What is Enlightenment?

What is enlightenment?

Without looking it up on the internet, what does it really mean to you? What do you conjure up in your mind when you see or hear the word “enlightenment”?

It is a strange word and is clearly open to interpretation. Enlightenment – seeing the light? Having total understanding? Finally realising a true way for yourself? Knowing that there is a true way for others that may or may not relate at some point to your own? Being me? Being completely intelligent? Using all your compassion and capabilities to do good for others? Be empathetic, emotionally intelligent? To embrace emptiness? To understand one’s true self?

What is it all about?

“Chop that wood
Carry water
What’s the sound of one hand clapping.
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is.”

What is all this talk of chopping wood and carrying water? What has that got to do with being true to oneself or having a complete understanding of life? What is there to understand about collecting water in a bucket?

And how can you possibly hear clapping when there is only one hand? Isn’t it just a riddle to which there is no solution?

In the West, we had a period of time known as the Age of Enlightenment – or the Age of Reason.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html

Michel de Montaigne asked the question, “what do I know?” and was sensible enough to realise that he could not possibly know anywhere near as much as some academics would think they knew because he did not have the experiences of life in other parts of the world, where there might even be a different type of knowledge.

We often hear the phrase “intelligent life” and ask ourselves if there is another planet that could, in time, communicate with us intelligently as capable life forms. Montaigne probably felt the same way about the people of distant continents. At the time, they may as well have been aliens or Martians from the big, red planet. In realising this, he realised his knowledge was limited and conformist, to an extent, through circumstance.

In the 18^th century, people believed that reason would bring about the type of changes to society that they thought were needed; i.e. the advancement of knowledge for societal reformation. Huge developments in technology, thinking, rejuvenation of the arts; all of this took place. The world was not standing still. It was evolving into a different form but at the heart of it was the development of knowledge and reason to try and make the world a better place.

 “Every second, every minute
It keeps changing to something different
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It says it’s non attachment
Non attachment. Non attachment."

Let’s not confuse the discussion by bringing non-attachment in at this point. It is hard enough to decipher the meaning of enlightenment, and yet, non-attachment is core to that.

So, what is this about enlightenment and reason? According to the development of the Enlightenment period, it was all about reason. We can reason, therefore we become aware, therefore we can develop new things and see the light – ergo we have achieved enlightenment.

But in many ways, this is similar to the inaccurate thinking about the word ‘intelligence’.

People have, for many years, equated intelligence to thinking, to reason, to understanding and have not begun to grapple with the complexities of this phenomenon.

Is the baby not intelligent to cry for food? Am I not intelligent if I want to help the suffering for no ‘reason’ other than a sympathetic feeling towards them? Is it stupid of me to sit on a hill, looking out to an open sea and feel more at one with myself and my ‘learning’ than any amount of time spent head-first in a book on quantum physics?

Am I really going to discover myself and the wider world through reason alone?

“I’m in the here and now, and I’m meditating
And still I’m suffering but that’s my problem
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
 Wake up”

Some may indeed be beginning to wake up, and we should be thankful for that.

It comes as no surprise to find Matthew Taylor from the RSA talking about a need for a new stage of Enlightenment, for he was one of those who ‘reasoned’ with the former Prime Minister Blair. He supported the New Labour mantra of “Education, education, education” with a very clear purpose to develop further reason, raising standards and enabling our young people to be knowledgeable and full of facts. He supported the idea that learning to read and write would come about most effectively by programming children to learn phonemes rather than use their imagination to create a story from their own mind. He believed, like Blair, that this reasoning, this knowledge would somehow magically lift the impoverished out of intellectual decline and therefore reduce all social inequalities at the drop of a CVC word or an intelligent use of the sort of vocabulary that Will Self

often plops into articles just to remind us he is more intellectual than the rest of the country.

However, according to this clip, I think he is beginning to see a glimmer of light, though seems a world away from what I would deem to be real enlightenment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=related

Taylor explains that the age of Enlightenment helped to shape the “collective consciousness of modern people” with shared values, norms and lifestyles. His question now is that is this same consciousness and collective values correct for the 21^st century?

He states that the there have powerful insights into human nature over the last thirty years that should make us rethink. He uses words and phrases such as “moral critique of individualism” where we should all consider the distinction between need and appetite as the drivers for our behaviour.

He suggests that we need wider levels of empathy to the point that he declares that the education mantra is important but that “fostering empathic capacity” is equally integral to a change in society and by default, a greater enlightenment.

He says that we should seriously consider substantive and ethical questions and that there should be a reassertion of ethical humanism. He concludes with the notion that we cannot advance without ethical reasoning, explaining that we need to know who are we, who we need to be, who we aspire to be.

This is the ethics of the 21^st century and this is what we can collectively achieve, according to Taylor, who captures this all as the new Enlightenment.

And of course to some extent he is right.

If we are ever to become fully enlightened, we really do need to have a collective and individual ethical basis. We need to be empathetic and to act with that empathy for the good of ourselves and others. When we see or feel injustice, we have to reason against it.

But enlightenment has to be more than mere reason.

We have to feel, think, imagine, act and also chop wood and carry water when the time is right to do so. We need to embrace everything in order to be. We need to learn well beyond our age of schooling. We need to intuit and be allowed to do so. We need to understand the strength of our body, mind and soul. We need to appreciate and use our passions. We need to have time to stop and feel rather than constantly bombarding our spirit with thought, all because we have been led to believe that we can only get to the ‘right’ answer through reason.

And as important as need, we must have the desire to do these things.

 “Enlightenment says the world is nothing
Nothing but a dream, everything’s an illusion
And nothing is real”

So what is real?

Who knows?

My first introduction to philosophy was from a teacher, spouting off about George Berkeley and his notion that material substances only existed because we thought they did. Without the thought, without the idea that a chair was a chair – it wasn’t. It didn’t exist without our thought.

Who knows what is real? Who needs to know what is real unless you are completely dedicated to reason but the world cannot possibly be compartmentalised in this way, and perhaps that is one element of enlightenment that many in the West have yet to see.

There are so many vitals in our lives that are unquantifiable and un-reasonable.

Who can truly measure contentment yet we need and want it in our lives?

How is compassion valued?

What of patience as a virtue? We’ve all heard the phrase but how many of us actually understand it and its place in our world.

Isn’t honesty and truthfulness as or more important than reason?

Isn’t there something about what Montaigne said in that we cannot possibly be enlightened until we realise that there are essential parts of our lives that we cannot possibly rationalise, and possibly never know.

“Good or bad baby
You can change it anyway you want
You can rearrange it
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
Chop that wood
And carry water
What’s the sound of one hand clapping
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is.”

Good or bad? Black or white? Hot or cold? Yin or Yang.

Where there’s a will, there’s a Way.

The enlightened don’t see black and white. They may see black, they may see white. They may see various shades of grey in between. What they do not do is insist that black is always black or that what they saw as black in one moment of their lives will always be black.

With every certainty in life there is uncertainty.

The enlightened do not dismiss reason but they appreciate that there is possibly more than this that should influence, shape and change us.

Change does not have to be huge but it does have to be.

The enlightened know that we cannot stagnate in an ever evolving world.

“All around baby, you can see
You’re making your own reality. Every day because
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”

Enlightenment is the ultimate reality but the ultimate reality for me may be very different from your own ultimate reality. There is uniqueness in life and there is collectiveness.

We need both, and the serenity and beauty of life can certainly be enhanced by the understanding, acceptance and reasoning of shared values.

