NB. This should have been posted on Sunday morning but there was no internet access to be found!
Our Prime Minister speaks.
“You are a good and honourable man. I am sure that throughout you have been motivated by wanting to protect your privacy rather than anything else. I hope that in time you will be able to serve again as I think it absolutely clear that you have a huge amount to offer our country.”
And the man in question had stated, “My only motivation throughout has not been to maximise profit but to simply protect our privacy and my wish not to reveal my sexuality”.
“Good and honourable man”!
Good and honourable men do not defraud the taxpayer from copious amounts of money, David(s). Good and honourable men do not try and pass such actions off in the manner that Mr. Laws has done so. Good and honourable men, when they have been found to be dishonourable, stick their hands in the air and say, “It’s a fair cop Mister”.
On Radio Four yesterday morning they were actually debating whether David Laws should resign or not. It was actually debated and discussed with a considered view that there was an option.
Why? The man took £40,000 of public money to pay his lover for sharing his home with him. The man broke the parliamentary legislation and guidelines on this. His credibility was shattered. You cannot possibly have a man in the position of tightening purse strings when he has pocketed such vast sums of public money. Whatever his reasons, he would have lost all ounce of respect by carrying on and pretending he could simply draw a line under the whole proceedings.
He pocketed £40,000 or if he didn’t pocket, the man closest to him did so.
I didn’t think we’d get a scandal quite this early. It’s a little pathetic not to get to the end of the first month of government without some major crisis. I almost feel sorry for Cameron who must be sitting there thinking that the world seriously does not want him to be Prime Minister. Firstly, the electorate don’t actually give him the absolute mandate to govern. Then he has to negotiate and contrive a coalition with people that he has probably seen as pinkie lefties for most of his parliamentary career and now he has to contend with the stupidity of the ever so sensible and trusted Mr. Laws.
Of course, Cameron could argue that Laws is not one of his. He is on the other side of the coalition. He can, to some extent, wipe his hands and saw, “Phew, I’ll leave that one to Nicholas”. But he can’t do that. He made the ultimate choice to have Laws in a highly prolific role.
Anyway, at least my gaydar is still in working order, not that it was a particularly difficult spot, and it was an open secret in Westminster that Laws was gay. That being the case, then why on earth did the man think that he could use the excuse of trying to shield the press and everyone else from his sexuality as a reason as to why he defrauded public funds in this way?
I always try to see a different perspective and how ever many ways I go around this case, I am flummoxed and left with the sad and disappointing conclusion that Mr. Laws thought he could get away with it. No doubt at one point, there was a decision to claim for rent as a mask on his sexuality.
Just for a minute, let’s just imagine the situation.
This man has moved into the home of another prominent albeit unelected Liberal Democrat. They find some common interests, values etcetera and soon they become sexually attracted to one another. In fairness, they do not want to go back to the Commons committee for expenses just yet in case their relationship is a mere flash in the pan. However, after two years of being together you would think that might constitute a settling in period.
By 2006 when the rules were “clarified” about paying rent etc to spouses, there must have been a conversation in the household and they must have made the decision to continue to keep quiet. Neither of these men was apparently “out” with their families and our gutter press could easily have got hold of information about them.
But then I would suggest that the conversation would probably have turned to probability and risk assessment. David Laws was a member of the Liberal Democrats; a party that was highly unlikely to ever be at the forefront of British politics. However brilliant this young man might be, he was never likely to hold office in government and I would suggest that it was this that drove these two men to continue with their charade whilst pocketing a tidy sum in the process.
So, at what stage did this good and honourable man find his conscience? Was it in 2006 when the Commons claims procedures were changed? Clearly not. Was it during the expenses scandal when journalists were shifting around and coming up with manna from heaven as far as disgracing dodgy MPs? No, apparently Mr. Laws did not squeak at this time either, other than to criticise those who were claiming astronomical amounts of money for feeding the family bunny rabbit. Was it during the election debate where any politically astute person could see that there was a high possibility that the Lib Dems may hold the balance of power in a hung parliament? No, this intellectually brilliant bloke still kept schtum. Perhaps it was during the discussions with little Willie and his brigade from the Blue side when Laws began to realise that power was coming his way? No, still there was silence.
And so it went on, and the trench was dug deep.
Laws, quite frankly, must have known he was well and truly fucked at this stage but once you are that far into a lie it becomes a reality by default. It is that person’s reality at least.
Enough said. Why did he not go to the chief whip or the party leader and have a quiet word about his expenses, explaining the situation, stating that he needed to claim to hide his sexuality? At this point, something could have been suggested rather than the fraudulent behaviour that ensued. He was in the Liberal Democratic Party for heaven’s sake, a party that has – guess what – liberal tendencies when it comes to sexuality. Whilst we are on that subject, David Laws is a pink Tory (in more ways than one). It appears that the only reason he joined the Liberals rather than the Tories was his abhorrence for Clause 28. Didn’t somebody twig then or did they not twig when they looked at his voting pattern on homosexual law?
As I said, enough said. Contempt breeds contempt. Greed breeds greed. Money breeds money from whatever source you can grab. This is a dog eat dog world where those that have will probably always have and those that haven’t just sit in stunned shock at the stupidity of some people.
And all of this before you get onto the subject of how pathetic we are as a society that it requires someone in high office to hide their sexuality. Our societal dishonesty about sex is appalling, be it homosexual or heterosexual.
We can’t cope with sex. We don’t like to talk about it openly and we probably think about it more frequently than we dare to admit.
This is 2010. If a man cannot stand up in public and admit that he is gay, then it is a sorry indictment on us all. On the positive side though, it could be a gross misjudgement from the man himself. There is a possibility that people are just not bothered by his sexuality.
Whatever the pros and cons, the ins and outs, the for’s and against’s, David Laws must be sitting there wondering why he got the call so wrong. Stupid, naive, power-driven, ineptitude.
When will these politicians learn that they are not invincible?
Monday 31 May 2010
Friday 14 May 2010
Time On Your Hands
Time On Your Hands
If only!
Did you know there are optimum times for us to be working and thinking cognitively? Most people have a very short window, usually a couple or three hours. If you are lucky you have two of these windows. It is at this time that you apparently do your best work. Those who have ever participated in time and motion studies may have even been told what their windows are.
Employers look at these times and consider them to be optimum times when the person should be giving their best for the service or the company. If you have an optimum cognitive time of between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. then you should probably not have a lunch break until the Archers has finished on Radio 4, so employers would say.
Me, I would say this is the very best time to be creative; to think, to read, to write, to wander around and take a good look at the spectacular world in which you live.
In a recent “Observer” questionnaire a range of politicians had to answer a range of questions so that we, the great British public, could learn a little more about them as though this might influence the way that we voted. One of the questions was “What super power would you choose?” There were the fairly usual choices of invisibility, time travel and flying but one consistent response echoed over and over again, and that was the ability to be in two places at the same time.
It would definitely be the one that I would choose. Life would be far less complicated if this was possible. Like Faustus, I would happily trade a few years of my life for this fulfilment but sadly, it is never going to happen.
Time is so precious and we spend so much time misusing it, wasting it, not prioritising the things and the people that are most important to us right now. Time does not stand still no matter how much we would like to pretend it does and the grains of sand run too rapidly for those of us with so many aspects of our lives still waiting to be lived.
Some people have weird misconceptions about the best way to spend time, thinking that the world is going to wait for them as they preoccupy themselves with the mundane, the peripheral, the unimportant. I remember the wonderful Dennis Potter stating that he would happily bump off a certain male newspaper tycoon on receipt of the news that he had terminal cancer. He felt that this would have been a good use of his time to some extent but then he said, “I’ve got too much writing to do and I haven’t got the energy”.
