The End of 2022
What a year. It (almost) began and (almost) ends with the man who made the most of the presidential limelight for four years. It took eight chapters and 845 pages for the select committee, or congressional panel to confirm what everyone knew back in January, when Trumpo’s attempts to overturn his electoral defeat in the presidential election led to (almost) unprecedented violence after his supporters stormed Congress in an insurrection which led to between four and ten deaths (depending on varying cause & effect interpretations).
Equally shocking was the arrest of twenty-five far-right activists on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the German government. Accused of preparing to storm the Reichstag parliament and seize power for themselves, the group refuses to recognise Germany’s democratically-elected government.
Two cheers for democracy, anyone?
The Wednesday Dream (As recounted by Arlo)
If I concentrated really hard, I had the ability to fly, though I wasn’t really in control. At first, I managed to soar high above the heads of onlookers and assumed they were watching me with admiration and astonishment.
That I had no control over my altitude began to worry me. Later, I lost my flying ability and merely hovered a couple of feet above the playground – something like that of my old school – and tried, with no luck, to gain height. As I hovered, I spoke, in both English and French, with various people I knew – pupils I think – and was a little sad that I’d lost so much French.
A lady in a car behind me became irritated. I finished my conversation before trying to fly, without success. I manoeuvered out of the lady’s way, but by then she was really angry. Stopping her car, she climbed out, and started shouting, accusing me of holding her up. I too was angry, and pointed out how unreasonable she was being. Then she spotted my aviator’s goggles and accused me of stealing them. I became indignant, but also slightly guilty because I thought they may actually have been hers.
She drove on, and I, no longer hovering, entered something like a library, or a staff room, and began to study.
A member of staff approached me and said someone needed to see me urgently. It wasn’t clear, at this stage, whether I was a pupil or a teacher. I think a little of both. Either way, I presumed I was in trouble with the headmaster, either for annoying the lady in the car, or for stealing her goggles. Or for swearing at her. There may have been an F bomb.
It turned out to be a lady maths teacher, a kindly-looking woman who pointed out I should be in her class. I knew all about this lesson, but hadn’t attended for weeks on end. I assumed she was angry, and I think I misheard when she asked – as I believed – whether I was in her class. Clearly, I wasn’t, and I answered, “No.”
Taken aback, she began to tremble, incoherent with emotion. I felt really sorry for hurting her feelings, and tried to comfort her, thanking her for taking the trouble to come and find me. I went with her to class, and somewhere along the line she changed sex.
The now male teacher seemed to forget all about me as I merged into the anonymity of his huge class, along with other pupils who were simply mannequins behind desks. He began lecturing about integers, sines, cosines and tangents; all the things I never understood at school.
This Parlous State.
Has Britain become a Third World Country?
With the Metropolitan Police, in a report carried out by Louise Casey, being found guilty of systemic, chronic wrongdoing, where racism thrives, misogyny rules, and corruption is rife, where institutional criminality has been allowed to continue as managers turn a blind eye, …
…With prisons overcrowded, in poor condition, where prison officer resignations have risen in the face of low morale, inadequate pay and rising violence, with the incidence of self-harm and mental health issues increasing on a scale to match high re-offending rates (and is it any surprise that a study conducted at the University of Manchester has judged the judiciary in England and Wales “institutionally racist”?)…
… When the NHS is routinely described as ‘broken’, with routine and even urgent operations being cancelled or postponed and vulnerable patients spending hours waiting in ambulances and corridors for lack of vacant beds, a dire shortage of staff and funding woefully inadequate, …
… Where criminal enterprises, with far more efficiency than is evident in any of the above organisations, swindle taxpayers out of millions by setting up bogus, unregulated supported accommodation for vulnerable people, …
…perhaps the time for a systematic overhaul of the whole darned lot is long overdue.