But ultimately, enlightenment is your own, and is all embracing.

I wish that they wouldn’t call it the Age of Enlightenment because for me, it is only a fraction of what enlightenment actually is. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the thoughtfulness of enlightenment from the other side of the world. It is a mere parody by comparison.

 “One more time
 Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s up to you
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s up to you everyday
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is
It’s always up to you
Enlightenment, don’t know what it is”

I don’t know what it is either. But at least I have my eyes, ears, heart, mind and soul open ready to learn, ready to reason and not to reason.

My enlightenment is somewhere out there as long as I travel the pathway.

But at the heart of it is living as well as I can for myself and others as I can, with clear pitfalls along the way and no excuses for my insufferable hopelessness, only a willingness to keep going, to keep looking and to keep trying to go beyond the rational and the reasoned.

The mind is greater than the cerebral, the soul more constant than the ephemeral, the body more able than the mere physical.

It's up to you, it's up to me but it is certainly something that everyone should be considering - beyond reason.

....................................................................................................

 Further thoughts on enlightenment..........

"Late one night a female Zen adept was carrying water in an old wooden bucket when she happened to glance across the surface of the water and saw the reflection of the moon. As she walked the bucket began to come apart and the bottom of the pail broke through, with the water suddenly disappearing into the soil beneath her feet and the moon's reflection disappearing along with it. In that instant the young woman realized that the moon she had been looking at was just a reflection of the real thing...just as her whole life had been. She turned to look at the moon in all it's silent glory, her mind was ripe, and that was it...Enlightenment."

CHIYONO-- NO MOON, NO WATER

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."

W. Somerset Maugham

And special thanks to Van Morrison for making me think.

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Enlightenment-lyrics-Van-Morrison/FFA2D8D1A2BC211D48256A34000DC302

....................................................................

And finally,

'We’re enlightened in our delusion. We’re deluded in our enlightenment. And then there’s delusion beyond delusion'. 

Dogen Zenji:

Justice in Death

I’m not very good with death. Who is? It is a tricky subject for anyone to contend with, and it is something that we are all going to have to face in life be it our own demise or the passing of a loved one.

Death hurts, or rather the feelings associated with death. Grief is epic. It is all-consuming. It lingers for years, rearing its ugly head in the most unforeseen of moments. The finality of life is alarming, which is why we should all try and live with compassion and consideration for all.

Life indeed is too short.

Can you remember your first encounter with death? Perhaps it was the death of a grandparent or a favourite pet? Some people argue that it is a good idea for children to have pets because it prepares them for death. It helps them to nurture their ability to care as well, but it is also an allegedly decent way of getting children used to the fact that every living thing will eventually die.

My first encounter with death was not that of a pet, though I do remember our third hamster dying on 4^th May 1979. My father said that the little mite had the right idea to pop his clogs on the day that Thatcher came to power.

My first encounter with death was earlier than that though.

It was a Saturday afternoon in January. We were having a big family do, possibly for my father’s birthday. All the men and some of the boys had gone to a football match and the women, girls and younger children were watching a film of sorts.

The telephone rang and my stoical mother answered the phone. It was my cousin, and she was explaining that my uncle had died, having had a massive heart attack in the post office that morning.

I was about seven years old and my four year old cousin, who really did not understand what was happening, marched into the lounge having overheard my mother recounting the news to her sister, and declared without an ounce of emotion that Alfred was dead.

My sister and I shot out into the kitchen in floods of tears to be greeted by my mother who was carefully trying to suppress her anger that we had found out so abruptly.

Uncle Alfred; a strange man who was so strict and harsh with his own children, yet was the most gentle of characters when it came to myself and my siblings.

It was Alfred who we always stayed with when we came to London, and because I associated him with London and London sites and sights, I was bizarrely perturbed that he died in the post office. I had assumed that he was at the Post Office Tower, and had visions of him falling to the ground on the top of this building rather than the reality of him dying at his local post office branch.

I still look up at it nowadays and think of him and my warped mind when confronted with death.

Death happens to us throughout our lives, even if we do not have immediate family that lose their lives. Death is ever-present in the news. Barely does a day pass when there is not some mention of death in the news. We have almost become oblivious to those initial feelings because of its omnipresent status. We watch fallen victims on dusty roads with a disconnection – almost forgetting that these are human beings with families and a life now exhausted.

Another childhood memory I have is of going downstairs early one morning. Everyone else was asleep but the newspaper boy had already done his rounds and the Guardian was sitting on the floor.

I picked it up and read the front page.

A man had been killed, murdered in Texas, USA. He had been sitting in a chair, and some anonymous person had switched a button that sent an electric shock right through this man as he was strapped and bound, unable to escape his state-planned fate.

I read the entire article with horror. How could anyone kill another person, knowingly? How could you live with yourself knowing that there was a possibility that the button that you pressed, in conjunction with others, could have been the fatal one; that you were responsible for the death of another human being?

I just didn’t get it, and it frightened me.

Nobody told me to detest capital punishment. Nobody had even discussed it with me. It was that article, read by the innocent child that formulated my view about state-managed death and I have never veered away from the abhorrence throughout my life.

There are some vile people in this world, and there are times when I have felt extremely passionate about particular people who have monstrously dismissed their basic humanity to murder one, two, thousands or millions of people.

There are other people who may not have physically pressed a button or fired a shot who have plenty of blood on their hands for the hopelessness that they instilled in others to the point that these human beings took their own lives out of despair.

Anybody who has watched films or read books such as “Schindler’s List” or “The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas” can hardly feel anything other than utter disgust at the waste of life and the appalling, almost inconceivable horror of what happened in those gas chambers established by the Nazis.

Surely the perpetrators of such policies deserved to die in the most horrible of circumstances considering what they had done to so many?

And yet, I still find it difficult to contemplate the thought of anyone’s death, or another person being responsible for the death of another.

Perhaps I might feel differently if someone murdered somebody close to me. I don’t know but I am still not convinced that I could cope with the responsibility of another person’s death, and I am not sure I would want “an eye for an eye”. What would be the point? It wouldn’t bring back the loved one.

There are some brutal people in the world both living and dead.

This year, we have seen the murder of Osama bin Laden – yes, an evil man who was responsible for the death of thousands. And today, we have seen Muammar Gaddafi murdered in his home town as troops loyal to the new regime in Libya finally found the dictator and dragged him out of his hideaway. They shot him in the leg so that he could not get away and then, on the way to hospital, the blurred picture seems to be suggesting that there was open fire and he was killed.

Was it an execution? Was it planned this way? Who knows?

The fact was the man died, and there are an abundance of questions that will never be asked and responses never given because with his demise went a whole lot of knowledge about what this bastard did to fellow countrymen and attacks on foreigners too.

Now, there is the possibility that we will never know.

What sort of justice is that to the people of Lockerbie, to the families of all those thousands found in unmarked graves in the middle of Tripoli, to the people who have fought against this dictator and lost their lives? Who is going to tell them what happened?

Are they really going to feel better knowing that this man has died? If they really wanted justice, then surely this man should have been locked up for the rest of his days, suffering the indignity of a fallen leader, having no books to read, no comforts of his Bedouin tents, no people to talk to.

There are other means of getting revenge that some may argue are less humane than a bullet in the head, but at least there would not be another human being with blood on their hands, responsible for the death of another.

I know that there are many who would disagree. I had this argument years ago with friends at college. On a trip down to London in a rackety old mini-bus we talked about this very subject.

