cherokoffdotcom

Glib statement maybe, but the portents are not good.

Never mind the soothing platitudes from Trump in his acceptance speech, this is the beginning of the big reverse.

What began here with the Brexit vote, and the return to a more divided and divisive Europe, so with the US election result, and a return to a more fragmented, isolationist world.

There is nothing in this latest result that is positive. And those that will be running the most powerful country in the world from behind the cardboard cut-out that is Trump are the ones to really worry about.

This will be the most anti-progressive administration within a supposedly developed country. There are no brakes. There is nothing to stop the divisions that were slowly healing becoming ever wider.

And once again, the outcome is based on lies. More blatant and more oft-repeated than in our referendum, but visible – and totally irrelevant.

The post-truth world has surely arrived. Those disillusioned in this country preferred to blame Europe for their ills, rather than austerity-happy Tories. The disillusioned in the US rightly blame the political establishment, but the wrong ones.

The Republicans have blocked every attempt to improve the lot of the Trump supporter, and yet they have handed their persecutors the reins, across the board.

The ripples from this have yet to really get going, but it echoes across the globe, all those who feel abandoned or ignored will look to pile blame on the innocent – because they are different – and the world reverts to all the intolerance and separateness that blighted so many lives for too long.

I wish I had a religion to which I could pray. I wish I had enough faith in enough people to see this as a temporary blip that will speedily be washed away.

But the power has shifted, and not to the people who felt disenfranchised, but to a more despotic new élite, less controllable, less compromising, less humanitarian.

This is a dark road. I wonder where the light is.

Some very interesting opposites have arisen of late, instigated by 2 very different, but assumed independent legal agencies.

In the US, a the head of the FBI throws a rusty monkey wrench into the final days of the presidential election by re-igniting a non-story of emails not related to Clinton, except by indirect association, and may create an international catastrophe of a result. By mistake – who knows. But odd timing, and odder release of the information.

Meanwhile, in the country of one of the older and more established formalised democratic and legal systems, three high court judges have, at the very least, loosened a few nuts on the Brexit runaway wagon.

Whilst I have no direct involvement in the varied nefarious political activities over the ocean, except abject fear, what is happening here needs a reality check.

Let us consider what we mean by democracy, or at least the UK version. This is a parliamentary democracy. Once every 5 years we, well some of us, troop down to our local polling station, put an X in a box with an extremely thick pencil, then go home and invariably moan about the result.

That result produces a motley collection of individuals, 650 of them, who trot off to Westminster on a reasonably regular basis, and make legislative decisions on our behalf. And that is the important phrase – on our behalf.

Now, they talk to us, some more than others, and they even listen. Again, some more than others. But in the end they sit around on leather benches and make decisions for us, or against us, and hold the executive, the governing party’s ministers of state, to account.

That is the system we have. Not perfect, far from it, and one that sidelines the majority of the population at any one time as power is based on first past the post rather than straight numerical majority. But that is where we are.

And the one phrase that you hear more than any other? The sovereignty of parliament. That was the base of the Brexit campaign, ‘We want our country back’. ‘Too much EU regulation reducing parliamentary sovereignty’.

So, now you want to change the rules. Suddenly, sovereignty lies with a small cabal selected on the basis of expediency, amiability, loyalty to an internal faction. Now, all the decisions will be made behind closed doors, with no checks and balances by those we chose to act on our behalf.

Sorry chaps, but to me that is not democracy. It is dictatorship. And it will not wash.

And one more point on the ‘democratic’ definition. Referendums are not democratic binding votes. They are opinion polls. And this one was an opinion held by 37% of the electorate. Which means that 63% didn’t agree. Which means that it doesn’t happen.

Now that IS democracy.

 

Systems, countries, communities, people. Cracks are becoming more visible every day. The fractures are growing, becoming more entrenched, less accessible to easy remedies.

And I stand in the shower and cry, as a Turkish surgeon explains why he has organised a charity to provide education for refugee Syrian children who have had no schooling for 5 years.

He described them as a lost generation, and that echos across the globe. On every continent, people are being left, discarded, ignored or degraded by events and arguments, politicians, religious leaders or corporations, far away from their daily battles to survive.

Lines are drawn, prejudices and old animosities massaged and energised, disagreement becomes dispute becomes destruction. And the established protect their status, and the populations bear the cost.

And from fear, or for security, for familiarity, for solidarity, more and more separate, more and more on either side of the cracks. And the divides get wider.

And the fractures spread down to communities, groups, individual people. Each struggling with their own pressures, the daily chicane that life throws up.

There are too many little nags and pricks and slips in dealing with everyday circumstance without the overload that so many have to deal with from outside their orbits of influence.

