Guess who's coming to dinner: The Petrol Crisis

What’s the difference between me, and David Cameron? David Cameron can kiss my arse…

I’m grateful never to have owned a car, as it keeps two utter evils out of my life: the need to converse with Traffic Wardens and the need to buy petrol. David “the kettle black” Cameron has had rather a sticky week, what with news of his exclusive dining club and pasty tax flooding the media. It seems our poor, hard-working and honest leader was feeling the stress a little. Did he take it like a man? Did his broad, atlas-like shoulders bare the weight of his duty to serve us?

Nope. He instigated a fuel crisis.

As the shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls (such a shame he didn’t become a professional footballer), claimed in the Independent today: "I do think that political games were played. I think the Prime Minister woke up on Monday morning and thought, 'I've got the worst weekend I've had in government, [so] why don't I try to divert attention? Then suddenly, out of the blue, we had government ministers talking up a strike which wasn't even called.”

Motorists were queuing for hours as a direct result of Cameron’s manipulative words to “be sensible”, and other Ministers mis-information for the public to keep their tanks two-thirds full after disputes sparked within Unite. Some 90% of UK forecourts are supplied by Unite's approximately 2,000 members involved in the dispute, their drivers deliver fuel to Shell and Esso garages and supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury's.

A Downing Street official privately admitted to the Independent that its message on the shortage threat got "out of control".

“We wanted the public to be aware of the strike but not be panicked. That got confused with the political messaging about the irresponsibility of Unite. Things got out of control and it became a feeding frenzy."

I should coco! Demand for petrol rose 172% on Thursday and diesel by 77% according to independent retailers' group RMI Petrol.

And then Cameron had the sheer nerve to call Unite irresponsible.

A government that deliberately ignites a fuel shortage threat, Francis Maude calling for us to “fill up our jerry cans”, to divert public attention from their own misdoings is more than irresponsible, its outright dangerous. One woman set herself on fire, suffering 40 percent burns decanting fuel in her kitchen. Although we can’t blame the government entirely for people not taking health and safety precautions in their homes, why on Earth would a responsible government fuel such panic and fear in the first place?

Answer: A responsible government wouldn’t! Even senior Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin agrees; "Really there should not have been any move to encourage people to buy more than they normally buy without consulting the industry first, and I think that was the mistake."

Again, I should coco!

It has now become very clear that, if there was ever going to be a strike, it’s not going to be happening over Easter, Ministers now completely u-turning by saying that there is no urgent need to top up your tanks. However, according to the BBC website: “The rules on fuel tanker drivers' hours have been temporarily relaxed to help the transport of supplies to filling stations. Under EU rules, drivers are limited to nine hours on the road each day, but this has now been raised to 11 hours. The new rules will apply until Thursday and have been introduced after requests from the fuel supply industry.”

Cameron went so far as to say he was pleased by the decision. Of course he was, but not as pleased as those who run the oil companies who will be making millions out of this crisis, I’m sure.

let them eat PASTY!

So…pasty tax eh?

There is a fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous – and it would seem that yet again our Prime Minister has failed miserably in defining what side he stands on.

I’ve been looking into this, and according to the Treasury guide food is hot if it is ‘above ambient air temperature when provided to the customer’.

As one rather astute journo pointed out: “a sausage roll sold at 20c in summer would be below the ‘ambient air temperature’ and VAT-free. In the winter it would be warmer than the surrounding air and therefore liable for VAT. Someone waiting at the front of a queue for a fresh sausage roll might pay VAT because it is still hot, while someone at the back might pay less because it has gone cold.”

How we gonna get round that one David?

Perhaps we could draw out some new legislation that requires all bakeries must be kept at 18c at all times? And of course there are ways around it, you could always buy the pasty cold and, once money has exchanged hands, ask the baker to heat it up for you. That is unless we want to start taxing good customer service. It’s an option.

