THE HORSEMEAT CHRONICLES

PART THREE:   GANGSTERS AND MURDERERS

 

I’m beginning this post with a message straight from the heart. After what so many of us have seen on television recently what I’m writing here doesn’t come easy. It comes with a moral indignation, outrage and disgust over the brutal murder of innocent dumb creatures by methods so vile that it makes me want to spit at its perpetrators.

Yeah, yeah, all you ere we go footballers who rushed off the field to the burger van. All hot and grinning to guzzle down the plate of horse in a bap on offer rather than beef. Someone ought to whip and beat you so it’s the last thing you’ll ever know before a trap door opens underneath three or four of you and you fall thirty feet, break your legs and your neck and while still semi-conscious have men get to work on you with cleavers and knives.

Horses coming out of green fields and sunlight all innocent, good natured and trusting. Then you get herded into dark sheds and pens, beaten and prodded and whipped till you were trembling with fear. Terrified over the chute before you fell into nowhere, till you were hacked and stabbed to the heart.

Somewhere in Ireland, somewhere in Romania. Innocent good natured friends of all children. Stabbed and hacked to the heart for your god-damned fucking ere we go burger meat and the guts you get in your supermarket foods. Horses beaten and whipped for your ready-meals. Lovingly processed and prepared by amoral gangsters. And worse, even worse than our vile murder is the fact that recent surveys show you’re still buying pieces of us knowing we’re there. That you haven’t changed your eating habits at all.

So what is it with you people? Don’t you care how we horses die before we get onto your plate? Don’t you want to think about how we once were. Friendly and affable with you and your kids by the gates of some field in the sunlight. Don’t you want to think of the truth. How we ran around in some field all pleased and happy before we went down your gobs and came out your arses. Don’t you want to know about the meat industry gangsters, the criminals who bought us with crooked paperwork and passed us on to the slaughterers with the same lies… butchers who carved us up then passed us on to the processors with more god-damned lies who in turn lied us on to supermarkets who never bothered to check what we were before they sold bits of us on to you? Little bits of us you once saw whole in fields and were glad you’d been out in the country. Who came over to greet you all friendly and helped give you a good day. Tell the truth! Didn’t being close to us there in the country make the day out for you and the kids?

And with all of this said our Government tells us not to throw away the cheap frozen or fresh ready-meal packs we’ve bought, full of our meat. No, don’t chuck them away. They’re quite safe to eat! So what happened to that horse you were riding Mister Prime Minister or the nag your dear Rebekkah got from the police? Eating something that David Cameron’s arse used to be on! Now that’s a real tasty thought! No, don’t throw it away. Keep it in the freezer till we’ve done all the tests. And carry on buying cheap. We’ve got all the food testing boys in on the job!

Trouble is, there’s a multi-billion pound industry in question and knowing there are food-gangsters involved in the supply chain while the Food Standard Agency’s been sleeping, can you honestly say we can trust you? Especially when everyone in the food chain’s throwing up their hands pleading innocent!

It’s not me that done it all guv. I’m innocent I tell yer… Ee was the one what done it. The geezer next door.

Remember what I said in my last horsemeat post? About testing meat in tins, stock cubes and other food additives. Well at last! Six weeks after the scandal first broke the Food Standards Agency are doubling the number of tests carried out on these supposed beef products including those that incorporate gelatin. But then this scandal has been a well-kept secret for years in the food industry. It’s a bit too close to Jimmy Savile for comfort. A lucrative money making machine paying off people or something too plain big to expose. That’s alright. Now that it’s out in the open everyone’s honest all of a sudden, testing and checking over a corpse. Too scared to nail it while it was alive, everyone’s now running around looking for credit. Doing the job they were supposed to do in the first place. Such things come with a name. It’s called policing standards. Not turning a blind eye.

Just another blind eye that’s been turning for years! The real criminals are not just the gangsters busy with meat substitution or the killers with cleavers preparing the way. Equally criminal are the facilitators in Britain and Europe who let them all do the business. Cover their backs. Allow them to carry on substituting meat after they’ve already been caught with their dicks out. Sorry to disappoint all you simply astonished people but there’s nothing really complicated in it at all. Substituting meat mate, or mon ami? Well we just want ten percent of the profit and you keep the rest. Nothing complicated about that! Just another holiday home in the Bahamas! The supermarkets and food standards people don’t do the testing they should on a regular basis and the public don’t ask any questions. All they’re good for is paying a couple of quid, putting  it into a microwave then down their kids throats so no-one’s any the wiser. Got it, mon ami?

Pots of money and killers with knives. All part of the same story. Endless amounts of money to be made. Unscrupulous unethical rascals. Same as banking and finance. The public being cheated and mis-sold dodgy products and the same kind of people who pay in the end. A few hundred criminals and millions of victims. It’s all pretty straightforward. Criminals need a mass market, but then you can’t call people in the financial services industry criminals. It’s not like that at all! They’re nice people really who just make mistakes!

How much worse can it get? Nestle, a Swiss company and the world’s largest food manufacturer have just discovered naughtiness in some of their products sold in Italy and Spain with many more yet to be tested across Europe so if it’s Nestle, Findus and Birds Eye, what next? With hundreds of products now being tested and thousands more suspects, the full results of this across the board crisis won’t be known for months if not years and by then we’d have all had a taste. Only maybe that’s not the end at all. Now they’ve tried horses the food gangsters will be looking around and they won’t have to look far. There’s a surplus of stray dogs in the country and the Food Standards Agency doesn’t test canine. Unusual, untraceable meat products? If it’s the dogs bollocks you want it’s the dog’s bollocks you’ll get! Don’t worry, they’ll even give it a flavor. Don’t rule out Vindaloo, then there’s always a creamy poodle masala. And if you don’t fancy Indian you can always add Piccalilli.

