Crosby Emergency.

By Mark Johnson, Crosby Herald.

Dale Farm travellers ‘look to’ Crosby. Oct 6th 2011.

SCORES of gypsies set to be evicted from Dale Farm in Essex could bring their caravan homes to Crosby, councillors believe.

Travellers have allegedly pinpointed the coastal park and Burbo Bank as possible locations to move to when they are eventually moved on.

The claims have apparently been made on social networking sites Twitter and Facebook.

An emergency meeting of worried councillors went ahead last week to look at ways to deter travellers from entering green spaces on Sefton’s coastline.

It was agreed that around £2,000 would be spent on wooden bollards to block any attempts to access.

Blundellsands councillor Paula Parry said: “We have had to get the bollards in very quickly.

“It was advertised on Twitter and Facebook that the gypsies might come here.”

The deterrents were installed immediately at the field entrance in Burbo Bank.

Cllr Peter Papworth said: “We had to do something in a hurry and it seemed sensible to do something because they said Crosby is a good site to go to.

“We’ve had wooden posts put in and they are about 2ft high.

“They will stop them entering the land.

“In the long run, getting the bollards in will be cheaper than trying to get rid of the gypsies if they were here.

“The decision had to be made in a hurry.”

Cllr Papworth added: “We’ve had gypsies here twice this year in Burbo Bank.

“The people of Blundellsands don’t want this to happen to their area again.

“We don’t wish gypsies any ill will but we just don’t want them to come here.

“We don’t want them in Waterloo either.

“We are looking at ways to stop them coming near the Lakeside too because we don’t want them there.”

Joseph Jones, chair of the Gypsy Council, said he thought speculation of a move north was not credible because the gypsies had firm ties in the south of England.

He did confirm that the Dale Farm gypsies had relatives living in the North West of England.

I found this story amusing so I thought I would share.
You can do a little mental exercise here -
If you replace the words Gypsy and Traveller with any other nationality, ethnic group or orientation it will give you an idea of just how marginalized Travelling People are.

Jean-Luc

What about a forced eviction with -no- relocation.

"Those people should move away" - Any suggestions as to where Mr Cameron?

PMQs - Something that bothers me about David Cameron's vocal support for the eviction
of the community of families living on Dale Farm, is that I found it to be small minded and unstatesmanlike for someone who holds the office of Prime Minister.

Evensong.

Careless Words.

They talk about them
like they are not there
they talk about them
like they do not hear
they talk about them
with a wink and a nod
as though everyone agrees
and everyone knows what they mean
when they say "traveller"

They make grandiose statements
career ending statements
hounded out of public office statements
if they made them about any other group
any other group in the world
apart from "travellers"

They would gladly load the cattle trucks
all that's lacking is a law
all that's lacking is the paper work
the corporate abdication of personal responsibility
and the police would obey the law
and the army would obey the law
they could muster an Einsatzgruppen in a day

And if you stand perfectly still
in this slip of the lip
you can feel humanity slip
you can feel the earth slip
toward oblivion.

Evensong.

Give up your Jews
Give up your Jews
Give up your Jews

And your Gypsies too

Give up your Colleagues
Give up your Neighbours
Give up your Friends

Give up them All
Give up Control
Give up your Soul

We have a Law...To make you Obey
We have a Law...To take you Away
We have a Law...To kill you Today

Law is Might...Wrong is Right
Dark is Light...Blind is Sight

No turning back at the Mississippi Turnpike

Now for Evensong.

Mad Cat Woman.

When a Government Minister makes a speech that includes the line
"The human rights act needs to go" and this is cheered by the crowd.
You don't know if you're listening to a Conservative party conference
or a Nuremberg Rally.

Definition of Racism

" Your culture is inferior to our culture
you must abandon your culture
you must accept and adapt to our culture
or we will persecute you "

Ed Miliband.

Link to Ed Miliband on Basildon Council.

The picture is of the McCarthy sisters
who represent the families in court.

In Pictures

Action Man

I've found this Link interesting.

Sorry Day.

Kevin Rudd on Law.



Tony Ball on Law.

Backing Basildon Council.

In the week leading up to the eviction on Dale Farm.

The British Broadcasting Corporation airs the most emotive and disparaging news story about Travelling People it is within it's ability to construct.

