NEWS AT THE END OF NOVEMBER

One of the most important news items of the week is that around 9 million Britons are in serious debt that they can’t see their way around paying with the population of half a dozen major cities involved such as Hull, Manchester and Nottingham. And what delight this must be to Tory Boy George Osborne and his Treasury who’ve just rushed to assure the British public that they have most definitely not made any kind of deal with the Big Six Energy Supply rascals cartel to lower energy prices now or in any foreseeable future. What music this must sound to the ears of price rise organizer in chief, Lib-Dem Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey. Now at last hard pressed pensioners and the elderly know what their Lib-Dem protectors against Tory excesses in Coalition Government that they so hurriedly climbed into bed with are doing to help them out! Yes, you’ll know how concerned they are and what they’re doing to help you out when you’re shivering your balls off this coming Winter. Apart from that the news about all those millions of British people in debt must also be music to the rampant industry of loan sharks and usurers squeezing the life out of the payday loan poor. Why, if they’re in debt already they’ll have to come begging for more, especially with Christmas just round the corner.

Millions of people in desperate debt and millions of old people who can’t afford to keep warm in Winter. Sounds like Tory-Lib Dem Coalition Government on a genuine high, but never mind all of that, the Bath Christmas market has opened!

It used to be called a German style market because of all the little wooden chalet type retail outlets but actually they’re more like idealized little Swiss chalets. Maybe one hundred in all at the center of the City of Bath. All lit up and tasty looking for goggle-eyed punters to spend their end of November pay at. This market and these stalls are definitely worth visiting, but not for any sound, sensible  or commercial reasons. Not if you’ve got half a brain and are looking for something really nice, unusual, imaginative or reasonably priced to buy for family or friend. This downright conglomerate rip off will be thronging with people coming from far and wide over the next fortnight, desperate to find something worth giving and keeping that won’t end up in a charity shop early in January. Sorry! You can squeeze your way round with the merry throng of suckers but if you’ve got any real class you’ll end up wasting your time unless you’re desperate, that is, to say that you’ve bought that something in a nice carrier bag from the lovely City of Bath, joke-joke! Or unless just about any bit of unnecessary bit of overpriced crap will do because no-one turns down Christmas Gifts, do they?

Perfectly tasteless wooden ties, fanciful up their own arse little Christmas tree decorations, snowy tinsel and tree bark, loads of little home-made genuine farm-produce cheese outlets with tiny little cheesy-on-a stick liberal-democrat type tasters, chou-chou and roast chess-nut outlets run by seriously Romanian type vendors, the usual exceedingly exclusive olive oil mob, a few seriously diabolical jewelry outlets, others selling a desperate variety of bowls, all howling CRAFT at anyone deeply stupid. And then there are the wretched home-made relish and jam stalls with the usual bit of grease-proof wrapping to make them look so deadly authentic, (here another joke-joke). Many of the stalls this year are new. Traders over the last three or four having been so badly bitten by the swinging rent of Bath’s ever avaricious Council and the plain lack of trade, just not bothering to turn up any more. Not even the two or three Nepalese jewelry men who at least made an effort, or the few who sold amber or excellent sloe gin liquor or vodka, or the couple who sold some interesting tiles. Just not enough money to make it worthwhile coming back.

This year it’s mainly little cheese jobs, silly things made out of oily wood, the usual fabulously priced Christmas decorations crap and of course, the mulled cider, overpriced sausage and burgers and merry mulled wine crew. I’ve already seen people handing out notes for quite frankly Christ knows what and it’s his season after all, isn’t it? Seriously, was all the shit in the Bath Christmas market worth dying for because in all truth you’ve really got to be stupid or silly to buy anything there. There have been odd times in the past when you might have come across something nice, I mean really nice, but not anymore. I mean there are people and lights and burning meat smells and things to look at but a genuine market needs to be selling things that are really worth buying and the Bath Christmas market is endlessly full of plain crap, and none of it’s cheap either

Oh yes. There’s a stall selling homemade type beers with labels on bottles saying Old Man’s Fart, Arse Liquor, Cats Piss or Grumpy Old Sod. Now you’d really need to be wanting to buy that for someone as a gift at three for a tenner but sales were brisk as I watched. Many jolly fat-faced women indeed were dead keen, telling me it was fun and when I wondered whether the recipient might not have thought it insulting I was told I had no sense of humor! It was only then that I realised why so many people are so heavily in debt and walked away wondering for what! Nearby was a stall flogging designer figurine bottle stoppers, nudes and such like. It gives you a sense of the adolescent puerility of it all. No class and not even funny. Tasteless unfunny little gifts that reflect badly on the giver. Or do they? Well look at it this way. Why bother spending money there if your act of generosity might make you look like a jerk? Why indeed? I suggest you give it a miss unless you’re desperate that is. Or you’re the kind of woman who shovels baked beans down her gob by the shovel load or indeed thinks it’s a laugh watching her kids pulling the legs off spiders. To others, I suggest that you buy your cheese somewhere better like Lidl’s, or any pates, relishes and jams from nearby Waitrose. Honestly, they’re a much better deal.

There’s one good thing to be said for the Bath Christmas Market however. It’s only minutes away from the Real Italian Pizza Company where in my opinion they make the best pizza outside Naples and at an excellent price. I know because I’ve eaten pizza in Naples six times and it’s the world’s best! But the stuff in the Real Italian runs it a close second, especially The Four Seasons. And the Chocolate Dream sweet is to die for. The service by the way is superb.

Kindly excuse the digression but back to News of the Week! The Government have just sold off part the Student Loans Debt they held to a private company. That’s for all student loans prior to the nauseating trebling of fees to nine thousand quid. It’s calculated that by the mid 2020’s the loan debt will run to about £46 billion. That’s not millions I’m talking about but billions! Many student debtors have left the UK and gone untraced overseas but most in the UK are known. The problem is that after students lost their grants and were forced to pay fees it was believed that the extra money they’d earn by having such qualification would easily help them pay off the loan. Unfortunately having a degree has never guaranteed a much higher income and worse still, neither has it guaranteed them a job! Many in fact are employed in occupations having little to do with their degree courses and earning a poor wage besides, so the chance of them paying off their loan are minimal.

That said, the annual interest they have to pay on their student loan still keeps on going and their debt to Government is ever increasing.  That’s another feather in the cap for New Labour Government that abandoned free higher education which ultimately led to student loans being sold off to the debt sharks creating a nation of student debtors! Well done Dirty New Labour, friend of financial swindlers and bankers and enemy of students from poor working class backgrounds. Question is, how are all these student debtors ever going to pay back their loans. Worse, how are all the parents supporting the current generation of students paying £9000 a year these days in fees ever going to pay back this kind of debt? The only answer they’ll shortly discover is that they or their kids will be forced to sell off the houses they live in when the next Government flogs off the current student loans portfolio to the next round of sharks.

It explains why the last ten years of Government, whether it was New Labour or Coalition, was so hot to vastly increase student numbers. There are hundreds of thousands more students now than there were in the 1980’s. All lending money from Government. Most unable to pay back such loans in the future without suitable well paid employment! So why print all the money to hand out the loans? The answer’s simple enough. The whole tarted up promise to newly qualified students of easy better paid jobs was just a plain con. Just another big sell going nowhere in the face of endless recession, especially with universities now handing out degrees ten a penny. An undervalued degree in the face of unemployment is quite frankly worthless only somehow the loan must be repaid. And where do you think the money for that will come from?

A piece of international news barely considered but of real importance is the Ukraine refusing to sign a big Trade Treaty much trumpeted by the European Union. Such a ‘deal’ had been widely sought both by the EU along with the Americans only the Ukraine’s last minute refusal put a serious dent in their plans. Russian pressure, even blackmail by President Putin, was blamed and the President of the European Union and others were seriously pissed.

The Russians, unsurprisingly, put pressure on the Ukraine to abandon the deal which the EU intended they sign up to at a summit in Riga. Instead, despite putting pressure on the ex-Soviet Republic, they got the big heave ho. So what were the reasons? Firstly Russia is the Ukraine’s main trading partner. If the deal had gone through a great flood of cheap foreign goods from Asia by way of Europe would have flooded the Ukrainian  markets to the detriment of Russian exports. Seems reasonable enough until you scratch under the surface. Far more important, a Ukrainian Trade Deal with the EU would also have meant a tie up with NATO, in effect with the Americans. Ultimately such a tie up would have resulted in pressure on the Ukraine to station NATO i.e. American warplanes, on its territory just a short hop from Russia, Ukraine’s next door neighbor. The Trade Treaty sounded like a simple fair exchange of goods only it was far more devious than that. America with nuclear weapons on Russia’s doorstep? Sounds a bit like nuclear missiles in Cuba to me!

Just as devious as Obama, David Cameron and other European heads of state assuring the Israelis that the Iranians will definitely behave themselves and won’t go on producing more weapons grade uranium to make nuclear bombs if they give them lots of money. Then they’ll allow them to check how much of the stuff they’re really producing under the deal they worked out in Geneva! Problem is, now that everyone’s gone home with the Iranians laughing their heads off, this murderous gang of fanatics has said that reducing their production of uranium wasn’t part of the deal anyway! And far more important, it’s now clear that the United Nations Weapons Inspectorate won’t have any mechanism in place to check whether their friends in Tehran are keeping ANY PART OF THEIR PROMISE because they won’t be ready and able for another 6 months.    

