Today, August 16, is always a difficult day for me.  On the one hand, Madonna is celebrating 60 years of life; on the other, Elvis Presley is celebrating 41 years dead.  We celebrate anniversaries – both good ones and bad ones.  Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles; this year, we ‘marked’ the 50th anniversary of the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.  Naturally, we celebrate anniversaries to a greater extent where round numbers are concerned: 10, 20, 25, 50, 100 and so on.

Thirty-four years ago today, on what was then the 7th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley (Madonna was not yet famous enough to worry about her birthday), I began to ponder this very issue: why do we celebrate anniversaries?

I think that the principle of the celebration of anniversaries – at least, the public acknowledgement of same on a large, even worldwide, scale – is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Up until, oh, the end of the Nineteenth Century, people didn’t seem to care that much about them.  After all, it was only as recently as 1752 that the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian one that had been the basis of the recognition of dates for almost 600 years.  The net effect of the adoption of the new calendar was the loss of 11 days – 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752.  So, what happened if, say, your father had passed away on, say, 9 September 1751 – when did you mark the anniversary of his passing in 1752 and in consecutive years?

That, however, does not affect us, because both Madonna’s birth and Elvis Presley’s death occurred under the adoption of the same calendar.  We know that today is the anniversary of both events as they occurred in their respective years.  Or are they…?

There’s something we forgot to mention.  It’s the Leap Year, that extra day every four years that is attached to the end of February to give us 29 days.  So, your uncle died on the 2 March last year.  Do you mark the anniversary on 1 or 2 March this year and, whichever you choose, is that the correct one?  Or, are we simply picking dates and saying, well, this date is the anniversary because the numbers match up, even if calendars are jumbled up and the ‘new’ anniversary is just 30 days later or something?  We adopt a new calendar, for example, which means we lose 11 months, let’s say, so August now becomes July – and how do our minds look at this?  Are we losing 11 months or gaining 11?  Losing one or gaining 11?

There have been fifteen leap years since Madonna was born.  So, with each leap year, that anniversary, in terms of actual 365-day timeframes that we define as a year, goes back one day.  So, in 1960, Madonna’s birthday should have gone back one day to August 15; August 14 in 1964, and so on.  Therefore, fast-forwarding all the way to the most recent leap year, 2016, Madonna’s birthday should have been on August 1, which is the day it should be this year.  In 2020, her birthday should become July 31.

Or am I wrong?  Is it merely the number of the date that matters?  If I decide to make tomorrow September 17, is it then my birthday (assuming I had the power to make such calendric decisions)?  Dates to me are like car crashes – I can’t help but look even though I am repulsed by them.

Elvis Presley, for his part, was completely obsessed by dates – indeed, by numbers in general.  He lived his life by a book called Cheiro’s Book of Numbers, published in 1926 and issuing directions to its readers to take their life’s path based on numerological principles.  When, in January 1977, Elvis decided to propose to his then-girlfriend Ginger Alden, he went to that book to find the date on which the engagement should take place; after consulting it, he settled upon January 26.  The name ‘Cheiro’ sounds like some ancient mystic handing wisdom down through the centuries; in reality, Cheiro’s name was Bill Warner and he was born in Dublin in 1866.  I presume that Elvis knew that.  Indeed, Elvis considered himself an ‘8’, because January 8 was his birthday, and of all the ironies, Cheiro himself died on an ‘8’ – October 8, 1936, in Hollywood, California (where else?)  Elvis had just turned 42 in January 1977, and his girlfriend was 19.  From Cheiro’s book, he chose January 26 – two plus six equals eight, you see.  That was Elvis Presley’s entire reasoning for getting engaged on that day.  Despite this, and despite the physical evidence of a huge engagement ring, many ‘fans’ over the years have come to wonder if the engagement ever took place; in his will, which was filed on March 3, 1977 – i.e., after this engagement took place, Presley left her nothing.  Not a red cent. Yet, according to legend, he was going to announce their engagement from the stage at Memphis’ Mid-South Coliseum on August 28, 1977; which, of course, never happened.

Of course, Presley’s choosing of that date, or any other date, was of no consequence at all because he was destined to die just seven months later anyway.  By the Leap Year Logic that I used earlier, the 41st anniversary of Elvis’ death should have been on August 6.  As human beings, though, we always look for the easy way out.  Things have to be labelled, compartmentalised; but not too much mental brainpower must go into it.  August 16 is the date that an event occurs, and therefore August 16 will forever remain the anniversary of the said event.  Added to the list of complications is the fact that, in some parts of the world – New Zealand, for example, is seventeen hours ahead of Memphis, which means that the events of Elvis’ death – and, indeed, Madonna’s birth, occur on August 17.  If I read a news report now on Madonna’s birthday, and I’m in California, then Auckland is 19 hours ahead, and the time is the following day, what is the date of that anniversary?  Elvis died on August 16, 1977, but part of the world is remembering it on the 17th because from their perspective, that’s when the actual events took place.

We presume that decades, or centuries for that matter, begin with the year ‘0’.  The big ‘millennium’ party, crossing over into the 21st Century, took place on December 31, 1999, when it should have been on December 31, 2000, according to some thinkers.  Decades and centuries should begin with a ‘1’, they say.

