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Oct. 2nd, 2021 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingboot6 years ago today Dad died.
And in that time it still seems a strange thing. I never knew what my feelings were about it in the first place, so it's almost impossible to comment on. I have grown more generous towards him since his death, he becomes mythologised. Bro would hugely disapprove of this and I do too in a way, but it's a process I can't stop; so I can merely be aware of it in myself and not let it colour the truth.
Dad came from a poor background. Not quite the Gorbals, still Cranhill, Easterhouse, all those Glasgow estates lent themselves readily to alcoholism, drug abuse, gang violence, the world of No Mean City. Dad joined the Forces and got out. After the RAF he went to work in the oil fields being established in the Middle East and Russia, and by god he made money, and as he made it he threw it around. For all his terrible faults and perhaps because of his background, he was genuinely generous by nature.
God knows what he would make of the revelation that over three million people in the UK will be choosing between food and fuel this Winter. Maybe he wouldn't be surprised at all. If there's poverty in the UK, sure it'll be lurking in the old badlands.
It's a shock to me. I'm hoping the New York Times has made a mistake.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/britain-fuel-crisis-johnson.html
Couldn't argue with Jonathan Pie when he said the Left made a mistake giving up the economic argument for identity politics. Equality of opportunity and respect are necessities but on social media, all I see among my progressive mates is an endless chewing of threadbare indignation, dogbone umbrage. Speaking from personal experience, for every one of them who proudly talks about the right to punch a nazi, deduct 7 from any protest where the enemy's getting wild with beer and flags. That's just human beings, that's just life but still...
I am not convinced these give a flying fig about freedom.
If anything there is an un-vocalised antipathy towards it.
And weirdly, they don't do much about pragmatic matters like keeping people warm and fed either.
They are about being in a tribe and feeling safe and protected there. Again, we are talking about human vulnerability, fair enough. They draw in, cast out dissidents, maintain communal purity (yuk!) and on some level support each other loudly since the community they seek has not been able to gather in person for a while. The price i conformity, but it creates that sense of belonging, strength even, among the brittle and broken. I see what it does, the comfort they get from it.
But as an active agent, my father, a Tory, would have been more useful and probably more likely to help someone in trouble.
Three million people, probably going up to three and a half, caught between food and fuel this Winter.
F*ck this Dickensian shit.
And in that time it still seems a strange thing. I never knew what my feelings were about it in the first place, so it's almost impossible to comment on. I have grown more generous towards him since his death, he becomes mythologised. Bro would hugely disapprove of this and I do too in a way, but it's a process I can't stop; so I can merely be aware of it in myself and not let it colour the truth.
Dad came from a poor background. Not quite the Gorbals, still Cranhill, Easterhouse, all those Glasgow estates lent themselves readily to alcoholism, drug abuse, gang violence, the world of No Mean City. Dad joined the Forces and got out. After the RAF he went to work in the oil fields being established in the Middle East and Russia, and by god he made money, and as he made it he threw it around. For all his terrible faults and perhaps because of his background, he was genuinely generous by nature.
God knows what he would make of the revelation that over three million people in the UK will be choosing between food and fuel this Winter. Maybe he wouldn't be surprised at all. If there's poverty in the UK, sure it'll be lurking in the old badlands.
It's a shock to me. I'm hoping the New York Times has made a mistake.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/britain-fuel-crisis-johnson.html
Couldn't argue with Jonathan Pie when he said the Left made a mistake giving up the economic argument for identity politics. Equality of opportunity and respect are necessities but on social media, all I see among my progressive mates is an endless chewing of threadbare indignation, dogbone umbrage. Speaking from personal experience, for every one of them who proudly talks about the right to punch a nazi, deduct 7 from any protest where the enemy's getting wild with beer and flags. That's just human beings, that's just life but still...
I am not convinced these give a flying fig about freedom.
If anything there is an un-vocalised antipathy towards it.
And weirdly, they don't do much about pragmatic matters like keeping people warm and fed either.
They are about being in a tribe and feeling safe and protected there. Again, we are talking about human vulnerability, fair enough. They draw in, cast out dissidents, maintain communal purity (yuk!) and on some level support each other loudly since the community they seek has not been able to gather in person for a while. The price i conformity, but it creates that sense of belonging, strength even, among the brittle and broken. I see what it does, the comfort they get from it.
But as an active agent, my father, a Tory, would have been more useful and probably more likely to help someone in trouble.
Three million people, probably going up to three and a half, caught between food and fuel this Winter.
F*ck this Dickensian shit.
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