The result is everything the Iranians along with their friends in the White House and Whitehall ever wanted. They’re not on good terms with Britain and the United States while the Jewish State of Israel is isolated and friendless. That’s quite okay really. Obama, John Kerry and William Hague were never genuine friends of the State of Israel and the Jewish people anyway so it’s good for them to know where they stand. And where is that? Basically exactly where they were in 1933 facing annihilation, only they didn’t quite know it then. The difference now with six million gassed is that they know exactly how it is.

Final item of news. For all England football fans, so it’s more important than anything else. The world famous Itaquerao football stadium in Sao Paulo that was hoped would host many games in the World Cup in Brazil next year has just partly collapsed. Oh dear!

BICYCLE THUGS

Unlike the great human drama of Bicycle Thieves, a story about a poor Italian worker and his bike told in one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 neo-realist classic, Bicycle Thugs is a post about people who ride bikes in Britain today; who they are and their conduct on the streets of our cities, often foul and illegal.

Let me say immediately that not all cyclists behave illegally and are vile in their temper and conduct. Such behaviour only characterizes a minority. What I do say however is that it is not entirely exclusive to a minority but, like some psychological disease of the mind, break out at any time inflicting  itself on just  about anyone who rides a bike in the form of some random act of bad temper, illegality or violence. Such psychotic or paranoid behaviour is not a general attribute. Something that occurs all the time. It is a thing that may be best described as potential, always lurking below the surface and likely to erupt as an impetuous act of illegality such as going through a red traffic light, turning without signalling, jumping a curb or riding at speed along a pavement crowded with pedestrians.

The question is not whether such things are done but why cyclists do them. For one thing riding a bike on a pavement is illegal and dangerous to others while making a turn without signalling can have serious consequences. Worse still, jumping a red light against fast moving traffic in the vicinity can be potentially fatal, not only for the transgressor but for others forced to slap on emergency brakes. As said not all bike riders behave like this but many undoubtedly do. They take dangerous risks. Do things that are wrong and mostly with the knowledge that what they are doing is wrong yet still do it. The reason perhaps is not because they simply don’t care or are wilfully neglectful. Not at all. A more plausible explanation is that they adopt a certain degree of flexibility in their conduct in knowing what is right and what is or wrong. What they can do and can’t.

Right or wrong become bendable concepts, according to circumstances or mood or maybe both. Conduct then become a matter of judgement. Not what should or should not be done but what they can do safely or judge to have the least risk or element of danger. Ultimately such loose or flexible judgement becomes a habit, a kind of game. Playing dice if you will with their lives or those of others only they don’t see it like that. The game is theirs. They play it. It becomes who they are and the game therefore cannot be criticized. To criticize their conduct on road or pavement becomes a criticism of themselves because they and their conduct have become one and the same thing. If to others it seems they take risks and do crazy things it’s because they’ve become chancers. People who don’t give a damn.

Theirs is an exercise in freedom to do their own thing and their bike is the vehicle on which they ride their own psychic spontaneity. It becomes a means to create a new and unchecked Them. An agglomeration of judgements based on their control of a moving machine. Each rider is literally in their own individual saddle and if the bicycle is a means, the ‘ride’ they gain from it is either a confirmation of what they already are or a vehicle helping them to become something else. Riding a bicycle for many is liberating. True, it may only take them to work and back on the cheap or into the countryside along a canal or river towpath or give them a ride through town. Whatever the case such mobility can provide an innervating solitary freedom. A feeling of control and empowerment, especially facing a world of work within which they have no power and are personally visible as part of a team. In this sense time on a bike is a precious individuation they have to sacrifice the moment they go through the door. A preparation in the form of a psychological enhancement before they give up the wholeness of self. That journey into work each morning is a big deal and the ride home at the end even bigger.

While they’re on their bike though they can if they wish indulge in acts of spontaneity. Play occasional ‘tricks’. Take little liberties or short cuts deviating from sensibility. No harm doing this or that if it’s safe so they think! Throughout it all alas there’s always a big fly in the ointment. The existence of others! Those they must share the street or towpath with! Pedestrians on the pavement, bad enough, but then those dreaded swine on the road. Motorists! As said, all bike riders are hard wired for pathology, much the same as all human beings, yet on their bikes they can become potential problems, in conduct, temper and temperament. This is only logical as there is no real check or force to control it.

There are two fundamental differences between cyclists and other road users. Cyclists have no protection around them in the form of a metal structure and are therefore far more vulnerable to injury, added to which two wheels are a less balanced structure than four. Their often dangerous behaviour is then all the more surprising and foolhardy given the element of risk compounded by this lack of protection. Equally important however is the fact that cyclists are anonymous. Their vehicles carry no identification such as a number plate or any other official mark of registration. All other road using vehicles carry such registration, except electric mobility scooters that is. Their users are identifiable, cyclists are not. This gives the cyclist an unlimited license to behave in any manner they choose. They can indeed behave illegally without any fear of identification and apprehension. A privilege each has over all other road users. And while pedestrians carry no license they are nonetheless vulnerable because if hit or knocked over they are incapable of apprehending such a mobile assailant if the cyclist continues on their way at speed.

Cyclists on the other hand are able to identify and therefore complain about the conduct of other road users if they wish and increasing numbers are doing so it seems. Motorists however don’t have that luxury. Cyclists are thus empowered to complain and act against other road users and given the febrile climate in the national psychology which in the last decade has seen a sharp increase of false allegation and complaint made to the police, such an imbalance between cyclist and motorist has become one of the greatest dangers existing on British roads today. Cyclists, either by design or default, have been empowered to commit all forms of negative and dangerous conduct without question or check and many are only too well aware of their empowerment.

There is then what seems to be a genuine war taking place on the roads and pavements of our country. On one side is an anonymous brigade of what may best be described as two wheel vigilantes with neo-fascist tendencies who think they can behave as they please on our streets and roads without apprehension. On the other is the car or truck driver sick to death of the plastic helmeted lizard lickers regularly giving them two fingers for every slick and tricky in and out of moving vehicles that gives them regular palpitation close under the wheels only to see them emerge again giving them yet another big finger.

Let’s call it for what it is. The problem is men on bikes, not women. Women cyclists, research shows, reveal a far more equitable temperament both in relation to their machine and to the circumstances surrounding its use. This is primarily functional, centered around transport and pleasure. Both uses eminently practical. For men however the story is different. The main group of users fall between the age range thirty to fifty and fit neatly in the lower middle class. While those below this age range, mainly students, tend to speed they are less inclined to bother pedestrians on pavements. Those at the upper end of the larger group are more problematic and have entered popular culture as The Menopause Mob and not without reason. Believing themselves to be better cyclists than most they consider their conduct on our roads above criticism and can therefore be highly aggressive when taken to task. It is strongly recommended that they should not be approached  by members of the public if perceived to be acting in a dangerous manner.

This group in particular is visibly becoming a cult with a strong attachment to designer helmets, clothing and cycling gadgets. They race around London getting to work not because it’s cheap but because they like being seen. It’s a kind of Tory, Liberal-Democrat thing. Toe-rags on wheels if you like. And with Lib-Dems of course it’s doing their bit to save the planet or any other pathetic shit they can come up with. In recent days however, after an unusually high number of road accident fatalities involving cyclists, there has been an extensive police blitz in areas where some of these have occurred. These checks have resulted in many cyclists being cautioned for red light jumping along with other careless and unsafe conduct.

If motorists understand anything with respect to cyclists it’s the absolute need to drive with great care and safety. For financial reasons as much as anything else. All motor accidents cost. They result in higher insurance premiums, something that does not affect cyclists who are not required to insure themselves or their bikes . Quite frankly, absolving cyclists from insurance is ludicrous, especially in matters of third party liability. For example, if ever a cyclist is deemed responsible for causing an accident, they do not have to pay the person they knock over or injure for the damage they cause. So not only are cyclists and their bikes allowed anonymity, they are financially removed from insurance against accident liability. Wait, it gets even better! All motor vehicles are required to carry current certification of roadworthiness. Failure to do so while in use is deemed a criminal offence. Bikes however, while using the road, are not required to be roadworthy! Such as possessing adequately functioning brakes for example. Furthermore, in law, there is no requirement for any check on such roadworthiness! It’s quite okay to ride on a road surrounded by moving traffic without having any adequate means to suddenly stop! And what joy, the same applies on pavements, never mind babies in prams.

Talk about arses in the jam! No identification or vehicle registration… No requirement for insurance… No safety requirement for roadworthiness… Now all of this wouldn’t be too bad if they were just having fun whizzing up and down mountain tracks only we’re not talking weekend leisure here but daily use on public highways often full of large fast moving trucks and often in dangerous wet weather conditions to say nothing of ice. Consider the above factors then consider the circumstances within which cyclists operate, particularly without personal protection, and you’ll realise that there’s a strange lack of connectivity here. It’s like there’s a strict legal framework for one set of road users and absolutely none for another, both of whom share the same common ground.  

Another thing abundantly clear is that there’s absolutely no love lost between cyclist and motorist. Drivers of commercial vehicles such as delivery trucks use them for their work. They make up part of their job. Cyclists use their bikes as a preferred means of transportation. More often than not they don’t have to. There may be other options so using a bike is a matter of choice. It’s a luxury most motorists don’t have. Riding a bike then, in almost every way, is a luxury. On for which cyclists should be grateful. Yet there they go, hurtling along pavements giving the finger to people they only just miss and doing likewise to car owners and truck drivers before whizzing away thinking they’ve got one over on you. It all begs the question. Who the hell are these people who think they can do this?

