HELLO YOU HAPPY CAMPERS!

It’s July. The schools have broken up, you’ve organised your year’s holiday break from work and miracle of miracles the sun’s out, the sky’s blue and the weather hot. You’ve been preparing for a camping vacation for months now and it’s all looking good. Furthermore your wife or the bit you’re going with has passed her time of the month and she’s bound to be in season so it’s high heels and fishnet tights for a long hot shag in the mobile home if you can get the kids into some kind of activity! Oh yes, she’ll know your mind all right you dirty bastard. On her back on the edge of the double bed, ankles up round her neck with the curtains closed and her all hot and expectant. That’s what this kind of holiday’s for really whether you’re a couple in your twenties or two randy oldies. It’s not for the fish and chips or the smell of the sea, neither is it for the views, the chit chat with your neighbours on site, the local pubs or the tinned shit you’re getting for supper. No, this kind of mobile home holiday, kids or no kids, is for purpose built shagging.

Dozens of young couples in tents are invariable all in a field of their own ‘cos the noise generated from one bit of canvas to the next tends to cancel each other out. Next door, however, in the field containing the dishwashing and shower block with all the hook ups for electric that you paid extra for, you get the cliff edge view looking down over the sea where it’s all very sedate, but don’t you believe it. There’s no spanking of course keen as you are because the children are too close in the awning tent and besides, to make it any good it has to be hard and then everyone will hear it! I mean, you start from the crazy presupposition that you’re the only one doing it… that everyone else can hear you and know what your wife likes and you don’t want them to hear you slapping her bottom because you’re really a prude. But the truth of the matter is that everyone wants to get their wife’s arse over their knee but don’t want anyone else to hear, just in case you’re the only one doing it and they all think you’re a bit strange let us say!

Mobile home holidays however are really about something more than a bit of wild sex. They’re for the kids, and of course for the dogs you had to take along. Among others the Doberman your wife persists in calling  ‘baby’… but kids and dogs aside they’re often about showing off the vehicle you’re driving. Your almost brand new six berth pride and joy that’s got an aerial on the roof that makes people think you’re working for GCHQ. Alternatively you could be flaunting your newly acquired second hand camper van. Power steering with toilet and shower. Only sixty thousand on the clock that you got for a thousand less than the asking price because you’re a hard-nosed bastard from Essex who’d throttle his own grandmother for two large.

Then there’s the serious sized tent you’ve got attached on the side. Big enough for the little bull terrier affably known to the family as Bollocks along with Hovis the Labrador. They’re in one corner the kids in another. The tent however has got an extension inside of which is the nuclear powered barbecue you recently bought in some New Age Camping Shop, a spare starter motor, just in case, a kite for the kids to fly, three crates of your favourite lager and most important of all, your two favourite gnomes from the back garden, Socrates and Kaka. Did I hear you say philosophers? Arsehole! No, we’re talking Brazil here. Anyway you’ve even had the annexe fitted with proper Venetian Blinds that you can pull down over the clear plastic windows when necessary. Attached to the back door are two bicycles on racks while on the roof there’s the rubberized dinghy. Yeah, let them all look! Great for doing coastal waters whenever you fancy with the high speed engine it’s carrying!

So there you are, occupying the largest space in field next to all the other big rigs. Everyone eyeing up everyone else. You slipped the site warden a tenner to keep you away from the Liverpool mob that only arrived yesterday when the schools broke up. Typical! All of them sitting together last night drinking the cheap stuff till way gone midnight and leaving their glasses all over the place. Well, what do you expect? Spoil it for everyone else they do! Up early and first in the toilets.  Little wonder with all that dog food grilling up on their disposable barbies.

Camping sites are a mecca for gossip. Many motor-home campers go to the same place year after year just to meet up with old friends. Have a drink out together in the little circle of people they’re comfortable with and talk about what they’ve been doing. Yes, comfort is very important on official camping sites, especially emotional and psychological comfort and once a year you all congregate together in your own protected little place in the wilderness. Somewhere that’s got just about everything. Sit round a table with a fruit bowl on it and talk shit! The kids are all asleep in the dog’s tent so you can engage in comfortable bonhomie under the stars.

Every year through the summer millions of British go playing camping with all its equipment, its rituals, its pleasures forced or otherwise and its disasters. You set out from home as an act of faith with hope at the back of your head. A belief that you’re all going to enjoy it which in truth is more like wishful thinking than anything else. A kind of desperate determination along with a prayer that it won’t piss with rain all the time, that the food doesn’t go rotten in the fridge, that a freak wave won’t wash the kids away in the sea or little Tommy won’t fall off a cliff. Then there’s all the will she or won’t she anxiety going round in your skull and Christ, there’s only one shop in the village and nobody wants fish and chips anymore because you’ve been eating it for the last six months and this is supposed to be a holiday? So what else is new?

The weather’s changed. Five days of sun and heat before the holidays started and now its bucketing with rain and you’re stuck in the tin box you saved for with the kids playing the same old games on the IPad. Still you’re part of the motor homes fraternity and considerably better off than those youngsters in their tents with the rain soaking their bedding. Camping writ large is a special case of British one-upmanship. At worst you can cook in a caravan but just think of those miserable bastards stuck in their tents eating Mars Bars twenty-four seven! We on the other hand are mobile! We can drive down to the pub or the Heritage Centre if we fancy, come back and be in the dry while the creeps under canvas are knee deep in mud! What we used to do a thousand years ago when we were young, like going on demos and being all green.

On camping-mobile home holidays the British take the class system with them, especially if they’ve got something worth flaunting. Those in tents on the other hand don’t seem to care. If it’s boys and girls it’s more about togetherness than anything else. Meeting challenges and doing things together. It’s a kind of test, a preparation for the life ahead they might spend together. The girl busy with the food for her man even if it’s just porridge and milk and cheese sandwiches, helping him fix up the tent in the wind and demonstrating her nest building skills. Her man keeping her warm and cosy at night when the wind’s howling outside and the clothes hung out to dry are wrecked. They’ll talk quietly about all the creeps up there in the next field in their tin boxes, removed from any closeness to nature which is really what it’s all about so they think and go home all smug and self-satisfied that they’re the real campers, tuned into solidarity more than anything else, but thirty years later, with a family, mortgage, and running their very own business, or at least with executive jobs at the bank they’ll have forgotten all the brave words they once thought made them different and be up there in the next field with the rest of them, in a tin box of their own with a side tent, two kids and a husky.

