Pastor Po - Smoke Curls

Pastor Po's Track List - Show 11

Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful - Paloma Faith

Sick Things - Alice Cooper

Glory Days – Bruce Springsteen

Treat The Youths Right – Jimmy Cliff

Shape of Things – Nazareth

Behind Blue Eyes – The Who

Framed – Sensational Alex Harvey band

Johnny B Goode – Peter Tosh

Sweet Jane – Lou Reed

Paranoid Pothead – Cheech and Chong

Lay A Little Light On Me – Strawbs

When The World Was Round – Ian Hunter

Maxi Taxi – Sly and Robbie

One Bourbon, One Scotch And One Beer – George Thorogood And The Destroyers

Pastor Po's Rock Show 11

Pastor Po's Tracklist - Show 10

Locomotive - Guns N' Roses

What's The Colour Of Money - Hollywood Beyond

21st Century Schizoid Man - King Crimson

Joe's Garage -  Frank Zappa

Peace Officer - Jimmy Cliff

Silly Games - Janet Kay

57 Channels (And Nothin' On) - Bruce Springsteen

Hard Work Worry And Pain - Vibracore

Kashmir - Led Zeppelin

World Shut Your Mouth - Julian Cope

Blowin' In The Wind - Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

Pastor Po's Rock Show 10

Pastor Po's Rock Show 09

It took eighteen radio seconds to introduce an interpretation of an unquoted comment. This was followed by one minute and eighteen seconds of statement of artistic intent presented in defence against a perceived criticism.

The five minutes and forty-six seconds of outburst that followed what would have been a reasonable conclusion of the matter was unexpected and illuminating.

Four times as long as had been taken to deal calmly with the offence taken at the comment was spent in vilifying the birth gender of the commenter.

It was this broadcast that inspired me to discover the word "misandry" to be the correct term for man-hating.
______

I argue for equality. I do it openly, publicly and, sometimes poetically, in performance, too.

I am happy to speak out of turn from time to time, to say things that challenge accepted or fashionable wisdoms, and I am happy to take the flak for my words and deeds.

I believe everyone else should have the same freedoms of speech and take the same personal responsibility for their words and deeds, too.

However uncomfortable they might be for the unidentified party who made the offending comment, the first 96 seconds of the broadcast piece were not unreasonable.

342 seconds later I had made the sad decision to stop wearing my newest tshirts because I would be undermining my own credibility as an egalitarian were I to continue to promote the source of this broadcast.
______

I realise this counts as a First World Problem but that happens to be where I live. I realise, too, that some people might think my attitude petty but they are not Po.

I'll keep doing my music show because it is fun but Show 08 and beyond will be hosted on my own Spreaker channel.

That way, if you don't leap up from the sofa immediately my show ends you won't be risking an earful of abuse for having been born the way you were you'll just get some more music.

Pastor Po's Rock Show 08

[Probably not a] Frog and Orb

This street was home to three people as I walked along it

This street was home to three people as I walked along it. One had erected a tent, one was in a partly cardboarded-up doorway and the third was less discreetly packaged. - A postcard from the not so saucy side of Seaside City.

Ashcroft and Cameron

In true tabloid fashion, the disclaimer acknowledging the story might be bollocks ...

[that no corroboration of the story has been received by the authors of the book & article and that their request for sight of the photo has been ignored and that the whole thing could just as easily be a case of mistaken identity or even an elaborate hoax and that even the prop said to be in the picture was not an uncommon find at parties attended by students at that university at that time]

... doesn't come until after the authors have told *only of their hearing of* the story themselves.

[Hearsay evidence - noun - (law) evidence based on what has been reported to a witness by others rather than what he has himself observed or experienced (not generally admissible as evidence)]

I'm left wondering whether I am intended to believe the photographer had their own darkroom, seeing as a roll of film with the implied image on it wouldn't be one you would readily entrust to the local chemist for processing or stick in a bag and bundle off to Bonusprint. Certainly not if you were rich, whichever side of the camera you had been.

I think whoever it was blocked Lord Ashcroft's appointment to Government made a good call.

Even if the allegation were to be completely true and blah, blah, blah, I am reassured that the eight million pounds donated by the author to the Conservative Party didn't buy him the level of influence he wanted it to. He appears far too spiteful.

Pastor Po's Rock Show 06

Have a listen to some tunes on

Pastor Po's Rock Show - Episode 6

This episode contains one song with rude words!

My weekly music show on Goddamn Radio www.goddamnradio.com

Meat Thief (FB 18th May 2015)

I was accosted in the street tonight by a meat thief. Not in the sense of anyone walking up masked and demanding I stand and de-liver, that would be odd even by Seaside City standards, but, in the absence of any apron, boater or other relevant paraphernalia that may signify butchery as a trade or profession, I feel it enormously unlikely the selected cuts on offer would have left their intended retailer's premises accompanied by an appropriate receipt.

"Do you eat meat?" was the initial enquiry. A number of interpretations of this question were still jostling with each other in my mind when clarification of sorts came by way of "Fresh meat? Do you eat fresh meat?"

A woman, in her forties, maybe older, maybe younger, hard lives make it harder to tell. Hair, dark and unremarkable framing a face riven with sharp-edged creases throwing high-contrast shadows from an unflattering street light, a black on white, DC Comic depiction of ever-scowling villainy if ever I saw one.

I mumbled an affirmative, honest answer to the question as posed and was genuinely relieved to see her rustle in an unmarked plastic carrier bag before advising me she had meat to sell. It was half past eleven on a Sunday night on the Lewes Road and I really didn't want to have to deal with a radicalised vegan.

Truthfully not boastfully and not to insult, I said I had no need of it and crossed the road away from her continuing pitch, having to repeat the same advice a little more pointedly to draw the encounter to a close.

I carried on my way without further interference and with the lesson learned that if I don't shave for a week I look like someone who might buy stolen meat on the spur of an almost midnight moment.

Boarding Schools and Bad Leaders (FB May 25th 2015)

The Guardian article currently doing the rounds, the one about boarding schools producing bad leaders, is clearly an emotionally exaggerated piece rather than a factual one.

