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Fox Hunting by Bus in Search of Nirvana

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

On the pavement outside Kwikfit, two of the monks from the Buddhist Temple on Kingsbury Road, resplendent in smouldering saffron and crimson, but simultanously down to earth in grey woolly socks and hats (a sartorial middle way) walk past. One of them has his nose in a leaflet about life insurance, which he might well have need of if he doesn’t look up before he gets to the edge of the pavement.

When waiting for the 324 bus outside Brent Cross, there is always a steady stream of 112 buses heading for the headily named Tally Ho Corner in North Finchley. To give the bus a bit of panache the destination board on the front reads FINCHLEY Tally Ho! as if grinding up Ballards Lane from one bit of nondescript bit of suburbia to another had all the dash of a hunt of sherried up hoorays jumping their horses pell mell over hedges, and hurtling through the countryside in full tilt pursuit of the foxes that now slink around our bins at night – probably at Tally Ho corner too. The arrival must be an anticlimax, but that exclamation mark gives the journey a bit of imaginary zip. In the same way that there is a suburb of Polokwane in South Africa that is called Nirvana. I don’t suppose its all that, but having it as a destination on the front of a bus…wonderful! Saves all that reincarnation.

That time of Year #1. The Nativity with no baby.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

In the midst of the great Temple of Mammon that is Brent Cross Shopping Centre, a not quite life size Nativity scene is installed on the first floor. It looks normal enough until you notice that, in the midst of the manger, where the Christ baby should be, there is a void.

As a result the hand and face gestures that should express awe and wonder are more akin to shock and bewilderment, puzzlement or even irritation. Where’s that baby gone? He was here a minute ago?

The Gold and Frankincense seems to have arrived with two of the Three Magi, but there’s no Myrrh for the third. Its obviously a result of something prosaic – some of the parts haven’t been delivered perhaps.

Nevertheless, it comes across almost as a statement of doubt. The absence at the heart of doctrine. Faith without object. Or perhaps as a practical joke, or a Shopping Mall Treasure Hunt – find the missing Son of God and win a Waitrose voucher (bonus points for the missing Myrrh).

A small dog strains on his lead to sniff through the barrier at one of the plastic sheep, trying to work it out.

Labour’s Climate Strategy – strengths and weaknesses.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

This was an introduction given at the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group’s energy strategy day. Afterthoughts and updates, like the next few paragraphs, have been added in bold.

This introduction was delivered before Keir Starmer’s speech at COP 29, which made the very welcome pledge of an 81% cut in carbon emissions by 2035, but also included the promise that the government would not “tell people how to live their lives”.

This makes the way we live now somehow sacrosanct- and assumes that “people” are incapable of rising to the challenge of changing it if thats whats needed to secure a livable world for their children and grandchildren. It also ducks the government’s responsibility to implement Article 12 of the Paris Agreement which is a call for mass popular information, education and mobilisation campaigns, to enable society to act collectively to save itself.

Parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change
education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information,
recognizing the importance of these steps with respect to enhancing actions under this
Agreement.

As 66% of the public want more action to combat climate change, we should be mobilised to do so. We will have to get to sustainability by marching forward on both the technological transformation leg and the social transformation leg. We won’t get there if we have to hop hopefully on just one of them.

Labour’s strengths and weaknesses

I’d like to stress that there are a range of views in the Greener Jobs Alliance, and these are mine.

To start with a statement of the obvious, it doesn’t look as though the government sees itself as an instrument to mobilise society to transform itself to sustainability.

They treat the climate crisis as an item on a list – limited to a mission to make the UK a “Green Energy Superpower” – not the framework in which everything else has to be posed.

That leaves huge gaps. Some examples.

1.The current curriculum review for schools does not explicitly have addressing the climate crisis at the heart of it, although the current Ministerial team are open to a discussion about it in a way that the last was not.

2.A climate conscious budget would, as a minimum,

i) have raised fuel duty and hypothecated the revenue to keep the £2 bus fare cap and invested the rest in enhanced public transport.

ii) raised a wealth tax on incomes above £10 million per annum, as suggested by Greenpeace – to raise £130 billion over 5 years (1% of GDP) which, they argue, would raise the revenue to cover insulating 19 million homes, cap bus fares outside London at £1.65, and free for under 25s, fund an unlimited rail ticket for £49, provide retraining for the 3.2 million workers at risk in high carbon industries and shift agriculture onto an agro- ecological basis.

That might be optimistic, but its that scale of ambition thats needed, along with a relentless explanation of why its necessary as a national and international mission.

And to play fantasy Chancellor a little longer, a recommitment to the £28 billion a year future proofing investment with a plan for every sector that works with the relevant unions to develop it and identify the skills gaps that have to be filled. This applies to expanding sectors as well as high carbon sectors that will have to shrink.