I was shocked that friends who were either socialist or communist did not agree with my stance on capital punishment, when it came to the truly evil of the world. I couldn’t understand how they could see justice in another killing, especially when the brutal one had not been given an opportunity to explain themselves in front of a court of law, to the family of their victims for their atrocities.

I have no love for these people, obviously. It is evident that Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Ladan were all absolutely responsible for the deaths of many, many people but there is still a niggle within me that squirms slightly at the thought of their execution. Saddam had a trial and he did not reveal anything significant about his state-run murders, so one could argue that there is no point in having his day in court. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been killed in the course of his capture but do the Iraqis now feel so much better because of his death? Perhaps they do, I don’t know.

And will the Libyans in two years time, potentially still in a state of political fluctuation, remain happy that Gaddafi was killed when they have no concrete understanding of what the dictator did and who he did it to?

There are other evil people still alive who I would like to see brought to justice. Robert Mugabe is often quoted as the man that most people would like to see dead, and yes, I would concur. He has brought about violence and suffering to millions but I would like to see him die in another way, not through the intervention of international forces that seek him out like a fox. I want to see him suffering for what his has done, and maybe that is more vindictive.

Anyway, there is no chance of international intervention – there’s no oil in his country.

There are plenty of evil people around who could do with a long stretch of silence to contemplate what they have done to society, be it through the murder of innocents or the greediness of their grubby little lives. As Gaddafi died there were people throughout the world fighting their own peaceful fight against the tyranny of capitalism that is also responsible for death and misery.

Nobody outside St. Paul’s cathedral is brandishing a gun. Nobody in Wall Street, who has been camping out night after night in the fight for democratic economics, is out to kill a human being, just a warped philosophy.

There are peaceful means and there is justice that can occur without any more bloodshed.

The young girl who sat on the hall mat, reading the newspaper all those years ago, is still within me.

I am not convinced that murder and death of any sort provides meaningful justice or revenge.

There are plenty of people that I would like to slap or spit at but I could not be responsible for the death of another and I am not sure how any intelligent, thoughtful person could.

I know that many could not possibly agree with me, and I accept that my opinions might be somewhat bizarre considering the extent of evil from these dictators.

All I know is that yesterday, once more, I didn’t feel a sense of victory. I just felt a little uncomfortable – as I suspect most do with death, if they stopped and considered it in detail.

One in Ten

“I am a one in ten

Even though I don’t exist

Nobody knows me

But I’m always there

A statistical reminder

Of a world that doesn’t care”

So went the song of the 80s to remind anyone who needed reminding that Thatcher didn’t have a soul, couldn’t care less how many people were unemployed and was resolutely committed to destroying the manufacturing industry of a nation that had very little in natural resources to fall back on.

Oh, and what natural resources we did have, she sold off, shut down and buggered up.

It was a very unpleasant time. It destroyed families, society and individuals as they fell into the hopelessness of redundancy, with an unhealthy dose of self-doubt and unworthiness.

Multiply that by three million and one can barely cope with imagining or indeed knowing just how many people were affected by this heartless policy of inconsideration.

Enter Mr. Cameron, always ready to make excuses and apportion blame to his immediate predecessors, glibly dismissing the matriarchal figure of his party and her role in the demise of all that was once valued and respected in life.

Who are these people who have such lack of concern for their fellow human being? How do they really sleep at night knowing how much suffering they are causing to other people with their ill-conceived and thoughtless policies? There’s a simple answer to that. They don’t consider the proletariat as their fellow human beings. The workers are a different species.

So our leader stood there in parliament today and happily dismissed Mr Miliband’s grave concerns about the growing unemployment figures. Cameron called them “disappointing”.

Disappointing? 80,000 more people out of work in the last financial quarter, and that does not count the people like my good self who are an unrecorded part of the statistics having lost their job but not signed up to any package of financial pittance that the government can offer.

Disappointing – that there are now more women looking for work, partly through redundancy and partly because their partners have lost their jobs thus forcing them to reconsider any care responsibilities for children or aging parents in the need for an input of money into the family coffers.

Disappointing Mr. Cameron.

Yes, it is disappointing. And a lot more besides.

But there is more.

There are now one million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are without a job; a statistic that was last at this horrific peak in 1992.

Now this is interesting.

The students who have recently left university were the first children who took the compulsory SATs in Key Stage One. At the age of seven, these children were tested in English, Maths, Science, Design and Technology, Geography and History. They were all graded as to whether they are working towards a level or whether they were accomplished enough to be given the label of being a “Level Two”.

Yes, I remember it well; how they had to study two dimensional black and white photos of irons through the ages instead of looking at the history of their own lives or being encouraged to talk to older family members about their experiences of childhood. I remember how they had to create an imaginary island rather than getting out to the local park to design a redevelopment of the play area that they could submit as a suggestion to the local authority. I remember how they had to make cards with flappy bits that fulfilled the marking criteria rather than being able to design something that reflected their interest and demonstrated their own sense of creativity and personality.

These children were given criteria, assessments, labels and targets, and swallowed them whole.

These children were told that if they worked hard and achieved Level 2, they could continue to progress to Level 4 or even Level 5 by the time that they left primary school.

These children were convinced that they should continue in their quest for attainment and collect a ludicrous amount of GCSEs.

These children were then indoctrinated into thinking that the only thing to do with these mass of qualifications was to study for A-Levels and then get themselves off to University.

These children were told that there really was no alternative. If they were ever going to get anywhere in life, they had to go and get themselves a degree. The job market was going to be competitive and without such a qualification they would be consigned to the scrapheap.

Enter the aforementioned scrapheap, where so many of these ex-students are sleeping, awaiting their chance to shine with their certificates of attainment.

Only there aren’t any jobs because someone didn’t do the homework. There are no jobs for these aspirational young people who were told that they could own the earth if they went onto higher education.

But, I hear you say, there are jobs. There are plenty of jobs if they actually want to work.

Well, this is not true in the main but there are certainly some jobs out there.

Today, on the radio, there was a factory owner talking about his inability to recruit. He owned a shoe and boot business where a certain amount of flair and creativity was required, according to him, to make these quality garments. He was offering training and a job for life, with potential career progression for those who showed a particular interest and loyalty to the organisation.

He had been on local radio to try and recruit and had had an open day session at the factory with fifteen ‘candidates’ coming to have a look around and see if this was a place where they would like to work. The pay was reasonable if not earth shattering. There was security. There was potential.

So how many did he recruit?

None.

Not one of these people wanted the job that this man was offering, and why? Because they all had degrees and felt that working on a factory floor was beneath them.

Somewhere along the line there was an implicit value judgment surreptitiously planted in their heads that this sort of work; manual, creative, manufacturing work was not something that a graduate ought to be even considering.

These young people had a degree and with that, according to them, brought an entitlement not to do menial jobs.

You cannot blame them. They had been sold the dream which turned into a nightmare because someone had not done the mathematics. There was never going to be enough jobs for every graduate - well not the type of jobs where their chosen degree was going to be an employable asset.

They were sold a dud! And the heartless or the cynic might even suggest that the insistence in keeping these young people in education prevented the unemployment figures then of resembling the heady and heartless peak that they do today.

It is, however, even worse.

Values are important in any society and any functioning collection of people. Once all these children and young people were sold this story of degrees and qualifications and success and attainment they, like the prostitutes who sold them this myth, started to believe, by default, that certain things were of more value in and to society than others.

Having a degree was of higher value than having a practical qualification in building or plumbing or roofing. Having a degree was more important than being a shopkeeper or a road sweeper, when we all know that we need to have food from the shops and our roads maintained.