It is simply not appropriate to describe going to boarding school as having to "survive the loss of [one's] family".

Being away from home for a small and finite number of weeks is a bit scary to begin with but, as traumatic experiences go, it is not in the same league as being orphaned and I think it an insulting analogy to anyone who has suffered the latter.

It is nonsense also to suggest, a little further down the same (first) paragraph, that communal living hinders the formation of relationships. If anything, the enforced sharing of living space tends one to learn how better to get along, form friendships and collaborate with people whose company one might not otherwise choose.

I also take issue with the author stating later in the article, " Bullying is inevitable and endemic in 24/7 institutions full of abandoned and frightened kids."

In reality, bullies' reigns of terror are usually quite tame and short-lived in boarding schools, because any inflicted physical injury will be promptly discovered and even bullies have to sleep sometime and they are then as vulnerable as anyone else. In today's world, bullies are also at considerable risk of expulsion from school with no money back for their parents and their place being re-sold. Litigation aside, failing to eliminate bullying is bad for business.

Simply sending children to boarding school is not the same as "abandoning" them. That's emotional rubbish again, as is the sweeping description of boarding pupils as "frightened kids". I attended two boarding schools, one of which I enjoyed and one I didn't, but at neither did I feel abandoned or would describe myself as being frightened.

At a guess, the author has issues arising from his own upbringing, education and early career. He graduated in Sanskrit from Oxford, taught in India, became a carpenter, retrained in psycho-spiritual stuff and for the last twenty years or so has been generating income as a therapist and writer, while apparently seeking a blameable entity to excuse his own self-perceived inadequacies in the area of relationships and gender.

But while I can only guess at the article's author's exact motive, reference to history confirms that David Cameron stood for election in 1997, has been an MP since 2001, the leader of the Conservative Party since 2005 and in 2015 has just commenced his second term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I am sure most would concede this record to represent success in leadership, even if it has not been in their preferred direction.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to offer your children the opportunity to experience boarding school and they are up for it go for it. Certainly don't let anyone put you off because someone who went to boarding school became Prime Minister. Twice. That would be daft.

Goodmoney CIC - Part Two (FB 11th June 2015)

A question arose. I researched and concluded thus:

It is my opinion that Goodmoney Community Interest Company (Goodmoney CIC) is only good by name and their Goodmoney Voucher business is profoundly detrimental to any local economy that engages with it. I cannot advise anyone to buy Goodmoney Vouchers or to accept them as payment.

Part two – Statements and Sums (fewer words but loads more numbers)

For Goodmoney CIC, Goodmoney Vouchers is a low risk business model with high return potential over a short to medium trading period. No loss will be suffered by Goodmoney CIC when the scheme burns out.

For givers, Goodmoney Vouchers are a stupidly expensive way to give spendable gifts.

For suppliers of goods or services, Goodmoney Vouchers are a stupidly expensive way to receive payments, being both short of sales value and delayed from the date of sale, adversely impacting profit margins, cashflow and VAT accounts. A retailer achieving modest margins on cash and card sales could have their business collapsed by this scheme if they accepted too many of these vouchers over a busy Christmas period.

Interestingly, buried deep in Goodmoney CIC’s T&C is a clear acknowledgement that operating their once-a-month payment run is detrimental to a business’s cashflow.

Is the Goodmoney Voucher scheme illegal? Not as a business but the way it is promoted might be and its qualification for CIC status might be questionable if viewed very closely

Is the Goodmoney Voucher scheme ethical? I don’t think so.

Would the Goodmoney Voucher scheme benefit the community or boost the local economy? No.

As it is both the Givers of the gifts and the Sellers of the goods who make up The Community and both groups lose out compared to giving the same gift value in cash the scheme is clearly not a boost to the economy of The Community. The scheme appears designed to do the opposite and to siphon cash out of the economy of The Community
______

If you want some arithmetical proof of the above, read on.

I use the giving of a single Voucher with a “£20” face value in this example:

To buy a Goodmoney Voucher with a face value of £20.00 will cost £23.75 if you include in your order the £1.00 for a gift card and envelope and the £2.75 for signed-for delivery of the voucher to you.

The current standard price of 1st Class Signed-For Delivery by Royal Mail of a 100g letter is £1.73 and if a business can’t buy gift cards with envelopes for less than 50 pence a time they should replace their buyer.

At first glance, this appears as if Royal mail have earned £1.73, the gift card supplier has earned 50p and Goodmoney CIC have made 50p on the card and £1.02 on the delivery to you of the voucher, a profit of £1.52 from your purchase of a “£20” Goodmoney Voucher.

For those who really enjoy figures, 6.4% of your outlay has gone straight to Goodmoney CIC.

There will be some costs incurred in processing the Voucher orders but if we assume success for Goodmoney CIC such that 1000 sales of “£20” vouchers to have taken place in a period their gross profit from the sale of the Vouchers in this same period will have been £1520 and I would expect their net profit to still exceed £1000 if they are running their business efficiently.

Goodmoney CIC would suggest this additional cost to you is worthwhile to ensure your present is spent locally and benefits local businesses. If you believe them you will buy into their scheme and the £20 worth of goods the recipient of your gift buys will have cost you £23.75, 18% more than it would have cost you to give cash.

When you are mulling this over in your head, you will probably be thinking that the £20 worth of goods the person you gave the Voucher to spends it on represents £20 worth of revenue for the local business supplying the goods and that’s that, but it doesn’t.

The local business supplying the goods only receives £19 when they redeem the “£20” Voucher, even though they have handed over the full £20 worth of goods and still have to pay a VAT bill as if they had received the full £20. The missing £1 stays with Goodmoney CIC as their 5% fee to businesses.
______

I’ll come back to the effects on businesses in a moment. For now I will stick to the transaction as viewed by the buyers of the Vouchers, for it is only their money that funds the scheme.

If you wanted someone to be able to buy £20 worth of goods in a local shop and you gave them a £20 note that they then spent in a local shop, you would be down £20, the person you gave the cash to would have £20 worth of goods from the shop and the shop would have £20.

