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A New England

On previous occasions I have written posts about the changes I have witnessed in Poland(e.g. I Love Warsaw, 7 Years On) without writing a single word about England.  Now I can’t help but wonder why?  Perhaps my reticence is due to the claim that people should only write about what they know(After all I haven’t lived in England for nearly 8 years).  I suspect it has something to do with the motherly maxim ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’

One of the strangest things about growing up in England was the importance of television. The most striking thing about English soaps and films was how fucking miserable they were compared to other countries.  It appears that very little has changed.  If soaps are to be believed England is full of po-faced cunts sitting around drinking tea and moaning.  Our film industry has reached such a low ebb that our biggest money-spinner is a blond James Bond with manners better suited to the Elizabethan era.  Our only saving grace is comedy.  Sitcoms, comedy dramas, mockumentaries, sketch shows and stand ups all prove that comedy is alive and well in England.  It has even hijacked the quiz show genre.  The question the overabundance of comedy on our tv screens poses is why do we possess such an insatiable appetite for humour?

Is England depressed?  How on earth do you go about diagnosing a country with depression?  Are we witnessing the emergence of a new 21st century mentality?  Is this what the Latin scholars christened Couldn’tgiveafuckitus?  A quick look at www.mentalhealth.org.uk was enough to convince me that something is definitely wrong.

Is this the result of a nation which feels obliged to answer fine when someone asks how are you?  Is our stiff upper lip affecting our happiness?  What does it really mean when we say mustn’t grumble in response to a personal question despite the fact we are obsessed with grumbling about the weather?  Are we witnessing the implosion of English stolidity? Are we all destined to end up on the Jeremy Kyle show?

On a recent visit to England I was stunned by the amount of times I heard someone utter the magnificently British phrase ‘I can’t be bothered.’  Initially it left me wondering where such a crippling inertia stems from.  I was convinced that the vast majority of English people think that Carpe Diem is some kind of fish.  Now I suspect that it is merely a symptom of something more.  After all there was a reason the financial recession of the 1920’s was known as the Great Depression.  Or maybe I am wrong.  Maybe England has always been that way.

The times they aren’t a-changing –
Yeah, England’s still shit and it’s still raining,
And everybody’s jaded and tired and bored
And no one lifts a finger because
It’s just not in our culture.
Our culture is carrion and we’re all vultures,
And no one seems bothered by this state of play –
It seems that the stench is with us to stay.

Frank Turner – Once We Were Anarchists

Dear Facebook II

Imagine you are sitting in a bar with your life partner.  She/he happens to be particularly anally retentive, and has an insatiable appetite for information.  As you are slowly drip feeding her/him every morsel of information regarding your unspectacular life you notice someone at the bar.  This person is alone.  Lots of people glance nervously at this person, many even recognise this person, but no one dares approach them.  On first inspection you suspect that this person is nothing special.  Maybe not even average.  But the longer your partner tries to suck information from your soul the more attractive that other person looks.  And that person is Googlina Pluss.

Thank you Facebook for informing me my timeline goes live from April 6th.  From all the things I pray for, having a timeline is up their with… genital warts, or even an anal cavity search.  There is a time or place for timelines and that is history lessons in Primary School.  From all the good you did as a weapon in the Arab Spring, I think it’s fantastic that you are such great advocates for freedom and free will in particular.  I especially appreciate the fact that you didn’t give me a choice.

That’s not to say that I blame you entirely.  The passive nature of the average human being makes taking such liberties so incredibly easy.  I am from a country whose last Prime Minister wasn’t elected, living on a continent with a President nobody voted for, where each country signed up to a constitution which a number of countries voted against.  We live in an age where it’s  illegal to smoke in public premises even if you happen to own them, where we can be detained in prison without charge for up to 28 days and where cucumbers are only allowed a bend of 10mm per 10cm in length, so believe me I understand why you feel able to disregard free will so readily.