It’s a situation that’s not hard to contemplate. In Britain these days people accept what they’re given. Accept just about anything really without making too much of a fuss. Go on eating dodgy food without question, knowing how horses are killed.

Oh don’t get me wrong. I’m no vegetarian. I eat meat big so why all the stuff about horses? Are they any the less personable than pigs? Your kids don’t save in a horsey box do they, and there’s always Miss Piggy! No, this isn’t a post about me. It’s about how horses are killed and how you are being cheated. We feel a fondness for horses so let’s remember how many die in terror to be on your plate. They can’t complain. You can. You used to stand up and in best British tradition say, hey, that’s not right but we don’t do too much of  that anymore. Don’t think too much about our health-care workers who earn so little. Instead we give large sums of money away to watch petulant grossly overpaid footballers on Saturdays instead of putting decent food on the table that wasn’t beaten or stabbed while it lived.

You’ve been allowing yourselves to do the same old thing too easily. Letting criminals and rascals plunder your salaries and cheat your kids of food. You let yourselves go as men and let your women and kids get fat on cheap rubbish foods. You’ve all but surrendered your right to take action thinking that a vote once every five years is enough! Well I’ll tell you. If you want there’s still time to take yourselves in hand and ask questions again. Be family minded. Care about what your wives and kids eat. You’ve become self-indulgent but you still know what’s right and feeding your kids murdered horses is somewhere you don’t need to go.

I’ll end here quoting the lines of a verse I recently read inscribed on a wall, written by someone unknown early 19^th century. It’s about a horse who was beaten to death because it couldn’t climb up a steep hill carrying a heavy load. Never mind the religion, it’s there for your conscience.

“A man of kindness to his beast is kind.

But brutal actions show a brutal mind.
Remember! He who made thee made the brute.
Who gave thee speech and reason, formed him mute.
He can’t complain, but God’s all seeing eye
Beholds thy cruelty and hears his cry
He was designed thy Servant, not thy Drudge
Remember! His Creator is thy Judge.”          

IF YOU’VE STILL GOT NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO FEED YOUR KIDS HORSE INSTEAD OF THE BEEF THAT’S PROMISED THEN CARRY ON WALKING BY.

THE HORSEMEAT CHRONICLES

PART TWO:    IT GETS EVEN BETTER

 

As forecast in the first part of this post last Friday, things have gone downhill at a gallop. It’s not just Findus and the cheap end supermarkets involved in it now. The great horsemeat scandal affects the great and the good with Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s caught with their pants down. There’s also serious confusion in Government and the Food Standards Agency! Why would a Minister be telling us not to throw anything away and that everything’s safe to eat when just about every supermarket’s been clearing their shelves with wheelbarrows?

First Ireland then Poland. Next came France and after that Romania. When BBC cameras tried to film at a main market there in the capital after an abattoir was thought to be suspect they were met by some seriously mean looking heavies who, wanting to make a point about how tasty the meat was, refused to let them go any further, and naturally with menaces! Nice to see that. And nice to know where the food processors are getting their meat from but then that’s Eastern Europe. However let’s not be in too much of a hurry at pointing a finger when people are in on the scam right on our own doorstep. On Tuesday police raided a meat firm in Wales and a slaughterhouse in West Yorkshire. Both were shut down by the Food Standards Agency after test revealed horsemeat going into burgers and kebab spindles!

Fancy a doner or shish after a few pints of lager? All that meat being sliced and stuck into a pitta with salad. True, you were never quite sure what the guys serving did with their fingers but at least it was cheap. Now you know why. But then who’s squeaky clean after ten pints of lager and can’t smell anything anyway when its dished up with a hot chili sauce? All right, all right… we’re not talking rats here, but then the Foods Standards Agency don’t test for small furry things.

Once upon a time, when all the world was young and you put any doubts you may have about cheap mass processed food somewhere over a rainbow where the Wizard of Oz did his shopping, the name Waitrose stood for high priced reliability. Not anymore. A firm in Glasgow has been identified as the supplier of Waitrose beef meatballs which may contain pork. It’s not their fault, or is it? Taking the word of their supplier on trust! Scots, Romanians, the Irish and Welsh! So many appear to be in on the scam that it’s hard for anyone with the best will in the world to get a grip on the great meat substitution rip off. It’s a Europe-wide scam involving Findus in Sweden and meat processors in France. Food Minister Paterson’s gone to Brussels in a hurry because just about everyone’s in on the bizz.

Unfortunately, as indicated in the title, it’s all going to hell in a handcart. It gets worse! Very much worse! Anyone heard of meat products. The stuff that goes into seasoning, stock cubes and gravy? Anyone ever thought about the stuff that goes into tins… the meat ravioli, the sausages that go with the beans, the meatballs with the spaghetti, the soups such as Oxtail and Beef. Who’s testing these for horse or pig DNA? Not the Food Standards Agency, even though they’re processed beef products, so called.

But just wait a minute. Anyone heard of something called Gelatin? This is a substance which to quote from Wikipedia, “is a mixture of peptides and proteins produced by partial hydrolysis of Collagen extracted from the skin, boiled crushed horn, hoof and bones, connective tissues, organs and some intestines of animals such as domestic cattle, chicken, pigs and horses…”  “Gelatin is derived from pork skins, pork, horses, and cattle bones, or split cattle hides.” Read further if you’re interested in its preparation! It’s classified as a foodstuff and “is found in most gummy candies, as well as other products such as marshmallows, gelatin desert, and in some ice cream, dip and yoghurt.” Right, have you taken that on board? And to quote finally from Wikipedia, It is commonly used as a gelling agent in food, pharmaceuticals, photography and cosmetic manufacturing.”