Introducing a Goodmoney Voucher into the transaction doesn’t affect the person who received the gift from you as a Voucher instead of cash, they still get £20 worth of goods from the shop, but this time you are down by £23.75 and the shop only gets £19, the other £1 having being retained by Goodmoney CIC. The shop also has to wait until Goodmoney CIC’s monthly pay run before they get their £19 which leaves them out of pocket in the meanwhile.

Updating the model now you have seen the second part of the transaction, Goodmoney CIC actually take another £1.00 to add the £1.52 of net profit you already knew they were taking. Goodmoney CIC now has £2.52 of your £23.75 and the shop you thought you were supporting has not done as well as you imagined they would. In which case you have been misled.

In the end, 10.6% of what you gave to Goodmoney CIC would stay with Goodmoney CIC, not just the 6.4% of it that showed up originally.
______

Wind this up to the 1000 customer model:

Giving Cash.
Gift givers give £20k, gift receivers get £20k worth of goods and the businesses supplying them get £20k of revenue to pop in the bank straight away to pay their bills.

Giving Goodmoney Vouchers.
Gift givers pay out £23.75k, gift receivers get £20k worth of goods but the businesses supplying them get only £19k of revenue and they have to wait up to a month before they can use it to pay any bills.

I can’t be sure about the detail but I would be very surprised if Goodmoney CIC hadn’t managed to hang on to at least £2.5k of your investment by the end of it, to which they would add the interest accrued on the £19k that sat in a bank from the moment the Vouchers were purchased until they were redeemed.

The sale of all subsequently lost or otherwise unspent vouchers would still earn immediate profit at the time of sale and ongoing interest on their redemption value indefinitely for Goodmoney CIC while never contributing to other business turnover locally.

[Radio debate from Goddamn Radio 8th June 2015 

https://www.spreaker.com/user/countessofbrightonandhackney/better-money-for-brighton ]

Goodmoney CIC - Part One (FB 11th June 2015)

A question arose. I researched and concluded thus:

It is my opinion that Goodmoney Community Interest Company (Goodmoney CIC) is only good by name and their Goodmoney Voucher business is profoundly detrimental to any local economy that engages with it. I cannot advise anyone to buy Goodmoney Vouchers or to accept them as payment.

If you want to see my professional background find me on LinkedIn, just drop the Po when you search.

I would, of course, be very interested to hear from anyone who thinks they can explain how a scheme that removes money from the collective economy of any local community at the rate of £4.75 per "£20" Gift Voucher transaction is beneficial to that community's economy.

Perhaps Dr Caroline Lucas MP, a Director of Goodmoney CIC, might like to have a go.

Part one – The Narrative (loads of words and fewer numbers)

On Monday I was involved in a debate that was broadcast live on the internet and can still be listened to via the www.goddammnradio.comwebsite. Proposed as a debate about alternative currency models, it became apparent quite soon that the visitors to the studio were simply using the current mood of general distrust in banks to promote a commercial gift voucher scheme as if it were a fledgling alternative currency that would benefit the local economy.

I was somewhat surprised when, before we went live, Matthew Slater, a self-titled "Community Currency Engineer", picked up an unused toothbrush that was among the art and music bits n bobs in the studio and asked if he could have it. He was promptly and firmly told, No.

I had read Matthew's website in preparation for the debate and was interested to discuss his philosophy of "Radical giving" with him as it seemed to involve everyone else giving their stuff away while he lived on gifts from everyone else, his only return contribution being the apparently priceless advice that giving stuff away so you own as little as possible is in some way spiritually beneficial.

Even having read his page and understanding him to be content to freeload off other people, I wasn't expecting Matthew Slater to be a straightforward beggar, I wasn't expecting him to ask to be given stuff as he saw it and wanted it.

Following the toothbrush incident I was not surprised when, after the broadcast was over and I was on the way outside for a smoke, Mathew wanted a free cigarette from me.

"Give me a cigarette." He said, with a tone suggesting it was my duty to provide one for him.
I told him, "No. You can buy your own."
To which he shot back, "I don't smoke." as if to give an illogical response was in some way clever. Moments later, he came outside rolling a cigarette he had more successfully blagged from someone on his own team.

You can listen for yourself how well he fared in the "debate" if you wish but I wouldn't advise taking any kind of financial advice at any time from any guru who apparently can't afford a toothbrush and who relies on handouts from disciples to get by from day to day.
______

Before he started telling people to give their stuff away, Matthew made his living writing software. One of his programs, he told us, sits behind the Goodmoney CIC gift voucher scheme. CIC stands for Community Interest Company, a form of Limited Company that must be run as a profitable enterprise and its activity must benefit the community. A CIC is not a Charity and cannot be run as "not for profit" or at a loss.

Having spoken in echo of Matthew's emotive terms of the evil of banks and that money as we know it should be replaced with something better, Dr Mick Taylor, a Director representing Goodmoney CIC, introduced his company's scheme as if it were a fledgling alternative local currency that would boost the local economy. At least, that's how it came across to me. Listen for yourself if you wish.

When quizzed, Dr Taylor, a mathematician whose PHD is in Network Science, had to concede the scheme is not a currency at all and never could become one. It is nothing more than a pre-paid gift voucher for local use with participating local traders. Dr Taylor was careful to describe the 5% fee deducted from the face value of the vouchers when redeemed by a business as an admin fee for inclusion in an online directory of participating businesses.

As he is a mathematician and on the Board of Directors of Goodmoney CIC, I was very surprised that Dr Taylor claimed not to know, when asked the question directly, what would happen to the interest on all the money that would sit in Goodmoney CIC's bank account in the period between any voucher being purchased and it being redeemed.

The debate on alternative currencies / gift voucher pitch drew to a close after its allotted broadcast hour and continued for a short while outside in the sun on the back deck until the Goodmoney sales team went off into the afternoon and I went home for a kip, my usual nocturnal routine having been interrupted by another engagement earlier in the day.

