Another year over and a new one just begun

At this time of year there is a lot of happiness around, people spending time with loved ones, family and friends. However, there is a lot of sadness around too. A lot more people being evicted for rent arrears because they had their benefits stopped right before the Christmas closedown.

Others were made redundant from the end of the month and told not to bother working the notice period, only to find that no-one is hiring at this time of year. So maybe we should take some time out from the festivities tomorrow to think of those less fortunate individuals who have no-one and/or nothing to look forward to in the New Year. I am not saying invite them into your home, but could you spare a warm drink for someone on the street? Can you take a cup of tea and a sandwich to someone who is down on their luck? If we lose sight of our humanity now then it will be difficult to regain it when the season ends and work resumes in January.

This isn’t a lecture, dear reader, so many of us don’t see the homeless as they keep being moved along from where they try to get some warmth. The Salvation Army do a splendid job with the homeless all year long and do what they can at this time of year. If you can spare a coffee or tea and a bite to eat for someone who has nothing it will give them a sense of not being in their plight alone but knowing that others care may bring a little light into their otherwise dreary holiday no different from any other day.

The thing I find very hard to believe is that for all the festivities and love flowing around every corner there are still those who want to bring hatred and distress to others even at this time of year. Those who want to cause grief and misery at any time of year should pay attention to the mood of the people around them. In the face of adversity, thank goodness, we all tend to get together and make things better for everyone in our vicinity. During the dark days of the Second World War when London and the Home Counties were being bombed almost continuously everyone tried to get together and live through the bombs dropping with support from others they didn’t know before.

That spirit still runs through the entire UK, we gave so much to stop hatred and genocide between 1939 and 1945 what makes people think things will be any different today? Our friends and allies know they can rely on us to back them up no matter what. We always have, although they haven’t always been eager to reciprocate. When the Falkland Islanders asked for help because the Argentinian Army and Navy had invaded them and tried to change their way of life we went alone to the rescue of these out of the way islands when the USA was closer to them and their fleet could have blockaded the islands. They refused as they were also allies of Argentina. Our fleet had to travel half way around the planet to get to the battle zone, we lost a lot of ships, men and suffered a great deal of injuries as well to push the Argentinians off the islands and give the Islanders back the freedom they needed to continue with their way of life and be free.

Is there any greater deed anyone of us can do than to lay down our lives for another? Of course once we are dead we don’t know if the other person got away without any further harm or if, once our sacrifice was made they were too weak to get themselves to safety. I would hope that if I were to jump in because someone was being attacked or abused the abuser would not be able to continue with the abuse as others would also come forward.

Not everyone is as free of fear to do as I would, however, most decent people will jump in if someone else shows them the way. Once we can overcome our initial thought of fleeing and stand up for those who are being persecuted and terrorised then we can reclaim our humanity, spread our community to include everyone and exclude none, if everyone joins together for the greater good of humanity then we can make wars a thing of the past and wouldn’t that be a good thing to achieve for our children’s children’s children?

The love train rides from coast to coast

This time of year is really horrible, snow sleet and rain fall most of the days, temperature drops at night and then walking into work in the mornings with rain in your face all of a sudden your feet go out from under you and then you find yourself sprawled on the floor. You think it may have been ice but you always hope it’s not dog poop you stood on and lay in. No way to tell whether it is or not until you stand up and look around.

I hate the cold weather, dreary and miserable and the lack of sun brings on my winter blues, when all I really want to do is sleep all day and play all night without going too far from home just so I can remain warm. I have a good coat so wearing it with a sweatshirt makes me too hot, without a sweat shirt I remain comfortable, then I get to work and start to bake unless I’m wet through from falling on my backside on my way in. If only we could haul the anchor up on this island we call home and move it further south nearer to the equator so it would never get so cold as to freeze then going to work in the winter wouldn’t be such a chore.

If the winter wasn’t so cold and miserable then maybe there would be less mental health issues at this time of year. We could cut down on cold and flu medication as we do in the summer months, and queuing to see the doctor might become a thing of the past a lot quicker than this Government wants. However, we are unable to move this island south and that makes all this just a lot of wishful thinking. If we stop dreaming then we stop doing the impossible and will stagnate.

