"Would you let her in?"

My brother phoned me last night. He does so on a reasonably regular basis. Sometimes I phone him instead. There is also an occasional email between us. He does the same with Middle Cat.

None of us has any contact with the Black Cat. We can only assume she is still living at the same address but she does not respond. Her phone number has been changed. If I needed to contact her urgently I would need to check with the Electoral Commission that her address was the same. They might not be willing to tell me.

She would not know where I now live. The move took place after she cut contact with us. She has a phone number and an email address for me as well as my work post office box number. In addition to that she knows where Middle Cat lives, has a phone number and email for her. It is the same with my brother. 

The question from my brother came as no surprise. I know her apparent desire to have nothing to do with any of her siblings worries him. Both of us are older and spent a great deal more time away from our family home when she was growing up. We were not there when she was in her teens. 

I was on the other side of the world when she married for the first time. There was no suggestion made that I should be there for the wedding. I did not have the money for the fare. A year or so later I went just once to her then home. She had asked our parents to visit and I happened to be home. Mum had told her "and your sister too". There was reluctant agreement and it was clear the invitation had been made for the purpose of getting more financial assistance.

I thought of that and all the subsequent events, events that have caused so much harm. I remember the police giving us the information and the advice that led to me being the one to return home for the safety of our parents. The Black Cat has never accepted responsibility for any of her actions or the consequences of them. 

So, would I let her in to this small place? I do not feel it is "home" in the same way that my last place of residence was. I may never feel like that. It is more like living in student accommodation than that. It is somewhere I can eat and sleep and work. I feel I need to be quiet at all times, even when my neighbours are not quiet. I try to be polite but there is no sense of community here. I miss the occasional chat with the neighbours and the ability to put a load of washing on the line. If I tried to tell the Black Cat this I am certain she would just shrug and tell me that things are more difficult for her.

If she knocked on the door I would feel compelled to let her in. I would offer to put the kettle on. She is still "family". I know the conversation would be awkward, very awkward. I would almost certainly be very relieved to see her go again...but she is my sister.

So you want to "protest" on Remembrance Day?

Please do not try and tell me that the "student protest" planned for that day "just happens to be the date that was decided" and "has nothing to do with Remembrance Day". Please do not insult my intelligence by telling me such obvious lies.

Of course it was planned for then. This is not about "solidarity with students in France". It has nothing to do with students in France - or anywhere else. The problems being experienced in France (and elsewhere in Europe) have very little to do with students or education. Yes, they may have begun that way. They may have moved on to housing, the cost of living and much more but they are about power. There are people who have a great deal to lose and others who have a great deal to gain from those protests. Planning a protest for that time has been a deliberate and deliberately provocative act. 

This is the time of the year when year twelve students are doing their final exams. The examination timetable began on the thirteenth of October and finishes on the thirteenth of November. In that time those being called on to protest should be able to concentrate on the activity which will influence the rest of their life. They should not be distracted by the short term aims of the publicity seeking organisers.

Remembrance Day in this country asks us to give up a short time to reflect on sacrifice, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice. It asks us to think about others rather than ourselves. It asks us to think about what others have contributed to our good fortune to live in what is still a largely stable, relatively safe place.  

I often wonder how many of those who go to protest have any idea what it would be like to live under a communist/socialist regime. I wonder what they would make of the Russian writer who told me, "We have not many candles and too many lemons in Russia". 

Stop blaming social media for

everything "wrong with society". 

Yesterday I wanted to tell one of our politicians this - and not for the first time. The politician in question was trying to place the blame for the attack on another politician on "social media". They were trying to suggest - not for the first time - that this is why we need their "Information-disinformation Bill" to be passed. 

No, we do not need that bill passed. It is not going to do anything but more harm. Social media is not to blame. People are to blame.

Let me put something to you if you are silly enough to read this blog. Imagine there is a poison which, taken in very small doses, actually does good. It is intended to stop you from feeling lonely and depressed and overweight and old and just about anything you can imagine. It is a miracle pill. The doctor prescribes it for you in the form of tiny pills. You are to take one pill each day along with the usual advice about diet and exercise. You start out taking the pill. It feels good but you don't like the diet or the exercise so you ask other people who are taking the pills. They tell you they take more than the recommended dose. It is making them feel so good. So you decide to take more pills as well but you do it without keeping to the diet or the exercise. Yes, you end up poisoning yourself. The doctor takes the pills away and you return to feeling the way you felt before you were taking the smallest dose. The poison is blamed and there are calls to withdraw it completely from the market. 

But wait! There is an antidote. It is a very, very expensive antidote and it won't actually reduce the harm that much but it is available - for a few and at a high cost to all. 