He knew his priorities, for sure and was an exceptional writer to boot.
He went on, during that incredible interview with Melvyn Bragg to talk about the importance of living in the now, with the wisdom of one who has a termination hovering over him, though I suspect he would probably have said the same thing irrespective of this cancer.
“And we forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense; it is is, and it is now only. I mean, as much as we would like to call back yesterday and indeed yearn to, and ache to sometimes, we can't................ no matter how predictable it is, there's the element of the unpredictable, of the you don't know. The only thing you know for sure is the present tense, and that nowness becomes so vivid that, almost in a perverse sort of way, I'm almost serene. You know, I can celebrate life.”
He continued.
“Below my window in Ross, when I'm working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter.”
And here is the most beautiful statement from this speech.
“But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know.”
He continued once more.
“There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance ... not that I'm interested in reassuring people - bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.”
Dennis Potter is so right. We should all listen to him now and realise the essence and the sense of those words.
I remember watching the interview when it was broadcast some fifteen years ago. Time flies, see!
I remember being deeply moved by the whole experience and I remember sitting there, not weeping howls of anguish but realising that my face was awash with spent tears that had flowed empathetically throughout the interview.
I suspect that Potter would not have asked for the super power of time travel. He seemed to suggest that whilst it is also a magical thought to be able to disappear back in time, there is little purpose other than living in the moment and that living in the present doesn’t mean that there is predictability. Far from it! There is a life about it. A living. A being. I like that.
I’m not sure that he would have chosen to have the power of being in two places at once either. I think he had a healthy respect for time and the nature of time as it stands, in reality.
Potter also highlighted another really vital issue about time; about the lack of it in his case. He mentioned that the blossom looked whiter and frothier than it once did. He mentioned that the trivial suddenly gained importance and the differentiation between what was trivial and what was significant was indefinable.
These are important messages about time. These are important messages about redefining what is important.
For the terminally ill, when time is disappearing, you look more closely. You see the absolute significance in things. You haven’t got time to be choosy. An instinctual urgency kicks in.
How sad that we only tend to see the blossom when we fear we will see it no longer.
I think the key message from all of this is that Dennis Potter was saying you cannot explain this to someone who has not experienced this and maybe we should all try and experience “newness” before we are terminally ill, before we are on our last legs. What he is saying is that we should be experiencing this now! I wonder if he realised how zen-like he was sounding.
We, as a race, are possibly the only ones who know that there is an end in sight. We, as a race, are possibly the only ones who have sufficient cognitive and emotional intelligence to be able to rationalise this and do something about it, and yet we spend our lives concentrating on the unnecessary, concentrating on the things that are not vital instead of concentrating on the things that are going to give us ultimate happiness, serenity and spiritual wellbeing.
We need to look up instead of at ground level. We need to take the time to walk and talk and enjoy.
We need to make time for the most important people and the most important aspects of life. Yes, we have to have certain things in place in order to survive but being the best teacher or the most accurate accountant or the most tidy housewife or the most dedicated follower of whatever is ultimately not the most important thing to be.
We should be listening to music, sharing our thoughts on what we hear. We should be looking at the ever changing world, of the growing greenness as the summer shimmers in. We should be reading and writing just as Dennis Potter did. We cannot all be as brilliant as him but we can try. We should be meditating and eradicating every thought from our mind and just enjoy searching, realising and enjoying the essentials of life. We should be considerate to others without swallowing ourselves into the bargain. We should smell the roses and embrace the sunlight.
But we don’t, do we?
For those who think that they have not got enough time on their hands, then think again. Is it really a lack of time or a lack of prioritisation?
I’m thinking now of all of those ex-MPs and indeed ex-PMs who have more time on their hands than they had thought they would have had or more time than they hoped they would have.
If I was them, I’d be relishing this moment for the serenity and hopefulness that it offered.
If I was advising these people, I would implore them to stop, take stock of the time on their hands and get out into the streets to see the remnants of the spring flowers. I would ask them to sit for a while and recognise the utter value of stillness and silence. Without this, they are never going to reformulate their ideas. Without this, they will never hear the words of truth spoken to them.
Here’s the truth. Today, I read the transcript for the interview between Melvyn Bragg and Dennis Potter for the first time since I watched the programme all those years ago.
The message and the thoughts resonated immediately yet I had heard them exactly and poignantly spoken over a decade and a half ago. I’d sat and listened intently to that interview, to the point of a cascade of tears and yet I did nothing with the words that this man spoke. I got involved with his ideas but I didn’t engage them. I didn’t act upon them. I hurried along with my life without really looking at the blossom in full, without really living in the present tense either.
We may have a rough idea of life expectation but we don’t really know how much time we have left; apocryphal buses are but a mere street away. But we do have time on our hands if we can only remember to use it wisely.
As Dennis Potter says, I can write this and the reader may take it on board but to really understand what this nowness is about, you have to live it.
And I am only just beginning.
If only!
Did you know there are optimum times for us to be working and thinking cognitively? Most people have a very short window, usually a couple or three hours. If you are lucky you have two of these windows. It is at this time that you apparently do your best work. Those who have ever participated in time and motion studies may have even been told what their windows are.
Employers look at these times and consider them to be optimum times when the person should be giving their best for the service or the company. If you have an optimum cognitive time of between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. then you should probably not have a lunch break until the Archers has finished on Radio 4, so employers would say.
Me, I would say this is the very best time to be creative; to think, to read, to write, to wander around and take a good look at the spectacular world in which you live.
In a recent “Observer” questionnaire a range of politicians had to answer a range of questions so that we, the great British public, could learn a little more about them as though this might influence the way that we voted. One of the questions was “What super power would you choose?” There were the fairly usual choices of invisibility, time travel and flying but one consistent response echoed over and over again, and that was the ability to be in two places at the same time.
It would definitely be the one that I would choose. Life would be far less complicated if this was possible. Like Faustus, I would happily trade a few years of my life for this fulfilment but sadly, it is never going to happen.
Time is so precious and we spend so much time misusing it, wasting it, not prioritising the things and the people that are most important to us right now. Time does not stand still no matter how much we would like to pretend it does and the grains of sand run too rapidly for those of us with so many aspects of our lives still waiting to be lived.
Some people have weird misconceptions about the best way to spend time, thinking that the world is going to wait for them as they preoccupy themselves with the mundane, the peripheral, the unimportant. I remember the wonderful Dennis Potter stating that he would happily bump off a certain male newspaper tycoon on receipt of the news that he had terminal cancer. He felt that this would have been a good use of his time to some extent but then he said, “I’ve got too much writing to do and I haven’t got the energy”.
He knew his priorities, for sure and was an exceptional writer to boot.
He went on, during that incredible interview with Melvyn Bragg to talk about the importance of living in the now, with the wisdom of one who has a termination hovering over him, though I suspect he would probably have said the same thing irrespective of this cancer.
“And we forget or tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present tense; it is is, and it is now only. I mean, as much as we would like to call back yesterday and indeed yearn to, and ache to sometimes, we can't................ no matter how predictable it is, there's the element of the unpredictable, of the you don't know. The only thing you know for sure is the present tense, and that nowness becomes so vivid that, almost in a perverse sort of way, I'm almost serene. You know, I can celebrate life.”
He continued.
“Below my window in Ross, when I'm working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter.”
And here is the most beautiful statement from this speech.
“But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know.”
He continued once more.
“There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance ... not that I'm interested in reassuring people - bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.”