Well we know who some of them are. There’s David Cameron and Boris Johnson for starters. Two Tory-boys who spend time posing on bikes because they think it makes them look popular. Well I have a message for you. If you think you’re being populist and blokey, think again. Your fellow cyclist electorate is detested by most British motorists for what they are allowed to get away with.

The solution to the whole cycling conundrum is simple. All owners of bicycles should be legally required to register them on a national database and carry such registration as a non-detachable number plate fixed to their vehicle. Such a registration would contain full personal details of ownership such as name, address and occupation of the owner. It would also include details of a compulsory annual check for roadworthiness to be paid for by the owner along with a fee for registration. Furthermore, all owners of bikes would be required to insure their vehicles against third party liability for accident. These requirements would provide a serious boost to the British economy both in revenue raised by the Treasury and in the growth of the insurance industry. And most important, it would give serious pdrotection both to cyclists and other road users along with pedestrians. Cyclists might even be compelled to pay some form of road tax to help maintain roads that they use just like everyone else. Such measures would certainly make Britain a more prosperous place.

David Cameron and George Osborne please note. Here is a way of raising billions for the Exchequer. It would help the country get over its financial crisis and part of the money raised could be used to fund apprenticeships and scholarships for young people. License and tax cyclists, and insist they’re insured. It will make you popular with millions!

JERK-OFFS OF THE WEEK

The above phrase is colloquial and popularly known to most British people so requires no explanation. This Post of News Stories is a few I’ve selected about individuals, organizations and practices that to my mind fit comfortably within any such definition.

I want to start with Paul Flowers, the crack-head (that’s Class A drug-taking) now former Methodist Minister hurriedly ditched by the Church who, with no real banking experience, was appointed Chairman of The Co-operative Bank by the Executive Board of the Co-op Movement and forced to resign after pictures of him buying dope became public knowledge! Oh Dear! But then how was it one asks that the Financial Conduct Authority who interviewed him to check his suitability for the job failed to pick up on the fact? You know about the Financial Conduct Authority don’t you? I’ve mentioned them before. They’re the keen on ethical standards boys and girls appointed by the Treasury to replace the Financial Services Authority, themselves previously implicated in turning a blind eye to illegal banking practices such as drugs money laundering and bank rate manipulation and fixing. Yes, the Financial Conduct Authority with the key word being Conduct, certified the Methodist Minister now arrested by the police as fit to be Chairman of a major bank without any proper banking experience.

And of course, once he was fine with the Authority he was fine with the Board of the Co-op, only now we know that one of the Directors of the Authority who vetted him got a job not long after soon as a Director of the Co-op Bank! OH MY! JUST HOW NAUGHTY CAN IT GET?

Okay, using his magic powers Paul got the job, only now he had a few banking problems to deal with. One of these was regaining control of hundreds of banking branches from Lloyds which meant getting hold of considerable capital from lenders. Another was knowing what to do about the discovery of a multi-billion black hole in the bank’s finances after it took over the Britannia Building Society, a semi-junk status outfit with massive debts that continued taking money from customers in mortgages, savings and bonds without a hope in hell of paying them back! Well that was all right. They’d sent a man of god in to sort it all out!

Now remember, the Co-op Movement is supposedly and I stress the word because it’s really important, supposedly owned by its members. Well what does this actually mean? Well what it actually means is that they get a vote once a year about something they don’t have a clue about or they’re not interested in such as who sits on the Movement’s Executive Board and directs its operations. A few thousand might tick a box on a form but that’s about it. They trust that those doing the job will do it on their behalf and behave ethically, but alas they appointed as their chairman someone who just wasn’t up to it let alone anything else. A few days ago the Chairman of the Co-operative Movement Board himself resigned, saying “serious questions,” had been raised by the scandal surrounding the appointment of the Minister. Well he should know! He helped choose him! And now, to make matters worse the Methodist Church has suspended the man of god indefinitely after newspapers began digging into his background and found certain questionable conduct.

How was it then that some holy-Joe jerk off found himself running a bank? After all there are thousands of kids out there with a few GCSE’s who might have done better to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of unemployed people all over the country. So what did the minister have that they didn’t? Well I’m sure you know the answer to that. GOD ALONE KNOWS! While working as Bank Chairman, Paul Flowers earned a very serious salary but having resigned he’s presumably looking for work. Anyone out there willing to give a jerk-off a job?

In all truth it’s not such a joke. Appointed in 2010 the jerk-off has left with two-thirds of the Bank owned not by its members, its millions of savers, small investors, people with mortgages, savings bonds or current accounts, but by American Hedge Fund Companies. In short speculators and private investors. These are the people who now own most of its assets, like the savings and homes of Co-op Bank customers, so how, it’s fair to ask, did the Executive Board of the Cooperative Movement allow this to happen. After all, wasn’t it founded on an ethical determination to help the working people and poor of our country? The answer is simple enough. They lost sight of their responsibility towards their members.

Okay, the next delicious jerk-off story is about Tesco using the same trucks that remove food and packaging waste from its stores for dumping purposes to also deliver supplies of fresh food to their customers! Don’t rub your eyes at the story! Yes, Tesco’s rotting food waste collection trucks, once cleaned out so they say, then deliver fresh tasty goodies. But please, don’t worry! It’s all quite okay! The rotting filth in the trucks is well contained in plastic bags and industrial storage facilities. It may honk to high heaven but that’s alright because after all that seriously nasty rotting food shit is out the back the truck’s all scrubbed up and ready to go to every little old lady who knows how much Tesco cares and how every little helps. 

And that’s important to Tesco. When the story broke into the public domain company management rushed to assure us. They weren’t denying in the least that they were using their trucks for BOTH purposes. On the contrary, using the same vehicles for both functions was helping reduce costs, thereby enabling them to lower their prices! How very thoughtful of them! And using the same trucks was also helping reduce the amount of fuel they used, enabling them to play their part in likewise reducing the nation’s carbon footprint.

REDUCING THE NATION’S CARBON FOOTPRINT… Now isn’t that so terribly important for people to know, and won’t everyone feel so very glad. Forget any issues of safety and hygiene! Your local Tesco is helping reduce our carbon footprint. That’s one of the great justifications for doing it all, senior management announced. Besides, all the trucks are scrubbed out!

In reply I can only ask… have you people taken leave of your senses? What kind of hurriedly made up sorry excuse is that? It could only have been rushed out in a desperate publicity disaster limitation exercise by management idiots with no conception whatsoever of public relations. You don’t rush to justify such practices as these… you acknowledge the truth, state that you’re horrified, apologize profusely and promise that it will be discontinued with immediate effect.

WHAT YOU DON’T TRY AND DO IS EXPLAIN IT AWAY AS A VIRTUE!

There are few things that people are more sensitive about than food hygiene. The absolute of cleanliness of the food that they eat. Few things are more important. For companies that produce and sell food, CLEANLINESS IS THE NUMBER ONE VALUE… What fools at Tesco’s then tried to explain away such a practice when what really counts is what is in the mind of the public… reputation, and above all the absolute and assured certainty of cleanliness?

It’s irrelevant that company guarantees of safety may be accurate. That’s not the point. In any case such guarantees can never be absolute. There is no 100% guarantee that airborne bacterial contaminant will never be breached with potential pathogens find their way into fresh or processed food products. That is simply impossible. Never mind the cleaning processes or treatment of vans, there can never be a 100% guarantee of safety from contamination unless each truck is separately irradiated! Simple washing and cleansing processes don’t go anywhere near providing an absolute guarantee of health and safety. It is all very simple. A company like Tesco is quite frankly not short of a shilling so guaranteeing safety as its top priority is an absolute requirement with no expense spared. Putting company reputation at risk just to save a few million is ludicrous. What jerk-offs then made the decision to save money in this way with such practices that have the potentiality to cause such damage?

My next example of jerk-offs of the week are the Liberal Democrats, in Coalition Government with the Tories who have repeatedly stressed that they’re in it to control Tory excesses. Sounds good, until you look at their record! Does anyone remember the Great Horsemeat Scandal earlier this year? Something seriously nasty you may recall. Okay then, a question for you. Has anyone in the food chain of meat suppliers from abattoirs, renderers, processors or supermarkets  been prosecuted by Government Food Safety Standards agencies for supplying and selling it to the public as beef? Answer, no-one! The whole scandal’s been ‘disappeared’ and our Liberal Democrat friends of the people have stayed silent. Not a word or a peep.

Okay, here’s something else. How about their promise to control banking practices and executive bonuses. Maintain their promise to separate investment activity from customer services. Have watertight procedures overseeing managerial appointees at the top? All these things spouted with such fervor after the General Election by Vince Cable now quietly forgotten and taken in hand by the Treasury. And then, how much did he or Danny Alexander know about the great Paul Flowers Scandal, with no real checks made on the man’s competency to run a big bank? Is there anything that these people have actually done or are they both plain straightforward jerk-offs, chewing the fat on Cabinet post salaries? That’s a fair question. These days not a word from the nation’s once favourite scarecrow.

Never mind! How about the increasingly oily, increasingly guilty looking Ed Davey, favorite office boy of the Energy Cartel? Given his increasingly embarrassing attempts to deflect attention away from swinging electricity and gas price rises with green, more green and increasingly green friendly promises that in total amount to nothing but verbal bollocks, I hereby announce your award as Political Jerk-Off of the month and forthcoming presentation to you of the yellow Jerk-Off Rosette for Bullshit.