It seems to me social media is a bit like that. It is not the poison itself which is causing harm. It is actually good. It has many benefits. The problem is that some people misuse it and even abuse it. There are claims it is addictive and much more.  It has been legal...until now. The first move was to try and take the under sixteens off social media. They were told "no" and "go and play with a ball instead". 

But it does not work like that. Not everyone wants to play with a ball. Not everyone can play with a ball. 

We see our politicians using social media and the media. They behave in the same ways they are telling us not to behave. They try to tell us that it is somehow "different" for them. If we try to suggest they are addicted to publicity they are simply "doing what is expected" of them. They want access to ever larger doses of the poison and for no antidote to be available among the rest of us.  I am not sure it works like that but the government still wants to try.  

If it is possible to be shocked but not

surprised then that is how I felt when an email hit my desk last night. It was sent out to a group I am peripherally involved in. I just happen to be on the list of people who are informed about what is going on from time to time.

In this case however I also knew the person it was about. Perhaps in a way I also knew him better than most of those who get the information knew him. It was not intentional. It just happened.

He was a member of a caring profession. He was also "gay" but, when I knew him, he was not in a relationship. He saw it as inappropriate, not the sort of thing that those he cared for would condone. Those people were important to him, very important. He had chosen his role or, as he would have said, been chosen to do the work he did. It is not easy work. He saw his attraction to his own sex as a test. Could he put it to one side and concentrate on the needs of others?

I have no doubt he talked to his superiors. They must have talked to him. What they said to each other is something I of which I have no knowledge at all. I would not want to know. For me he was simply someone I saw occasionally and happened to like very much. I liked him because he was a gentle man as well as a gentleman. His first thought was always for the person he was speaking to. He genuinely wanted to know how you were feeling. 

I came across him because he was in training locally. He would sometimes call in to see the Senior Cat.  Their conversations would often take place out in the shed. He would seek advice from the Senior Cat. It was not about his caring role. They both understood that and the restraints it sometimes places on those who perform it. What he wanted to know was about teaching. At some point they would move from the shed into the kitchen and I would put the kettle on. 

The conversation would continue. Sometimes I would listen. At other times I would return to my own work. He would ask if I could talk about what I was doing that day and was one of those few people who really did understand when I would say, "Not really." 

The last time he came to see us was just before he was appointed to a new place. He was feeling very anxious and uncertain about it. It was obvious that he was trying to hide it from everyone he knew but the Senior Cat had made two things for him. He had asked for one but the other was something that meant infinitely more to him. He stood there holding it as if he would never let it go. The Senior Cat probably made well over a hundred of them in his life time but he made this, like several others, from a special piece of timber.

"Sit down," I told him, "I'll put the kettle on." He sat. He transferred the little thing from one hand to the other and continued to run his thumb slowly over it again and again. We talked about the thesis he proposed writing but I thought he would be too busy to write it. I knew it was unlikely we would ever meet again.

We did not. I was right about the thesis and I was right to be worried that he would find his new role very difficult. There were occasional reports that told me he was "liked", "good", "so kind", "a lovely man" and more but I heard that almost inaudible whisper of concern. 

It was all too much in the end. He did not see himself as worthy. Yes, I was shocked. It is always a shock but, sadly, I am not surprised. I am also selfish enough that I am glad my last sight of him was, as he was about to get into his car, the way he held up the small object in his hand and called out, "Thank you again. It means so much to me."

The Senior Cat saw religion in a very different light from that young man but he had given him a small "holding cross" made from olive wood from the Mount of Olives. He knew it would mean something to an uncertain young man. I hope it went on meaning something to him even if it was all too much in the end. 

Have we reach peak "wokeness" yet?

Is there anything which could be more ridiculous than the news that Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow has removed the mummies and the parts of mummies on display because...wait for it... the mummies did not give their permission to be displayed?

Yes, apparently now there is a need to ask the long dead for their permission to be displayed. How this could be done is something I do not understand but someone, somewhere must know this...or perhaps not. It is so obviously ridiculous that surely someone needs to speak up and say just that?

People who make these decisions are no more than attention seekers. They crave publicity. Issues like this are not about permission that could not possibly be granted they are about feeling a sense of self importance and power over others. I cannot see any other reason for it. 

I am not someone who believes passionately in "returning" artifacts to their places of origin.  It is all too likely if they had not been removed they would no longer exist. Yes, some might have been buried but the vast majority would have been destroyed. They would no longer exist. Museums may be filled with "stolen" objects but they are objects which have generally been carefully studied and preserved. They have taught us a great deal about the past. 

Of course history is not really about the past at all. It is about the future. If we pack the mummies away in a box and forget about them then we might not get that vital clue about a future problem. How many children have been to a museum, seen something like one of the mummies and decided on a career in medicine or chemistry or some other science as a result. There might not seem to be any relationship between the mummies and such things but taking away that opportunity leaves us just that bit poorer. 