Camping holidays are for the adventurous and all British people, one way or another, love to feel that they are. Just imagine being thought of as an old stick in the mud. They can call you names, think about you any way they like just as it’s not someone who never does anything or goes anywhere. What, going camping at your age Bill? There’s nothing you like to hear your neighbor say more than that! Yes, you’re still being adventurous at your age. It might not be in a tent anymore but you’re still getting out. Going somewhere distant. Looking down over green fields and valleys from high up or walking down the dunes to the sea. All the others, however, and the phrase generally refers to anyone working class north of Buckingham, prefer going into the nearest seaside town proper, doing their fish n chips suppers or curry sauce with chicken nuggets and playing the slots. You won’t invite THEM to sit round your table on a warm early evening sipping your vodka and tonic. No ways! You’re you and they’re them. You don’t even like talking to them but still put on a friendly disposition because it doesn’t cost anything to be civil just as long as you make them know, in the gentlest most subtle of ways, where your invisible garden fence is i.e. that their kids can’t play anywhere near you and their dogs have to be an a two foot lead. Heavens, just think of them shitting anywhere near you. Turning the whole camp site into a sewage farm after only a day that they arrived.

Thank God there’s a Warden permanently on site! I really don’t like to say but… I mean, you always get that kind of thing with people from Liverpool… I mean, I don’t know how they can afford that kind of thing, all of them being on benefits… but then it really isn’t so hard to imagine…

Well it’s just about alright as long as there’s the weather or there’s only a few of them. Just think of them congregating in swarms and the things those kids will be getting up to on a rainy day! If you’re going out for a walk just make sure you’ve got the wheel lock on Cyril and the Doberman’s nicely inside! Did anyone actually think that you brought it for exercise or a paddle down in the cove? No, you brought it along to keep the tattoo mob at bay!

Okay, so you’ve taken the kids to the Heritage Centre, gone for a boat trip round the bay or fishing further afield. You went Pony Trekking, listened to the colliery brass band playing the Cobbler’s March at the village fete where you watched the vegetables being judged, talked all about rural life with some farmer or other, saw tall ships tied up at harbour moorings in Devon and learned about life at sea from some old fucker with a white beard who looked like Captain Fish Fingers, watched the lower classes queuing up for the evening’s cholesterol while you and yours walked into the Port Somewhere or Other pub restaurant for Sea Bass and baby potatoes with a chilled Chardonnay, and that’s showing your ignorance because the only white wine for fish is a chilled Chenin Blanc! Okay, maybe you all went down to the harbour to watch the boats coming in loaded with lobsters and crabs then tried some seafood in tubs. That’s really adventurous for anyone under thirty but you remember your dad liking the stuff so it couldn’t be bad, for you that is, with vinegar, pepper and salt. Then there’s always the evening show at the Playhouse, featuring some has-been group out of the seventies or comedienne Jackie what’s-her-name who used to be funny. Well it wasn’t actually great but you shared in the laughs and were kept entertained by the quietly desperate revolving summer playhouse performers who’ve long past their prime and know how to put on a show and a face.

Yes it’s seeing things for you ‘cos the kids don’t want to go hiking. Maybe some sea caving but definitely not hiking. Ten miles on a coastal path in pouring rain or a baking hot sun, forget it! That’s for the kids up the hill in their tents. You are family camping and don’t you forget it. There’s a big difference between what you are there for and them. Then of course there’s another whole species of camper. The static home mob! Whole houses on raised concrete platforms close to the sea with two of three bedrooms and all mod cons. It’s big business. Buy a piece of land at a good site, first paying off Head of Planning at the local council, bring in the concrete for a hundred pitches or more then move in the same number of bijou residences, each on their own little patch of concrete and green. A few shrubs here and there and you’re renting out Berlusconi by the Sea. Think of what you can do with a good looking young piece in a Static that you can’t do with your wife in a Mobile and now you’re talking banking executive bonuses!

Statics are static. They are not going anywhere and neither mostly are you. You’re there for the fantastic view and maybe a short drive into the village. Some time at the pub with your piece before driving back up the rough road with moonlight over the sea to your tucked away corner of paradise. Your wife thinks you’re away on business but we know the truth. You’re in the static home business all right only it’s not what she imagines!    

There’s one thing about a camping holiday though that connects all the different kinds of accommodation and all social classes and that is the beach. Many sites are close to the sea, sandy beaches and swimming. It’s one of the main reasons you’re there. When the sun’s out and the sky’s blue you’re in the water for a fair time doing something or other. It could be pissing or paddling, fooling about on a plastic boat or playing with a ball Whatever the case and no matter who you are you’re just having fun. It’s a longing, an essential part of the human condition that cuts all the way across the social classes. Everyone wants to have fun and the beach near the camp site is the perfect place. The only pressure on you there is the tide and the only worry the weather. You can either splash around, watch the kids making sandcastles or try and catch fish. It’s either that or boil up in the heat. Everything’s free down on that beach and everyone’s equal. It’s about the only time and place in their lives when everyone’s the same as everyone else. It’s a kind of place outside reality where all men and women, whoever and whatever they are in that time and place are equal. A place of happy enchantment. In essence a fantasy that actually becomes a temporary reality. That’s why everyone’s so happy on beaches. They’re all living the once a year dream, a place where nothing matters except having a good time. Something you can’t do whenever you please when you’re back home.

The beach then is a universal equalizer that all kinds of camper can share. It’s a precious almost holy place of happy fantasy. Another world that you enter the moment you step on the sand. Why do you feel so happy, so liberated and free? It’s because you’re no longer a hostage to anyone’s fortune. You’re a free being! But you’re only allowed this two or three weeks a year. Just a taster. Like a reminder of something ancient. Like some kind of Garden of Eden. A time when all people were decent, pure, uncorrupted… A state of being that died, but all the same, just once a year for a time, on that golden sand your thoughts can run free. Maybe that’s why you feel happy being there. Your senses are captivated and liberated. It’s a fantasy you’ve paid for with a year of hard work. Whether you’re under a tent or living in an ultra-modern ultra-expensive tin box you’re all sharing the same residual dream down there on the sand. The joy of freedom that historical time and evolution relegated to the back of your brain. Don’t worry, it hasn’t gone away. It’s still there waiting to come out once a year as a universally shared joy.

Can you remember ever feeling angry on a beach or resentful of anyone. It’s magical when it’s warm and strange when it turns windy or rains. Something that threatens the idyll of Eden!

So there you all are, happy campers. Enjoying the sandy idyll that’s soon to end when you leave and get back to the campsite. Suddenly reality returns in a flash but not yet, not yet! You’re still full of the golden haze of sun and sand that’s not quite out of your mind. You’re moving from one world to another. From the fantasy you’ve travelled down the motorway for to the reality where you’ve pitched up and what you’ve pitched up in. Never mind, there’s always tomorrow! Meanwhile you’re a traveller between both, between the beach and the campsite. Between a great liberating relaxed feeling of joy that though you don’t know it comes from deep out of our biological past and the reality that we created for ourselves over millions of years of historical time. And when you leave and go home you’ll take them both with you, the beach and the site. You really won’t know why you loved being there. You’ll call it a change of scene, much needed, maybe a challenge. It’s all different in a way if it’s pelting with rain. You don’t walk the beach do you? Well maybe you should try. You’ll find doing it something real special!