This story is based on personal testimony from events that allegedly happened in 2008 and in 2004. It is completely one sided with those being accused given no opportunity to answer the allegations.

The BBC present this story on it's main news instead of a United Nations press conference that was given the same day in which the Government and Basildon Council were accused of denying the people of Dale Farm the human rights that have previously been ratified by the Government.

Whether the story presented by the BBC is true or fully accurate or not, there is one thing it does prove - Endemic institutional racism against Travelling People.

It is my opinion that the people of Post-Blair Britain are not so easily taken in by cynically constructed emotive manipulative news as they might have been in the past.

There is a percentage of news stories and documentaries
which are specifically constructed
with the purpose of attempted social manipulation.

In The News.

BBC News on Travellers 14th September 2011.



Press TV News on Travellers 14th September 2011.



I find I can't help wondering why a story about one Traveller family accused of keeping slaves should break on the week running up to the eviction on Dale Farm.
And also why this news should take precedence over a UN press conference,
which was not shown on BBC news.
Even if this family were guilty (which I believe a court would have to decide) does that mean all Travellers should be denied human rights.
If that criteria was applied to other groups would it not mean that all Politicians should be sacked because some fiddled their expenses.

After 9 / 11.

Whenever we receive hurt from an individual from a group of people or from a situation it is also an opportunity to grow, to seek a personal growth in grace in forgiveness and in reconciliation.

There is also the easier option of succumbing to the darker side of human nature and growing in belligerent vengeful retribution.
A conservative estimate would be that America has killed 100 men women and children for every man woman and child killed at the world trade centre and there is also all the American, British and allied soldiers who have been killed.

It will end with all the protagonists around a table talking peace and patting each other on the back, while Mothers around the world will be patting down flowers on their loved ones graves.

Hobby Premium

This is the new 2012 Hobby Premium...Just poppin' out for a lottery lucky dip.

David Cameron.

The Government brought in laws that made it illegal for Travellers to stay anywhere in their caravans.

Then the Government told Travellers to buy their own land and make their own sites.

What the Government didn't tell Travellers was that it would be nigh impossible for them to be granted planning permission for their land and that in all fairness hundreds of Police and Bailiffs would swoop on them and forcibly evict them from their own land.

With it still being illegal for Travellers to stay anywhere in their caravans the people of Dale Farm have literally nowhere to go.

Travelling People pose as much danger to the fabric of British society as hill grazing sheep. All they want is somewhere to park a caravan.

BBC Sunday Morning Live 4 Sept 2011.

Basildon Council have stated that the forced eviction
of 86 Traveller families from land owned by them on Dale Farm
will begin on Monday the 19th of September 2011.

On Speyside

I've heard the auld folk tell a story
and bring to life the scene before me
how folk were wonderful' content
in a wagon or a humble tent
when life was all uncomplicated
and simple things were appreciated
With an enthusiastic glow
they unfold a time long ago
and I listen with joy and pride
of youthful days along Speyside
Near a grove in a field of green
beside a flowing purling stream
the Travelling families are gathered
their tents secured their horses tethered.

No land no house to call their own
being together they are at home
for a household is not brick and mortar
but husband wife and son and daughter
And in some Scottish highland shire
assembled at the common fire
warmed against the evening air
and happy everyone is there
the tobacco and the stories go round
and children sing with an angelic sound
Until beneath the starlit sky
they recede into a time gone by
and will not walk these roads again
but I will gladly go to them.

Scenes from a Marriage

I knew nothing of Ingmar Bergman's films until the last couple of weeks. A season of his films has been on Film 4. I recorded a few and watched this one last night. It was originally a TV series in Sweden. In the year it was shown the Scandinavian divorce rates almost doubled.
It's mostly about something I've thought and written about - The possibility of your life becoming a caricature of what is expected of you.

Candle in the Shadow.

Rowan Williams. Archbishop of Canterbury.

The government needs to know how afraid people are.

We are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted.

I can imagine a New Statesman reader looking at the contents of this issue and mentally supplying: "That's enough coalition ministers (Ed)." After all, the NS has never exactly been a platform for the establishment to explain itself. But it seems worth encouraging the present government to clarify what it is aiming for in two or three key areas, in the hope of sparking a livelier debate about where we are going - and perhaps even to discover what the left's big idea currently is.