And I see friends, families, coping, dealing, falling, rising and rising again. And each one inspires, and each one slides a slither of hope into the cracks. And there are clear moments of joy to lift hearts, and eyes to a clear sky.

And I feel ashamed for the flatness, and the lack of impetus. I watch bright souls surpass the fractures and move forward and upward. And I smile a little and step up.

And then a new harsh crack appears, and I wonder, again, whether there will ever be enough tiny shards of hope to fill the cracks.

And I don’t know. And maybe I never will.

 

 

Isn’t it comforting, after all the various helter skelter hiatuses (seems that a word) we have been through lately, that a sense of order is regained.

We are now back in a world we can all recognise. Back on track with the Tory train to honesty, decency, clarity, bullshit. Where did that last one come from?

‘ The Battle of Orgreave’, the one battle in our past that no-one seems keen to include in the history books with any degree of clarity. A cynic would suspect that, although preceded by positive indications that an enquiry was coming, the possibility of Cabinet minutes being made public that might cast a light on Thatcher’s heavy hand on the tiller, has resulted in a swift reversal.

NHS funding, and a public statement, by the Tory chair of the Health Committee, that the government has been misleading the public with the amounts allegedly being pumped in to maintain the service at some sort of functional level.

The obstinate and obdurate advance of benefit cuts, and changes to disability assessment and support, never mind how many stumble and fall through the cracks.

The dithering, prevaricating and delaying in bring refugee children to England from ‘The Jungle’, leaving unknown numbers still wondering where to sleep, where to find safety.

The inability to see the national culpability in the deaths and destruction wrought by arms supplied by us to Saudi Arabia, because ‘If we didn’t, someone else would’. Thanks Boris.

The new runway at Heathrow, even though there are so many reasons for it to be elsewhere, or not at all.

And so it goes on, and on.

And all within the governing party that is so factional in its support for these and other policies, that it makes UKIP look rational.

Keep your criticisms of others and their internal wranglings, Theresa. Have a look at the motley mass you are supposedly leading, accept that it isn’t a party fit to govern. Accept that the country deserves a proper choice.

Call an election now, before normal service destroys what little we have left.

 

Sometimes, and unfortunately more and more these days, it is hard to retain a positive view of the direction of the world.

Whilst there are countless examples of acts of selfless support, of humanitarian gestures and operations, to help and aid and relieve the suffering of so many in so many places, it does feel like trying to hear whispers at an Iron Maiden concert.

Whether it is world powers using other countries to stage their ongoing animosity, or internal factions too narrowly focussed on their ancient, or not so ancient, regional and religious disputes; in the middle are the innocents.

And the innocents will always bear the scars, and suffer the pain, and be expendable.

Collateral damage. Friendly fire. Pick your favourite innocuous phrase and see it used to plaster over a callous indifference for the damage done for the ‘greater’ battle of right versus wrong. Or right versus might. Or arrogant, unyielding stupidity.

Every day, leaders of every hue, at every level, ignore the endless lessons of history on the assumption that this time the result with be other than destruction, dispossession, despair.

And the sowing of seeds for future animosity and hatred. And disaster after disaster.

Yemen. Syria. Iraq.  Afghanistan. Nigeria. Somalia. Cameroon. Niger. Chad.  And on, and on.

Even the clearing of ‘The Jungle’ in Calais, one of the many results of all the other misery in the world, reveals callous prevarication by governments smug in their ineptitude.

And the young suffer most. And will bear the scars the longest. And provide the fuel for future conflagrations.

Human beings. We are all a part of humanity. And we are all we have.

And more and more we turn our backs, and look inwards, and close our eyes and our ears to the simple fact that there is no-one else but ourselves.

And the shame grows, and the anger grows, and the voices of humanity are drowned out by the sabre rattles of excuses long past their relevance.

When will we take a breath, take a step back, listen, and extend a hand and not a gun?

When men decide that maybe women should make the decisions perhaps?

When so many things jangle the nerves and raise the hackles, there is only one thing to do. Brain dump ranting! So here goes – in no particular order.

Jeremy Paxman, greying sage of the political system, commentator and aggravater of government practitioners over many years, and a puncturer of bullshit balloons. Well, it seems the pricker has become prick.

Last night he dismissed Hillary Clinton as an unsatisfactory candidate for the presidency. Not based on her years of experience in public service, not from misogyny or so he claims, and not because of overly close links to banks.

No, Hillary Clinton’s dismissal is due to her air of entitlement. Now, it strikes me that if you are going to stand for the presidency, you should exhibit a certain confidence in your own abilities. She has certainly done that, but not with the asinine arrogant stupidity of Trump.