Dennis Potter is so right. We should all listen to him now and realise the essence and the sense of those words.
I remember watching the interview when it was broadcast some fifteen years ago. Time flies, see!
I remember being deeply moved by the whole experience and I remember sitting there, not weeping howls of anguish but realising that my face was awash with spent tears that had flowed empathetically throughout the interview.
I suspect that Potter would not have asked for the super power of time travel. He seemed to suggest that whilst it is also a magical thought to be able to disappear back in time, there is little purpose other than living in the moment and that living in the present doesn’t mean that there is predictability. Far from it! There is a life about it. A living. A being. I like that.
I’m not sure that he would have chosen to have the power of being in two places at once either. I think he had a healthy respect for time and the nature of time as it stands, in reality.
Potter also highlighted another really vital issue about time; about the lack of it in his case. He mentioned that the blossom looked whiter and frothier than it once did. He mentioned that the trivial suddenly gained importance and the differentiation between what was trivial and what was significant was indefinable.
These are important messages about time. These are important messages about redefining what is important.
For the terminally ill, when time is disappearing, you look more closely. You see the absolute significance in things. You haven’t got time to be choosy. An instinctual urgency kicks in.
How sad that we only tend to see the blossom when we fear we will see it no longer.
I think the key message from all of this is that Dennis Potter was saying you cannot explain this to someone who has not experienced this and maybe we should all try and experience “newness” before we are terminally ill, before we are on our last legs. What he is saying is that we should be experiencing this now! I wonder if he realised how zen-like he was sounding.
We, as a race, are possibly the only ones who know that there is an end in sight. We, as a race, are possibly the only ones who have sufficient cognitive and emotional intelligence to be able to rationalise this and do something about it, and yet we spend our lives concentrating on the unnecessary, concentrating on the things that are not vital instead of concentrating on the things that are going to give us ultimate happiness, serenity and spiritual wellbeing.
We need to look up instead of at ground level. We need to take the time to walk and talk and enjoy.
We need to make time for the most important people and the most important aspects of life. Yes, we have to have certain things in place in order to survive but being the best teacher or the most accurate accountant or the most tidy housewife or the most dedicated follower of whatever is ultimately not the most important thing to be.
We should be listening to music, sharing our thoughts on what we hear. We should be looking at the ever changing world, of the growing greenness as the summer shimmers in. We should be reading and writing just as Dennis Potter did. We cannot all be as brilliant as him but we can try. We should be meditating and eradicating every thought from our mind and just enjoy searching, realising and enjoying the essentials of life. We should be considerate to others without swallowing ourselves into the bargain. We should smell the roses and embrace the sunlight.
But we don’t, do we?
For those who think that they have not got enough time on their hands, then think again. Is it really a lack of time or a lack of prioritisation?
I’m thinking now of all of those ex-MPs and indeed ex-PMs who have more time on their hands than they had thought they would have had or more time than they hoped they would have.
If I was them, I’d be relishing this moment for the serenity and hopefulness that it offered.
If I was advising these people, I would implore them to stop, take stock of the time on their hands and get out into the streets to see the remnants of the spring flowers. I would ask them to sit for a while and recognise the utter value of stillness and silence. Without this, they are never going to reformulate their ideas. Without this, they will never hear the words of truth spoken to them.
Here’s the truth. Today, I read the transcript for the interview between Melvyn Bragg and Dennis Potter for the first time since I watched the programme all those years ago.
The message and the thoughts resonated immediately yet I had heard them exactly and poignantly spoken over a decade and a half ago. I’d sat and listened intently to that interview, to the point of a cascade of tears and yet I did nothing with the words that this man spoke. I got involved with his ideas but I didn’t engage them. I didn’t act upon them. I hurried along with my life without really looking at the blossom in full, without really living in the present tense either.
We may have a rough idea of life expectation but we don’t really know how much time we have left; apocryphal buses are but a mere street away. But we do have time on our hands if we can only remember to use it wisely.
As Dennis Potter says, I can write this and the reader may take it on board but to really understand what this nowness is about, you have to live it.
And I am only just beginning.
Sunday 9 May 2010
Electoral Reform
I’m foncused! I’m not sure what I want any more.
The country seems all topsy turvy at the moment which, in a way, is rather stimulating and exciting but at the same time it is unsettling, unnerving and full of trepidation.
My ideal politics and my perfect socially just scenarios were not available in this election. There was no manifesto that matched with my expectations for society but then again, there probably hasn’t been for many a year. There always has to be a compromise. There always has to be a ‘near match’. That is what the electorate have to do when they go into the polling booth and place their ‘x’ in the appropriate or inappropriate box. They tend to vote for the party that most closely matches their views, or sadly, matches the views that have been dripped into them by the Murdoch and Barclay papers.
There are very few people in this world who agree totally with every piece of legislation and every suggestion from the party that they vote for. In 1997, there were fundamental sections within the Labour Party proposals that I totally disagreed with but on the whole, the manifesto (which I did actually read) was in line with what I wanted. And of course, like many people, I had this overwhelming feeling of hope. I, like many people, thought that the first term of a Labour government would tread wearily but once a second mandate had been achieved, they would drive full throttle into the sort of social change that was expected of a Labour government.
There’s little point in reiterating the disappointment that has since ensued. People with far greater writing ability than me have commented over the last decade on this. It is a fact of history and it is time to move on.
What we have now is an absolute that our electoral system is laughable.
We have a situation, once more, where the majority of the population has voted against the party with the greatest amount of Commons seats, and that is without the additional 30, 40 or 50% of people who did not vote in their constituency. That, in itself, is not new. Even in 1997, when Labour won 43% of the popular vote, 31% voted Tory and 17% voted Liberal – and let us not forget this!
We have the paradox of a Liberal Democrat party who have fared far worse than some had predicted yet have more power in their hands for doing so.
It is time for Nick Clegg to make some fundamental decisions and stick to his principles on the reforms to the system that is so vitally required.
There is a hypocrisy from Labour that I find quite abhorrent. Whilst they were commanding huge majorities in the House of Commons, like the Tories before them, they did not want to meddle with this so-called democracy by offering proportional representation or even the watered down version of single transferable vote. It did not suit their needs. It would not keep them in power and they would have to consider the needs of the smaller parties with their views and their requirements.
To start banging on about PR now is painfully opportunist when they have had thirteen years in power to make the sort of amendments that the electorate seem to be demanding.
However, as I said before, that is history and whilst I would be the first to advocate the study of the subject (though not in the way that Michael Gove is suggesting), we have to move on. We can use the information from history to inform us of why there is a moral duty for all parties to look at the bleeding statistics and see how very wrong the first past the post system is.
We can look at the present to see how very wrong the system is. The current situation is hardly an advert for FPTP and strong government.
Whilst it is demonstrating something entirely different, it is an interesting analogy to look at the two electoral maps that the BBC used the other night. The first map showed an almost entirety of blue in England if you looked at geographical distribution. When it was transformed into the hexagonal evenness of equal size per constituency, it showed completely different colour coverage.
This would be even more colourful under PR. People need to look at the stark picture in front of them.
One of the key aspects of democracy for me is that an election should not be about a single issue. Another paradox from this election!
This time it really is about one issue. We need change. We need reform. In order to deal with the other important issues, this is the single issue that has to be altered. If real democracy is going to be the winner, there has to be a system for proper debate about the economy, about education, about society – big or small. The problem with strong government as advocates of FPTP continually bang on about is that on some occasions the largest party are invincible, which means that they can almost work in an autocracy. That’s what happened with Thatcher and that is what happened with Blair. Whatever the other side was opposing, there was an utter futility in even opening your mouth. Laws were going to be passed irrespective of proper debate. Maybe that is why Tony felt he had the right to drag us into an illegal war with all the hundreds and thousands of fatalities therewith.