What we also need and what industry and businesses nationwide are also crying out for is young people who are confident, who have self-worth, who know how to communicate, who are capable of thinking on their own, who show leadership, creativity, inspiration, who are literate and numerate. Employers want young people to shine in a way that shows they are human; that they have qualities, personality, an ability to empathise, an ability to work together, collaborating. They want people who show initiative, who can think outside the box.

And some of these poor young people have nothing to offer other than a shiny certificate with a 2:1 emblazoned on its matt finish declaring their ability to pass exams on the Media Influences of the 21^st century.

I am not suggesting that all young graduates who are unemployed are devoid of some of the qualities mentioned above but what I am saying is that there has been a values statement in saying that their degree was indeed the ‘be all and end all’ and that none of these other vital skills and attributes were ever going to be as important as that shiny certificate. Furthermore, there was also the implicit suggestion that those who did not have that shiny certificate could not have those attributes either.

The trades were and are so belittled that it is allegedly incomprehensible to have an intelligent, confident, communicative plumber, for instance. Happily I know plenty, one of which has recently done some work for me; who left school at sixteen and has worked for the same organisation for the last ten years, one that is at least employed but struggling to get money together for monthly rental let alone the £30,000 he needs for a down payment for buying a house.

We have sold them all a dud. We have not supported them. We have led them to believe in the value of ‘education’ without ever enabling them to learn according to their needs and their desires. We have created a process of teaching rather than an avenue for learning, and in doing so we have disabled them and indoctrinated them into thinking that there was only one course to follow.

For those who could not or chose not to follow the higher education route, well they were dismissed as being thick or second class in some way, even if they had the ability and the wherewithal to follow an academic journey had they wanted to.

We have stuck labels on young people and now disregarded them whatever label they chose.

I was talking to my child yesterday about what he might want to study for A-Level. Philosophy was his response, and drama. He definitely wanted to do drama.

I paused. I started to say that perhaps he ought to keep his options open and do English too.

And then I stopped.

For the greatest accolade to my parenting would be for him to choose exactly what he wants to do, irrespective of the pressure that he might have to go for pure academic subjects as he is a candidate for top grades.

Whatever he chooses to do, will it really matter? At this rate a degree will be worthless whatever the subject matter. Therefore he should follow his dream and just do what amuses him and what enthuses him beyond all manner of supposed cogent planning.

And if he chose to be a builder or an electrician – would that make him less of the human being that he is? Apparently the answer to that is yes, and it bloody well shouldn’t be.

We have to enable young people to fulfil their human potential as the first ‘criteria’. If that happens to comply with the greater needs of society, then all for the better. However, if we create an environment where those with a mass of qualifications suffer from superiority complexes to the point that they cannot bring themselves to do any job, then we have created an unworkable and irresolvable situation. What we have done is place total value on work rather than living.

And I am not convinced, from the comfort of my redundancy, that this is the right way.

Another short anecdote – My son was asking my mother about what was the greatest punishment that her parents inflicted on her.

She told him the story of how she was caught out by her mother. She had been reading in bed by torchlight well beyond the hour when she was told to switch her lights out. The punishment for this disobedience was a fortnight without books. She could read books to do with her studies but no reading for pleasure. She said it was the longest fortnight of her childhood.

Ask a teenager how much time they get for reading these days and you will get a sorry response. Ask them what they have had time to read other than the ubiquitous “Of Mice and Men” and they will tell you that they are not encouraged to read for pleasure. They have to abide to the curriculum. Ask them if they have heard of any other Steinbeck books and they will look at you blankly. “It’s not on the list”.

My mother was right to be upset for that fortnight. The trouble today is that through the influence of those who aspire to see education as a factory of facts has ensured that my mother’s fortnight has stretched into a four year period or more.

And still we have these horrendous unemployment figures.

No jobs, no learning, no ability to be creative. Lots of misplaced values judgment.

I wonder what might have happened to these young people if we had thrown the 2D irons up in the air. I wonder what would have happened if we had spent days in the park learning about their lives instead of adhering to the curriculum.

I wonder what would have happened to these young people if they hadn’t been sold the wrong dream.

Shine On October Moon

There is something deliciously exhilarating about being completely impulsive. It makes one realise that there is still life in an old girl and that there is a world out there waiting to be witnessed; photographed and written about, if only you JFDI!

Midnight and the household were about to go to bed. It had been an abnormally sunny and hot day; a surprising word to use for the 1^st October, but hot is certainly the only one that could be used for this incredible day. Earlier, there were people walking the streets in shorts and t-shirts, and why shouldn’t they in temperatures of 29 degrees? There was no wind present. It was almost stifling. Fancy saying that in Britain on the first day of an autumnal month!

I felt like escaping.

And so I did.

My friends were taking part in the Shine Walk, raising money for cancer sufferers – in this particular case for two dear friends who are currently enduring treatment and pain from this debilitating and ultimately terminal illness. They were also walking in memory of all the people lost to their friends and family.

So it seemed an appropriate thing to do – to go and meet them and break their walk in the darkened morning by giving them a little company, and to let them know that they were being thought about.

I asked my family members if they would like to come and support my friends, but it was nearly midnight and they didn’t really fancy the trip around London at that time of night. I really must emphasise the joys of spontaneity to them.

I grabbed a bottle of water, got in the car and headed towards Greenwich. The streets of this little enclave of the capital were still relatively full as I parked my car in the road that leads to the Trafalgar, and as I emerged from my vehicle I could already see a line of mainly women, walking towards to old buildings that are now part of the University, with their black t-shirts emblazoned with the “Shine” emblem, adorned with various extras like glow sticks, pink tutus and face paints.

A few late night drinkers applauded them on their way, and a handful of people were sitting at the side of the road, with drinks and other refreshments waiting for their friends to emerge from the crowd to give them an encouraging boost of support.

As for me, I wandered along Trafalgar Road, quietly minding my own business and looking down the linear pathway to see hundreds of people reminding us that there are actually still people in this world who give a damn.

After about half an hour of walking towards the Blackwall Tunnel approach road, I met up with my friends and they were so delighted that I had gone to the alleged trouble of popping out to see them. We walked along the road, passing their two miles completed poster and then I left them to wander into the old nautical buildings area for their first official refreshment stop.

It was nearly one o’clock. What was I to do?

I wasn’t ready to go home so I drove up to Tower Bridge and parked the car in familiar surroundings next to the railway arches by the London Mission.

Was I insane? Was it appropriate for a woman with an expensive camera around her neck to be walking the streets alone at this time of night? We are led to believe that this is probably not the most sensible thing to do, particularly in a place with such a dodgy reputation, but this used to be “my manor” and I didn’t feel particularly perturbed.

It really shouldn’t be a problem and whilst I would not advocate risky behaviour, I honestly felt total calm and a sense that this should be a perfectly acceptable and safe thing to do.

I walked up to the river, took a few photos from Tower Bridge and then headed down towards City Hall where the walkers were beginning to amass for their refreshments. The walk was in two sections. The first walkers set off in the middle of the evening – these were the ones doing the marathon distance, but walking. My friends had opted for the half marathon distance and the turning point was through Potter’s Fields.

And although the majority of human traffic was relative to the money raising, there were still plenty of other people taking full advantage of the balmy night, wandering or even sitting in the park to reflect on the city in front of them.

Mad folk dancing through the water sprinklers, groups of American visitors with their friends who lived locally, two people cuddling up together, legs gathered by the knee, folding into one another, and the odd singleton with a can in hand not looking as though they had anywhere particular to go.