Imagine a magician beside a dining table before an attentive audience.  On the dining table there are 257 table cloths.  On top of the table cloths is a full dining set.  The magican pulls away one cloth and the glasses and plates remain in place.  He is a magnificent magician, possibly the greatest in the history of the world.  He does it again and again and again.  He repeats the trick 257 times.  Despite the fact he is an extraordinary man he has to stop.  There is nothing more he can take from the table.  As the magician finishes his performance, he turns and swoops into a bow and realises that the audience has left.  That’s the trouble with repetition.  The more times people experience the same trick, the less chance there is that they will stick around.

For those of you that never read the original post here it is
 
And yes you can now find me on google+

It’s Not The Winning……

We are all liars.  Every single one of us.  There is not, nor has there ever been a person cursed with the gift of total honesty.  It is an impossibility.  It is an end result of the competitive nature of our society.  We are continually measuring ourselves against others.  So much so that in the end our intentions often blur into a philosophical wet patch which causes us great discomfort when we are forced to sleep in it.  Rather than continually reassess our beliefs and ideas it is often more comfortable to roll over and ignore the discharge of doubt as if it isn’t there.

The biggest problem for a race of liars is often the raising of ones children.  In an ideal world a parent should introduce a sense of values which they themselves have accumulated over the years.  The child should look upon their parent with awe, both inspired by their wisdom and dazzled by their brilliance.  However we are disregarding a few things here.  First of all we don’t all live in tents in the desert.  Which means that a parent has to compete with the television, with google and with popular culture for the child’s attention, love and respect.  The pressure the lying parent feels to compete against these things is immense.  They often try to distract the child for their own failings with meaningless clichés, meant to soften the blows to their own ego rather than to encourage or motivate their offspring.  None of these statements are more redundant than the following:

It’s not the winning it’s the taking part that counts.

First said by some arsehole somewhere.

The first thing I want to make clear is that there is no truth to it whatsoever.  It is always the winning which matters.  Nothing else does because from the very beginning of our lives to the very end, our lives are infinitely better if we are winners.

Pick a war, any war.  Ask a soldier.  Not winning in something as serious as war often equates with death.  Perhaps it’s an extreme example.  How about in your working life?  There are three people up for promotion.  You are the oldest, with the most experience.  You get interviewed but don’t get the job.  The bigger office, the extra 20 thousand a year, which would have meant you could have got a mortgage on a bigger house  and finally started a family are all gone in the blink of an eye.  However it doesn’t matter, because you took part.  How about love?  The most beautiful girl in your high school.  All the boys want her.  You ask her out.  She laughs in your face and tells everyone in school that you are an idiot.  Of course you don’t feel sad, because you took part.

The problem with propagating lies to children is that they do have an impact in unforeseen ways.  We are in grave danger of producing a society of kids who just don’t give a shit.  Why should they even try to win if it doesn’t matter?  We are sucking the motivation out of them by being overly reassuring.  What’s wrong with trying your best to win and not being good enough?  It’s going to happen often enough in their adult lives that one day they may even thank you for it.

Life is about winning, from the moment it begins until the moment it ends.  Denying it, is like claiming that the sky is green.  If you don’t believe me ask the other 179,999,999 sperm your father ejaculated when you were created.  That’s right you can’t.  Because they didn’t win the greatest lottery of them all.  I am sure if you did ask them they would say ‘It’s not the winning it’s the taking part that counts’.

Mass Debates And Mass Debaters

Some of the greatest, most pointless debates known to man have taken place within a group of semi-drunk heathens.  Almost always the subject is as banal as the afterlife, the meaning of life, the meaning of apple or the end of the world.  It’s much easier to attribute blame and lay it at someone’s doorstep after several beers and a few whiskeys, usually because alcohol lowers the barriers which we surround ourselves with.  From time to time drunken debates can go wrong, they can become too personal and heated, thankfully we can then blame alcohol rather than ourselves.

The first mistake people often make, is to misunderstand the point of such discussions.  The purpose of such deliberations is not to try to bully and harangue the other person into agreeing with you.  There is no winner or loser.  The reason to enter such debates is to exchange ideas.  From the process alone you can often learn something as long as you are receptive to others opinions.  In times long past philosophers would use debates as a public forum to test their own ideas, and when necessary to refine them.  And it’s for this reason alone that I love these verbal jousting matches.