Perhaps energised by the debate, I didn't sleep straight away. Instead, I started doing sums and reading the Terms & Conditions published across a number of pages on the Goodmoney CIC website. If the T&C were outsourced I suggest someone asks for their money back. I was not impressed to find inconsistencies between similar terms on different pages, typos, use of incorrect words and reference to a non-existent Act.

I read Goodmoney CIC's T&C from start to finish, because I am like that. I would have looked at their accounts but the company is too new to have published any so I looked at the legislation covering CICs. All this is standard practice for anyone properly evaluating any contract and is what I have been paid to do for years.

Though in this instance I am giving my advice free of charge it is exactly the same advice as I would give were I commissioned as a professional consultant.

I cannot see how such a plainly parasitic business can call itself a Community Interest Company in any sense other than by Goodmoney CIC's registered office being in New England House, an address within the community. Everyone else in the community who interacts with it seems to lose out by doing so. I note Goodmoney CIC requests volunteer help with its commercial operation.
______
My considered advice to anyone wanting to give someone else £20 to spend locally is to make your gift of £20 in cash and hang on to the extra £3.75 it would have cost you to add a gift card, envelope and delivery to the purchase of a "£20" Goodmoney Voucher.

Most people spend cash locally in shops and pubs anyway and you can spend locally the £3.75 you have saved, too. How about supporting your local pub or café with a drink or a bun to celebrate being smarter than Goodmoney CIC and actually supporting your local traders and businesses without going through a middleman?

My considered advice to traders and businesses is to not participate in this voucher scheme unless you have fully understood the detrimental effect it would have on your cashflow, your profit margins and your VAT account when compared to equivalent cash sales.

Accepting payment in the form of a credit voucher still leaves you liable to pay VAT as if you had received the full sale value at the time of the sale even though by redeeming the voucher you will receive less than the full sale value and will receive the reduced sum at a later date, according to whenever Goodmoney CIC programme their monthly payment run.

It would be less damaging to your business to offer a 5% discount to local customers who pay there and then by cash than to accept a voucher under this scheme.

The 5% of face value retained by Goodmoney on redemption of vouchers was described to me during the debate as a fee for inclusion in an online directory. That all sales resulting from this directory in the fashion intended by the publishers of the directory will be of less benefit to your business than any other sales should be seriously considered before signing up for inclusion.

Signing up also gives away more intellectual property rights than seems necessary, especially as these rights are to be given over to Goodmoney CIC for all time and for any purpose and for everything submitted to their website. This would include their use of your logo without your further permission even if you left the scheme.

My advice to Goodmoney CIC is to stop promoting yourself under a banner of proclamation that the existing monetary and banking system is evil and stop claiming that your scheme is a fledgling alternative when your business model seemingly relies upon earning bank interest on sums held as security against unredeemed gift vouchers and taking a cut from "both ends" of the local transaction.

Though it could be said there is a bit of smoke and mirrors stuff going on here, the key to clearing it away is to ignore the person who receives the Voucher with a face value of "£20" and who gets £20 worth of goods from the local trader.

If someone were fool enough to buy a "£20" Goodmoney Voucher with gift card and delivery and the voucher got spent in their own shop they would have laid out £23.75 to enable them to claim back only £19.00, representing a straight cash loss to that someone of £4.75 having resulted directly from the involvement of Goodmoney CIC as middlemen in the transaction rather than dealing in cash.

It follows that:

If a member of the community buys a "£20" Goodmoney Voucher.... that gets spent in a shop in the community .... a straight cash loss to the community of £4.75 …. directly from the involvement of Goodmoney CIC in the transaction rather than dealing in cash.

If 1000 members of the community each buy "£20" Goodmoney Vouchers and they are spent in the community the community suffers a straight cash loss of £4750. Additional losses would also be incurred by businesses not being paid by Goodmoney CIC until their once-monthly payment run.

As I said at the beginning, I would be very interested to hear from anyone who thinks they can explain how any scheme that removes money from the collective economy of any local community at the rate of £4.75 per "£20" Gift Voucher transaction is supposed to be beneficial to that community's economy.

[Radio debate from Goddamn Radio 8th June 2015 

https://www.spreaker.com/user/countessofbrightonandhackney/better-money-for-brighton ]

BBC Migrant (FB 26th June 2015)

I can't be bothered to rephrase my Calais lorry-jumpers piece from tonight as standalone so I'll begin with the post that prompted my response. It was a Public post so I am not breaching any confidences and I shan't attribute it to avoid its author embarrassment:

They wrote:

" Last night on the BBC news, they interviewed a Sudanese migrant in Calais. He's trying to make his way to the UK. He's taught himself impeccable english, and he's made his way across Africa and Europe to try and make his dream come true.
Some people think we should move heaven and earth to stop him. I disagree.
A man with that much motivation, drive, and talent should be welcome here. He's shown more resourcefulness and resilience than I think most of us could in his situation, and with all that going for him he's going to be an asset to the country.
So what do we do? We spend millions of £ to stop him.
Smart move."

I replied:

English is one of the two official languages in Sudan so it is no great surprise he is fluent.

If he had entered the EU legally he would already have a visa that entitled him to come here. I guess he doesn't so he has illegally entered and crossed a large number of countries, those of which are in the EU having the same human rights legislation as we do.

The UK, as is recently widely reported, is on average the most expensive place in Europe in which to rent accommodation and as he presumably has no funds he is presumably intending to be supported by the UK as he has no job ready and waiting for him.

The key to what makes the UK an attractive destination for illegal migrants over other European countries is that if one does qualify for asylum here and finds even a low paid job one's earnings are topped up by Tax Credits, which are an unquestionable burden on those taxpayers in the UK who do not qualify for them.

And, of course, if he intends to cross on a lorry he is also putting the livelihood of the driver of that lorry at risk. I believe the fine is some £2000 or so per person discovered on, in, under or otherwise aboard a vehicle but not on the ticket or with the correct documentation.

Had he real drive and motivation to become an upstanding and contributing member of our society he would have done all he could to qualify for legal entry. He might also, were he not criminally selfish, have thought to stay closer to home to help sort out the problems within his own country.

