-05-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

I questioned her methods. Not very often, because mostly when I arrived on a timeline with a target, I knew I was preventing someone from doing something horrendous. I knew exactly what would happen if I didn’t change the timeline. We were playing Gods, but for a higher purpose. We were going to create a unified timeline – and when this happened, Earth- humanity – would join the rest of the universe.

I began to notice subtle differences in the briefings in the missions. With some, I was given a full rundown of the lives from beginning to end, and sometimes the detail was horrific. Other times, I was given the physicality’s of the mission, the address and routine of the subject, but little more.
And then it happened. One day I entered the timeline room with what I had began to call, "a hasty brief," and, emulating what I had watched her do, I moved my entry point to 15 years after the hit. 15 years in an un-manipulated future.

The information download was instantaneous. I had the power to do what she did. The woman whose future I was supposed to manipulate away from certain meetings and experiences, or kill, was to be inaugurated as President.

She had told me that only she could upload a brief into my mind. She had told me it was a complicated process, doing the research and bringing together the strands needed to do the hit. But here was I with information about this person - knowledge of her previous life and her future, without the need for Her... how could this be?

The -machine- the box, had arranged everything. This was the first shock. The Box was acting like a conscious entity. Where we being controlled by a higher intelligence? And why was it working against her?

I was shocked at what I had learned about the “hit.” I could see why there were gaps in my original brief, because the knowledge I had now was complete. She had wanted me to manipulate this woman’s life away from the inevitability of this Inauguration or if I found that difficult (sometimes to change a future depended on more than one event and sometimes on more than one series of events- sometimes the *inevitable* could only be delayed and therefore...) kill her.

President Vera Sophie Arrow stood behind the bullet proof glass lined podium, the wave of applause and cheers crashed against my soul and as she held up her hands, it ebbed and with every word she spoke, my soul grew and my fears about my missions solidified into an informed rebellion against Her missions.

Shouts of “Arrow! Arrow! Arrow!” rose from the crowd.

"Citizens of the world... I stand here today your servant, knowing we have a long road to travel, but confident we can do it together.

I thank President Windsor for his service to the world, and for helping us in the transition to our new programme.

76 Presidents have taken this oath, and with each, we have watched the world change and learn. Sometimes putting into practise the obvious path has been difficult, but you have given me the strength to ensure our Team changes the world to how we need it, and not how a minority want it preserved. Sometimes “remaining true to our forebears” has been negated into something they clearly did not see, and at times this great country has been the block to progress in ensuring all in the world have a fair share of what they deserve and own as citizens of this planet.

Each President has come up against a blank, solid wall of money power, preventing real change. Preventing change for those who struggle in life -those who create the wealth for the rich and powerful.

This wall must be tore down.”

There were gasps from the crowd. A slow, rumbling, rising cheer as people realised this speech was no ordinary speech. This speech was going to challenge, not capitulate. It would not be more of the same.

She held up her arms and the crowd calmed.

“The crisis the world has lived through in the past 100 plus years – a crisis of war and poverty, enslavement and division, has been the result of a war not out with our nation’s borders, but a war between those in our country with power and money and resources they can never use in even their extended lifetimes; a war against the people who create their wealth- the poor who sell their bodies for the scraps they need to survive.

President after President has capitulated in the fight to change this great country, and indeed the world, into the new age. Fighting for resources that only enrich a few has ensured this nation is the enemy of all – and I say that to make you think. We have always called “them” the enemy- the rest of the world who live outside our razor-wired borders; outside out “economic zones,“ which are, and again this will shock, in effect, our walled cities created in other lands to enslave and exploit labour and resources our elite need to keep their walled, ivory cities to themselves.

Electing me and my Team, you, the people, have done many things. You have opened your eyes to reality around you – the poverty and the pain that lies outside the Virtual Realities created to make you feel good and you have rejected the lies pumped into your homes minute by minute.

Electing me and my Team, you the people, have rejected the lies of the billionaires and trillionaires. You have rejected the lie that has you working until you are 70 and dying, while they now have augmented lifespan, some predicted to live 1000 years.

Electing me and my Team, a strong Team, a Team that is ready to fight their private armies through the donations you have made, you have rejected the lie that it is evil to work together, share our toils and share the result of that toil.

To quote the President we look back to with fondness and equal disappointment, “The time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

I take up that challenge. My Team and I will fight to ensure the people who built America, the labourers and the sweatshop workers, the enslaved and abused across the world, will see the fruits of these labours in a healthy, free, tolerant world. A world fit for their children in a world where their children will live 1000 years and who will see worlds beyond this planet. The days of privilege through strength, blackmail and lies is over. Capitalism has run its course and has nearly destroyed us. It has created the society that our forefathers such as Orwell, Chaplin and Fritz Lang warned us of. It has created an underclass, which have no hope of becoming anything only automatons. It has created a vast people who the liars and oppressors have named “subhuman.” Well this subhuman, this person who, through your fund raising, determination and secret fight, is here to help you wrestle the world from the worthless rich.

America, let us now begin a history that our children’s children will look back upon and say, “my forefather was brave, my foremother stood up to oppression, my great -great grand parents aimed for utopia through the myopia of lies, deceit and threats. They laid the foundations for everlasting life.”

This, America, is it. This is the day things changed. As we speak, my Team are taking over the Virtual Realities. As we speak, the owners of the economic zones are being arrested. As we speak their armies are being brought into our control. As we speak, the bank accounts and treasures of these oppressors are being seized and will be used to make your lives the true, valuable lives they should be.

Our work will take generations. But it has begun.

“Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

Electing me, YOU become part of a Team. A Team that will change this world to a world in which everyone has equal rights to life, liberty and safety.

God bless America and the poor billions of the world, because today we take back what was stolen from us.

Thank you, all of you.

Let the new America begin its journey.”

I knew this woman should not be stopped. That was the first day of my rebellion. I became part of her Team, fighting for her, keeping her alive to lead the world into a better future. This timeline had to survive.

(Other Chapters of the Village - a novel in progress - can be found HERE)

This person seriously unfucks things

2011-05-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Trill Zapatero - a real unfucker!

Unfuckitup Website

Her Unfuckitup SL teeshirts - HERE

Working Class Hero.

2011-05-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

When I heard the man shout that the needy and the poor should take control of the means of production, I knew what my politics were. If I wasn’t poor and needy, who was?

I was standing by the shipyard gates, begging for a job, when the Union leader came out, followed by hundreds of men. He stood on the small wall that surrounded the shipyard works and held on to the metal railings. His message was clear. We should rise up. And then no-one would starve. There would be jobs for the likes of me when socialism came. I cheered the loudest for socialism. It would give me a job.

The strong, hard, muscular, clenched fists punched the air.

When I got the job, I entered the man’s world. Up until then I had been living in a world where my hair would be spat down by my mum and told what to do by her. She told me I was special. She told me I would be a great worker. I was now the man of the house. My wage was more than hers and I could now tell her what I wanted in my sandwiches.