Running you close second in the award stakes for this honor is dour Yorkshire Tory jerk-off William Hague the British Foreign Secretary who thinks that the best way of bringing the Islamic thugs of the Iranian Government back into the world community of nations and control their secret refinement of Uranium for manufacturing nuclear weapons is to ask them to make promises to behave! The man and his Government know that these religious lunatics are only months if not weeks away from having operational weapons of mass destruction which they’ll certainly use to bomb Israel. This is not the first time however that British and American Government has been involved in a decision making process about the fate of the Jewish people. As early as 1943 both knew what the Nazis were doing at the Auschwitz Extermination Camp in Poland and had the ability using long range bombers to destroy it. The issue was considered by both but rejected on the ground that it would cause unjustifiable harm to civilians when such action might have saved the lives of half a million Jewish children. Today, dealing seriously with Iran might do the same thing only this time in Israel. Yet William Hague thinks that establishing good diplomatic relations with equally evil Jew hating monsters might do the trick and make these modern Nazis see reason. For such diplomatic wisdom you and John Kerry, American Secretary of State, receive Joint Second Place in the Political Jerk-Off of the Month Awards, each receiving yellow Jerk-Off  rosettes for Appeasement.

My final Jerk-Off Award of the Month goes to England Team Football Manager and Zany Optimist Roy Hodgson. This is mainly for his brilliant idea that the best way to build a successful world football cup squad is to change your team players on a regular basis so no-one has any long term experience of playing with anyone else. WHAT A VERY CLEVER IDEA. So very zany! So very British! None of that European or South American shit about having people playing together many months on end and getting to know what each can do i.e. getting used to each other. Oh no, none of that! You see the idea is that when our guys pass the ball to each other no-one is there to receive it! And when they get near the other team’s goal they adopt the brilliant idea of passing their opponents the ball! That you see, tricks and confuses them because they’ve somehow got the wrong idea that we want to score. Can’t have none of that. Just think of how well Roy did against Chile and Germany. All those dedicated English fans who came from all over the country to pay good money and watch! I mean wasn’t it such a brilliant exercise in strategic thinking. Confusing everybody that we wanted to win when it was all about changing everyone around all over again and doing our best to be friendly. You see, if just about everyone gets the chance to pay for England then we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of new caps and loads of guys to choose from before we go to Brazil!

Now you’ve really got to be clever to think it all up, which is why Roy was given the chance. True, we beat lots of teams before Chile. I’m trying to recall but they were all serious stuff. Tough opponents like San Marino, Poland, Montenegro… and wasn’t one of them Outer Mongolia? Yeah, really hot stuff! Thank god we weren’t up against Iceland. An interesting thing about the Germany game was that Wembley was full of empty seats with large numbers of people outside the ground who wanted to get in but never had tickets!

So Roy, given all the time you’ve had to work with large numbers of players from the Premier League and mold them into serious squad, is the pathetic, hopelessly unskilled, grossly overpaid bunch of useless jerk-offs the best you could come up with to represent England? WHAT… IT IS? Losing to a third rate German team! Well for that you win an honorific Third Prize Jerk-Off Award for Gross Incompetence. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul when you and your fellow jerk-offs pitch up in Brazil.

WHO KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY?

This Friday marks the 50^th Anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas. An event being commemorated along with his supposed achievements of which, during his three years in office there were few. Firstly one thing needs to be understood. The man wasn’t murdered he was assassinated. Something that only happens to very important people like top politicians, military or religious leaders. Murder’s for ordinary folk like you and me. Theirs is a different kind of death. They may be good people or bad but their demise is a happening on a much higher plane. It’s more like a ‘removal’. Ordinary people just get done in for whatever reason. Those living on a higher plane, the summit of something or other like a political system, are taken from it. Its apex, in their persona, is removed!

So J.F. Kennedy wasn’t murdered. His death in any case never had anything like a commonality about it and given the circumstance surrounding it, was shrouded in mystery much of which remains to this day. Mystery and conjecture which, in view of all the enquiry and investigation into what happened and all that’s been hypothesized, written and said, is so overgrown with legend and mythology that it’s like walking through a jungle of words.

So much enquiry, both official and unofficial. So much written and spoken. So much more known about the private life of the man and possibly so much more waiting to be revealed. The event has become something of a cult experience within American culture itself!

Some brief family background is always interesting. The Kennedys were Boston Catholics who had their origins in Ireland. Joseph Kennedy, father of three sons, was a gangster who made his money bootlegging liquor in the 1920’s and put it to good use promoting starlets in Hollywood and making a career for himself in American politics, winding up as ambassador to Britain in the 1930’s, his reputation badly dented because of his flirtation with the Nazis. His favourite starlet was the glamorous Gloria Swanson, his mistress for many years, notwithstanding the complaints of his wife Rose. He saw to it however that all his sons had an elite Ivy League education at the best American colleges. The ramifications of him going straight as a Roosevelt political appointee after dissociating himself from his many criminal friends and connections, Irish, Italian and Jewish have never been fully spelled out or investigated. Whether it caused any long term residual resentment and how deep it may have gone can only be guessed, but break from an immensely rewarding criminal career he did to establish another in politics.

Later as is well known all three of his sons eventually followed him into politics as Democrats, the party of choice among Irish Catholics. Liberals when set in an American political context but meaning little to nothing in that of anything European. If their politics were liberal in any way it was always more verbal than anything. John Fitzgerald, eldest of Joseph’s three sons, charmed and smiled his way up the greasy party political ladder backed with copious wealth until he became a Senator in an acceptably liberal north-east state. His college and early political career was marked by innumerable affairs which still continued after his marriage into American high society. Like his father also with Hollywood starlets. He then ran for President against the busy Richard Nixon in the early 1960’s, an interesting dark sided character who having established himself as a McCarthy political activist associated himself with mainstream Republicanism becoming Vice President to former war hero, General Eisenhower. Surprisingly, and strongly backed by the Kennedy family wealth, the young JFK won the election by the tightest of margins.

With his brother Robert at his side as Attorney General in a new Administration the stage was set for a showcase political elite of youth, good looks and glamour, trumpeted throughout America and Europe as laying down a marker for promise and hope in a dour political world dominated by post Stalinist bureaucracy, political combativeness and technical challenge. Right then, with the full publicity apparatus of the Democrat Party behind him the approachable JFK seemed to confidently smile his way through just about everything, even the shock of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, first man in space. Stuff the Russians, he promised America a first man on the Moon! Certain complications however were fizzing away in the background. While Robert was taking on and combating institutionalized crime, determined to reduce the power of the old well established syndicates while rooting out criminal corruption in the trades unions, a well-known Mafia fiefdom, his brother was conducting an affair with the mistress of Mafia boss Sam Giancana, likewise enjoying the home comforts of world glamour queen Marilyn Monroe.

Like his father, the young socialite President was now chewing the fat top end both sides of American society, the irresistible combination of politics and pussy. Chewing it off a potential old family enemy however was risky. At the same time, both brothers were perceived as a political challenge by a key  element of Government administration, its internal and external security apparatus, the former run by hard right secret transvestite J. Edgar Hoover, the latter comprising America’s various intelligence agencies. All were unhappy about what they saw as the frothy liberalism of the Kennedy Clan, to them a dangerously leftist political elite. This was a broth nicely stirring during a period of external political challenge from Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev… From Soviet missiles and Cuba. JFK seemed to deal with it firmly enough but exactly how firm was it for the various agencies concerned about the safety of their budgets once the crisis was over?

The complexity of the Kennedy’s relationship with J Edgar Hoover is real point at issue. It’s no secret that politically they both wanted him out and that he couldn’t stand them. How much did they really know about his sexual predilection… because he certainly knew all the Kennedy Affairs, especially with Marilyn. Precisely what was going on between them will never be known but despite repeated attempts at the time Bobby Kennedy failed to remove him from office. As for Hoover himself, he was never a man to stand in the way of a killing.

By November 1963, with John Fitzgerald Kennedy surrounded by such personal and political circumstances the stage was now set for the death of a President. Who killed him then? There’s been endless speculation and endless stuff written. So much so that it’s become a particularly wretched part of American life. Okay, let’s deal with some of the more way out stuff. I personally don’t believe he was done in by Aliens or ancient Sea Monsters. Neither do I believe he was killed by a world-wide conspiracy of Jews in the form of shape-shifting rabbis who spend most of their time hibernating in large bowls of chicken soup. Admittedly to some people all things are possible but to my mind a lot of this stuff is unlikely. My view is that he was done in for either personal or political reasons; as an act of revenge or because some people hated his politics. A killing done by a single individual acting on their own or someone connected to an organisation.

The Warren Commission, officially set up to investigate, concluded that the killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a disgruntled American citizen with military training who became a Russian national then got fed up living there and returned home. He fired the shots from a sniper rifle they said and that all the evidence pointed to him. The precise psychological motive however was never made clear but remained guesswork because Oswald was shot and killed soon after by a former Mafia operative and never got the chance to say anything. So one man on his own or others acting together? Maybe the mafia taking some old time revenge for Joe chickening out of the organisation back in the thirties, or some new revenge now both for that and his son sleeping with a current mafia boss’s piece of pussy… along with which a perceived threat from both Kennedys to organised crime. Three good reasons that all hang together, culminating in a lone mafia appointed professional killer specially employed for the job. Finally, Hoover of the FBI, fearing that the Kennedys might expose his secret sexuality, had him killed by a trained marksman or some part of the external security service which believed him to be a political threat and wanted him out of the way.