So, in summary, he is someone who has no respect for the law in the countries he has already crossed without the appropriate permissions and has no respect for UK law as it is his intention to enter the UK illegally. That he has not expired yet would imply he has either illegally worked along the way or has stolen enough to sustain himself. He also chose to run away, much further than is necessary to achieve safety for himself, rather than address problems for the greater good of his fellow Sudanese.

I fail to see how all that renders him a potential asset to our country? He may have been a refugee from Sudan a while ago but right now he's nowhere near Sudan, has no need to flee anymore and he is just another illegal resident in France, which, as it happens, is not a dangerous war zone. I am there at the moment and would have noticed.

Air Products, Lyon / US Police (FB 28th June 2015)

In Lyon, a couple of days ago, a troubled individual beheaded his boss, took and sent via a social media messaging service a selfie of himself with the head he had just separated from its owner and impaled the head on the railings of an Air Products factory before he, thankfully inexpertly, attempted to get the factory to explode.

That he sent the selfie to a number in Canada, from where, it is unclear as yet to where, it was forwarded, suggests he took the selfie as proof of his macabre act.

I am somewhat doubtful that if this scenario had played out in the US, the home country of Air Products, the individual would be in custody answering questions as he is now.

French police carry guns as a matter of course, I still find it a little distracting to see them carrying what I assume to be assault rifles when they pop in to the bakers, but they don't use them if there is a safe option not to.

May the US please observe and learn. With the proper training and discipline such that security service personnel enter dangerous situations with appropriate caution but not fear, it is quite possible to respond to those situations with a clear head and to respond only as is necessary.

I am not of the opinion that the majority of US policepeeps are in the job just to kill folk of any shade or hue, it isn't as if you need a badge to get hold of a gun so killing sprees are not exactly hard to organise, I believe the problem lies in a lack of education that results in officers being placed in circumstances they are ill prepared for and too often on their own.

Be it the response to a domestic dispute or a vehicle stop or a teenage party that gets out of hand, the news footage we see more and more of appears to show a lack of awareness of how to properly contain people or circumstances without being scared of them or angry with them, a lack of confidence, if you like.

Naturally, we never get to see or hear about the incidents during which nothing bad happens and no one does anything wrong and in which people do not get unnecessarily killed or otherwise damaged and these are the vast majority of police attendances, but those we do see do seem to share a common characteristic of the placement of poorly prepared people reacting as those of us who are untrained might and making very unfortunate mistakes.

It is no different from someone having spent their life becoming expert in any field but mine not spotting flaws in commercial contracts or proposals. With the correct training and the thirty years of my experience they could be just as able as I am.

I know I could never be a policeperson or a member of any armed service as I do not have the correct temperament for it but I can wrestle spreadsheets into submission and wade through reams of terms and conditions with relish and without breaking into a sweat.

We all have differing abilities. Just because someone wants to do a job and applies for it doesn't mean it is the right job for them. In my field it just means someone loses a few quid and it isn't terminal or likely to cause civil disturbance and while I often piss people off I am not going to be setting elements of any community violently against any other element of that community.

I don't live in the US and am increasingly unlikely to visit as I am extraordinarily happy to be where I am, but I have a friend or two there and would like them and their fellow countryfolk to be as safe as I feel here.

It might take something as simple as more effective weeding out of even the most enthusiastic of applicants for policing roles. It would certainly be worth a try. By the time they are sent to do something they get wrong it is too late.

Happy everyday.

Tube Strike (FB 8th July 2015)

Today I find myself amused by noting how many of the moans and groans about the Tube drivers strike, particularly those mentioning the drivers' working conditions, contracts and existing remunerations packages, are coming from those whom I might describe as "under 30, something-for-nothing-socialists".

I suspect they have no idea that these and other "cushy" positions held within the rail industry are the direct legacy of the nationalised services of the 1960s and 1970s and that it is not possible in law for the "private" companies now responsible for providing the services today to get them changed.

Trade Unions, initially created to avoid workers being trampled on by their employers, didn't stop at defending their members' reasonable interests and achieving fairness across the board. Instead, they kept on improving their own members' lots at the expense of the lots of other workers, many of whom were also funded by the public purse. Collective greed is still greed.

Socialism might be wonderful in theory but it doesn't work when you apply it to real people in the real world. It never has and it never will. There will always be generous people and greedy people and there will always be lazy people and those who work hard. Any system that ignores these differences and overlooks that some people will simply cheat for their own personal gain whatever the rules are will be doomed to fail.

"Big Business" (FB 9th July 2015)

The "big businesses" I keep seeing people moan about are just as accurately described as "major employers", providing incomes for their own staff and for the staff of their supply chains and distribution networks.

The last time I did the sums relating to a relatively large company I worked for, I discovered that for every £200 I was paid by the company I contributed no more than 40p to the shareholders of the company, whose personal investment enabled the public infrastructure works we carried out to take place. This still strikes me as a pretty good deal for continuous employment.

Conversely, my greediest employer ran one of the smallest companies I ever worked for. In a single year, simply by doing my job well and managing his company better than he had, I was able to improve his gross annual income by a sustainable £125,000 yet he was reluctant to raise my salary above 10% of that figure. I made him £2000 for every £200 he paid me and I withdrew my services at the end of that year.

Whether it is fashionable or not to mention it, in the unemotional world of sums involving real world numbers, employees almost always get a fairer deal from larger companies than from small ones.

Prism (FB 10th July 2015)

Does it help
That there's a
Device in nature
That exposes your
Every constituent part?

That breaks down what we see
Into black and white from
What we thought
Was grey

Then
The white
Becomes a rainbow
With more shades than Newton
Let himself believe
'Cause he
Was

Christian
In the old fashioned
Sense that was modern at
The time so seven was
A magic number.

We now use three,
R and G and B
For light.

You see

R G B alchemy
Is showing you me.
That's all that you see

In the shadows
That define

Me.

Close up is an intricacy
A detail without design
Just twisted fibres
Spun, woven,
Knitted and
Sewn.