My place was in the union. It was the way to the top. These guys could work a crowd. I remember Jimmy saying, “You have to be in the Union to fight for your class.” I agreed. The bosses wanted to screw us and I wanted the money shared... with me… and my comrades.
All the top union men – the ones who could make the speeches and gather in the crowds, slowly, one by one, became Members of Parliament. Heroes. People loved them. Men loved them. I knew what I had to do. My dad, if he was still here, would love me.

I shouted and ranted about Imperialism and the fat cats getting the cream, while the rest of us were left with sour milk. The scraps from their table. I led everyone out when our wages didn’t rise with the cost of the things we needed. I sat with the bosses, smoking cigars and eating salmon sandwiches through the night while I negotiated my pedestal. I deserved this.

I began my speeches talking about the wee boy who played outside with no shoes, and how he went on to lead the Labour Movement. I told them about my mother and my sisters working their hands to the bone to keep me in clothes and food. If I wasn’t needy, who was?

I became a supervisor. The bosses confided in me, “Billy, the last ship went out at a loss. If this strike goes on another week, the order will go to Lennoxes down the river.” I managed to get the extra quid for the cheering men and the orders came in. The men loved me, the women sent me cakes and Mollie was made pregnant at the fancy do the Owner invited me to at his country house.

“Billy, we’ll back you for Parliament,” the boys said at my wedding. Her da’ was happy because I had prospects.

It was a shoo in. The Docks were for Socialism. I was to sit in the place in London that had been controlled by the millionaires and the Shipyard owners. I was to tell them what the Class needed. And there was no doubt about my credentials as I stood for my maiden speech, “I am here to represent the men who work hard for a living. I am here to represent the poor and needy. And sitting here amongst you rich men, I know which class I belong to.” Amongst them, I was poor and needy.

The wine flowed and the cigars were sucked and I made speech after speech against the bosses until they started to notice how needy I was. A new Saville Row suit if you introduce me to Lord so and so. A weekend at Cliffson house, swimming naked with the women, if you make sure the order goes to help the workers of the North Side. I deserved these things. The wine, the women and the cigars. I helped the people. And if I had these things to give, I would give them out too. ‘Bread and Roses,’ after all, and some of the young roses at Cliffson house were oh so pretty, and they benefitted too. I threw fivers and tenners at them like confetti at times. And The Shipyard owner paid them off if we “went a little too far.”

“William, as an MP, you can sit on the board of The White Star Line.” With this, and my salary, I was able to buy a house in which I felt comfortable entertaining these men of fortune. I never had felt they were better than me. I was one of them. The Shipyard owner and his wife became regular diners in our house. My wife enjoyed a trip or two to Paris and New York, not through my books of course. But she deserved it. We knew what it had been like to be poor. If we weren’t poor and needy, who was?

After years, my working class accent, admittedly exaggerated for the media as time went by, was used on the telly to justify or to excuse what they did. They did it because there was no other way. I just persuaded the people like me (hard workers) that it was in their best interests to give all to the corporations who are working to give them jobs.

The poor and needy are not like they were. They have shoes. They have tellys. They have DVD’s. But they are alien to me living in their ghettoes, taking their drugs and dying young by the silenced river. Why don’t they just get on their bike and find work? I managed to ensure there are huge amounts of minimum wage call centres across the country. They are guaranteed that money. They can’t be ripped off with lower pay.

The Shipyard Owner moved his building to some eastern European country where workers didn’t demand so called “rights.” And he and I played golf on the day they helicoptered the machinery out over the heads of the striking workers. Back in my day, you were lucky to have shoes on your feet. I bet the workers in that country have some poor and needy politician rising through the ranks like I did. I helped them get work. Feed the World.

My wife left me after the scandal. It was stupid really. I deserved her, the young woman who cleaned the rooms in the hotel. It wasn't a hit, just a slap to calm her - and it did. The police said that she had left the money in the room and called them straight away. Bread and Roses. If she’d have said nothing, she would have had lots more bread and roses than that crap cleaning job could ever give her.

I’ll be out in a few months, they say. And when I do get out, I’ll fight again for the poor and needy, because as I sit here in this small room, if I am not poor and needy, who is? The men – the real men – men like me, will listen.

Thatcher's Town

2011-05-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

The town was grey and shabby.

Whole towns and villages had been razed to the ground after the war and rebuild in post war utilitarian style. They were soulless replacements of street layouts and buildings that had evolved over centuries.

Not this place – it didn’t have the excuse of pre-fabs to quickly house the returning soldiers and refugees. This place had missed the war – the Luftwaffe had never gone near it. It’s ancient, evolved, robust buildings had been razed and replaced by the post war want to replace everything with pre-fabricated homes and flat roofed shopping precincts.

Stalin himself could have brandished the pencil that had given the workers the new town and “houses fit for working families.”

Only nowadays, post Thatcher, post industrial, the town was a shabby, grey, dreich, depressed place for working class people with no work. A place where dissatisfaction was fed with satellite antennae and OK! Magazine. A place where a generation had passed since working class people were politically educated by their unions and previous generations of working fathers and mothers. A place where drink and drugs glued the economy together.

We set up our table and laid out our political shop. We had driven from the nearby city to save these souls. Our manifesto spoke about care of the elderly, a good free education, work, a fully funded health service and decent housing. We weren’t being unreasonable. We weren’t being revolutionary. We wanted for these people what bankers and billionaires had stolen from them.

A livelihood and pride.

Some people came to us and spoke about footballers being paid too much and the fact they had lost their heating allowance. Some bought our paper and some nodded sagely as Jim told them of the vision of a socialist world. And some said, “but look at Russia! It didn’t work there.”

We had answers; we had a vision of how to make a fair world for them and us. And then the baseball capped pensioner walked up to us, walking stick in hand; tweed, shabby jacket open revealing a maroon woollen pullover pulled tightly over a large stomach.

“Young fella,” he said. “C’mere and I’ll tell you something. You people haven’t a fuckin’ clue.”

I tried to placate his obvious anger. I told him I did understand; I told him how their chemical plant, once owned by Alfred Nobel, had moved to the east where workers could be poisoned without the world knowing. I told him his plant – the one he worked in twenty years ago – was still making the same things, but people were working 15 hour shifts and being paid less than a quarter in the wages he had twenty years ago.

“Shut up, “ he said. “Listen to me. We won’t be voting for you, we want the Tories out of Parliament. We’ll be voting Labour, because they give us our heating allowance. They won’t take our bus passes off us. We’ll keep what we have. They aren’t Margaret Thatcher.”

I said to him, “But they’ve been in power for thirteen years – the chemical plant isn’t back!”

The junkie stopped to laugh at us being berated by the old man.

“G’wan, tell they fuckers! Vote BNP!”

The old man looked at the junkie and looked at me.
“I’ll vote for none of yis – yer all the same.”

My pleas that it could be different fell on deaf ears. He went to walk off, but turned for his final shot.

“It was a shite place to work anyhow!”

The racist, lumpen junkie cackled and I saw Thatcher’s children.

today's 15 minute dash word was "placate."

Tania

2011-05-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

She kneeled by the river, her long dark hair, matted with dirt, her face smeared with blood, sweat and tears. The excreted blend of war. Her fatigues were ripped, blooded and torn, the Kalashnikov lay by her side. But her beauty shone through.