And yet I find myself irreversibly drawn to numbers, and to anniversaries.  I hardly know what today’s date is (I always have to look at my desktop for that), yet I can rattle off dates of people’s birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so forth.  I can’t understand that, and I hate the fact that when someone talks about some event or other, my mind is automatically drawn to the date of its occurrence.  I like to ‘play’ with dates.  One of my favourite games involves Microsoft Excel: by entering the correct formula, you can work out days of the week for any date for the next eight thousand years.  Any date at all.  For example, barring any further change of calendar, I can tell you that December 31, 9999 will be a Friday.  I hope that there may be someone reading this or something like it eight thousand years from now, trying to see in to the primitive minds of the 21st Century, wondering how we survived, and themselves about to come up to that magical date when New Year’s Eve, 9999 becomes Saturday, January 1, 10000.  If so, I have a message for you:  you’re probably wrong, but I don’t blame you for clinging on to the anniversary.

x

I don’t know…maybe it wasn’t built properly? x

Oh my dear, sweet Jesus.  This morning the BBC News leads with the story that the owner of Sports Direct, Mike Ashley, has bought out the struggling store chain House of Fraser for what is, in corporate terms, a pittance of £90 million.

I don’t pretend to understand why it is that companies buy out other companies when the chips are down, so to speak; what is it that the buying company gains financially if they do that?  Anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is that Ashley, boo hiss, is the current owner of British Premier League soccer club Newcastle United, a club of which I counted myself a fan of until he took over – no, more accurately it was when he put 20,000 of his employees at Sports Direct on zero hour contracts.

Zero hour contracts take us back to the dark ages of 18th & 19th-century factory employment; the days when workers had no rights, children were sent down mines, all that sort of thing.  No notice period, no sick pay; there’s the famous story of a female Sports Direct employee forced to have a baby in the toilets at work because she was too frightened to take the time off in case she was never allowed back.

It emerged in July 2013 that Ashley had 90% of his workforce, around 20,000 people, on these zero hour contracts. Furthermore, many were working below minimum wage and it took the intervention of a programme made by Channel 4, Dispatches, to highlight it and force the company to begrudgingly make some of the changes.

I cannot in all conscience support this man or anything he is involved with, much less anything he owns.  He only improved some of his employees’ working conditions because he got found out, and even then the changes were so tightly and temperamentally made that it was obvious there was no interest or love for his workforce.  What a dreadful human being.

Thus, I no longer support Newcastle United until the day he and his cronies are long gone from that club, and his continued efforts to drive the club into the ground are investigated and dropped.  I do not, and will not support any other club in its place, but I do look for a ‘guest team’ each season to support, usually a club local to me and struggling in its own way.  The day Ashley is gone and the rotten smell he has left behind is cleared, trust me, I will be back with Newcastle.  But until then, and for this season at least, my ‘guest team’ is Cheltenham Town, currently 17th in the S** B** League Two, for alphabetical reasons.  I won’t mention who the sponsors of Leagues One and Two (the old Third & Fourth Divisions), but they are sponsored by another evil corporate swine.  Cheltenham lost their opening fixture of this new season (2018/19).

Another team I still look out for, despite not having lived there for more than a decade, is Boreham Wood, the Hertfordshire club who play a pre-season friendly with Arsenal every year.  Ironically, “the Wood,” as they are known locally, made it to the second round of the F.A. Cup in 1999, only to lose 2-0… to Cheltenham Town!  Life is funny that way sometimes.  The Wood hover about in the National League, one step below the main four divisions of the Football League – last season they were defeated in the play-off final at Wembley Stadium to make that league.  What a day that must have been for the players, despite the loss!  A game at Wembley Stadium!

But…

Mike Ashley is evil.  He is a billionaire, and a typical one at that.  All he gives two shits about is making money for himself.  Today he bought House of Fraser for £90 million but is still quibbling with employees over pay rises totalling less than £10 million, that were supposedly awarded in 2015.  Furthermore, the 20,000 or so employees were not included in the pay rise.  As the late, great Rik Mayall would have no doubt said, Mike Ashley is a total bastard. x

This week, former ex-Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, made some comments about Muslim women who, adhering to traditional Islamic values, still wear burkas in public.  Almost immediately, there was a public outcry, but more importantly a further, widening of the rift between members of the British Conservative Party over this most trivial of matters.

Most trivial of matters?  How dare you, sir!  I argue that it is.  The other day, I mentioned that free speech is the most important thing we have in this and other democratic nations, and as long as hate speech is not involved, we should adhere to that.  But does Mr. Johnson’s comments cross the line into hate speech?

Well, here’s the thing: it depends how you interpret the comments.  Is it a simple insult to the women that wear them, in describing in less than flattering terms what they look like?  Or is it, as I suspect, more of a veiled (ho ho ho!) comment on the bullying tactics of Muslim men within the religion who make women wear them, having already stated in his Telegraph column that they are made to do so on the basis of no scriptural evidence whatsoever in the Qu’ran. 

It’s more a case of “why are you making your beautiful women look this way without any authority from your holy book?” than hate speech.  Therefore, in the spirit of free speech, I see no reason for Boris to apologise for his writing, although I would expect him to offer some sort of explanation to that effect if indeed that is the effect.

But the biggest fallout from this most trivial of matters is within the Conservative Party itself.  Most are demanding that he be thrown out of the party!  Talk about not having a sense of humour!  Only Jacob Rees-Mogg, who else?, has leapt to Johnson’s defence.  I don’t think even Rees-Mogg gets it, but at least he has realised that Johnson was not criticising the women, but the religion that demands they wear them – basically so that other men don’t drool over them.

