Not being able to sleep last night, I arose and had a look at some of the programs stored on my Sky box.   I found a series featuring John Cleese who had been given a series of 10 programs by GB news to do what he liked.  He was called something like the Dinosaur Hour. He was talking about wokeness.

Before I start, I should mention that it was extremely difficult to hear what he had to say because to put it bluntly, his teeth need attention. If you know someone who has left out their dentures and they speak, you will understand what I’m saying.  The mouth and throat are an echo chamber and they need to work together.  Cleese was unable to project his voice and so you have to listen more carefully.  I’m sure no one has got the guts to tell him.  Anyway I stuck with him because I have a regard for him going back to my formative years.

He was trying to understand the topic of wokeness. He had approached up to 10 ‘woke’ people who refused to speak to him so found an intermediary person, an academic, who was willing and able to explain the whole thing.  You can find the whole series on GB news if you wish to look, but basically the mores are that everyone has to be inclusive, no one must be offended or upset, no one must be marginalized. We can offend them unknowingly by the use of incorrect words.  However, this is one way traffic. They can abuse and insult us, but we cannot do the same to them.

The question is, what are the criteria? What happens if you fall outside their criteria? We all know the answer to that. The unfortunate person concerned is cancelled or fired. This has happened to nearly 200 professors  alone which is even more than the 150 professors in the McCarthy era in the 1950s in the States. One of their weaknesses is that they take the meaning of our words as they interpret them. There is no discussion.

Let’s take the case of JC Rowling. the famous author. She received a huge amount of hate mail including death threats for saying that there are only two biological sexes, men and women.  The friend of hers who related the story, a children’s writer for a big publisher, told how she was sacked for supporting JC in her campaign via a Twitter text. The hate mail from anonymous people towards her evidently frightened publishing houses and others,  not to mention the general public, into deciding that people like her should be marginalized  or at least censored. Why are well meaning authorities scared by such brainless nonsense?

To me the frightening and significant thing is that you cannot even ask a question of the woke movement  about why they have the views they do,  because even this is regarded as discrimination.  It is an authoritarian system not based on logic, thinking, sharing, coming to a conclusion, but the simple fact that if you even attempt any critique means that you are automatically a bad person. They are good, you are (potentially) bad. So that’s it then.

I have not come across many of these people but when I do they will get short shrift from me.  So as I said in my heading, this is a judgment of a ‘court’ by anonymous  plaintiffs on social media given without reason or logic.  The fact that this can even take place in a university  which is supposed to develop the faculty for critical thought amongst more intelligent minds. This is quite shocking. After three years going down rabbit holes I am still shocked by some things and this is one of them.

Wokeism  is the quickest and most effective way of turning a person who is potentially capable of intellectual thought into a retard.

Talking of being shocked, another thing I was shocked about is Oprah Winfrey saying on U.S. TV that it should be OK for adult males to stroke the penises of seven-year-old boys as ‘they might like it’ if done properly.  She is well up there or down there with the paedophiles and child traffickers. No one in the audience seemed to react.

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things.  This is from ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ by Lewis Carroll.

The relevant verse is

The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
to talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax
Of cabbages — and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings.’

Is it our time as I sit at my computer on a bright Saturday morning to consider whether our morals or our characters are worth fighting for, or whether we are going down the plug hole as human beings. All we have to do is ……. do nothing.

Back to Israel
So I watch the so-called ceasefire, day 2. The israelis are going to release about 130 hostages but over the period they have detained At least three thousand hostages. They are teasing beings that they regard as subhuman, deliberately prolonging the agony. While they detain people they bully and beat them

How we came to live here in Somerset

Today,  following on yesterday’s celebratory lunch, we toasted our 11 years as residents of Midsomer Norton. In a way, it seems like yesterday.

I was living in a property in Dulwich and she was living in a rented property, a housing association between Chalk Farm and Hampstead. We both wanted to move in together but in London that would have been impossible.

Françoise’s mother departed this life at such a time to make a  substantial amount of available funds in her will to her. We were thus able to consider buying a property. We knew we had to be somewhere south west but had no idea so we did a process of elimination by driving to places that we were not sure about, but at least we wanted to delete certain areas from our wish list. One of these was Bristol which was far too expensive and properties did not seem to have a garden. We inspected one house which had been occupied by an Indian family; the walls and the wallpaper certainly bore out their tastes. It took about 3 minutes for us to decide ‘no’.