You may go home. Return to the old worries, anxieties and traumas, but somehow they’re not quite the same. That’s because you’re not quite the same either. Somehow those old golden moments of Eden are still there in your head so everything strangely feels brighter.

THAT’S YOUR CAMPING HOLIDAY, WITH ITS BRIGHT SUNSHINE AND GOLDEN BEACH DOING THE TALKING!

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NEWS OF THE WEEK : SUNDAY 7th to SATURDAY 13TH JULY

Well here my considerations on some of the news stories of the week.

So Andy Murray won the Men’s Singles Tennis Title at Wimbledon and his years of hard training, ambition and dedication paid off. Good for him! Every year when Wimbledon’s on, BBC Television froths at the mouth and no more so than this year after his victory. Old champions now fat and ugly get dragged out to commentate and usually foreigners who always do the jolly old British Establishment proud by saying how much they love to be here and other little niceties that the middle class tennis following love to hear. For the days’ patriots the red of the Union Jacks go nicely with strawberries off a barrow that are somehow not your common East European migrant pickings at three quid an hour but very definitely middle class strawberries nicely going down the very middle class gobs. And how do most people get seats for the Centre Court on Finals Day? Well if you think it’s a queuing thing think again! It’s celebrity time and the ‘A’ list. Politicians, entertainers and corporate executives. The rest sit outside on a hill, watch a screen and think they’re just like everyone else in there only they’re not!

The boy did well and he deserved the media adulation that followed, only he was a Scotsman from Dunblane a small town where a crazed gunman murdered many kids at the school he attended Sand much as the Establishment would have loved him to be English he wasn’t. Tennis at Wimbledon once a year, like the Proms at the Albert Hall, the Henley Regatta and Test Match Cricket at Lords are annual pinnacles of the British Establishment at play. Most of their following is straight out the shires. Ten bedroom country cottages or town houses in Chelsea, one of the most understated shires in London! It’s not for the underclass of Liverpool or the working class of Widnes. Likewise the Durham Miners Gala isn’t for those out of Kensington! These people don’t even watch tennis on tele. It’s not traditionally their kind of sport. Never mind, when anyone British wins anything at Wimbledon, the BBC, leading the mass media, make sure they do it for ‘the nation’ so when Murray won we all became middle class only that’s not Andy Murray. He’s a modest, dedicated self-effacing sportsman who also won the Olympic title on home soil. It means the Establishment will give him a knighthood and make him one of their own.

Perfect if he wants to be a BBC Wimbledon tennis commentator but hopefully not. It’s a fate worse than death. A bit like being a schoolteacher when you should be researching!

The other big news of the week, the funeral of soldier Lee Rigby is strangely connected. Andy Murray’s home town was victim to a terrible attack, Fusilier Lee Rigby was likewise a victim of a shocking outrage.  Much has been written and spoken about the life of this courageous and affable young man who fought for his country abroad, almost to sickening excess in the lower end media and the BBC, the latter describing his death as a killing rather than the filthy murder it was. Some have described it as senseless, however it wasn’t really senseless at all. Not to his murderers. From their point of view, as a soldier, he was a murderer himself.

Let’s look at this clearly. The hateful assault on him outside the military barracks at Woolwich was a product of uncontrolled rage fuelled by Islamic hate propaganda. This wasn’t a simple stabbing for god’s sake. They overpowered this man and tried to cut off his head with a knife. That’s because the filthy hate propaganda that took over their minds preaches that all non-Muslims are ‘dhimmies’. Inferiors. An inferior species of being, and that’s the real irony. According to such teaching, chief among these inferiors, after Jews, are black people themselves! How was it then that these two black murderers, both British who’d been schooled in this country, one with a Nigerian background who’d gone to University here, could have become so rapidly radicalized? And much more than radicalized! They’d deliberately gone out to murder that day and driven round searching for victims, murdering entirely in the name of Islam and so very clearly proud of it. They hadn’t tried to escape after their butchery but hung around, waiting to be caught for the sake of the publicity it would bring. This a particularly filthy kind of fanaticism. Entirely unashamed and redolent of Nazi’s openly murdering Jewish babies and children.

Both men, so clearly proud of their deed, were well educated, so their conversion to hatred seems illogical, but not if you follow the logicality of this fanaticist teaching. Put one foot on the path of its warped twisted ideology and you begin killing single individuals thought inferior, thought enemies of everything you are taught to believe is good and right and later you wind up killing many because you now identify with countless others of the faith and become part of something much bigger than yourself. So now you have to murder everyone on the other side, those you think are doing your brothers harm here and overseas. The perfect target for you therefore is your main enemy, a soldier. That’s why you’re proud. That’s the filthy logic of it all.

How come that these two men were so entirely susceptible to such teaching? That they forgot whatever else they were taught had learned and embraced such twisted views so completely? Could it be because such teaching is so utterly true? Surely not if it condemns two thirds of humanity out of hand as inferior. The fact that it took hold of them lies perhaps in their psychology. That they themselves felt inferior and their lives without meaning so sought meaning and empowerment elsewhere. The path that brought them to Lee Rigby might have been accidental that day but their murderous intention wasn’t accidental at all. In a way it was part of a product of good old New Labour intention.

Remember New Labour? Remember how soon after the time of the first New Labour Government in 1997 the streets of London were filled with Muslim hate preachers with large numbers of followers around them spouting venomous racial hatred against minority groups such as Jews. There were many of these people, standing up in the streets, protected by the police, with New Labour Home Secretaries allowing them to say whatever they wanted. It was exactly with the advent of the New Labour Government that anti-Semitic preaching on the streets of London became commonplace. Yes, we all heard the tight lipped excuses. There was nothing they could do about it. It was entirely lawful. It would alas require a major change in the law to stop it. All the New Labour Home Secretaries wringing their hands over the following decade. Oh dear, oh dear… how on earth did it happen? Well it happened because Muslim-happy New Labour Government wanted trade with the Arab world. Anyway, there were only a few hundred thousand Jews in the country and the many millions of Asians their immigration policies had allowed in. So the preachers radicalized hundreds of thousands of youth in Slough and the Midlands, many of whom left to fight British soldiers in Afghanistan while two who stayed murdered Lee Rigby!

Now, many more are leaving for Syria, radicalized by a philosophy of hatred. The Middle East one minute, Britain the next. The signs are only too evident. Well done New Labour! Lee Rigby’s life might have been honorable but his death certainly wasn’t. His funeral however, with his brother soldiers around him giving him the respect he deserved was indeed something better. Something worthy. Something altogether more honorable than anything those so called brothers can give to their own fellow murderers who fight to stop women and girls being educated. Who want to stop children learning to read and to write. These so called brothers need everyone else to be ignorant so they can only swallow their message of hate. That was what Fusilier Lee Rigby was fighting for. To help educate kids so that they’d become better people. The noble choice of an honorable man.