Please, both of you, don’t begin demanding that I am a racist and I should remove my comment.  Please don’t begin accusing me of being a Tory.  I am neither of those things, but I do leap to the defence of anyone who is being denied their right to free speech, Tory or not.  This world would be a sad place indeed if we all agreed. x

Dear Reader(s):

It has come to my attention that certain social media and video platforms, namely Facebook and YouTube, have taken to banning a certain individual and his channel accounts, accusing him of hate speech.  That individual is Alex Jones, who runs a current affairs channel called InfoWars, and is already well known for spreading conspiracy theories, and other ideas that are, at the very least, wacky.  I’ve watched a number of the videos he has made from his studio in Texas, and I couldn’t agree with less if he didn’t say anything at all.

But, I like to think we live in a spirit of free speech.  In other words, everyone gets a go, even if the content is nuts. Jones, known for saying ‘just what he thinks’ in a particularly gruff accent, is a dyed in the wool conservative, and he has one especially well-known fan: “President” Donald J. Trump.  Indeed, Jones was a supporter of Trump’s right from the word go, and earlier in the week, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., wrote on Twitter that a senior Democratic Senator had admitted openly that media outlets are being shut down for the simple fact that they are conservative, and Trump wondered how long it would be before “Big Tech & their Democrat friends” purge other right-wing outlets such as Breitbart News and The Daily Caller from their platforms.

Trump has a point – a partial one, at least.  At first, I wondered why it would be that Big Tech would have so many “friends” in the Democratic Party, and indeed what Big Tech was at all.  However, I soon managed to console my fevered mind when it occurred to me that a) it doesn’t matter what party you are from, as soon as you get to Washington, you become soiled with money.  Politicians from all sides become slaves to the dollar, so it’s not really surprising that the likes of Google, YouTube, Microsoft et al get in the pockets of the politicians to increase their influence – nobody gives a f*** what party whoever is in, anyway.  Oh, and b), Big Tech is the conglomeration of companies that became the giants of the internet era, especially in the social media age which we are currently in.

But Twitter – seemingly alone among this bunch of reprobate social media giants – refused to ban Alex Jones either as an individual, or as a representative of InfoWars.  Why?  Well, it was really simple: he had not violated any of their rules regarding hate speech.  I have not seen that many of Jones’ videos for a long, long time; or indeed followed him on Twitter, therefore I could not tell you from personal experience if any of his speech or writing would be definable as hate speech.  But I do understand that his views are extremely right wing; and he is one of many who seem to think that the primary virtue in life is to be able to “say what he thinks”.  But, as long as he is not violating these laws in any country in which he broadcasts, why not let him?  As someone wrote on Trump’s Twitter feed, you should have the right to say what you want within the bounds of the law, but also you should be prepared to take the consequences.

For example, Jones is being sued by three sets of parents of children that were killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre of December 14, 2012.  You know the routine: teenage nutjob arms himself to the bollocks, goes into a school or college and just starts shooting.  Adam Lanza, no relation to Mario, managed to kill twenty children under the age of seven and six teachers.

Probably in part because the subsequent inquiry found no real answers as to why the young man targeted that school in particular, and because so many young children died, a number of conspiracy theories quickly arose; the whole thing was a hoax, that the government was involved, that it was a Jewish attack on Arabs, and so on.  Alex Jones, two years after the event, came firmly down in the “hoax” camp.  He called it a “false flag” event by the Government of the time, lead by recently re-elected President Barack Obama.  Jones had evidence: the town in which the massacre took place, Newtown, Connecticut, reported no deaths by murder that week.  Jones’ claim used the back-up that the children killed were in fact child actors.  However, Jones’ evidence was quickly debunked as a classic example of adding two and two and coming out with six.  No murders were reported in the town statistics because the investigation into the massacre was being handled by the Connecticut State Police, and the deaths subsequently appeared on the state’s statistics.

In November 2016, some of the relatives wrote to President-elect Donald Trump and asked him to denounce Alex Jones and officially recognise the deaths of the twenty-six victims.  Trump did not do so, and indeed actually appeared on Jones’ broadcast a couple of months later, so the parents took the only course of action left in the U.S. legal system: they sued Jones for a lot of money.  A million dollars.  Each, presumably.

The upshot of all of this is that Jones’ channel has been shut down on all of the major social media platforms bar Twitter.  This, I do believe, is a denial of free speech.  I don’t like anything that Jones says, inasmuch as the amount that I have read or seen.  From the available evidence, he seems to be a right-wing blowhard who can’t stand liberals.  That’s mainly what it boils down to in the US: conservatives vs. liberals.  But, in what is increasingly looking less like a free society, you cannot and should not deny him the right to his free speech.  He denies any and all accusations of hate speech, and I have to take him at his word.  It is for the social media giants to pore through the evidence of that, if any, not me.  As I wrote earlier, Jones can say what he wants, although it is he who must take the consequences.  I have spent years happily ignoring him with no adverse side-effects that I know of, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to carry on doing so.  I advise others who think he should be shut down to do the same.

Still, my personal opinion is this:  I never listen to someone who thinks they have an answer for everything.  Someone who never says, “Shit!  I have no idea!” is of no interest to me.  Life is for learning, not being a smart arse.  I think I would have a little more respect for religion, for example, if they said, you know what?  This stuff is mental, but somehow I believe it.  But they don’t; they always try to get the last word, they always try to have an answer for everything.  Not that I have any idea about the afterlife myself.  Haven’t a clue.  I have some ideas, some theories, but I can’t possibly know any more about it than the next person.