Recently I was dragged into a discussion about Warsaw.  I said in passing that ‘Warsaw as a city, has no personality.’  Rightfully so I was challenged by friends and my better half to spell out exactly what I meant.  In hindsight I can say that I failed.  For whatever reason I was unable to clearly explain exactly what I meant.  It didn’t, nor does it anger me.  It only frustrates me.  And it is that frustration which keeps the topic floating in the back of my mind.

The question itself is two-fold.  The first regards whether a city can actually have a personality.  In my mind’s eye I see a man surrounded by people at a party.  As he tells stories and leads the conversation like a conductor before an orchestra you can see something radiating off of him.  He is like the Queen Bee.  He is magnetic.  That thing which ensures people return to converse with him is his personality.  On Monday when these people go to work they are going to tell anecdotes to their colleagues about their meeting with this man.  These people have been affected, some stronger than others.  Perhaps even inspired.  These people at the party have been changed.  Even if it is a temporary change.  The thing which has done this is personality.

A city with personality inspires awe.  People write books, make films and sing songs in its name.  The people there are proud to be there.  People are drawn to it, after one visit they want to live there.  The believe in its power to improve their lives.  It changes them.  People tell stories about the wonderful things they experienced there.  There is even more pressure if you are a capital city.  That charismatic person at the party becomes a famous celebrity.  They cannot just be typical or normal.  You expect personality from this person and your disappointment is infinitely higher if they fail.

What did I learn?  That a sense of pride can be found in the most unlikely of places.  That I only enjoy leaving and never arriving.  And that Warsaw is the only European capital built with its back to the river.  Is it shy?  I don’t know.  Maybe that’s why I am not mesmerised by its charm.  Or maybe, just maybe it’s because I am a Mass Debater.

Celebrity Arseholes And The Sebald Islands

The greatest threat to the human race is and always has been stupidity.  In the 21st century the stupidity bug appears to have mutated with celebritism and created a new super powered celebrity arsehole.  The symptoms of celebrity arseholism are as follows:  over rating your own talents, travelling to other countries where you are more popular than your own, and last but not least, saying cuntish things.

Recently intellectual luminaries such as Sean Penn, Roger Waters and Morrissey have all seen fit to have their say on the Falkland Islands/Los Malvinos/Sebald Islands without having any credentials or expertise or knowledge on the subject.  Seeing as the debate appears to be open to anyone, and that the only relevant qualification appears to be that you must be a giant arsehole, I feel it’s only appropriate for me to join the party.

When trying to ascertain the ancestry of the people of the Islands a good starting is always a census survey.  The most recent I found on the internet is from 2006.  Suffice to say I was stunned when I got to the bottom of page 8.  I expected to see a large number of islanders with Argentinian ancestry.  The next page(table 14b) shows the population by ancestry(other).  Now despite not having a celebrity superpowers I am fathoming a guess that it refers to the number of people who consider their ancestry to be mixed.  In total 17 of the 2955 Falkland Islanders consider themselves to be Argentinian to some degree.  To put it into context, it is less than 1 percent of the entire population.  Maybe the answer is to be found in the history of the island?

A less than intelligent human being would, rather than waste any of his precious superstar studded time on research, make idle speculations based on the few memories they retain about the history of Britain at the back of their super minds.  Therefore it would be really very easy to conclude that Spain had probably colonised Los Malvinos and then the British invaded, stole it and plundered it.  I applaud such a line of thought as that is exactly what Britain did mostly.  Except when it didn’t.

The Falkland Islands were first sighted in 1600 by the Dutch explorer Sebald de Weert who subsequently named the islands the Sebald Islands.  Not very imaginative I know, but absolutely true nonetheless.  If the world was ruled by five-year old boys and the finders keepers rule was applied the Islands would be Dutch and none of this mess would have ever happened.  In 1690 the first Brit sailed between the two main islands and named the passageway, the Falkland Channel.  That man was Captain John Strong.  Still there was no problem, as no one tried to settle there.  Trust the French to ruin everything.  In 1764 Louis Antoine de Bougainville founded a settlement in what is now Port Louis, East Falkland.  And this is where things become a little complicated, so complicated that I shall continue in bullet points.  For the record lets recap first nation to see it – the Netherlands, first country to move in – France.  