Her goodness was why she was fighting. She bore her enemy no malice; she abhorred their malice for their own people.

The struggle through the undergrowth; the barbs of the vines and bites from unknown insects would be worth it when all were free. But she was exhausted and longed for cleanliness and linen sheets.

Her gaze was unfocussed. She knew the fight would be won. Their years of planning and subversive words and pronouncements would change people’s thinking. The world would rise from its knees and cast off its chains.

He had led them here. He would win, alongside his small band of comrades. Her fight would have to be somewhere else; from the safety of their land; the land they had won from the selfish.

She slowly turned to look at her comrade. He was sprawled awkwardly, broken where he fell. Her head fell, her slim young neck unable to support its weight and she sobbed from her belly. She realised she would not see the new world.

Saliva and blood dripped from her mouth.

She thought, “We will win!”

She slowly raised her head and smiled, and the final shot propelled her back, broken but defiant beside her comrade.

From today's 15 minute Dash - the word given was "Blend" - the piece is based on the Bolivian struggle led by Che. Tania was one of the fallen.

RAWA Fundraiser

2011-05-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.rawa.org/

SL Left Unity (the group I helped set up in Second Life) are running a fundraiser for RAWA (see website). It has been suggested that we add any funds we possess over L$50000 to what is raised at the event (at the moment we have L$81,946 - which would mean L$31,946 going to the organisation - £73 or $113). Anyone with any objections to this, should contact SLLU Alecto.

For details of the event, please contact Siri Vita.

ABOUT RAWA HERE

SSP Campsie Election Podcast!

2011-05-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

SSp Campsie Election Podcast, featuring tracks from Thee Faction, Tears of Sirion, MC5, The Exiles and Roy Moller - plus the voices of the Scottish public!

(Bonus Thee Faction track at the end - check out theefaction.wordpress.com for details on their new album, Up the Workers!

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Blue

2011-04-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Now and again in Scotland, we look up and see blue sky. Just now and again.

Scottish Socialist Party Election Broadcast 2011

2011-04-20T07:32:00.000-07:00

This is who will get my vote here in "West Scotland." Voting for the SSP list will return Jim Bollan - a very principled and hard working candidate (who is a Councillor in West Dunbartonshire)

Spring Dog

2011-04-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

Big Dog in the Sky

Lake District

UNFUCKITUP!

2011-04-19T05:21:00.000-07:00

Trill Zapatero made SL teeshirts for this superb song...(video below picture)

The Bridge

2011-04-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

The apex of the bridge, the place where the green and white scarves, football tops and teddy bears have been tied, is nearly 40 meters from the water below. I wonder, do these tributes sum up the tragedy of this lost life?

Photo by Calum Davidson See - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccgd/805913869/in/faves-isotype75/

I believe that some people who jump actually think it is a cry for help that will perhaps go heeded. A stinging belly flop into a swimmingpool. They don’t know that hitting the Clyde from so high up will leave remains not unlike those left if they had jumped from a multi-storey building, for the coastguard to fish out.

None of the twenty or so troubled souls that jump from the Erskine Bridge every year survive.
The green and white tributes flapping in the spring breeze are what the people who are left think sums up this poor person’s life. Celtic Football Club was this person’s being?
They played last night. They were crap. They won, but they were playing a part-time team, a team like so many others in Scotland, made up of part-timers – Saturday footballers who have other jobs. Celtic is one of the richest football teams in the world and pays millions of pounds for its players.

Before the game, I had called Susanne. She sounded happy enough. She was drinking a bottle of Merlot, she said, “and watchin’ a film about a wee vampire in Sweden.”
Susanne and I liked to walk in the local park and on sunny days, took a bottle of Merlot with us and bought fish and chips and sat watching Glasgow walk by while we talked.
“You watchin’ the game the morra night, then?”

“Aye. D’ye want tae come over and watch it wi’ me?”

She screws up her face and turns and gives me a look of exaggerated disbelief.

“You jokin’? tae your place?”
“Ah tidied it up, like.”

She looks me up and down.

“Aye, ah noticed. Yiv had a decent haircut an’ ironed yer jeans.” She turns her freckled face up to the sun and laughs.

The view from the bench, over the pond, towards the hospital, is, I suppose, nice.

“Onyways, me and the girls are gonna huv a night in, watchin’ East Enders and eatin’ Pringles.”

I only came to this park to meet Susanne. This was out of my way. I had escaped Glasgow and lived in a wee council house in a suburban town called Milngavie. I had escaped the decay left by the shipyard owners who had bled their workers and then left to bleed cheaper labour on the other side of the world.

I had hated the, “my da’ was a fitter,” or “my da’ wiz a ‘lecky,” or ma da’ plumbed the QE2,” from all the junkies who had been stripped of all hope of doing anything.

My da’ had been more. He’d been a designer. He had designed Ocean Liners, tug boats, tankers and all sorts of huge ships that had fanned out across oceans from Glasgow. When I had been wee, we’d lived in one of the big houses on the Southside of Glasgow.

I remember my maw laughing and running after us in the park in her blue coat and her white open smile. I remember, vaguely, a couple of holidays in the sun. I remember him kicking the ball to me and splashing in the pool. I worried about his white skin being so pillar box red. I thought he would explode.

I remember when he didn’t return from the work trip to the States. When he eventually did, he was in a box, unseen. I guessed that the car crash had made him unrecognisable.

I remember the move to Govan and the teasing I got for being posh… something I had to lose quickly to survive.

I remember the rest of my childhood as grey. Overcast. Heavy on my shoulders.

I remember her lying in bed, lots. Calling down the stairs for a cup of tea. Her thin, sick, depressed bones under the covers.

My gran took me in and made me leave school for work when all I wanted to do was draw, paint and write stories.

I worked in a chippy, then I got an apprenticeship with a carpenter who remembered my da’ as a great gaffer.

That year, we found alcohol and hash. Tennents Lager, then Bucky and then blow and then the pursuit for a bigger kick.

When she died, her will said she didn’t want me to sell her life’s detritus to inject my scab ridden arm with insanity. She had left £15000 or so, and I would only get it if I was “clean” and married with a we’an.

Our addiction, our lifestyle, was their fault. The capitalist bastards. So we broke in to their homes, and those who worked for them (mostly those who worked for them because they were easier). Their lifestyle would plunge the world into ruin; mine to perfect oblivion.
We were the subversives, the real revolutionaries. We couldn’t escape the system – we knew that. We weren’t delusional like the God squad or the soap box socialists or the middle class anarchists. We knew there was no hope. I would kill myself without my maws money.

No matter how much I pleaded, no matter how many times, stinking of piss and sick I threw stones at my lawyer’s window, they would keep my right from me. On those nights, after a thwarted house break, I would sit and shit and shiver and vomit until the chemist opened and I had my Methadone hit.

I knew what she had done was actually some sort of apology; her way to say sorry for the wrong childhood; her way to say thank you for the cups of tea and for listening to what could have been and should have been.

This was her way to parent me. To clean me up and create a life for new we’ans; a life she should have given me.

At first I didn’t bite. I just shouted and railed and smashed and kicked at her making me suffer.

Waking up in the Southern General to the words, “don’t revive the junkie,” two weeks after my 25th birthday changed everything.

