Fascism?
Religion?
Mobile phones?
Communism?
Social Media?
Slavery?
War?
There is a war
There is a war
There is a war!
There has always been a war
Between those who care
And those who don’t;
Between the fascists
And the democrats
Between the selfish
And compassionate
Between the greedy
And the starving.
There is a war!
Between those who abuse
And those who nurture
Those who are selfish
And those considerate
Those who love nature
And those who just use it
There is a war.
This is where integrity resides;
It’s time to take sides.
Opher – 13.1.2025
I don’t think it’s ever been clearer.
On one side we have the Trumpist mentality and on the other the socialists.
The Trumpists believe that it is the survival of the fittest. They have become rich because they deserve it; they are better than the rest. That people who are poor deserve to be poor. They should work harder. That wealth is all that matters. That nature is there to be exploited. That we do not need controls, government or regulation. We do not need taxes.
On the socialist side we have people who believe that people and nature matter more than money. That we should care for each other and the world we live in. That the wealthy have got to where they are through privilege, luck and profiteering. That we need welfare for the needy, good education for all, good healthcare for all, good policing and good infrastructure and this costs money. That a society with greater equality is a better society. That requires taxes and bigger government. It requires regulation, safeguards and rules.
I believe in people, nature and a fairer society.
Roy Harper – I Hate The White Man
Every time I play this song it takes me right back to Les Cousins and that day in 1969 when Roy had gathered the faithful to make a live recording for the album. I can still feel the nervousness and expectation as I sat at that little table and waited. I so wanted it to be perfect. I’m sure I was eaten up with nerves more than Roy was – although he did break a string in the course of the performance due to hitting the guitar too hard.
The whole gig was recorded and later came out as Live At Les Cousins. A great slab of history.
He wanted a fiery live version for the album. As it turned out Roy wasn’t satisfied with what had come out of the gig.
I Hate The White Man
Just as ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ is the centre-piece to Folkjokeopus, ‘I Hate The White Man’ is the guts of Flat Baroque And Berserk. Like ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ it is an extremely powerful statement of a song.
Roy was very much aware that it had been hard to generate the required passion for ‘McGoohan’s Blues’ when he recorded in an empty studio. He wanted the ‘White Man’ to be a live recording in front of his own audience and what better place than Les Cousins, the small intimate club where he had started out that became his second home. Amazingly EMI agreed and their mobile recording studio was set up in the club. That is incredible because we now have a recording of the entire show – which later surfaced as Live At Les Cousins.
The decision to leave the spoken preamble on the record was a dubious one. Roy always likes to talk about the lyrics and explain the ideas within his songs. He wants the inherent meaning to be understood but once you have listened to the introduction a few times it begins to pale. Roy knew that with a title like ‘I Hate The White Man’ it would be easy to mistake what the song was about and he felt the lyrics required explanation. Perhaps that was best kept for the liner notes or the live album?
This song features Roy and his guitar without any other backing yet he creates a full and complex piece of music. Roy has reverted to normal tuning. The chords are powerful and the voice is clear and pure. As the piece progresses passion builds and builds until it is storming along with Roy hitting those strings with real venom.
The poem has nothing to do with skin colour. It is all about an attitude. It concerns the empty culture, hypocrisy and arrogance of western society with its violence, avarice and inherent racism. Roy detests the destructive nature of western values. His central premise is that this so-called civilisation took away a natural hunter-gatherer way of life and replaced it with concrete and shackles.
‘The land of look and see’ refers to America and Native Americans prior to the arrival of the Europeans.
Roy is hankering after a simpler life away from this plastic society of drunkenness, guns, teargas and unfulfilling lifestyle. His fury is aimed at the establishment and the lust for power and wealth that not only creates war, enslaving us and taking away our freedoms, but destroys the planet in the process.
This ‘attitude’ is not confined to those with white skin. There are plenty of our brown, yellow and black skinned fellow human beings who worship the same gods of arrogance and greed, whose media propaganda feed the same lies and maintain the same fallacies.
Roy envisions a tragic nuclear finale to our violent culture which in the face of the evidence from history will inevitably perish. At the end of the song ‘the shooting star has summoned death’s dark angel from his night’.