Reeves and Starmer’s overall strategy is for “growth” – any growth – conceived in completely traditional terms, not framed as transformation. This can sometimes even be framed in a way that undermines the government’s own targets -as expressed in the recent Sun article under Starmer’s name headlined – “I will never sacrifice Great British Industry to the drum beating, finger wagging Net Zero Zealots”.

I guess that’s us. Perhaps we should all get badges.

Also, I don’t know if its just me, but does all this “Great British this, Great British that” have a really early Victorian feel to it?

3. This can also be seen in housing. The challenge is to build 1.5 million new homes a year. The GJA wrote to Angela Rayner in October last year whether all new homes would be

i) built to a zero carbon standard, with a sound level of insulation, heat pumps, electric cookers and hubs, solar panels as standard and no connection to the gas grid (as this would be a wasted investment).

ii) with all essential facilities within walking distance, integrated green spaces and trees, good public transport links and car clubs to reduce the burden of individual car ownership.

iii) zero impact assessments on water tables and sewage and other questions including who will build them? Arguing that there needs to be a plan to expand Local Authority Direct Labour Organisations with a link to local FE colleges to skill up the new workers we will need to do it

iv) And, crucially, the last question. If the aim is to use existing developers, how will you prevent them from blackmailing the government to water down standards to enable them to squeeze in more units, cut the proportion of social housing, sit on land banks and refuse to develop them, or claim that necessary environmental standards impact on their profits too much?

We didn’t get a reply, but there are indications that they could let developers rip through reducing planning restrictions even on the water table and sewage – which is quite extraordinary, given the massive concern about sewage in our rivers – and there are signs of a retreat on a solar panel default after push back from the industry which shows where the battle is. New rules ensuring that no new homes are connected to the gas grid are, however, scheduled to come into force by 2027 and implemented from 2028. The key question now is how stringent the environmental standards for new builds will be and not allowing the developers to kick the costs of meeting them onto households.

All this poses a question for the trade union approach to Just Transition. At the moment, the new TUC Worker Led Transition Team is focussed on enabling a transition in threatened high carbon sectors – cars, cement, steel etc – which is vital and important work, but we also need campaigns for employment that doesn’t currently exist. Construction and retrofit are probably the most promising sector for this.

The TUC WLT have been working since May and you can read about them and find their contact details in the latest Greener Jobs Alliance Newsletter.

Just Transition doesn’t have to mean like for like jobs. I saw in Edie this week that there’s a skills gap for 50% of the jobs projected as “green” by 2030 – which indicates a huge demand and potential, but also a risk if that gap isn’t filled.

4. This also applies to Foreign Policy. David Lammy made a speech in September stating that the government would put climate change at the heart of UK foriegn policy.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if it did?

For him this had three components.

i) A “clean power alliance” to scale up finance for “clean power” in the Global South.

ii) Measures to unlock global finance to “leapfrog fossil fuels” there.

iii) Implementation of the 30 by 30 agreement (safeguarding 30% of land and oceans by 2030).

The problems with this are that the UK went to the recent Nature COP without a plan for 30/30. “Clean power” is sometimes used as a synonym for “green power” but it is also often used, especially in the US, as a specific description for the cluster of technologies being posed as an alternative to renewables; nuclear, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage.

Most crucially, unlocking finance does not mean increasing aid levels – which are still at 0.5% of GDP, with no plans even to get back up to 0.7%.

What Lammy means is trying to find investment opportunities for the City of London/UK finance sector. For this to work it would have to be profitable for them, as banks follow the money; which is why they have invested twenty times as much in carbon bombs as the Global South has received in climate finance since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

So this is a bit greenwashy, especially as the actual heart of UK Foreign policy is not prioritising fighting the climate crisis, but its strategic subordination to the United States; expressed this week by Starmer “looking forward” to working with Trump “in defence of our shared values” – even as Trump is poised to exit the Paris Agreement and trash all domestic environment protection measures and even the bodies that monitor them.

The question posed by this is the extent to which the government will adapt to US pressure; particularly as this is finding expression here in the alignment of every political force from the Tories rightwards on opposition to “the madness of Net Zero” or the “costs of Net Zero” as they put it. The use of these phrases is now ubiquitous and serves to associate “Net Zero” with “madness“ in people’s minds – pushed as it is by “eco zealots” and therefore by definition unreasonable – without the inconvenience of having to make an argument to justify the association; which they have to do because both are the opposite of the truth. The only thing mad about Net Zero is not reaching it in time, the costs of not getting there are enormous and, indeed, fatal.

As will be the end result of the increased military spending that they falsely pose as keeping us “safe”.

One aspect of US pressure is to sharply increase and prioritise military spending. Starmer is due to announce a schedule for the UK to increase its military spending to 2.5% of GDP straight after Trump’s inauguration, which will do little to appease him when he’s pushing for an eye watering 4%. This is dangerous in itself, but also sucks resources away from investing in transition and/or improving people’s lives; thereby deepening the cost of living crisis and the risk of war.