That sort of absolutism cannot be good for the country; it cannot be good for debate and cannot be good for democracy.
I am now, having been a Labour party follower all of my life, thinking that I don’t want to “belong” any longer. I no longer “belong” anywhere other than holding a fundamental belief in the need for a more equal society. I want to get the Tories, Labour (notice I have deliberately dropped the Nu throughout this blog, pressing the point of hope!), the Liberals and anyone else who wants to join to debate around a table to talk about the issue, without the need for whips or media telling them what to think. Oh and it would be rather good to get some specialists there too. This is what a democracy should look like.
Take education for instance. There is sadly whole party consensus on testing, though I think branches of each party could have their supporters for progressive education. Only the Green Party had a statement in their manifesto about scrapping the tests. However, Scotland and Wales have opted for a more progressive form of assessment. Therefore, the round table should include all parties, experts from a range of educational establishments and not just the Institute of Education with additional educationalists from our Celtic siblings who can come and explain how and why it works. The same could be done for health, crime, the works.
An all party discussion on economics would mean that there would be strength in numbers, excuse the pun. Consensus or certainly majority could be agreed and with expert consultation, action could take place with all knowing they had had their say. Simple really.
Liberty, equality and fraternity are the new black; no need for red or blue or yellow or rainbows.
Politics is no different from anything else in society. Times are a-changing. The expected way of things is not now appropriate. Anachronistic systems are meaningless. Change is coming. 2012.
So where are we now on this cold Sunday morning at the start of May?
Essentially, we are reliant on a group of men leading a singular man on making a decision about how far he can be placated.
Maybe Clegg should do what the rest of us do each time we enter into the ballot booth. We consider, we think, we rationalise and hopefully, we go and vote for the party that we instinctually believe will bring the majority of what we believe in to fruition, even if there are slight compromises along the way. We can argue against those cases later but we cannot argue if we are not given the proper mandate or systems to enable us to do so.
I, like many, am now putting my faith in the resilience and determination of one man to stand resolutely for what he believes in. Any form of compromise on this vital issue will be nothing less than fatal.
If he chooses to compromise on Cameron’s promise for a referendum, he would be behaving hopelessly naively. Unless he gets a written contract from Cameron stating an absolute guarantee that there would not be another general election before electoral reform, referendum and implementation, he should not make any compromises at all. If he wants a further reminder, he should pick up the Observer today and see what William Hague has in line for foreign policy on Europe. It is an alien planet journey away from what the majority of Liberal Democrats and the hidden socialists believe is best for this country. If he still is unsure of whether he wants to get into bed with Cameron and crew, maybe he should really look at the mansion tax and why he wanted it there in the first place. The Tories will always want to protect the wealth of the few. That is a fact and it is a realm away from the type of democratic justice and equality that the Liberal Party has always stood for.
If he wants further support, he should look back in history to the Whigs and their commitment to the poor and impoverished of the land, and they were somewhat more purple than orange in those days. They were the elite with a conscience.
And if he is still undecided, he should just have a little chat with Michael Gove and George Osborne to see what he has in common with them other than a privileged and, in my opinion, deeply flawed education.
There are commentators throughout the land, professional and bloggers, who are making their comments. I profess to no great insight or thoughts. I may even be borrowing the thoughts of other unbeknown but I do feel that there is a real sense of hope. If Clegg is stupid enough to play along with the ambitions of NewCons, then I will be disappointed but will hold high hopes for an election in 2012 at the latest, when the Tory government has come forward in its true colours and pissed the nation off once more.
As for the Labour party – well, we shall see. Getting it back to the views of the mass of support within would be a good start. Maybe as disaffected followers, we should join the party to guide and direct the type of change that we want. But then again, maybe the time for party allegiance is over. Maybe, this is the time to consider themes and issues before towing a party line.
Gordon has to go. We do not want the Tories throwing the comment about an unelected Prime Minister once more, so this has got to be carefully managed.
If Clegg decides he cannot work with Cameron, then he should walk towards Millbank and have a chat with people there but one condition is going have to be the carefully placed comment from Clegg that he could not work with Gordon Brown. There has to be an immediate change or a promise of change from within Labour.
My suggestion has been echoed by many that Gordon should stay in charge for the next four to six months, remembering that much of this will be summer recess.
He should offer a summer referendum on PR with the view to their being a new election either in the autumn if that is feasible or early in 2011. In the meantime, he should remain where he is until a new leader of the party is elected democratically through conference. At that point, he should pack his bags and go, hopefully having done something successful and therefore prevented him from permanently carrying the label of the most useless Prime Minister ever, which is a little unfair when you consider all the Tory nightmares we have had over the years.
It makes you think also about fixed terms and the time between electing an American President and his (or her eventually) inauguration. Nobody questions the time between November and January as far as the markets are concerned. Perhaps we should be doing the same. We wouldn’t be in the position of trying to rush agreement through to satisfy the markets if there was a predetermined process whereby the departing PM remained in Downing Street for a month regardless of whether he lost the election or not. Perhaps this is not ideal but it is worth consideration.
So the foncused remains confused but probably not as much as she thought.
There’s still ideals, there’s still vision, there’s still values that hold as true today as they did last week. There is still a need for hope and a determination for change.
I, like others, sit and wait.
The country seems all topsy turvy at the moment which, in a way, is rather stimulating and exciting but at the same time it is unsettling, unnerving and full of trepidation.
My ideal politics and my perfect socially just scenarios were not available in this election. There was no manifesto that matched with my expectations for society but then again, there probably hasn’t been for many a year. There always has to be a compromise. There always has to be a ‘near match’. That is what the electorate have to do when they go into the polling booth and place their ‘x’ in the appropriate or inappropriate box. They tend to vote for the party that most closely matches their views, or sadly, matches the views that have been dripped into them by the Murdoch and Barclay papers.
There are very few people in this world who agree totally with every piece of legislation and every suggestion from the party that they vote for. In 1997, there were fundamental sections within the Labour Party proposals that I totally disagreed with but on the whole, the manifesto (which I did actually read) was in line with what I wanted. And of course, like many people, I had this overwhelming feeling of hope. I, like many people, thought that the first term of a Labour government would tread wearily but once a second mandate had been achieved, they would drive full throttle into the sort of social change that was expected of a Labour government.
There’s little point in reiterating the disappointment that has since ensued. People with far greater writing ability than me have commented over the last decade on this. It is a fact of history and it is time to move on.
What we have now is an absolute that our electoral system is laughable.
We have a situation, once more, where the majority of the population has voted against the party with the greatest amount of Commons seats, and that is without the additional 30, 40 or 50% of people who did not vote in their constituency. That, in itself, is not new. Even in 1997, when Labour won 43% of the popular vote, 31% voted Tory and 17% voted Liberal – and let us not forget this!
We have the paradox of a Liberal Democrat party who have fared far worse than some had predicted yet have more power in their hands for doing so.
It is time for Nick Clegg to make some fundamental decisions and stick to his principles on the reforms to the system that is so vitally required.
There is a hypocrisy from Labour that I find quite abhorrent. Whilst they were commanding huge majorities in the House of Commons, like the Tories before them, they did not want to meddle with this so-called democracy by offering proportional representation or even the watered down version of single transferable vote. It did not suit their needs. It would not keep them in power and they would have to consider the needs of the smaller parties with their views and their requirements.