I returned to the car and headed towards Bermondsey, where I phoned my friends who were approaching. I decided that I would leave the car there and walk back to Tower Bridge with them, just for a brief while and they soon made the distance from Surrey Quay station to the next one.

We had a good chat about the world, about friends, about what they have been doing in the month or so since I saw them and by the time we got to the river, we talked quietly about our friends who were riddled with the big C, reflecting together as we looked across the river.

I spoke to S last week. Her most recent visit to the consultant had been a mixed bag of news; no new spread, but the mass of cells in her lungs were no longer responding to the particular type of chemotherapy she had been on. She needed to start a new and more sinister form of treatment this Monday.

C said that it had completely wiped her out this week. She had been totally incapacitated, such was the strength of the dosage she had received. We know that the chemo is not going to remove the little bastards but it could diminish them, thus prolonging her life by a small amount.

Of course, we all hope for the miracle.

It could happen.

Our other friend has returned to work, not because she is fit enough to do so but because she has been unable to work for a year and has no money left. No insurance, no nothing, so she is trying to do a couple of days a week. Unfortunately, she has had an excruciating pain in her neck that meant two days back at school and she was ready for a week off. I spoke to her last week too. Her resilience and determination is impressive. Why do we use such words for people who are coping with this illness? Because there is nothing else to do; either you are resilient or you let the disease overwhelm you. There is no other choice, I suppose but I am still in awe of people who live with this disease, knowing that it is destroying the workings of your body, knowing that sooner rather than later, it’s going to get you.

We all know that we are going to die but living with its immediacy is something quite different. Stoicism seems the wrong word sometimes.

We walked a little more quietly after that, and then I said my goodbyes at the station, returned to my car and made my way back through the streets.

London was still awake. London is always awake. Shops open, restocking a big independent supermarket in the middle of Peckham; boxes galore, a whole family seemed to be working together to get the shop ready for the morning business, but the morning was already alive. Business never shuts.

More people walking through the streets, more drinking, more sloping against the shuttered and graffiti laden shop fronts, smoking, eating, not really going anywhere; just being.

And still it was 18 degrees.

And meanwhile, the many walkers traipse their steps back towards the Millennium Dome; their final destination once their walk is completed.

It is good to witness camaraderie. It is good to see people enjoying one another. It is good to see values being so blatantly demonstrated.
But to think how many people were out there, knowing that each of them had their story of one, two, three, more people who had been lost.

I wandered back to suburbia. Curtains closed, lights off, lifeless.

This part of the city closes its eyes, shuts its ears and the silence endures uncomfortably. 

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Next year, I think I will do the walk. Why didn't I get organised to do it this year? Why is everything next year, later, maybe, hopefully?

But at least there is a next year.

A real huge well done to those who did the walk tonight/this morning.

If nothing else, it makes us all a little better for doing something together.

Sunday Offering

“I do not want the peace which passeth all understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace” – Helen Keller

I read about Helen Keller when I was very young. The thought of being unable to see and hear was intolerable to me. Her miraculous effort to communicate showed such determination and fortitude and I can distinctly remember the story of how she used her sense of touch to learn words – such as water; her first breakthrough into language. How she did it was phenomenal and shows the rest of the uncommunicative world just what obstacles can be overcome to share in this brilliant existence of ours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

Not only did she learn to read and write but she developed a clear interest in politics and philosophy. Her objection to the war and her feminist stance in life led her to the Socialist Party of America. I suppose people excused her insanity and put it down to her inability to hear and see.

Of course, in true Zen style, Helen Keller could hear and see more in a day than most people do in a lifetime.

It fascinates me how people such as Keller become known and how they overcome such disabilities to have their voice heard. Everybody has a voice and so many people shy away from using it. If you have a voice and discovered that you have it, then I feel as though there is a certain obligation to get speaking, talking, writing, sending your messages loud and clear across the world. Blogging makes that so easy these days. People with something to say have to say it otherwise a mass of reality and truthfulness will sit there, lacking in multiplication, silent in oneness. Lone voices are fine but when the world suddenly realises that there are like-minded folk out there who are expressing views so similar to their own, you never know what might happen and what potential there is for change in this yes, brilliant but bewildering world of ours.

I remember pretending to be Helen Keller as a child. I closed my eyes and walked around the garden, feeling my way, trying to understand what it must be like not to see things. I also tried to block out the sounds too by placing my fingers in my ears, whilst simultaneously scrunching my eyes together so all that I could see was the orange, black and red dots of the blood pouring through my eyelids.

It was easy for me though. I already knew the pathway down the garden. I knew where the thorns were and which steps I could take to avoid any obstacles along my way.

Can you really imagine a world without sound and without sight? It would be bad enough to lose one of these senses but to have neither of them in your life seems to be utterly intolerable. No music, no sound of water crossing over sand and pebbles, no sunrise, no sunset, no eyes to look at, no sunflowers or trees, no wind whistling through, no beautiful people or faces, no sound of laughter.

But Helen could probably hear one hand clapping far better than most, far better than you or I.

We take so much in life for granted and we abuse the powers that have been given us. We waste our sight and we destroy our sounds. We hide from darkness and silence when their radiance increases with every opportunity to see and hear the lightness of the world. We rely on these senses often at the expense of others. We do not touch the world and we do not allow the world to touch us. We ignore the potential for peace by trying to intellectualise it rather than letting it be. We abuse our loved ones, our friends, our family by not speaking to them and by not hearing them when they are open and honest enough to want to speak. We defy the difficulties faced by Helen Keller to no avail. We have a voice and we have ears, if only we would be prepared to open both once in a while.

Helen Keller spoke without speaking. She listened without hearing. She touched without worrying. How many of us can say that we do any of those? How often have we really considered a life without sight and without sound? How can we begin to appreciate life more if we do not speak and do not share the vital parts of our lives with others?

How can someone so shut off from the world be such an inspiration?

She learned to communicate and was prepared to learn about the world. She never closed her eyes and she never cast away the opportunity to hear, even though the organs were not working.

Keller was an inspiration and her words or wisdom shone through. I wonder if she had ever looked at zen philosophy for even if she had never heard about it, she certainly appears to have lived her life according to its magnificence. Keller chose a path that was far more open and alive than many of us who have our sight and hearing in full working order. She demonstrated how to be silent whilst speaking volumes. She showed how to listen without ever hearing a single word. Isn’t that the Way?

“I do not want the peace which passeth all understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace”

What an incredibly insightful phrase. Without even realising it possibly, she is saying more about intellect than most people with a pocketful of mysterious internet browsers can do these days. Yesterday, I spent some time looking at the definition of “intelligence” and about 95% of the quotes that I found were about “intellect” and not “intelligence”.

Here, Keller demonstrates both.

She knows that understanding requires intellect, amongst other things, but also appreciates that no amount of understanding will suffice unless it is acted upon. There is no point in loudly declaring that peace is wanted without understanding what the peace actually entails. There is no peace if the quiet is not understood. There is no peace if we choose to disregard its reason. There is no peace if we have to stay silent and compromise to the point that the peace is false. All we do is accept the peace without plumbing the leak. All we are doing is passing over something, so that the underlying cause of destruction is never placated. There can be no peace without understanding.