The other big story of the week is a return to Ed Miliband! The spat between the Milipede and Len McClusky of the Unite Union last week should have given the latter a wake-up call that something nasty was going to happen only he was still having a nap. There was Len, still calling the Milipede ‘Ed’ and making out that he was somehow misguided and just ‘got it wrong’, right up to the eleventh hour when the Parliamentary Labour Party leader turned round and told him he didn’t give a shit about his Trade’s Union financial donations, nor the support of its affiliated members. In fact he broadened it out to say he didn’t give a monkey’s about any kind of support from the Trades Union Movement at all and that they could stick all their money!

I suggested last week that this might well happen. The Milipede wants to complete the work of his predecessors, the two Dark Lords of New Labour, and dissociate the Party from its working class foundation and support. Make it an entirely middle class entity with policies little different from the Tories. The Milipede, actually Florence the Snail from the Magic Roundabout, wants any connection with the Trades Unions to be entirely on his terms and quite frankly he understands the Union Leaders only too well. There’s the wretched McClusky still making speeches of support for Florence and the Labour Party at the Durham Miners Gala when Florence had already stuck two fingers up and told him to stick it! How very strange Len! No repeal of Anti-Trades Union legislation from Florence should he be elected to power and no reversal of Tory Spending Cuts. Actually whatever you think it is Len it’s actually NO NOTHING for millions of working people from New Labour and NO NOTHING for you and the Trades Union Movement. Yet you are still talking about your good friend Ed even though he’s telling you to get stuffed and you’re still promising this Party money from the subscriptions of working people to your Union who, if they come to Government, will only give 1% annual pay rises while they allow their corporate friends in finance and industry to avoid paying taxes.

Now exactly what kind of Trades Union Leader are you Mr McClusky, just politically ignorant or simply an unconscionable political coward? Or do you think that all trade unionists are stupid?

CRYSTAL HEALING FOR DOGS - THE BIRTH OF A NEW SCIENCE!

As many observers of the British social scene know there are few pleasures that the people of the United Kingdom enjoy more than getting drunk, involving themselves in fights or rowdy behaviour, informing on their neighbours or anyone else they don’t like to the police, paying ludicrous sums of money they can barely afford to get themselves tattooed and likewise forking out the same to watch little up front punks  kick a ball around for ninety minutes once a week in between spitting and fouling their opponents. All very true only there’s one thing I’ve missed and that’s how much they love their dogs. Indeed, the British are truly a nation of dog lovers and isn’t that nice!

Yes, isn’t that nice! In fact it’s been observed by those visiting Britain along with many dispassionate non dog owners living here that British people seem to love their dogs as much as they love their own children. Indeed, could it be the case that there are more instances of abuse against children than cruelty to dogs? This so called love of their dogs is both interesting and complex and well worth considering. Dog owners are not dog lovers in general. They love their own dogs, not everyone else’s. Their dog is considered not so much as a pet but part of the family. Indeed more often than not as a family member. An integral part of the family unit! They are treated, often adored, as active companions and trusted friends. Unlike children, problem free and uncomplicated. You often hear a litany of phraseology from dog owners well known to one and all about a dog being a man’s best friend when that friend should actually it should be his wife, or being part of the family when all it actually is in real terms is an animal appendage that takes on the character of its owner, more often than not let it be said in order to please. Dogs have a genetic lineage from wolves who used to wander round ancient campfires hoping to snaffle a bone then turned into affable friends for something out of a tin. Smart cookies, dogs!

However the relationship people have with their dogs isn’t as straightforward as that. While dogs often take on the personalities of their owners the latter often seek their own specific personality in the dogs they acquire. I would have used the word beasts here but that might have caused serious offence because no dog owner regards his or her dog as a beast. That would be unthinkable, unkind… ignorant more often than not because outsiders know nothing about the relationship they have! A dog or a bitch isn’t a beast, he or she is a friend! A kindred spirit! Well that’s what their owners need to think because of the emotionality they invest. That’s it really. Dog owners invest their emotions in such relationships. Perhaps because they are less challenging or hurtful than wives or children can be or so they think!  In that sense dogs can be appealing to the lazy side of human beings. Of men in particular. They require less effort for the affection and companionship they give. Their dog will love them no matter what!

So dogs take on the personalities of their owners and their owners seek dogs with self-affirming personalities. It is an observable fact just about everywhere that heavily tattooed working or underclass dog owners have a general taste for Staffordshire Bull Terriers after which come Alsatians and Dobermans. The former are active, purposeful and aggressive when pushed. The latter seriously aggressive when prompted. Unfortunately this is not simply a mimicry of personality but can often become much more when their owner requires their dog as an instrument for his or her aggression. In such cases the dog takes on more than the passive quality of a companion and becomes the agent of its owner’s will. The preference of middle class owners however is more for affable companionable creatures such as Labradors or hounds. Affectionate trusting relationships that are essentially passive. Dogs for the home rather than dogs for the street and at home very much an extension of family. Good with the children. Not too much hard work required. Not too much of a challenge. They are part of comfort, ease and domesticity.

There’s another side though to aggressive dog ownership or the lazy ease of middle class affability. While both are more often a matter of family extension many dog owners are single individuals and it is here that equally interesting and often problematic circumstances arise. The dog becomes much more than a friend.  In the case of middle aged men and women the relationship becomes altogether more psychological. Altogether more intimate. Not so much that of a parent to a child but in a peculiar way almost like that of companionable substitute for family that’s missing. In many such cases the dog reflects a neurosis within its owner. Their relationship becomes more deeply personal than is healthy insofar as the beloved creature can do no wrong. That any criticism of its behaviour becomes a criticism or attack on its owner. The consequences of this are clearly observable. For example if the attentions of a dog on people in public, say in a park, are rejected, its owner may take this as a slight on themselves and reproach some stranger accordingly.

Other examples of this quite common dog owner neuroses are altogether less pleasant, such as being socially blind to the conduct of this do-no-wrong part of themselves. Instances I have personally witnessed are owners taking their dogs into children’s playgrounds, allowing them to defecate in sandpits where kids are playing and when reproached by parents are defensive in the extreme and often respond with serious abuse. The same goes for public parks where single middle aged women give their charges carte blanche to shit wherever they like. Another problem often arises in small public gardens where only guide dogs are allowed. Well displayed notices to this affect are ignored by women who make a point of bringing in usually small fluffy dogs without leads to piss all over benches and empty their pedigree pal on the flower beds. Their response to complaint is invariably the same, defensive abusive. The dog’s behaviour might be anti-social but is never perceived as such by an owner obsessed with their charge. Such people are undoubtedly possessed by a compulsive neuroses that likewise turns their dog into a weapon. 