The political debate in the UK at the moment feels pretty stuck. An idea whose roots are firmly in a particular strand of associational socialism has been adopted enthusiastically by the Conservatives. The widespread suspicion that this has been done for opportunistic or money-saving reasons allows many to dismiss what there is of a programme for "big society" initiatives; even the term has fast become painfully stale. But we are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like.

Digging a bit deeper, there are a good many on the left and right who sense that the tectonic plates of British - European? - politics are shifting. Managerial politics, attempting with shrinking success to negotiate life in the shadow of big finance, is not an attractive rallying point, whether it labels itself (New) Labour or Conservative. There is, in the middle of a lot of confusion, an increasingly audible plea for some basic thinking about democracy itself - and the urgency of this is underlined by what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa.

Incidentally, this casts some light on the bafflement and indignation that the present government is facing over its proposals for reform in health and education. With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context. Not many people want government by plebiscite, certainly. But, for example, the comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates. The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument.

I don't think that the government's commitment to localism and devolved power is simply a cynical walking-away from the problem. But I do think that there is confusion about the means that have to be willed in order to achieve the end. If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up
responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority.) Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?

Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around such questions at present. It isn't enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, "This is the last government's legacy," and, "We'd like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit." To acknowledge the reality of fear is not necessarily to collude with it. But not to recognise how pervasive it is risks making it worse. Equally, the task of opposition is not to collude in it, either, but to define some achievable alternatives. And, for that to happen, we need sharp-edged statements of where the disagreements lie.

The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation. The old syndicalist and co-operative traditions cannot be reinvented overnight and, in some areas, they have to be invented for the first time.

This is not helped by a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, nor by the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system. If what is in view - as Iain Duncan Smith argues passionately on page 18 - is real empowerment for communities of marginal people, we need better communication about strategic imperatives, more positive messages about what cannot and will not be left to chance and - surely one of the most important things of all - a long-term education policy at every level that will deliver the critical tools for democratic involvement, not simply skills that serve the economy.

For someone like myself, there is an ironic satisfaction in the way several political thinkers today are quarrying theological traditions for ways forward. True, religious perspectives on these issues have often got bogged down in varieties of paternalism. But there is another theological strand to be retrieved that is not about "the poor" as objects of kindness but about the nature of sustainable community, seeing it as one in which what circulates - like the flow of blood - is the mutual creation of capacity, building the ability of the other person or group to become, in turn, a giver of life and responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this is what is at the heart of St Paul's ideas about community at its fullest; community, in his terms, as God wants to see it.

A democracy that would measure up to this sort of ideal - religious in its roots but not exclusive or confessional - would be one in which the central question about any policy would be: how far does it equip a person or group to engage generously and for the long term in building the resourcefulness and well-being of any other person or group, with the state seen as a "community of communities", to use a phrase popular among syndicalists of an earlier generation?

A democracy going beyond populism or majoritarianism but also beyond a Balkanised focus on the local that fixed in stone a variety of postcode lotteries; a democracy capable of real argument about shared needs and hopes and real generosity: any takers?

New Statesman 9th June 2011.

Julian Assange.

Sweater Life.

The past is History

The future is a Mystery

The present is a Gift

That's why it's not quite what we Wanted.

Tuesday 1st March 2011.

"Woof Woof"

Having reached an age now where I could get a dog and have it for life,
I've been trying to take stock of my life.
So far I haven't come up with much apart from an observation that none of us are fully aware or face up to our mortality. If we did it would make big changes in how we would live out our few remaining piddling years.

Dear Reader.

A family member has been ill
this has left me even more incapable
of getting my head around computers and blogging.

Thank you all for reading and for your generous and kind comments.

Hope.

May you in whatever circumstance you find yourself
find also a sense of hope in the Christmas message.
Remember also that this baby grew up to be a man
who was accused, condemned and executed
by the religious establishment of his day.
So don't excuse or flatter yourself
for throwing this baby out with the bath water
because of the religious establishment of this day.

Thank You For America.

Thank you.