A group of people for which I do have a considerable degree of respect are theoretical physicists.  They work on the basis of what we know and postulate further debate among themselves and devise still more complex theories from that.  There are plenty of them to choose from throughout the history of ‘modern’ humankind: Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Dalton, Hertz, Einstein (of course), Hawking (of course), Kaku, and many, many others.  Astrophysics is a further topic that fascinates me, although I cannot claim to know that much about it or theoretical physics.  However, I am certainly enjoying the learning process.  Theoretical physics is more mathematics-based, while astrophysics places more emphasis on the physics.  And chemistry.  Two areas of science at which I failed miserably at school.  But as I get older I find my interest increasing, I don’t know why.  Perhaps it is because my late Mother was a scientist; she taught all the sciences at a comprehensive school, and had a great interest in it for the rest of her life.  She also loved Frank Sinatra, but that’s a whole other blog, I think.  x

This, I hope, will be a regular feature of my blog in which I conduct a sort of a ‘rant round-up’ of various events around the world that may not justify a rant of their own.  First up is something that occurred overnight (August 4) in Venezuela – an attempted assassination of President Nicolás Maduro in the country’s capital city, Caracas.

Fortunately, as far as I am aware, nobody – not President Maduro or anyone else – was seriously injured or killed.  However, after the attack, President Maduro – without a shred of evidence to back his claim – proceeded to blame neighbouring Colombia for the attack.  And, naturally enough being a politician, further claimed that Colombia and the U.S. were somehow collaborating in a ‘right-wing’ plot to kill him.  One of Mr. Maduro’s ministers went ahead another stage and blamed the right-wing attack as a support gesture after losing Venezuela’s election (another election in which accusations of vote-rigging were made) in May of this year.

However, the fact is we do not know who carried out the attack, or why.  An opposition group calling themselves Soldiers in T-Shirts (!), possibly one of the best monikers ever devised for a political group, claimed responsibility, but this has yet to be proven.

But ridiculous names for political groups is not the funniest – or let’s say, most ironic – fact about this news story.  No, that honour goes to the knowledge that the event at which Mr. Maduro spoke, and was televised live nationally, was an event to mark the 81st anniversary of the formation of the Venezuelan military in 1937.  And, being a military event, we see a number of long shots of them, all standing in neat rows along the main street.  When the programme cuts to them after the explosion, we see a few seconds of disorder among one of the groups, followed by the entire parade running away en masse from the scene of alleged danger!  Ah, a military to be proud of, folks, when there is a weapon-imposed danger on your doorstep, your army – designed and trained to keep you safe – will run away in a completely disorganised fashion yelling for their mummies to keep them safe!

BREAKING NEWS:  One of the Chuckle Brothers is dead!

Many of my fans from Facebook will be aware of my stance on Brexit.  While the EU – like anything created and run by human beings – is not perfect, it is still infinitely preferable to the chaos and disorder faced by the United Kingdom by leaving it.  And since the U.K. voted more than two years ago to leave, our Conservative government has been debating, arguing, summit-ing with senior European politicians over the best deal that Britain can get for itself after they leave the E.U., sometime next March, I believe.

I believe in democracy, and – assuming there was no demonstrable intervention by the Russians or anyone else – since the U.K. voted by a majority to leave, we ought to do so.  The Government is there to exercise the will of the people, in my view, or at least the majority if there is disagreement.  That’s my view and if you disagree, fine.

We vote for our politicians to act on our behalf in important negotiations to get the best deal for us as citizens of the United Kingdom, but unfortunately our current Conservative government are too busy being self-serving and inept to actually provide or even care about anything that could be beneficial to us as a collective (population) or as individuals.  Our Prime Minister, Mrs. Theresa May, is our most incompetent this side of Gordon Brown.  O.K., there’s only been David Cameron in between, but still, she’s fairly bloody useless.

As far as Brexit is concerned, one of Mrs. May’s ministers, Liam Fox, wrote in The Sunday Times this morning that the chance of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit is growing considerably as the days go by.  This, says Fox, is down to Brussels’ rejection of the idiotic proposals came out of the infamous meeting at Chequers, the PM’s summer residence, some weeks ago.  So, Liam, Mrs. May’s incompetence and a load of clueless Conservative cockups running about the place have nothing to do with it then?

Britain’s main problem is that those who voted for Brexit did so in the main because they believe that too many Europeans are getting into the country, taking jobs, stealing benefits and getting on buses first.  They saw the Brexit Referendum as a great opportunity to do that.  Other than that, people want everything just as it was before; trade, money, silly little rules about using metric measurements ought to be the same.  The European Union, quite rightly in my view, are saying, no, you can’t do that; if you want to leave the E.U., then you’re going to have to do it properly.  Even some of Mrs. May’s own party – Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel among them – are saying that to anyone who will listen.  Of course, the Tories are not worried one bit about the welfare of the citizens of the United Kingdom, are they?  Oh, no; they’re more concerned about the loss of trade and, as so many MPs are company directors, the money.

Religion.

This is a topic that I think about frequently; and it is one that has been on my mind this week, for no particular reason than it has been a topic of discussion to which I have been paying attention in my daily forays into the murky world of YouTube, in its context as a news/entertainment source, and in its context as a social media platform.  Of course, logic tells you that it cannot be both news and social media.  Once it does that, it crosses the line into what we now call ‘fake news.’  Never mind the fact that television, radio and the internet have all been presenting themselves as more or less all three for decades.  Political discussion programmes such as the B.B.C.’s Question Time or A.B.C. in Australia’s Q&A are all fake news by this argument because their primary purpose is entertainment, right?  Yes, they discuss current events, but they do it in such a way as to provide entertainment – guests who fundamentally disagree with one another, pre-approved questions from the audience, and so on.  Wouldn’t it be dull if they didn’t do that, eh?

But, I digress – a common feature in my rants, especially now that I an not encumbered by space or disagreeable guitarists.  Religion.  I think about it a lot.   Am I spiritual?  Probably.  Am I religious?  Absolutely, definitely, one hundred per cent not.

