Doublespeak

Back in the city, with a fine clear morning and a good run through the woods.

Last night we watched the movie The Name of the Rose on the BBC. For anyone unfamiliar with it, this is a complex story set in a 14^th century Italian abbey, featuring graphic portrayals of violent murder, torture, insanity, depravity, sadism, burning at the stake and religious zealotry. And a brief interlude of very poignant love making between two young people. The BBC felt it necessary to warn parents of young children about this last interlude, but not about the other activities which are apparently legitimate entertainment. Now, obviously, this could be written off as just another instance of British prudishness about sexual matters but, looking around at current world conflicts, somehow it seems to have a wider significance as a metaphor for moral inconsistency.

Small is still beautiful

A fine breezy morning and a brisk run by the loch.

Perhaps it was just me, but the 1970s seemed a decade of contradictory ideas, with style vying with substance in a confusing tangle. As a student of architecture this was made manifest in a curriculum which tried to combine the grandiose, the mechanistic, the mass-produced, and the modest & hand-knitted, in an incoherent stew with occasional highlights of excellence, such as E F Schumacher’s prophetic book.

Thirty five years later, the Occupy protests are re-setting the agenda of challenging global and corporate capitalism in all its de-humanising forms, and it is good to see the book in the spotlight again (ref). Maybe this time more people will listen. 

Bastards and whores

A cool grey morning but a fast and heated run. One of the penalties of following the news on a regular basis is the number of times there is reason to be depressed or angry, and today is angry’s turn.

For several years, despite an otherwise bellicose foreign policy, the UK has been active in supporting a global ban of cluster bombs. Until, that is, the current government under the leadership of the Right Honourable David Cameron who, in a characteristically shameful lickspittle u-turn, is now supporting the inexplicable US bid to allow them, so long as they were manufactured in the last 30 years (ref). The age of the bombs which indiscriminately kill & maim civilians on an industrial scale being, apparently, key to their humanitarian qualities and overall acceptability. Why, Obama, why ?

And that’s not all. Within  2 weeks of Muammar Gaddafi  being tortured and executed, that same honourable UK government is already planning to renew weapon sales to Libya – not so much to show support for a democratic and peaceful new regime in its precarious and volatile early stages, but more in the indecent rush to get their money back after the vainglorious and expensive bombing campaign (ref). 

Thank you Lord Sugar

A good early run along the still dark loch-side

In an oddly mesmerising reality TV series, Young Apprentice, the BBC are showing 12 of Britain’s allegedly “brightest and best young entrepreneurs” as they compete for the patronage of a rich lord. Yes, it is the 21^st century, but remember that parts of Britain are still locked into the Middle Ages. Anyway, at a time when the ethics of corporate business are finally being challenged, the sight of psychotically competitive 16 year olds being criticised because they only looked for a 100% profit margin when selling a bunch of hot-house flowers, instead of a possible 200%, seems comprehensively to sum up what is wrong with capitalism.

To believe the right wing press in the UK is to believe that the BBC is a cauldron of crypto-socialism, so possibly they are being deliberately subversive here, but more likely just cynically exploiting their audience’s appetite for watching people being nasty to each other.

The one percent

A frosty and beautiful run along the loch-side this morning, as the stars faded in the early light.

Yesterday the Guardian carried an excellent essay by George Monbiot in which he highlights the clinically psychopathic characteristics of senior managers and chief executives, and the feudal way in which they claim their rewards, reminiscent of medieval dukes. He also quotes Daniel Kahneman’s study of Wall Street fund managers, which found that their massively renumerated performance was “no better than that of a chimpanzee flipping a coin”. And meanwhile, over the last 30 years, the gap between the richest and poorest has been increasing, keeping pace with the ever-greater trashing of the planet in the name of economic growth. World leaders have failed spectacularly to make a difference, so maybe it's time to try the chimpanzees.

Destruction Incorporated

A clear calm morning and a good run along the loch-side, as a late skein of geese head for their winter haven.

Two inter-linked and very gloomy reports stand out from this morning’s papers. The first is that global CO2 rose by 6% last year, despite or perhaps because of the economic slump. The UK, with its self-proclaimed “greenest government ever”, bravely contributed to this with the first increase in emissions since 1996, lagging behind only Brazil and Saudi Arabia as the dirtiest G20 economy, but obviously nowhere near the two main villains, US & China.. The second is about an estimate that by the end of this century, 50% of all animal species will have been rendered extinct by our environmental carnage, as we accelerate towards what is only the sixth great extinction event in the history of the planet.  No doubt extinction-deniers will soon be as well resourced and orchestrated as climate change-deniers.

All relative

Again back to the Highlands, a fine cold morning and a welcome run along the forestry track. 

As the eyes of the West watch anxiously the operatic tribulations and dramas within the Eurozone, and as the global population passes 7 billion, the Independent is carrying a small report about daily life in Burkina Faso. In common with many sub-Saharan African countries, the population growth is outstripping their natural resources, forests are being decimated for use as fuel for cooking, and consequentially the land eroded and made even less productive, sketching out a future of famine, disease, and war. All of which is a timely reminder of the relativity of problems.

Alternative reality

A good fast woodland run yesterday and this morning.

On the radio Bob Diamond, CEO of Barclays Bank & allegedly the highest paid UK bank executive, was smoothly, confidently, & utterly predictably, reiterating the mantra that economic growth is good and is the way out of the current difficulties. What was more interesting though was his use of the term “compensation”. In my naïve way I have always thought of compensation as a payment to make amends following some kind of personal damage, whereas if you do a job you get paid for it or, if you are lucky, you receive a salary. However, on Planet Bank & Planet Big Business, apparently the top executives are compensated for doing their job (however badly, in most cases) with massive salary & bonus packages, which is a little ironic since it’s the rest of us who should be compensated for what they have been doing.

A poem instead

A fine fast run through the woods this morning and then back for a respite from the endless carousel of the news media. So, instead, a poem & a wee drawing:

Going without Saying

(i.m. Joe Flynn)

by Bernard O’Donoghue

It is a great pity we don’t know

When the dead are going to die

So that, over a companionable

Drink, we could tell them

How much we liked them.

Happy the man who, dying, can 

place his hand on his heart and say:

“At least I didn’t forget to tell

The thrush how beautifully she sings”

Thanks, Donald.

Ubuntu

A fine clear morning an a good long run through the woods.

To continue the theme of the protest camps, two clergymen on the radio this morning were highlighting that one of the essential differences between these protests and many others is the peaceful co-operativeness & respect with which they are being conducted. This is possibly the strongest message to all the cynics who are missing the point by scorning the lack of clear manifestos amongst the protesters. A link on the Occupy Glasgow Facebook page points to the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which has been translated as "I am what I am because of who we all are." (ref) and which articulates beautifully a long established alternative to  capitalism and greed predicated on the Western model of individualism and ego-centricity.