Thank you for America not being the World
and the World not being America

Thank you for human leadership not being greater
than the mind of God or the conscience of man

Thank you for the Media not being the whole story

Thank you for the 99 per cent of people
who choose peace and community

Thank you for kindness everywhere and anywhere

Thank you for Family
for Grandfathers and Grandmothers for Fathers and Mothers
for Brothers and Sisters for Nephews and Nieces
for Uncles and Aunties and Cousins

Thank you that you are the Father of us all.

The Purpose of Torture.

Birlinn: Ship of Burden.

Govan GalGael Birlinn.


Don't wait for a Ship that will never come in
Build your own Ship and become it's Captain.


A carving of a Bìrlinn from a 16th century tombstone in MacDufie's Chapel, Oronsay.

Remembrance.

The ruthless greed of the Bosses of big business

The despotic ambition of Politicians

The slaughter of the innocents for the control of the World's resources

Good family men conscripted to kill Good family men

Evil called Good Deception called Transparency Lies called Truth

The powerlessness of ordinary men and women

God will remember them.

The Millbank Mandate.

There have been violent scenes as tens of thousands of people protested against plans to treble tuition fees and cut university funding in England.

Demonstrators stormed a building in Westminster housing the Conservative Party headquarters, smashed windows and got on to the roof.

Outside, a crowd of thousands surged as placards and banners were set on fire and missiles were thrown. (from the news)

Why was there so few police positioned outside the Tory HQ?

1. Those in command of the police operation were incompetent?

2. The powers that be have now established a mandate for heavy handed tactics
in dealing with expected future protests engendered by their policies?

11 O'clock.

Maelstrom.

Dada.

When I was 20 I thought that 50
was a thousand years away
and now I'm 50 I think that 60 and 70
are tomorrow and the next day
and now I'm 50 (no matter what you say)
I know that 20 is a thousand years away

If I was 20 again
I would Get out Get out Get out
and you should do the same
Relatives are a wonderful childhood accompaniment
and in adulthood they are also good
but on a different continent

Don't become the Hobby horse
from your Father's carpentry box
ridden into the ground for the rest of your life

Don't become the wedding dress
from your Mother's pattern box
another Wedding another Bride another Mother

Don't become the chattel
of a Priest or a Mullah
When all they are teaching is
Be me Be me Be me
Grasp your God given right to
Be you Be you Be you

Break the mould
shatter it beyond repair
leave no ambiguous pieces of doubt
and Get out Get out Get out.

New Group.

I was listening to the Radio one day and the DJ said - "Here is a song by a new group called The Beatles" and he played this song.

Impassioned impatience.

Moriarty.

You are a Bastard
and I've decided to kill you
I've thought of many different ways
and from these I've chosen - Time
I'm going to kill you with time
and then you will be dead
as dead as Marlene Dietrich.

Impassioned impatience
is not my style, I'm a patient man
patient enough to kill you with time
and get off scot-free.
I can wait, I can while away the hours
sit out the days endure the years
until the last day, last hour, last second.

Until your time and my time
until the Reichenbach Falls
and there will be an end
an end to this life lived in this world
an end to all this life's reasons
for you being a Bastard
and for me killing you.

Beloved.

Beloved.

It's strange after all these years
to find myself thinking about you
It began about a month before I met you
in the Hotel lounge after the funeral

We stood in the middle of the room
making polite small talk
and the whole world receding around us

It was in your eyes
it was written all over your face
the spark the chemistry the attraction
whatever it is named
or indefinable without a name
that makes a man and a woman
want each other

It was you all along
it was you I've been drifting from
you were the one
My Dearly Beloved
and I never knew until this moment of clarity
thirty seconds watching thirty years
go down the Swanee

If I could go back
I would not walk across that bridge
I would not leave you standing there
so distraught and so alone
But I can't go back
and we can't go forward
there is nothing for us
there can be nothing between us
we met too soon and now too late
it's all perfectly fucked up

Only this mutual comprehension
of what could have been
can perhaps be counted as something
And all I'm left feeling
is that I'm walking
away from you again.

Appointment.

At the Doctor's

I'm afraid you have
a very difficult to pronounce illness
complicated by the fact
it is also very difficult to spell.
Because of this all I can do
is prescribe a medication
which is equally
difficult to pronounce and spell.
This may or may not
alleviate your symptoms.
We'll see how it goes.
I appreciate your confidence in my ability
to pronounce and spell these unfamiliar words.
And for your convenience
Medical knowledge of your condition
has been abbreviated to N.I.L.
and the name of your medication
has been abbreviated to C.R.A.P.