I too want the understanding that brings peace for this world. How many treaties and agreements have been drawn up with warring factors that have not stood the test of time because there has been no understanding, no logic, no fairness in what has been agreed to resume congenial behaviour? How can the Israelis agree to a shared state with Palestine if they are never able to understand the reason behind it? How can they agree to peace when they have not understood and empathised with others? How can you resolve an argument with a member of your family if you just brush it aside without understanding of yourself and your sibling or mother or child? Peace cannot be unconditional, and neither can love.

Surely it is far better and far wiser to embrace an understanding that leads to peace rather than live in a peace which is oblivious to or deliberately ignorant of cause, effect and comprehension?

I like wise women. I like wise men too but there is still something that resonates with me when I hear the voice of a woman who has overcome so much to speak to the world. I too want to be a woman who speaks to the world because I have so much, possibly too much, to say.

The learning that I have been through is vital for me, and I feel as though it could be vital to others. My reason is my own but I feel so profoundly about its truth that I need and want to share with others. I do not expect everyone to automatically adopt my stance, my ideas, my philosophy but at least I can do my bit by speaking and saying what is my fundamental beliefs, knowing and delighting in the possibility that they are ever changing, with the ability to listen to others within my construct.

The world needs change. Change doesn’t have to be dramatic to find truth. Change can be tiny and almost incomprehensible but if I have an opportunity to speak of change, and listen to the views of others, then isn’t it my duty to do so, and isn’t this what Helen Keller was telling the world? If a woman like her can speak and listen then surely to goodness the likes of me has a duty to do the same.

To finish, I have chosen a few more Helen Keller quotes to demonstrate the intelligence of the woman.  She talks of peace and I have found some through her today, all thanks to Twitter. She talks of peace and I continue once more on my own unique pathway of understanding that will bring me some peace, and hopefully peace to those I care about too.

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Intelligence – oh why did I spend so much time yesterday searching for a definitive description of intelligence when so much of it was written years ago by a woman who thought, felt and imagined so much.

Have a look at the quotes below. The brilliance of them is that they encapsulate the whole notion of three dimensions of intelligence. It is not about one intelligence any longer, dear world. It is about how we use our intelligences together to make us see, to allow us to hear and to capture the very peacefulness that Keller was talking about in that first quote today.

  “Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”

Intellect, spiritual, personal, social – she describes how her world of books has opened her world to new adventures, to intellectual stimulation, to an ability to share with her friends, whilst simultaneously explaining her very personal passion – that of reading and awakening to a world of possibilities.

“Many persons have the wrong idea about what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

Are you listening, those who think that happiness can be taught? Happiness cannot be attained by ticking off a list of hopes as ‘completed’. Keller demonstrates once more that the intelligent thing to do is have purpose in life. With the fulfilment of purpose we find pleasure. Of course a little self-gratification can help along the way, especially if it is combined with or is a demonstration of the worthy purpose. Now that is intelligent!

“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an unchartered land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.”

I want to discover the secret of the stars. I definitely want to sail in unchartered waters for I have already found my way to the shore. Spirituality comes from such words, such hope. Personal wellbeing is an added advantage to discovering the potential for humankind.

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

She even manages to encapsulate the truth of instinct. How can you ignore the instinct when there is an impulse to rise? Good or bad, the instinct has to have its day, and say, and actions, even if it is short lived and reason returns once more.

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.  They must be felt within the heart.”

And the mind and the soul, where the spirit dances with the surrounding and enveloping beauty.

 “We could never learn to be brave or patient, if there were only joy in the world.”

It is strange that I was saying such a similar thing the other day. Joy is as destructive as any other emotion. Like it or not, we need to be aware of and sometimes even feel destructive emotions in order to understand. Some of the hardest lessons in life are the most challenging as far as intelligence goes. Sometimes, even when we know how to be intelligent, we lose it all in an instance. But the intelligence remains, however hidden and we must learn from our experiences so that we can truly embrace and maintain joy, without trying too hard.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

My being, me, who I am requires tribulation. But only if it takes me forward. This is the same for all which is why much can be learned from the stresses and strains of a season.

“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content.”

Be content, be peaceful, be you.

Chaos and Ignorance

There are times in life when the truth is hard to cope with. There are times in life when sometimes it is probably wiser to withhold information to lull a person into a false sense of security because the horrible reality of a situation is too difficult to contend with. There are times in life when not saying anything is the easiest if not the right thing to do.

This happens to me frequently, and I can explain precisely when this happens to me and how it affects me.

Travelling back from work on many evenings, I get in my car, I switch my radio on to my dependable Radio Four and I have the technology tuned in to tell me of the misfortune ahead of me as I make my way south. Only sometimes, I hear nothing about what I am about to experience.

In London, the traffic news is frequent, as are the same names that you hear daily, repeated every quarter of an hour throughout the two hours of heavy traffic in the morning and evening.

It’s the Hogarth Roundabout or the Tolworth Junction or the Hammersmith Flyover or the Blackwall Tunnel. Frequently it used to be the Albert Bridge but that is currently closed for repairs or Kensington High Street or Chelsea Embankment and so forth. If you live in London you know these places because they are always on the travel reports, and I have clearly missed some obvious ones as well.

For those who do not live in London, let me tell you a little secret that the rest of the world hasn’t cottoned on to. The majority of the places listed about happen to be in the West of London. My word, says the geographically intelligent population outside London, that western part of the city must be a nightmare. It’s only the Blackwall Tunnel that seems to be blocked on the other side of town.

But no! Recently I wrote about the Chipping Norton Set and here is the thing, here is the truth and reality of life. The Chipping Norton Set and their friends and colleagues don’t have to travel to the East of London to get into the godforsaken city. They have to travel over the Hammerhell flover, returning via the Hogarth Fuckedabout and that, as well as a ridiculous amount of traffic, is why you hear these names so often. They affect the rich and famous!

However, the real damage, the real and perpetual gridlock is happening on my patch, thank you very much, as I inch down the Eastway to that interminable tunnel approach before crawling through and receiving even more traffic south of the river.

It is a gloriously, revolting nightmare, only made easier by the company of Eddie Mair, Jenni Murray and the likes.

But what is this about this withholding information?

As I approach the motorway (well I call it a motorway because it has three lanes and looks and feels like a motorway apart from the 40mph speed limit), I have my radio ready. The travel information frequently comes on as I sit at the traffic lights in anticipation, and I wait. And wait. Obviously the news from the west of town takes precedence for the reasons I have explained previously. It is only when a nuclear bomb has been diffused (can you do such a thing?) that the Blackhell Tunnel gets a mention first; when the traffic is seemingly going to require a wait of an hour or so to get through the blasted tunnel.

And yet, even then it is sometimes ignored. Sometimes the news from the west takes so long, it seems as though they run out of time before they can tell us Blackheller’s of what we are about to receive. Sometimes, however, I have now come to the conclusion that they don’t actually tell us what is happening on the approach to the tunnel because it is too damn scary. They would rather us drive in ignorant trepidation rather than reveal the calamity of what is the main route between north and south at the wrong side of town.

Sometimes I honestly think that they can’t be bothered to inform us of the potential misery because it is too bleak to do so with such frequency. The poor announcers are simply bored by the repetition. So they just calmly forget to mention the Blackwall buggery.

Or even worse, the simply don’t give a toss because it is not involving themselves or their friends.

The amount of times I have been foolish enough to think that all will be well because the BBC have not felt it important enough to mention that there is a three mile tail-back that will take me over an hour to travel through. Fifteen miles it is from A to B, and I can guarantee that the journey, at a certain time in the evening, can take me up to two hours, certainly never less than one hour and twenty minutes – at a specific time.