I wanted to be the da’. I wanted to be tha da’ splashing his wee fella. I wanted to complete a we’ans childhood. Camping, cycling, Scalextric. The heart attack and the second class NHS citizenry took me out of my oblivion revolution.

I asked for help. I wanted to be clean. I wanted to be something. I wanted to be part of the consumerist struggle and own things.

The death that was cold-turkey – the pain – the drama – gave way to nothingness. A being I can only now describe as “not being.”

After that, I was discharged from hospital. Back to the piss stained, rubbish strewn hovel.
It was months before I found a will beyond “being.” Beyond eating the little I needed to survive and then wanting something more, something other than day time TV, beans and toast.
I met a cousin who was giving up her council flat in Milngavie and she allowed me to move in. When she left her flat, it was passed on to me. It was a life saver, for a while.
I managed to get a job in a local café, and with the small earnings and some top ups from the brew, I began my crawl to acceptance and to a real life.

Susanne used to come in to the café. At first I didn’t notice her, but then she said things like, “I prefer your white trainers,” or, “I saw you in the Shelter shop looking at books yesterday,” and stuff.

She was attractive, in a left-field sort of way. She had long black, straight-ish hair that she obviously cut herself. Sometimes it sat at strange gelled angles. Her face was really pale, and freckled and she stared at you with pale blue eyes which followed your every move and changed her expression with every word you said, depending on her interpretation of your emotion.

Sometimes she dressed in scruffy, worn denims and teeshirts, sometimes in strange skirt/ stripey socks and flowery blouse combinations.

And some days she came in and looked at you as if she didn’t know you, a sad smile was all she gave in acknowledgement to anything you said to her.

Our first date was to the pictures. We went to see “Avatar.” She cried. In fact she was inconsolable. I left her to a taxi and she said she would see me tomorrow.

I didn’t and damn, she hadn’t given me a phone number.

She came back to the café around about a fortnight later.

“Hi!” she said as if there had not been a moment between Avatar and now, “d’ye wanna go to the park near where I stay?” She opened her plastic bag and showed me the bottle of Merlot and two plastic cups.

“OK.”

This was her way of showing me where she spent most of her time. Gartnavel Royal Hospital.
“Do ye know, it used to be called the Mental Asylum. I’m mental.”

I got to understand her condition. Some days she wanted to live so badly and madly, she wouldn’t meet me. Some days the medication gave her, and us normality. Some days, weeks, she wouldn’t come to see me.
But I loved her.

-----
After our fish and chips, and bottle of Merlot, I walked her back up the hill to the hospital. She stayed in one of the units behind the old Victorian building, but she never wanted me to go beyond it. We kissed and se promised when she felt good, we would be together forever. The doctors said she could well live in the community, when she felt well enough. My flat was ready for that eventuality.

“I hope the game goes well. Phone me!”

I had managed to get some decent second hand furniture together and I painted the hall and kitchen in her favourite purple. When she came to stay for the odd night, we would play Kate Bush CD’s and fall asleep entwined on the couch. We were both happy.

“A Swedish Vampire?”
“Aye. A wee girl. Some wee fella has fallen for her. I’ll phone you later.” And she hung up.

She didn’t phone.

I watched the game and fell asleep on the couch waiting for the call.

Then I phoned the next morning.

It is a strange sensation. I am standing… or floating… I don’t know which, here on the Erskine Bridge, reading cards left by junkies and family friends over the past week. They think Celtic sum up my existence. They didn’t. She did. And when they told me she had been found in the pond, her wrists slashed deeply, and her beautiful freckled face drained of life, I knew the golden life was not for me. I knew the £15000 would go to someone else.

She smiles and takes my hand, “We’ll be happy now.”

I smile and we dissolve.

The Zinn Library - Grand Opening!

2011-04-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

Click on the image below for the catalogue for this project (my submission "Grainne's Soldier" features).

In the hearts of people today there is a deep longing for peace. When the true spirit of peace is thoroughly dominant, it becomes an inner experience with unlimited possibilities. Only when this really happens - when the spirit of peace awakens and takes possession of men's hearts, can humanity be saved from perishing.
-- Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

Saturday April 16th and Sunday April 17th beginning at 12pm SLT

2 days of poetry, music, and the arts

Meet the artists of the exhibit

Saturday 6pm SLT

Sunday 2pm SLT

Check the calendar for specific event times.

The Beach

2011-04-11T07:28:00.000-07:00

Unexpected journey

2011-04-11T07:22:00.000-07:00

A Place in the Forest...

2011-04-11T07:14:00.001-07:00

Parenthesis

2011-04-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

Parenthesis Salt Window

A place by the Loch

A place by the Loch 2

A place by the Loch 3

A place by the Loch 4

A place by the Loch 5

Be Careful...

Death on the beach...

Leaving Ireland

Leaving Ireland 2

Leaving Ireland 3

Leaving Ireland 4

Leaving Ireland 5

Leaving Ireland 6

Death on the Hill

Death on the Hill 2

Death on the Hill 3

Death on the Hill 4

Death on the Hill 5

Death on the Hill 6

Death on the Hill 7

Salt window parenthesis

Me in SL

2011-03-28T14:50:00.001-07:00

My SL profile: HERE

Grainne's Soldier

2011-03-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

For the background to this book, please scroll down.

Click on each page to read, and then backspace to come back.

The voice I have used in this fictional account was influenced by many people I have known through the years I lived in Northern Ireland.

I was brought up in South (County) Down in Northern Ireland and lived through the bulk of the troubles. In fact, the first cease-fire came just as I left to live in Scotland in my mid-twenties. I visit my old home town five or six times a year, so some people would say I have never left! But the few hundred miles west is a step outside the mindset of sectarianism that permeates the province at all levels (whereas sectarianism in Scotland, although existent in the Central Belt, and in particular the west, I would argue, is not just as embedded in the structural social systems across the classes).

The sights and sounds and smells in Grainne’s story are informed by my experiences. Although having been brought up in the “Ring of Steel” – an area of Northern Ireland that was allegedly protected to a higher degree than the rest - the terror was at times driven in in car bombs and shootings. And of course, my life, especially as I got older and had independence, went beyond the ring of steel into some of the areas where one side or the other was more prevalent.

I spent time amongst Nationalists, Unionists, Republicans and Loyalists; some of the people I grew up with and drank with were witness to and took part in some of the most heinous crimes of those dark days between 1969 and the late 1990’s.

And I had and still have, superb friends across the sectarian divides.

Sectarianism and bigotry are the two enemies of sense. When one “side” feels superiority over another, whether that is by way of “true knowledge or way,” politically or religiously, then things get dangerous.

The sectarianism and the callous murders of Catholics (and the infamous murders of the Miami Showband in Northern Ireland, known as “The Day the Music died”) carried out by the vicious Glenanne gang , led directly to me hearing my first bomb while in the living room of my ageing grandmother, and witnessing firsthand the grief of a family, my family, as victims of the travesty that was to become known as the “Troubles.” This same sectarianism and disregard for life led to the death a school friend, a few years my junior, when a car bomb was left outside the shop owned by a family friend while the eleven year old waited for his father to collect him after a day at school.

