Honours - Get Rid of Them or Make them Relevant

I could spend time researching the Honours System, but to be honest I can't be bothered to waste my time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders,_decorations,_and_medals_of_the_United_Kingdom

Honours go back to the Normans - 1066 & all that. So my first question is how relevant to the 21st century is that? The whole system is an anachronistic dinosaur. It's all done behind closed doors. Give enough money & you can virtually buy one - A lot of recipients are political. The criteria isn't transparent & thousands of people who actually deserve one don't get one. What's to like?

Queenie, or a lesser royal, taps someone on the shoulder with a sword!  Do we really want any more Knights, Dames or members of the British Empire Orders? Aren't there enough members of the Aristocracy, or people at the top of the hierarchy, which is still rampant in Britain today?

As a friend of mine says - "I don't understand why sports stars and other so-called celebrities are getting all these New Year's honours. They have got success in their chosen field and all the admiration and money they need. Surely we should be honouring those who quietly get on with jobs that improve other people's lives and make the world a better place and those who make real, personal sacrifices".

Couldn't put it better myself.

What possible justification is there for this antiquated system to continue in it's present form? Lets be truly democratic & see what public opinion says - Do we the people want Honours at all - If so what sort of Honours exactly - What are the critreria for awarding them - Who should make the decision? Should people get them for just doing their job well, whatever that is? Shouldn't our expectation be that we all do our chosen employment , which we are paid for, well?

It's about time the whole thing was taken out of the hands of the politicians & those with power. It's also about time the whole thing was far more transparent & recognised the huge contribution of the silent masses who don't grab the headlines, but do make a our society continue to function.

We need a completely new system. This one is well past it's sell by date. If I'm honest it makes me angry & despairing in equal measure.

Loneliness Commission - Jo Cox

The fact that this Commission is going ahead, despite the fact that Jo Cox was murdered, is testament to the impact she had. It is the best memorial to a remarkable woman.

 https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0ahUKEwi34Km9z5vRAhXNcFAKHeneDjwQFggvMAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F418513%2Floneliness-isolation-presentation.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEVnWIIYVJpalYjV4c7HPBNAlfYSQ&sig2=UpxAn1Cpd8YzkSD360aXDA&cad=rja

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/28/jo-coxs-campaign-to-tackle-loneliness-lives-on-with-help-of-friends

Personally I'm wary about saying I am lonely. Since being widowed I am alone - that is different. At the moment I am capable of running my own life. It's not a life I have chosen, but I can deal with it effectively & relatively happily.

The reality of being on your own 24 / 7, except for interactions with friends, aquaintances & family - if you are lucky, is that everything is done by you. You have no choice but to cope regardless of how you feel or what the problem is.

Absolutely everything, from replacing the batteries in inaccessible smoke alarms, to coping after surgery is down to you. If you are lucky, & I am, you can afford to pay someone to do maintenence jobs for you. (That actually doesn't help at all if the smoke alarm battery dies in the middle of the night!)

When you have been out you return to open the door on silence & close the door on the world. I'm lucky I volunteer for an Oxford theatre & the Community Centre. So I get out & meet lots of people. I swim regularly so I know a local group of women. I have good friends, although mostly they live quite a long way away. I have a daughter & her family. I know a few neighbours, but living in a city isn't like living in a rural area.

I eat my breakfast listening to Radio 4's Today & my supper with PM. At lunchtime I do a crossword. Meals are quiet & not lingered over, not really a pleasure to be enjoyed & shared. My Blog is my main conversation - My way of dealing with my life as it is. It will remain as a reflection of me when I am no longer here.

There are so many people who are not as fortunate as I am. Loneliness is no respector of age or sex. Loneliness can easily become depression, isolation & even suicide, something far more destructive. Somehow loneliness is even more poignant at this time of year, when many people will not have a "Happy Christmas" or "Happy New Year". Some won't even have a home.

You can be lonely in the midst of family & other people. Loneliness is a state of being & is pernicious & more prevalent than you might think. It is a silent, common, dis-ease of the 21st Century & there isn't a handy pill to cure it.

The Circularity of Life

I do believe in Karma, or, for non Buddhists "What goes around comes around". The world is circular & so is life. You can't really get it until you are old enough to have experienced a lot of the twists & turns & put them into context.

As you reach the uplands of age you do become more reflective & begin to see the patterns emerging. So much so that sometimes it feels like "deja vue" - I have been here before, I have had this conversation before, I have done this & I know what's going to happen.

There are patterns of behaviour, of experience, learned ways of responding. We repeat what we have been taught by our parents or significant people in our childhood. As children we are a blank canvas or blotting paper. Our nurturing in the first 5 years can set the whole pattern of our personality & character for good or bad.

