Wales and Ukraine

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is now in it’s third month and Putin’s forces have switched focus to the Donbas. Yet this horrific war continues and Putin’s propaganda machine keeps belting out it’s misinformation on Russian media. I had a look at what is being said last night and the narrative that Russian speakers have been subject to a vicious ethnic campaign authorised by the Ukraine regime and that this terrible war is justified on the basis on this supposed persecution. It’s scarcely credible, after the annexation of Crimea, ethnic tensions appeared in the Donbas, supported and perhaps fomented by Putin. It is far more credible that Putin created this situation to breate the justification for this war. i.e That Putin had to invade Ukraine to resolve the problem created by Putin himself. It seems Putin really doesn’t like Ukraine.

Back in February a Welsh politician was expressing solidarity with the people of Ukraine. In short he was saying that Wales and Ukraine have a lot in common and as such our hearts go out to the people of Ukraine. However he was then attacked by members of the current UK regime, trying to make some political point scoring out of how it is crass to compare a nation at peace with one at war, all part of the UK regimes muscular unionism agenda.

Whilst war rages in Europe tensions within the UK should not be at the forefront of our minds. However I think this is worth exploring as an attempt to understand the mindset of Putin and how his propoganda is being successful with those Russians who do not actively seek alternative media and get all their news via state broadcasters in Russia as indeed most Britons do.

If you take a look back into Welsh history over the last thousand years or so you will find a Wales largely dominated and exploited by it’s vastly bigger neighbour, England, militarily, cultually, economically and linguistically. Yet as in the words of Dafydd Iwan’s most famous song: “Er gwaetha pawb a phopeth, Rwy ni’n yma o hyd” [In spite of everyone and everything, we are still here]: Wales is still proud of itself, of it’s culture, it’s heritage, it’s language and having a red dragon on it’s flag.

When the Welsh see on our screens another culture being dominated and attacked by it’s bigger neighbour, we almost instinctively reach out to the people of Ukraine, we just get it, we know what being ignored and devalued feels like. Wales and Ukraine both have rich traditions of folk choirs for example. I’ve recently discovered the beauty of Banduka choirs, which stir the soul much like Cerdd Dant does here in Wales.

Cerdd Dant

A Banduka Choir

Throughout our history there have been those in England, especially those with hard right views, that view Welsh culture and it’s language as having no value, which has similarities to suppression of cultural traditions in the Soviet Union. Keeping such traditions alive has and continues to be a struggle and they would benefit hugely without intereference from outside from people who don’t understand the culture and interfere first rather than take an interest in it. The issue is really with the right wing UK ruling class, the Tories, because there worldview is all about being on the winning side. To them it is absurd to support something like Welsh culture when it has clearly lost the battle across history with the Anglo-Saxon culture, the English, so why would the Welsh seek to be themselves when they could simply join the winning side. It’s a fundamentally different worldview, that clashes with a more inclusive sense of Welshness.

Cultures become integrated over time, for most of us in the UK we have at least two identities, a Welshness and a Britishness, or an Englishness and a Britishness. Many Welsh people find lives for themselves living in England and many English people come to Wales to live, we work together, sing songs together, marry each other and other wise are two nations at peace who are not bothered by any cultural quirks of the other country and are generally supportive because we share things in common. People adopt their own personal identity forged by their personal and family history, England, or the UK ruling class has long stopped trying to eradicate our language yet largely remains dismisive of the Welsh language. Perhaps very much like the situation was between Ukraine and Russia, where Ukraine has it’s own language that is closely related to the Russian language. Why would anyone hate their neighbours when they are our brothers and sisters?

It is surprisingly easy to break this freindly relationship. There is a whole rhetorical technique for doing so. You focus attention on and magnify any discord. In Wales on an almost daily basis face trolling by those who say that teaching the children of Wales both our languages, Welsh and English is somehow wrong or that the Welsh are very rude because ‘they all switched to speaking Welsh when we came into the pub’. There is no logic to these arguments, they are and have been long refuted, yet those on the far right keep bringing them up amd we keep trying to ignore such trolling. Yet we’ve also seen how the media has allowed refuted arguments and downright lies to be repeated on our screens until they are believed. Hitler acheived it in Germany in the 1930s and we saw it again in the UK’s Brexit campaign and in the election of Trump in the USA. Truth and freindship towards our fellow human beings is quite easily undone.