I disagree with religion, its principles and practices, fundamentally.  If there were ever a Question Time featuring myself against religion, it would make for great entertainment.  I do not deny anyone their right to believe in an afterlife, a god, even a messianic figure who came to Earth and was then publically humiliated and hung out to dry by a controlling, dictatorial spiritual being.  Fine, if that’s you, have a nice life.  But don’t expect me to believe it or I shall suffer eternal damnation, or to think that I am not exercising my free will.  One of the most humorous facets of religion is that it makes the believer feel he or she is ‘saved,’* or that God gave humans free will when religion is one of the easiest methods by which humans can be denied free will, is astonishing.

*Please note I am addressing, in the main, the Christian religion, although many facets of other religions such as Islam or Hinduism can be applied to my statements; where there are ideological or practical differences, I hope to be bright enough to point them out.  If not, please comment and I shall do my best to make the necessary corrections.  But be nice.

So, there is a God, and that God created everything that there is in the Universe in just six days.  On the seventh day, he rested.  What did he do?  What was there to do in a Universe that, in many parts, was created so recently it was still drying?  Science has discovered a great deal in recent centuries.  But there is still a great deal that is unknown.  If we were to draw a graph, and a line from the beginning of human existence through to now, we would see a line with a slow incline for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, as we discovered (or invented) the wheel, fire, fashion and makeup (not necessarily in the correct order), followed by a sharp, almost vertical line during the last couple of centuries as we found trains, cars, planes, the internet and electric guitars.  Oh, and space.  The discovery of space is a big one, because, with our massive telescopes, we can see not only out into the darkest Universe but back, back, back in time almost to what scientists would call the Big Bang, while religious folk would refer to it as the Creation of the Earth.

You see, folks, if you have no idea what I mean, light travels at 670,616,629 miles per hour; and if the distance is so great that it takes light four years to get to you, say, then whatever it is you are looking at is the object as it was four years ago.  It’s why scientists say that something is four light years away rather than 2.351e+13 miles away – much longer and more difficult to understand.

The discovery of the Universe – or, more accurately, how mind-numbingly big it was – led to a branch of physics we call astrophysics, a side-project of physics, if you will, that uses physical and chemical principles and practices to come up with solutions to some of the greatest mysteries and puzzles of the Universe.  Theoretical physics, where mathematics and other models are introduced, also made its way into the equation, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Anyway, the point is that physics looks for answers and uses scientific and practical models to find them.  Religion uses faith and guesswork, none of which can be proven, and expects its followers to believe them unquestioningly while giving that religion lots of money.  That goes for all major religions.

Human beings are one of the Great Ape family.  Religious people don’t like that, humans were created by God to be special, but that aside, humans evolved as one of the lucky branches of the Great Apes.  Look at us against chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, for example, and while you will see some similarities, you will also detect decided differences and count yourself lucky that you have an unbelievable level of intelligence compared to these animals.  Our brains are infinitely more complex, but there are some things we do in which we can spot similarities with these animals.

Watch a chimpanzee for a while and you will soon see that it will do anything for food; it will trick a fellow chimp, fight with it, or learn simple tips and tricks in order to get food.  Some have tried to prove that chimps are more intelligent than we thought.  They can be taught to eliminate numbers in sequence or to open and shut a series of doors to get to food that has been locked away.  But these scientists seem unaware that it is the food that is the primary object.  They learn that, if they do this, that or the other, whatever that is, they will get the food.  That’s all they care about.  They are not smart enough to know that what they are performing is a complex mathematical equation, or a specific series of doors in a specific order to get to the food.

Humans do the same thing.  Sorry to break it to you, comforted religious folk, but we do, and none of it more clearly explained that in the context of religion.  All of us, every one of us, I don’t care who you are, are or have wondered at some point in your life about where we have come from and, more importantly, where we are going.  Eventually, groups started to form and once it became clear that people would do anything to further those groups that seemed to express their own views on their ultimate destiny, the groups became religions that used the most fascistic methods to implement those beliefs on everyone in their society.  You will believe this or die.  And when you die, you will burn in eternity.  Wow!  Just like medicine show performers, or magicians, religious leaders realised that there was money in this.  Lots of it.  All they had to do was tell people that they must believe a certain set of tenets that they had drawn up, and they were home and dry.  One of the reasons that the 9/11 attackers were so willing to die for their cause was that they were told that if they did this deed, if they became martyrs, they would spend forever in eternity in the company of virgins.  And do what to them?  Exactly, despite not being human, with 70 virgins and 70 wives!  I mean, talk about the ultimate human male fantasy.  How can that possibly work in eternity?  I’m sorry, Islam, but that is utterly ridiculous.  And, of course, to make sure many of its millions of followers don’t think too long about this, Islam preaches very loudly that you are not allowed to question it, and you are taught not to like it if others – regardless of their religion – write about it.  Although there is a fascinating article on the subject written in a book review not long after 9/11 in the Guardian, reproduced here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jan/12/books.guardianreview5

So, chimps solve the meaning of life without realising it simply to get a piece of fruit; humans, who have developed a far more complex way of bartering, will do anything, without any thought for the consequence, to get money, which will, in turn, get them whatever they want.  There is no difference in my mind, whatever the religion, or fantasy, it’s all the same.  There is so much I could write about religion that this rant could in theory almost literally go on forever, but out of deference to you, dear reader, I won’t.  Religion is a racist, sexist, derogatory to others, murderous, violent fantasy, and I won’t have anything to do with it, no sir.  Although I would not insult a scientist by claiming to be one, I certainly pay a fair amount of attention to astrophysics and similar, its conclusions based on as much scientific fact as is possible.  I enjoy conversations with astrophysicists that I know personally and much of the music I am making at the moment is along astrophysical lines.  Check out my album Piece Time III:

…and, furthermore, my latest work with the band Spiral Planet – like the Universe itself, an ever-evolving band of heavenly bodies – here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ-PEbs5M_5vcr6K3Fy93ZA

x

I have a number of topics to rant about this week.  This is not intended to be a ‘weekly’ column, it’s just that I’ve not had a lot of time to rant, so I will attempt to spew my ire on as many things as I can remember, and get completely and utterly worked up so you don’t have to.