So foodstuffs using a derivative of pig and horse is at least a possibility so is the Food Standards Agency at least likely to check whether any horse or pig DNA has gone into your kids’ jelly babies? Now that’s a question someone should ask. Alternatively, ladies, what might have gone into your lipstick?

If questions like these aren’t suited for domestic consumption they’re far less likely to suit other interests. There are some big commercial players with billions tied up in investments. Making huge profits out of what you fork off your plate or rub on your face. Their budgets combined are a million times more than those of all the standards agencies combined the world over so maybe it’s just a fact of life that’s now coming out. Raising an ugly head as an ugly thought bubbles up to the surface. Disturbing the belief you once had that everything you got served up cheap was above board and kosher.

When you ate and looked good you blessed the hands that fed you, forgetting the truth you ought to know well. That there never was any such thing as a free lunch. Ever!

So now you’ll all wait for the test results of the Food Standards Agency and those elsewhere in Europe. Meanwhile everyone’s talking about honest labeling, and there’s even some talking safety. Some! What should we all do then in the meantime? Run around looking like emaciated Vegans? It’s not a problem the rich have to worry about. They’ve got the time and money to pick and choose, but who cares about them anyway? Certainly not the politicians. They’re only a fraction of any mass market and the mass market is precisely where the money is made, legal or not. Reassuring the public that they can trust what they’re getting is central to restoring their confidence, something essential for restoring the manufacturers faith in humanity! As long as Joe Public maintains the circular process of spooning it in and shitting it out it’ll  keep the smile on their face!

But there’s a real problem here. Has anyone heard so much as a peep from the Liberal Democrats? No, of course not. They’re all vegetarians! Give them a cheesy on a stick and they’ll promise you anything. Trouble is, the little cheesies are bovine products so the Lib-Dem Tory tarts could be white-wining on any old shit! No, not a peep from any of them, not even after developments in recent days when the police finally got busy. Arrests at last! At the burger and kebab joint in Wales where the owner previously said they’d done nothing wrong then at the plant up in Yorkshire. As though the jack-the-lads who work in these places don’t know what’s what. However the French have also been busy. Spanghero, sounds a really nice bunch of guys, have been caught red-handed with horse-blood paperwork all over their hands and closed down by the Government while in Holland, a Dutch meat trader ALREADY CRIMINALLY CONVICTED OF HORSE FOR BEEF SUBSTITUTION has just been found out doing it all over again with a friendly meat processor. Is anyone asking any questions here? Like how he was allowed to do it all over again. How all these people were allowed to lie, cheat and deceive.

But then I guess it’s understandable really. They’re only cheating the poor and their kids.

Clearly, the problem’s not only here but all over Europe, only has anyone heard of any top level Eurocrats in Brussels saying so much as a word? These people are only too hot when they want taxpayers’ money for farming subsidies - that’s paying farmers to grow nothing. However, when it comes to trans-national meat and food fraud such as product mislabeling and mis-selling they’re just like the Lib-Dems. Not a word!                                                                                                  

And finally, the test results on Friday. Everything’s fine, joke, joke! Only one percent of everything tested contains horsemeat but then that’s the school-kids in Lancashire and the stuff dished up in the Whitbread pub and restaurant outlets. Presumably only small traces we’re told of horsey ingredients anyway, so everything’s alright. Trouble is, these are only a fraction of all recent tests! The rest are yet to come only  has anything been said about tests conducted on the stuff served up in prisons by Government catering suppliers or throughout the NHS hospitals to patients? Have any tests been conducted on confectionery products, on meat additives in stock cubes or canned products? I think not. In the next few months European Governments and supermarket chains will be dishing out mixed messages and wait for everything to blow over. Fingers crossed for other big media stories to dilute public concern that’s now running high so they don’t have to increase the budgets of food standards agencies that have recently been cut to the bone.

Let the jokes and metaphors fly! Sooner or later everything will lighten up and public concerns diminish under the weight of good humor. Meanwhile you can bet your life that the criminals responsible for all the meat substitution fraud and the supermarket chains that have been relaxed about testing the products they sell will all be blaming each other. It’s all a bit like banking and financial services really. Getting away what they can get away with until something leaks out all over again and people say sorry and promise it won’t happen again. It’s so easy, really, to hold up your hands and say, you got me bang to rights guv, I was the one who done it, take a hit on your profits for a while then let it happen all over again.

Profitability is not conducive to a culture of integrity, and self-regulation never worked anywhere where big profits are there to be made. It happened in banking and in the media. What makes you think that the food industry is any different. As I’ve said elsewhere in one of my posts, in a culture that produces so many on the make cheats and jack-the-lad rascals OUR BEST AND ONLY DEFENCE IS CONTINUAL UNENDING VIGILANCE.  

DON’T TRUST THE PEOPLE WHO SPEAK FOR YOU. TRUST YOURSELVES!

THE HORSEMEAT CHRONICLES

PART ONE : UNFOLDING SCANDAL

 

Horse and pig DNA in supermarket beefburgers. Horsemeat in your lasagna! It’s official, but actually what does it actually mean? Now if anyone thinks that some nice, lean tasty horsemeat, you know, a nice piece of horse steak mince or some succulent roast pork kind of stuff accidentally went into those products you’d really better think again. Nothing so sublime I’m afraid. We’re talking about food for the poor here, especially kids. Hard up single parents or families where both Mum and Dad are unemployed; people on contract work or minimum wage. We’re talking about what the poor eat. Trusting that what they buy cheap from the supermarkets is at least honest.

Only it isn’t! Beef and pork DNA can mean just about anything and what it’s definitely not supposed to mean in beef burgers is eyeballs, bollocks, offal, hooves or anything else from tucked away factories in Ireland or France who cut the stuff up and flog it somewhere else to those who in turn ‘process’ it for supermarkets in England. It’s supposed to be what people expect it to be from the packaging. In the case of beef-burgers, beef, only it isn’t. Parts of it are something else so the question arises. Okay, what is it?   

