Category: Blog

Two recent Facebook posts and a movie have punched me gently but firmly in the middle of my abdomen, where my conscience lives.

Post one: a shocking picture of a young gay woman, face streaming with blood. She had been randomly attacked by a stranger. The comments, naturally, full of outrage.

Post two: two graphics of a man and a woman having an argument. In the first, there is insult and conflict. In the second, she wears a fake moustache and his response is to smile.

Both were posted by the same person, a beautiful friend.

I wrote this comment on the second post:

“Contrast this with the unprovoked attack on the lesbian woman above. Ironies and a feeling of dis – ease. Maybe there’s a difference in challenge and aggression when it’s between relatively intelligent people seeking a resolution? As opposed to attack by a moron. As a teacher of martial arts for many years I try to teach non-violence and psychological self- defence as well as powerful resistance to violence where essential. These two posts (attack on lesbian and conflict resolution via humour here) contrast two responses to aggression: in the first, the woman could not have stopped the attack with a false moustache. I apologise for this, but frankly if I saw her on the street in that state, once I made sure she was ok my instinct would be to set forth after her attackers with every intention of beating the shit out of them. Not appropriate for one who follows Karate-do! Or Bushido!“

Once I did just that. But that’s another story which will be fictionalised in Cassie’s Game, the TV Series I’m working on. I was young. Stupid.

I’m much more sensible now. I tell my pupils there are three levels of threat: light, medium or heavy. For light threat pull away, laugh, make a joke. If it ramps up, say “If you hit me I’ll tell my mommy! And she’ll cry! And it will be your fault!” Or, say sorry, at fault or not. Then, if it moves to level 3 and you can’t run away or yell for help, hurt the bastard hard, fast and sudden. THEN walk away and get help.

Clearly in the first case none of these strategies would have worked. Owen Jones had the same experience: nutters erupting from the cage of their own prejudices and lashing out. The only thing this woman can do is to hope there were witnesses or CCTV and get the law to do its job. In Owen Jones’ case the attackers were caught, prosecuted and will be sentenced this week.

But it was the movie which made me utterly sick of, repulsed to my depths by the stupidity of people I once admired far too much. Yes, I know – the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Pogroms, the persecutions, attacks, random killings with which we humans have scarred our history. And which are all the proof I need there is no god. But in a way my response to these has been intellectualised disgust, and after all they are none of them personal.

The Japanese invasion of China. Nanking. There they were, my heroes. The Japanese soldiers, their katanas swinging at their sides. Invading an innocent nation. Their strategies: terror, rape, murder. This people with their spirituality, their Warrior Code, their art and poetry. Sure the Germans were as bad or worse! But they weren’t carrying katanas.

Since I started Karate in 1976 with the godlike Sensei Enoeda, I had revered the Japanese. Enoeda was the ultimate gentleman. Humorous, wise, and a superb instructor in the art of causing corporeal destruction to an enemy. But he did it with the Dojo Kun, a set of precepts we had to recite at the end of every lesson, ways of thinking and being developed by Funakoshi, the founder of modern Karate.

The English translation goes as follows: “Exert oneself in the perfection of character; Be faithful and sincere; Cultivate the spirit of Perseverance; Respect propriety; Refrain from impetuous and violent behaviour“.

Great principles to live by, and since then I always have adhered to the letter and the spirit as best I can.

But that movie!

…anyone want to buy a katana? Used…..

There are 91 at present awaiting approval. Wtf! How am I to know which are real and which are bogus nonsense from bots and other web-crawling pondlife? With Viagra or stadium lighting to sell or looking for an opening for a hack, a virus, a trojan? Or even with nice websites I would enjoy even though they don’t read my blogs?

Safest strategy: just delete all. So if you’re a real person who reads my blogs and wants to make a genuine connection with the content, or with me – and I haven’t posted or responded to your heartfelt comment, I apologise. If you engage with the content I’m more likely to engage with you ok?

To the time wasters: send as much nonsense as you like, it goes straight to the Spam folder. Last time I posted a blog about this ghastly phenomenon I was suddenly overwhelmed with a huge increase in the spam volume. Maybe the bots have a sense of humour?

To my dearly beloved readers: Hi. I hope you are well, certainly better than I am at the moment. Yesterday I had a flying lesson over the handlebars of my bike – my scarf had wound itself around the front wheel and I almost did an Isadora Duncan (if you’re too lazy to google her, she was a very famous dancer in the 20’s killed when her scarf wound itself around a wheel of a sports car) – although flipping up in the air outside Sainsbury’s is just not even remotely romantic.

