He alleged European Union “commissars” were suppressing free speech.
One of his absurd gripes was a two hundred metre exclusion zone around abortion clinics. It seems that his idea of free speech is that people should be free to harass people going to an abortion centre. This harassment includes silent prayer. Is that really Free Speech? To allow a bunch of religious nutcases to congregate around the entrance to abortion clinics to harass young girls seeking advice or terminations? A large number of people, even indulging in silent prayer, is highly intimidating to young girls in highly emotional state. I don’t see this as a free speech issue. The girls have rights too! The right to not be harassed has nothing to do with free speech.
This seems staggeringly hypocritical.
According to JD Vance and the Trumpian MAGA movement Free Speech means the removal of all Fact Checking on social platforms. This means that conspiracy theories, propaganda and deliberate misinformation can be freely disseminated without any attempt to pull someone up for deliberately lying. Nobody is to be held to account. Is this Free Speech? (Of course, lies and conspiracy have been the vehicles through which Trump has deliberately stirred up fear and hate. It’s his currency. MAGA thrives on lies.) Their idea of Free Speech is the right to deliberately spread disinformation!
According to JD Vance and the Trumpian MAGA Movement it is OK to check phones at borders and refuse entry to anyone with views they disagree with. That’s not a suppression of Free Speech.
According to JD Vance and the Trumpian MAGA Movement it is OK to arrest people who oppose their views. This is not a suppression of Free Speech.
In The MAGA world suppression of alternative views is not about free speech at all. In the MAGA World you are entitled to believe what you like as long as it is not critical of them!
Free speech! As long as you conform!
I’m reading worrying things about what is happening in the USA.
People are being refused entry for posting on-line criticism of Trump!
People are having their phones checked at the border to see if they have put up any negative posts about Trump!
People are being held without trial!
Innocent people are being deported to El Salvador!
Neil Young was concerned as to whether he will be allowed back in!
So much for Free Speech!! Seems that being critical of King Trump, his incompetent crew, massive corruption or policies is enough to get you slammed up!
I, personally, feel ambivalent. Mass immigration is undoubtedly a problem. I do have problems with the way certain groups of immigrants have taken over various areas of Britain. It creates a feeling of having been displaced. I do have a problem with intolerant, exclusive religions (Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews are, to my perception, all guilty). I detest the brainwashing of kids.
I would like immigrants to integrate and fully accept British values.
On the other hand I greatly value the cosmopolitan richness of culture, art, dress, dance, theatre, music, food and architecture that other cultures bring to our society.
I’d like a good balance.
Too much immigration creates a feeling of being overrun and I believe this is exactly what Trump and Reform have been tapping into. They have exacerbated this by demonising immigrants. They portray them as scroungers who come here to live off the dole, and, paradoxically, people who are ‘stealing’ our jobs. They are portrayed as evil drug dealers, murderers, rapists, paedophiles and killers of our pets. They are taking up places in our schools and hospitals, receiving preferential treatment with housing and putting great strain on our systems.
The reality is far from that. Until they have been processed immigrants are unable to work. They receive a subsistence level of support of £47.36 a week (try living on that!) and a room – usually in a hostel.
Immigrants are brought in as a ‘cheap’ workforce. They work in the fields, factories, care and hospitality on very low pay! They work hard and do the jobs that others really do not want to do.
Populist politicians portray them as dangerous, work-shy, scroungers who are costing us a fortune and getting preferential treatment. The truth is far different. They are hard-working and greatly contribute to the economy.
One only has to look at the reality. An immigrant before being processed costs us £2,464 a year. The VIP lane of the Tory Party gave out lucrative contracts of billions to their chums. Eg. Lady Mone received £200 million for PPE! Her scam alone would have supported 81,184 immigrants.
The problem with the country is not immigrants. Brexit alone is costing us an estimated £37 billion a year! That’s enough to pay for 15,015,221 immigrants! That’s right 15 million!!
The problem with BROKEN BRITAIN is not immigration; it’s government corruption, Brexit and billionaires/millionaires scamming us! Yet we support the very scammers who have ruined us – Johnson, Farage and Trump!!
Mass immigration needs solving for social cohesion reasons. You don’t solve it with walls; you solve it by dealing with the wars, corrupt regimes, repressive regimes, climate change, poverty and social situations that create it.
Mass immigration didn’t break Britain – the corrupt wealthy along with the Tory and Reform parties did that!
How is this book going to end?