If we don’t dream then how could we continue to develop bigger and better things to help make lives better and leisure time more productive? If we don’t make better things then would we stagnate and become less than we are now? All this if we stop dreaming would it not come to pass that no new invention would be created? We have to keep dreaming to progress, some have ideas and will create designs, split up and show what is needed to be done. Others can take these ideas and designs and start to build them. It takes trial and error to bring the initial idea to life, a tweak here and there before it is ready to be unveiled.

While doing this, is it better to think of others or just to think of ourselves? Isn’t it always better to consider others when we dream? Civilisation depends on moving forward and taking care of those around us. We need to spread the love around us that we feel for each other, after all love will always trump hate. I don’t fear those who spread hatred, for eventually they will find that no-one is listening to them and no-one wants to follow their ideas of hatred and fear any more. People like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Putin and Trump only learn the lesson the hard way.

Somebody brought the juicer I thought I’d take a sip

My last post upset me so much, I’m not sure if you understood what I was getting at by reviewing Mein Kampf (My Struggle) but as the most hated man in the world prior to 2001 I thought I would read his book to see if there was any indication of how such an evil man came into being. What I read shook me because his arguments were well discussed, he set out his reasons for believing what he was writing and, I think, he truly believed them.

A man like that who could do so much evil by controlling a country decimated by war and it’s aftermath could have done so much good had he had a mind to. The art of history is to teach the mistakes of the past which is why I don’t think his book should be banned by any society but not everyone who reads it will have my point of view and some may read his words today and be moved by them as the German people were in the 1920’s. The world was a much more violent place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, countries signed alliances based on marriages between Royal Families and hoped they would never have to honour them.

Europe could have been united before the end of the first World War had Germany gone to the negotiating table with a stronger representation. Because the French wanted reparation for the destruction of French fields and lands as quickly as possible they bled Germany dry. That mistake was not made at the end of the second World War, Germany was split in two by the Allies, half rebuilt by the West and the other half left in ruin by the Soviet Army. Since reunification of Germany it has once again become the most powerful state in Europe, this time though there are none who want to see another war destroying Europe at the hands of Europeans. In Germany or any other European country. The European Union has played its part in that, however, we Brits were never part of that because, as Winston Churchill himself put it in 1949, “Why would we seek to willingly join with 2 countries we have so recently defeated in War and 3 others who were occupied for so long by those 2?”

That has been our attitude here for so long we still take pride in defeating Germany and Germans at every opportunity. Now we are going to cut off our noses to spite our face because our leaders have never successfully negotiated with Europe since we voted to join in 1972. If they had then we would have not had a second referendum in 2016 which opted us for Brexit. If our Prime Ministers over the years had gone into a united Europe from the beginning then we could have used our position to better help to heal the wounds caused between 1939-1945, forging a much stronger Europe and one which could have helped to heal the scars left over from 2 disastrous wars when almost every country on this planet was involved.

The thing this time; with the third World War, which started back in 2001 on 9 November in the United States of America; is that the bulk of the fighting has been fought in the Middle East. Yes there have been the odd rumblings in Europe, a few skirmishes here and there, as well as the odd shots fired, planes brought down in the USA. For the most part however, the fighting has been in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. With pockets of fighting in Africa. The reason I call this a World War when the political stance currently in the USA that it isn’t is down to the fact that this time there are no neutral countries, every country has upped the security, closed borders, arrested immigrants and sent them back to the country they were fleeing or back to the country they were last welcomed into.

That was the reason behind Brexit, why a lot of places in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Greece and Sweden who took in vast numbers of refugees paid the price for this action by having some enemy combatants hiding in plain sight. Unlike the other two world wars where every soldier wore a uniform, this time it is only our soldiers who wear uniforms. Our enemies no longer wear a uniform because they are cowards and want to get innocent people to pay for their war. They refuse to make themselves known to anyone until they are wearing a suicide vest and carrying a gun yet they want us to imagine a big and powerful army is setting against us, why? So that we will kill people because of their religion or where they came from? Yes that is exactly their reasoning. History has taught them nothing except to hide, and fight then run. Our biggest advantage is that we have never bowed down to terror as a weapon, in the two previous World Wars there was terror deployed on both sides of the fighting to try and end the hostilities. However, after all was said and done the ones who wanted to enslave the others were defeated so what makes these terrorists today think they can win?