During my childhood I was caught up in the aftermath of bombings (and on one occasion was a few hundred yards away from one that exploded, but thankfully on that occasion, property was the only casualty), found ordinance and was caught up in various incidents of the troubles. I was told my best friend was a Catholic, not knowing there was any difference, and then spent a lot of our time together trying to gauge differences. I concluded “they” liked Cream Soda and “we” liked Sarsaparilla. I waited behind curtains, looking worriedly out into the night when the local TV news reported “incidents” in Belfast, and my father was late home from his building work in the heart of the troubled city. I was subjected to phone calls from nasty, vicious people who did not want my father working in “their” area. I was beaten up for my beliefs, shunned by “one side” because of my mixing with “the other” and had my ignorance challenged by inspiring people.

My experiences in Northern Ireland have led me towards left politics – the politics of fairness – and also towards unity with as many comrades, brothers and sisters I can in the fight against those who use their money and power to trod us down. In RL I am a member of the non-sectarian left unity party, the Scottish Socialist Party and I am a founding member of SL Left Unity.

This story was written by me a good few years ago, but I had placed it HERE. Trill Zapatero, a friend in Second Life, read the piece and asked if she could create a book for it to be placed in Second Life's "Zinn Library." (I'll blog about the library another time - it's official opening will be soon!) So - if you are in second life, take yourself to the Four Bridges Project and go in to the Zinn Library, and thanks to Trill and Millay, you can read this as well as many other books. It is a great honour to be associated in this small way with Howard Zinn - and I thank Trill from the bottom of my heart.

Zinn, if you do not know of him, is well worth looking up. He was a great man - and one who has helped open up real discussion in the US about real politics again. In 2009, he said,

"Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."^[53]

Virtual Writers 15 minute Dash - today's word was -

2011-03-24T05:53:00.000-07:00

Martyr

My mum has to buy nappies for me. But we can only go to the big shop once a week. Because it takes so long getting there. So I wear torn sheets until we go.

The journey is not far. We can see the shop from our window. But the diggers and men with hammers came and built the fence and then the wall, so we have to drive a long way to get to the gate.

When we go to the gate, we are taken to a room where my mother is stripped and so am i. Our car is searched and my pram is taken apart and rebuilt.

When we go to the shop, mum takes us to the café first, and we eat and laugh, but mum can’t hide worry.
I see her look across the wall to our house and then to me. She says, “one day, we will be able to walk here.”

I laugh.

--ooOOoo--

Screaming. Running. We run into the playground, just as the burning, white stuff drops from the sky. My friend drops to the floor. Her clothes and hair are in flames. My teacher falls on her, rolling on her, trying to smother the flames, but she is on fire now too. I stand frozen.

--ooOOoo--

My Grandfather, a doctor, sits in the darkened room.
“We need to leave here, Grandfather.”
“I can’t. this is my home. I paid for it by my work. Your Grandmother lived and laughed here. Your mother played and learned how to be, here.”
“The bulldozers are going to come through, Grandfather.”

“Let them.”

The shots ring out. I hear the siren. The bulldozers awaken.
I stand and nod.

I walk out of the house into the mud and hellish landscape.

I stand in front of the huge, armoured bulldozer.

A soldier shouts, “Go! These houses must be levelled!”
I look up and shout, “This is my grandfather’s house.”
He shout’s back, “Out of the way terrorist scum!”

“Did your father tell you that?”
“Everyone knows you are all terrorist scum.”
“Did your father tell you that?”
“My father told me about you terrorists, yes, “ he shouts.

“My father was martyred by your father.”
I lie down in the mud.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This word just came as i visited a new piece that Trill Zapatero is working on in SL - a Palestinian Wall and it was influenced by her (and those who are involved in this project) incredible work.

Entrophy

2011-03-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is another post about my walks through Mugdock (I hope to post more photos as the seasons change, so you can see the beautiful changes in the Scottish landscape).

I was thinking of the TV programme "Wonders of the Universe," the programme featuring the superb Professor Brian Cox. As a teacher, he is superb. The whole programme is made in a beautiful way - with both amazing graphics and simple explanations to the most complex theories (in the UK, you can watch the programmes HERE - I am not sure about the rest of the world).

One of the programmes dealt with "entrophy" - and the arrow of time. The conclusion was beautiful and has stuck with me since I watched it just over two weeks ago. Cox said that the Universe will finally entrophize into nothing but light particles and radiation (that is what I understand by it). This will happen eventually, but he explained while sitting on a beach, that if he was to count the years out using molecules onto his hand, the amount of years in time would be many more years in the future than there are molecules in the Universe...

How does this apply to my walk in Mugdock? Well, today was perhaps the first real day of spring. I
went out wearing only a cardigan and a teeshirt, and not far into my walk I had to take off the cardigan. This was a far cry from only days ago when I was wrapped up in my winter gear!

Conformity means death. Only protest gives a hope of life - Bertrand Russell 1962

The teeshirt is a slogan one. It says, "Conformity means death. Only protest gives a hope of life - Bertrand Russell 1962."

I really think our society is entrophising. The rate at which it entrophises is stepped up when the Tories and Republicans come in to power. There were attempts in the early-mid 20th century to control this entrophy, and indeed reverse it; but the greed encapsulated by Reagonomics and Thatcherism has brought us further down the line towards a society in which the only growth is in the bank balance of those who exploit.

Bang!... down goes another Truffula tree making that Onceler richer and richer...

Growth in knowledge and understanding and in empathy and togetherness has been stopped in its tracks. We are all conforming under the false notion of "trickle down" and that the people who walked over many in order to enrich themselves will throw scraps from their giant tables for us to fight over. On another blog I am quoted as saying, "Plot Tracer: "Our society needs to be more caring. Trusting in the markets to provide does not work - it is a leap of faith as big as hoping the Sun God will provide cash under our carpets"

...and it is this faith in Sun gods and the Gods of the markets and the God of wealth and competition that is slowly wearing away our society and our togetherness and our love and empathy for those around us.

When the Universe ends, what will be left will be without form... but will it be without intelligence? Will something have grown from the entrophy? what will it think of the time when other intelligences thought it a good idea to devour all to enrich a few "three score years and ten," and impoverish most.

In Mugdock, in the undergrowth, and on the hills, and in the seasons, the death and destruction of nature bears new life and new purpose. There are hidden ruins being eaten by new life and beauty. The rotting beams of a building are even hard to see, but they are serving a new purpose. They are not supporting a floor, but they are supporting life.

I'm told that some of these old buildings were placed here to support a local mine; but some where built during WW2 to protect Clydebank 70 years ago.

The buildings at the Gun Sites have been preserved in their ruins. I guess for years after the war, people wanted to build the new society of free healthcare and education and industry working for all; and the symbols of war and competition and the old entrophising society were to be hidden and forgotten. But it is always good to remember - though not worship - the past. Life has not been allowed to completely envelop the gun sites, but the brickwork is allowed to crumble and water allowed to flood and the wood allowed to rot.

I think when the new society is won through those fighting the conformity thrust upon us by these "Market god" freaks and hope returns, the citadels and cathedrals of selfish wealth hording and poverty should be allowed to return to nature perhaps in the slow, "remember" way the Gun sites have been.