It’s not all bad news though; baked bread will remain VAT free, as it is considered a basic food item.   Anyone who does not believe pasty or pies to be a basic food item has never been to Devon/Cornwall, or a football match.

You can imagine the chants on the terraces of “who ate all the pies”, being rallied with calls of “that rich bastard! That rich bastard!”

Bakers across the country are, unsurprisingly, up in arms about this. Cameron is lucky we aren’t French, or there would be a guillotine in Whitehall before Big Ben struck four. Officials say the changes (which come into operation on October 1) will raise £50million in the current financial year, rising to £120million in 2016/7.  Okay, but how much could be raised by taxing the super-rich?

As News Thump pointed out, the government may very well defend it’s decision to slap “VAT on sales of hot pasties by insisting that a tax on bakers is only one letter away from a tax on bankers.”

Lets not be too cynical here, perhaps we have got it all wrong. During the recent Wall Street uprisings there has been an incredible upswing in public opinion for bankers to take more responsibility. Maybe we should have been directing our anger and frustrations at the far darker and insidious organization: Greggs.

Does David know something we don’t? Probably not…

But it’s comforting to know that he can take away our JOBS, and he can take away our NHS, but he’ll never have our PASTIES!

Isn’t Britain great?

the aliens are coming

Is the surest sign that there is intelligent life forms out there in the universe, the fact they haven’t tried to contact us? We live on a planet where common sense is so rare it should be classified as a superpower. 

Yet we strut around this shrinking globe of ours, believing that if awesome was a crime our species would be facing a prison sentence, negotiating with the idea that we are so important aliens are going to invade on December 22^nd 2012, and take over our planet.

It might happen. But would a species so advanced that it could build an invisible space station/observatory on the moon (people believe this, I’m not making it up) really be that enthralled with observing a race of heavily armed monkeys get excited about making phone calls?

We aren’t advanced. We need to stop fooling ourselves.  Any race that spends billions upon billions of pounds (while millions starve) on discovering new ways to wipe itself out with weapons of mass destruction (they do exist, America and the UK has most of them) would not attract a higher species to it.

It’s like when you go on holiday, book into a hotel and the friendly receptionist tells you about the places you should avoid. Earth would be like the Ghetto’s of the Galaxy – nice place, lovely views, just a shame about some of the locals.

Some believe aliens are here, now, ruling our planet disguised as our leaders.  It might be true, but why would they disguise themselves? Hitler didn’t disguise his armies when he invaded Poland. Why should invading Earth be any different?

I don’t want to come across as cynical. I have an extremely open mind. But I also am a realist, and truly believe that any alien that ends up here is either lost or being punished. Can you imagine coming from a higher civilisation that has evolved above the need for money as trade, or violence as solution, only to end up here?

I enjoy the conspiracy route as much as any other, but humans have a problem with projection. We made a God in our image, and it got us nowhere. Is basing alien behaviour around the worst aspects of our own likely to get us any further? Especially as the word alien signifies that something is different. Aliens would have to deplore war, violence, greed, hatred and bloodshed for profit.  Otherwise they would not be alien at all.

there is no hope of a cure

Are selfish people rewarded, or is that just the way it seems? I know there is a certain stigma around the world selfish, that it is laced with warning that this is not the way people should be. But everyone is. Henry Ward Beecher called selfishness “that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.”

There must be a fine line somewhere. I have had countless conversations with friends in need, and the overriding cause of their grief has invariably been another behaving in a selfish or self-interested way. Selfish behaviour hurts people; are we here to not care about that and carry on regardless? Is selfishness what is destroying our race? William Gladstone thought it to be “the greatest curse of the human race.”

Dr Martin Luther King once said: “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

But can any of us be selfless all of the time? Would there be any point in having a self if you were not going to look out for its interests above any other? I suppose Darwin would argue that the very essence of our survival depends upon looking after number one, but is screwing number two the only way to do this?

I don’t have answers. I’m just someone who satisfies themselves by looking at the world and thinking: fuck – what a mess.  But has this world ever been populated by creatures that satisfy themselves by skipping freely in green pastures, helping old ladies across the street in their free time?