Prowling around the British Museum last year I was struck over and over again by the thought, "these were made by people who lived at "X" or "Y" time...they had families and friends and had to eat and drink..."  It was the very "ordinariness" of some of what I saw that made me feel that way. It was also the out of the ordinary. That first known wood wheel clock must have hung in a home somewhere. It was there because someone needed to tell the time. They had gone from looking at the sky to candles to an attempt to build something. Now we have units of measurement which are far more precise but they came about because of that early need to know when darkness was going to fall. 

Mummies have led to develops in preservation, in medicine, in our understanding of diet and much more. The idea that we simply put them away because someone thousands of years in the past cannot give permission is extraordinary. Should we stop performing autopsies now if the dead do not give their permission? 

  

What happened to Helen Haines

is appalling and, like most people, I am very upset by it. I am also upset that something like that should happen in this country. We are supposed to be a "safe" country but I am growing increasingly concerned that we are becoming the opposite.

Whatever happens however this incident must not be used by the government as a means of demanding their "digital duty of care" act is passed by parliament. It will not make things "better" or "safer". It will do more harm.

It is not social media which is the primary problem. I know we like to think it is but it is the government itself when it has a "dirt sheet" about her sent out into the community. Don't try and tell me it was not deliberate. Of course it was. This sort of thing happens inside politics all the time but it has become much worse recently. The current federal government knows it is in trouble. It still has "an election winning lead" with around 25% of the first preferences but that is a long way down from the last election. Dishing out the dirt on anyone and everyone outside their own party has become the name of the game. 

They also see it as more important than ever to pass that "digital duty of care" bill. Indeed we are being told that what happened to Helen Haines would not have happened if the bill had been passed. That this is absolute nonsense is not something they are even prepared to discuss. All we apparently need to know is that this sort of thing could not happen because we would not know...anything. 

I wonder where all this is taking us. Will they succeed in turning us into the "communist" state some think. 

 The other major culprit here is the main stream media. The present government pays them a good deal. In return they are, despite attempts to deny it, shall we say "careful" about how they portray the government. There has been some criticism recently and the story of the "dirt sheet" on Helen Haines has come to be more widely known but it took an horrific act for it to happen. This is not "social media" at work. It is not ordinary, everyday citizens. Has the media finally started to wake up to the fact that the government wants more control in order to control everything we can know as well as say? Is it too late?  

Tone down the rhetoric?

Our Prime Minister is telling us we have to tone down the rhetoric... that the social problems besetting this country are our fault. Really?

Apparently the problems have nothing to do with not listening. It is apparently fine for him to say whatever he likes. He might try to camouflage it with words he believes are carefully chosen but he is still able to say what he wants us to hear. He does not want us to respond. There is no room or time for listening. 

"Look, it is what we have decided to do. If the electorate doesn't like it too bad. Give some of the biggest whingers a lolly to suck and ignore the rest. We can blame it all on that red headed woman," is how it apparently goes in our nation's capital.

Communication is a two way street. What is happening is not communication. It is dictation. Argument is not being tolerated. Dissent is not being tolerated "People have to learn..." 

Two days ago we had an incident of the most appalling violence. One of the members of parliament was deliberately hit by a vehicle driven by someone who is obviously not normal. It was not normal behaviour. I have not heard one person express anything but shock and concern over this. "If we want to change things then this is not how you go about it," has been the general view. 

The politician in question is an "independent". I may not share all her views but it seems to me she was doing a better job than some I actually know. Her life will never be the same again. Our Prime Minister said what was expected of him but he went on to use the incident for his own purposes. Now we are being told that "social media" is to blame for what happened, that this is why the government's "misinformation/disinformation" or "digital duty of care" bill needs to be passed. It needs to be passed "as soon as possible" to "prevent anything like this happening again". 

What absolute nonsense! This will make martyrs of people whose views differ from his own, that the government does not want expressed and most certainly not debated. It is an attempt to prevent healthy debate not stop those with extremist views making their voices heard. 

Social media gets inflamed by main stream media. "Protests" continue in part because main stream media encourages them with constant reporting of the events. The "climate change" message is constantly slipped into news reports. We are given the impression that bullies and murderers should be allowed to succeed in their efforts "for the sake of peace". All this is what we first learn through main stream news but it gets expanded and twisted in social media, often with encouragement from "leaders". Politicians use main stream media to "get the message across". It is a very powerful tool. Abuse it and you can do a great deal of harm. Try to stifle it and you can do a great deal of harm.  

The desire to control social media is understandable. It would make us much easier to govern. Is it possible? I think not. Communication is a two way street - and trying to stop the traffic flow will cause "accidents". Some people will aways try to find a way around it to do even more harm.  We need to keep the communication lanes open.