This is in the context of some EU leaders going to Trump, according to the FT, and suggesting “lets avoid a tariff war and team up against China”; thereby proposing to form a bloc with a climate rogue state against the world’s largest investor in renewable energy.

At the same time they are relaxing their formerly sacred fiscal rules to allow stepped up investment in military production and military focussed infrastructure investment, like strengthening bridges “so tanks can pass in safety” – to prepare for a continental war with Russia which, were it to happen, would kill us all. It is an explicit presumption of the current UK Defence Review that we are in ” a pre war period” with Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, or all four. This is suicidal lunacy and we don’t have to accept it.

In the context of Trump expecting these ruinous increases in military spending from all US subordinate allies, a better course for all of them is to seek peace and mutual security with the targetted countries. In Europe, that means finding a modus vivendi with the Russians that would allow a lasting peace in Ukraine – not just a pause while both sides feel they have to tool up for Armageddon – and a reduction in tensions and barriers across the whole of Eurasia.

5) Lastly, on the “Green Energy Superpower” project, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is

i) the unblocking of onshore wind and solar farms,

ii) the 2.5 times increase in offshore wind in this years Contracts for Difference auction – though this needs to double again next year and stay at that level to meet the 2030 target

iii) getting a fast feasibility study done from NEOS that its possible to get the grid in shape to take on all the new renewable energy sources – and finding that this would cut people’s bills

iv) moving zombie projects out of the planning system so those most ready can go first

…all this is positive and means there will be a substantial increase in renewable energy by 2030.

But,

i) The investment in CCUS and blue hydrogen announced last month is a misallocation of funds that could have more of a climate impact and create more jobs elsewhere.

ii) The failure to maintain the original plan for retrofit means that demand and emissions will be higher than they need to be.

iii) As does the insufficient focus on sustainable transport and the continued low funding for local authorities that makes most local climate action plans well intentioned and doing some good things – from bee corridors to LTNs and cycle paths, public EV charging points, officially approved guerilla gardening, school streets programmes and so on, but not resourced enough to qualitatively impact neighbourhoods.

Above all, and overarching, this is the lack of just transition bodies with mass participation at national. regional and local levels because, if I can misquote Lenin, Sustainability = electrification plus Just Transition Commissions.

What’s wrong with the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign model motion for NEU Conference.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

If this Motion were to be marked as a History essay, it would be unlikely to get high marks for balanced or objective judgement.

More important, it is a motion to pursue the war not to end it. 

All of the horrific consequences of the war, which it simplistically, ascribes to one side in the same way that our self serving media do, are arguments to end it as rapidly as possible, not cheer it on, particularly given the dangers of nuclear escalation. 

Whatever views members have about the causes of the war, we can surely unite in wanting it to end.

Most people do.

1 A Majority of people in Ukraine now support negotiations to end the war. “More than half of Ukrainians polled by Gallup (52%) agree that: “Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible”, while only 38% want the country to “continue fighting until it wins the war”. This is a remarkable shift compared to a year ago, when 63% wanted to continue fighting and 27% were in favour of negotiations.” From The Conversation. The motion supports the minority view in Ukraine.

2 Majorities in Poland and Italy (both 55%) support a negotiated settlement over supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes to restore the 1991 borders. Almost twice as many also support negotiations over those who argue for fighting on in Germany (45% -28%) and France (43% – 23%) twice as many in Spain (46% -23%) even more than that in Italy (55% – 15%). Even in the UK, with its stifling pro-war consensus in Parliament and media, support for negotiations is now almost level pegging with support for fighting on (32% -36%). The trend in all countries is towards negotiation not endless war. By the time of NEU conference at Easter, on current trends, there will be a majority for negotiations here too. This is partly because only one in ten Europeans now believe that Ukraine can “win”; or that to do so would require an economically, militarily and humanly unsustainable level of military escalation; including crossing nuclear red lines.

3 Supporters of the motion should be asked if they support the £3 billion a year from the UK, “as long as it takes”, and the sharp increases in military spending now being posed as needed to counter the Russians, if not now, then in a suicidal land war in Europe within the decade. Trump is demanding 5%. Neil Kinnock says 4% would be “reasonable”. Kim Darroch says “more than 3%” would be needed. 5% of GDP on “defence” in the UK would require an additional £60 -70 billion a year. This cannot be done without cuts in every other area. Mark Rutte, of NATO, suggests this could come from “health and pensions”, but we can be sure that everything else, including schools – with 76% of primary schools and 94% of secondary schools already being threatened with cuts this year, even before this starts – and investment in climate transition, would be in the firing line too.

This infographic shows the comparative existing balance of military spending between NATO and the Russian Federation. For every £1 spent by the Russians, NATO spends £11. Even the European NATO powers outspend them by a ratio of £7 for every £1. Proposals to double that can’t realistically be described as “defensive”. We should not support it.

