Quickies on a Sunday!

Audio book 'Silence' by Shusaku Endo-  Available on Audible.  Like Brian Moore's 'Black robe' and due (according to The Guardian's Sue Arnold) to be made into a film starring the great Daniel Day-Lewis.  A sort of hideous torture leading to spiritual conversion theme!

'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery Trans Alison Anderson Narr by the utterly brilliant Barbara Rosenblatt and Cassandra Morris on Audible.

'Perpetual Euphoria'  by Pascal Bruckner-might be worth a look.

'Alternative and Activist New Media' by Leah A Liedrouw

'Overconnected'  William H Davidow

'I shall not hate:  A Gaza Doctor's journey'  Izzeldin Abuelaish

'Solar' by Ian McEwan-Comedy from the melancholic genius-we really should check that out.

'The Ask' Sam Lypsyte  "One of the funniest and most straight-out brilliant novels of the last few years." (Nicola Barr)  Such reviewers comments always come with a warning but it does get my attention.

Who ever knew that Tim Leary wrote a novel and that it has this title?

Gareth Knight artwork from his Journal-'Quadrigal'-I like it!

A beautiful pen holder for a Moleskine notebook-The Quiver.  One of those little things that makes you think erm...that could improve my life.

Check some of this out and get back to me if they're good!
Have a great Sunday and spare a thought for the freedom fighters in the Middle East!

Success to your work!

THEMES OF A LOST LIGHTBRINGER

THEMES OF A LOST LIGHTBRINGER

First, there is the forgetting.

This allows the unfolding, the fracturing

to begin.

This forgetting that you love,

forgetting of the joy and bliss,

forgetting of life’s very precious pulse.

What is this forgetting that is everywhere?

That covers the buildings

and the waters

to the farthest stretch?

Has the Snow Queen returned

to curse us with Heart’s ice?

Then there is betrayal.

That moment of impeccable choice.

Go this way or go that way.

Follow the green man

or the beckoning finger.

Tunnel or rockface.

Path or stream.

That faint sound of voices 

murmuring on the wind

or the clamour of the marketplace.

Choices in the vital moment,

choices that return with vengeance

 of wounds and loss

on the morrow’s breaking.

Spawns deceit it does,

births a hideous monster

suckling on your soul’s dugs.

Drawing you into circles.

Making you into other shapes too.

Unknown.

Un-remembered.

Un-expected.

And then...

Discovery!

Cup breaks,

breathless in foundation

you are plucked/cursed/hidebound.

In a fucking instant

you become newly defined.

A new gestalt

out of which you totter

gracelessly.

Lurching out of Plato’s piss-washed cave

blinking like a reptile on a stage

re-membering

that something a shadow makes.

You have only one cloak to wear today,

let it be a cloak of ashes

to hide your naked despair.

Hide such nakedness from the villagers.

Begone then!

Return when you are healed.

We good folk cannot stand your endless tears.

You follow the soiled track

to re-membrance

Yes!

Re-member.  Re-gain.  Re-turn.

But too late, poor lost child.

All is lost,

it is too late.

All the other fools have left

and there is none so piteous as 

the single fool,

a brightless and despairing fool.

There is little so affronting to our eyes.

We do not like this cracked mirror.

We hate it!

Acceptance spins your cloak of 

ashes into wool.

It shall protect you from the cold wind.

Gather it about you and set your face 

to the West.

Be your destiny and

accept it all into your heart.

What was hollow is now solid.

What was empty is now full,

of pain but also of purpose.

Acceptance is the gift

you give yourself in life,

the rope on which you climb

sweet dreamer.

Accept it all into your heart.

Let go into it!

Let go!

Just let go!

And so...spinning in that web

that holds us all.

A sudden realised thought

sparks out of the void.

Forgive!

Forgive everything!

Find forgiveness and dive into it.

It is understanding.

It is wisdom.

It is the hero’s way.

The transmutations of alchemy are it.

The soul’s truth is it.

It is the only path

out of this dark wood Lightbringer!

So let your light shine

and yield to this well-wyrded fortune.

Follow the strings of runes

To her fabulous eyes

That ever changing glyph,

hazel and blue of

hazel and blue.

Fall upon your sword each day.

Be carried home at evensong

upon your shield.

Children’s tears shall wet your wounds

and even the harsh Gods

will wonder at such pain.