So far all you’ve glibly heard from the media is talk in the abstract. DNA from other animals… sounds unpleasant, even unfortunate, but acceptable! Especially when so called experts, keen to earn a few quid on a television interview pipe up and tell you, as experts of course, that horse meat is really quite healthy, quite nourishing actually! Actually it’s only too typical of the horse-shit you get in the multi-billion pound food trade with many of the experts on nice little earners from the supermarkets. So what then is the reality of those unfortunate traces of DNA from ‘other animals’ that goes into burgers and lasagna?

Well for one thing it’s all got to do with selling food to the poor on the cheap so it’s hardly likely to be loin or steak mince. Well think of it. IS IT? Those who dish it up for the poor no doubt take the view that they’re stupid as well. Stands to reason doesn’t it. If they weren’t stupid why would they be poor in the first place? It’s a bit like the way bankers think, or members of the Government who’ve spent time thinking of these things in their Oxford University Clubs, or actually Members of Parliament in general. It’s a kind of contempt. All you people down there are really great when we need your vote every five years but the rest of the time you’re stupid enough to be needy and poor so you really won’t think about the shit you’re feeding you’re kids. Buy it cheap and poop it out wholesale!

Well the horse and pig DNA they’ve found in your on the cheap burgers could be brain, kidneys, stomach, eyes and testicles, and that’s definitely not the worst! I mean, if you get into work late one morning and someone tells you you’re a real horse’s arse I think you’ll know what I mean.

I mean DNA strands of bollocks in your burger is one thing but there are places with animals you really don’t want to go. Now forgive me if I’m wrong but wasn’t there a serious scandal involving beefburgers time back during the days of nasty Margaret Thatcher. One of her arse-crawling Ministers, Gummer I think it was, or something that sounded like him, having his daughter eat a burger on camera to show it was safe when there was a major panic alert about cheap meat contamination with cattle brains infected with BSE being rendered into fertilizer by the meat processing jack the lads and finding its way into farms all over the place. And there was this Tory Minister of Agriculture getting his daughter to eat it so everyone would believe it was safe. Such a nice man!

Yesterday the BSE Scandal, with cattle falling about like they were on ice, today stuff in your beefburger and lasagna sold as beef that isn’t beef at all and the food experts treating everyone like children in the belief that they’re too stupid to think any further. Oh yes… and what about the celebrity chefs! Such nice people, but has anyone heard so much as a peep from them with this new scandal going on? Indeed, has anyone heard anything from these on the make foodies who glibly and endlessly tell us all what to eat and how to make it, drawing their cheques from the supermarkets they advertise so they can open up restaurant chains. Nice one celebrity chefs! You really know how to keep your mouths shut when it counts.

And come to think of it has anyone heard so much as a peep from the Liberal Democrats?

But that’s not all. Come to think of it what’s going into the meals the sick are being served up in hospitals? What’s going into the school dinners you’re kids are eating and what’s being served in the prisons? Not the kind of thing M.P.’s are noshing in Parliament or banking executives chomp in the board room canteens.

Cheap horse and pig-burgers and horsey lasagna! Well done supermarkets. Trying hard to give all your Muslim customers value for money and making them think that you’re doing your best. That you’ve really got their interests at heart when you tell you sincerely and honestly that every little helps only next time maybe you’d do better checking your sources and standards more accurately, frequently and openly.

However, mistakes can be made and the supermarkets that became victim to these filthy scams are places where the real victims shop. The victims in our society on low pay, who are unemployed more often than not through no fault of their own, NOT because they’re idle and lazy the way the gutter press brands them.  Then there are the old people, somehow struggling to make ends meet on poor pensions, struggling to survive a harsh winter unable to have the heating on because of endlessly rising energy prices… and teenagers with young kids who can’t afford to feed them any better than cheap processed meals.

The supermarkets are victims by default. The poor and the often desperately needy are victims on purpose. Though sneered at and too often despised, these are the people left in the dirt by a society dominated by on the make banking executives and money dealers with sky high pensions and bonuses, energy price fixers ramping up profits for shareholders, yahoo boys in the Conservative Party and their creepy-crawly mates the Lib Dems, not forgetting a Labour Party that’s chucked overboard just about every decent principle it ever had. Yes these are the people who the politicians abandoned. Who eat on the desperately cheap and trust what they’re given is right. Maybe sometime they ought to try eating the same!

Part two to follow:     IT GETS EVEN DIRTIER!

CRYSTAL HEALING AND GOING TO THE GYM

Reading the title of this post you may well think that you’re entitled to raise an eyebrow. Oh yeah, how could crystal healing have any connection with going to the gym, unless of course you’re the kind of person who might say, well aren’t they’re both the kind of thing… that only arse-holes and idiots are into!

Well I’m discounting the fact that you might be someone like that. Given over to rudery however true it may be! However, much as the initial question might rankle, accept my assurance that there’s a real and genuine connection between these two seemingly disparate activities. If there wasn’t I wouldn’t be sitting here at a table in the Bath Reference Library drinking hot Heinz tomato soup out of a plastic cup and sharing my thoughts.

Having said this let me immediately qualify what you are about to read by pointing out that there’s a real difference between creative writing and telling plain porkies. The first is what banking executives do, the second falls more into the province of politicians. The connection between crystal healing and going to the gym is neither. It’s more if you will a matter of considered opinion!