I started writing this in my mid-fifties to record my death. I imagined that at some point I would have a symptom, a warning, go in for tests, start a treatment and receive a diagnosis of a terminal condition. I envisaged recording my feelings and physical symptoms as the disease and treatment progressed. I was aware that the event could be sudden and I would have no opportunity to describe anything, in which case the entire premise of the book would be made obsolete. Ho hum. It’s only been twenty years.
At no time did I contemplate that I’d go over twenty years without a symptom or how and when I might publish this thing. That surely should have been a prime consideration! How stupid am I? (Don’t answer that – it was rhetorical!).
The book is now a hundred and twenty pages. I’ve rambled around as the mood took me. Given my views on life and death and gone into the beliefs and rituals that fascinate me. I’ve arrived at this point. The book has no coherence or structure. It’s going nowhere. How can I end it?
Did I expect the bulk of the book to be a detailed well-documented description of my illness and descent towards death? I suppose that I had imagined writing all these feelings and descriptions down until, near the end, with a feeble finger on the button and all the last dregs of energy I would press the button to publish the beast and then slip away into eternity.
All very romantic and exceedingly unlikely.
The reality would have been much different to that. As soon as I became ill I might have gone off the whole idea. I’d likely be too depressed to be bothered. There’s no telling how imminent death would affect me. Until there you can’t tell.
What is apparent is that I can’t actually record my own death.
I did think of a way round that though; I would ask my wife or a friend to write the last paragraph and then publish it…..
After a short illness, with his finger still on the keyboard, courageously typing until the very last seconds, Opher Goodwin slipped into unconsciousness never to wake again.
The end.
Well, that’s better than the miserable git buggered off and left me to deal with all the finances, books, CDs and vinyl!
Or – Towards the end he became truculent and depressed, withdrawing into an inner world of pain punctuated by the occasional moan and grunt. – Not quite so heroic.
Ends are difficult. We rarely find the perfect one.
The end.
74 – Quantum Death
Can you have a quantum death? Death in two places? Death that isn’t death?
The world of quantum is much stranger than Sci-fi. Reality is nowhere near being reality. Everything is super weird. A while back there were experiments to show that photons behave differently when being observed. Now there is serious scientific talk about all matter having consciousness, about the human brain not being the seat of consciousness (but rather an organ that tunes in to the consciousness around it, some kind of sense organ) and not only the planet but the whole universe possesses consciousness. I’m at this moment reading a scientifically based article about planets being conscious and affecting their own orbits. What the hell? Science?? They now believe that we can change reality with the power of our thoughts. It’s getting weirder by the minute. Science is outdoing religion. These theories are becoming stranger than Sci-fi.
For me these ideas resonate back to some of my youthful conversations about universal minds and being part of some great consciousness that had its basis in Eastern mysticism. I remember tuning in to Jim Morrison of the Doors with his lyrics ‘I’m doing time in the universal mind’. It sounds to me as if science is tuning in to a similar concept. All matter contains an intrinsic consciousness. Consciousness isn’t a product of the brain. It answers a lot of things, like how can organisms like flies be aware while having brains the size of pinheads? And are microorganisms aware? That’s before we get to plants! Everything is conscious and aware.
When, long ago, I decided that all religions were manmade power structures with flawed doctrines designed to promote division and tribal behaviour, doctrines that did not shed light on reality and teachings that were based on ignorance and medieval practice (that was best kept securely in the past), I also tended to put aside my views on spirituality. Frankly, I find the concept of god risible. The biblical and Koranic stories fables and the misogyny and violence repulsive. They stem from a different cultural time and place. But when it comes to internal spiritual development and understanding, as through meditation and contemplation; that I can accept. I often find myself transported by nature, a sunset or a log fire. I have an affinity for nature and oneness with the natural world. That is my spirituality.
Perhaps the universe is stranger than we think? Perhaps reality is an illusion? Perhaps consciousness is a product of matter? Perhaps the weirdness of quantum is the norm?
So where does that leave death? If the direction quantum physics seems to be heading: into a mystical connection, perhaps I have to view death a little differently? An end and a beginning. Perhaps it is the end of myself as an entity, an ego, a living organism, a man? But perhaps it is a reawakening into the universal mind of the cosmos?
Wouldn’t that be nice?
So none of your religious nonsense – no heaven, hell, paradise or Valhalla, no god presiding over everything and dispensing arbitrary rules and threats, just a cosmic universality, a consciousness into which I would dissolve! Takes me straight back to my youthful ruminations!
Isn’t life wonderful?
I await further scientific investigation on the quantum intelligence of reality, nature of spirituality and the death of tribal religions!
Until then I’ll continue to regard death as an end.