We also went to the coast, Western-Super-Mare which was frankly a little bit down market. Clevedon, on the coast, had a delightful character but we felt it was a bit remote for communications. It’s all about public transport in case we cannot drive for ever. Frome was definitely a place of culture but there is a divide between council property land and the historical center. The latter’s properties are way beyond our reach and have very small gardens. The same can be said for the more desirable parts of Bath and indeed of Wells. With bath I don’t like the hills.

We visited Midsomer Norton briefly and I noticed that a stream running down the High Street was maintained and in good order and that told me that the management of this small and unpretentious town was good.

We found a local agent and one Monday morning they rang up and said they had a property for us. Without hesitation I agreed to come down from London. We arrived if I recall on Tuesday and before we walked in the door we said yes. It is a question whether we chose the property or the property chose us.  I suspect the latter. You could invent all sorts of esoteric reasons why this should pertain but at the end of the day there was an attraction that was a visceral. There was no question about it.

The cost was within our budget. The sellers took some persuasion (argument between the family) but our agent waved in front of them the fact that we were cash buyers and there was no chain so I think that was the fact of that did it. By the time we arrived to view we were told that five other people were interested. I think that living in a Close is safer because strangers are noticed so from the burglary point of view the incidents over the last 10 years can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

As for moving, it was traumatic second only to being divorced. So much could go awry. We drove down in seperate cars and followed the van which dutifully disgorged our possessions. Françoise’ removal company was a bit more tricky since they had quoted over the phone and underestimated the amount of material so two trips were required. We spent the first few months sleeping on a mattress on the floor and then finally got a proper bed from a local company. I will give a tip to anyone thinking of  putting a mattress on the floor. No draft >  damp > mold. When we eventually took it off the floor we were horrified at the growth that had taken place. It cannot have done our respiratory systems much good.

I cannot say we are close to our neighbours but we know them and a nodding acquaintance is actually sufficient. Most of them have lived in the area all their lives and are parochial in their attitudes. We have both lived quite different lives. I have traveled to many places including South Africa, 20 times, the USA, 40 times for various business and personal reasons. I met up with someone in New York and briefly stayed there but that was not a success.

The area where we are living is not the center of the cultural world but it is extremely convenient for access to Wells, Frome, Bath, Bristol, Cheddar, Glastonbury, all of which have their special features. We also got here what the Americans would call ‘more bangs for the buck’. We have a three-bedroom accommodation with the decent size garden and access to local allotments which I ran for some time.

The mood in cities is more fractious and unsettling than here and there is more EMF, particularly 5G. In rural Somerset, people are not so aware of trends in the world; this is a disadvantage but also an advantage. We have to work a little harder to find people who are on our wavelength but they are around. We can invite people to stay with us and they seem to enjoy the environment.

Of course in the last 11 years our property has increased in value, about £100,000, but this is academic.  We currently find no calling to go elsewhere and anyway with the possible advent of the worldwide virtual currencies systems, impeding control from the world Health Organization, who is going to say that other places will be better or worse than where we are at the moment. What we have currently is stability and that will do just fine. The weather is colder and rainier than we would like but then you can’t have everything.

There is enough culture in Bristol, Bath and Frome but we have to decide whether we have enough energy to visit these places especially evening events in the winter when I no longer like to drive even on well lit roads. I cannot cope so well with oncoming cars who do not dip their headlights.

Our days of gardening are coming to a close and fortunately we have enough in the kitty to be able to survive without such activities.

‘Brixton Village’

We do enjoy visiting London but only for short periods. We only go by coach as the train is 2-3 times more expensive.  I go there from time to time to keep my sister company. She is currently on her own. London has changed but it is cosmopolitan enough to accept the refugees and integrate them into society. My favorite place of all is Brixton Market (above) because you find all nationalities mixing and working together in harmony and that is how it should be throughout the world. I prefer the restaurant section.   Next time I go I will write a report.

It is a funny feeling riding on the buses in London. I find myself on the upper deck of the number 3 bus which goes from Oxford Circus to near Crystal Palace and sometimes I am the only white person on the deck. I do not mind and feel quite at home. Travel costs are quite steep and last visit we paid £69 for a seven-day pass which includes travel areas 1 to 5. Actually, if you work it out and do a lot of traveling it is quite cheap per journey. The pass gives you travel by all means including bus, train, underground.