In Zimbabwe, mercifully now free of that despotic devil Robert Mugabe, they have just had the first ‘free & fair’ elections since Mugabe seized power for himself back in 1980.  And you can tell that they’re out of practice.  There have been accusations of vote-rigging, protests on the streets so severe that the army has been deployed, and soldiers of that army have found it necessary to shoot to kill three of those protesters.  And Mugabe isn’t even involved.  That, as you can imagine, is not good.  While I certainly condone protest if they have evidence that their elections have been tampered with, I do not condone violence from either side.  It just doesn’t work and it robs those of an opportunity to experience any more of life than someone with a gun says they can.

And who sent the army out?  The ruling party, Zanu-PF.  Who led that party and the country for 38 years?  Robert Mugabe.  And who is being accused of vote-rigging, causing Zanu PF to send out the military?  Zanu PF.  Are you starting to join the dots?  That’s right, dear reader, one cannot help but wonder if Mugabe is behind it all, pulling all the strings.  And even if he isn’t, it would appear that the party he has left behind is every bit as corrupt as he is/was.  Still, it could be simply that the MDC Alliance is miffed that it was unable to unseat the party that has ruled for almost four decades and that President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who said after Mugabe was ousted that we would see a different Zimbabwe now, is actually the leader the people want.  That surprises me, but there we are.  I thought the UN put people in there to ensure we have ‘free & fair’ elections in countries where they are either rare, have a reputation for rigging, or some other reason; and indeed, monitors were allowed into the country for the first time in 16 years, but where were they?  The African Union, according to the BBC, said the elections were ‘peaceful’ but could not confirm any rumours of vote-buying.  Huh?

UPDATE: The election was called, and the result is in favour of incumbent President Mnangagwa.  His share of the vote was – and sit tight – 50.8%!  Yep.  Point eight per cent above half.  Yes, technically that’s a majority, but it couldn’t have been closer if it had been a Brexit Referendum.  Opposition leader Nelson Chamisa won 44.3%, which gives us, hang on, a total of 95.1%, meaning that ‘the rest’ of the candidates enjoyed 4.9% between them.  Given the somewhat volatile nature of the Zimbabwean people, as demonstrated in the last few days, then this result is not going to be the end of it.  Indeed, the opposition leader has already discredited the result, calling it unverified, and was basically announcing himself as the winner of the election to anyone who would listen.  But I agree with the government over there that such violent protests cannot be tolerated.  Peaceful protest is one thing, and in situations like this, if you don’t get your own way through peaceful protest, tough.  Mugabe is gone.  You have more freedom, but do not think that this now gives you the right to kill people, and petrol-bomb buses.

Official Saviour of the World Jeremy Corbyn has, as I’m sure many of you in the UK will know, has been targeted by the Government, by opponents in his own party, and by the media, ever since he became the leader of the Labour Party back in September 2015.  It was inevitable, wasn’t it?  Someone who, at the time, was something like 66/1 on becoming leader, last in the opinion polls, that sort of thing; and, more importantly, someone who actually believed in the principles and practices of the Labour movement, and not simply someone who could stand in the middle of the political divide and win votes from both Labour and Conservative voters.

Recently, Mr. Corbyn has been in trouble again.   He had been accused of membership of a number of groups on Facebook which support the Palestinian cause and furthermore featured a number of antisemitic comments made by others in the group.  No antisemitic comment is justifiable by the way; so don’t go accusing me of suggesting that, just because such a comment was made by another it is somehow OK – it is not.  We are simply talking here about the notion of ‘guilt by association.’  Some jackoff in Tennessee makes an idiotic redneck comment while Corbyn is out campaigning, and it is Corbyn who shoulders the blame.

More recently – and remember, Corbyn’s opponents are looking for something, anything, that will bring him down – Corbyn was accused of defending an antisemitic mural that was removed by the local council in London’s East End.  Corbyn, according to the man himself, at any rate, was defending free speech as a concept, without paying too much attention to the mural’s contents, which were antisemitic and had been taken down after a number of residents had complained.  That’s Whoops 1, Corbyn 0.  Even if Corbyn’s version of events is true, it’s still a pretty stupid thing to do on two counts: one, not studying the mural, and two, not contending the fact that the concept of free speech does not, and should never, incorporate hate speech.  That’s Whoops 2, Corbyn 0.

I for one was looking forward to the day when Jeremy Corbyn would take over from Theresa May as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but one must be aware that, in doing so, it would have to be at some degree of personal and political cost; otherwise, the media will never leave him alone.  That is a very sad fact that needs to be faced up to.  Anyone who is not Conservative cannot lead a party, and more importantly a country, based on principle alone.  And even the Tories would struggle if, for example, Boris Johnson, or Jacob Rees-Mogg, or any of those ‘hard-right’ Conservatives became PM.