The damage was to nose and forehead, which made stunning acquaintance with the sidewalk and bled all over the place. A wonderful New Zealander called Matt I think (works locally. Good chap) checked me out and sent me home.

So now I have to go into a school and do a Thingy. With a great blob of scab in the middle of the nose and a bruise on the forehead. “Hey Sir, you’ve got a squashed cockroach on your nose!” “Yeh kiddo, want one?” would not be an appropriate response.

Ok I’m off.

Love you all. Even the spammers.

Finally I read Voltaire’s Candide! What a splendid farrago of nonsense woven apparently drunkenly or high on something more exotic, around a profound philosophical debate between optimism and pessimism. The characters of Pangloss the eternal optimist “everything is for the best “ and Martin “I am a Manichean and believe in the battle between good and evil” in contention for the soul of our naive hero Candide whose adventures in pursuit of  his adored Ms Cunegrund take him all over the world.

How long have I been Candide! Chasing all over the world in pursuit of a chimera, a ghost, a soul.

So these are the possibilities:

Theory 1: All is for the best!

Ultimately there is a Supreme Being who has it all planned, to the extent that the actions interactions and reactions of us humans are someway important and leading somewhere. This is the view of evolution that says fine, there is a direction and a destination. Much as individuals may suffer sometimes the journey is toward perfection

Maybe we are destined to abandon our bodies in favour of what we are now calling AI, Artificial Intelligence, which we will ultimately call Us. When we are no longer organic – or analogue – we become digital. As digital beings we can travel easily to the stars snd colonise the universe. My sympathies, universe!

Theory 2: It’s a shitshow!

… a mishmash, a mess. We humans came about as a result of a series of 99.9% impossible events. . Well, it took a very long time, 4 billion years or so, which does make this theory believable. After all, if there was some kind of god or purpose to it all, wouldn’t he/she/it have put this together in half the time? And so what has emerged is a smattering of versions of human, generally divided into 2 tribes: us, and them. Of course They refer to themselves as Us. And us as Them.

This goes further.  Here are the characteristics of Us:
Right
And Them:
Wrong
Also. Us:
Good
Them: 
Evil
Manichean, eh?

So, which is right? 1 or 2? Poor Candide who had to travel the world tried so hard to work it out. And in the end, decided that it was entirely irrelevant.

3. Cultivate your Garden!

Ultimately Candide finds his beloved and she’s ugly! Dried up, fat. Yes she becomes good at making pastry and the others of his party all find skills and occupations which please them. But committed to marrying her, he settles down to a life of cultivating his garden.

I have no garden, although I look down on one from my first floor window. I can watch the neighbour, shirt off in the globally-warmed evening, chopping snipping digging and shovelling, while my news sources burn with approaching doom. (Although let it be said I have the privilege of staying sometimes in the Shropshire Hills where my putative other family have a lovely garden. Above, some of the produce thereof.)

A Conclusion of Sorts

And so, I prefer to quietly determinedly and studiously cultivate the wider garden. Message: skip this part if you don’t like messages! Because it’s about the fact that our world garden is under terrifying threats: Climate Change, pollution, war, stupidity.

So my way is to work with those who really care and want to defend our garden, whether they are believers in Theory 1 or Theory 2. Because, dears, it really doesn’t matter who is right. What matters is who takes care of the garden.

Love to you all….

How Jeremy Clarkson makes a fool of himself and his readers!

It’s not just about Greta. Look, we have all been highly impressed by the fact that a sixteen-year old Swedish girl felt so strongly about the Climate Crisis that she decided to make a stand. And her voice has been heard all around the world, she has addressed the United Nations, she has made a plea for the future. You know all this.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-to-world-leaders-how-dare-you-you-have-stolen-my-dreams-and-my-childhood-video

But type Greta Thunberg into Google, as I have just done, and you will see several horrible right-wing Denier reactions. We are facing the massed ranks of Big Oil’s paid Deniers. All the polluters have a vested interest in continuing to make massive profits, which means they have a vested interest in destroying the climate. And all life on Earth, as most scientists agree. And so the real nastiness in some segments of society comes out. The violent, dangerous extreme right wing identify the fight against Climate Change as somehow a liberal, globalist, Soros-funded battle. For example, a Denier has made a graphic of Greta as a puppet, being manipulated by a Soros-like figure. In the Daily Mail, you can read about Jeremy Clarkson calling Greta a “spoiled brat”. I will not copy the link for you, I don’t want to promote this idiot. Or the Daily Mail.