The Lorax in the Dr Suess book, leaves a statue to what was lost by the chopping down of the Truffula Trees and devastation of the world of the Onceler to make the useless thneeds which bears the only word, "Unless."

Unless we stop the entrophising right wing greedy bastards, our society will crumble and fold. In nature, when the old is replaced with the new, the old have left enough for the new birth to feed on and breathe. Today's society is not doing that. The history of capitalism, and indeed the speeded up capitalism created by Reagan and thatcher will become known as the years of the greedy people who ate everything, leaving nothing for their children.

Perhaps the epitaph for capitalism and it's citadels and cathedrals will be "Unless."

I wrote this five years ago. It still stands...

2011-03-13T04:56:00.000-07:00

Ten Years Ago Today

(originally appeared HERE )

I know exactly what I was doing this day ten years ago. I had just turned 30 and was taking a year out of Uni to work off some debt. I was working in a huge hotel and living in the hotel living quarters. On the morning of the 13th March, I was having a lie in – I was on a day off. The night before I had been out on the tear with my two friends from Euskadi (the Basque Country) and a few others who worked with us. We had drank calimotxo and smoked dope and had listened to Pulp, Oasis, McAlmont and Butler, Garbage, Sleeper, the La’s, Supergrass et al. We managed to sober Sharkey up enough to go in for his shift as Head Porter and Jamie was in trouble again for mixing with us low life – Managers were not supposed to drink with the staff.

I can’t explain that time easily enough. It was a time of drink, drugs and total madness. Someone tried to burn down the big house we were living in on a number of occasions. I was introduced to speed one mad, amazing night. Onditz, Aitor, Jamie and I travelled around the west coast of Scotland in his dad’s Mercedes and were absolutely out of our faces every night – Jamie passed out one night and pulled the most incredible face during his blackout. Onditz, Aitor and I laughed until we cried for hours and smoked his weed. We ate from the hotel fridges thanks to a knowledge of where the keys were kept and I introduced Aitor to George Best.

An incredible time. One of the most fantastic of my life. A time that came about by accident. A time that changed me forever. A time that wiped away most of what had happened previously, including having my heart ripped apart on one occasion by my “pragmatism” and on another by a blonde. A time when I had long hair and decided to cut it in order to get out of the accounts department and into portering. 10 years ago. My hair is temporarily long again – a ten year anniversary. This experience was the culmination of the madness that had started when I gave up my job in Northern Ireland and decided to get educated. A culmination of two years in college drinking and arguing with Big Ian and two years in Uni, drinking with Matt and arguing with everyone; a fantastic wedding and road trip with my cousin; smoking with Kev and loving everyone. Then getting pissed off with it all. So I left the student digs and moved in to Ledcameroch House.

I did night shifts as a night auditor, I did day shifts on reception. I worked in the accounts department and couldn’t get on with a boss who liked to hate so I asked for a transfer to portering where I carried cases, gave dollar bills back to Americans who thought they were actually tipping me with something valuable and had a joint or two out the back with a radge porter from Stirling.

I woke up on the 13th March earlier than I wanted to because someone was banging my door. I lived in a huge room – but it was dingy and dark. I had accumulated lots of furniture from my work as a cleaner during the summer in the University. Furniture rich students had left behind at the end of their student life. I had posters of Betty Blue; a woman smoking; an advertising poster from the Bad Ass Café in Templebar in Dublin and a “stop smoking” poster. I had an old TV a student had left behind. I had a small kettle my sister had bought me and lots of coffee and tea from the hotel. And someone through the haze was shouting, “Neil – telephone!”

Who the hell was phoning at this time? The person who was at my door told me it was my mum. What did she want?

I walked to the other side of the building in my pants and long teeshirt with the Indian saying, “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.”

“Hello?”

“Hello, Neil? I was just ringing to see what was going on. They’re shooting children.”

I didn’t understand. I thought she was saying that some other atrocity had happened in Northern Ireland. I was pissed off. If they had shot children, the peace would never come about. These “cease-fires” were a sham. We had all been fooled. I thought for a moment. If mum had thought it important enough to phone at this time in the morning it must be close to home.

“Where? Not Banbridge?”

“No. There. Dunblane. In a school.”

“What?”

“There have been children killed. There.”

I remember someone walking past me. I remember asking them did they know anything about it. They didn’t.

It was around 10am. The children were just in the school really. Just changed for gym. Then the darkness had taken over that man. Those wee souls left never having experienced life beyond learning to change and writing their names.

I could tell you more about the rest of the week. How the journalists took over the wee village. How some of them treated the place like a war zone. How they insulted and broke people who had relatives caught up in the hell. I could tell you about the stars who came to the hotel and strutted around as if they were doing something more than showing up. I could tell you of the exploitative management who asked people to work for nothing on the back of what had happened and made people feel guilty if they mentioned pay for the day (not me – I told them directly I wanted my pay for the day given directly to the Dunblane fund). I could tell you of the thousands of pounds the hotel made. Of the children I met. Of the wee girl in crutches who had been shot in the Gym and who had the most angelic smile when she recounted meeting the Celtic Football team. Of the heart ripped out of a wee village.

That time changed my life.

Today's "Dash"

2011-03-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

The Return. by Plot Tracer

I imagined returning here for many years. In my imagination, the place would be as alive as it had been when we used it. The door where we, the factory mafia, used to smoke. Used to watch the imaginary cricket. The place where we used to hide from the bosses. Where I met you.

You walk ahead of me. We approach the building, now alive with ivy and dripping slates. I imagine the mafia standing, some engrossed in conversation about the previous nights football. Some talking about the latest terrorist atrocity; you and I gazing into each other’s eyes, the world disappearing from about us.
You don’t stop to look at our meeting place, our old courting place. You push ahead… towards the forest. I can’t keep up. The mafia dissolve. I know quite a few have passed, their time gone. The important work they did here done.

“Hey! Wait!”

You don’t turn. You push on and disappear into the winter trees. I can’t run. The ground is uneven; the old tarmac is pitted and brambled. My legs are not those of my mafiosa self. The building is decrepit and I am too.

I see you standing with them. Shadows waving. Letting me know the football conversations go on. I just want to gaze into your eyes again.

But you are gone.

The word today was Mafia. This is what I wrote in the alloted 15 minutes:

If you want to take part - why not visit! - HERE

Caladbolg

2011-03-03T12:54:00.000-08:00

I walked towards the huge stockaded hill. She walked ahead, the gold in her hair braids glinted in the sun and the copper arrow tips shining from her leather shoulder strung quiver. What did her own people think of her?

She was protecting me. I was here to transform their world. I was here to show them how they could control the future with bellows and rocks and fire.

I could feel their eyes upon me as I strode through the huge wooden gates. I understood their suspicions. My craft was magic to them and I could be another magician come to exploit. I wasn’t, but I had to assure them of that.

What I was going to do was going to change this settlement beyond recognition. It would change how they ate, farmed, hunted and fought. But it would also change their perception of value and it could lead them- or some of them- to become exploiters. Controlling the magic was important. But more important was to take the magic out of it and make the magic disappear and become common knowledge.