This problem of neurotic British dog owners in general is commonplace and serious whether in small towns or the suburbs of cities. It is a perennial cause of tension between semi-detached neighbours or in provincial parks and is now an essential characteristic of a very anti-social way of life in British society where dogs are often considered more important than people. It’s not the fault of the dogs. People have changed. Under  pressures created by economic anxiety, they have become socially marginalized. Old identities have gone, things that were once certain have disappeared. Loss of place promoting a new social dis-ease. The personalities of dog owners and their neuroses perfectly reflects this fracturing of the old social ease and headlong plunge into uncertainty with anti-social aggression, anxiety, fear and disturbed personality fast becoming the order of the day. New times create a need for new certainties. With dogs increasingly reflecting the personalities and temperaments of their owners new solutions are needed to create for our friends a new sense of harmony. A new sense of canine spirituality from a new kind of healing.

Crystal healing for canines is very much a new vision. What one might justly call a New Wave Idea. The tensions and imbalances of canine personality is not something new. Its existence has been known for millennia. Its solution however has only become possible with the advent in recent decades of the new science if I may describe it as such, of Crystal Healing. We are now aware of the healing properties of crystals. That each is specific to a certain condition of wellbeing. It is now believed that such associations between people and crystals may be equally relevant to the spiritual condition of dogs. We have all witnessed the canine temperament and changes within it. I’m not talking here of any relevance of specific crystals to specific breed of dog. On the contrary I refer to the spiritual connectivity of specific crystals to each canine temperamental condition and need. The healing properties of Rose Quartz, for example, on the agitated, disturbed condition of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. As a crystal that creates and enhances a soothing, loving, calming disposition its healing effect has yet to be realised. Amethyst on the other hand may purify the blood and enhance circulation in many species from Setters to Dalmatians.

The science at this time remains inexact. There is currently much speculation and significant healing experimentation to be done. I have earlier pointed to the problems of dog owners, the respective conditions they create and affect they have on their charges. The potential remedy for this is to consider the situation from the dogs point of view! Indeed, how it might become possible to reverse this effect through crystal healing therapy on the dogs themselves. This spiritual healing and re-alignment therapy, a rebalancing if you will of the spiritual energies of dogs, would inevitably have a profound effect on their owners. Such a  symbiosis in the form of a mutual wellbeing is well known and nothing new but using crystals to create such a state, however, is a radical departure from all forms of hitherto canine psychology. It represents a new stage in the relationship between dogs and their human friends. One that is indeed profound and revolutionary.

Here there are difficult questions to consider.  One is naturally the effect of crystals worn by dogs on owners who do not wear crystals, or anyone else they come into contact with who likewise do not experience the spiritual benefits of crystal healing. Then again there is the matter of the spiritual interconnectivity of the healing properties of crystals worn by both dogs and their owners. Should the wearing of crystals by both dogs and their owners be those that are mutually complimentary to the personalities of each or self-enhancing to become mutually complimentary so that dogs and their owners are able to spiritually grow together? This inter-developmental relationship between dogs and their owners each receiving the benefits of crystal healing therapy is complex and may be decided by the interrelationship between the dog and its owner’s mutual spiritual needs. A problem here is that the differential energies of crystals might not necessarily be complimentary to both dogs and human beings. Are we concerned to use crystal healing to create personalities in dogs that complement that of their owners or allow canines their own unfettered distinct personalities?

These are matters for future philosophers and psychologists of crystal healing and canine personality to research and no doubt such issues will be explored in Faculties of Crystal Healing at some of our finest Universities in the coming decades. For example a Department of Crystal Healing and Canine Psychology  at Oxford University is not in the least improbable! Having said this much of course depends on whether dog owners might be interested in crystal healing and believe in its beneficial effects and not only for themselves but also their canines. For now though just a few simple suggestions. Things you may wish to try out. For owners of Staffordshire Bull Terriers and let us say Dobermans why not try attaching a Rose Quartz crystal pendant with silver chain to its collar and observe its effect. Making it more calm, affectionate and loving, less aggressive perhaps, is something you may not initially want or desire, that is if you want it to be a simple extension of your own personality! It all comes down to what you really want your dog for. However an alternative is a pendant of Amethyst for giving your dog a healthier physical condition as the crystal increases the production of hormones and may harmonize its endocrine and immune systems. It may also relieve physical and emotional tension and stress therefore assisting in bonding with children and neighbours.

Finally there’s always the simple Quartz crystal as possibly the greatest healing and energy booster and regulator. Generating electro-magnetism it may tune itself to the spiritual energy of your dog enhancing it if required and making it a more vibrant active companion. These are mere suggestions. If you’ve tried them yourselves and found their effects beneficial you may wish to see how they work with your canine companions. Take care in how you attach them to the collar. A small hole perhaps with a clip. The choice is yours but the benefits of crystal healing to many millions of adults is undoubted so why not try with your dog! Just think of your Doberman… Just looking at you so affectionately and not wanting to bite anyone’s hand off, or your little black Staffie being so nice to the cat.

It’s true that other things have been written about dogs and crystal healing but it’s all casual stuff. A few photos but little else. Nothing that approaches serious study and a rigorous outlook. Here I have presented for the first time what may best be described as the foundation for a new science for others to consider and take forward. Much work remains to be done.  

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If you've enjoyed reading this post and others in the series, why not try reading some of the novels I've written? One is a highly enjoyable black satire about the English Literary Racket and what unknown writers have to do to try and get their work published. It exposes the whole dirty world of literary agents, celebrity writers, journalists and publishers and it tells you the truth. I know, I've been through it all.

A CONSPIRACY OF TRASH is a story that Rupert Murdoch's book publishing company Harper Collins, the largest in the UK, refused to publish. You can download the Foreword on Amazon for free if you like, and if you want to read more it will cost just 99 cents or around 75 pence. Above all I hope you enjoy it and that it makes you laugh because I enjoyed writing it.

The story has many different characters and one or two heroes. It also has a serious message. About the people who really control publishing and the kind of books they allow you to read. All the publishers refused to give this black comedy a public hearing. They pose as liberals, believers in free speech but they're nothing of the kind and the thing they fear most is satire. If you read A CONSPIRACY OF TRASH you'll understand why.

Another great read is my Science Fiction novel THE ADVENTURES OF A MAROONED SPACEMAN told in two parts. It’s a story about a human being’s struggle to survive after being dumped on an alien world after his Starcruiser is attacked by space pirates. It’s a real thriller about human endurance and the triumph of a man against all the odds.