First though a word about gyms. Going to the gym, like going to watch football, is a displacement activity. An excuse for not doing something far more worthwhile and certainly a whole lot less expensive. In recent years an ever increasing number of people have been taking themselves to a gym for what may best be described as a workout or training session. The question is why? Whether such places are large or small you always see the same kind of people there. For example, the muscle-bound Michelin-men off on one side pumping heavy iron and the trainers and sports coaches employed to give affable advice. The friendly disposition by the way is important for keeping customers because gyms are businesses more than anything. There to make money out of your self-deluded belief that being healthy is more important than anything else and exercising and ‘keeping fit’ is the best means to attaining that end.

Is it really? Never mind that much of what you eat is junk food and your drink sugared up to the eyeballs. And never mind too that you could afford to eat much healthier food and wouldn’t get so fat if you weren’t paying serious money to go to a gym in the first place! The gym and football that is. You needed to begin with yourself. With a bit less laziness and a bit more self-control but you didn’t and now you’ve got to pay for it both ways. All that exhaustion on the treadmill or bicycle and having to pay for the pain. Kidding yourself that you’re taking your flabby condition in hand and doing yourself good only it’s all second hand now… making up for the sugar and fat habit you slid into in the first place because you were a sucker for it.

Gyms are places for people who make up excuses. Along with the muscle-men and sports trainers their clientele includes quite a few ‘women of age’ who still feel a need to look good. Still want to look presentable. Then there are the thirties singles, (still!) and edgy with it, or forties plus divorcees, all lonely and looking for a friendly face or a sympathetic ear, men who’ll listen , joke, joke, but underneath it all just hoping to meet  ‘a really nice man’. Forget it ladies. Really nice men don’t go to gyms. Most have their own psychological agenda wrapped up one way or another with insecurity. Anyway most are already spoken for or angling for a shag on the side. Nothing else. Most don’t have the money or inclination for wining and dining and most can’t even talk about Delia let alone Dostoyevsky! WHO? Sorry I meant Debussy.

Then of course there are the main players, lads between 17-24, mostly students and from the lower middle class. The great majority work out hoping to build muscle. Fitness is a secondary thing. They’re young. Feel an inner need to look good, feel tough, like in their untutored juvenile minds they think it’s what young women want! Sorry lads, it’s only the over 70s who might give you the eye if that’s what you’re after. Most are okay but many can be trouble. After all they’re there because in some way they feel a need to prove themselves and rationalise such goals by increasingly straining their bodies and physically exhausting themselves in the process. They think that the effort and fractional increase in muscle makes them real men though it doesn’t of course and plays no part in increasing testosterone levels. That’s more a product of genetics and diet. No, for the hordes of young men who go to gyms it’s a matter of ego and the ego they bring to the task is more often fragile than not.

The chat that passes between them is unvarying. Tales of alcohol indulgence first, closely followed by bragging about personal involvement in some gratuitous street violence, all of which is closely followed by digressions on young women of their acquaintance that are invariably obscene and often staggeringly ignorant of the most basic knowledge of physiology. Need it be said that they are rarely seen to shower in changing rooms or apply soap in any way, preferring instead to make use of scented sprays. Horrifyingly enough, my wife tells me, it’s the same for young women, most by the way never changing out of the clothes they exercised in!

If the young men are sometimes aggravational the muscle-men are invariably courteous and affable. A rude or unkind word let alone any physical show of displeasure is entirely beneath them. They look upon such things with horror. In acquiring muscle they have visibly elevated themselves into a fraternity. A recognizable club of attainers. As physical gods they are far above the commonality of ordinary mortals, the ‘skinnies’. They are the cool, calm, smiling hard men who give advice on occasion and sometimes help… who have their own small surrounding circle of youths or, as they seem to me, acolytes. The muscle-men never seem to seriously ‘work out’. One or two exercises perhaps, with heavy weights, no more, and each accompanied with considerable noise! They do not need a harsh routine like others. They’ve done it all and are merely there to be seen!

Finally a fair proportion of the clientele attending the larger often University based Gyms are athletes who use the various facilities to enhance their performance. Such Gyms inculcate a ‘team’ ethos and the athletes attached to such Gyms regard themselves as ‘team members’. They often have academically qualified personal fitness trainers employed by the University and wear ‘team’ garments bearing the University name or logo and often talk ‘team talk’. More often than not they are studying there for some kind of sports degree and are part of the established identity of the place, a University with a reputation for ‘sport’. Like the muscle-men (who by the way wouldn’t be seen dead wearing University logo garments and are rarely students themselves but more often townies) these sporting types are affable but communicate mainly with the sporty circle around them not the wider clientele.

The interests of a gym’s clientele, no matter whom, whether it’s those seeking sporting success, personal fitness, whatever that may mean, those seeking youthfulness again or better appearance, or engaging in what they regard as a worthwhile social activity with friends, even those who believe they may be healthier for the experience… whatever their reasons or rationalization for committing themselves to such often exhausting physical effort… all this, like sport itself, is delusional, a displacement activity for other things.

In ancient society the majority of those who engaged in sporting activity did so as a challenge, a human challenge of physical prowess. In the last century however, sport has become something else. Its reach is now global, instant and intensely financial. Sport is big business. It has become important to a majority of people who live on the planet and an undoubted component of their emotional lives. The rise of commercialization has seen a concomitant rise in a universal desire to feel healthy, one now translated into a desire to be ‘fit’ and keep oneself so. Physically fit! The commercial rise of the Gym has in turn fed this desire and turned it into a need. Even so this whole circular process with sport at its center is entirely delusional . Human health and well-being doesn’t need gyms. It doesn’t need people to physically challenge and exhaust themselves when such ends could be better achieved in far easier, less costly ways.