Into

What?
A covering.
A hovering above
Fashion's no man's land
Wrapped in wilderness itself

Where I find myself naked and pink

At least that's what I let everyone think.

How much R and G and B make this pink that
Armour clads the imagination of others?
How bright must a light be for eyes
To avert instead of staring at,
To alight instead of
Torching the
Home of?

How!

Take a piece of pipe and
Make it a pipe of peace

Let your Grey
Be wisps from
Burning reds.

Let your living
Be what keeps
You

Let your stride
Be long enough

Let your dreams.

Just let them.

Without fee
Invite your loved ones
To join you where the rules
Of the outside, everyday society,
As outside, everyday society
Itself, has no place
Black is lace with
R and G and B
On delicate
Show
Off

So

Look close. See.
What constitutes me?
I'll look close, too,
At what constitutes you.

With the help
Of that same
Device in nature,

As spectacular
As spectacles
Bringing life into
Sharp focus

As it ever is
In breaking
Light apart.

Such is the magic
Of the polished
Planed prism
That lens
Itself
To

Madness
And love.

Which,

Without form
Without surface
Without reflection,

Are the

Black and the white
The day and the night
The flight and the fight

Of fancy.
Or of fear.

Am I
Making
Myself clear?

There's more to life
Than ever meets the eye

The truth is in
The light
the eye emits

That cannot hide
Hatred
Or hide
Loving to bits.

Untitled (A Gentle Rain - FB 12th July 2015)

My planned Poem Three has been cancelled due to inclement weather. I went looking for an "Indoors if wet" alternative and wrote this before I found one. It will have to do:

A gentle rain comes to soften and,
In time, to rinse away the remnants
Of food and drink, to clean the streets
Of the pee and puke of humankind and
The poo I hope is of beasts of land and air.

The sun averts its direct gaze
From the morning after the humid
Night before, bringing slowly into the very
Softest focus a few selected, carefully vignetted
Outstamatic memories of "freedom", as played out
By stags and hens under the watchful eye of their hosts,
Using cameras set high up on buildings and purpose-made posts.

I notice

A miserably damp, chill morning in Seaside City feels
No different from a miserably damp, chill morning in
Whatever part of Sarf London whence they arrived
With bulging yesterday cashcards and back to where
The Southern Railways train will slightly gently carry
Them and their newly swollen livers later on today.

Me?
I live here.

I haven't finished enjoying
My birthday weekend.

I just took a time out
To write a poem.

It's what
I do.

© Po 2015

Job Description (FB 16th July 2015)

My current job, as best as I can define it, is:

To experience life,
To give it thought
And to take notes.

Yesterday was a good day at work.

Labour Party Leadership (FB 5th August 2015)

While I have no direct interest in Party political matters and am consequently not following closely the news coverage of the Labour leadership contest, I am picking up enough in passing to establish the gist of the debates and to note how many people seem to have a misunderstanding of human nature.

The further to the left the Labour Party leadership goes the further away from potential to form government it goes.

The general electorate is naturally self-interested and the majority will always sit just to the right of centre, only voting towards their the left when the alternative is too extreme for comfort or cocks things up spectacularly, as in the 90s when New Labour was pitched left of Conservative but not by far.

Being able to eloquently present and debate a left-leaning opinion is not enough to make it work. If an Opposition proposal is too radical it ceases to be an option for the majority to consider as a viable alternative to a Government proposal and the opportunity to bring about change by diverting votes is lost.

The ideal is to return the country's direction to straight ahead, not to keep swerving it from side to side, to make steady progress rather than boom then bust. Yes, it is dull. The simple administration of an economy should be dull.

Calais Migrant Camps (FB 29th August 2015)

For clarity, the definitions used here are:
Migrant - noun - a person or animal that moves from one region, place, or country to another. [Collins]
Illegal immigrant - noun - a person who has entered a country illegally [Collins]
Refugee - noun - a person who has fled from some danger or problem, esp political persecution [Collins]

Can we please remember that the people who are camping near Calais and attempting to board lorries etc. to reach England are willfully illegal immigrants and are only a tiny minority of the refugees and other people currently legally present in and wishing to settle in the EU. This is an important distinction.

This tiny minority is made up exclusively of those who refuse to apply for residency in the EU in the proper manner, who have entered and crossed a number of countries without regard for their laws and who intend to break both French and UK laws in order to cross from France to the UK. They are not model citizens.

It is their free choice not to have applied for asylum in any EU country they have set foot in before reaching Calais. If they had applied via the correct channels and had achieved a legal right to be living and working in the EU they could get on the train like anyone else.

All the people camped in Calais, some of whom may be refugees and all of whom are illegal immigrants, can apply to the French government and would be entitled to exactly the same as the many tens of thousands already in the system. Were they to do that I might respect them a little more.

I am appalled at the calls to take supplies to this tiny minority, the small criminal element doing more to damage the reputation of genuine, law abiding asylum seekers than anything else. I have even received an invitation via social media to contribute to a collection for these people which, unsurprisingly, I shall not be doing.

No one needs to buy food or supplies in Brighton and take them by van to France, it is a daft idea and a waste of money. If you are that concerned, pop over as foot passenger and walk to the local supermarket and save yourself a bundle. I am slightly concerned that a local politician bigged-up the idea.

The camps in Calais are not populated by desperate people who have just escaped a war zone and who seek safe settlement in the EU, those people applied when they arrived and are already in the system. The camps in Calais are populated by those who have been safely in the EU for a while but who refuse to abide by the rules.

It isn't about being racist or capitalist or nationalist or any such nonsense, it is about respect for the law and giving support to those who properly apply for it and qualify for it, which is as available in Calais as it is in Dover or Folkestone.

It is the simple selfishness of these few thousand criminals, I assume that to be the term for someone who is committing the offence of being where they are not legally entitled to be, that incurs massive cost and causes frequent delay, not just to the service through the tunnel but across Kent and in the Pas-de-Calais as traffic backs up.

People Traffickers (FB 30th August 2015)

The second emotive issue I am going to tackle tonight, while my head is in the right place to do it, is that of refugees and other migrants drowning en route to Europe from North Africa.