Finally you’ll really enjoy my exciting human interest drama THE BROTHERS PAGE, A VERY ENGLISH NOVEL, about a working class family up north, two brothers and their sister, who make it out of a tough grinding background to achieve happiness, fame and fortune. Through it all the guiding spirit is Ma Page, who nurtures her family through many adventures. This is a story full of happiness and romance  where true love is found. A great family tale full of hard work and ambition, optimism and hope. Something that will warm the hearts of those who find life tough and dispiriting today. You can likewise get some free download from Amazon to experience the spirit of the story and to buy it is cheap. I promise you’ll enjoy it!  

MORE NEWS FOR A NEW WEEK

Every week brings new treats where the news is concerned. Juicy little stories you might say, and recently there’s been plenty. That said I’m only commenting on three. Firstly the personal attack by the current leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Britain’s largest Trades Union, Unite, and its leader Len McCluskey. Secondly the heroic people of Egypt, mainly its youth, who in their many millions and with   the support of the army behind them to further their cause have created a new revolution against the Muslim fundamentalists, their political party and Egypt’s President who were fast turning the country into a religious state. And finally, more about the shocking conduct of the police that’s been in and out of the papers thick and fast.

Many of you may object to the fact that I’m not saying anything about the upcoming re-release of one of the child murderers of young Jamie Bulger. This is a horror and torment that his parents will forever live with just the same as it is for his two killers, only children themselves at the time. Every one of us lives with this grief. We feel it in our hearts. We share the sorrow and mourn with the parents. Yet we also hope that the killers may do something good with their lives and within themselves give retribution and atonement. So let the little child sleep sweetly now, forever in our thoughts, his tragedy urging us to be better, more decent, more loving people.

Now the attack by Ed Miliband on Len McCluskey and the Unite Trades Union is something real special. Ed Miliband has referred a so called internal Labour Party Enquiry - which he and his Parliamentary colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet requested into the conduct of the Unite Union - to the police. In short, the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party have asked the police to investigate their complaint of illicit conduct by the Union at one of their Party branches, Falkirk in Scotland to be precise, where it is alleged that the Union tried to interfere with the selection of a new candidate for an upcoming by-election. In this case the Unite candidate was the Secretary to Tom Watson himself  the Shadow Cabinet member in charge of organising Labor’s upcoming National Election Campaign. The specific allegation of the Internal Enquiry is that the Union tried to rig the Party membership in Falkirk to ensure victory for its candidate.

Len McCluskey and his Unite Union have described the Internal Enquiry as a ‘stitch up’ and a ‘smear’ on the Union. Ed Miliband has said that he would not have “my Party” dealt with in such a manner. That’s fair enough but someone should tell Ed Miliband, the Parliamentary Party leader that the Labour Party, such as it exists outside the Parliamentary Party, is not YOUR Party and neither is it the property of its representatives in Parliament. The Party itself belongs to its MEMBERS, by far the greater majority of whom are Trades Unionists, its ACTIVISTS and SUPPORTERS, NOT YOU ED MILIBAND OR YOUR MATES IN THE SHADOW CABINET. The Unite Trades Union and all the working people who are its members are far and away the greatest financial contributors to the Labour Party itself. It is their contributions that in main help the election campaigns to return to Westminster Labour Members of Parliament!

Never mind that this Parliamentary Labour Shadow Cabinet campaigns for and supports economic and social policies little different from those of the present Tory-Lib Dem Coalition Government. Never mind that Ed Miliband had said that he will not reverse these policies should he win power in a General Election. Never mind that the views of he and his Shadow Cabinet are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Tories. The main thing is that he has asked the police to investigate Britain’s main Trades Union and therefore the Trades Union movement itself. Indeed, he has turned the police onto the Union for the purpose of attacking and discrediting it.

This is important. Ed Miliband was part of Gordon Brown’s now discredited Labour Government. You know, the one that caused the great economic collapse and was responsible for all the major banking, taxation and corporate scandals that resulted in the serious impoverishment of the British people. Just as important however, with Ed Miliband a part of this Government, the police were up to their elbows in undercover spying on individuals and campaign groups for many forms of social and legal justice, all of which were undoubtedly known to Labour Home Secretaries and their Police Ministers! In this respect could it be the case that the police were also busy spying on Trades Union members and Trades Unions themselves while Ed Miliband was a member of this Government. Did you yourself know anything about such police spying practices while you were a member of the Brown Government, Mr Miliband? Furthermore, were you aware of any undercover police spying practices while you were a Member of Parliament during the time of Tony Blair’s Labour Government?

For a leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party to smear Britain’s largest Trades Union and turn the police on it is a radical departure in Labour Movement politics. Supporters of any Labour Party that remains have been warned that if a Labour Government is elected led by Ed Miliband its policies will be no different to those of the Tory Party. Okay, now people know, but then kindly tell us, WHY ON EARTH SHOULD ANYONE VOTE LABOUR IF YOU’VE SAID THAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE NO DIFFERENT TO THE TORIES?

Everyone knows that the recent Labour Government was one of uncontrolled mass Muslim and East European Immigration, gross failures of economic control and a long term extensive attack on British working people and with you getting busy with the police all over again on behalf of the Tories, Ed Miliband, why should anyone think that you and your middle class Parliamentary wretches, many up to their eyeballs in expenses fiddling, are worth putting a tick against when it comes to a General Election? 

You’ve got nothing new to say and nothing better to offer working people except more attacks on their standard of living, more social injustice and more police spying. That’s what you’ve become. The dirty party and there’s the remarkable thing really. You’re even more dirty than the Tories!

By way of contrast to all this we have seen the heroic revolutionary secularist masses of Egypt, mainly its youth, unemployed and poor masses, courageously gather to demonstrate against increasing poverty and islamification of their country by an elected Muslim President and his Muslim Brotherhood Movement. Their dissatisfaction with their policies and actions over the last year had reached its head in the last week with gigantic demonstrations in cities throughout the country prompting the army to intervene on their behalf. The army could have intervened on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political party in the Egyptian Parliament but instead chose to support the mass of the people so clearly against them. The army, then, has chosen to support the insurrectionists who have courageously acted to make a new revolution just a year after they made the old. In this respect, the political development and advance in the wisdom of Egypt’s youth and working people has been extraordinary and quite frankly a beacon of enlightenment for the rest of the world. Egypt’s young people and poor would not be sold a pup, be silenced or stilled.

And what has the BBC had to say about all this? You know the BBC don’t you? Formerly main promoters of the Jimmy Savile fan club they then became its protectors, refusing to air a television documentary which raised suspicions about the conduct of their favourite son. So what has the illustrious BBC had to say about the new Egyptian revolution? Well during the last week it has come to officially describe it as a military coup d’état, an undemocratic intervention by Egypt’s army against what it has repeatedly described as Egypt’s democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood Government. Its presenters and on the spot reporters have endlessly repeated this view. They’ve repeatedly interviewed supporters of the Muslim faction in the streets but never once bothered to talk to or interview anyone from the vast mass of demonstrators on Tahrir Square. Furthermore, when interviewing ‘experts’ or panels of ‘experts’ on Egyptian politics it has made sure that most of their panelists were supporters of the former President’s regime. In short it has given a very decided slant to its broadcasting of events, taking the side of the Muslim Brotherhood against that of the masses.