To start banging on about PR now is painfully opportunist when they have had thirteen years in power to make the sort of amendments that the electorate seem to be demanding.
However, as I said before, that is history and whilst I would be the first to advocate the study of the subject (though not in the way that Michael Gove is suggesting), we have to move on. We can use the information from history to inform us of why there is a moral duty for all parties to look at the bleeding statistics and see how very wrong the first past the post system is.
We can look at the present to see how very wrong the system is. The current situation is hardly an advert for FPTP and strong government.
Whilst it is demonstrating something entirely different, it is an interesting analogy to look at the two electoral maps that the BBC used the other night. The first map showed an almost entirety of blue in England if you looked at geographical distribution. When it was transformed into the hexagonal evenness of equal size per constituency, it showed completely different colour coverage.
This would be even more colourful under PR. People need to look at the stark picture in front of them.
One of the key aspects of democracy for me is that an election should not be about a single issue. Another paradox from this election!
This time it really is about one issue. We need change. We need reform. In order to deal with the other important issues, this is the single issue that has to be altered. If real democracy is going to be the winner, there has to be a system for proper debate about the economy, about education, about society – big or small. The problem with strong government as advocates of FPTP continually bang on about is that on some occasions the largest party are invincible, which means that they can almost work in an autocracy. That’s what happened with Thatcher and that is what happened with Blair. Whatever the other side was opposing, there was an utter futility in even opening your mouth. Laws were going to be passed irrespective of proper debate. Maybe that is why Tony felt he had the right to drag us into an illegal war with all the hundreds and thousands of fatalities therewith.
That sort of absolutism cannot be good for the country; it cannot be good for debate and cannot be good for democracy.
I am now, having been a Labour party follower all of my life, thinking that I don’t want to “belong” any longer. I no longer “belong” anywhere other than holding a fundamental belief in the need for a more equal society. I want to get the Tories, Labour (notice I have deliberately dropped the Nu throughout this blog, pressing the point of hope!), the Liberals and anyone else who wants to join to debate around a table to talk about the issue, without the need for whips or media telling them what to think. Oh and it would be rather good to get some specialists there too. This is what a democracy should look like.
Take education for instance. There is sadly whole party consensus on testing, though I think branches of each party could have their supporters for progressive education. Only the Green Party had a statement in their manifesto about scrapping the tests. However, Scotland and Wales have opted for a more progressive form of assessment. Therefore, the round table should include all parties, experts from a range of educational establishments and not just the Institute of Education with additional educationalists from our Celtic siblings who can come and explain how and why it works. The same could be done for health, crime, the works.
An all party discussion on economics would mean that there would be strength in numbers, excuse the pun. Consensus or certainly majority could be agreed and with expert consultation, action could take place with all knowing they had had their say. Simple really.
Liberty, equality and fraternity are the new black; no need for red or blue or yellow or rainbows.
Politics is no different from anything else in society. Times are a-changing. The expected way of things is not now appropriate. Anachronistic systems are meaningless. Change is coming. 2012.
So where are we now on this cold Sunday morning at the start of May?
Essentially, we are reliant on a group of men leading a singular man on making a decision about how far he can be placated.
Maybe Clegg should do what the rest of us do each time we enter into the ballot booth. We consider, we think, we rationalise and hopefully, we go and vote for the party that we instinctually believe will bring the majority of what we believe in to fruition, even if there are slight compromises along the way. We can argue against those cases later but we cannot argue if we are not given the proper mandate or systems to enable us to do so.
I, like many, am now putting my faith in the resilience and determination of one man to stand resolutely for what he believes in. Any form of compromise on this vital issue will be nothing less than fatal.
If he chooses to compromise on Cameron’s promise for a referendum, he would be behaving hopelessly naively. Unless he gets a written contract from Cameron stating an absolute guarantee that there would not be another general election before electoral reform, referendum and implementation, he should not make any compromises at all. If he wants a further reminder, he should pick up the Observer today and see what William Hague has in line for foreign policy on Europe. It is an alien planet journey away from what the majority of Liberal Democrats and the hidden socialists believe is best for this country. If he still is unsure of whether he wants to get into bed with Cameron and crew, maybe he should really look at the mansion tax and why he wanted it there in the first place. The Tories will always want to protect the wealth of the few. That is a fact and it is a realm away from the type of democratic justice and equality that the Liberal Party has always stood for.
If he wants further support, he should look back in history to the Whigs and their commitment to the poor and impoverished of the land, and they were somewhat more purple than orange in those days. They were the elite with a conscience.
And if he is still undecided, he should just have a little chat with Michael Gove and George Osborne to see what he has in common with them other than a privileged and, in my opinion, deeply flawed education.
There are commentators throughout the land, professional and bloggers, who are making their comments. I profess to no great insight or thoughts. I may even be borrowing the thoughts of other unbeknown but I do feel that there is a real sense of hope. If Clegg is stupid enough to play along with the ambitions of NewCons, then I will be disappointed but will hold high hopes for an election in 2012 at the latest, when the Tory government has come forward in its true colours and pissed the nation off once more.
As for the Labour party – well, we shall see. Getting it back to the views of the mass of support within would be a good start. Maybe as disaffected followers, we should join the party to guide and direct the type of change that we want. But then again, maybe the time for party allegiance is over. Maybe, this is the time to consider themes and issues before towing a party line.
Gordon has to go. We do not want the Tories throwing the comment about an unelected Prime Minister once more, so this has got to be carefully managed.
If Clegg decides he cannot work with Cameron, then he should walk towards Millbank and have a chat with people there but one condition is going have to be the carefully placed comment from Clegg that he could not work with Gordon Brown. There has to be an immediate change or a promise of change from within Labour.
My suggestion has been echoed by many that Gordon should stay in charge for the next four to six months, remembering that much of this will be summer recess.
He should offer a summer referendum on PR with the view to their being a new election either in the autumn if that is feasible or early in 2011. In the meantime, he should remain where he is until a new leader of the party is elected democratically through conference. At that point, he should pack his bags and go, hopefully having done something successful and therefore prevented him from permanently carrying the label of the most useless Prime Minister ever, which is a little unfair when you consider all the Tory nightmares we have had over the years.
It makes you think also about fixed terms and the time between electing an American President and his (or her eventually) inauguration. Nobody questions the time between November and January as far as the markets are concerned. Perhaps we should be doing the same. We wouldn’t be in the position of trying to rush agreement through to satisfy the markets if there was a predetermined process whereby the departing PM remained in Downing Street for a month regardless of whether he lost the election or not. Perhaps this is not ideal but it is worth consideration.
So the foncused remains confused but probably not as much as she thought.
There’s still ideals, there’s still vision, there’s still values that hold as true today as they did last week. There is still a need for hope and a determination for change.
I, like others, sit and wait.
Saturday 1 May 2010
Animals and Emotions
Animals seem to be all over the news this week, and I am not talking the Chameleon and his two running mates. I wonder what animal you would put for each of the main leaders. Gordy the Gorilla? Rather unfair perhaps. Clegg is rather giraffe-like perhaps. I’ll have to think about that.
There was a strange but interesting article in the Guardian this week about whether our nearest relations in the animal kingdom were capable of having certain emotions. Of course, the article went on to mention three things, some of which were not emotions. They were probably feelings but that distinction is for another time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/29/grieving-chimps-need-more-research
Apparently these chimps have been all over the newspapers this week and the footage been one of the top hits on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL86Ap9zSmM
It showed a troop of chimpanzees looking over and caring for one of their own who was dying. The video provides images of two females sitting next to the dying chimp, stroking her and covering her with straw. Later a larger male comes into the enclosure and makes what scientists have interpreted as a crude attempt to resuscitate the dead female. According to the news clip, the animals who had watched this death were completely subdued and appeared to be grieving for weeks after. The entire troop seemed to be affected by the witnessing of this death.