Phew!! Has there ever been a more powerful song filled with such meaning?
A four or five minute version of this song could have been a hard-hitting single! It should have been Roy’s ‘Working Class Hero’. It’s a far better song than Lennon’s but with a very similar arrangement and chords. His first opportunity missed I think.
Poetry – Tectonic Plates of Society
Tectonic Plates of Society
As the tectonic plates shift
The ground beneath us.
New mountains of behaviour
Push upwards as cultures clash.
Mountain ranges of compassion,
Volcanoes of cooperation,
Peaks of altruism,
Earthquakes of respect.
The old layers of populism,
The fossilised strata of greed,
The crushed remains of selfishness,
Are fractured, bent and buried.
As the old separation is replaced
By new togetherness,
And the old hostilities
Are suffocated with love.
Opher – 29.3.2020
The pandemic has caused major shifts in our society. It is noticeable.
Most people are politer and friendlier. There is a togetherness and community spirit. It has brought people together.
So many are volunteering to help others, to look after the old and needy, the more vulnerable members of society.
Many are putting themselves at risk to tend to others.
The selfishness of Brexit and austerity is being washed away.
Perhaps we are on the brink of a new caring era? It’s a shame the pandemic did not happen a few years earlier.
Poetry – Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and Ladders
There’s a game being played.
Some play by different rules,
While others are told what rules to play by.
If we dare to move
To a different tune
They create a cacophony
To drown us out.
For they have all the ladders
While we are left with snakes.
The games that I would choose to play
Have no snakes
And every square has a ladder.
But they play by different rules.
Opher 13.11.2019
My tax is calculated to the last penny but they are free to form companies and stuff their millions off-shore tax-free.
I am subject to the law but they employ lawyers to bend the rules, find loopholes and evade justice.
I, like the vast majority, use the public services, hospitals, schools and police but they pay to jump queues, get better service and enhance their privilege.
They influence the law with lobbying, bribes, promises and sweeteners. I am subject to the law.
Privilege buys a ladder to the heights.
They think this is alright.
I think it stinks.
Poetry – Caught Between
Caught Between
Between the profits and the greed,
Between the money and the seed,
Between the madness and the war,
Between the illness and the sore,
There’s no room.
Between the pillar and the post,
Between the devil and the ghost,
Between the hard place and the rock,
Between the explosion and the shock,
There’s no room
Between the funfair and the ride,
Between the hunter and the pride,
Between the arrow and the gun,
Between the baiting and the fun,
There’s no room
Opher 13.4.2018
It seems to me that something is missing from this modern life. We’ve lost it somewhere along the way. It has been squeezed out.
Now, with our life of fun, comfort and ease, between the leisure and entertainment, between the purchasing and throwing away, we have lost something that was immensely important.
Now that most of us do not need to struggle for survival, when the food is on the table, the fridge bulges and we just have to turn the central heating or air-conditioning up, something has been lost.
Now when the trip to church, mosque, temple or synagogue and the reading of the verses has no impact on our daily life or the way we act, something has gone badly astray.
Somewhere in the het up struggle between NeoCon and LibTard, where all minds are clouded with tribal fury, a real sense of purpose has been waylaid.
I think I know what it is.
I think we have lost our connection with nature.
Who are the Establishment and why I’m against them!
The Establishment are a loose combination of all those who have wealth, status and power.
They include the royalty, aristocracy, wealthy landowners and businessmen (plus a few women), Bishops, Generals Politicians and Top Civil Servants.
They are conservative in that they have a vested interest in maintaining the system as it stands – ie. they want the wealth and power to reside with them and not allow the rank and file to usurp them.
They use their power, influence and privilege to buy, coerce or provide them with advantage.
They form a club. To be part of that club you either have to be born into the club or buy your way in.
The badges of their club include privileged schooling (at public schools such as Eton and Harrow and on to Oxford and Cambridge) and membership of other clubs or professions – hence the Generals, Judges, Civil Servants, and CEOs of big companies. You can join the club by invitation through great success at sport, in the arts or business world – or even a rebellious Rock Star like Mick Jagger. You could become a Lord.