This slant of the BBC was somewhat vague during the early part of the week, even after the military intervention on behalf of the secularists. On Thursday and Friday however this definitely changed, hardening into a generalised support for the old regime. The new revolution with army support was put across as illegitimate, unconstitutional, undemocratic and mob inspired. All the well-known, well-worn BBC establishment phrases of denigration. BBC reporters and journalists ensconced up on hotel balconies overlooking the square making hostile judgements without bothering to go below, get out into the crowds of excited cheering youths and working people and ask them why they were there and what they believed in. They stayed well away from these people but no such ‘caution’ on Friday when they went straight into the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations and let these now oppositionists make their threats and say what they liked, then adding their own view for the British public that the country was now clearly divided.

This clear BBC slant on behalf of the former Muslim regime of ex-President Morsi, now deposed, should come as no surprise to many BBC watchers who have observed for some time that the Corporation behaves more like a Muslim front organisation than an objective, impartial conveyor of news, and if they ever wanted evidence of this, first hand, then the events in Egypt supplied it in plenty. For myself and the wretched BBC apart I can only express my admiration for the sparkling optimistic and courageous young people of this country, rich with all manner of views, rich with history and with fire in their hearts for change! Their enthusiasm for change and a better life should be a beacon for us all in these days in Britain when the three main political parties all stand for the same thing and the supposed main opposition party has betrayed and turned its back on everything it once believed and the millions who supported it.

Finally this week more interesting news about our lovely police. Firstly an official report condemns a police shootist with a sub-machine gun for pumping eight bullets into a man sitting in a car in Edgware, a suspected drugs dealer, most of them fired when the man was already dead! The killing was described among other things as unjustified and illegal and their raid on his motor vehicle condemned. Even so the police have refused to apologize to the mother of the man shot in 2005 who led a campaign for justice on her son’s behalf. No apology for you, lady, however we will review our procedures! Lovely isn’t it! Illegally kill an innocent man and you don’t even want to say sorry!

Secondly, the police have finally owned up to speculation in the newspapers that they bugged a conversation they had with Steven Lawrence’s friend who was with him at the time of his murder, and the man’s solicitor. If they intended to record the conversation they should have acted lawfully and informed those present. Where was the harm in that? But no, they acted unlawfully again… and did so because they clearly believe they can do so. And do you know what? They can! That’s because nobody will slap these people down because as the State force of order, they are simply too important. So it’s the police who’ll keep on doing the slapping, illegal or not, not the elected politicians! And sometimes they’ll even give the elected politicians a slap to remind them who’s boss, like Andrew Mitchell!  Of course, they’ll keep on reviewing their procedures about who they can slap or not. Slap safely that is. Without too much fuss.

And last but by no means least, horror of horrors, the name of the policeman most prominently linked in an official report to the Hillsborough Disaster and the misconduct of the police that went with it, i.e. the extensive falsification of police statements and evidence along with extensive police procedural misconduct has been connected to allegations of smearing the names and reputations of the family of Steven Lawrence. A finger has been pointed at Sir Norman Bettison in the press as a man connecting one cesspool of illegality with another. Such dirty police behaviour is appalling but quite frankly it doesn’t come unexpected. However, it is the press who is doing all this finger pointing and as everyone knows, they themselves have a lot to answer for. Allegations have been made but the man is still innocent of these until proven otherwise and no-one should rush to judgement.

Let us not judge the police individually or collectively by the standards they use to judge us, namely the suspicion or presumption of guilt. Let us judge them instead from the higher more moral plain that underpins British law, the presumption of innocence. Not that they care one way or another! And if this sounds offensive to the many victims of police misconduct from physical assault, threat and abuse to being fitted up or falsely convicted I simply say that you need to take strength from your experience. You know you’re better so go out and work to do big things with your lives.

Finally come to think of it who recommended Sir Norman for a knighthood and which Government gave it to him?

SPYING ON ME – SPYING ON YOU

This post is about SPYING, something currently topical in the news media. And it’s not entirely about Edward Snowden, the American Government intelligence analyst now holed up in in a passenger transit lounge at Moscow Airport because he leaked crucial secrets about the spying activities of the United States and Britain on various foreign Governments, international organizations and private individual citizens around the world. The unfortunate Mr Snowden, now urgently ‘wanted’, has applied for political asylum in many different countries but has so far been refused by most and has nowhere to go because he committed the unpardonable offence of telling the truth.

Telling the truth, in this respect internationally divulging State spying secrets, is not so much a serious offence but deemed by the United States as a very serious crime which is why they’ve put huge pressure on those countries to which he’s applied for asylum to reject his applications. Indeed, telling these truths is considered so serious that it is willing to damage its relations with many of these countries just so that it can get hold of their man. For example, the aircraft containing the President of Bolivia was forced to divert to Austria on its return journey from Moscow because Italy, France, Spain and Portugal refused to allow it to fly over their airspace, it being thought that it carried Edward Snowden along with the Bolivian President, a false rumour inspired by the Americans. The consequence of this has been a meeting between six or more Latin American heads of State offended and furious by the actions of the Obama Administration to decide what further action to take.

So what information was revealed that was thought serious enough to jeopardize and undermine America’s foreign relations across the globe, particularly with the European Community. Well for one thing  organizations belonging to its member states are now known to have been spied upon in various American cities. Many of these countries have already expressed shock and disbelief but the news that it happened is already out there. It’s old news, already in the public domain, same as the collaboration between the CIA and the British GCHQ to spy on British and American citizens. That said, why are the Americans making such a fuss? Why are they so determined to get Snowden back to America? Could it be that he has many more unpalatable secrets to reveal and somehow has to be silenced?

Maybe, maybe not, but then Edward Snowden isn’t exactly what you might call a spy, just someone who revealed secret information because he finally made up his mind that he didn’t like what he’d been doing over many years and decided to tell everyone about it. Some people do things for a time then they change. The human personality isn’t a fixed entity. It experiences emotional and intellectual growth, sometimes contraction. It’s not necessarily rigid. People experience change and they change accordingly. For example members of the Metropolitan police undercover squad have recently begun to divulge the nature of their spying activities on various individuals and organizations. They decided that they didn’t like what they’d been doing, thought it was wrong and divulged their conduct to the media. These people were spies, same as those in Britain’s GCHQ who listen in to people’s private telephone conversations here and abroad, gain information about them along with details of the industrial and commercial activities of foreign companies and Governments.