The notion is that this proves that chimpanzees are far more like us than we imagined and that animals are capable of “human emotions”.
One scientist, Stuart Semple, suggested that this might be a classic case of anthropomorphism, whereby we place human actions, thoughts and emotions on animals that are possibly not capable of such things. We interpret their actions according to the way we would behave or feel. However, Semple went on to say that animals may very well be capable of emotions such as sadness and feelings of grief and it is not a question of whether this issue exists but how we establish precisely what this means; for the animals and indeed for humans and their actions.
Another scientist, Professor Marian Dawkins, suggested that in the absence of confirmed knowledge we should take the stance of assuming that animals do have emotions and treat them accordingly without going to the other extreme of treating them as humans and the high level expectation that goes with that.
Of course, animal rights activists would take this information to further their cause in protecting animals from the sort of abuse that scientific researchers place upon them, but that, once more, is a discussion for another time.
As for us humans treating animals as humans, well, anyone who has owned a dog has been guilty of that to some degree. “He’s a dog!” is a frequent cry that people in my family have when it is suggested that the poor little might should come and say “hello” to us (on the telephone!).
However, I am intrigued by emotions and whether we as humans have a monopoly on being the only species capable of such high level working.
As a teenager, our family had the most stupid, arrogant and stroppy dog that was ever placed on this earth. She adored each and every one of us but detested anyone else who came into the house. New friends had to go through her acceptance regime that usually took about twenty minutes on the first visit and then a further four or five visits before she finally accepted that this was a human being to be trusted.
I can distinctly remember one day when I was devastated about something, I returned home demonstrating a certain amount of anguish. Obviously it wasn’t a life-shattering issue because I cannot remember exactly what I was so upset about. On seeing me arrive and march upstairs, throwing myself into bed, the dear dog followed, clambered up into the bed and nestled her head up against mine. Normally, if invited onto the bed, she would selfishly burrow all the way down and place herself at your feet. Not this time. She knew I needed some contact and she lay with me, unobtrusively.
How did she know I needed that? How come she responded against her instinctual behaviour? I hadn’t been over demonstrative about my grief. At the point of being greeted by the dog, I was not crying but she knew there was something that was wrong, and she acted accordingly.
This week, I was talking to a friend who said that his dog was exactly the same. She responded to his anger by cowering, which is probably an instinctive thing to do as he hurtled things across the room but he also said that his dog seemed to know exactly what was needed when he was at his lowest. She knew not to bounce around in expectation of attention. Time and time again she demonstrates a sort of intuition, if that is not too strong an anthropomorphist statement.
Do dogs feel grief? Do they understand death?
It is said that a dog is eternally grateful to see their owner on their return because every time they are out of sight for a prolonged period they assume that the owner has died. Once more, this statement suggests that we are placing human thoughts on our animals but this shouldn’t be dismissed altogether.
Two instances spring to mind.
I was asked by my parents, in conjunction with my brother, to dog sit whilst they took their first transatlantic holiday. Easy, we thought. She may have been a stroppy so and so but she loved us as much as she loved her masters. Only that wasn’t the case. It is an apocryphal story that has been heard all too frequently but the dog stopped eating. This was unheard of. As well as been the stroppiest dog on earth, she was also the greediest. Her natural instinct to gobble finally returned three days later just when we were on the verge of taking her to the vet.
The same hound was incandescent with anguish when my grandfather died. For at least two weeks after his death, she hurried into his house and searched the entire place for him. Devastated that she could not find him, she curled herself up under the kitchen table and resolutely stayed there until we left. It was pitiful to watch and furthered our own grief.
I’m not suggesting that this is absolute evidence that animals have feelings but it certainly suggests that it is feasible. What it does not do, however, is suggest that animals have the core set of emotions that we have. They demonstrate a response to what we might seem to be an emotion but that is quite different to having the emotion itself. They demonstrate feelings and perhaps a certain level of empathy. Whether that empathy is an intuitive thing or something that is an instinctual response is something that probably needs some study.
The chimpanzees were in the news because of their response to death.
The day after I had read this article, I listened to the radio and on “The Reunion” there was a group of people who had been part of the Dunblane massacre in 1996.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007x9vc
I listened to a short amount of this programme on my way to work and finished listening to it this morning.
As I arrived at work yesterday, I listened to the teacher who was the first person to be shot by Thomas Hamilton, the former scout leader who carried out this atrocity.
It was a normal spring day. Excited five and six year olds were gathered in the school hall waiting for their lesson. Anyone who has worked in a school will know this scene all too well. Getting young children ready for PE is not something that they put on the teacher training course. It can be a source of great antagonism and frustration as well as source of merriment and hysteria.
The wonderful thing about children that is often fatally lost in adults is the joy of the simplest of things. They get changed for PE on a weekly basis yet still get excited about this very simple and straight forward act.
I could envisage these children jumping around and collecting together to protect themselves from the cold as they awaited instruction from their teacher to find a space to do their warm up activities.
Only they never got the chance. This man charged through the glass doors and opened fire; first on the teachers and then one by one he shot the children, killing sixteen of them, physically injuring many more, emotionally injuring an entire community, murdering hope.
I switched off the car engine and started to get out of the car, only I couldn’t. The macabre in me wanted to listen to this poor woman explaining what happened. The thought of those children falling down one by one was horrifying enough but the statement that really wrenched at my heart was when she said, “At first, the children just thought it was some sort of game”.
The fun and enjoyment of their weekly PE lesson always excited them, even if it was the same mundane lesson. Just doing something different, away from the classroom was enough to set them into excited anticipation. When Hamilton came in, they thought that he had been invited in to get them moving around, and they responded. On his first shot, they ran giggling. On the second and third, they continued to dash around until finally a collective horror enveloped them. Huddling together, they watched as first their teachers and then their friends were massacred.
It defies comprehension. Maybe it exacerbates comprehension for those who have been in charge of such lessons in such places. I know that yesterday whilst I was listening, I had a freshness of grief, remembering that day fourteen years ago.
Sophie Jane Lockwood North was one of the young victims. Her father was on the radio yesterday. On hearing what had happened, he came to the school and waited for an eternity to see whether his child was one of the victims. Two hours passed before he was told the devastating news. Two hours.
How did he survive those two hours? How has he survived the ensuing years?
His wife had died from cancer two years before Sophie. How much can one person cope with grief?
We all have to confront death eventually. It’s not a pleasant thought. It is an integral fear for many. Faiths across the world prepare human beings for this without ever getting to the crux of the issue that life ceases to exist. Hope in afterlife is there as an appeasement, a placation of the instinctive fear of dying.
My own baptism of death occurred when I was seven. The telephone went and I answered it. My cousin always joked and asked how I was but she just asked for my mum immediately. My mother took the cradle and listened and then, unusually, she cried.
My dear uncle had died and I can remember crying and asking that one word, “why?”
Like others, since then I have lost grandparents, friends, relatives, my father, and it never really gets any easier though bizarrely, I fear death less as I get older, which always seems rather odd to me considering the proximity to the inevitable is greater. It ought to be the other way around.
I also fear death less because I have actually witnessed two people leaving life. That, in a very odd way, actually helps.
My grandmother was ready to die. She lay in the hospital bed and gradually stopped breathing. It was simple, calm, undemonstrative and peaceful. We all sat there together looking at this woman who had given us life and watched her go.
