All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
beliefs, personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 8 #5

And so we crawl our way to the last of my current series of Five Questions.

★★★★★

Question 5: If you could write a note to your younger self, what would you say in only two words?
Wow! Two words is actually quite hard. Almost everything one can think of is at least four words.
So one is tempted to go with the advice forum Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: DON’T PANIC!
But I think instead the advice I could best have used and learnt to implement when younger was:

QUIT WORRYING!

Just learn to let everything flow over you, although that does mean I no longer do “excited”, “panic” or “real anger” any more. I’ll happily forego the “excited” in return from the relief from “panic” and “anger”.

★★★★★

OK, so that’s the end of this series of Five Questions. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, maybe learnt something (if only about the oddness of my mind) and possibly even had a think yourself.
If I can find enough good questions I may do another series later in the year. So if you have a good question, or something you want to ask, then do please get in touch.
Meanwhile, be good!

photography

Weekly Photograph

More pussy porn this week …
I’m sure you understand that the Tuxedo Twins (aka. Rosie & Wiz) have nowhere nice to sleep, only a heap of old slippers, a rope toy and dead catnip mice.

Please, we have nowhere nice to sleep
Please, we have nowhere nice to sleep
Greenford; June 2016
Click the image for larger views on Flickr

beliefs, personal, thoughts

Five Questions, Series 8 #4

Ah, so we’re getting towards the end with this the fourth of the current round of Five Questions.

★★★★☆

Question 4: Would you ever admit to being racist?
Yes, of course …
Hello. My name is Keith and I am a racist.
I wish I wasn’t thus, but I am.
In fact whether we like it or not we are all racists, although some are better at hiding it than others.
Yes, that’s right, we are all racists. It is a tribal thing.
We have sports teams, religions, political parties and socioeconomic classes. And yes, people of different colours, ethnicities and languages. We go through life knowing and interacting with people like “us”, lodging contentious feelings towards “them”. We do it now, and we always have.
Like all animals we all identify with, and thus instinctively prefer, our own tribe and our own territory. And thus by implication we dislike — in extreme cases even hate — the next tribe. The tribe that lives the other side of the river or mountain. Or the one up the valley who are a different colour. I’m green, I’m right, I’m good; you’re red, you’re wrong, nasty, diseased etc.
Neighbouring groups of chimpanzees will fight with each other. As will meerkats and many other species. Yes, this is partly territorial; but to me that is all part of racism. Many animals will ostracise, even kill, a comrade who is a different colour (say, albino).
We do this naturally; at least it is not something most of us are overtly taught. If anything we have to be taught not to do this.
Some of us learn better than others. And some of us can apply the lessons better than others. It’s a bit like learning woodwork or French at school — some can, easily; others never can. I like to think I am one of the better amongst us, but I’m probably not the best person to judge that.
But underneath I am still a racist. We are all racists. All we can ever do is learn to subdue it.

current affairs, ramblings, thoughts

I want my country back

I want my country back
This is the constant refrain of the collection of spivs and barrow-boys who are hectoring us to vote to leave the EU.
And which of us wouldn’t agree?
I certainly would like my country back. But not the country of the “good old days” — formerly known as “these trying times” — as so well hammed up by AA Gill in last weekend’s Sunday Times [no link to the original as it’s paywalled, but the text has been posted on Facebook].
What I want is a country of sanity.
A country without gratuitous violence and sexual abuse.
A country where we all treat everyone as an equal …
… and other people as we would wish to be treated ourselves.
A country which is not run by self-serving, sleazy, megalomaniacs.
A country where there is a right to privacy, but also transparent & honest government …
… a right to free education up to and including university first degree level …
… a right to properly funded, excellent healthcare, free at the point of use, for all.
A society without corporate greed and unnecessary obsolescence.
A country which cares more for the environment than it does for corporate profit.
A country without a “me, me, me” “now, now, now” culture of instant gratification and ever mounting personal debt.
A country where sexuality, nudity and “soft drug” use are normalised, not marginalised and criminalised.
A country where (like Bhutan) Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product as the measure of success.
I don’t care about the golden days of the Hovis bread adverts, when all men wore hats and ties, beer was 2p a pint, and we all lived in hovels with a privvy at the bottom of the yard. I’m not asking for them to return. And I’m not asking for Utopia.
I’m quite content to take a modern society with modern conveniences. I just believe we have the balance completely wrong.
And it is this lack of balance which is basically screwing us.
Unfortunately we are not going to even think about this, let alone get anywhere near it, with the present set of political lizards, whether they’re in parliament & local government or whether they’re journalists, commentators or other media hangers-on. There are just too many entrenched attitudes and vested interests. Turkeys vote neither for Christmas nor Thanksgiving.
We aren’t going to get it either by voting to leave the EU or remain in the EU. In this sense the EU referendum is as pointless and meaningless as it is tedious and divisive.
No, the only way we are going to achieve this is by a complete paradigm shift. A paradigm shift that happens to the whole country, not just a few intelligent idiots like me. It has to be a vision of the majority. A vision which the majority can find a way to implement in our governance structures. A vision which we, the people, can make stick.
I don’t know how we do this. I don’t even know how we start to do this. I really don’t.
But I do know that this is what we desperately need.