The commercial rationality for more and more gyms has little to do with health and physical well-being. It’s commercial rationality. Just that! Human well-being is far better achieved by control of diet and daily exercise such as walking. By self-discipline in consumption in general. Instead we have sport and we have the gym. The money that people, mainly men, pay to watch professional football, and the money that people, mainly young men, pay to attend a gym are part of the same self-indulgent lazy delusion. Wanting to be part of a tribe. Seeking out and performing a ritual.

But watch out. Rituals come in various guises.

While you’ve been reading this post the question I asked at the beginning nonetheless remains in your mind. Crystal healing and going to the Gym… so where’s the connection? Let me answer it this way. Have you noticed that whenever you go to a gym the place is more often than not full of tension. Tension seems to thrive in the place. It’s palpable. All that stress, all that sublimated emotion. All the challenge and physical effort. If keeping fit is supposed to promote well-being it certainly doesn’t help you relax. Gyms are just about the most un-relaxed places I know, full of the most un-relaxed people. The whole atmosphere of the place is tense. Everyone struggling to do better, to achieve some kind of goal for some barely defined purpose. Struggle and exhaustion, while questionable as a path to personal physical well-being, are certainly no pathway to personal relaxation. More likely a slippery slope to some kind of breakdown.

Personal relaxation and spiritual ease, mental and therefore physical well-being, crystal healing adepts would argue, are more a product of spiritual energy. That is healing energy and the healing energy of crystals. Forces that bind you to the earth, that promote strength and vitality, imbue confidence and help you focus your mind. Teach you to breathe when you exercise.

One such mineral that does all of this is Kakortokite, a rare white, red and black flecked opaque stone from Greenland. It helps you to recognise where you’re at. Where you are and what you need to be. In other words gives you focus and promotes concentration. It’s recognised as being useful for energy depletion physically re-energizing and re-oxygenating the body and the blood. In crystal healing terms it unites the earth, heart, base and crown chakras. Acting as a channel for what is thought to be the universal life force. In other words, this stone alone provides the precise combination of physical strength and spiritual healing that you’re not likely to find at a gym.

The Gym won’t help you with your personal problems. It will only exacerbate them! It’s a place for physical tension, for physical energy to run riot and I may ask the many of you who go to the gym, is this not the case? Surely you can feel it. However relaxing the ambience of a gym might be made, its reason for being, its purpose is physical, not spiritual. True, in Ancient Greece there were those who associated physical attainment with spirituality. In modern times the Nazis of course did the same. However the Nazis were never what you might call relaxed in any way. I mean, did you ever see Nazis laugh or smile? Only when they were murdering someone maybe. NO, ALL THIS FITNESS AS A BASIS FOR PERSONAL WELL-BEING DOES NOT MAKE PEOPLE RELAXED. IT WINDS UP THEIR TENSIONS AND MAKES THEM AGGRESSIVE.

In any case there are crystals that promote all the better things associated with tension such as a self-awareness of it and an ability to suppress its worst side and promote its better qualities. Bixbite is such a mineral. It’s bright red in colour and rare, but it’s also creative and powerful. It helps suppress the worst aspects of egotism so often found in gyms, promoting courage and passion instead. By stimulating the base and heart chakras it promotes self-healing and inculcates compassion for others. And through such humanizing spiritual strengths it promotes personal vitality and stamina.

Ask yourself, does a physically demanding and challenging session at the gym with a load of hyped up teenagers and people with axes to grind help promote your spirituality, raise your vitality and feeling of well-being or does it leave you feeling drained? Underneath it all, tense?

Personal ease is a far better basis for personal well-being. It is therefore spiritual energy and its healing character that forms a more mature, more solid basis for personal strength AND THERE LIES THE CRYSTAL CONNECTION I’M TALKING ABOUT. In this connection its healing energy is calming, soothing, embracing and loving. It is a crystal par excellence for easing personal tension and has the additional effect of reducing ambient tensions within your immediate environment. Handy when you go to the gym!

Finally, a word about Moldovite. A miracle mineral really. Deep bottle green and glassy it is now recognised as a product of a meteor impact whose pieces are referred to as tektites, small deposits of which have been found on the banks of the Vlatava River near Vlatavov a small town 20 miles north-west of Prague in the Czech Republic. It has a strong  association with the Heart, Brow and Crown Chakras and stimulated much interest in medieval times because of its association with The Holy Grail. It was therefore highly prized and  only royalty and nobility were allowed to wear it.

More recently this connection took on an altogether more serious character. Heinrich Himmler, leader of Hitler’s SS was heavily into various forms of the occult and spiritual manifestation even before the time the Nazis took over Germany and would certainly have been aware of the Grail connection, something with which he had considerable interest just as his master had many years before. Equally important would have been his knowledge of it Moldovite’s properties… that it possession eased doubt when people were troubled and promised dramatic change in their lives for the better. In the years leading up to the Second World War, Hitler was experiencing exactly such worries and doubts and was looking for encouraging signs in the views of political leaders in the countries around him which their policy of Appeasement was soon to provide! This explains why Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s Deputy in the SS, otherwise known as the Butcher of Prague and later architect of the Holocaust, spent time along the banks of the Vlatava River north of the city when he became Governor of Czechoslovakia, searching perhaps for something his boss could pass on to the Fuhrer. It’s well known that the murderous little chicken farmer would do anything to please his boss. Who knows, maybe turn a piece into a tiepin or a nice little Moldovite Swastika set in a badge.

To end this post I would finally say this. If you can get hold of some, take a bit of Kakortokite with you next time you go to the gym. If not maybe a small piece of Bixbite. If they’re both unavailable or ultra-expensive try some Purpurite. It’s seriously good for overcoming exhaustion, increasing stamina and making you feel thoroughly rejuvenated. And if you fail to get hold of any of these without remortgaging your house just try some Rose Quartz. It works every time. Helps you feel calm and loving all over. It’s the Liberal Democrats’ favourite crystal. They’ve all got a piece!