By the time my Dad drew his final breath, it was almost a relief. The weeks before had been the most difficult of our lives. Once more, we collected around his bed. We said nothing; just waited until he was ready. The silence was just there. It doesn’t and didn’t need description. He breathed and we waited for an extraordinary amount of time, thinking it was his last only to hear another one after that, waiting once more for minutes for another quiet breath to pass. And so on and so on until there was the collective understanding that he had gone.
As humans, and according to the research by scientists as animals, we all deal with death in different ways. We all grieve in different ways despite their being a progressional diktat of how we are expected to behave.
We all have to experience death and in many ways we hope to. If you don’t have to deal with bereavement, it probably means that you die young, and despite Daltry’s and Townshend’s protestations to the contrary most people don’t really want to die before they get old.
But my incidents of death are fairly commonplace. The deaths are part of life. Although I have had instances of some horrific deaths, including a murder, which I never thought I would experience, the deaths I have had to deal with have been the sort of deaths that most of us will have to experience.
Death is life changing. My 34 year old friend who died had a significant impact on the friends who were with him and near him as he prematurely left us. The murder of my 22 year old child who I had nurtured and loved as a boy when I was a young teacher left me emotionally scarred. It was as near a trauma as I had experienced at that time, and I still feel that grief whenever I contemplate what happened to him.
The death of my father changed my life. Completely.
But however dreadful that loss was and continues to be, it wasn’t accompanied by the trauma of something like Dunblane or Columbine, Hillsborough or Hungerford. How do people cope with that? How do people live day in day out with the loss of a child? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. The fear of that sort of death is a constant.
With death having a certain prominence in life, therefore, why do we hide away from it? Why do we shield our children when we know that at some point they are going to have to confront this? Why, when we can see and experience evidence of animals feeling some sort of grief do we not accept that this is something that we can possibly learn from? Why do we shy away from the acceptance of the vital and significant emotions that we all have to contend with and embrace?
When I read the article about the chimpanzees, I was interested because I am intrigued as to how our emotions work. I am intrigued as to whether we are the only species capable of expressing ourselves emotionally, which we are apparently not. Knowing that animals have the capacity to feel is significant but in some ways it is more interesting that we are prepared to study animal behaviour without fully realising the potential of our own emotional being. Furthermore, we are prepared to ignore the information and understanding that we already have about emotions and feelings, and brush it aside as either insignificant or something that we cannot deal with.
Certainly with children, our ability to research, discuss, think about emotions is not quantifiable and is therefore deemed to be less significant than other aspects of learning. And yet, as is the case with death and bereavement, we are all going to have to cope with this at some point in our lives.
If teaching is about preparing our young people for the future, then surely we should have emotional learning at the forefront of their learning? However difficult it may be, we have to talk to children about the feelings associated with grief and loss and bereavement and separation. These are feelings that our children experience without any hope of being able to express their concerns. These are feelings that our children may not have experienced but are frightened to ask about because they have intuited that it is a taboo subject.
It isn’t that they can’t deal with the issue of death; it is that we as adults cannot cope with it. Is that really fair on our children?
If anything should be learned from the chimpanzees this week, it is that there is a possibility that their reaction to the impending death was an instinctual behaviour and that this in turn resorts to a natural grieving process. We look on in some sort of admiration at this behaviour and then do not enable or assimilate to a similar instinctual and emotive response in humans.
Death and grief is difficult but it will never get any easier if we ignore this essential part of our life and think carefully about how we deal with a range of emotions and how this is merely one aspect of our all round intelligent approach to life.
There was a strange but interesting article in the Guardian this week about whether our nearest relations in the animal kingdom were capable of having certain emotions. Of course, the article went on to mention three things, some of which were not emotions. They were probably feelings but that distinction is for another time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/29/grieving-chimps-need-more-research
Apparently these chimps have been all over the newspapers this week and the footage been one of the top hits on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL86Ap9zSmM
It showed a troop of chimpanzees looking over and caring for one of their own who was dying. The video provides images of two females sitting next to the dying chimp, stroking her and covering her with straw. Later a larger male comes into the enclosure and makes what scientists have interpreted as a crude attempt to resuscitate the dead female. According to the news clip, the animals who had watched this death were completely subdued and appeared to be grieving for weeks after. The entire troop seemed to be affected by the witnessing of this death.
The notion is that this proves that chimpanzees are far more like us than we imagined and that animals are capable of “human emotions”.
One scientist, Stuart Semple, suggested that this might be a classic case of anthropomorphism, whereby we place human actions, thoughts and emotions on animals that are possibly not capable of such things. We interpret their actions according to the way we would behave or feel. However, Semple went on to say that animals may very well be capable of emotions such as sadness and feelings of grief and it is not a question of whether this issue exists but how we establish precisely what this means; for the animals and indeed for humans and their actions.
Another scientist, Professor Marian Dawkins, suggested that in the absence of confirmed knowledge we should take the stance of assuming that animals do have emotions and treat them accordingly without going to the other extreme of treating them as humans and the high level expectation that goes with that.
Of course, animal rights activists would take this information to further their cause in protecting animals from the sort of abuse that scientific researchers place upon them, but that, once more, is a discussion for another time.
As for us humans treating animals as humans, well, anyone who has owned a dog has been guilty of that to some degree. “He’s a dog!” is a frequent cry that people in my family have when it is suggested that the poor little might should come and say “hello” to us (on the telephone!).
However, I am intrigued by emotions and whether we as humans have a monopoly on being the only species capable of such high level working.
As a teenager, our family had the most stupid, arrogant and stroppy dog that was ever placed on this earth. She adored each and every one of us but detested anyone else who came into the house. New friends had to go through her acceptance regime that usually took about twenty minutes on the first visit and then a further four or five visits before she finally accepted that this was a human being to be trusted.
I can distinctly remember one day when I was devastated about something, I returned home demonstrating a certain amount of anguish. Obviously it wasn’t a life-shattering issue because I cannot remember exactly what I was so upset about. On seeing me arrive and march upstairs, throwing myself into bed, the dear dog followed, clambered up into the bed and nestled her head up against mine. Normally, if invited onto the bed, she would selfishly burrow all the way down and place herself at your feet. Not this time. She knew I needed some contact and she lay with me, unobtrusively.
How did she know I needed that? How come she responded against her instinctual behaviour? I hadn’t been over demonstrative about my grief. At the point of being greeted by the dog, I was not crying but she knew there was something that was wrong, and she acted accordingly.
This week, I was talking to a friend who said that his dog was exactly the same. She responded to his anger by cowering, which is probably an instinctive thing to do as he hurtled things across the room but he also said that his dog seemed to know exactly what was needed when he was at his lowest. She knew not to bounce around in expectation of attention. Time and time again she demonstrates a sort of intuition, if that is not too strong an anthropomorphist statement.
Do dogs feel grief? Do they understand death?
It is said that a dog is eternally grateful to see their owner on their return because every time they are out of sight for a prolonged period they assume that the owner has died. Once more, this statement suggests that we are placing human thoughts on our animals but this shouldn’t be dismissed altogether.
Two instances spring to mind.
I was asked by my parents, in conjunction with my brother, to dog sit whilst they took their first transatlantic holiday. Easy, we thought. She may have been a stroppy so and so but she loved us as much as she loved her masters. Only that wasn’t the case. It is an apocryphal story that has been heard all too frequently but the dog stopped eating. This was unheard of. As well as been the stroppiest dog on earth, she was also the greediest. Her natural instinct to gobble finally returned three days later just when we were on the verge of taking her to the vet.