Is it a credible idea that a regime in England could decide to start a campaign suggesting that there is a percieved bias against English only speakers in Wales [there are those who tout this idea frequently], leading to perhaps an annexation of a part of Wales which has come to have a significantly ‘English’ population, say Monmouthshire, which then leads on to a full blown invasion of Wales citing tensions created in Wales by the UK regimes anti-Welsh policy, leading to a ban on use of the Welsh langauge and Welsh cultural traditions again and install a pro right wing, pro-England regime to administer Wales. A few months ago this idea would have been laughable, but this is exactly what we’ve seen happening in Ukraine.

The idea that something like hatred exists from one culture to another is largely completely non-existent aside from perhaps soem light-hearted jokes on match days in the football or rugby: Canada does not hate the US, the English do not hate the French, New Zealanders do not hate Australians, the Welsh do not hate the English and Ukrainians do not hate Russians. However there is always a tiny tiny minority of nutty ethno-nationalists who desperately find some grievance, perhaps based on a misinterpretation of something that happened say 700 years ago that is focussed upon. This is then fed into the media until it is believed as it is all everyone is talking about, all they see in their screens. It may simply the case that one regrettable murder from one of these deluded nutters can make people believe that those of another culture actually hate them can then be a justification for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. We had all hoped that such things were consigned to European history books and not played out in Europe in 2022.

Brexit or The Death of FPTP?

The UK General Election of 2019 is a very curious beast.  Brexit is of course the major theme of the election, but it’s influence is indirect, this election isn’t really about Brexit itself. However the traditional nature of UK elections has changed in similar ways to other Western democracies and is producing a very divisive election in an divisive atmosphere caused by the tribulations of Brexit over the last five years.

A traditional election in FPTP and indeed Western democracies is a battle between the two biggest political parties, a moderately left wing one and a moderately right wing one. FPTP unlike more modern systems discourages more than two parties as votes for other parties can distract from influence over which of the two big parties wins. Normally, the two big parties fight over the ‘centre ground’ stressing their understanding of economic life for average subjects and their moderate reasonable solutions to the issues of the day.

However, people have got fed up of everyday politics, they see decline, their decline in living standards and feel that ‘something needs to be done’ and have been more prepared to support more radical positions. People are not stupid, they see logn established well-run local businesses go under, their children struggle to afford their own home so continue to live with their parents much later, our bills keep going up, but our salaries don’t. I think we all know something is very wrong with the UK. Coupled with this is the development of  electioneering and how modern media functions. So the traditional view that winning the fight over the centre ground  is the way to win elections has lost popularity has gone.

Instead this ‘traditional’ fight has been abandoned to be replaced by an appeal to fundamentals of left or right wing dogma. Winning an argument is no longer important, but a simple three word slogan to demonstrate an emotional understanding of a simplistic view of a political situation has won the day, look no further than Mr Trump. Political parties now agonise about finding that killer three word combination, to reduce all debate to whether you prefer these three words or the other lots three words. For example ‘Take Back Control’ ‘Strong & Stable’ or ‘Get Brexit Done’. This has been successful as parties then no longer need to develop an argument or even coherent policy. Politically educated electors have worked out their position and it would take huge effort to get them to shift. Instead it seems better to persuade the less politically educated as gaining these votes requires a lot less effort, simply three words in fact.

Brexit is a great example of this. A few years ago it was thought that this issue would tear the traditions of UK elections apart as it was a non partisan issue. People of the centre tend to view membership of the EU positively, whereas those towards both Left and Right wings of the spectrum are more sceptical of the benefits of EU membership, or rather pick on different aspects to criticise.

We seem to have entered George’s Orwell’s 1984 for real. I saw an advert on the telly today for spinning sessions you can join online with an instructor barking out orders ‘Smith, Winston, a man your age should be able to touch his toes!” Despite the bleakness of the decline in our economy staring us right in the face, the ‘Party’ has managed to distract us and divide us with Brexit. We aren’t really discussing Brexit, it’s just become a political game where you have to pick sides and then lay the blame on the other side.