SUGILITE : THE HIDDEN FORTRESS

In 1944, at the height of the Asia-Pacific War between the United States and Japan, a serious military conflagration if ever there was one, when most of the adult male population of the Japanese Empire was either engaged in the fighting, or in industrial production and science research for the war machine, a 43 year old Professor of Petrology, Ken-ichi Sugi was busy digging up rocks and exploring the geology of Iwagi Islet, Ochi District of Ehime Prefecture on the Island of Shikoku, southern Japan. An islet few people had ever heard of except a handful of locals. The result of his work, as much as was then officially known at the time, was the discovery of some tiny crystals of an unknown, seemingly unimportant mineral which later became famous and was given his name… Sugilite!

These are the facts of the matter. A tale that seems so strange, so unlikely, that you’d have trouble making it up! What was a Japanese professor of rocks doing hammering away on some tiny islet in the Japanese Inland Sea when he could easily have found himself making bombs for the military? To any outsider his work there was unimportant. Far removed from the realities of the time. The place had nothing worth digging for. Crystal healing and spirit energy were things of a far distant future so that for all the man knew he could have found jack. In that sense, given the war and the fanaticism with which the Japanese fought it the contradiction seems glaring. One is therefore at least entitled to ask what he was actually doing there?

Curious isn’t it. Well to mince up a metaphor a bit of digging cuts both ways and that’s what I did. It was strange and I wanted to know more. My first breakthrough came with a careful look at his short life, 1901-1948. At first glance it was all very conventional until I came across certain facts, unimportant in themselves but altogether more interesting when taken together. During his early years he developed a keen amateur interest in archaeology. This undoubtedly coalesced with his studies of Japanese history during his schooldays which came at the height of the Meiji Dynasty that reached its peak in the first years of the 20^th century. This was a time of the extraordinarily swift and monumental modernization of Japan. The pace of industrialization knew no bounds as did the progress of all forms of education and research in the sciences.

Secondary school education in particular surged ahead and certainly befitted the young Sugi but those who gained from the process were inevitably taught to look back to Japan’s imperial past as a solid ground on which to base its headlong leap into the future. This was nothing new. The rise of Germany from 1871 and its phenomenal industrialization and rapid programs of science research and formal education created much the same effect. The new Germany’s youth were taught to look back to Germany’s ancient history as suitable ground for propelling their nation into the future. In music the arch-nationalist and mythologizer Wagner prepared the ground for the Nazis. It was much the same for the youth of Japan in the early years of the 20^th century as it was for those of Germany. A keen eye on national history and an interest in literally digging it up.

This backward look at Japanese history was entirely normal for pupils at the time of Sugi’s schooldays and may have helped cultivate his interest in archeology which to me initially came as a surprise. An interest in history and digging things up however are certainly pointers for studying the age and composition of rocks so the fact that he became a Geologist is not altogether surprising… but a Geologist with a background interest in Japanese history and its active exploration says even more! Points the way perhaps to something even more fascinating. Was it just for the rocks that he came to Iwagi Islet or was the new mineral he found there only a bonus? A chance discovery? Just an additional find to what he was really looking for!

Iwagi Islet. Let’s consider the place for a moment. There’s no reference to it on any map and no grid references to it either. Research however shows that it’s one of a small group of tiny islands located north-east of the top of Ehime, the closest city to it being Imabari. It’s pretty small, its total area being eleven point five-one square kilometers with an estimated population of two thousand people. During Sugi’s time it had a degree of political independence but not anymore In 2004 it was merged with the small town of Yuge and other villages to form a new town of Kamijima. That said, the islet is tiny so it all begs the question, when Sugi arrived in 1944 what rock formations did he think he’d find worthy of geological exploration and research on such a peanut of a place, if that’s what he was actually looking for!

The mystery can only be answered by reference to geographical location, then to Japanese history and finally to a fascinating discovery about the family background of the man that takes us back many centuries. Only when taken together will they answer the question at issue. Why was he there?

Let’s start with location. The island chain of which Iwagi is a part forms a barrier across the great Inland Sea of southern Japan. It’s potential value is therefore military. Directly west lies Japan’s second largest city with its famous castle, The Fortress City of Osaka. Historically the city and its surrounding area played a pivotal role in the continuing conflicts between rival dynasties and clans so its value cannot be underestimated. It was captured by the Emperor Ieyasu from the Toyotomi in 1615 soon after which Japan became completely isolated from the rest of the world for over fifty years. During this time the power of the ruling clans in the south extended west to Nagoya, north to Kyoto and due east to the city of Kobe. Less well known however was the ambition of Osaka’s rulers to extend military influence and control south and east through the island of Shikoku all the way down to Kyushu and the southernmost tip at Kagoshima. The first step in this process in fact was the conquest and fortification of the chain of islands across the Inland Sea beginning with Iwagi, which Professor Sugi visited three hundred years later!

Indeed, exploration of the waters off the rocky shores facing north-east, along with excavations recently undertaken further inland, reveal an astonishing level of construction. However unlike the fortifications of Osaka those on the island are altogether more subdued. Unlike of the towering magnificence of Osaka Castle, the defensive system across Iwagi lay more underground, hidden in a well-connected system of garrison posts among the rocky outcrops, the historic significance of which we now recognise today as The Hidden Fortress of Iwagi. Looked at another way it may be seen as an advanced outpost of the Osaka Region. Both as a springboard for an attack towards the Southern Prefectures and a defensive line in case of any invasion east from the south.