The blood itself will cry out of these caves.

Even the good folk will wonder:

Some will say, forget.

Some will say, re-member.

Lost Lightbringer, they will say,

re-member!

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CAMERON CLEGG AND OSBORNE: THREE NAUGHTY LITTLE MONKEYS

The impact of the comprehensive spending review and the proposed cuts in state spending of, in some cases 8% reductions year on year for five years will lead in some cases, to a 40% reduction in state provision.  It is an unheard of amount and the effects cannot be easily determined.  We have heard that ‘we are in this together’ and that the cuts will not be borne disproportionately by the most vulnerable in society.  But while the banksters gather to grab a share in an estimated 7 billion bonus pot over the next few weeks it has certainly come to my personal attention that in fact the cuts will directly affect the most vulnerable groups in society as well as the slightly unsavoury new term to describe ‘the squeezed middle’ now being touted by Ed Miliband in an attempt to create clear blue water between a seemingly directionless opposition and a coalition hell-bent on the dismantling of vast elements of a welfare state built up over the last fifty years.  There is a good reason why the cuts will be targeted (I use the word advisedly) on the poor, the vulnerable, the sick and the ‘squeezed middle.’

The major reason is an astonishing ‘hands-off’ mentality from the government in relation to where the cuts will fall.  But while the government may present this as giving freedom to local authorities to reduce where they determine, it is obvious that panicked and poorly lead local authorities will target the areas of least resistance and these are generally populated by those most dispossessed, most powerless, voiceless and least able to resist.  The real strategy is an abdication of responsibility that will allow the coalition to avoid the difficult decisions and, more crucially the responsibilities of identifying which groups lose and which maintain their funding.  There will be no winners-apart that is, from the usual suspects.

The looked after children population falls into this category.  With 60.000 children and young people in care set to rise to 120,000 by the end of 2012 there will be a proposed doubling of the population of children coming in to the care system.

The domino effect will be set in train by the cumulative effects of withdrawal and reduction of benefits on the poorest families who have to date managed to keep their families together by the skin of their teeth.  The difference this time is that this vulnerable group will be joined by members of Miliband’s ‘squeezed middle’ who can usually struggle along through boom and bust.  With an average national salary of just £26,000 per annum these families will be taking the hit on the 5% VAT increase as well as their better off neighbours facing an imminent reduction in child benefits and tax credits which will mean the loss of hundreds, in some cases thousands of pounds a year in income.  Add the hikes in transport and utilities costs and you have a perfect storm for the middle classes who earn around £37,000 per annum.  Certainly never seen as a penurious income but soon to be far from comfortable

But what is astonishing about this round of cuts to me is the almost complete absence of what we might call a culture of resistance.  The passivity with which the comprehensive spending review was received by the nation was remarkable.  I think this is compounded by the predominant emotion in a recession which is fear but the flipside of that particular coin is anger and I sense a deep fury among the people at the injustice of this elite-manufactured recession.  I would not be surprised to see a series of serious riots in the cities over the summer of 2011.  I also see a political system which is rooted in ideas of society relevant to the 1950’s and completely unfit for purpose to deal with the three major challenges of the next twenty years and beyond.  Namely climate change, the loss of biodiversity and increasing global instability.

Leadership in the UK is supplied by a cadre of elite educated sociopaths with a pathological sense of their own entitlement and crucially no understanding of normal economic life.  Cameron, Osborne and Clegg visited Oldham in the recent by-election like Victorian gentleman anthropologists observing a tribe of African bushmen.  They are so divorced from the reality of most people’s lives that they are unable to see the implications of their policies on actual lives.  To them it is all theory.

This has to change.  We need a new political party which is truly of ‘all the talents’.  We need the leadership of the most brilliant people in their respective fields so we can have the best healthcare, the best welfare, the most effective military capability, the most effective  strategies for industry and commerce, the very best and relevant educational system for all our children and it needs to be based on what works, not informed by some outmoded political cod-philosophy derived from the turn of the last century.  We need an end to the ludicrous and simplistic binary polarities of Labour and Conservative.  We need an integral politics and a new political party to take us forward.

I don’t see anything like this evolving presently but you know sometimes it takes a disaster to birth a new beginning.  Sometimes all you can do is take a deep breath, do your bit, and cross your fingers.

The Passion Soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. Beautiful...