While regrettable, the deaths at sea attributed to the current "refugee crisis" are not something the citizens of Europe should be made to feel guilty for, unless they are personally a part of the trafficking organisation responsible for providing the boats to the people in an unseaworthy condition or overloading them or both or of any other ruse designed to prise money from people with no concern for their wellbeing.

The drownings etc. are a symptom of a much larger problem and one that cannot be solved by the EU, no matter how many rescue craft are or are not deployed. There is even a strong argument that a greater chance of being rescued in the event of difficulty decreases the perceived risk involved in attempting a crossing and encourages more to give it a go.

To use the analogy of "Russian Roulette", with each boat being a chamber in a revolver and lack of seaworthiness or overcrowding being the bullet therein, it seems the gun is now fully loaded and there is an approaching certainty the crossing, the pulling of the metaphorical trigger, will result in death, injury or sickness.

People pay huge sums to play the game and it costs even more to pick up the pieces of the players at the end but, and here's the catch, the game is being played outside the EU so it has no power to stop it, just to clear up the mess from it that does or would otherwise wash up on its shores.

It is no more responsible parenting to send or take one's child to sea under the conditions we see across our news media than it would be to point a loaded gun at their heads directly and to pull the trigger.

I find it barely credible that it causes an outcry in the UK to suggest sending appropriately skilled people out to where the games are being organised and to discreetly disrupt the traffickers' activity such that so many people do not commit what is tantamount to suicide and infanticide by paying to play.

This is not an action movie, these are not crowds surging from imminent death at the hands of armed hordes onto whatever craft is in front of them at that given moment. Even those presumed refugees are already displaced. They are not plucking themselves directly from a war zone, they have already extracted themselves a considerable distance and are deciding where to pay to go next.

Of the hundreds of thousands of people currently displaced by war, predominantly from the Middle East and Africa, a relative few have the desire to travel to somewhere as far away or as different as the EU and of them a relative few would have the means with which to pay traffickers' rates for the journey.

So an earlier conscious decision, taken weeks or months before the decision to board an unsuitable watercraft in which to cross the Mediterranean Sea, could easily be considered to be where the tournament of Russian Roulette began, any number of games having already been played between leaving home and reaching the coast of North Africa.

There has to be a point at which running away from something to achieve safety becomes a different journey, when safety has already been achieved and the decision to continue running into the far distance turns it into a quest for something else. That something else is usually money.

Traffickers don't offer sea crossings for free so any adult on board their vessel has made a decision to gamble what they have against what they dream they might one day have and has bought a place in the last round of Russian Roulette, the one where all the chambers of the gun are loaded and it comes down to luck and the benevolence of the EU whether they are rescued from the brine or they die.

I have no problem with people dying from their own greed and stupidity but I do have a problem with people putting their children's lives at risk because of it. Understanding human nature as I do, I am aware there will always be idiots prepared to take potentially fatal risks so the only way I see of keeping these children safe from their parents' idiocy is to take away the boats.

It would probably be cheaper, too, for the EU to buy and scrap every potential trafficking vessel than it is to keep scooping people out of the water when they break down or sink. It might give people from some parts of the world the incentive to sort their own countries out rather than just move out, too.

In Europe now we have a peculiar situation in that our own rules generally prevent our direct intervention in the politics of troubled areas so we don't have the option of sorting the problems out at source, helping places become safe and prosperous enough that populations don't feel the need to seek asylum elsewhere.

Until someone changes the rules elsewhere in the world, there is nothing more we in the EU can do than clear up any mess that reaches us. It is not appropriate for us as individuals to feel guilty that other parts of the world choose not to follow our political example and experience problems from which people flee as a result.

Some numbers:

Of the people arriving in Italy by sea in 2014, just over 25,000 were men originally from Syria and just over 24,000 were men originally from Eritrea. Just over 6,000 women arrived from each country, too. The published number of minors I have to hand does not differentiate between girls and boys but I guess the split to be no less skewed in favour of males. However you view these figures, they do not convincingly represent a flow of refugee family units.

The Gambian arrivals numbered almost 7,500 men and only 28 women, very clearly suggesting economic migration to be the principal driver for migrants attempting illegal entry to the EU from that region. Malians numbered over 9,000 men and just 27 women, indicating a similar situation.

Today's papers showed a picture (FB 4th September 2015)

Today's papers showed a picture of a mother, father and their infant sprawled on a railway track with a policeman standing over them. The father's face is contorted in fear. Why? The policeman is trying to get them to accept help, not to harm them.

The father's despair is really only at his having to stay in Hungary for a bit and he's only really upset because he can't just ignore the law and zip right along to Germany as he would like to.

Imagine a homeless person coming to your door in distress and you offering them a seat and some food in the kitchen while you make up a comfy bed for them in the living room until you can find them something permanent.

Then imagine them refusing to sit in the kitchen, refusing to sleep in the living room and instead making a dash for your bedroom because that's the only room they want to be in. You would probably say they were taking the piss.

That is exactly what is happening if you put yourself in Europe's place. If you put yourself in Hungary's place you will notice the people refusing your help are not even satisfied with your bedroom, they covet a bedroom in the big house, two doors up. Which is really taking the piss.

A column of people who had already reached safety and who just had to wait to be signed in to the system in Hungary to, if they were genuine refugees, shortly achieve free movement within Europe have now gone walkabout. They have just left the area in which the adults had my sympathy.

The children will always have my sympathy because it isn't their fault their parents take unnecessary risks with them, put them in unnecessary danger and unnecessarily prolong their hardship.

I do not recognise it as the act of a responsible parent to take their child on an unnecessary pedestrian road-trip simply because they would rather be safe in Germany than just as safe in Hungary, where they already are, or just as safe in Austria, which they intend to pass right through before accepting help.

It is also really rather insulting to the people of Hungary and Austria that these supposedly desperate refugees do not consider Hungary and Austria acceptable places to live, both countries being safe and in many ways more comfortable than Syria was before the war that has displaced them began.