This is national and international spying but let’s not play the innocent auntie. The Chinese military have been busily engaged in international electronic espionage for years, both against foreign companies and Governments, particularly those of the United States and Europe. The business of international industrial espionage is huge and worth hundreds of billions. And not far behind comes America, Russia, the UK and all of Europe. They’re all doing it, both on their own citizens and everyone else’s. Citizens, corporations, institutions and just about everything. We all know it so let’s look a bit closer. A bit closer to home! And let’s make it more personal while we’re at it!

Spying? Well, does anyone still want to play being a virgin? Isn’t spying something we’ve all done? Something we all like to do? Oh, you think I’m being rude do you? Well then, let’s take a look and start by holding up a mirror so you can see for yourself. You’re 6 or 7, travelling with your parents on your way home. You may be in a car or a train but one thing’s for sure, you’re bored to the back teeth but never mind, your parents know just what to do to keep your mind occupied. Dad has a brainwave… Let’s play I Spy! I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With K! Okay, is it in the car or outside the window? Now that really gets you thinking! It’s a game you love to play when you are five, maybe six. After that it’s the IPad or something electronic, but meantime it’s I SPY! Boys are often more ingenious, more seriously ingeniously silly than girls. Girls are more factual, like S for steering wheel or W for window! For boys it’s H for hair or E for dad’s earring! Okay, you play the I SPY guessing game on the way home. But then maybe it’s a follow on from something else. Something naughty you’ve done at home like secretly spied on mum and dad having sex in the bedroom! Listened in on it or maybe had a squint through a door that was meant to be closed. Oh you spied all right! Retained some secret knowledge, only it led to something else.

You grew up and went to school. Wanted to be thought well of by the teacher or in the cubs or girl guides so first you told tales then you kept an eye on your mates after which you told teacher. You observed people and situations. Developed an eye for that kind of thing. It was only ‘small’ really. You really couldn’t call it spying ‘cos that was dirty, something associated with dodgy practice! But maybe you went ahead with it because you were encouraged, even thought well of for doing that kind of thing so it was less shameful than it seemed. It was just YOU, not your mates. It was a solitary kind of thing. Privatized! Individualized! Something personal, keeping an eye out on people. Not FOR people so you could be there to help them, but ON people! Just to make sure they didn’t do anything wrong or bad… Didn’t harm anyone… That’s how you justified it, keeping an eye on them. You were doing THEM good, doing what was right for society in the process. AND THAT’S HOW YOU BECAME A POLICEMAN!

All the same, they were they but you weren’t you anymore. You were someone else! Part of something else! You were a policeman or woman. You worked for the State. You worked for GCHQ. Used your natural skills or were trained to collected intelligence, about individuals or organizations. Found out things about them. YOU SPIED WITH YOUR LITTLE EYE and met other people who did the same. It was a natural, logical development since childhood, to grow from what you were to what you’d become. You played I SPY then you learned to use the binoculars someone bought you for Christmas. Ooh, look what they were doing through the window across the road! You’d never believe it, so you increased the focus… Just for clarity really! Years later you finished at Oxford or Harvard and got recruited into MI6 or GCHQ, or the CIA or the special department in the KGB and worked directly for Stalin or Putin or Obama and spied on every comrade citizen, or American. Or American, Russian, Chinaman or Frenchman. Everyone and everything! They were all suspect really!

If you told a Frenchman he was being spied on he’d probably get all uptight. You know, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and all that. It’s just an idea that they hate! Most Americans on the other hand simply don’t know or don’t care. They’ve got the Constitution on their side. They can bear arms and shoot who they like. The British however are special. They are without doubt the most spied upon nation on Earth and they simply don’t care! There are no serious civil liberties issues here! CCTV cameras on every street corner in every city and town. Likewise in every shop, bank, hospital and library. They are just about everywhere. People looking at you that you didn’t think were looking at you. That you didn’t even ask yourself why you were being looked at. Why and for what purpose? Whose benefit was it for, for you to be personally examined while out in public. Well it certainly wasn’t for your benefit so who gave these watchers permission? BUT THEN IT’S CLEARLY NOT AN INVASION OF YOUR PRIVACY BECAUSE NOW YOU DON’T HAVE ANY. It’s not an intrusion into your private space because out there in public you’re simply not private! And that’s not you’re thinking but theirs. When you’re outside your home you belong to someone else.

Actually, who gave these WATCHERS permission to watch you while you were just strolling along, smiling, thinking your own thoughts or chatting to your wife or kids or family, picking your nose or scratching your arse? Who gave them permission? To most British people it just doesn’t matter. They have such a low sense of self anyway. Sense of self… That’s not the same as self-importance, be clear on that. Most of us here in the UK think that we, individually, are more important than anyone else but that’s very different from having a sense of self. Self-importance is a psychological attribute. Something fundamentally defensive and born out of weakness. Sense of self is a characteristic of self-confidence, something born out of strength. Perhaps this is why police have a problem in dealing with self-confidence people, those more from the middle class than elsewhere. It contradicts their own individual sense of self-importance that you will all have noticed. Often a kind of inferiority that comes from poor education. An aspect of personality that is almost universal. Perhaps this is why British people from the lower middle class down in general don’t mind being spied on and more often than not respect the police; but always in Essex, much more than Liverpool!

Spying on Me, Spying on You! Spies are not necessarily people who GIVE AWAY secrets. They’re much more likely to be people who COLLECT them, pass them on or make them public for political reasons. Others steal secrets and sell them. They might need to spy to obtain them so what, you may ask, is the difference between that and intelligence gathering? Well the latter is more often a State promoted and driven activity, the former more for private profit or gain. Sometimes of course spying might be for blackmail. The kind of thing that nasty people do with camera lenses on unsuspecting moral transgressors. Much depends on where you are morally. For some spying is justified for the retribution it brings, for others it’s justified for the profit, for the sense of power derived from blackmail, for the purpose of personal or national security, this latter very much a primary justification. Edward Snowden’s supposed crime is quite special. He’s supposedly given away secrets about spying! In that sense he has uniquely betrayed America’s national security. But then, quite frankly, how secure was it anyway?

People are always human first and foremost. They are likely to change their beliefs and their values. How they see themselves. Who they think they are and what they are. People are always likely to change. Become someone different. Someone else. Casting away what they once were in a process of moral recrimination. Seeking moral, spiritual regeneration. No longer being what they once were and resenting the fact. With this understood, the best way of keeping secrets is not to compartmentalize their storage in vulnerable individuals or machines but have as few as possible worth keeping. Something impossible in a world where human activity is motivated by competition and profit. Where Governments and institutions are insecure and most people are likewise.

Insecurity leads to fear. Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side! Better known as spying!

Telling the truth is something else Mister Obama!