What is Democracy? Do we want it?

Posted on by Opher

Democracy? That is easy – one person one vote.
But not quite as easy. What we have is representative democracy. Instead of all of us being able to vote on every issue (which we could do with the technology we have) we elect representatives to do the voting for us.
This is quite good if we elect the right people. Those people can check everything out in a way that most of us can’t – because we don’t have access to all the information and do not have the time – and vote wisely.
I used to like democracy but I’ve lost a lot of faith in it.
We never seem to have candidates who represent my views to choose from.
Those candidates are not what they seem.
There is too much corruption.
The representatives are bought off by vested interest – the rich and wealthy.
Power goes to the head.
To put the power directly in the hands of the public is also fraught:
It puts power in the hands of the ill-informed.
The stupid have as much influence as the intelligent.
The media misinforms people.
The media is controlled by the rich and wealthy.

Having said all that I do believe that we do have many politicians who are dedicated and honest. There is not any other system that is better.

What I would like is complete transparency, a way of taking money and lobbying out of the system, and an unbiased, objective media.

Hitting Brazil – Recife and Olinda

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Hitting Brazil – Recife and Olinda

P1020025After four magic days trundling through the doldrums we were getting close to Brazil. I was expecting lots more wild-life but nothing much was showing up. The result of centuries of plundering of wild-life by our sailors. They took the females, young and eggs as if they were endless.

I fear the end is in sight. Our numbers will kill off the remainder.

Our first port of call was Recife. I was looking forward to Brazil’s Samba and vitality. I wanted to see the result of Pedro Alvez Cabral’s discovery. He’d claimed it for Portugal. It had been part of the slave trade. With Indian and freed African slave blood mixed with European stock there was a rich hybrid vigour to provide that energy.

I didn’t have to wait long. We were welcomed off the ship by a band knocking out Samba rhythm.

We set out to look round. The city seemed a good place. We alighted on a square in front of the Palace. It had a Baalbab tree and fig trees with their aerial roots. The air was rich and humid. It felt and looked tropical. The palace and theatre were both colonial buildings looking tatty and in the process of decay.

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We set off for jail. The jail has been transformed into a tourist trap with local arts and crafts. It’s an amazing building. Nothing has been changed except that now all the cells are little shops designed to trap tourists. They do a mean fruit juice though – very sticky and thirst quenching – though we’re both wondering, with the flies and hygiene – whether it’ll be coming back up the other way soon. (It didn’t).

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Out back of the prison there was the railway station designed and built by the British. Looked it too.

We’d heard Olinda was the place. A Portuguese colonial town on the hill overlooking Recife. That’s where we headed.

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Through streets of colourful painted house up to the top and the inevitable church. The Portuguese had a mission to save souls. They were a latter-day Christian ISIS and every bit as ruthless. The Churches were their ICBMs for subjugation and control. Their aim was to Christianise the Indians, get them to work and plunder the wealth. Their piety was only exceeded by they greed and violence.

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Sao Berto was lavish. It was a gilded statement of power. Incredible painting, blue Portuguese tilework and grandeur. Outside there were beggars using young kids and babies to plead coins from tourists.

We walked from the church along the street to another church and square overlooking Recife. We sat and drank coconut juice from a fresh coconut and looked out over the bay and beach with its high-rise blocks. It was quite a view. Pretty blue and yellow birds nested and played in the trees. There were gaily coloured parrots squawking. Down the hill was verdant forest with more churches and the red tiled roofs of houses. It was picturesque but all showing signs of dilapidation. It was as if the Brazilians were rejecting the whole of their colonial heritage. Its only use was to attract in tourists but they’d rather see it rot.

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We headed for the beach. It was dull with a spot of rain so it did not look at its best but the heat was very humid and we strolled along. The Brazilians were not impressed with the weather. It was almost empty. We looked at the waves lapping on the yellow sand and the tall apartment blocks of glass and balconies along the very edge of the sand and it seemed to sum up the image of the new Brazil.

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On the way back to the boat we had a look at the other side, the shanty towns – shacks on stilts along the river bank – where the poor and disposed lived.

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We’d gone from million dollar apartments to destitution within a mile. That seemed to be the story of Brazil. There was immense wealth and huge poverty and no will or inclination to solve its problems and maintain the infrastructure.

We’d only been here a day but we’d picked up the scent. Corruption was in the air from the tropical forests, the crumbling colonial buildings and the politicians. Brazil was interesting and dangerous.

We’d got a sniff – more was to come.

Oh Shit!! Pete Shelley’s Dead!!

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A few years ago I was living in a hiatus of great bands. The Magic Band, Love, the Fall and the Buzzcocks were all touring. Then it fell apart – Rockette Morton with heart surgery, Arthur Lee died, Mark E Smith died and now Pete Shelley!

What a great loss.. Pete was a master of lyrics and produced a string of high energy Punk classics. He brought a different craft to Punk.

Live they were a high energy act who always delivered and got the crowd rockin’.

Pete was also a really nice friendly guy. There was no front. On a few occasions I was sitting around in his dressing room after a gig chatting. He was always open and welcoming.