I can cope with the truth and make my decision based on the reality of a situation but what I find intolerable is this lack of information so that I have already stuck my indicator out, despite having listened to the travel report, to take me onto the main road to Hell, only to find that the Hogarth Roundabout had a fingernail out of place on the driver of the 5 series BMW which had caused a slight blip in Jemima being picked up from the child minder by 5.59 pm which meant the news about my route home was deemed to be insignificant.

It’s tragic.

But the tragedy does not stop there. Not only do they conveniently forget to mention the horror of fume-fuelled disaster awaiting me as I sit in stagnation every evening, but also someone made the monumental decision to close the tunnel every night bar Friday and Saturday from 9 pm so that if you want to return from north to south on the eastern side of town after 9pm, you have to wheedle your way along the slowest road in town, that was clearly not designed to take the heavy goods vehicles, through the terribly sweet but utterly annoying Rotherhithe Tunnel. The joke is that they have a sign up saying 20 mph – I wish!

Have these people never considered a contraflow?

And it doesn’t stop there.

Someone from Transport for London had the absolute brainwave of informing passing travellers of precisely how many incidents of disruption have occurred through the tunnel for the last month.

How very informative, I hear you say, but can I please ask a simple question...... what is point?

What is the point of telling me that there are currently 40 dimwits whose cars broke down either immediately before or in the tunnel during the last month? Is there any purpose in telling me that the traffic was halted due to 80, yes 80, trucks or lorries being too tall to pass through the barrier, thus having to be taken out and directed to an alternative route?

That is more than two a day. And this, I assume, for the month of August when the traffic is allegedly less problematic because we are all allegedly away from the city finding a source of sun and enjoyment without school runs to clog up the system.

Surely, the money that has been invested in furthering the angst of the frequent Blackheller’s to inform them that there have been 80 incompetent lorry drivers and 40 useless drivers who have either crashed their cars, broken down or, heaven forbid, forgotten to learn how to read a petrol gauge could have been better spent by putting some notices up further down the road to prevent the fuckwits from causing havoc before they get to the bloody tunnel? Or am I being naive?

It is utterly intolerable that there appear to be three incidents a day that close the tunnel – all due to the stupidity of the people that we carefully trust our lives with every day as we accompany them towards the tunnel only to find that they either can’t drive or can’t judge the size of their juggernaut.

And even more intolerable is that nobody seems particularly bothered about putting some preventative measures in place to stop this from happening.

I cringe at the thought that this is what is going to be greeting the many visitors that we are about to receive in this country for the Olympics. I wonder why nothing was done about this when we had the announcement in 2005, when everybody has now known for nearly seven years that this side of town seriously needed some help and consideration.

Talking of 2012, the television skit on the Olympic planning team even had an episode about the flaws and problems of the traffic approaching and travelling through the Blackhell Tunnel. The irony of this particular episode was that the Blackwall Tunnel is so bloody hopeless and so terrifying that they couldn’t actually bear to show the vile thing in reality and ended up filming the Limehouse Link instead – just in case the reality of Blackhell was too frightening to put on television. It might put people off. Of course, had they used the tunnel for filming, then there would have been a tailback from Gilligham to Cambridge, so that wasn’t likely to happen.

More veiled truth.

Whilst I may sound like the most tedious of bores with a bee in her bonnet, I am writing this slightly with a tongue in my cheek, but sadly, there is too much reality in what I am writing. Yes, it is frustrating to sit in traffic having made assumptions that no news is good news but as my darling Dad said to me once when I was flipping about something quite incidental, “For goodness sake, there are children dying in Africa”.

And he was right. Traffic is mind-numbingly tedious and incredibly frustrating, all the more so when no information or veiled truth is being sent down the airwaves, but there are more important issues to concern us with, and every single time I am caught up in this sort of traffic, I have to think positively. I go to work because I love it. I travel in the car because it gives me the independence to move as and when I choose rather than being reliant on a strict timetable, and the endless hours of travel enable me to stop, listen, think, not think (other than being in full command of my vehicle) and spend some time with myself in a very busy schedule.

So many times I have been caught in this sort of traffic and have had time to plan my writing or reflect upon a wonderful day, whilst listening to the real disasters in peoples’ lives around the world.

Perhaps this is what we should really be reflecting on. Perhaps we should all take a calmer and more tolerant look at the world.

Before any friends to the West start screaming, and before any non-Londoners accuse me of being ignorant and dismissive of the rest of the country, I say outright, I sympathise with anyone caught in intolerable traffic, and I am all too painfully aware that London, and the East of London is not the only place that suffers with this debilitating problem.

Recently, it took me over two hours to reach the Hogarth Roundabout from work; a journey that by right should take no longer than 45 minutes. There are huge traffic problems in the west of town too but at least it feels as though someone gives a damn.

The other day, I was travelling back from work after Blackhell had been closed for the night. Some ludicrous person had then decided it was a good idea to dig up large chunks of Commercial Road (the road to the alternative tunnel of Rotherhithe) at the very same time as the Blackwall Tunnel was closed. Over an hour, and I was still some way from the old Victorian warren to Southwark, and nobody seemed to care. Coordination is really bad.

As for the rest of the country, they don’t fair too well either. Last night, I crawled through Port Talbot at less than six miles per hour, clogging up an entire town because the motorway had to be closed for maintenance.

I am not suggesting our roads should not be closed for repairs, but there needs to be more management of such situations. Do you, for instance, really need to close a stretch of four junctions simultaneously? Do all lanes need to be worked on at exactly the same time? There has to be an alternative to diversion, and talking of diversions, if you are going to introduce such a system, please make sure the signposts are all in place. It was only due to my relatively decent sense of direction yesterday that I managed not to follow the diversionary sign that would ultimately have sent me back to the motorway in the wrong direction.

But returning once more to reality, however hard it may be, sometimes, one just has to accept that traffic chaos is annoying but not necessarily the worst thing that we have to endure in life, and for those who disagree, then you are either the fortunate ones who genuinely have no threats or concerns with life or you simply aren’t enlightened and intelligent enough to want to know anything about the world, the injustice and the problems that so many of our fellow men and women live with on a permanent basis. If a fucked up transport system is really the most important thing in your life, then you are fortunate or foolish.

That said, here is a plea to the BBC, Transport for London and others. Remember little us on the other side of town. Don’t hide behind withholding information or simply not telling – the resentment that can build from such dispassionate behaviour is extreme. Keep us informed, consider ways of preventing Blackhell from being so called and spare a thought for those of us who choose to love East rather than West.......... and if you forget, well believe me, you may well regret your procrastination and disregard when it comes to wanting to visit the wonderment of the Olympic site for next and subsequent years.

There is life on the other side of town and we are prepared to let the Western grockels come and have a look, but don’t forget our plight once you flee back to the dismal delights of the other side of town.

I mean, just think how many thoughts are amassing in that approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. If someone managed to gather that, well, the East would have its day.

Enlightenment approaches.

Economcially Speaking

In the news today, a rogue trader has lost an extraordinary amount of money in the City. What precisely is an extraordinary amount of money these days? Nick Lesson only lost Baring’s Bank £800,000,000 – small feed apparently these days. Today’s little loss is not quite as much as the ‘mistake’ from the French rogue trader three years ago who lost his bank, Societe Generale, a small 4.9 billion euros. In fact Kweku Adoboli only lost about half of that – at £1.3 billion.

It all happened on the third anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy submission. And there was us thinking that nothing like this could happen again. Surely the bankers had learned their lessons.