Connected to this unveiling would be the even more problematic idea of ownership. My tribe owned and controlled something they would need. And we did so in order to ensure it stayed in the right hands. But there was something I was aware of that they weren't yet. They also controlled something that many people were going to need and I had to tread carefully to ensure they would also be as generous as we.

I loved these settlements. As yet untouched by greed and competition and kings. Unlike some of the places I visited all over our world. Unlike the places where the magic was worn by kings and queens in order to keep hierarchies and serfs. I saw their community as how it should be- as it used to be before the magic. When all that was needed lay all around us. Nothing was hidden. But I had watched as the magic spread and enslaved and killed. Knowledge is power and some people enjoy power. Most prefer to share and live life together. But the small amount of those people who like to control were slowly taking over our world, and my tribe knew it was because of us and our magic. We vowed to spread the knowledge and kill the greed.

She showed me into the smoky central roundhouse. The elders sat around the fire. And elders they were... not kings nor queens nor warriors. Which of them would start a dynasty? It was the dynastical ones I had to learn not to trust. I had to try to identify this kind.

Their smiles were genuine. They seemed to trust me. Perhaps they had not come across the magic before? This could be the case... I had met untouched tribes before and this tribe was across the sea from the magical tribes.

The woman signalled me to sit. She knew about the magic. She had travelled beyond their houses. She had traded. I could see they had magical objects... knives and pins - small things. Perhaps a trader had found something of value here. Cloth or food. Perhaps she had returned with these things. But she was the only one who knew the existence of knowledge. To them her golden hair and unbreakable arrow tips were magic. This is why when I had spoken on the boat that she had invited me here. She had acted to protect me from some others when we had arrived on the beach. When they had acted to protect their magic and their power – the magic I wanted to give away; to share. Two lay dead and I knew I must find another sea crossing on my way back.

I sat. I knew I must not speak of my purpose until I was asked. They saw me as a visitor and they must share food with me. They must be hospitable. Make me comfortable.

One of the elders arose and with a flint knife, cut meat from the sizzling beast on the wooden stake. He placed it on a wooden platter and passed this to me first. The beast was large, and I knew this was an honour to be sharing it. This kind of beast was usually not killed until the winter shortage.

I bowed my thanks and lifted some of the meat and passed the platter back. He bowed and then the platter was passed first to the woman and then the other elders.
A large beaker was passed around. Their drink was made from elderflowers and honey. I drank deeply and the beaker was passed around.

After the platter and the beaker passed three times, one of the elders, a woman with hair as grey as granite cleared her throat and started to sing. Her song was about the tribe surviving a harsh winter when their stores had been spoiled when a huge storm had ripped the roof off and more rain had fallen in a night than usually did in a year. The song told of children dying and people fighting over food… and then it told of a woman, with golden braids, finding the tribe while passing through the land, drawing in the soil and teaching them a system that would save the tribe. She showed them how they could survive on sharing the little they had and by finding foods buried in the soil or by eating animals hidden in trees. She showed them a way to store food that would keep it safe from such disasters and she showed them magical tools made from materials that were not brittle flint.

Her tale ended as the woman left, promising that on her return she would give them knowledge of how riches could be made for all and now she was here with a magician.

I smiled when she pointed at me. I knew this was my time to speak.

I thanked her and I thanked the elders for allowing me the time to speak with them. I thanked them for the food and drink and I promised them that what I was going to tell them would mean all of their women would have golden hair and all of their hunters would have arrows that could be used over and over again and would pierce the skin of the toughest beast.

I untied my linen roll and took out my sword. They gasped. I could tell they had never seen anything like this before. This sword, in the tribes where magic was held by the few, was worth more than this tribe could produce in food in a year. As they passed it amongst themselves, I could see they saw it as they would their holy relics. This razor sharp and sheened killing machine was something they could never even have imagined before. Even the woman held it in awe. This was the result of the magic. This magic was what made power and wealth.

I took out the rock. It was bigger than my fist and heavier than three normal stones of its size. I passed it around and they gazed at it, felt it, smelled it and tasted it. This stone – the source of part of the metal was from the lands of my people. To make this sword would need a stone they had on their lands as well. It needed both stones.

“Our tribes should share.”

They nodded. I could see the kings and queens and I could see the people who wanted to share. The round table outnumbered would be thrones.

“I will teach you how I pulled the sword from the stone.”

Dash - "Calibrate"

2011-03-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

No Calibration Necessary by Plot Tracer

I adjusted the instrument. This was the time to act. Re-adjustment was necessary. Re-calibration could not be allowed to happen.

The money I had made by readjusting was incredible. The money I would make by the following re-adjustment would be immense. I would be the richest person in the world. I would have more money , and therefore power, than most small countries! And all of this would be paid for by the idiots who craved a “normal” life. Those who washed their cars on a Sunday and got up on Monday mornings and sat in “rush hours,” dreaming of lottery wins. Little did ordinary Joe know that what the system would need to work for them rather than me, would be recalibration. Capitalist readjustment would take more from them and give it to me…

But. Across the world something new. Ordinary people were tweeting, facebooking – second lifing – “uncut”. UKuncut, USuncut and SLUNCUT were calling for me to pay my taxes. They were calling for me to keep my money in the country I used as my playground. They were saying it was unfair of me to play the system to breaking point and then screw them in order to stick the bandaid across the gaps so I could make more money… people are questioning the pyramid built to keep them poor and me rich. Questioning the portrayal of freedom as something in which I can travel, my money can travel, while they stay in their trailers, flats or semi’s and if they are lucky can step off the grindstone for a fortnight on an expensive beach.

Well fuck them. “We are all in this together.” Except me. Cuts will not be made to services/ hospitals/ policing – instead we will re-adjust. We will “make savings” and their taxes can flow in my direction.

I sit here on my yacht in the Mediterranean; protected by my on board missile system and minions scrabbling for the scraps I throw to them to ensure I pay no tax and ensure the media do not question my riches and I watch the news as the poor fight for “democracy” in the middle east. Fuck them – their new democracies will be brought into line.

Recalibration will not be necessary.

The Second Life writing group, Virtual Writers, run an event most days called a "Dash". This is a kind of "write in" at which you are given a word or theme and have fifteen minutes to write something. Todays theme was the word "Calibrate."

Milkwood - a place to write in SL

Spring?

2011-03-01T06:57:00.000-08:00

Spring is on it's way. Really.

Here in Scotland, it comes a little later than the rest of the UK. Buds take longer to open and green takes a longer time to diversify here.

There were two signs of spring today. One was the snowdrops and the other was midgees. If you haven't been to Scotland and have not experienced the midgee, well, think mosquito without the danger of death but with all the biting power.

Midgees...

My back was quite sore this morning. I went for a meeting with my boss to talk about returning to work. The thing about it is this. I can walk, but need to stop lots. The dog doesn't like the fact I can't trudge through Mugdock or where-ever without loads of stopping. He comes back and barks at me to get a move on! I'm glad he isn't my boss.