There is an ‘Old Boy’ network which operates to give benefits to other members – we’ve seen that in operation during Brexit and the Coronavirus – the inside knowledge and contacts, meant that lucrative contracts and huge profits were generously given out to the few. These establishment profiteers – like Rees-Mogg and Baroness Dido Harding – made a fortune. We see it with the 44 members of Cameron’s cabinet that were shuffled into lucrative jobs. We see it with the revolving door into the world of huge opportunity. We see it with the likes of Cameron and Osborne leaving politics and going on to make countless millions.
This club called the establishment controls everything. It has the money to control markets. It controls the media. It controls jobs.
If an antiestablishment political group forms – such as the original Labour Party – the media create a shitstorm of lies and scare stories. The money markets are carefully directed to create economic failure. The political figures are either worn down or bought off and the threat is removed.
The only way for a party, such as the Labour Party, to become elected is to become an establishment party – as happened with Blair.
Antiestablishment figures such as Corbyn, with their antiestablishment policies of nationalisation, are vilified and ridiculed.
Conservative statesman Lord Salisbury told parliament in 1866, in response to plans to extend the suffrage. Giving working-class people the vote would, he stated, tempt them to pass “laws with respect to taxation and property especially favourable to them, and therefore dangerous to all other classes”.
They feared that the people might want a fairer country and take away their wealth and privilege.
When working-class people forced the establishment to give them the vote the establishment set about controlling them.
Through the media they spread propaganda, lies and scaremongering. The idea being that they could prevent the working people from electing people who would represent their interests at the expense of the establishment elite.
They set about controlling the markets to safeguard their wealth – hence we have tax loopholes that are never blocked off – and to use this control to undermine any attempt to create more equality.
The establishment regard themselves as superior. They see the rest of the country working to create wealth for the elite. They give them as little in terms of money and work conditions as they can get away with.
Hence the land, wealth and power reside with a small group of people – the establishment.
They have proved very cunning and successful.
Apart from a few blips – such as the post-war Labour Atlee government sneaking in unexpectedly and bringing in huge social change – such as the NHS and Welfare State – the establishment have ruled consistently.
The Conservative party were set up by the establishment to rule for the establishment – which they have consistently done. One only has to look at today – The Johnson government has given huge tax cuts and handouts to the wealthy while cutting public services and bringing in cuts and austerity for the poor.
The Labour Party in order to become elected effectively become watered-down Tories presenting Tory policies and supporting the establishment.
So the Tories represent the wealthy establishment.
The Labour Party ostensibly represent the working-class (but in fact are still establishment).
I’m middle-class. Nobody really represents me and never have!
The working class have been successfully conned. They have been distracted with soaps and gameshows, drink, drugs and gambling, or deceived with propaganda.
They have been controlled with poverty and threats of job losses.
The establishment have been amazingly successful.
Why I am opposed to the establishment
In actual fact it makes very little difference to me or my life anymore. Whoever gets in power (Labour or Tory) my pension is secure. Prices might go up a bit. Taxes might go up a bit. But my lot is secure.
When I worked as a teacher it did make a lot of difference. When the Tories got in there were cuts and pay was poor. When Labour got in there were pay rises and schools had more money.
So I can see a difference. But Labour never disturbed the Tories much after that Atless government. They lost their antiestablishment credentials.
So why am I opposed to the establishment?
a. I believe in fairness. I believe in equality. We live in a society where the bulk of the wealth is siphoned off into the pockets of a few. I think that is wrong.
b. I despise the class system with all its arrogance, privilege and ‘Old Boys’ Network’.
c. I despise the game of privilege.
d. I believe in a meritocracy. I believe the best people should rise to the top. We see all too clearly in this pandemic and Brexit the way that cronyism, nepotism and the establishment network has put incompetent people in charge. The result has been disastrous. Boris Johnson is a clear example of someone who is incompetent and has risen to his position, not through merit, but through privilege.
What I want
The country/world I want to see is one not ruled by a greedy, selfish, arrogant ruthless establishment – an establishment that uses repression and war in order to gain more for itself, who exploits the majority and firmly believes that it is better than everybody else. The establishment believes they deserve it.