Ever heard of addiction, greed, dishonesty, thieving? It’s not just those in the dumps of society that go in for this nasty behaviour. With those who already ‘have’, it seems to me far more despicable.

I make that statement because the quiet one, Iain Duncan Smith, stated that the recent riots were a wake-up call to the middle classes. He stated that the riots showed a “distorted morality that has permeated our whole society, right to the very top”. The middle classes, according to IDS, have shielded their eyes for far too long – “for years now, too many people have remained unaware of the true nature of life on some of our estates”, he said. “This was because we had ghettoised many of these problems, keeping them out of sight of the middle class majority”.

Interesting language.

He stated that the banking crisis, the phone-hacking scandal and the MP’s expenses debacle showed that this moral decline was happening at all levels “right to the very top”. I am assuming that he meant that politicians, bankers and Mr Murdoch et al are the “top” whereas the folk rioting from our run-down estates in Tottenham, Hackney, Lewisham and the likes are the bottom. Oh how good it is to have such differentiation – really helps to break down the barriers of inequality.

I wonder how it would feel to be seen as the opposite of the top all the time? I wonder how it makes one person or a group of people feel to constantly have it suggested that they are the lowest in society, as though the lack of money automatically makes them degenerates.

There is a time and a place for some pecking orders – this is not one.

The corruption of the bankers is far more degenerate and corrupt to me than children and young people who are bombarded by adverts, enticed to want the very items that they are never going to be able to afford, trotting off and grabbing a few goods for themselves. At least one makes sense. At least you can see the reason why someone would want a new television or a decent pair of trainers; they’ve been brainwashed into thinking that this is something to which they should aspire.

How can anyone want to keep on making the ludicrous amounts of money that occur in the Square Mile just for the buzz? It is quite incredible to me. It is quite the most revolting scenario.

And where does this money go? Nobody seems to explain what happens next? Surely there has to be someone somewhere making a healthy profit on UBS’s loss. Someone is having a party right now that they have been the winner in this particular gambling game. Tomorrow they may be the losers.

Winners and losers – I know it is divisive language but it is where we are. This is the way things work in society. Top and bottom, first and second, higher and lower, and whilst I applaud IDS for making such a statement, he isn’t exactly looking at this holistically is he? It is his government that is perpetuating the polarisation. It is his government that is trashing the local services that these people in society do not even know that they need, especially with regard to preventative services which don’t tick target boxes but are so integral to future change.

What else have we had this week? Unemployment has reached dizzier heights than the month before. More public sector cuts are predicted. On the positive side there have been something like 40,000 new jobs created in the public sector but that is set against an increase of 119,000 lost in the public sector. EDF and British gas have announced a 15% rise in gas prices that they are going to have to pass onto their customers. A further 4 or 5% increase is expected in electricity. London transport announced, on average, a 7% rise in fares at the beginning of 2012. And today, there was the announcement that the average rent now stands at £713 a month. Look at that figure again, £713 a month.

Now as I have professed on many occasions, I am not particularly adept at mathematics but even I can work out that a freeze on public sector pay, mirrored in the private sector means that everyone is going to be paying out more than they are receiving. Figures such as 15% are going to be felt by people. The immediacy of travel cost increases are going to be very apparent to those who were on an extremely tight budget and could not possibly have forecast such a rise, especially when it is added onto an increase of the same amount the year before.

Recently, I was talking to a couple of friends about the cost of housing. One was in her mid twenties, the other a little older. Both are currently renting. The first friend knows that she cannot afford a house of her own. She also knows that at the current rate of earning, she may never do so. What bothers her is that she cannot even afford to rent a place of her own. She can only afford a house share with people that she does not know. It is a risk to her wellbeing, as far as she is concerned. The other is paying over a £1000 in rent. This friend has done some homework and realised that if she had a deposit for a mortgage, she could reduce the monthly outgoings by nearly 50%. Even if she could get a 100% mortgage with no down payment, she could reduce her outgoings but who is going to give her a mortgage for a £250,000 house when her income implies that she would never be able to pay this off?

What are we going to do about the cost of housing? The capitalist owners of properties are in a prime position to monopolise on this situation. Those who can never have a mortgage have no alternative than to abide by the inflationary grabbing prices that the landlords pour down upon them. It is immoral.

It is also a sad indictment and a huge irony that a mortgage suddenly appears to be the cheapest option, if only one could persuade a borrower, a banker that it is a worthwhile use of money. But there we are, back to the bankers, the gamblers, the ones who are prepared to lose billions of pounds in a split second of excitement whilst hard-working people who are not demanding the world are struggling to even put decent food on the table for their children.

And talking of bankers, our very own Mr. Osborne this week has finally told them that they have to separate their game-playing from the business of looking after our money. They cannot gamble our futures by using our money to play the markets – only this is not going to happen until 2019. By that time, with the increase in costs of services and utilities, we may not have any money to put in their precious banks. What will happen then? Will the chancellor back track and allow them to gamble as the only viable way of making any money?

Obviously, I do not know enough about how this works but it worries me, considerably.

It’s not been a good week. I am worried about my younger friends and their future. I am concerned about my children too. I am not suggesting that having the noose of a mortgage around their necks is a viable proposition but you can understand their frustration at knowing that such a deal would, in the short term, be a cheaper option for them.

If only there was an increase in a half-way house; like housing associations who work with people to enable them to feel secure in a home whilst starting to invest in it. The most awful thing about renting is the ability for a landlord to simply get rid of his or her tenants at the drop of a hat. It hardly makes for people to feel secure or to add their creativity and personality into the very place where they spend the majority of their time. Who would want to borrow a favourite pair of trousers knowing that within the whim of another, they could be whipped off your body as and when a fancy took?

Today, what with student loans and mortgages, we are teaching our young people to be borrowers rather than savers, whilst persisting with this opposing ideal of getting them to save and live within their means. They can’t. They are being frugal and still cannot make ends meet. This week’s inflationary figures together with the announcement that one well-to-do has lost a couple of billion must really shatter these people at the lower rung of IDS’s ladder.

And as a final thought, there are four miners stuck in the middle of a mine in the middle of a valley in the middle of south west Wales. News has just come in to say that at least one of them is dead. There seems little hope, at present, that the others are alive since nobody has heard a sound from them – not exactly the joy that was experienced when the Chilean miners were rescued.

A friend of one of the miners was quoted in the newspaper as saying that the man was merely trying to provide for his family. He said, “people don’t go mining for fun”.

Indeed they don’t. People go mining because there is no alternative. People go mining in this part of the world because there are not other jobs available for them. Long gone are the times when people went down the mines because it was a trade passed down through the generations. This particular mine is hardly the sort of major colliery that once stood proudly in this area of the world. Someone put paid to that in the 1980s, and come to think of it, she too didn’t give a toss about the consequences either.

Inronically, Melvyn Bragg’s Reel TV last week showed a film of some miner’s being rescued. It all seemed so ancient, so “of another age”.

Perhaps it is about time for us to fully address who is at the top and who is at the bottom and what we can all do to make life a little more equal. Policies on housing needs to change - now. Policies on banking cannot wait until 2019. Policy on education is a fundamental preventative measure to increased polarisation of society, if it is looked at in a progressive way (today’s announcement on phonics testing will really help the future miners of this world, because although literacy can help to “raise people out of the quagmire”, there are still people who will be needed to do the more dangerous work of the world).

 And as for the costs of utilities, well, if I remember rightly, the government used to own such services. Perhaps if they hadn’t sold them off there could be some control on these too.

But I was always a stupid idealist.