The USC Motion point by point.

  1. Self determination has to apply to all peoples in Ukraine, including the large Russian speaking minority in the East of the country and Crimea. The USC position is based on the delusion that there is one united Ukrainian people, which writes the Russians in the East of the country out of history as if they don’t exist and never have. They did, do, and have been asserting their independence since 2014. Any position on the war that does not recognise this is a denial of reality and principle.
  2. and 3. All children deserve a peaceful education on both sides of the front line. Hopefully we can all agree on that. The USC does not acknowledge that the Donbass has been shelled daily since 2014. Schools and colleges have been hit. Children have been killed. Their lives matter as much as those in the West.

Faina Savenkova in the ruins of school №7 in Lugansk. It was not a warehouse or a military facility. Ordinary children studied in this school. But Ukraine destroyed it during its shelling of the city in 2014.

4. Calling for “Russia” to withdraw from “Ukrainian territory” does not recognise the unresolved national question in Ukraine and, as a result, is a call for the Russian speaking population of the Donbass and Crimea to become refugees en masse. Ukrainian military intelligence is quite clear that the people in these areas have “a completely different mindset” (Kyrillo Budanov, head of Ukranian Military Intelligence) requiring wholesale reeducation and anyone “with blood on their hands” would have to be “physically eliminated” (Budanov again). This could well mean all 55,000 members of the Donbass Militia. Hopefully, we can all oppose that.

5. This point is a cover for NATO to step up the war. When funding, munitions, weaponry, special forces and special advisers, “volunteers”, military technicians and satellite data are core to the war effort this makes it clear that this is not support for Ukraine from NATO, it is the Ukrainian government sacrificing its people on behalf of NATO. A neat formula expressing this relationship is President Zelensky’s comment that his aim is to build “a big Israel in Eastern Europe” – that’s to say, a powerful, technically proficient, military frontier state for the US, guaranteeing its interests in “a bad neighbourhood”. The price being paid by the Ukrainian working class for this ambition is appalling.  The fulfillment of this ambition would not be a good development for the working class in Ukraine, or anywhere else.

6. At the moment the Russians are still able to grow their army with volunteers. By contrast, the early surge of volunteers in Ukraine has long subsided and there is now forced conscription with press gangs roaming the streets widespread draft resistance – with films of men being dragged off the streets into military minibuses and putting up a hell of a fight to stay free. In the Autumn there were demonstrations of relatives demanding to know the whereabouts of their sons, brothers, husbands who have disappeared at the front. UAF losses have been horrific, particularly since the start of the Kursk offensive. As a result, Western “supporters” of Ukraine like Senator Lindsay Graham, have been calling for conscription to be extended down from 27 to 18 years old to supply more bodies to feed into the war. President Zelensky has been resisting this so far, for the same reason that the call up age was so high in the first place. With a steep demographic decline since the break up of the USSR, resulting from a low birth rate combined with high emigration, the number of men in their twenties is about half that of men in their forties; so national survival depends to a large degree on not letting them get killed in large numbers. Hopefully we can all oppose that.

7. In the event of peace, the “Western backers” will call their loans in and asset strip the country and no one should have any delusions about that. Having sacrificed their sons for the West, the Ukrainian people will have their resources annexed by it for the privilege.

i) Opposing the Russian intervention without considering what came before is like opposing October 7th without considering 70 years of Israeli occupation. There had been a civil war in Ukraine since 2014, when the overthrow of an elected Russian leaning President by a mass movement in the West of the country, – supported organisationally and politically by the US and EU – led to a rebellion by people in Crimea, the South and the East of the country by Russian speakers who objected to the overthrow of a government they had voted for. This was crushed in Odessa, led to direct Russian intervention and annexation in Crimea and to a war in the Donbass, after the new government in Kyiv sent in the army and strafed Donetsk city with helicopter gunships. This war cost 14,000 lives up to 2022, mostly on the Donbass side of the front line.

Attempts to resolve this war through an agreement (at Minsk) to allow autonomy within Ukraine for the Donbass Republics were conceded by Angela Merkel to be an attempt to “buy time” while NATO trained up the Ukrainian Armed Forces so they’d be strong enough to retake the Donbass by force. At this point, the Russian stance was for the Minsk agreement to be implemented. They didn’t even recognise the Donbass Republics. This came to a head in the Winter of 2021 -22 when the formal process of starting Ukraine’s application to join NATO began.