My fears
I’ve watched this naked greed throughout my life as it destroys other cultures, starts wars, uses economic warfare to castrate opposition and is destroying nature in the process. It is relentless and immoral.
The end point of all this is too frightening to imagine. The end of the planet??
The other frightening thought is this:
The establishment have needed the workforce in order to create their wealth. They have used and exploited us in their armies, factories, mines and fields.
They no longer need a workforce. A/I and automation have removed the need for a workforce.
We are surplus to requirements.
Poetry – The Pursuit of Happiness
The Pursuit of Happiness
We’re all busy consuming.
It’s what we’re taught to do.
Buying and throwing away
Is the nation’s glue.
We’re using up the planet.
Making lots of people rich.
Destroying the thing we love.
Ain’t life a bitch?
The pursuit of happiness
Is to be found in ownership.
The more you have the more you are
All that matters is blue chip.
Some have much and some have none.
That’s the way it has to be.
We’re living the life of luxury
In the land of the free.
What good is having everything
If everyone has it too?
If money doesn’t buy us happiness
What are we to do?
Opher – 28.3.2021
It seems to me that we have lost our way. We do not have lives full of meaning, wonder and adventure. We live in a world where the only things that matter are status and fame.
It’s so empty.
Poetry – Once Upon A Time
Once Upon A Time
Once a tiny tribe
Roamed, following the meat,
Now a teeming mass
With more than it can eat.
Once wild and free,
Bonding in brotherhood.
Now restrained by law, but
Rampaging in the neighbourhood.
Where once masters of skills,
Living by their wits –
Now a gang of fools
With whom no purpose sits.
Once proud, strong and true,
Now posturing on corners,
Wondering what to do.
In the concrete and plastic
Of a man-made universe,
Where decisions are all drastic
And answers perverse,
The human race has come to this –
A smoke, a shag and a lot of piss.
An empty life
An empty mind
With nothing in front
And nothing behind.
Opher 19.12.2015
Once Upon A Time
It seems to me that mankind’s intellect has outgrown his instinct. Where once we roamed freely in small numbers using all our intelligence and skills to battle the elements, fight of predators, feed and clothe ourselves and stay alive, now we are in the business of sanitising life.
In the plastic universe of our creation, where nature is banned or tamed, we are shackled by our laws. We still have the tribal instincts. The skills, camaraderie and bravery that once meant life and death for all the tribe, all now count for nothing. Health and Safety rules life. Life has to be saved. But life has no substance or meaning.
Our young people are aimlessly drifting in a plastic universe.
It is no wonder that some of them drift into religion as an answer. They are searching for purpose. They want more than gang violence and the endless, vacuous night out on the town. They want meaning, purpose and fulfilment. We give them safety as a sop.
Poetry – Angry
ANGRY
My mind is crippled
My emotions crawl
My memory limps
My psychology stalls
There must be more than this
There has to be a way
That gives a sense of purpose
With something real to say
Somewhere between the mindless and the mean
Between the leaders and followers
What is and might have been
Between the sickeningly sweet and the vicious kick
Between the awesome mystery
Religion and the sick.
Somewhere between the ageing and the end
Between the discovery and death
The laws to break and mend
Between the exploiting cynic and the devotee
Between the moments that matter
And the lives of you and me.
There must be more than this
There has to be a way
That gives a sense of purpose
With something real to say
Opher 23.10.96
I do not like the society we have constructed. I find it empty, plastic and completely consumed with the trivial.
We seem to have become fashion and celebrity obsessed to the point where real issues are not even addressed. To talk about the population explosion or destruction of the rainforests is considered boring.
Consequently people are disconnected from important issues. They feel impotent and uninvolved. Many do not feel they can make a difference so why think about it? Let the politicians sort it out.
TV is vacuous. Entertainment is the name of the game. If it requires thought then forget it.
Politics is something that people do not wish to think about.
Most do not care. They live in their bubble where all that is important is their hairstyle, clothes, nail-varnish and what the celebrities are wearing, saying or doing.
We have become mindless cattle; consumers to be led by the nose to plastic paradise where no one ever has to think.