But - & it's a big but - we are sentient & intelligent beings. We have the capacity to learn new things, new ways of behaving. We do not have to repeat the mistakes of our parents. We can't use them as an excuse for our behaviour. Not every child from a emotionally deprived & disfunctional background turns into a criminal or a psychopath. Sometimes a challenging childhood literally forges us into successful human beings.

Breaking the Cycle needs us to recognise that a way of behaving or responding isn't the best. We need to try different responses to see what works better. Negative emotions, anger & violence just begat further negativity. If only we could respond positively, kindly, with some understanding we might, just, be able to create a better world.

Love really can conquer all. Hate & anger destroys the person who hates as well as those s/he comes into contact with.

There is certainly a lot of room for improvement.

Rise of the machines - Demise of Humans

• My local library is introducing a pilot scheme to allow people access out of hours with a card & Pin Number. Who needs librarians who actually know something about books?

• Most supermarkets now have self check outs. Cashiers are a dying breed & queues for them are longer.

• Most airlines do online check in & boarding pass issuing.

• Train tickets are issued online or by machines at stations. Finding someone to ask if you are unsure what to do is almost impossible.

• Trains are being totally disrupted because of the dispute over removing guards and allowing drivers to press a button to close doors. This raises an issue of safety which I'm not competent to comment on.

• Cars & goodness knows what else are assembled by robots. Will there be any factory workers in the future?

• We are all used to filling our own cars with petrol.

• We rarely go into banks, we get money from a hole in the wall, pay bills & check statements on line. The friendly bank manager who knows us is a dinosaur - consigned to history.

• Telephone systems are automated. Gone are the Operators other than those in the dire call centres based all over the world.

• Email hasn't quite taken over from post completely, but for how long? No one writes letters anymore.

• We are remarkably close to computer diagnosis of illness. That may be a good thing given the difficulty in recruiting & retaining enough GP's.

• Farming is becoming ever more mechanised. The debate about foreign pickers may well be very short lived if harvesting can be done by machine.

• There is even a robot you can have sex with now if you are unable to make a conventional relationship, which for a variety of reasons seems to be on the increase!

 

 All good ideas - Or are they? Working out the impact on jobs & therefore people, isn't rocket science. This is only the beginning. We may well be more efficient. We probably are saving time. The commercial benefits in increased profits are obvious. The technology genie is out of the bottle & our capability grows exponentially.

But what about people? What will they do? How will they earn money & occupy their time? 

We really should be thinking about consequences.

Happiness & Wellbeing

Who would have thought that there was a website for Happiness? Unsurprisingly it's closely linked to Buddhism.
http://www.actionforhappiness.org/

For a mere £25 you can do an online course called "Do Happiness"
http://dsd.me/programme/dohappiness/

I haven't done it yet, but if it works it seems well worth the money. So many people are not really happy. So many people have mental health illnesses.
https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/fundamental-facts-about-mental-health-2015

When you look at what we in the developed world have, our general standard of living, you would imagine that we would all be really happy. Compare that to the relatively un-complex existance of many in the developing world & you could be forgiven for thinking that they weren't. But that doesn't seem to be the case. The more complex our lives get the more dis-eased we seem to be.

One factor seems to be community & neighbourliness. In my lifetime that seems to have largely disappeared. As a child I played on the street with other children in the neighbourhood. We walked or travelled by public transport so interacted with neighbours on a daily basis. We shopped in local shops, met there, gossiped & learned what was going on locally. Adults popped into eachothers houses regularly. We knew what was happening in our neighbours lives & we helped & supported eachother.

It was all more ad hoc, relaxed & part of the daily routine & interaction. Now we are all on a treadmill, whether it's work, school, social life or running a home - usually an exhausting combination.

No wonder there isn't enough happiness & wellbeing. Somehow we need to try to create time to bring back genuine neighbourliness. Facebook & Twitter isn't enough.

Christmas - What is there to Celebrate?

I am biased - I don't enjoy Christmas. But this year seems much, much worse to me. I cannot understand how the West can sing Carols while the Middle East burns & children die of malnutrition & starvation.

Yemen War & Famine  
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38220785

Syria War & Starvation 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-38194962

Ethiopia Drought & Famine
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/23/ethiopia-struggles-with-worst-drought-for-50-years-leaving-18-mi/

Libya, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan seem to have been fighting for decades. Somalia & Eritrea are also suffering drought & famine.

The average British family will spend £800 on Christmas. Many families will take out loans or use credit cards to fund it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/household-bills/12038620/Average-British-family-to-spend-800-on-Christmas.html

Successive Governments have tolerated homelessness in the UK for years. My Christmas charity this year is Green Pastures which provides affordable housing for the homeless.
http://www.greenpastures.net/
http://www.homeless.org.uk/facts/homelessness-in-numbers/statutory-homelessness

None of this makes any sense to me. We are a rich nation.