Do I still want Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister?  Absolutely yes.  Do I recognise that there will be trouble ahead, should that event ever occur?  Oh, yes.  Corbyn would struggle to last one single term in office because of the knives that would be out to get him.  They may be knives of truth, they may be knives of fiction – who knows?

I opened up my WordPress blog to discover that, having opened it over a half-dozen years ago, I’ve written but a handful of posts on it; the rest of my ire, wrath and anger have all been sent to that pantheon of social media, one of the two major sources of news, Facebook.

For at least a year now, maybe two or three, I have become disillusioned with Facebook for a number of reasons.  My tendency to rant has not diminished over the years; however, Facebook’s tendency to squash these rants to as few a number of readers as possible has increased.

There are a lot of bloggers who have blogged their entire lives for perhaps over 15 years now, and – as usual – I am one of the last to jump on the bandwagon.  Why is that, I hear you cry?  Well, it’s because, in part, I am simply too busy doing other stuff – including ranting on Facebook, to keep it up.  When I have finished writing a rant, I am physically – as well as mentally – drained to almost the maximum, and I frequently lie back in my chair and sleep.  This is the result of my sodding condition, Fibromyalgia.  It hurts and drains me to write at the same time.  I take pills for the pain, but I cannot do anything about the urge to sleep throughout the day – the pills are most likely a part of the cause, anyway.

Every so often I make a pledge with myself that I will begin using the blog regularly, but never seemed to want to give up the various things that take my time up during the day.

This time is different.

I don’t know whether it is because of some sort of revelation or not – I certainly don’t recall one.  I felt that it was time to put Facebook behind me – at least, the ranting side of it.

I have to keep up with my friends and family, there’s no question of that.  Social media was set up, I believe, in the wake of Friends Reunited, for folk to reconnect, and in many cases connect for the first time, once it became clear that the more friends you have, the more whatever it is you’re trying to make money from will reach more people.  And I got sucked into that; I had many, many dozens of friend requests every single day from almost every country in the world, and I took them all until I ran out of space.  I was happy to do that, and I was equally happy to have a listen to their music and try out the album they were selling.

But, you know, all of that stuff became insidious.  You could write messages by the thousand, with each tailored to their recipient, even including the recipient’s name.  There was something slightly weird about that, I felt.

So I tried it.  Selling my own music through social media.  I did it on a number of occasions with albums I made either alone or with my dear brother, composer Julian Butler.  If you hover over his name, dear reader, you should be able to click a link to his very excellent website, and go and enjoy his own particular brand of writing both lyrically and musically.  I was direct about my music.  I said it was fantastic but there were limitations.  Please buy it, I said.  And in – what?  Five years? – I’ve had not one shred of evidence that it has generated the sale of even so much as one single copy outside of those very kindly bought by friends and family.

And these loyal, supportive and generous friends and family are the reason why I intend to keep my Facebook account – and certainly my Twitter account (you’ve got to go after Donald Trump somehow) – open.  Until Facebook introduces another measure to reduce its membership.

The dream is over, boys and girls.  The internet bubble has now burst and is nothing but a stream of filthy water rushing slightly downhill to the sewer.  And once it goes down that drain it will merge forever with the murky waters of the Dark Web.  Who would have thought it, that there could actually be a post-internet world?  An age when the world wide web would, and could, be superceded by some other technology from which Corporate America would be prevented from hijacking.

I hope that day comes.

Dear All:  Christmas is a time of year when, using the birth of the baby Jesus as an excuse, we like to give and especially receive presents to and from our loved ones.  Everybody has their own agenda when it comes to Christmas; be it presents, family, joy, love, and – just occasionally – Christ himself.  Nevertheless, I know many of you – and indeed many of my subjects around the world – feel immense pressure at Christmas, and for a variety of reasons.  The big day itself is a culmination of months of planning, buying presents, buying food, more planning, inviting friends and family, buying wrapping paper, still more planning, and buying decorations.  Have I left anything out?  I’m convinced that the biggest winners through the whole festive period are the makers of Sellotape.

Oh, and what constitutes ‘the festive period?’  Note that I don’t use the word Christmas for the sake of inclusion.  Sure, it’s a Christian festival…or is it?  When Christians first arrived in this country via the Romans (I believe) they adopted a British pagan festival celebrating a sun god to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  This we know.  And we also know that Christmas long ceased to be a Christian festival for the majority of people once all the other things that I listed above became more important.  Anyway, to cut a long story short, as far as I can tell, the festive period begins around the time the kids go back to school at the beginning of September until the official ‘twelfth day’ which is traditionally January 6.  The main reason, of course, that Christmas begins so early is so that our supermarkets, and other corporate online retailer giants, can sell you stuff.  Lots of stuff.  And relatives with kids (both young and old!) feel the pressure to buy the gifts ‘from Santa’ that they actually want.

In every sense, the mask has fallen to the floor, the defences are down; no-one gives a s*** about Christmas as a festival celebrating the birth of one Jesus Harold Christ.  It’s a commercial one, pure and simple (feel free to run the Hear’Say No.1 hit in your head right now).  Money, money, money (feel free to run the ABBA hit…oh, you get the drill).  If it were suddenly made illegal to give and receive presents, Christmas would collapse right now and be celebrated by about three people in some small village fundamentalist Church of England in the middle of nowhere.  And that’s another thing; the bloody Christmas No.1!  Some of the CRUD that gets released in the good name of having the festive chart topper.  Thank goodness that Clean Bandit’s single, ‘Rockabye’ beat them all off (if you’ll pardon the expression) with a sharp stick.