The future of the NHS has come up in this election, again it’s staring us in the face how chronically underfunded it is. We have to wait weeks to see a doctor, even if you have private medical insurance! Yet the Tories use their doublethink to allow people to believe that they care enough and blame the other lot who are against ‘our precious Brexit’ which, incredibly, at this late stage is still undefined.

The politically informed, under FPTP feel they must vote tactically. That a vote for the party that most represents your views is a ‘wasted vote’ and you must vote for the big party that you find least objectionable, that isn’t democracy, just as Brexit isn’t ‘democracy’. Wales has pretty much always returned a majority of Labour MPs, yet Wales has suffered mainly under Tory governments in Westminster. Continuing to vote like this isn’t working for Wales. However, despite this we are seeing the most tactical voting exercise ever seen before. Political parties have withdrawn candidates to let the ‘least bad’ option have a better chance of unseating the ‘worse option’. The Opinion Polls at the start of this election were somethign like 47% Brexit parties (Tories & Brexit Party), 53% Remain parties (National parties, Labour, Greens, LibDems). Despite Remain parties appearing to edge the popular vote, the vote is split more ways. As this election campaign has progressed we’ve seen two shifts. Firstly the Brexit party vote collapse, to the Tories favour and a LibDem fall to Labours advantage. It doesn’t seem as though the Leave:Remain split has shifted at all. No-one has had there minds changed by the election, but more people are voting tactically and that maybe how to bring the outdated FPTP system to an end?

It should be blatantly clear to the British electorate that Brexit isn’t the answer.  Electoral Reform is what is needed to enable the UK to have a government that represents the population and is able to make good decisions, rather than bad but politically expedient ones. However as 1984 tells us ‘Ignorance is Strength’, and the British establishment/ Inner Party have successfully distracted us form what is in front of our eyes, for Brexit to be the answer.

 

 

Waiting for the bus that never comes

I used to hate waiting for buses. It was the not knowing how long you had to wait, whether it was worth getting my book out, whether I had time to pop to the local shop, an answer to whether  the bus had been cancelled so I could go to the pub for a pint or two whilst waiting for the next one. Often these days you can use an app’ on your phones which will tell you where the bus really is and how long it will be, which solves all these problems of lost time waiting and makes bus travel a lot less annoying.

Unfortunately there is not an app’ for the UK government. Brexit is like waiting for the bus that never comes; We know the service will be crap but at least we may soon be on the ruddy thing and we are no longer waiting.

We are in this strange Brexit zone. No-one talks about Brexit anymore, I think we are all fed up of going through the same tired arguments yet again, the arguments that frustratingly never get around to their logical conclusion. There doesn’t seem much we can go about it and we don’t want to open up those divisive arguments again. Of course we do make lots of jokes about how pathetic the UK is being by not having a Brexit plan and trying to wing it and keep the important electoral demographics happy during the process, rather than formulate sensible policy. I’m sure those outside the UK are making the exact same jokes.

It’s not only Brexit fatigue, it’s this whole three year period whilst the UK negotiates Brexit on the fly, with no plan of what to do with it. We kind of want to know what will happen at the end so we can start preparing for it and start thinking about how to adapt to it. We are waiting again without knowing when the bus will turn up. With this Tory UK government having decided to take all the responsibility for Brexit and secured government by a gnat’s wing to do so, there seems little to do but get on with our lives in the meantime.

When and indeed if Brexit does happen, I expect the vast majority of people to be disappointed, only a particularly bizarre few are going to get what they want. The big issues of the “debate” over Brexit of immigration and better regulations are not going to be tackled as there is unlikely to be any agreement of how best to resolve these problems. Of course we could actually have a debate, work through the issues and come up with sensible policies, but that isn’t how the British state works. The EU doesn’t work that way either of course, but is perhaps less likely to do anything truly daft, which was always my argument for remain; that the UK can and should do more to sort out our problems rather than waste years on Brexit with no plan for post-Brexit.