The above choices are fair and logical. The killing, using a specialist sniper’s rifle, was exceptionally professional given the speed of the vehicle and position of the target, the final bullet leaving no chance for survival. Lee Harvey Oswald may have been a good marksman but given the complexity of those moments could he have been as cold and steady as the situation required. Theories have been proposed that he was mentally conditioned but these are some among thousands and while there are many possibilities only a very small number combine logic and science.         

I don’t know who killed President Kennedy. Perhaps that is not as important as why. And perhaps that’s not so important either. Politically he didn’t do much during his time as the world’s most powerful man, except face down the Russians over missiles in Cuba and provide a political lead to take America’s space program forward. So little really when he could have done so much more. His winning smiles meant nothing to America’s needy and poor. Their betterment and the great issue of racial equality had to await Lyndon Baines Johnson. Even so, John Fitzgerald Kennedy died a rotten premature death and he didn’t deserve that. Same as anyone else who dies a rotten premature death.    

NEWS OF WEEK ENDING NOVEMBER 16th

The main news story of the last week has been about the typhoon that hit the Philippines. Yes, everyone in the country has been lashed by 24/7 gale force coverage via the newspaper and television channels of every tiny detail of death and destruction not to say mayhem! Oh how the journalist media monkeys on unlimited expenses must love a disaster! I mean a really good one. And if you’re a disaster junkie, getting off on cities all busted up, crying kids and jonnies on the spot telling you how it all is than the Philippines was your kind of thing. Every sorry little detail going round and round in your head till your eyeballs were floating. Well if that’s what you get off on don’t worry! There’s plenty more climate calamity out there waiting to happen. Incidentally, Disasters Reporting is a great career for any budding journalist. In this one you got a rundown on every sack of aid and bottle of water all the way down to the last grain of rice, along with each country donating plus all the ships and planes coming in. Yes, you could even venture outdoors, put your fifty pence in a box and feel you were part of the international relief effort!

No doubting it, disasters have got something for everyone. They’re functional for lower middle class Daily Mail readers who watch all the natives on television and think how lucky they are that their house values in Essex won’t be affected and yet maybe, on the downside, that there’ll be millions of them all coming over here looking for jobs and housing! Yes, they’ve all got to be housed, all 11 million of them! In Essex! Then there are all the journalists stirring the pot and reporting it up, the talking Aid Heads, politicians putting on their caring and sharing make-up, the aid mob themselves, the rescue wallahs, the charity brigade and tin shakers. Even the crying kids who love being on camera. Yes, everyone loves a disaster, but also big on the news was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Ceylon, that’s Sri Lanka to you Godfrey Bloom! The island nation, ethnically divided between Sinhalese and Tamils, recently went through a big  civil war full of full of endless Tamil terrorism. The Sinhalese Government hit back with its army terrorizing the Tamils, killing and torturing many. And David Cameron comes along and sticks his head into it all with Prince Charles acting as dummy, hoping the Government in Colombo that had to terrorize the terrorists in order to defeat them will hear him out, loud and good, when he asks for an enquiry into it all.

Yes, David Cameron, as British Prime Minister representing the supposed center of the Commonwealth, goes to Ceylon with Jon Snow and the Channel Four mob to talk about War Crimes and ask the Government there to investigate. That’s the other big story across all the news media. The shiny faced Dave telling his hosts what’s what with the sallow Jon Snow on his shoulder. Well the Channel Four boys weren’t allowed to go anywhere on the island while Dave was surrounded by police most of the time. Never mind, that’s real public school cheek for you! The ex-Eton boy going on a conference to some foreign country and telling his hosts what to do while the media back home is baying for blood. It’s like some French President coming over to Britain during the IRA campaign of violence and telling the Government over here how to behave!

These are probably the two big things of the week but they are not the stories I want to concentrate on. To my mind there’s some altogether more serious stuff at home. The Philippines and Ceylon may have been battering your head but that’s the pleasure of journalists and their media, and ultimately political masters. For a whole week or more that’s what they wanted to shove down your throat but in all truth what the heck is all that to you? Well the following is my choice of news. Firstly the statement from the National Audit Office that bills for domestic energy customers will rise annually above the level of inflation for the next 17 years because they will be required to pay for the complete renewal of the Big Six cartel’s entire supply infrastructure from pipes to power stations. Secondly, the return of undercover police spying activities. This time at Universities on student groups.

I’ll deal with the gangsters of the Energy Cartel first, a major news story that effects everyone getting drowned out by Philippines, mercifully for the Coalition Government. The National Audit Office staffed by faces none of us know (they might be operating out of the Monkey House of the London Zoo for all we know) was set up the current Government. It’s one of their agencies, and has the blessing of the saintly Clegg, and kind hearted and caring ‘friend of the people’ Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey… just     as much as its statement about domestic energy customers having to pay for the renewal of the suppliers infrastructure would ALSO have their knowledge and blessing. Why, are you surprised? Did you ever think that either of these Lib-Dem monkeys were virgins? They knew about the whole thing long ago with Ed keeping silent as the grave about the whole thing! After all, he’d worked it all out with executives from the suppliers’ cartel who were working in his Department.

It’s easiest if we consider it like this. Most of the companies that make up the cartel are foreign owned and operate out of overseas tax havens. That means they pay NO TAX over here. Secondly no tax and rocketing energy prices mean fabulous profits for shareholders most of whom are based outside Britain.

NOW HERE’S THE GREAT WHEEZE… WAIT FOR IT… These foreign owned companies registered in overseas tax havens specifically for the purpose of tax avoidance, along with their foreign shareholders expect the energy consuming public over here to pay for the complete renewal of the supply infrastructure for the owners. Pay for a renewed supply infrastructure that is not their property and would not be owned by themselves. NOW WHY SHOULD ORDINARY CUSTOMERS WANT TO DO THAT? INDEED, WHY SHOULD THEY HAVE TO DO THAT OR BE MADE TO DO THAT? They won’t own what they’re  paying for! That’s the real cheek of it! They’re not only paying a rocketing price for the gas and electricity they use but are now being asked to pay for its delivery. Pay for a huge increase in the capital value of the energy companies that they themselves do not and will never own. This is something that Davey and Clegg must have known about, SO WHY THE SILENCE? Why Ed, I thought you were in politics to help people. Help those hard pressed people deal with their energy bills. Isn’t that what you’ve always claimed, as the man who always looks so concerned on everyone’s behalf!

Well Ed? The statement from the National Audit Office is almost a week old and we haven’t heard a word from you about all of this. You’ve stayed silent as the grave you naughty boy. But then that’s Liberal Democrats for you. Politically they’re absolute rascals!

So this is what’s good then for Liberal Democrats. That the Big Six Cartel of Energy Suppliers set up under their guidance, most of whom are foreign owned and registered in overseas tax havens so that they have no UK tax liability, all of them making fabulous profits on the backs of domestic customers over here, ARE NOW PROPOSING THAT THE BRITISH PUBLIC PAY FOR THEIR CAPITAL RENEWAL! It’s as nasty as staff bureaus employing contract workers demanding that they pay them a fee to receive their own salary, or oil terminal workers on the Clyde being told that they have to take a salary cut to pay for the capital renewal of their employers business. To summarize, it’s fast becoming a case of workers coming under attack from employers literally blackmailing them about their jobs or consumers likewise from energy suppliers who make it possible for them to cook, wash and keep warm. Forget the huge profits of these supply companies or the fact that they avoid paying tax. Theirs is an attack on ordinary people supported by the Liberal Democrats so let’s have no friendly concern out of you people, thank you very much.

We all know now that your job in Government is really to facilitate all this attack on behalf of the Tories. That’s the real truth. And now it’s also possible to know who’ll help facilitate all of this. Help deal with any protest, demonstration or opposition to your nasty covert intentions. WHY, IT’S THE UNDERCOVER POLICE! UP TO THEIR TRICKS ALL OVER AGAIN! They’ll help deal with any public protest for you, whether its workers or students, those with jobs or those unemployed.

This is a main news story of The Guardian and rightly so. Not content with having recently infiltrated national protest groups with undercover agents, gaining the confidence of activists, having sex with women members and in general shamelessly betraying the trust given them as well as affection, are continuing with this kind of conduct all over again. They’ve spied on and cynically betrayed decent but naïve people once and got away with it without being punished so naturally they’re engaging in such practices all over again. If they can’t join the groups they’re interested in, they are shamelessly and cynically asking people to spy on their friends. The Police Undercover Unit is dirty and cynical, that we know, but then so are their political masters. If Government is currently engaged in an attack on the poor and unemployed then it will need to deal with protest against their actions and conduct. The security agencies lead the way in this, particularly MI5. The police undercover boys however do the work on the street. Doughboys of dirt you might say.

Let’s take a look at what they’ve been up to. Again it’s a virtually unreported story that in real terms will affect far more people in Britain than a typhoon ten thousand miles away. That’s because everything that the police do over here now that’s political affects people in a bad way. They were never supposed to get involved in politics but here they are. Up to their necks, beginning from the time they helped break the Miner’s Strike. The well documented front page story in the Guardian of November 15 tells how a young political activist in Cambridge with many student friends, though not at the University himself, was approached by a member of a police covert unit and promised rewards for information about their political activities. What was requested was “student union type stuff,” naming students engaging in protest, listing vehicles they proposed travelling in to demonstrations and identifying leading members. The targets of such surveillance were to be UK Uncut (which runs a campaign against tax avoidance and government cuts)  Cambridge Defend Education (which has protested against student tuition fees and education cuts) and Unite Against Fascism.