The Russians had made it clear at least since the US backed Orange Revolution of 2004 -5 (hard to deny that this was a colour revolution, since the name is on the tin) that Ukraine being in NATO was as much of an existential threat to them as the US had seen Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962. At that point the US had been prepared to risk nuclear war to get them out. The Russians were saying consistently that this was a similar red line for them. So, in the winter of 2021 -2 they put forward a mutual security treaty as a way to avoid the clash that, without it, they conceived was inevitable, if not now, then later when Ukraine was fully integrated and NATO felt able to chance its arm. NATOs refused even to negotiate on this, either because they thought the Russians were bluffing, or that if they weren’t the sanctions they had up their sleeve would be enough to bring them to their knees in short order. They were wrong about both. But, either way, an alliance interested in peace would have negotiated.

Deliberately pushing across the red lines of a nuclear armed state warning of an existential crisis for it is a level of reckless brinkmanship that puts us all at risk and our movement should be challenging that not supporting it.

ii) See point 2 above.

iii) and iv) All civilian deaths on both sides of the line are to be deplored, as are war crimes committed by soldiers of either side. Trying to present only one side as culpable of this, as this motion does, is reminiscent of editions of John Bull in 1915 banging the drum for recruitment in WW1 on stories of “German beastliness”, and it is dangerously similar to the far-right framing of the Azov battalion (or Benjamin Netanyahu) who see themselves in a struggle for Western civilisation against hordes of eastern Untermensch. In Vietnam, the US forces referred to the Vietnamese as “Gooks”. In Ukraine they refer to the Russians as “Orcs”. There is a continuity in this with the Ukrainian nationalists from WW2 led by Stepan Bandera, who are now celebrated in Kyiv, who fought with and for the Nazis, recruited guards for the concentration camps and massacred Polish villagers.  The longer the war goes on, the more atrocities there will be.

v) The environmental damage is done by the war itself, not just by one side in it. Some of the most productive agricultural fields in the world are mined by both sides. The Nordstream gas pipeline was blown up by the US . The Zaporozhe nuclear power station was shelled by the Ukrainians for months, as was the Kakhovka dam. All these are good reasons for the war to end, not be pursued.

vi) It is the war and resulting sanctions that is disrupting the supply of food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine to the rest of the world. Another reason to end it.

vii) What the USC describe as “Russian occupied areas” are Russian speaking areas that rebelled against Ukrainian nationalism in 2014 and are now part of the Russian Federation; so it is entirely logical that schools there follow the Russian curriculum, not that of the state they rebelled agsinst.

viii)  Evacuating children in orphanages and children’s homes from war zones is a necessary precaution to keep them safe. Perhaps the USC thinks it would have been better had the Russians left them in the firing line?

  1. Supporting the trade unions that support the oligarchy that support the war is in contradiction to
  2. supporting campaigns for working class interests, which requires the workers movement not to subordinate itself to its own oligarchy.
  3. 1.2 million of the refugees from the war fled to Russia – which is more than any other single country.
  4. Dissidents are also arrested in Ukraine, some have been murdered.
  5. All refugees should be treated with respect and care wherever they come from and whatever the reason.

The instructions for the Executive do not support a campaign to end the war and the suffering attendant on it. 

All the links they propose are with organisations in the West of Ukraine that support the continuation of the war, and therefore the sacrifice and suppression of the working class. We should reach out to teachers in the Donbass too and should campaign for a ceasefire and peace talks without preconditions.

The NEU already has guidance for supporting refugee children that we should be pressing employers to use for all refugee children.

Photos of children killed in the Donbass by Ukrainian shelling from 2014 onwards on display on the Arbat in Moscow. There are more than 300 of them. Photo Dan Kovalic

A finger of hot schrapnel

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

One afternoon in 1940, before he was evacuated, my dad, his parents and their neighbours were drawn outside their house in Ireton Place in Grays by the shattering percussion of the Hogg Lane Anti Aircraft battery opening up at Luftwaffe bombers heading upriver towards London. Everyone stood in their front gardens and looked anxiously upwards.

The aircraft could not been seen because of low cloud. Bursts of flak puffed amidst it.

The anti-aircraft battery was loud. It was barely a quarter of a mile away at the crown of the Hogg Lane hill, just beyond Wallace Road, the other side of the thin end of the Titan pit and the allotment. Being on the top of the hill, it had a command over the Thames flood plain below. Navigating by eye, Luftwaffe pilots found the Thames a useful routemap up to London, but had to run the gauntlet of dozens of Ak Ak batteries on the way. This map just shows the heavy batteries. Regular batteries like the Hogg Lane one are not marked.

These are Vickers 3.7 inch anti aircraft guns – the main calibre used in the UK during WW2 – about the same as the more well known German 88 mm gun. It could fire a 13 Kg shell up to 9 kilometres high at a velocity of 800 -1000 metres per second at a rate of 10 – 20 rounds per minute (one every 3 to 6 seconds). This is not a photo of the Hogg Lane site but looks similar, with, from memory, four concrete bases in a kind of four petal shape to make a firm platform for each gun, with a concrete bunker in the middle to store ammunition. This was abandoned at the end of the war and was used to play on by successive generations of children – “let’s play over the army barracks” – until the landscape was obliterated by the Chafford Hundred development in the late eighties. Photo Wikipedia

These guns didn’t often hit anything, but it was devastating when they did. At around this time a Junkers 88 was hit flying at 30,000 feet over Purfleet, disintegrating the plane and killing the whole crew of seven. The youngest member of it was 19, the oldest 26.