I am still aware of all the problems with the EU: economic migrancy, regulations that don’t really apply and are a hindrance to the UK economy, the Eurozone holding back the economies of Southern Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) etc. The problem with Brexit was that acknowledging these problems but not offering an alternative, not looking at what the alternatives are, the arguments never got beyond this beginning of forming an argument, taking the first premise as a conclusion.  A great weakness of the EU was failing to sort out the CAP. The CAP was a strong argument for Brexit, however the UK has not promised to replace it with anything better, instead suggesting that agriculture won’t get any subsidies, but don’t worry we can import lovely unhealthy foods like chlorine chicken and hormone beef from the US, making food regulation even more complicated. How is this better than staying in the EU?

The other powerful Brexit argument was that the UK would never be offered a choice on the EU again, so Brexit should be voted for to give Britain the chance for modern democracy and reform of our failing institutions. However instead of preparing for this, instead we hear about binding ourselves to a different set of damaging “free trade” deals.

We know that both of the major Uk political parties are slaves to their focus groups, rather than what is best for economy. Tory Bliar’s  [Tony Blair] “Labour” government, only implemented limited devolution to gain votes and the Tories only had Brexit to win an election as well. Britain just needs to end this ghastly Westminster system, have true democracy and that means Wales getting to decide it’s own affairs, rather than decided by these two lots of political careerists.

Much of the motivation for Brexit was hope, hope for new systems that actually worked and performed their function to be developed, rather than continual decline in living standards. Paradoxically, the only way for Brexit to work is bring Westminster government crashing down and allow genuine reform from the bottom up. We are still waiting for that but anxious that that day may never come.

Newspeak

As a teenager I read George Orwell’s  novel ‘1984’, a polemic warning of the sort of dystopian society Britain could become in 1984 (written post-world War 2), based on the totalitarian state of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The book is such an important warning from history, made a huge impact on me and it remains a useful tool to compare where we are as a society.

The UK government have implemented some very worrying surveillance legislation and are proposing yet more in the forthcoming ‘Snooper’s charter’ whereby individuals internet browsing history is recorded and monitored by the UK state. It is possible that such information can be effective in screening to uncover terrorist plotting. However, we are led to fear terrorist atrocities, whilst in reality we are more likely to be hit by a bus. The mass media, television, newspapers, the media, focus on these awful events and the everyday preventable loss of life through avoidable poverty is somewhat brushed aside. It does seem as though we are living in an Orwellian dystopia.

There is much evidence of this, from CCTV on almost every street, monitoring of our movements online and through our mobile devices. People have got used to be monitored, whilst we may not like it, it has become part of modern life. what scares me is that all this surveillance, with this proposed legislation becomes legitimate, legal. Once data is officially held it becomes a commodity that can much more easily be used by the state or corporations to influence our lives. For example, insurance premiums may be effected by accessing this data, potential employers may screen such data so only people from a certain demographic are able to assume positions of authority. It is like how only through ‘membership of the party’ can one live a decent life. It is genuinely concerning.

One of the most interesting facets of ‘1984’ was newspeak, how the totalitarian regime managed to change language so that dissent and rational though became more difficult. In the novel such phrases as ‘War is peace’ and ‘Freedom is slavery’ exemplified doublethink. The modern political realm is full of doublethink, In Modern Britain we accept that ‘Development is making things worse’ and ‘Planning is something you do after you’ve finished’. In party politics it is even worse, or should I say more developed, policy is rarely defended from criticism, rather critiques are attacked for who says them, whether they be members of the proletariat, academics, ‘liberals’, jews or black disabled lesbians, no-one outside the inner party/establishment is really allowed a say. Indeed when anyone who speaks up, there is a fear they they may disappear without trace.