current affairs, environment

Alternative Garden Bridge

As reported in the Guardian a few days ago, architects Allies & Morrison have come up with a much more affordable version of London’s proposed Garden Bridge — an ill-conceived, cabalistic vanity project if ever there was one. And because it is affordable, and thus won’t be burdened with huge debts or the demands of corporate sponsors, it can be a truly open public space. Basically they are proposing to reuse some of the space on Blackfriars Bridge — a resource which already exists. This sounds eminently feasible.


The Garden Bridge project should be killed — and no I don’t believe Mayor Sadiq Khan when he says it will cost more to cancel it than complete it. This alternative deserves to gain traction.
Read the full Guardian article and Allies & Morrison’s description.

current affairs

Brexit? Then What?

In the latest of a series of posts about the UK and the EU, Obiterj, over at the Law and Lawyers blog, takes a look at what has to happen politically (and legally) to implement a Brexit vote.
It isn’t pretty. Or easy. Or quick. There’s a lot that would have to be done, by both the UK and the EU, and it could be years before the UK could trigger the formal 2 year (or more) process to withdraw from the EU.
Read the full piece here.

quotes

Quotes

Another mid-monthly round-up of quotes interesting and amusing …
The pain of being alone motivates us to seek the safety of companionship, which in turn benefits the species by encouraging group cooperation and protection. Loneliness persists because it provides an essential evolutionary benefit for social animals. Like thirst, hunger or pain, loneliness is an aversive state that animals seek to resolve, improving their long-term survival.
[Emily Singer; Quanta Magazine]
You can’t let one setback ruin your life. You’ve got to just keep being a squirrel.
[Mikel Delgado quoted at ]
Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate’. Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need’. It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment — not discouragement — you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.
[From A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living]
It may be remarked with equal truth that ignorance is often the effect of wonder. It is common for those who have never accustomed themselves to the labour of enquiry, nor invigorated their confidence by conquests over difficulty, to sleep in the gloomy quiescence of astonishment, without any effort to animate enquiry or dispel obscurity. What they cannot immediately conceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or too extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content themselves with the gaze of folly, forbear to attempt what they have no hopes of performing, and resign the pleasure of rational contemplation to more pertinacious study or more active faculties.
[Samuel Johnson]
To know that you do not know is the best. To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
[Lao Tzu]
With all this opportunity, this comedy and tragedy, how near all men come to doing nothing!
[Henry David Thoreau; Journal; 29 May 1857]
We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well.
[Alain de Botton; New York Times; 29 May 2016]
Marriage ends up as a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don’t know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully avoided investigating.
[Alain de Botton; New York Times; 29 May 2016]
The difference between lying and bullshit is less a question of a statement’s relation to the truth than of the motivation of the person making it. A liar wants his audience to believe what he says; a bullshitter doesn’t care, as long as he gets what he wants.
[Harry Frankfurt]
The person of superior integrity does not insist upon his integrity. For this reason, he has integrity.
[Lao Tzu]
When you are in your middle seventies you have passed your prime as a cat-catcher.
[PG Wodehouse]

amusements, natural history

Oddity of the Week: Seagull Orange

A bright orange Herring Gull was rescued from a vat of waste chicken tikka masala at a food factory last week.


Staff at the nearby wildlife hospital used washing-up liquid to remove the bright orange from the gull’s feathers, returning him to his original white & grey colour. However he still smells of curry — apparently the gull smelt amazing!