The same hound was incandescent with anguish when my grandfather died. For at least two weeks after his death, she hurried into his house and searched the entire place for him. Devastated that she could not find him, she curled herself up under the kitchen table and resolutely stayed there until we left. It was pitiful to watch and furthered our own grief.
I’m not suggesting that this is absolute evidence that animals have feelings but it certainly suggests that it is feasible. What it does not do, however, is suggest that animals have the core set of emotions that we have. They demonstrate a response to what we might seem to be an emotion but that is quite different to having the emotion itself. They demonstrate feelings and perhaps a certain level of empathy. Whether that empathy is an intuitive thing or something that is an instinctual response is something that probably needs some study.
The chimpanzees were in the news because of their response to death.
The day after I had read this article, I listened to the radio and on “The Reunion” there was a group of people who had been part of the Dunblane massacre in 1996.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007x9vc
I listened to a short amount of this programme on my way to work and finished listening to it this morning.
As I arrived at work yesterday, I listened to the teacher who was the first person to be shot by Thomas Hamilton, the former scout leader who carried out this atrocity.
It was a normal spring day. Excited five and six year olds were gathered in the school hall waiting for their lesson. Anyone who has worked in a school will know this scene all too well. Getting young children ready for PE is not something that they put on the teacher training course. It can be a source of great antagonism and frustration as well as source of merriment and hysteria.
The wonderful thing about children that is often fatally lost in adults is the joy of the simplest of things. They get changed for PE on a weekly basis yet still get excited about this very simple and straight forward act.
I could envisage these children jumping around and collecting together to protect themselves from the cold as they awaited instruction from their teacher to find a space to do their warm up activities.
Only they never got the chance. This man charged through the glass doors and opened fire; first on the teachers and then one by one he shot the children, killing sixteen of them, physically injuring many more, emotionally injuring an entire community, murdering hope.
I switched off the car engine and started to get out of the car, only I couldn’t. The macabre in me wanted to listen to this poor woman explaining what happened. The thought of those children falling down one by one was horrifying enough but the statement that really wrenched at my heart was when she said, “At first, the children just thought it was some sort of game”.
The fun and enjoyment of their weekly PE lesson always excited them, even if it was the same mundane lesson. Just doing something different, away from the classroom was enough to set them into excited anticipation. When Hamilton came in, they thought that he had been invited in to get them moving around, and they responded. On his first shot, they ran giggling. On the second and third, they continued to dash around until finally a collective horror enveloped them. Huddling together, they watched as first their teachers and then their friends were massacred.
It defies comprehension. Maybe it exacerbates comprehension for those who have been in charge of such lessons in such places. I know that yesterday whilst I was listening, I had a freshness of grief, remembering that day fourteen years ago.
Sophie Jane Lockwood North was one of the young victims. Her father was on the radio yesterday. On hearing what had happened, he came to the school and waited for an eternity to see whether his child was one of the victims. Two hours passed before he was told the devastating news. Two hours.
How did he survive those two hours? How has he survived the ensuing years?
His wife had died from cancer two years before Sophie. How much can one person cope with grief?
We all have to confront death eventually. It’s not a pleasant thought. It is an integral fear for many. Faiths across the world prepare human beings for this without ever getting to the crux of the issue that life ceases to exist. Hope in afterlife is there as an appeasement, a placation of the instinctive fear of dying.
My own baptism of death occurred when I was seven. The telephone went and I answered it. My cousin always joked and asked how I was but she just asked for my mum immediately. My mother took the cradle and listened and then, unusually, she cried.
My dear uncle had died and I can remember crying and asking that one word, “why?”
Like others, since then I have lost grandparents, friends, relatives, my father, and it never really gets any easier though bizarrely, I fear death less as I get older, which always seems rather odd to me considering the proximity to the inevitable is greater. It ought to be the other way around.
I also fear death less because I have actually witnessed two people leaving life. That, in a very odd way, actually helps.
My grandmother was ready to die. She lay in the hospital bed and gradually stopped breathing. It was simple, calm, undemonstrative and peaceful. We all sat there together looking at this woman who had given us life and watched her go.
By the time my Dad drew his final breath, it was almost a relief. The weeks before had been the most difficult of our lives. Once more, we collected around his bed. We said nothing; just waited until he was ready. The silence was just there. It doesn’t and didn’t need description. He breathed and we waited for an extraordinary amount of time, thinking it was his last only to hear another one after that, waiting once more for minutes for another quiet breath to pass. And so on and so on until there was the collective understanding that he had gone.
As humans, and according to the research by scientists as animals, we all deal with death in different ways. We all grieve in different ways despite their being a progressional diktat of how we are expected to behave.
We all have to experience death and in many ways we hope to. If you don’t have to deal with bereavement, it probably means that you die young, and despite Daltry’s and Townshend’s protestations to the contrary most people don’t really want to die before they get old.
But my incidents of death are fairly commonplace. The deaths are part of life. Although I have had instances of some horrific deaths, including a murder, which I never thought I would experience, the deaths I have had to deal with have been the sort of deaths that most of us will have to experience.
Death is life changing. My 34 year old friend who died had a significant impact on the friends who were with him and near him as he prematurely left us. The murder of my 22 year old child who I had nurtured and loved as a boy when I was a young teacher left me emotionally scarred. It was as near a trauma as I had experienced at that time, and I still feel that grief whenever I contemplate what happened to him.
The death of my father changed my life. Completely.
But however dreadful that loss was and continues to be, it wasn’t accompanied by the trauma of something like Dunblane or Columbine, Hillsborough or Hungerford. How do people cope with that? How do people live day in day out with the loss of a child? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. The fear of that sort of death is a constant.
With death having a certain prominence in life, therefore, why do we hide away from it? Why do we shield our children when we know that at some point they are going to have to confront this? Why, when we can see and experience evidence of animals feeling some sort of grief do we not accept that this is something that we can possibly learn from? Why do we shy away from the acceptance of the vital and significant emotions that we all have to contend with and embrace?
When I read the article about the chimpanzees, I was interested because I am intrigued as to how our emotions work. I am intrigued as to whether we are the only species capable of expressing ourselves emotionally, which we are apparently not. Knowing that animals have the capacity to feel is significant but in some ways it is more interesting that we are prepared to study animal behaviour without fully realising the potential of our own emotional being. Furthermore, we are prepared to ignore the information and understanding that we already have about emotions and feelings, and brush it aside as either insignificant or something that we cannot deal with.
Certainly with children, our ability to research, discuss, think about emotions is not quantifiable and is therefore deemed to be less significant than other aspects of learning. And yet, as is the case with death and bereavement, we are all going to have to cope with this at some point in our lives.
If teaching is about preparing our young people for the future, then surely we should have emotional learning at the forefront of their learning? However difficult it may be, we have to talk to children about the feelings associated with grief and loss and bereavement and separation. These are feelings that our children experience without any hope of being able to express their concerns. These are feelings that our children may not have experienced but are frightened to ask about because they have intuited that it is a taboo subject.
It isn’t that they can’t deal with the issue of death; it is that we as adults cannot cope with it. Is that really fair on our children?
If anything should be learned from the chimpanzees this week, it is that there is a possibility that their reaction to the impending death was an instinctual behaviour and that this in turn resorts to a natural grieving process. We look on in some sort of admiration at this behaviour and then do not enable or assimilate to a similar instinctual and emotive response in humans.
Death and grief is difficult but it will never get any easier if we ignore this essential part of our life and think carefully about how we deal with a range of emotions and how this is merely one aspect of our all round intelligent approach to life.
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