Police spying on Anti-Fascist organizations is perhaps the most sinister activity of all. Firstly what do the police want this information for? Do they propose handing any information they gather about plans for anti-fascist protest over to fascist organizations which would mean that they’re effectively working for them. This is an exceedingly serious matter and should be of immediate concern to the Jewish Community in Britain for very obvious reasons. The same spying activities by police on Jewish or Anti-Fascist organizations took place throughout Europe during the 1920’s. Information was fed by police forces to fascist groups and eventually the Nazis which led to the arrest and deaths of many Jews and political activists and quite frankly there is nothing to say that it couldn’t happen here. Apart from this, police spying on protest groups campaigning for plain political fairness and justice is quite frankly appalling. Protest and demonstration in this country is not illegal and students or whoever else have a right to do this for causes they believe in, not be spied upon and then questioned, intimidated, have their vehicles stopped and ultimately find themselves being rounded up as has certainly happened in the past.

In the case of police having a spying interest in Anti-Fascist organizations this is understandable enough. Such organizations are invariable anti-racist and the police as is well known have been declared an  institutionally racist organisation. However many individual members almost certainly hold pro-fascist views, something common to police throughout 1930’s Britain and Europe. An example of this today would be police membership of the Nazi Golden Dawn Party in Greece and the support they give it. So the question is a very fair one. Why are undercover police interested in the activities of anti-fascist students and organizations unless it is for politically dangerous and sinister reasons. In fact, more generally, why do the police want to spy on and gain information about students or other ordinary people engaged in political protest activity at all? And who indeed are they doing it for?

As for the attempt to recruit an activist in Cambridge, him going to meetings of organizations like UK Uncut and reporting back, the man told his story to the Guardian who fitted him out with a concealed camera and let him go back to the would be covert police sleuth for further discussion. And there it all was. The undercover political policeman wanting to know about anti-fascist activities and for information holding out a bait of his own,

“You might go to a UK Uncut or Unite Against Fascism meeting one evening, you might get say £30.”

Thirty pounds! For doing such a dirty thing as betraying your friends and causes that are decent. This, I think, tells us everything. Everything about what kind of people they are. Something that should make us realise who is decent and who is not. Make us realise who we are, and whose side we should be on.

These are the stories that I think are important this week. The real question in Britain today is, who cares? Who cares when it’s far easier to give money to disaster causes than think, about how very precious our freedoms are and how important it is to be vigilant.

SOME CRYSTAL HEALING FAERY STORIES - LARIMAR AND MOLDAVITE : A BIT OF A PISS TAKE

Crystal Healing is a bit like Catholicism in the Middle Ages, and for countless millions still the same across so much of the world today. Once you’re into all the father, son and holy ghost shit there’s no coming out. If you think of the numberless little old ladies in black across Mediterranean Europe, Ireland and Poland along with their husbands, to say nothing of the same throughout Central and South America you’ll know they’ll stay Catholic till their dying day no matter how many scandals come to light about priests molesting children and teenagers who were taught to trust them. No, once bought into that’s where people stay, bell book and candle. It’s not a case of wanting to believe, or believing as an act of faith, or, as in the case of the Middle Ages being taught by the priests that if you didn’t believe absolutely you’d go to hell when you died and suffer endless fiery torments. It’s actually much more than that. It’s a case of believing because you WANT to believe, which actually means that you’ve got nothing else bigger or better to believe in!

In short, Catholicism, with all the father, son and ghost stuff, has become the essence of their spirituality. Now, for an increasing number of people, it’s become the same thing with crystals and crystal healing. There’s a new kid on the block. A new kind of religion in the making, and it’s simply no use telling people or trying to make them understand that it’s all bullshit. Such a thing is utterly futile because its practitioners and believers have exactly the same kind of need as the billions of people who believe in sons, ghosts and prophets; one god or many. It is something they desperately want. It provides them with spirituality. Something outside and above their own human essence. Throughout so much of historical time it was a case of HAVING to believe. In later centuries it became a matter of WANTING to believe.

That’s how it is with crystal healing adepts today. It’s like the underclass and their dogs or the lower middle class and their bikes. In recent decades both have become passions. If some wretched dog attacks an adult or child it’s simply no good whatsoever taking its keeper to task. You’ll be told it’s no fault of their beloved pet but that of the child who goaded it or the adult who was behaving badly. In other words that the problem with their vicious dog lies elsewhere. The animal has become their spiritual extension. Its violent behaviour could never be its fault let alone theirs which in all truth it is as dogs take on the temperament of their keepers. No, playing the blame game is necessary displacement activity in this act of spiritual bonding with the beloved, the family treasure, in this case a dog. With cyclists it’s different, it’s a spiritual bonding with a machine. A belief in the virtue of ‘healthy’ outdoor activity that in their reasoning gives them mobility and freedom. However theirs is a demanding and challenging faith! It’s part of their resolute dedication to the free outdoor life. Perhaps that’s why they all ride around looking so grim! They don’t give a shit about anyone else, riding on pavements and going through lights. Theirs is a commitment to the One True God, in this case their BIKE! They’re a fast rising new group of adepts. Peddlers to the fancy of the lonely outdoors.

Just as the neurotic- aggressive underclass dog owning fraternity worships its deity so too do cyclists worship theirs. Neither dog nor machine can do any wrong. If someone gets bitten it’s all their own fault; if they knock someone over it’s the fault of the hapless stranger! Both groups may best be classified as believers, same as those of the faith of crystal healing. They’re also believers. They too have their faith… That crystals provide for all kinds of human needs from the physical and psychological to that which is the most important of all, the spiritual. For these people the healing power of crystals is a fundamental article of faith, the essential heart of their being. They are true believers not simply because they believe, but because what they believe in is true and that they have been shown this truth. In short, it does for them absolutely. The power of crystals to heal and make whole has become a divine revelation and you can no more tell them it’s bollocks than a catholic priest would tell his parish of believers that all the stuff about a holy ghost is a piss take on plain common reason.

Throughout the history of humankind people have had a need for delusion. One of the most splendid is the belief politicians have that they’re in it because they genuinely think they can make a difference. Be a force for the good that can make people’s lives better. Go ask any of them in the established ‘democracies’ and they’ll all tell you the same. With the religious it’s because they think they can see into people’s souls, divine their troubles and send them on their way with the word the way and the light. With politicians it’s a more personal thing. Generally speaking, believing in confidence trickery is one of the most institutionalized characteristics of the human condition and so it is with crystal healing. It’s certainly interesting that the new faith made its appearance at a time of great economic uncertainty and crisis when old religious values have increasingly been challenged by those of science. With the ever increasing permeation of people’s lives with uncertainty and anxiety there has been an ever increasing need for new ways of looking at things, new methods of interpreting events and alternative ways of understanding our individual personal problems. Crystal healing, fast evolving in the hands of its hard-nosed money conscious adepts into a pseudo-science thinks itself seriously up for the job.

Crystals shops and a crystal healing literature are fast entering our culture full of all knowing adepts. Priests if you will of the new faith and like the practitioners of all the well-established religions they’ve got their own well-rehearsed circle of logic. Once you’re in, round and round you’ll go, riding the carousel of a moronic tautology.

That said, crystals and minerals have a great charm of their own. They’re often a delight to the eye and one of the treats of the natural world we live in, that is, until a crew of pseudo-scientists came along and decided they could turn the ever changing geo-chemistry of rocks into something spiritual, with each piece of geo-chemistry having a meaningful function in human lives. Look at the books on crystal healing and you’ll see what I mean. I could use any of literally countless examples to demonstrate, as I’ve previously done in the case of Sugilite, one of the ‘wonder’ minerals of crystal healing of recent decades, but the two I’m choosing today are Moldavite and Larimar.

Crystal healing of necessity needs to continually reinvigorate itself for its ever self-indulgent adepts always on the lookout for something new and special by discovering new things. In most cases, this ‘newness’ goes hand in hand with rarity to stimulate demand at exorbitant prices. A historical case in the scarcity racket involved Zeolites, volcanically formed highly attractive alumino-silicate minerals which up to the 1960’s were found primarily in Iceland and were extremely rare and expensive, most working wonders for the spiritual needs of enthusiasts. Now, after the opening up of the vast ancient lava fields of the Deccan Flats in Central India they’re available to everyone in endless volume and the bottom’s dropped out of the market so it became important to replace them! Today Moldavite and Larimar have taken their place among others as the new wonder minerals. Essential for each troubled spirit if you can get hold of them that is. And you can, for a price! That said let’s take a look.

Larimar is a pale blue mineral hydrothermally formed in alkaline volcanic rock with a sodium-calcium silicate chemistry containing additions of iron and manganese. Typically, until recently it was found only in the Dominican Republic, an impoverished package-tourist holiday hole in the West Indies specializing in toxic hotel meals next to one of the world’s chief death and disease dumps, the Republic of Haiti. Perhaps it was inevitable then that it was ‘discovered’ there as a little moneymaker for the locals!