The pink pigeon. Which, according to Wiki, is the only Mascarene pigeon that has not become extinct. It does, though, hover between the list of “Vulnerable” and “Endangered” lists, having for the moment been saved from extinction in the nineties. The Guardian newspaper claims that over 60% of animal populations on earth are in similar danger in the face of continuing deforestation, pollution, urban development and industrialisation. Disaster is not inevitable, we are told, if only world leaders sit up, take note, and take action. Why is it that Nero and fiddles come to mind.
An Improving World
At a time when electronic ankle tags have been found to racially target young BAME men, the mayor’s office for policing and crime (Mopac has oversight of the Metropolitan Police Force) is organising ‘refresher training on racial disproportionality’ (Guardian Newspaper, 7th Oct. 2022). Furthermore, Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, assures us he will be “ruthless” in tackling racism and misogyny. Another issue sorted. Next?
A perfect storm of problems
In a week that has seen Thailand mourning thirty-seven deaths, mostly young children shot or stabbed by an ex-policeman, Iranian women burning their hijabs in protest against the despotism of their government, and the discovery of a box of Gold teeth abandoned by Russian troops fleeing the Ukrainian advance prompts an investigation by the War Crimes Commission, we learn that ongoing hostilities in Somalia and elsewhere is hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid in the face of imminent famine.
Marina Ovsyannikova the Russian TV journalist who, in March 2022, disrupted a Russian state live news broadcast to denounce Russian aggression in Ukraine, claiming the state news channels were spreading lies and propaganda. She has since been arrested for lambasting Putin and the Russian state on social media, and has refused to retract her statements.
She described the hearing in a Moscow administrative as ridiculous, expressing the belief that Russians guilty of war crimes in Ukraine would face justice through international tribunal. Putin has made it a criminal offense to call his “special military operation” in Ukraine a ‘war’, and growing numbers of dissidents are imprisoned daily.
“War,” Ovsyannikova claims, “is horror, blood and shame.” Refusing to be intimidated, she describes Russia as an aggressor, claiming that article 29 of the Russian constitution guarantees her freedom of expression. The judge, less bold, disagrees.
Zahra Elham, the Afghan female singer who in 2019 became the first woman to win Afghanistan’s widely popular talent competition, Afghan Star. Many saw her victory as a triumph for female emancipation in a country where radical Muslims disapprove of music and believe a woman’s voice should not be heard.
The competition was held while U.S. and Taliban talks negotiated the terms of an American withdrawal which triggered the return of Taliban rule.
The Curse of Interesting Times:
As Queen Elizabeth’s coffin leaves Balmoral and the queues of well-wishers begin lining the streets of Edinburgh, we must all get used to certain changes of expression: The King’s English; Our Gracious King; the King’s pleasure. As pundits ponder what sort of monarch King Charles III will be, republicans in UK and some commonwealth countries alike push for referendums to allow people the right to reconsider constitutional matters.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II has rather upstaged the appointment of our new Prime Minister, elected by a handful of conservative party members, and deflected our thoughts, albeit momentarily, from other pressing concerns:
Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation’ perpetuates the slaughter of thousands of Russian troops as well as that of his self-declared Ukrainian ‘enemy’, all in an effort to steal back the land which, with the fall of the USSR in 1991, became an independent territory.
The energy crisis, never far from the minds of those struggling to know how they will cope with the tripling of energy bills, continues to haunt the public and politicians alike. As does the economy in general, staggering from the double whammy of Covid 19 and Russia’s anachronistic war. As office workers endeavour to return to their places of employment, strikers threaten the effectiveness of public transport, and the NHS struggles to cope with rising ambulance wait-times plunging the survival rates of heart attack- and stroke-victims to an all-time low.
Patagonia. Not the geographical region in South America but the outdoor clothing company whose sole shareholder is now Earth. Its billionaire owner, entrepreneurial Yvon Chouinard has given the organisation away in an effort to fight the climate crisis.
All of Patagonia’s profits will, from now on, be channeled into the avoidance of environmental catastrophe, and the promotion of biodiversity. He and his family remain controlling figures in the organisation, and the manoeuvre has reportedly been finessed in a manner which does not involve tax avoidance…