*Hungary is a popular destination for other Europeans, notably from Germany and Austria, to visit for holidays. It is a member of the EU and of NATO and refugees are at no particular risk by being there.

I feel I am watching the world as it goes mad (FB 8th September 2015)

Scammers, con artists, rip-off merchants or whatever else you choose to call them are having a field day, fleecing shedloads of cash from compassionate folk via the internet.

Anyone can set up a donation page, post a picture they copied from a news site, write something to inspire guilt-driven giving based around others being less fortunate and then sit back and watch the pounds roll in. It's hardly genius.

If your particular cause isn't photogenic enough you can always pick a photograph of something that will tug at more heart strings and use that instead, use an award winning aerial shot of an overcrowded boat on the sun-drenched Mediterranean, for example, to raise money for some people camping in a field near Calais.

Even the best intentioned of these knee-jerk operations are amateur and downright wasteful of donations, seemingly more concerned to be seen to be making the effort to travel to France themselves than to be efficient with what they get and to feed in locally to the existing and well established supply chain.

Be very careful where you donate. Just because an individual, group or organisation is requesting donations and what they state they intend to do with them is a charitable act does not make them a charity. You could just be buying someone a booze cruise or subsidising their ego with the cash you electronically hand over.
______

Until last week most people in the UK had been turning a blind eye to the plight of refugees from war-torn or otherwise less salubrious areas of the world wishing to settle in Europe.

No matter how many times they had heard or read reports of boatloads of migrants drowning or of people being found dead or dying in the backs of lorries they did nothing until they saw a photograph of a drowned child.

Suddenly there were public outpourings of anger, not at the traffickers who provided an unsuitable craft for the crossing or at the father who let his family board it but, quite bizarrely, at the governments of the land they were setting out to visit.
______

It is more than fifteen-hundred miles from the Turkish coast where the boy drowned to the migrant camps near Calais in northern France. Fifteen-hundred miles is far enough to make them separate circumstances.
______

Assuming one to be a genuine refugee, to achieve refugee status in Europe one has to reach Europe and apply for it. It might take a few weeks to come through but that's only because there's lots to check and every application deserves to be considered properly and individually. Oh, yes, and there's a bit of a rush on.

Alan, the boy whose photograph seems to have shaken people from their rose-tinted torpor, died at sea on his way to Europe. The inhabitants of the camps are already in Europe and have been for some long while. Sitting in a field they are not at risk of drowning. They are in no imminent danger except from themselves.
______

Assuming one to be a genuine refugee, the quickest way to a decent life in the UK really is to apply for asylum as soon as entry is made to the EU. If someone failed to apply at the point of entry, their quickest way to a decent life in the UK is to apply right now, wherever in the EU they happen to be.

Had the people camped at Calais applied for asylum even when they arrived there some of them might by now have been in a position to cross the channel by conventional means instead of risking their lives jumping trucks.

Had they applied when they first entered the EU, wherever that was, their applications would have been in days or weeks earlier and the relevant decisions would be made that much sooner, too.

Is it not strange then that so many people choose to stay in a squalid camp with no end to their ordeal in sight rather than signing up for the first step towards what they all say they want, a decent life in the UK, for which they will need the appropriate paperwork?

I suspect their real motive for not signing in is that they know they do not qualify for asylum in the EU under the rules. So I have to ask, how humane are they themselves being by jumping trucks in the hope they can break the rules to enter the UK and to take a job on the sly that might otherwise have been offered to someone who genuinely was a refugee?

It really doesn't make sense on so many levels that so many people in the UK fail to see the difference between someone desperate to reach Europe to claim asylum and get on with their life as we live it here and someone who is happy to turn a piece of northern France into a replica of the slum they snuck thousands of miles to escape from.

If you want to send supplies to Nigerians, Eritreans or whomever living in shanty towns send them to the parts of Nigeria, Eritrea or wherever where shanty towns are as good as it gets. It is ridiculous to perpetuate the existence of a shanty town near Calais, especially one populated entirely by people who insist upon living other than in accordance with the laws, customs and accepted standards of those they purport to wish to assimilate with.

Just because someone used to live somewhere dangerous does not entitle them to ignore the laws of Europe, the very same laws we are expected to follow, and it certainly shouldn't entitle them to mollycoddling while they do.

If British idiots stopped making life unnaturally comfortable for people choosing to camp in a field in France the people in the field might just make an effort to accord with the rules, to play fair and to either sign in or fuck off. I thought we were supposed to stand-up for fairness here, not to support those who cheat.

If people in the camps in Calais don't qualify for asylum in Europe they should take the oft referred to "drive and determination" they displayed in coming thousands of miles to shit in a French field back to their own home countries and make life better for their families, friends and neighbours that way.
______

There are hundreds of thousands of genuine refugees currently in or heading for Europe. It is a massive headache for everyone concerned, an unprecedented situation but, if you prioritise the saving of life, the most immediate need is to stop people putting themselves at risk.

The real urgency is stop people being overcrowded onto boats in Libya, Turkey and elsewhere and to stop people gathering near Calais in the hope they might jump a truck to England. Yes there will be queues building up while we work out how to deal with everyone but no one will be dying at sea, suffocating in or dangling off lorries.
______

It is not compassion fatigue or an initial lack of it it is common sense. Anyone who calms down enough to look at things clearly will see that to perpetuate the camps as they are at Calais brings no solution any nearer. If you can't see why that is and you still want to perpetuate the camps at Calais you should do it in a cost effective fashion.

If you want to make a cash donation choose a proper charity that has some experience and expertise in the field. If you want to be a more direct part of helping you can always volunteer to assist with an established charity's work. They will know how best to deploy your skills or resources and will work with complementary charities in developing long term and sustainable support strategies.

Or, if you live in Brighton, you could wander outside and probably find someone homeless to help within minutes of your front door. You wouldn't need to waste money on a van or a ferry ticket or anything if you did that. You could be cash efficient and green, too.

Of course, if you were helping homeless people in Brighton you wouldn't be able to use an award winning picture of an overloaded boat on the Mediterranean to encourage donations to fund a weekend away like you can if you help homeless people in Calais.