Of course not, not since humans have been here.

It is in the human condition to want to enjoy and get the most out of life, to fulfil our desires and achieve all we can achieve. Oscar Wilde believed that “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”

Is this not the Western ideal? Is American foreign (and domestic) policy not founded on the idea that everyone would be happy if only they could buy their happy meals? No one would be a terrorist if they simply learned to suckle at the teat of consumerism, would they? Those who hate us for our freedom wouldn’t do so if they could just buy Nike!

But where is this getting our species? Lao Tzu, writing over 3000 years ago realised that for our evolution to truly evolve us we must: “Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.”

Is this possible in our day and age? Has this ever been possible for any day and age? Do we even know what plainness is? Do we know what true happiness is, outside of our own desires for more?  Greame Green didn’t think so, he said “Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance.”

Can we imagine a better way for ourselves? Can we imagine a world where the needs of the individual are curbed so the needs of the whole can be met? Or is it best to follow the advise of Jane Austin and forgive all selfishness in ourselves and others, because “there is no hope of a cure.”

people don't think

Its true people don’t think. We don’t create thoughts; thoughts create us. As we are all original, there are original thoughts, but people don’t think about them.

We obsess over the deeply unoriginal, the “all that has been done before.” Since the dawn of civilisation – since before Alexander the Great thought it would be a good idea to stretch his legs, humans have warred with one another. Yet, every night at ten, we report this as News.

Peace would be News. The American Government disarming and deciding not to interfere in other countries interests would be news.  But, yet another kid blown up because he/she was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time is as old as the hills.

We call this tragedy? Yes, but the greatest tragedy of these tragedies is there everlasting repetition throughout history.  History always repeats because we can’t stop bloody talking about it, instead of learning from it.

We have become deeply unoriginal as human beings, and there are no excuses for it anymore. We come from the species that built the pyramids.  How many thousands of years do you think your local Tesco car park is going to last?

We come from the same gene pool as Pythagoras, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Milton, Socrates…Einstein. We have no excuses to be as dense as we are in modern times.  We live in an age of information that has surpassed any other, but it seems the more information there is on offer, the less people want to learn.

Are we all a bit stupid these days because so many great minds before us have worked it all out? Are we stupid because we are lazy, or are we stupid because we don’t challenge authority at all in this day and age. We don’t even challenge what authority is.  The recent Wall Street uprisings that spreads across the world were a push in the right direction, but lets face it, the reason there are banks is because we all want money.

If we didn’t care a less about the pound, the dollar, the yen or Euro, banks would end trade tomorrow. But, money is not the “root of all evil”. We are.  We are also the “root of all good”, brilliant and outright incomprehensible.

But what do we have an abundance of?  Fear.

And what is Fear? Can you describe it? Do you know what it is? Does it actually exist outside of our own minds? Isn’t it rather stupid to be afraid of something that doesn’t exist?

Wherever there is fear there is a need for more money, which really means more control and more security.  But if you think about it, our very desire for more security is what is making us insecure in the first place. If you feel secure, you are secure – and vice versa. Having money does not change this one bit.  Rich people are deeply insecure, or there would not be billionaire plastic surgeons in the world.

Life does have a purpose. That purpose is to grow in experience, wisdom, love and tolerance.  However, for most people life seems to be about buying things.  The more you buy; the less free you are, as everything you possess sooner or later will end up possessing you.

And if you go too far down this road, your growth will only be measured in how the inches expand on your flat screen TV width and your wisdom will boxed in and shelved, just above your square eyes.  You will want a flat, a house then a home for you and your family. But you will never live there, because that is not living, that is planning. Life has no agenda; the infinite is spontaneous.