Standing outside during an air raid is never a good idea. A friend who grew up in Mumbai told me that during the 1967 Indo Pakistan war – the second one over Kashmir – people would initially go up on their roofs to look at the show when the Pakistan Air Force made raids – and many were killed or injured from falling schrapnel – so that was a short lived diversion.

It surprises me that my grandad’s curiosity got the better of the ingrained caution built into surviving almost three years as a teenage soldier on the Western Front. At one point his regiment was redeployed to Ireland, so perhaps I owe his survival, and my existence, to the IRA, whose insurgency got him out of the trenches for a while.

My family and their neighbours were luckier than the people hit by schrapnel in Mumbai.

There was a “ping” as something hit the roof and a piece of metal bounced off onto the garden. A warning in a way. It was about the size of a fat finger, smooth on one side but visciously jagged on the other. Hot too. As no aircraft were hit by the bombardment, the shell fragment must have been “one of ours”. My granddad picked it up and kept it as a memorial for about twenty years, wired down to a piece of hardboard to keep it safe in the glass fronted bookcase with the tiny ivory elephants and three wise monkeys he had brought back from India when deployed there in the 1920s.

John Wesley’s Twinned Toilets, and other scenes from Central London

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

On the Metropolitan Line on the way to the joint unions and climate movement rally for a just transition outside the Treasury building, a bloke gets on the tube wearing a blank expression and a black jacket with the legend “Find your own way” on the breast pocket. Its hard to tell if thats a personal philosophy, or advice.

Rising up through Westminster tube station, built at a time of intense de-industrialisation and therefore designed to look like the inside of a power station, a crocodile of kids on a school trip walk across on a higher level. They are wearing scarlet peaked hats, which are a bit MAGA, but, small as they are, they seem calmer, more mature than the people you get at Trump rallies. Odd moment at one of those recently. He complained that the teleprompter had cut out. You mean that stuff is scripted?

At the Portals of Power. Outside the Treasury building (author with Greener Jobs Alliance banner in evil looking black hat).

A lively rally outside the Treasury. A mix of Scottish trade unionists and other UNITE members, the Stop Rosebank campaign, Campaign Against Climate Change, Greener Jobs Alliance, Greenpeace and Scottish FOE. More women than men, including among the speakers. Lots of speeches and chants, people passing sometimes bemused, but a lot of honked car horns and fist pumps from drivers. A letter signed by 60 organisations calling for the government to fund a transition for North Sea Oil and Gas workers so their skills can be redeployed, handed in at the end. It would cost about a billion a year – small change given the totality of government spending and a sixth of what they are spending on maintenance on the Trident missiles they occasionally misfire into the Carribean on tests. Hopefully, when it was handed in by a delegation that included UNITE and Greenpeace representatives, someone from the Treasury was engaged in a discusion about it and was given some food for thought.

In the basement of Central Hall Westminster, the enormous HQ of the Methodist Church, they have a cafe that is a bit hidden away, named after John Wesley, founder of the Church, which a little group of us from the Greener Jobs Alliance repaired after the rally for a bit of caffeine fuelled repair and bounce ideas off each other. Its a light and airy cafe. A bit of a discovery. Good coffee. One of my comrades in Green arms was very complimentary about their bacon rolls. Its a little odd because Wesley himself was not especially fond of coffee. In his Primitive Physick, his rather austere guide to diet and exercise he notes that “Coffee and tea are extremely hurtful to persons who have weak nerves.” However, while he was not especially fond of coffee, he definitely didn’t like tea, blaming it for “Symptoms of a Paralytick Disorder” in himself and, watching people on the street, concluded that there was a lot of that about. He gave it up altogether in 1746, arguing with a friend that “You have need to abhor it as deadly Poison, and to renounce it from this very Hour.” Now they sell mugs with his face on it, but without the quote.

Although, equally oddly, he didn’t note that coffee and tea can be exteremely hurtful to persons who have weak bladders, one of the best things about the place is that they have twinned their toilets with facilities their church has built all over Africa. Every urinal has a little photo above it of a thatched shack in Zambia, or the DRC explaining where it is. They are all unique. The urinals are all the same. None of them is by Duchamp. The shacks are like the Ventilated Improved Pit toilets at Vanghani school in Limpopo, South Africa that I visited in 2005. A gigantic pit with a long drop from a basic toilet seat. The idea being that whatever goes down will be absorbed and the hole will never fill. Works very well. No need for flushing. The pictures felt like humanity and hope.