I have used the stops to look and photograph. I am so grateful for my wee camera on my phone. It isn't as versatile as the superb electronic SLR's you can buy today (my photographic background is with film and slr's and darkrooms), but because I haven't got a darkroom anymore, nor know how to photoshop, I have to take time to frame and look for proper light (though I am sure some more professional photographers than I would beg to differ looking at my snaps!). The light today was diffuse and grey. Although not perfect photography weather, it was still and warm and Scottish.

Blessed

2011-02-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

I wrote this in February 2006... originally it was HERE

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/4316154.stm

Back in November, I wrote something that may seem a bit facetious.  “Poor George Best.  I hope he really did have as good a life as he used to boast – I hope the pain at the end was worth it all.”

George Best was another icon of my youth.  I was never interested in football, but I knew who George Best was.  I had grown up with the “Cookstown Sizzle” adverts he used to be on.  My dad is a huge football fan.  He played for various teams in his youth including Bangor , but had to stop because of injury.  “Georgie Best” is who every lad I knew wanted to be when we played our street games of football.  George Best was someone who even I could see was talented. 

I remember when I lived in Dunblane in Perthshire, a Basque friend and I had an all night drinking session.  After a boozy day in the pub we went back to the hotel living quarters we were staying in (we worked in the Stakis Hydro, now the Hilton I believe) with a few bottles of wine, a few beers and something to smoke.  I can pinpoint the evening.  It was 22 May 1996.  I can pinpoint it because it is in Best’s Autobiography, “Blessed”.  The BBC had devoted an entire evening’s programming in honour of his turning 50.  I remember my mate, Aitor, being amazed as we watched the TV.  He hadn’t heard of Best.  He was shocked that he hadn’t because the George’s football was amazing.  He watched, stunned, as footballers such as Pele recounted what they thought of Bests footballing skills.  Pele rated him as the best player in the world.  And what amazed Aitor even more was that he was from the backstreets of Belfast .  A little corner of the world renowned for things much more sinister than sport.

I think Best did have mostly a good life.  He had found a way to escape the pressure around him.  I think the guy was damaged by the attention he got as “El Beatle”.  He was a teenager when all of this attention started and he was part of the ‘60’s culture – though like most Northern Irish people caught up in that, he hit the booze rather than the drugs.  He went from the fifth Beatle, with their look and taste in clothing and with as fanatical a following, to an almost Che look alike in the seventies.  I think leaving his family at an early age damaged him.  I think some of the people around him, living off him may have damaged him.  But I think Best was ultimately a shy person.  He says in his book that he ran from things by drinking.  But I think Best wanted to embrace life and everything around him and the way he could do that was by drinking.  Without the drink he would have shrunk away from the highlife and the TV and the newspapers.  With the booze he could command a place in a circle of friendly fun.  I wonder who his heroes were?

I think one of the things about alcohol addiction is that it is not just physically addictive.  It also helps people relax.   Not just relax about what is happening around them, but also relax about themselves.  Personal shortcomings can be forgotten.  Who you are can be replaced by who you want to be.  It helps people act.  I wonder what the statistics for alcoholism in the entertainment business is? 

I think it is the relaxation part of alcohol that I am attracted to.  I like to sit in a pub with a few friends and blether unselfconsciously.  It isn’t a physical addiction with me (though I’m not denying that that is something that I would not be immune to).  I like getting outside myself.  In the past I have been on benders that are days long.  I recognise it when George recounts his mates saying they had drank as much as him – but him knowing otherwise.  I remember being at a party, for example, and waking up on the couch in a house where I knew the people I was going to have to talk to were extremely confident people.  I got up and sourced a bottle of Vodka and mixed it with milk and boy did the party continue!  I was about 21 at the time.

When I lived in Banbridge, County Down, I knew the all nighter pubs and by the time I left to go to Uni (at the age of 27) I rarely went out on a Friday or Saturday night and came home within 24 hours.  When I went to Uni, I found all night pubs in Stirling , though I didn’t need to as as a student, someone was having a party somewhere.  I think what saved me was hashish – I became quite addicted to that and I didn’t like to drink TOO much when I was smoking!  My alcohol intake lessened as my uni career developed and it dropped further when I met my wife. 

So George, there for the grace of God, Dog or whatever, go I.  I am definitely not as in love with the booze as I was in my twenties, but I guess I was falling for it again coming home from work on a Thursday or Friday looking forward to a 6 pack of Stella or a bottle and a half of red wine.

I will drink again, but gone are the 24 hour sessions.  Gone are the nights trying to find somewhere to continue the party.  Gone are the nights sitting in front of the telly until the drink was drank.

I don’t have the talent of George Best – the man WAS a genius in his youth.  I don’t have that talent to “squander”.  People talk of Best squandering his talent.  I don’t think he did.  His talent is there to enjoy now.  I wish Best hadn’t have died at 59.  I wish his death wish had not been so strong.  I wish he had have found other ways to relax his head. 

Go to the BBC site I have linked above.  Watch the videos.  Buy or borrow his autobiography, “Blessed”. Spend a few pounds on Itunes on the Colin Hay video, “My Brilliant Feat” – the song he penned about Best that was re-released after his death and in aid of a charity set up in his name.  And watch with a lump in your throat for the boy from Belfast .

Birthday Walk 2011

2011-02-27T12:08:00.000-08:00

Loch Katrine...

(Map etc HERE )

Proposal for SL day of events for all SL groups...

2011-02-24T11:06:00.000-08:00

... in protest against the "austerity measures" - HERE

Destruction, decay and painkillers...

2011-02-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

I have been off work after falling on ice just before the New Year. I fractured three vertebrae. One of the things that suffered during this time, was my walking. I have tried to keep walking with the dog, but the pain afterwards is not so good, so walks tend to be short.

One of the places I love to go with the dog, is Mugdock Country Park, which is just five minutes up the road from me. I decided that today I would give it a go, so loaded up on pain killers and off I went.

Mugdock is a place where it is difficult to take a bad photo. There is just so many beautiful things and places.

One of the most beautiful things in the world is decay. In cities, when old buildings fall out of use and are taken by nature, or brought down to make way for something new, I love to stop and watch or photograph. This isn't destruction. Decay is renewal. It is some wonderful thing coming to the end of it's usefulness and making way for something new or better. This is the same in the forest.

I don't think the same of people though. I feel that mankind must conquer death, as it is waste.

Mugdock has a good few old, decaying buildings, and some that have been given new life. Craigend Castle may be beyond saving, though I like to think it could be rebuilt. The ruin is slowly being reclaimed by the forest; by the dripping and climbing illuminescent green life.

Have you ever seen the film (fillum - I am re-claiming my Northern Irish accent), Avatar? I have watched it once. The scenes within the forest are beautiful. The colours glow. I really do believe some people are so alienated from the world, they believe the glowing colours of nature are only science fiction. They aren't. A walk in the Campsie hills or in the Narnia of Mugdock is Pandora. Stopping, listening and looking, you can hear her speak.

In the Park, there are a number of Lochs. Today they were rain speckled and hazed and blurred.

The dog doesnt really appreciate my stopping our walk to take a photograph or rest or look.

We are back in the house, dried off, dog snoozing in his basket. I have my pot of coffee, more pain killers and flicking between BBC News 24 and Aljazeera. The destruction of the tories shining through the flickering window.