To any straightforward Professor of Geology the ancient ruins of The Hidden Fortress of Iwagi would have presented themselves as a matter of curiosity. A matter of passing conjecture, nothing more. Only Ken-ichi Sugi, with his interest in archeology and Japanese history was not such a man and his interest was not merely geological. He was there on the island with a purpose. Geological enquiry was one thing, his ancient family lineage quite another. Patient research has uncovered something altogether more surprising. His ancestry indeed goes back to the time of the clans under the great Emperor Hideyoshi where a family member may have served in some important military or political capacity, something he was almost certainly aware of. In short he had a very real personal connection with Japanese imperial history.

Now let’s return to more modern times. From early 1944 Japan’s cities were being blasted and destroyed on a daily basis by the American Army Air Force. The country was going down fast. The United States Navy now ruled the seas around Japan and its ruler Emperor Hirohito and the military oligarchy around him which he controlled were expecting an invasion at any time which would certainly come from the south. The Emperor was no ordinary man. To the people of Japan he was a god. His grandfather was Emperor Matsuhito, i.e. Meiji “the Great” whose written constitution to his people proclaimed that he was successor in an unbroken sacred blood line and that any government was subordinate to monarchy and that he was the sacred and inviolable head of the Japanese Empire, head of the armed forces and as the source of all law his position transcended that of all law and the constitution. 

In 1944 Emperor Hirohito WAS Japan. HIS country’s highest spiritual authority and the entire military oligarchy around him of politicians, army, navy and air force his personal fiefdom. His rule was more absolute than any British monarch’s had ever been. From 1941 he and the clique around him became caught up in the Nazi fervor of territorial expansion and war sweeping Europe. By 1944, with Japan’s power declining, he still believed there was time to check the American offensive, the invasion by sea that must come from the south.

In that respect, as we know now, he was entirely ignorant of American military intentions. His aim and therefore that of his military advisors was to prepare against that invasion. One which would inevitably be naval and come across water. Looking at their maps early in 1944 he and his advisors would have noted the English Channel and made comparisons with that and the Japanese Inland Sea. It was the naval route for Osaka and then onwards to Tokyo. The point of access into the heart of Japan for ships and landing craft was the Inland Sea. For defence purposes its fortification now became a strategic priority. On those maps, entry through the Bungo Straits west of Shikoku Island would have seemed a more likely option than an attack further east of the Island through those of Kii. Capturing the two southern-most islands of Kyushu  and Shikoku would provide an initial springboard from which to launch a land based attack west towards the industrialized regions and cities around Osaka.

Once through the Bungo Straits though and heading east their ships would meet the chain of small island with Iwagi at its center. IWAGI ISLET! The name must have rung a bell somewhere! Certainly in Imperial Circles! The place had already been fortified hundreds of years back! From military dossiers released over time since the end of the conflict we now know where Imperial interest was directed. Implausible as it seemed, towards the tiny chain of land that stuck out of the water north of Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku. Iwagi Islet now seemed a natural choice to begin the defence of Japan.

Now, as we know, the Americans began their initial thrust elsewhere, on Iwo-Jima and Okinawa. Then, as is now clear, the Japanese thought it would be elsewhere. Iwagi Islet and its earlier Hidden Fortress! The place, however, had sunk into oblivion in the preceding centuries. An immediate appraisal was needed!

Whether he was the dupe of Imperial military intentions or an earnest patriot of his country we shall perhaps never know. Perhaps as a genuine scientist he was in some way a mixture of both. What is certainly the case is that if he was required, as a command of his Emperor, that he carry out ‘research’ on Iwagi Islet at that time in 1944, Professor Ken-ichi Sugi would have felt greatly honoured. We do not know exactly what his instructions were but we can certainly hazard a guess. That together with a small team of military officials he exam the geology of the rock formations with a view to establishing the most viable defensive positions based on the fortifications already there.

Even to have been commanded by the Emperor would have been deemed the greatest honor. And to obey, unquestionable!   

No record of any words, instructions or discussions between the Imperial hierarchy and Professor Sugi remain. Perhaps this was because nothing was ever put on record. The Emperor’s requirements or commands never were. Word alone was deemed sufficient. He would have been called before some official. Almost certainly senior. Suggestions put to him. Instructions. A matter of patriotic duty. Coming from the highest source. That would have been more than enough. He was a good choice. A professor of rocks, a keen amateur archeologist, someone personally connected through family history with the Imperial history of Japan. A man of understanding. He was almost certainly told what was required.

He almost certainly made a report.

There is a surviving record of the geological notes he made on the rock formations of Iwagi Islet and the hitherto unknown small yellowish crystals he found. Of his other report nothing is known. It may have survived in Imperial Archives, most of which, with post-war American connivance, have never been made public, or been destroyed in the turmoil of post-war Japan.

This is the most likely outcome of the most likely explanation of what a Japanese Professor of Geology, Ken-ichi Sugi was doing on a tiny islet in the southern Inland Sea of Japan in 1944. His mind curious in many directions. Looking around, taking notes of things that he saw. Hammering away on some rocks. Thinking his destiny lay with his time and all too soon knowing how he’d been wrong. Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed just a year later. Clouds that weren’t far away. That he’d have certainly seen at the time.

He gave his name to the yellow non-gem form crystals. Thirty-five years later the mineral took off with the discovery of the first gem grade deposits at the Wessels’ Mine near Kuruman, Cape Province of South Africa and its entry into the pantheon of crystal healing wonder minerals. Delighting endless numbers of the faith around the world.

What a fate! In 1944, Ken-ichi Sugi would have been happy doing his research, serving his Emperor and spooning away on a bowl of rice. Maybe noodles if he was lucky. Around him was death, the Americans and destruction. Never mind the Emperor! Today his name is part of a new spiritual pantheon of heroes. The new Gods of the Sacred! From one world to another. A future he’d never know.

But through it all, from that time to this, is the excitement and thrill of being a geologist. A scientist going about their work. Finding out and learning new things. Being part of what it means to be human.