Osbourne.

Paranoid lyrics.

Finished with my woman
cause she couldn't help me with my mind
People think I'm insane
because I am frowning all the time

All day long I think of things
but nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind
if I don't find something to pacify

Can you help me, occupy my brain?
I need someone to show me
the things in life that I can't find
I can't see the things that make true happiness,
I must be blind

Make a joke and I will sigh
and you will laugh and I will cry
Happiness I cannot feel
and love to me is so unreal

And so as you hear these words
telling you now of my state
I tell you to enjoy life
I wish I could but it's too late.

BBC News.

Yesterday on the News.

A BBC reporter interviewed four students seated outside a bistro in Sheffield Hallam Nick Clegg's constituency. They were all asked the same question - What was their opinion of the Coalition austerity measures. The four of them in turn agreed that something had to be done to pay back the deficit and that they were in agreement with the public spending cutbacks.
I found this reassured me that these cutbacks are in fact a good thing.

Today on the News.

A BBC News story regarding Dr David Kelly has reported that someone found blood in the wood where he died. This is evidence that he did take his own life.
This report coupled with two short videos of Dr Kelly looking unhappy have convinced me that this must be the case.

So I commend the BBC for the integrity their impartial investigative journalism.

The Maze.

The Maze.

Too many variables to be very sure
Too many Doctors to find a cure

Too many Politicians mouthin' sound bites
Too many human beings denied human rights

Too many Millionaires applauding austerity
cheering the deepening entrenchment of poverty

Too many sociologists narrowing the gap
trammel through the maze into the mouse trap

Too many Priests going through the motions
reciting liturgical unfelt devotions

Too many Poets who have never been read
lost like pearls from a broken thread

Too many blind to worth - wanting to be rich
Masters of Life in designer kitsch

Too many deaf standing on the shore
there's a hurricane coming and they can't hear the roar

Too many refugees to calculate the cost
country and home and dignity lost

Too many smug regarding their future
counting the cost of a food voucher

Too many young men eager to be brave
learning to fight while learning to shave

Too many being taught in segregation
denied an interactive rounded education

Too many claiming the authority of God
twisting youthful ideals into innocent blood

Too many children cut down while they play
Too many hearts broken like clay

Too many fragments of shattered dreams
caught in the vortex of a Mother's screams

Too many standing in numbed disbelief
surveying the altered landscape of grief

Too many stumbling attempting to regain
a foothold in unfamiliar terrain

Too many walking the desolation
of their social isolation

Too many waiting for things to get better
until it finally doesn't matter

Too many on the outside looking in
on Churches barbed by subtle sin.

W. H.

I wrote this ages ago, this is what I remember of it.
I wrote it after reading a particularly flowery poem of Auden that had nothing to say, just an exercise in words that nobody speaks.

Bad poem on a Bad poem.

I'll never be aw dun wae Auden
I admit it's probably my fault
this image of walking through a desert
carrying a bottle of salt

I've accosted you in sobriety
I've even plied you with vino
at the last you have helped me with Shakespeare
because you make him read like the Beano

My dictionary is dog-eared
teasing out revised brocade
only to find the woven gold
serves to disguise the nothing said

Old Oxonian verbiage
with an empty page to fill
composed of so many darlings
you could not bring yourself to kill

I hold you in my work worn hands
and want to know you very much
but find I am a common man
and you don't have the common touch.

This poem by Auden has more to say.

NIGHT MAIL
by W H Auden

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Thro' sparse counties she rampages,
Her driver's eye upon the gauges.
Panting up past lonely farms
Fed by the fireman's restless arms.
Striding forward along the rails
Thro' southern uplands with northern mails.

Winding up the valley to the watershed,
Thro' the heather and the weather and the dawn overhead.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheepdogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

One Flew Over.

Bad Egg.

I don't want to hate you
it would be too easy
and if it wasn't you
it would be someone else

There is always someone
a Cuckoo of hatred
laying it's egg
in someone else's heart

Hatching and thriving
demanding and greedy
evicting nobler emotions
from their birthplace

I don't want to hate you
it would be too easy
and that is why
it's so difficult not to.

Stevie Smith.