It all seems very dark, when the ‘enemy’ of ‘islamic terrorists’, was itself created by funding of Arab groups by the Western establishment and then dodgy ill-advised wars begun with the result of fostering ‘islamic terrorism’. The establishment created their own enemy, whom there own proletariat are led to live in fear of, so we allow the establishment to monitor us, to watch over us through our webcams. Economically people are thrust at the age of 18 into debt to the state and financial industries (who are largely the same people), then to achieve a decent standard of living and repay these ‘debts’ we are encouraged to take jobs that pay well, yet exploit others, rather than do anything useful. If the 14 year old me could see the world of 2015, he would be very worried indeed and I am worried. Actually we are powerless to do anything about it, instead simply resist, and try to make the most of it.

Teenage Fantasy

Having recently dabbled into teen fiction, I thought I’d have a bit of a look around. I believe that children’s or young adult books can produce great literature as much as any other fiction ‘genre’.  There appears to be quite a sub-genre of dystopian fantasy. When I was a teenager I read George Orwells ‘1984’, which had a profound influence on my understanding of the world, it is one of the classic dystopian novels.

I love Science Fiction. I love to immerse myself into different universes. I believe there is value in using created universes to explore concepts and also to compare and contrast such societies with the real world. There is also the appeal of escapism and anything involving spaceships! I have also identified more with SF, as opposed to fantasy. The key difference between the two genres is that in SF the worlds strive to be coherent and possible within the universe, or possible with particular defined differences. With fantasy, anything is possible, which makes for great stories, however they are perhaps often less useful as social commentary, due to not trying to be possible.

Both SF and fantasy seem to appeal particularly to teenagers. If teenagers are defined as people engaged with discovering themselves, wider society and the process of fitting in with society. Perhaps due to the pressure of the process,  a desire to escape, to create a space outside of the process is sought. Fantasy fiction can provide this.

I was interested in exploring  contemporary teen dystopian fiction, from an older perspective.  I read ‘Divergent’ by Veronica Roth. I feel that is i had read this as a teenager i would have hated it. Hated, because it isn’t a coherent universe, the society described is not possible, as such as a teenager I would have struggled to make sense of it. However, transcending this incoherence and immersing with the story allows the reader to appreciate what the novel does say, even if a fantasy.

Spoilers. The society of ‘Divergent’ is a dystopia consisting of a society divided into five factions, which are purportedly stable, as each faction offers a way of avoiding conflict, though in the novel this stability is breaking down as the factions evolve away from their founding principals. The factions  are based on five  human lifestyle guiding principals: Knowledge, Honesty, Integration, Bravery and Selflessness. At sixteen members of this society choose which faction to join. However rarely, there are ‘Divergents’ who do not have a single dominant principle and divergents are alleged to be dangerous to the social order. This idea of rare ‘divergents’ is where the coherenece of the society breaks down , as the majority of people in our universe are divergent and value more than one thing.

Nonetheless the idea is appealing, perhaps particularly to the teenager, concerned with finding themselves, how to act in society and a fear of conforming to a disliked lifestyle. Indeed, much of the novel concerns the protagonist being initiated into a different faction from her youth, where the behaviours of the faction of her youth are discouraged and new ones encouraged. Essentially some aspects of the  individuals personality are encouraged and others repressed. Thus, individuals conform to their faction, which is what most people do in the real world. For the divergents, they learn how to act as members of faction do, rather than conform. So, the novel actually, effectively explores some of the major issues of being an adolescent. It is an enjoyable, fast paced, action adventure novel.

The lack of coherence of the world still irritates me, the fantasy, the unreality. This is an objection i have towards contemporary society generally. We are offered incoherent fantasies as opposed to balanced accounts of the world. From politicians, from the news media, from the internet and popular entertainments. To be fair, these problems were probably just as bad as when I was a teenager. Perhaps I am frustrated that the world hasn’t improved, so when I discover another fantasy, rather than a thought through coherent world vision, I am frustrated. This puts me into a cynical mode, so I see how in ‘Divergent’ the story panders to the teen ‘market’, rather than as a work of art.

It is very very sad, that the world is now so tapped into commercial culture, that art, books and music, have to be ‘commercial’. so much is there a compromise between quality and commercial appeal. Yes, artists need to make a living. Yes, many artists do an amazing job of balancing these two facets of their work in ingenious ways. The problem is that the pressure towards commercialism away from value seems to be increasing.