  • 1765 – British Captain John Byron explored and claimed Saunders Island.  Apparently unaware of the French presence, he laid claim to all of the archipelago in the name of King George III.
  • 1766 – Britain built its first settlement in Port Egmont.
  • 1767 – Spain acquired the French colony and placed it under the control of the Buenos Aires colonial administration.
  • 1770 – Spain attacked Port Egmont and expelled the British presence.  Later that year a peace treaty was signed, and the British returned.
  • 1774 – Great Britain withdrew from the islands as part of a mass of withdrawals caused by economic problems.  Insanely they left behind a plaque laying claims to the island.
  • 1806 – Spain withdrew its governor, leaving behind a bigger plaque in his place.
  • 1811 – the United Provinces of the River Plate(which later became Argentina) withdrew the remaining settlers.

As you can see the end of the 18th century was quite a turbulent time for the attempted settlers for the Sebald Islands.  Incredibly it wasn’t until 1820 when the Argentinians properly entered the stage.  All because of an American named David Jewett.  His boat the Heroina was damaged in a storm and he took shelter on the islands.  While he was there he claimed the islands in the name of the United Provinces of the River Plate.  Did he stick around?  No.

It wasn’t until 1828 when Luis Vernet established a settlement, after first getting permission from both the British and Argentine authorities, that the first Argentines settled on the Falkland Islands.  Some 64 years after the first settlement had been built.  Unfortunately for Vernet his settlement was destroyed in 1831 when the Islands were raided by the USS Lexington, after a dispute over hunting and fishing rights with the US Government spiralled into a conflict.  In 1832 Argentina sent Commander Mestivier to found a penal colony on the island.  His efforts lasted a whooping 4 days before he was killed in a mutiny.  In January 1833 the British forces returned and requested that the Argentinian garrison leave, to which they did somewhat reluctantly.  In 1840 the British government decided to establish a permanent colony on the Falkland Islands.

Let’s take a moment to consider Argentina’s claim to the island.  They were 56 years too late.  They occupied the island for 5 years.  They did not discover it.  They were not the first to settle on it.  Or the second.  In fact the first Argentinian to claim it was an American.  They settled on the islands after seeking British permission.  They loved the island so much that they tried to turn it into a prison.  All in all in my non-celebrity arsehole opinion they have a magnificent case for ownership.  So strong in fact that I can’t understand why they didn’t take their case to the United Nations.  In 1947 the United Kingdom offered to submit the case to the International Court of Justice at the Hague.  Argentina refused.  In 1955 a unilateral application to the court, by the United Kingdom failed after Argentina announced that it would not respect the decision of the court.

On Friday the 2nd of April 1982 the Argentinian Army invaded the Falkland Islands on the orders Leopoldo Galtieri, the last of Argentina’s military dictators.  907 lives and 74 days later the Argentinian army surrendered.  Which brings us all the way to 2012.  The newspapers are full of talk about British acts of aggression which include sending a destroyer and a submarine and most threatening of all, Prince William to the region.  In Argentina the President has arranged a ban of Falklands flagged boats landing in South America.  As the sabre rattling continues, one has to ask why is it starting again?  As a human being I hope that humanity learns from war, rather than repeating the same mistake again.  Could it be a purely territorial dispute?  Or could it be something even more sinister?

My neighbour has a lovely house in the country.  I don’t.  I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that the government are planning to build a motorway exactly where his house is (to see more about the motorway – click on the link beneath *).  The value of his land is going to skyrocket.  I went there for 5 days a few years back.  I have told him that I think I should now have the house, after all it’s much closer to where I live.  He says that is absurd, some of his family live there, and I don’t even speak the same language.  Last year I went there and kicked his family out.  I was planning to live there forever.  However he called the authorities.  They came and removed me.  He doesn’t speak to me now.  He says I am in the wrong.  I know I am not though.  As Bono agrees with me.

*Click here to read an article about the motorway