Will you happily call your boss sir or madam, and sell out your respect for a salary, just so you can buy more things?  If the answer to that is yes, you will grow old until one day, aged 80 plus, looking back think: shit, I really didn’t think about that al all, did I?

the hermetica

Did you know the word alchemy means “from Egypt?”  I only found the fact out this afternoon, and it really made me think about how much I take for granted. I must know thousands of words, and not know where they originated.

I know that Shakespeare invented 6000 words, among them is generous, accommodation, and aggrieved. No one thought to say you were generous prior to Shakespeare. We owe a great deal to the influences of the past that we take for granted.

But I digress from Egypt. 

The mythical figure of Thoth has existed for over 3000bc in Egyptian mythology. Portrayed as a scribe with the head of an Ibis, Thoth was said to be a sage whose wisdom transformed him into a God. He is seen as the “dispatcher of divine messages and recorder of human deeds.  In the afterlife court of Osiris, Thoth would decide whether the individual had acquired spiritual knowledge and purity, and so deserved a place in the Heavens.” Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy Hermetica: Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs

As well as being accredited with inventing the Hieroglyphs, Thoth was also thought to have taught the Ancient civilisations of Egypt astronomy, geometry, religion, alchemy and medicine. The Ancient Greeks believed him to be the sole architect of the Pyramids, and venerated him with alongside their own God Hermes (also referred to as Trismegistus: the Thrice Great.)

The Greeks ran with the baton of civilisation handed to them by the Egyptians, whose culture they revered, and by the 2^nd/3^rd Centuries there were innumerable writings on the wisdoms and teachings of Hermes (inspired by the stories of Thoth) in the Great Library of the City of Alexandria: they became collectively known as the Hermetica. The Hermetica is written as a dialogue between Hermes and one of three students, Tat, Asclepius, or Ammon.

Timothy Freke explains: “Hermes narrates a dramatic story of how God creates and maintains the cosmos. It is through appreciating the awesome beauty of the cosmos and understanding the fundamental laws by which it functions, that we can come to know the mind of God.”

 In a nutshell, the teachings of Thoth/Hermes are really based around one enormous idea: that everything we are exists as a thought within the mind of God. A thought echoed by Albert Einstien who described science as an attempt to understand the mind of God.

Great minds think alike.

The Hermetic texts, unsurprisingly, were suppressed during the Dark Ages ushered in by the rise of the Roman Christian Church. It’s hardly surprising that a power built on the lies of being the only living embodiment of God on Earth would have a problem with teachings that give everyone divine right to have knowledge of God’s kingdom. Thankfully, the Hermetic texts were not entirely destroyed, and it was their rediscovery in 15^th Century Florence that helped inspire the Renaissance. Great artists, thinkers and scientists such as Leonardo Da Vinci, William Blake, Paracelsus Copernicus and William Shakespeare (to name a very small few) all admitted to being heavily influenced by the teachings of the Hermetica.

This maybe a rather far out idea, but actually, everything that exists in your life NOW, began as a thought in someone else’s mind if not your own. Is it too much to believe that we are all part of a greater mind?

 We take a great deal for granted about ourselves, lost in the mundane duties, problems and the distraction of our every day “flat-earth” lives. We believe that our world is real and manifest as solid matter around us. But it is not; everything is vibrating at the atomic level. Nothing is fixed. Only thinking makes it so. 

We are nothing more than a vibration. Our senses operate through the interpretation of vibration. Our minds are so powerful that we walk this Earth blind to the staggering reality of our existence: it barely exists.  Our eyes colour in shapes by translating the movement of light, the dense atomic shapes of buildings bodies and bounty around us, however, are 99% empty space.

We get stuck in the thoughts and ideas we have of ourselves.  Most of us spend 90 percent of the time thinking about what we don’t want, affirming ourselves as poor, fat, stupid, or useless. When really, how can there be such a thing as a useless vibration? A vibration simply is.

We are incredible experiential beings, operating on so many levels. 