Remembering the colour it is worth mentioning that throughout history light blue has been traditionally associated with the sky and from that a sense of tranquility, calm, peace and contemplation, much the same as red has been associated with fire, from which activity, dynamism and passion. It is no accident perhaps that light blue Larimar should, for crystal healing emotionalism, be associated with inner peace, helping people stay calm in the face of serious upheaval and change while acting to remove any fears and doubts associated with it. Light blue… calm and soothing! Question! Now why for crystal healing should the mineral do that if it wasn’t for its colour? In short, take the colour, add to it some cultural tradition and lo and behold you’ve got the emotional side of its healing function. So what then was the special input of crystal healing itself in forming such judgement. In a word, nothing. It was all lazily extracted from popular culture, no more than that!

Emotionality however is only the base line of the deception. From their own personal ‘feelings’ the adepts moved towards spirituality. That at least was logical. The mineral they say helps us take control of our lives, removing those things that encourage suffering. Not for me to ask perhaps but could these be problems of real life such as cheating spouses and rising energy bills? But here now the clincher for those obsessed with existence on a higher plane, with matters spiritual, (not of course with the bank balances of those who make money out of crystal healing). Given that we’re all supposed to have our own spiritual spectrum, Larimar is thought to give us an awareness of how effective it is, telling us where its boundaries are! It must all sound fantastic if you’re a glassy eyed believer but what I’d like to know is upon what basis such judgements are made? Obviously there are those who’d say, well who cares, it all sounds right to me and anyway, I’m absolutely sure I’VE got my own spiritual spectrum even if you’re not sure about yours!

Well if you need to have one so badly you’re welcome. Unfortunately however, those making money from crystal healing have now intruded on the science of medicine and Larimar is a case in point. The mineral it is claimed, stimulates the body’s self-healing properties by helping us make decisions about how healthy we are. Alas there are some real problems here. Unless it’s a simple cold or a stomach ache, we ourselves are not the best people to make qualified judgements about complex medical ailments. That’s why the science of medicine evolved and why there are doctors. And just as important, any belief that there’s a connection between any so called ‘judgements’ we make about our state of health and our body’s ability to heal itself   is a dangerous fantasy. It’s as if crystal healing through claims such as these seeks to present an alternative to medical science.

It’s another form of quackery, much like homeopathic medicine. If you feel really ill go and see a crystal healing doctor and he’ll sell you a bit of blue stone, not available on the National Health right now, but then you never know what the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition might have in mind. Shut down all the hospitals and surgeries and flog everyone a nice little bit of blue Larimar. Mind you its seriously pricey right now but if they encourage competition the price will be bound to go down! Right now it’s sold in crystal shops mainly in jewelry such as pendants and rings, the supposed rarity of the mineral making these things expensive. Oh yes, the price will come down all right, when the natives of some other holiday package paradise go digging around some other volcano and come up with something else for the healers.

The greatest current whizz in this respect is Moldavite. Now here we’re talking serious money. I saw a piece in a shop recently. A little flat round thing the size of a tuppeny piece. Yours for £425 I was told by the attractive pre-Raphaelite looking shop assistant who assured me it was cheap. That a gentleman from Munich had obtained a dozen or so pieces and the one they’d bought was kind of by special invitation or something like that. What I’m saying is that she made it seem like a privilege to have obtained it which for me meant that it would be a real privilege to buy it. I mean, let’s get it straight dear customer, this is NOT about money, it’s about you being here at this time and on this day not only to look at it, but to be in its presence! Selling it to you is only incidental! And to drum home the point she told me that it had only been received in the store yesterday. The £425 was incidental! It’s like this. If I’d said the price was staggering I’d have revealed my parvenu status as a miserable worm, let alone someone who knew nothing about crystal healing, but then, having revealed the fact that I was both a crystal healing aficionado as well as having a staggering bank balance and definitely wasn’t a member of the underclass she allowed me to pick it up which I did, with a studied carefree manner that made her gulp for a moment!

Quite wonderful I said in hushed tones, you can see the bottle green depth of colour only if you hold it up to the light. She concurred and we both sighed. Her waiting for me to get out my card, me telling her I’d be back tomorrow and thinking as I left, £425, pull the other one! These dealers from Munich! Well actually Munich does have a reputation for being one of the mineral dealing hotspots of Germany. It’s well known for it but then it’s also well-known for Nazis, Hitler being its favourite. And therein lies a most interesting connection. Many of the top Nazis were seriously into the occult, which is what the pseudo-science of crystal healing actually is. As for the man from Munich, I guessed he’d probably got hold of his horde from the Czech Republic where most Moldavite is found.

Wikipedia has plenty to say about it that’s useful. The mineral probably has a cosmic origin and was formed by a large meteor impact in southern Bavaria, molten rock cooling while airborne and falling some distance away, mostly in southern Bohemia around the Vlatava River area where 99% of the world’s supply is to be found, the remainder lodged in Moravia. Isotope analysis shows it to be of a beryllium 10 composition . The result is a crusty dark green translucent silica dioxide containing various chemical additions from aluminum and calcium to iron, potassium and sodium. It’s all a bit of a mystery really. There have been many seriously big meteor impacts across the planet over many millions of years but none seem to have replicated the hit in ancient Bavaria, Munich’s very own little province! There’s supposed to be only 275 tons of it left, a ten year supply then the world and crystal healing will run out its cosmic gift. Today most of it is commercially extracted from a sand pit in Bohemia which no doubt saw a recent visitation by a gentleman from Munich!

An important consideration is that it comes in two distinct grades. The Regular is of a darker more saturated green colour with the surface of the mineral more pitted and weathered than that described as Museum grade which has fern like patterns on its surface and is considerably more translucent in appearance. That makes it considerably rarer and more collectable, giving it greater cult status. That said the piece I saw for £424 quid had semi junk status! But then the healing qualities of a mineral, its adepts would claim, doesn’t depend on its rarity or collectability. Oh no, none of that! It all has to do with its powers! To put it all into context, here we have a new and ultra-expensive healing mineral that’s probably close to replacing Sugilite as a must have latest thing in healing!

And now the reasons behind its Warp Factor Nine rating on the desirability scale. Firstly perhaps most of it comes from only one place in the world, added to which is its established reputation in history for bringing good fortune, not only as a fertility charm but also because of its connection with the Holy Grail. Fertility, the Holy Grail, Everlasting Life… Say no more! I’ll buy the piece in the window and mount it in silver! In your dreams, lady in the crystal shop! But seriously, let’s look at why so many healing adepts would give their year’s Christmas bonus for it… if anyone ever gets a bonus at Christmas these days apart from being told they’ve got a job to go into on Boxing Day!

Moldavite, it is believed, allows its possessor to experience a vast range of across the board spiritual dimensionality which in each person facilitates the realisation of what the full attainment of spiritual perfection might be. It sounds a really great and clever idea. Something that anyone into crystal healing would really want, knowing just how spiritually great and fulfilled they could be. It’s a perfect must have. Something that only a hard-nosed psychologist could have dreamed up. But then how did they know the connection between that particular geo-chemical formation of rock and the fabulous spiritual propensity it contained, particular with regard to its ‘human’ side, relieving us from our anxieties about the future and giving us insights into our own personal maladies.

Here again, Moldavite, like Larimar, offers spiritual healing as an insight for physical causation, again as a challenge to the ideas of conventional modern medicine very much like homeopathy. However what I have especially done in this post is use examples of two currently popular ‘buzz’ minerals in crystal healing to examine its evolution into a pseudo-science from its basis in the science of geo-chemistry as originally formulated by scientists but later turned into something else… a kind of spiritualist intuitive art form masquerading as a genuine science which of course it is not. In a broader philosophical sense it is a kind of metaphysics. And while its practitioners and adepts may consider it to be much more than that, others have the right to disagree. After all, the Nazis turned race into a pseudo-science on the basis of their own racial doctrines and called it a science!

But one thing is sure. If there is any parallel here of any kind the subject should be open to free intellectual debate in the name of science itself. Something that will be beneficial to both sides in any intellectual argument giving them equal opportunity to air their views. Time will make sense of the debate in an atmosphere of free discussion as opposed to the dictatorial and dogmatic expression of any faith or ideology in circumstances of oppression and ultimately abhorrent intellectual control as happened throughout history and its dark times, and lately during the twentieth century in even darker decades.

No-one should debunk crystal healing because they simply don’t like it, and the same goes for any other dogma or faith. The point above all is to understand it, challenge it and move forwards, not simply fall into the trap of becoming the same kind of dogmatists ourselves and wind up like all the others down the long centuries, barring free expression and promising those who disagree or are different or don’t want to conform the promise of hell or the death camp. If those who develop and expound new faiths or beliefs wind up as prophets they should beware the judgement of history and have in mind the consequences of their ideas that is, should they have any thoughts or ideas about becoming gods or dictators themselves!

Above all, we need to proceed in our own free and fair British way, not be subjected to any form of spying, stifling regulation or pernicious control, all of which curtails our most precious, most ultimate of aspirations. That is freedom itself.

NEWS OF WEEK ENDING NOVEMBER 8TH

Well what do you know? After an Honest to God, Cross My Heart and Hope to Die investigation over the last year by the Energy Regulator Ofgem and the Financial Conduct Authority, no evidence has been found of price manipulation in the UK’s wholesale gas market by the Big Six Energy Companies.