On the corner outside Westminster Hall, a bloke in his sixties is standing with a home made contraption with a message about the overuse of plastics that looks like a full size crucifix for plastic bottles, which hang from the cross bar like shot game birds. Its so large that its hard to miss. I go over and offer some encouragement and find out that he is doing it off his own bat, not attached to any campaign, just personally motivated to get a worthwhile message out there. Beats sitting at home watching Homes under the hammer I guess. I suggest it might be an idea to have a map showing nearby water fountains and he says that there aren’t any nearby, and those that do exist are often hidden away in odd corners, perhaps so they don’t get worn out by anyone using them.

Opposite him, a big blue banner and EU flag with the slogan “We’re still here because Brexit is still crap”. I think this might have been the bloke who played “Things can only get better” as an accompanyment to Rishi Sunak’s ill judged General Election announcement; one of the things contributing to Sunak’s increasingly frustrated demeanor as he talked on through the wind, talked on through the rain, and walked back into Downing Street very much alone. Perhaps “Singing in the rain” might have been better.

By the statues in Parliament Square, a tour guide rattles through his spiel to a group of teenagers with 1,000 yard stares. General Smuts is turning green behind them.

On my way back down the tube, a family of French tourists walks up the steps towards the exit. As they get half way up, the two toddlers with them, who look like illustrations by Shirley Hughes, look up and out and catch an eyefull of Big Ben at a sharp angle, framed by the humdrum surroundings of the exit and backlit by a bright blue sky, all tall, gothic, gold and glittering in the sunlight, and their eyes widen and jaws drop – “OOOOH! Wah!”

Love a bit of awe and wonder.

Starmer through the looking glass

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The hypocrisies and biases of a political stance are often revealed starkly by keeping the grammar of a statement intact but reversing its terms. The result puts whats being said, and, crucially, what isn’t, into a sharp relief.

This is very clear in Keir Starmer’s statement on the Iranian retaliation for succesive Israeli assassinations and terror attacks and their latest assault on Lebanon.

For ease of understanding I have kept in the original word in brackets.

“I utterly condemn this attempt by the Israeli (Iranian) regime to harm innocent Palestinians (Israelis), to escalate this incredibly dangerous situation, and push the region ever closer to the brink”

“It cannot be tolerated. We stand with Lebanon (Israel), and we recognise her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression. Israel (Iran) must stop these attacks”.

Israel (Iran) “has menaced the Middle East for far too long, chaos and destruction brought not just to Palestine (Israel), but to the people they live amongst in Lebanon and beyond.”

“We stand with the people of Palestine (Israel) and we recognise her right to self-defence in the face of this aggression,” adding that Britain supports “the Palestinian People’s (Israel’s) reasonable demand for the security of its people.”

Hostages and casualties – a matter of proportion.

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Travelling on the bus up Golders Green Road, the hoardings just opposite Grodzinski’s bakery (now modernised but smaller than it was) are covered with A3 posters of the Israeli hostages. 97 of them are still alive. If you were to stick pictures like this of them up alongside the road in a single line they would stretch for approximately 100 metres. About the length of three semi detached houses side by side.

As of April this year, Israel was holding 3,660 Palestinian prisoners in adminstrative detention, that’s to say without trial. Hostages by any other name. Rarely mentioned on the news. No imperative to release them. Effectively invisible. No pictures of them up on hoardings anywhere. But if you were to stick them up in a single line of A3 posters, it would stretch for about 1,220 metres. On a street of semis that would not stop at number 6, as it would with the Israelis, but at number 73.

If you were to stick up posters of the Israeli victims of the Oct 7th attack on the same street it would not get so far. About 400 metres, just to number 24. You could walk it in a couple of minutes. Doing the same for the 41,534 Palestinians killed so far in Gaza since, and you’d need a road more than ten kilometres long. Walking at an average 3mph it would take you more than two hours to get to the end.

Carer’s tales

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There are rhythms to the deployment of carers. Some arrive according to a rigid timetable set by tablets. If a certain medication has to be taken at regular intervals, with no more than a 10 or 15 minute variation, the carer has to turn up at those times.

This tends to mean that the carer who arrives is more often than not the same one. They have their regulars and a regular schedule so they can get from one client to the next on a predictable timetable. They are, of course, not paid for travel time and the pressure to get from one job to another can lead to road accidents. One we know was trying to save a second or two and crocked her car gliding into the one in front, damaging it enough for it to be out of action for a week. She was unable to get work until it was fixed because they are all dependent on cars to get from one job to the next. She now drives very carefully because the pressure isn’t worth it.

Because they travel by car, they come from quite a range of places, from Forest Gate in the West to Canvey Island in the East. One had moved from a flat off Tottenham Court Road in the heart of London down to Purfleet – because the housing is more affordable – and taken the job for the excitement; explaining that “Nothing ever happens in Purfleet”.

