Practical Thoughts

Dear Reader, I feel conscious that a change of some great significance will soon be on us (i.e. Planet Earth). What form it will be I cannot say: it may involve many things. To that end, I felt moved to create an additional blog, which I am calling 'Perspectives'. Whilst I shall still write on this blog about specific issues, 'Perspectives' will be an ordered series of papers (starting at the beginning) about a philosophy that I believe we will all need to reflect on, to help tackle forthcoming changes. There is no compulsion on anyone's part to read them, of course. But they will be there, added to every week or two, for your interest and maybe even your comment. In fact, I hope you will make some comment, for the benefit of all readers. Unless the comment is rude I shall not intervene. So, please click here to read the first 'paper' in this new blog called 'Perspectives'. See you there, perhaps!

Dear Reader, The New Year is settling down and is clearly showing us that whatever negative issues existed in 2017 seem to be escalating this year. I am particularly drawn to the news from Oxfam that the gap between rich and poor seems to be exponentially increasing, We are told that this past year has seen "the fastest rise in the number of billionaires ever recorded", and out of a £7.3 trillion increase in global wealth, £6 trillion went to only 75 million people, while the bottom 3.7 billion people received no benefit (reported in i, January 22, 2018). But that's just the economic figures. With the advent of Brexit and Donald Trump, we can clearly see that there has been a swing back towards old methods towards generating revenue. Brexit supporters chortled that "Britain can make itself Great again" as it once did, but I wonder if they realise that Britain's separation from Europe is pushing us to develop arms deals with questionable regimes and...

Dear Reader, Another year is on us! For me time seems to gather pace at an extraordinary rate, but maybe that's to do with the fact that we always seem to be active in something or other. And many a time I seem to find a 'Eureka moment' which attracts my deep attention and soaks up time. One such 'moment' occurred just a few weeks ago when I discovered the extent of the work of children's author W. J. Corbett, who, unknowingly to me for many years, was born in and lived in the area of my upbringing. And this past year or two I've been drafting a history of that area of Birmingham. A few weeks ago I had come to the end of the main body of the book and was looking into finding something appropriate to begin the book, and, lo and behold, Corbett provided the very answer for which I was looking. For those who are unfamiliar with Corbett, his first book ("The Song Of Pentecost") won the Whitbred Award for children's books in 1982, and his work...

Dear Reader, Hello again. The past 3 months or more have been taken up with so many important things that something had to give way. So this blog had to give way. In future, I will try to post at least once a month rather than weekly. I have been doing a kind of bird's-eye review of what's been happening these past 3+ months, and what I see is more of the same, if not worse! Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the other day he felt that the Brexit matter would come to a climax by the middle of next year (2018), and he thought that it would not be the result that the leavers hoped for.  But I see not just that but many other issues coming to a climax as well - notably the viability of the western system of economy. The Church of England's chief primate (Justin Welby) has said that the western economic model is "broken". And I well believe him, especially as the very rich get very much richer while the poorest are more squeezed than ever before. What has...

Dear Reader, On July 19 (just gone) I began to think more deeply about the weather we have been experiencing in this area of the UK, and how the weather forecasters just do not seem to be too accurate about their forecasting. They say they have built bigger and better computers to process the data more accurately - but do they? In particular, the bursts of wind under perpetually gray skies seemed to be odd; plus the fact that summers of old just did not seem to be of the order we've been experiencing this past year or two. And what about the freak weather conditions in Cornwall just a few day ago?  Oh, yes - it's "climate change" isn't it? Well, yes, I'd go along with that, but I'm beginning to suspect a lot more. Perhaps I'm just a suspicious type, but I looked into the strange weather phenomena and saw this photo of the sky over Zurich when the CERN Large Hydron Collider was being powered up: Other news in July 2016 proclaimed that the ...

Dear Reader, An artlcle in the Guardian this weekend was headed: "I took my first antidepressant this week. The effects were frightening." [Link] This article elicited a great response. Within half-a-day this article received over 1,100 comments and over 2,800 Facebook shares before comments were closed. I managed to make a comment: Yes, I read below someone saying that Deborah is "very brave" talking so openly about her condition. But all the replies I've read (sorry I've only read the last 20 or 30 or so) seem to be supporting this drug therapy culture in some way or other. Though I'd agree there are times in your life when pretty well everyone (I imagine) goes through some kind of stress of a threatening kind, and some kind of 'action' is needed to circumnavigate the issue, why does the action have to be one that supports the idea that we are *simply* made up of chemicals and that a chemical has to be the appropriate treatment? In 73...

Dear Reader, The state of affairs in the UK at this time really points to the country being on a knife-edge. There is the potential of total disintegration, while at the same time Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the young at the Glastonbury Festival in order to give them hope - that it is possible to have a society that is joined up and for the benefit of the many, not the few. And that was partly the message of another 'JC': Jesus Christ. Today we rather downplay religion, yet I yesterday saw a news clip where a far-right demonstrator demanded that we maintain our "Christian values". It does occur to me that we don't take religion seriously because we do not trust those "Christian values", and why don't we trust them? Simply - I suggest - because only fragments of Christianity get taught, and there are now so many sects of the broad church that are in existence, with each of them emphasising different elements of Christianity. Worse, religion usually ...

Dear Reader, In a way, I do feel sympathy towards Mrs. May. One week she's told in the clearest way by the electorate (other than the pensioners) that she and her Party are not wanted, and the next week she has the consequences of the most horrible of disasters to face: Grenfell Tower. But the sympathy ebbs away when I think of how the Tory Party has treated the poor over this past seven years, the bedroom tax (when few other homes were available) being one of the most outstandingly divisive policies to mention. And now it is clear that someone was trying to cut corners in the recent refurbishment of Grenfell. A mere £6,250 extra would have made the property much safer (still probably not good enough though), but someone did not think it worth spending that figure. And the cost of sprinklers fitted throughout the block? Up to a £400,000 spend I believe, but again not thought to be worth doing by someone, somewhere. The pressure is now on to ensure that other tower blocks in...

Dear Reader, It is clear (surely the Canterbury result demonstrated that) the young - for the first time in over 70 years - were fully engaged in Thursday's election. But why? Well, here's what "The Conversation"  has said: Young people are at the heart of it all. If you’re young and living in Britain today, you’re less likely to hold a steady job than a series of insecure gigs, leaving you with a  jumbled CV  of zero-hours contracts and unreliable work. No savings, high rent, and huge tuition fees if you’re fortunate enough to make it into higher education. No-one should be surprised that young people offered this dismal social contract instead opted for the promise of investment in the welfare state, secure contracts, and an end to tuition fees. Now, I was brought up in the decades after the War when politics was an important issue in the lives of many people. There were political activists in my own family on my paternal side, while on my maternal side th...

Dear Reader, Well, the day is almost on top of us! My feeling is that Theresa May will win her majority, but 66% of more than 250,000 people are indicating on Vote-for-Policies that they prefer Labour/Liberal/Green options and left-of-centre views in England. There is an indicator that the first-past-the-post voting system will work against democracy.  Perhaps. Or maybe it is just those that have a huge political zeal that make their opinions known. We shall find out on Friday! But with the threat of the right-wing tightening their control around the world (and policies like fracking becoming a likelihood), I hope people keep to their apparent instincts and vote for fairness and also sustainability in the environment. Thank you for reading this.