All of this relates to Christmas as a general institution.  Let us now, dear subjects, look at this year’s festive season and how we have arrived here on our journey through 2016.  Many have travelled through 2016 with much sadness as family, friends and fans have grieved the loss of their heroes from the world of arts and entertainment, not to mention politics and other areas of life.  For me, it was David Bowie, Victoria Wood, Muhammad Ali, and Prince.  Yesterday, I was floored to hear of the death of Rick Parfitt, out of Status Quo.  All of these knocked many around the world for six, but for me these deaths left me feeling still more desolate as I struggle to cope with more personal losses of family and friends.  Even now I feel lost, walking in the desert with no compass or sat nav.

And, of course, both Britain and America suffered losses of their own as sovereign nations – Britain voted by a narrow margin to leave the ‘European Union,’ or ‘Brexit’ as some bright media spark must have struggled for hours to come up with.  Only problem was, those who campaigned to Leave the EU had forgotten to come up with a means of HOW to do it.  Thus, like the proverbial rudderless ship, our beloved Government have been leading us all round the houses trying to figure out the best way to do it without upsetting too many of their beloved voters.  David Cameron resigned and took his cabinet with him; once again we have a Prime Minister NOT GIVEN A MANDATE TO BE SO by the British people.  Bloody Tories.

Speaking of which, now that the Tories have sold our N.H.S. off good and proper, it is with depressing inevitability and regularity that we hear almost every day of some local ‘trust’ or other failing to provide enough beds, services, doctors, nurses, cleaners and medicine for those who need it – the taxpayers who pay into it in the first place.  Not that staff don’t want to provide the service – the vast majority are more dedicated to their jobs than in other vocations – and that makes the situation even more sad.  Even as the Tories passed the Health & Social Care Act in 2012, pigs were waiting at the trough to start diving in and grabbing the choicest services for themselves.  See my video on the subject here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpHoyrXJcaI  People often go in with one illness and come out sicker with another. And nothing is changing in 2016 because the general public, us, are not willing or able to fight back.  This was the year they beat us down.  For good?  We shall see.

Americans will be mourning the election of DONALD TRUMP to the Presidency, commencing January 20.  How did THAT HAPPEN?  Five years ago, if someone had used the words ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘President’ in the same sentence I would have laughed.  And I mean, properly laughed.  But now he actually is, and even now I have to write it out and stare at it for long periods to even stand a chance of believing it.  Most Americans are worried; Democrats have tried every which way to force Trump out even before he takes office.  Sadly, many liberals and left-wingers are unable to accept democracy – ironic since many belong to the Democratic Party – and the same was true in Britain in June, when many Labour supporters called for a second Brexit vote.  I appealed to my subjects for calm, to accept democracy in both instances, but of course it fell on deaf ears.  Americans simply told me that their nation was a republic and not a democracy, because it says to in the Constitution.  That may be so, but why bother voting at all if that were the case?  As it was some 42 % of America’s voters failed to show at the ballot box; THAT is the reason Hillary Clinton lost, nothing to do with swing states or corruption or any such excuse that Democrats have used to hide their embarrassment.  Republicans, right-wing Christian gun-worshipping hypocrits were whooping up and down in crowing glee, while many of those with a conscience were left mourning the loss of common sense in so many parts of the world where democracy and rational thought once triumphed.  2016 was the year that Britain and America embraced racism, nationalism, and open paranoia about the loss of their borders.

So what, my dear friends, of the future?  On January 20, Donald J. Trump becomes President of the USA, and who knows what happens after that.  Even I have no clue what’s going to happen, other than a period of utter madness that may last the full four years of Trump’s leadership.  Others who are more politically savvy than I may be able to answer that; who knows, they may disagree with me entirely on this.

Meanwhile, I will continue to watch movies and make music.  I will watch the news off the internet and let you know the salient stories as they happen, so you don’t have to.  I will continue to search for a meaning to this otherwise pointless existence.  I will continue to speak from the heart, and not from WIKIPEDIA.  I will continue to adore my dear wife Jane who has tolerated me for what is now almost 29 years.  She has been beside me, supporting me and giving me the gift of her life every day.  And so, in closing, I feel strangely positive about this Christmas and for 2017.  And the nearness of my dear wife is the reason behind that.  I have done wrong many times; it is the ones who stick with me and love me in spite of that who are the keepers in life.  And I hope that you are all able to feel the same or similar* about your loved ones.  I promise you, there is no greater gift.  I’m not pretending that it’s all hearts and flowers either; life has been very difficult for both my wife and myself, but in spite of it she’s still here, and I wouldn’t change a day of it.

And I’M FINALLY GOING TO SEE OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN on January 26, in London.  Bloody hell.  I’ve only waited almost 39 years.  All right, it’s not a regular concert, more of a sit-down celebration of grief and loss promoting an album with two other singers, but I don’t care; it’s Olivia Newton-bloody-John, for goodness sake.  I doubt I shall even hear what anyone else is saying.  And if she comes back to do a regular show like The Tour I Missed in 2013, I’ll be there also.

In conclusion, I invite 2017 to bring me its challenges and achievements and face me with them head-on; I will embrace them.  As all of our heroes who have died this year would testify if they could, life is indeed short and one must try and embrace every day as positively as possible; for even great men and women are not exempt from The Final Croak.  But I also appreciate how difficult it is, in certain circumstances, to remain positive, or even to avoid depression.  For many days, weeks, months or years I have felt its heavy weight upon my shoulders; pushing me to the ground so that all I see is a burnt, blackened wasteland with black clouds above and no life anywhere.  Speaking personally, I have to believe that there is a way out.

May the Force be with you all. x

*You may have to go up or down an insurance group at no extra cost to yourself, depending on availability.