It is, apparently, the ‘dynasty’ myth. Well Jeremy, can I call you Jeremy?, this is not a dynasty. This is not passing the baton from father to son, or father to daughter. This the acceptance that the more capable of a political partnership is now standing for office. The unfortunate thing is she lacks the one thing that Bill had, charisma.

But, Jeremy, do not dismiss her on a failure of public presentation, and disguise it as a dislike of the passing of power without outside influence, or you will begin to sound like the misogynist you aren’t.

Heathrow airport. A decision, at last. Well nearly at last. Ish. Even though our esteemed Theresa said it was a bad idea not many moons ago. Still, she is getting ever better at 180 degree turns without the whiplash.

And, if it means Boris will lie in front of a bulldozer, then maybe …..

No. My ire is reserved for dear Zac Goldsmith. Can I call you Zac? Honour to the fore, resigning because he said he would. To achieve what exactly? A by-election which he assumes – Oh that air of entitlement – he will win as evidence that he is right.

Except that he was elected on that platform in the last election, and he will not pay for the by-election, we will. But hey, his honour is at stake. So we must assume that all those who were against the Heathrow extension to resign, along with all those who have found reverse gear for, at best, short-term gains.

And are we really going hell for leather to expand our carbon footprint to blight the lives of future generations so that the UK can appear ‘open for business’, eventually. Maybe.

And that brings me to Gove. No first name, no particular respect offered. Well, not by me.

Having managed to alienate vast swathes of the educational sector, and working hard to do the same to the legal law and order arena, before presenting the dishonest face of Brexit whilst stabbing his life long chums in the back, he was finally dumped. Or so I thought.

Over the last two days, he has been given more polite, even obsequious air time than he ever deserved. He has had been provided with public airtime to pontificate, obfuscate, and explain away any ‘misjudgments’ from the past. All the while being treated like the elder statesman he will never be.

Brain dumped. Rant over. And breath.

This world is full of holes. Potentially, one for each of us. There are many who wander, drift, storm or stagger through life who never end up in a hole.

And others who are not so fortunate.

Sometimes you can see it coming, and swerve, or reverse, or jump, and sail on by. And sometimes you only know you fell in when you start to fail.

You can’t move forward. Progress, even the daily, repetitive flow of life, hits a slope too steep to gain your normal place in the world. And the sides slowly grow higher.

It would be easier if the hole was there, or clearly there, all the time. But sometimes you seem to be on flat, safe ground. you can walk, run, move through the world, and all is fine.

And you turn around to be faced by sides too high to see over.

And the bottom moves, and traps your feet, so that even when the slope is easy to manage, just a gentle incline, your feet can’t, won’t move. And you pull against the grip and the grip gets stronger.

And you look up, and the lip of hole is there. And you reach out, and if it stays then you can haul yourself up and out. And a hand reaches out to grip yours, and pull you to your feet, and hold you.

And for a while the hole is gone. And you walk forward again.

But it is tiring, forever fighting the holes. Endlessly climbing out and hoping, and relaxing, and moving forward.

And you turn around, and the sides are back, and steep and pressing in. And the faces above, calling, reaching down, can’t reach.

Until the next reprieve. And up you go again, climbing or walking, but wary and unconvinced that the freedom will be anything but temporary.

And the noise at the bottom of the holes, silent but deafening. Filling everything, pushing thoughts away, leaving nothing but a hole.

Distractions help. Concentrate on something else, someone else, and the hole recedes, the silent noise recedes. But break the concentration and the hole appears again.

Just one question. Who is digging these damned holes?

It is always comforting for a jaded and cynical soul like myself to witness the moral high ground being scaled by the great and the good. And some must be suffering from acrophobia and oxygen starvation, they have climbed so high.

Sir Philip Green, what have you done? Apart from unifying every shade of the establishment against you, of course.

Some of the epithets attributed to your character would be more at home in a B-Movie Western, but the sentiment remains constant. And, I must be honest, I have absolutely no intention of defending you, except to say that, as far as I am aware, you have not been found guilty of anything, yet.

But, unscrupulous, uncaring, exploitative, immoral; that should cover your business activities nicely.

So why the friendly, first name terms? Well, if Parliament has its way, the Sir will shortly disappear, so I thought I would get ahead of the crowd.

Of more interest to me is the cross-party, cross-cultural, crossness of the criticism flying around. From the highest to the lowest, universal condemnation.

Whilst I feel the lowest, and the middle, have every right to bellow their horror and disgust, perhaps the higher strata should take a moment.