Well that settles it then! With friends like these looking after the interests of domestic gas customers I guess we can now all sleep warm and safe in our beds! Or can we? Firstly no-one knows the terms of reference under which these people set up their enquiry. Secondly and much more important few of us know who they  are and how impartial they’ve been. That said let’s take a look at the record of those who are telling us that all is well and above board in gas supply industry. Firstly the jolly old price ‘regulator’ Ofgem. Well unless you’ve spent the last five years locked away in a Siberian Labor Camp you’ll be aware that in all the many times gas supply companies have raised their prices to domestic customers recently, often at double the rate of inflation, no word of criticism or complaint has been heard from this so called ‘regulator’. Not a word of condemnation for the suppliers. Instead a deafening silence! Just a raised eyebrow and a bit of concern but that’s about it. In short they’ve given the suppliers a virtual free hand to stick up prices whenever they liked. That’s the fact of the matter. Oh they’ve behaved like regulators all right!  HELPING TO REGULATE PRICES ON BEHALF OF THE SUPPLIERS. Every time domestic prices rocketed they did nothing. AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WANT YOU TO TRUST THEM! Quite frankly they must be having a laugh. As everyone knows they’re little more than a political put up. A Piss Take.

Oh but wait a moment! How about the Financial Conduct Authority? Alas, the joke’s even worse! Before changing their name they used to be called The Financial Services Authority. Remember the creepy-crawlies who did absolutely nothing to control the bankers and practices of the financial institutions of the City of London during the time of Gordon Brown and his ‘light touch’ regulation? Remember his ‘light touch’ regulation which effectively meant no regulation at all of their illegal practices and swindling. Remember how they awarded themselves huge bonuses for all the hanky-panky they got up with such impunity? So the fact that this so called Financial Conduct Authority has given the all clear to the Energy Cartel for not fixing wholesale gas prices in truth actually means nothing at all! Well actually, come to think of it says just about everything!

Everything unspoken that is! Domestic consumers of gas will know exactly what it means! And as for Ofgem, WELL REGULATORS ARE MEANT TO REGULATE i.e. CONTROL RISING PRICES RATHER THAN GIVING THE COMPANIES RAISING THEM A NOD AND A WINK. Anyway, who is this ‘Regulator’? Does anyone know him or her? Do they live on the same planet as everyone else. But then in Britain and only in Britain, the duty of Regulators is not to control rising prices but to help jack them up!

HALLELLUYAH I’M A SPY!

Okay now everyone knows. American Government spying agencies have been spying on every American. Not just a few thousand criminals or terrorists but everyone! Kids included! Not just a handful of potential ne’er-do-wells but EVERYONE. And it’s lawful so they claim! Just imagine, when Americans aren’t shooting each other they’re all being spied on. Sounds like it’s a great place to live… if you’re an impoverished Mexican that is.

Okay, so how do like the idea of being spied on? From your mobile and computer to the time you’re out in the street, Government wants a piece of your mind, but please understand, they only want to be friendly. In the words of the song… Getting to know you… Getting to know all about you… Let’s bring it all closer to home so that you can be precisely someone’s cup of tea!

Recently three policemen sat in front of the Commons Home Affairs Committee . Today another three monkeys also concerned with security came up before the Committee for Security and Defence. And while the policemen rightly got a serious grilling for telling porkies and came out of it toast, the Security Committee mainly played kiss-kiss with their friends in the business. Given the comprehensive inability of the committee members to ask any serious questions I’d like to ask one myself. What kind of Parliamentary Service was this for the people of Britain? We thought you were supposed to be serving the people. Asking questions of those who are, they acknowledge, spying on us. Actually, come to think of it, why do we pay taxes to have Government Agencies here in Britain spy on us? Don’t you trust us?

Probably not and maybe for good reason. When it comes to national security these people are probably telling the truth when they voice their concern to protect our lives against terrorism. During the recent decade of Labour Government, Islamic fundamentalist were freely allowed into this country to publically preach their hate sermons at will. They were protected by the police and protected by Labour Government Home Secretaries and freely allowed to say anything they liked. Especially if it was anti-Semitic Jew ranting and hatred. The decade was one of uncontrolled mass Muslim immigration into Britain from Asia and Africa and the words and hate sermons of the preachers did not fall on deaf ears but excited and radicalized the minds of countless Muslim youth. Over time thousands of them were recruited abroad for terrorist training to participate in various causes, returning to Britain courtesy of a totally porous immigration checks system which allowed just about anyone through. There was so much turning of blind eyes that it stank. That said, the problems of the various British Security Agencies today are entirely genuine and inherited from these laisser-faire immigration policies of what may best be described as a blind eye to Islamic fundamentalism period of Labour Government. They allowed it to happen and encouraged it. That’s the root of the security problem today. Simple!

Combating the consequences of all this religious fundamentalism has created a serious problem of which the security services are well aware. They need to gather information about those who intend harming us and make use of intelligence gathering services. The fear is that their activities may impinge on the lives of ordinary perfectly innocent civilians and such fears are justified because, as everyone knows, their actions are directed by politicians for whom the public residually have little trust. The heads of the Security Services talk of balance and ask us to trust them. Maybe it’s a good time to start because the terrorist enemy we face is hard-nosed, half crazy and serious. Remember, it was politicians who created the problem, not the general public, so do the work that you’re paid for and after that kindly stay out our heads.

TIME TO LOVE IRANIAN AYATOLLAHS? I REALLY DON’T THINK SO!

After years of unending bullshit and bluff a new gang of Iranian mullahs and their civilian front men are getting together in Geneva with American, European and British diplomats to try to resolve the problem of the country’s extreme Islamic fundamentalists, led by The Supreme Leader, manufacturing their own nuclear weapons. Never-mind that they’ve been producing weapons grade fissile material for five years or more and that they sharply accelerated their program in the last eighteen months. Never-mind either that, at best, they’re only months away from making a nuclear bomb. That’s alright because in their recent election for President the Supreme Leader accepted the success of what has been euphemistically described as a ‘moderate candidate’. Another joke as he comes from the same stable of religious extremists as The Leader himself, only this one’s more practical.

With Western powers fearful of nuclear was in the Middle East between Israel and Iran and the latter a great potential partner for trade, Governments, especially those of Britain and America, were rightly seen as by Iran as willing to bend over backwards to avoid any conflict. That said and with a new, more ‘practical’ man at the helm of Iranian Government as President, feelers began reaching out. In Western media the new more ‘practical’ man began being hailed as a moderate! It was a first step towards a softening up of diplomatic relations. A moderate ‘practical’ speech at the United General Assembly followed by a few telephone calls from President Obama and his Secretary of State and things got as close to a love-in as was possible with men who believe in the stoning of women and whose declared policy is wiping the State of Israel from the map of the Earth. Things were getting so luvvy that there was almost talk of a thaw in relations.

Never mind that Iran is only months away from producing a bomb. They could well be working on producing one now for all anyone knows. That’s okay! At what is virtually the eleventh hour, certainly for the existence of Israel that is, President Obama has phoned Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, and told him not to worry and that things will work out. That diplomatic dialogue will surely succeed. After all the assurances that Nazi death camp guards gave Jews arriving by train that all would be well but they should first take a shower, it’s little wonder that Israel, the Jewish State partly built on the backs of Holocaust Survivors, should be distrustful and disbelieving. Iran is their stated sworn enemy and has vowed its  destruction. It will soon have the means. Yet American, British and European diplomats are now round a table in Geneva with the Iranians after eight previous years of fruitless, quite frankly useless negotiations with the Iranians stalling on promises and inspection facility through the back teeth… All of it giving them time to produce the nuclear grade materials for making a bomb.

And here once again is a new piece of bluff. Now all will be well with a new ‘practical’ man at the helm. Practical men can see sense. We can do business with new practical men! Everything now down to money! We can exchange reducing or dropping our sanctions in return for your assurances that you will stop producing weapons grade uranium and worse. Just promise you’ll do it and we’ll welcome you back into international diplomacy and the community of nations. Okay, you’ve got to promise that you’ll let us check everything out but after that we help you back on your feet economically and do what you really want to do most… And that’s doing business with us!

As if the Ayatollahs and Mullahs, the religious Shia fanatics who run Iran give a shit about doing business with anyone. Anyone except the Russians who supply them with rockets that is. They regard everyone else, American, European, British, no matter who, as heathen. Unbelievers! Fit only for conversion or destruction. They have a totally different mentality and mind set to everyone else. They regard Western Civilisation with utter contempt and it is a catastrophic failure on the part of Western Government and diplomacy not to understand this. Getting into bargaining postures with religious fanatics and allowing them to create for themselves weapons of true mass destruction which they will certainly use, believing it to be their religious right, is infinitely worse than appeasement. Today the Jewish State has no REAL friends in the world. In order to survive it can only trust in itself and to do that it knows what it must do. Once not so long ago they were powerless to act. Not anymore. The issue of survival is with them all over again.

And if they act, Channel Four, along with the British and American Governments, will quickly have to think of a way of blaming the Jews. To sum it all up it doesn’t look good for Israel but if America and Europe wants to believe that the people who run Iran are a bunch of really nice guys who want nothing more than world peace then what are you going to say to history for letting these people pool the wool over their eyes and help facilitate nuclear destruction? Allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons is madness. They are mostly all the way there and all your talk in Geneva won’t change a thing. You are dealing with an Islamic-Fascist State here, or are you so blind that you can’t see the truth? In case you’ve forgotten the lesson it’s 1939 all over again… just to remind you.