I’ll sure miss him! There’s not many left!

Goodbye Pete and thanks!

5 Great British and Irish Punk tracks from the Seventies

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A tribute to Pete Shelley!!!

David Attenborough?? Is he right??

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Is David Attenborough a shill for the global elite?

Is he simply misguided?

Or does he, after spending a lifetime working with nature, know what he’s talking about?

David says that we are facing the greatest threat for thousands of years. He states that the planet is warming. That this warming is so extreme that it will lead to the collapse of civilisation and the extinction of the natural world.

There will stronger and stronger storms. Droughts, floods, heatwaves, changes in air and sea currents, extreme weather and freezing winters.

Ice caps will melt leading to the rising of sea levels by tens of metres that will put our cities and fertile land under water. Low-lying countries will disappear altogether. Wildlife will be decimated. It will lead to mass migrations, starvation and the breakdown of civilisation.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2018/dec/03/continuation-of-civilisation-is-in-your-hands-attenborough-tells-world-leaders-video

NASA provides an excellent course module on the science of global warming.

climate change
(Source: NASA)

climate change

CO2 is now the highest it has been for 3 million years.

According to the UN report we now have just 12 years to get these carbon dioxide levels down or we face catastrophe.

Are the UN being alarmist?

So is NASA lying?

Is Attenborough a dupe?

Or is global warming a real and terrible threat?

Ilheus Brazil – Jungle and Capoeria

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Ilheus Brazil

Posted on by Opher

We headed out of Recife for a day at sea on the way south.

Ilheus was different. While Recife was a major port and city catering for transatlantic commerce Ilheus was a small town whose claim to fame was the production of chocolate (now largely in the past). One of the beauties of being in a small ship was that we could get into the small ports. We were welcomed into the port by a samba drumming outfit who seemed to be dressed up in African cotton shirts. They were great.

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Ilheus had that same decaying colonial architecture that we’d seen in Olinda. We wandered through the town and looked at the electricity wiring reminiscent of Thailand and India. It hung in swathes across every building and formed great knotted junctions on every corner rather masking the gaudily coloured buildings.

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The centre of town was a square a hundred metres from the beach. The Cathedral dominated to one side and the theatre at another. Many citizens sat in the shade of the magnificent old fig trees while other folk did their best to extract cash from tourists. There were stalls selling cashew nuts and raw chocolate, a group of young men doing the acrobatic kick boxing/dance – Capoeira. Well I say doing. What I really mean is that the musicians playing a short burst while two or three put on a performance and then they demanded money from anyone who dared to watch. We watched. It was fun and looked very interesting and the musical instruments were weird. It was worth a dollar.

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There was also a very strange big black woman in a headscarf and big flouncy white dress. It was our first introduction to Brazilian Voodoo – Candomblé. For a small payment she would give you a blessing. It seemed perfectly mainstream. Voodoo sat alongside Catholicism. People seemed perfectly happy to come out of the cathedral and receive a voodoo blessing. They were covering both bases.

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The Cathedral was heaving with people all joining in with their hands raised palms upward. It always amazes me that the poorer and more deprived the people the more they put their faith in religion and superstition. The evangelicals were making a huge impact in Brazil. There were churches popping up all over the place with massive congregations.

The Cathedral was opulent and a great example of Portuguese architecture though not quite as typical as many. It looked a bit fairy-tale. I enjoyed it. But there were the ubiquitous clutch of beggars.

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Out in the cathedral plaza there was some guy whirling around with a huge hat. IHe didn’t seem to be taking money so I don’t know what that was about. I decided it was either some new religion or something for the tourists to wonder at.

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I wandered on the beach but, due to El Nino, it was a drab day. The beach was empty and did not sparkle.

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We headed out into the hinterland to get a small taste of Brazilian Atlantic rainforest. We saw a waterfall, some pretty birds (including a humming bird) and gorgeous flowers but I was disappointed to find so little life. You could not describe it as teeming.

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Uruguay and Montevideo and the magic of Mujica

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Uruguay and Montevideo

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We were heading for Uruguay. I was fascinated by the thought of Uruguay. It shouldn’t exist at all. It is a small country sandwiched between Brazil and Argentina and fought over by both of them as well as the might of Spain and Portugal. Yet wonderfully it does. It not only exists but is prosperous. It has the highest wealth, stability and equality of any South American country. So it has to be doing something right.

When most people think of Uruguay, on the edge of the River Plate and the Atlantic, they think of the scuttling of the Graf Spee. That battle of the River Plate was the opening sea engagement of the Second World War. But for me the most important thing about Uruguay was its amazing President Jose Mujica. If only all other politicians could be like him. Here’s a President who, instead of becoming a power-mad dictator, chose to be one of his people. He lived in a humble house, no different to most of his citizens, and donated 90% of his income to charities. He presided over liberal, egalitarian policies that made Uruguay prosperous and created the sort of equal society I wouldn’t mind living in. He brought in liberal policies that made sense. He legalised cannabis. He did not agree with cannabis use. He stated that the only good addiction was love. But Jose said that the illegality was putting money in the pockets of evil characters and putting his citizens at health risk from adulterated drugs; legalisation was the lesser of two evils. What a man. I was only surprised that the CIA hadn’t overthrown him. Hopefully the new president Tabare Vazquez will be man enough to follow in Jose’s footsteps.