If, for example, we were to examine the membership of the House of Lords, I am confident we could discover a goodly number of honoured captains of industry, applauded for their entrepreneurial skills, their commercial achievements. Are they all gleaming with saintly perfection?

And, to concentrate down onto the particular gentleman – that generated a choke – someone thought it would be a good idea to make him a Sir in the first place.

Assuming that, like an oil tanker, it takes a significant time for a leader of industry to change direction, it has to be accepted that his working methods haven’t change much over the years. It just took a while to emerge.

And the recent revelations of the treatment of care workers, or those employed by Sports Direct and Amazon – don’t even start on the tax –  all starts to paint a picture more akin to Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’, than Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’.

Lauded as drivers of the economy, of generators of new jobs, it doesn’t take long for the mirage to dissolve and the truth emerge. And the whiplash caused by the change of direction by their erstwhile supporters is demonstrated by the height of their dudgeon.

So Phil, if I can call you Phil, I have no sympathy for you, and no empathy for your situation, particularly as you don’t seem to give a damn. However, I do have a word for you to say to any of the current hornets nest of critics you have stirred up.

hypocrisy.

 

I must admit that this was not a statement that I thought I would ever make, but I agree with Gary Lineker.

Belatedly, and not enough by far, but the UK – you know, that country flowing with compassion and empathy for the dispossessed – has started to bring young refugees from the camps across the Channel that are imminently to be closed, forcibly.

And, as could be predicted, instead of applauding a small but important act of universal compassion, the Daily Mail, amongst others, decided to stir the pot of suspicion and hate with the exposé of ‘fake youth’.

Never mind that these are human beings, stuck between disaster behind them and an unknown but not entirely welcoming future. Never mind that the numbers are so small as to be totally insignificant. The most important thing is that maybe there might be one or two who lied about their age to escape ‘The Jungle’.

I know that, all across this country, there are individuals and groups who do more than can ever be expected to aid and support people in crisis, refugees from worlds we would never want to experience.

And yet, the great and the good of the sanctimonious isolationists are happy to keep the bigotry and racist tendencies bubbling away. Are they so ashamed of a small, very small, gesture of good will towards those in need, that it must be purged from the good heart of this country by biased assertions and accusations.

Let us not forget that, thanks to our government’s willingness to involve itself in other countries, either through commercial exploitation or military intervention, that the resulting ripples are now reaching our shores.

We are happy to cling to our place of importance in this world, an international force, and all the advantages that brings. So we must also be prepared to reap the whirlwind when, as history has proved so many times before, it all goes dramatically wrong.

We never seem to learn from history, but we have to, at the very least, accept our responsibility for it.

We are, so we are repeatedly told, a rich country. We can also be an overtly compassionate one.

Gary Lineker and me. Who would have thought?

I know, everyone keeps saying ‘Get over it.”It’s decided.’ ‘Brexit is Brexit.”The people have spoken.’

Bollocks. And again bullshit.

37% of the electorate have spoken, well ticked. Not exactly the people. And if it seems that I am still angry about it, I am. Fuming. Still.

I am not saying that those that voted Leave were idiots, or foolish. Because I have spoken to some who appear intelligent enough to make a rational choice. So, not idiots or foolish, but certainly gullible.

Gullible to fall for the appealing notion that we can be free from EU imposed regulations and laws, even though 94% were supported, and many instigated, by ourselves.

Gullible to believe that Europe, and the rest of the world, will be desperate to establish advantageous trade deals even though the doorway to the EU is gone.

Gullible to believe that the support from the EU will be continued, and the rules protecting the workplace, and the environment, and food safety, will all still be there.

But above all, gullible to believe that the problems that are afflicting the disillusioned areas of the UK that supported Leave were somehow down to the EU, and immigration.

The areas that are suffering most, the lower paid, the forgotten non-London parts of the UK, are doing so because of the policies of the Tory Party. They are the ones that cut off the life lines, the support, the care.

And the referendum wasn’t to consult the people. It was supposed to save the Tories from division. And that worked well!

And, as a side-bar, if anyone is curious as to why Trump is still in the race in the US, it’s because both parties ‘forgot’ about the disillusioned and dispossessed, and most particularly the Republicans, who stopped the governmental process dead.

But back to the UK.

This is the worst decision that has been made in this country since the beginning of democracy. It will reduce the country’s ability to develop, to grow as a decent society. So much that we rely on is now owned by overseas interest that we can never be an ‘independent’ country again. So we need to remain within a structure that supports that.

Brexit is not Brexit. Brexit is national suicide by stealth. It is unfair, unconstitutional, unrealistic, irrational.

So yes, sorry one and all, but I am a Remoaner, and I am still angry.