Ideas are powerful; they are the only things capable of changing the world. How would the world change if we all lived by the idea that we don’t need protecting from each other? (This is an idea of fear spread by Governments so rich men can get richer from war, and it has been the predominant idea of humanity since before Alexander the Great.) How different would the world be if we all believed we didn’t need to compete with one another? (Vibrations don’t race; they travel.)  How different would it be if we didn’t only think of our interests? It is in all of our interests to raise the general vibe of the planet to a happy, healthy place to live for everyone.

If we all saw ourselves not as millions of tiny individual minds, but as beautiful thoughts within one infinite mind, all connected, there would be world peace overnight. These ideas are not new; they are thousands of years old and have simply been repressed – because those who wish to control you know it is true.

speciesforhire: even rebels have regulations

speciesforhire: even rebels have regulations: Kids are cruel. Isn’t this what we say? They lack compassion for misfortune, laugh at weakness and tribe up in groups of peers, playing t...

even rebels have regulations

Kids are cruel. Isn’t this what we say? They lack compassion for misfortune, laugh at weakness and tribe up in groups of peers, playing the acceptance game, which can only be won through rejecting others.

Bloody teenagers! There are so many insults we can throw their way! They lack concentration, they’re ambition is not for personal growth but for glory, fame and adoration.  When asked if they wanted world peace, or a piece of the material action in the world, they’ll plum for the latter 9/10. Teenagers are selfish, amoral, and lazy. Isn’t that what we say? Wasn’t that what we were accused of?

A survey taken in a British girls school about 7 years ago asked 30 students what they wanted to be when the grew up. 29 said famous. They did not have ambition to cure cancer, end world debt or poverty, or even discover a new musical octave: they just wanted fame. To be heard of, talked about, recognised.

This was one of the aims of Billy the Kid.

Even teenagers who manage to reach the higher echelons of fame don’t appreciate it when they get it, or at least, this is what our beloved media are hoping every day to prove. Just look at the young football stars rolling out of nightclubs with fifty- pound notes rolled up their nose! Or podgy Jamie Waylett, the 22 year old Harry Potter star who was sent to jail for 2 years for drinking champagne while rioting in London in Summer 2011. We cynical adults love to put shame to youth’s trespasses.

That angry 14-year old mob that looted their capitalist hearts out during the London riots last summer, more than underlined the prevailing belief that teenagers have no appreciation of anything! No value for anything! No concept of money or hard work! Wasn’t this what most people concluded to be the cause of the uprisings in the capital?

 Teenagers want everything now. This is the quick fix generation, and if films can’t be downloaded onto their computers faster than pizza can be delivered to their doors, teddies will be hurled out of prams from London to Tokyo!

The music they listen to is either too loud or too fast. You can’t understand the words half of the time.  Teenagers are the reason Simon Cowell drives a Bentley. The cultures they create are meaningless and passing, filled with fads and embarrassing haircuts that are destined to plague them for the rest of their lives.  Isn’t this our grievance every time we get stuck behind a slow-walking 17-year old boy that still hasn’t found the belt department in his local clothes shop?

Do we really want to put our faith in a generation that believe it is better to wear expensive pants on show then it is to find out their own waste size measurements? Perhaps our present problems will be solved in the future by everyone walking like a penguin constantly referring to everything as either “sick” or “safe”.

But in their defence…

Rejection is an enormous part of teenage life.  The innocence of childhood ends almost overnight; the integration of boys and girls divides itself asunder when the shudders of hormones first tremble through our young, awkward bodies.

We go from sand pit to hell pit in one leap. Suddenly the boy next door, who has played with your toys and pulled your hair since you were two, is an alien presence in your life. He has hair on his face, spots, and new discovered deepness to his voice.  And you know that whatever you got changing in you, if he is so inclined to notice, is not going unnoticed.  Puberty is bloody weird.  Adults forget this, mostly because we do all we can to block it from our memories.

As well as this tectonic development in body change, teenagers have school to consider. Social aspect aside, the national curriculum is not designed to educate teenagers on how to know themselves and love themselves unconditionally. It is designed to disorientate and confuse. There is nothing coherent or meaningful at all about the way children are taught.