Mind you, Metro picked up on it and I don’t mind mentioning them. In the Metro Report Clarkson says “…..the  planet is heating up and something needs to be done before we are all faced with an ‘unimaginable refugee crisis’, the 16-year-old should perhaps ‘get back to school as quickly as possible and work hard in your science lectures’. ‘Because science is what will solve the problem eventually. Not scowling and having screaming ab-dabs every five minutes. Many thousands of people who you had the temerity to blame this week are trying to do exactly what you want,’ he concluded. ‘So be a good girl, shut up and let them get on with it.’”

Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/28/jeremy-clarkson-brands-greta-thunberg-spoilt-brat-shut-get-back-school-10823793/?ito=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/ Engage!

The fool. So he, unaware of the science, unlike Greta, he thinks the biggest problem likely to be caused by the Climate Crisis is an increase in refugees. Direct appeal, therefore, to right wing racist paranoia. He doesn’t appear to care about flooding, forest fires, tornadoes, possibly millions of deaths. Could his contempt for this person trying to keep our planet habitable be anything to do with his addiction to gas guzzling?

Read the appalling ignorant responses to the Clarkson Defect in the Sun.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10022396/greta-thunberg-meltdown-wont-help-world/

Stuff like this:

Do Deniers have children? Grandchildren?

Am I suggesting that Clarkson is in the pay of Exxon Mobil or others with a vested interest in planet destruction? Hell no.  But when you remember that his fame and income are derived from promoting gas guzzling vehicles, no-one can deny that he has a vested interest in undermining any attempts to limit the use of petrol, oil or diesel.

Hints on How to Deal with Deniers Online

Here’s the Elkon kit for Denier- disposal. ALWAYS challenge! For the sake of people reading the interchange, who may be on the fence.

1. Ask who pays them – make the point that most deniers online are paid by Big Oil or Big other Polluter OR are being fooled/conned by them;
2. Mention “Children” and “grandchildren” and ask if they have any, and say “they will never forgive you”
3. Use “science” in your reply
4. Then block them.

Declaring an Interest

Here I must confess that I own a gas-guzzling petrol-driven vehicle. The engine is 1.6 litre. Shame on me! But in my defence, I hardly ever use it. Caroline Russell, of the Green Party in the London Assembly, said in a meeting we had with her “KEEP your gas guzzler for now. We don’t yet understand the impact battery vehicles have on the environment – their manufacture, sourcing the raw materials, using the power from the grid, recycling when they die. Just don’t use it!” So, hello to buses, trains, my beloved bicycle. I have been a petrolhead (shame on me) for years! But I have reformed, step-by step. First, I sold my Alfa Spyder and bought a BMW 1 series – Diesel, because I was told that would be better for the Environment, like so many others. Then, when I heard the dreadful news about particulates caused by Diesel, I sold that and bought a 1.6 Peugeot with good fuel economy.

So a gradual improvement. There’s a way to go! Like so many others, I cut down on my carbon footprint a little every day.

But that’s Not Enough!

We face a Climate Crisis. A few years ago, I joined the Green Party. A merry band of like-minded warriors. To my surprise, while there are certainly a few tree-huggers and scandals and socks wearers, the profile of the Greens is changing radically. Now that their message – the message they have been promoting for almost 50 years – has become mainstream, they are gradually becoming the Political Wing of XR – Extinction Rebellion.

Proof that the GPs message has become mainstream is that all the other parties are assiduously putting on Green clothes. The Tories, with their utterly insincere commitment to “Carbon Neutral by 2050”; Labour, with their determination to beat the Tories at everything except cricket, “Carbon Neutral by 2030”. The LibDems “Carbon Neutral by any date you bloody want as long as you vote for us”. And the Brexit Party “Soros!”

And so I am standing for the Local Council by-election in Heston West. The by-election hasn’t been declared yet, so you heard it here first. Sadly the Councillor died recently so there is a vacancy. As a result of Green Party pressure, Hounslow Council has declared a Climate Emergency and they are developing a plan to tackle it. What’s needed is some Green Councillors to keep their nose to the grindstone and prevent backsliding.

So much to say on all that, but I’ll reserve it for next week’s blog.

Stay sane! Remember I love you.