Pay for each visit is presumed to match the half hour or 15 minute slot that the company is paid for. This does not always match reality. If a client has a medical emergency it can take longer, so there has to be a scramble to fill the slots that are down the line. If all goes well, the routines of getting a client onto the commode, sorting all that out, getting them washed, dressed and chatted to can be done more quickly. In the case of housebound people with no family support, the last job is the only social contact and conversation they will get all day and is a crucial part of the job.

One that came to ours a few days ago said that she has a core of bedbound people who are her regulars. Somehow she has got into the habit of singing to them, and taking requests. Some of the old ladies like the Ronettes, and bands like that, but she has one old gentleman who is into heavy rock and usually wants something by Metallica – which is truly above and beyond.

Some carers are chatty, some quietly get on with things and converse functionally. Most are pretty upbeat. Most of them are women. Many are black. Most of the white ones have tattoos. There is a high turnover. A core of veterans keep things going while newcomers either adapt or, finding it too much, leave.

Some of them wear fans around their necks because, even during a heatwave, some of the clients have their heating on, and cranked up high.

None of them are in a union.

I complement one on her pair of colouful converses and she says that she loves them, has 14 pairs, but is now boycotting them because of Nike’s sponsorship and partnership deals with Israel.

Several have said they like coming to us because we are friendly and take an interest. Many of the clients have dementia, so can be terrified and aggressive. Some are racist and don’t hold back about it even though they are being looked after – possibly because they are being looked after and resent it. This is sometimes the case with relatives too.

If the family is covering meds and, to a lesser extent, food, the schedule for visits can swing quite wildly, with the getting up arrival ranging from slightly before 7am one day to well after 9am the next. During the Summer holidays schedules get stretched because carers with children have them on their hands, but as Winter approaches they also get harder to fill because its getting dark, dank and miserable and, people get ill.

Some of the overnight crews, who are always in twos and arrive in the wee small hours to give bedbound people a turn, or deal with pads, can be loud – car door slams, a conversation that would be loud for the middle of the day erupts up and down the path to the back door, a scrabble for the door lock, the door goes crunch and the loud conversation imposes itself on the living room downstairs for a while, before the whole thing repeats itself in reverse on the way out. Others arrive with the stealth of Ninjas, but greater consideration. Some of them close the side and front gates on the way out. Some let them swing in the breeze.

Aromatherapy in Thurrock, and other bits and bobs.

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Overheard in Boots.

“If she says she caught thrush from sitting on a toilet seat, she’s doing it all wrong.”

Walking down to town I am passed on the other side of the road by an elderly Irish bloke I chat to sometimes, absolutely bombing along in his mobility vehicle. He hurtles off up the sharp incline of Cromwell Road, leaving me limping behind eating his electric dust.

The trees on Cromwell Road now look almost primeval, with huge boles you couldn’t put your arms round anymore. Oak. Lime. Massive crowns hissing in the wind. At the brow of the hill there used to be a Horse Chestnut, magnificently flowered in May and the source of many a childhood conker. Now gone, diseased and rusted and eventually chainsawed, leaving a sawdust and a naked stump; and the road looking like a smile with an extracted front tooth.

Further down the hill a bloke built like a silverback gorrilla – arms like hams, big belly, a neck with one of Rusell Kane’s “Essex triple ripple” rolls of muscle – is drilling and hammering insulation panels on the outside of a house as though he is attacking it. Despite the power in his body, he carries an air of nervous truculence about him.

The street name plate by the car park outside the Tae Kwando Centre at the foot of the hill, pointing to a pair of houses evidenty constructed as an afterthought to fill in a bit of spare space overlooking the Titan pit, is a rhyming couplet. “Quarry View – Nos 1 – 2”. As mind worms go, this is the road sign equivalent of “baby shark”.

As I pass the war memorial opposite the old police station (now posh flats and renamed “The Old Courthouse”; which has a slightly Western feel about it to me) workers from the council are planting out dense blue banks of lavendar in the flower beds on either side. The waft of aromatherapy is almost overwhelming even from the other side of the road.

The vista approaching Wallace Road across “The Field”. More homely state than stately home.

In the playing field opposite the house, now glorified as “Hathaway Park”, a strikingly tall woman stands alone on the bank of grass, bright green in the sunlight, looking up towards the redbrick facades of Wallace Road – a proletarian version of the entrance to Blenheim Palace – wearing a chador from head to foot in the same celestial blue as renaissance painters used for the Virgin Mary – so a sort of Muslim Blue Nun. he is alone in a sea of green, and looks as though she has been beamed down from the heavens. It looks like a still from a film. The staginess of everyday life.

Things my Grandmother used to say.

On the News. “Not to worry, it won’t happen here”. On the “nothing ever happens in Grays” principle.

On illness. “What’s moveable’s curable”. Which, I suppose means that if you’re not dead, you can be fixed.

On the elasticity of the perception of time. “It don’t half get late early, don’t it?”