Do you remember school? Registration followed by a bell that directed you to some arbitrary subject such as Geography. Then, an hour or half hour later, another bell, and off you plunder to some utterly unrelated subject such as English Literature or Art. And on it goes. Can you imagine a trade that could run on these irregularities? From 9-10 you are a painter and decorator until the bell rings, and then you have to present a weather forecast for the BBC? It doesn’t work.

There are so few schools that encourage kids to learn what they wish to learn, or afford them time to pursue it. But those who run schools know that their institutions have very little to do with education, and everything to do with training for meaningless and banal employment. Deskwork.

I have nothing but compassion for teachers who actually want to teach something valuable, and not just stand in front of a class like a mock-boss, encouraging young adults to meet their targets and keep their CV in mind.  It is drilled into kids: doing well at school gets you work.

The Curriculum is not there to increase your appetite for knowledge or greater understanding of your place in existence: it is there because it is what has been decided, by extremely misguiding authorities, what kids must learn to fit in to the system of adulthood.

Therefore those who are rebelling against schooling are also rebelling against conformity, banality and brainwashing and that could be admired. Having said that, most of the naughty kids at my school who refused to wear the uniform, were often seen hanging out together wearing identical tracksuits.

Even rebels have regulations.

I can fit you in between...

I never buy a diary in December – unless it’s for someone else. I rarely buy a diary in January either. My urge to buy a diary usually comes mid-February, when no shops stock them any longer and you have to once again suckle to the teat of amazon.co.uk…

I haven’t written anything in a while, you may have noticed, you may not.  Writing a blog is like keeping a diary. Months of unenthusiastic missed entries can float by without notice, until one day you realise that four months of your life have passed you by without any written record of them in existence.

I have a very busy life, full of appointments that people (such as my part-time employers) require me to attend. If my life was a carefree crusade with time to play with and nothing much to do but have fun, I would bin my efforts at personal management until the next life.

I know this is true for most people. This is why we all want to win the lottery.

Diaries are more hassle than they are worth for unorganised people. Organised people love diaries like they love lists and pencil’s that accessories with post it notes. Giving an unorganised person a diary is not going to make them more organised: it’s going to make them more aware of their disorganisation.

Diaries need more attention then a Tamagotchi.  We need to feed them with our schedules, constantly amending the circumstances. We need to consult them, rely on them, they become the safe keeper of our futures and nothing short of our reputation relies on them.

I have a friend that cannot make a decision without her oracle. And she does actually refer to her diary as an oracle, as if it was somehow writing her future out for her – ready for her to follow. It just goes to show how powerful this book is in some people’s lives.

Mae West said: “Keep a diary and someday it will keep you.” Truer words cannot be found. A Diary is a book of prophecy to those who believe they are a human doing, not a human being.

I know all of this. Yet somewhere in the deep recesses of my subconscious mind, the word diary is entirely associated with the word handy.  As if it is important that I persist to write down dates in a book that I will stop looking at, and probably lose within a month. As if it is important that I have a book that is there to aid my memory, when my memory is so bad that I rarely remember to take it out with me.

 I also have an aversion to committing myself to disappointing someone: if you are written in some peoples diaries you might as well just been carved out as the eleventh commandment: thou shalt not be late.  For some people, ten fifteen really does mean ten fifteen.

Diaries diminish our appreciation of time, in the same way that mobile phones diminish our abilities to have a conversation with the person sitting next to us in the pub. The busier you are, the less time you have to be open to your present circumstances.

Is it diary keeping that provoked such utterly nonsensical sayings such as “there just aren’t enough hours in the day?” How many hours do you need?  Would you like to put forward the proposal on how we can somehow slow down the sun to suit your agenda?

Do Diaries, and the thinking and language they encourage, help the evolution of the species, or diminish its chances of survival utterly?  Is this a topic of debate that should be fit in somewhere between lunch and three, or can it wait until Monday?