The only reason we were visiting Uruguay was because of the simmering situation with Argentina. No ship was allowed to go directly to or from the Falklands from Argentina. That meant that we had to stop in at Uruguay on the way to the Falklands and into Chile on the way back. That sounded dandy to me.

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As we nosed into the harbour at Montevideo in the early morning of the morning I stood at my customary place at the bow eagerly watching to see what there was to see.

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The first thing that came into sight was a ship’s graveyard. The rusting hulks looked so picturesque in the early morning light I couldn’t stop photographing.

Montevideo had a modern skyline with a smattering of old towers and spires. It looked interesting.

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I was used to derelict ports, all dilapidated and sorry looking. All the ports from Cape Verde on had been in need of some love and care. This was different. It looked smart and colourful. That boded well.

We headed out on a coach towards Punto Del Estes. We’d been told it was worth a visit.

The coach took us past Montevideo’s beaches – the Ramblas. As they were on the Atlantic side they were not the muddy brown of the river plate but rather the blue of the Atlantic.P1040052

It was hot and that sea looked inviting. It also looked very tidy and orderly. More like a European resort than a South American one. People were cycling and jogging on the promenade. There were people bathing, fishing and sailing. It looked idyllic with its miles of sand, the sun and the backdrop of Montevideo city.

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We continued up the coast past more picturesque beaches and fishing ports. Then we headed in land through some lush green farming land with cattle and horses and past small villages with what appeared to be car lots selling old classic cars. That looked intriguing. What was that about?

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Punto Del Estes was a big disappointment. I’d been expecting a charming fishing village. I’m not sure how I arrived at that into my head. What we found was an extremely rich town with multimillion dollar apartments and a marina that was full of expensive yachts. There were no vestiges of the old fishing village. It had been transformed into a rich man’s play area.

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Still the beach was free and had yellow sand and warm sea even if, unlike all the beautiful curving bays we had passed to get here, it was packed with bright beach umbrellas and people. This was obviously more popular than all the others.

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The most interesting features of the whole place were these giant fingers of some buried hand poking up out of the sand! They were huge, bluish grey and quite a tourist attraction.

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Disguising our disappointment we headed back to Montevideo, stopping on the way to have a look at the amazing home of the artist Carlos Paez Vilaro. He wasn’t home. That was largely because he’d died years ago. But the house was still there with its splendid white surreal towers and spikes. It looked like something Salvador Dali might have designed and was well worth a marvel or two. Carlos was a remarkable man.

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Back in Montevideo we had a chance to see a little of the city. It was a mixture of old and new. The tower of the Palacio Salvo stood out with its rounded turrets.

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I noted in my mind that this was a place I wouldn’t mind coming back to and exploring at leisure. A few beers in those bars and cafes wouldn’t go amiss.

If you enjoy my poems or anecdotes why not purchase a paperback of anecdotes for £7.25 or a kindle version for free.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings/dp/1519675631/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457515636&sr=1-3&keywords=opher+goodwin

Or a book of poetry and comment:

Rhyme and Reason – just £3.98 for the paperback or free on Kindle

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rhymes-Reason-Opher-Goodwin/dp/1516991184/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457515636&sr=1-4&keywords=opher+goodwin

My other books are here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1457515636&sr=1-2-ent

Thank you and please leave a review.

Dead Duck – a poem

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Dead Duck

 

Dead duck floating

Duplicity totin’

What a mess she’s made!

 

Arrogant May

Has had her day

Leaving Britain in the shade!

 

Party before sense

With outcomes immense

The whole country has been played!

 

Opher 5.12.2018

 

 

I am so furious with the Tory Party who have selfishly got us into this costly mess.

First Cameron and Osbourne playing with fire, Gove, Farage and Boris were power-mad twerps and then May putting her own lust for power before anything else.

They’ve bungled, botched and buggered the whole country.

They have cost us billions and put our future in jeopardy.

I am also furious with the Brexiteers who have voted for such a mess. Part of me wants a hard Brexit so that I can sit back and watch them bleat as the economy dips, their jobs go and their wages get slashed. But I have my children and grandchildren to consider and they don’t deserve this!

Let’s have another vote and salvage it!

Guns, Rhymes, Elephants and Dreams – my 11th Poetry book

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This is a compendium of my recent poetry. It is my 11th poetry book.

The cover is a photograph I took of some amazingly colourful tree bark in Tasmania near Cradle Mountain. So beautiful.

The title comes from some of the contents. As usual there is a mixture of themes – social comment, the environment, humour, satire, politics and fun.

In the UK:

In the USA:

Guns, Rhymes, Elephants and Dreams – now available!

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A digital copy of my eleventh book of poetry – Guns, Rhymes, Elephants and Dreams – is now available on Amazon!

In the UK:

In the USA: