Just Say No

This comment isn't about green issues, it's about creeping authoritarianism.

Now, while I understand and accept all the science, and am well aware of the coming ecological catastrophe, I'm slightly fucked off that years after it became obvious, private citizens, and small businesses have been sold diesel vehicles but are now going to be required to ditch them overnight (more pollution getting rid of the vehicles themselves now, of course) and shell out for petrol driven replacements, which is not really that much of an improvement and particularly enraging when you remember that politicians have colluded with the fucking evil Oil Industry for decades to prevent clean fuel transport.

I'm all for this in theory of course, but, are we going to get compensation for the vehicles we HAVE invested in? Probably not.

So, to this end, we were approached by another arrogant busybody at Dieppe on Sunday telling us to turn our engine off in the queue for the ferry (we'd been there like, 2 min, he just couldn't wait.) The miserable sod was driving a brand new hybrid, well nice work if you can get it, privileged middle class prick, and he actually called our van 'your dirty smelly OLD van' this is the Tory attitude, the" 'I've got a nice job and a big house Why Can't You" idiocy. When did he get appointed as the diesel Police? I said, NO, sorry, not at the moment, my husband is charging his phone. He started banging on so I said NO again and he stalked off and glared at us for a while like a thwarted adolescent.

We could, if we can find a plug on the ferry not in use, charge it on the boat. With electricity generated presumably by it's diesel engine. Was he planning to drive round Dieppe, 300 yards across the port, and harangue any French diesel owner failing to switch off their engine in a traffic queue? Probably not. Because people with authoritarian issues just act out on on the nearest victim.

The thing is I'm fairly Green, of course, but the ferry 100 yards away was also belching out diesel, I didn't see him NOT using that! Later on as we were disembarking I saw the little shit again and I said to Aldo in a loud voice: What fuel did you say this ferry uses again? Diesel, he bellowed. And then I said, did you know, that as you are virtuously recycling your plastic milk bottles, that there's a ten thousand square mile chunk of Russia that is already so toxic that no human will be able to go there for centuries? People in the queue were smirking. He was fuming.

Clearly, there is a new kind of Green fascism taking hold. Nobody is going to take any green measure which is going to destroy their business or cost them their hard earned money, until Big Corp and Government does the right thing and acts across the board. That's the reality.

I don't go round the World bossing strangers around and they are NOT going to do it to me. This is how people like Trump get elected, people are just so mindlessly obedient. Just stop it.

White World Strikes Again

Tunisia inquest. Same old superior racist drivel. Do you think when someone is utterly shocked, in the UK or 'white world' that person wouldn't faint, or pretend, or hide? Seriously? You think people who are young, not very well paid, probably not trained, would want to go get more guns? I do.

This was an awful tragedy but honestly, if it had happened in Eastbourne everyone involved would be a 'hero'. What happened here was that people 'froze in trauma'. If you think YOU wouldn't, you've watched too many movies I'm afraid. We have to stop the media constantly misrepresenting 'foreigners' as somehow weak, cowardly or less able than 'us'.

There have been as few terrorist attacks in Tunisia as there have been here (oh yes, and before you howl, forty years of the IRA, always conveniently forgotten.) And then, in apparent 'mainstream news', Simon Calder, who is a travel writer, not a diplomatic or political expert by the way, and who now takes the Indie fake news site shilling, says a few crass remarks including that Tunisia is next door to Libya a 'failed state'!

The nerve of the man! WHY is Libya a failed state?? Answers on a postcard...then, contradicts himself and says, oh the chances of being involved in a terrorist attack are about the same as being in an air crash. The BBC strikes again.

Launching Myself Off A Mountain

Hi there! Thanks for stopping by.

You've happened upon what I hope will at the max be a resource and at the min, something to provoke some thought.

I've been writing all my adult life, professionally for 20 years, but in the last 15 or so online. Now I'm taking some of my stuff off social media and blogging it instead.

Why?

I read stuff all the time and sometimes it's a wow! good or bad, I've learned a lot of wisdom and sometimes just plain info, from other people.

I've lived quite a long life, and I've done a bunch of cool stuff and a bunch of boring stuff, I'm not a believer in God but I am a believer in passing on anything I've figured out before my kids are scattering my ashes and it's all lost.

Is that arrogant? Of course it is. Why would I write a blog about my low self esteem? Seriously?

So off we go.

I am not going to be fake controversial. I've done a feckova lot of 'personal development' so I have strong views of course I do, but it's more about things like conversation and process for me.

I think people see the World through a very specific, carefully constructed 'lens' of their own. I do. The trick is to constantly widen and intensify that lens.

If you are wearing reality goggles that keep you sane don't just rip 'em off. That would be just daft. But maybe consider that they might be restricting your further vision, or your peripheral, or, side vision.

That's what this blog is for.

It's like this, ok. About 20 years ago, I was doing some FE with others and three of the guys on the course who I had good connect with asked me if I fancied walking up Snowdon. One of them had been gradually going blind. But he'd been a keen hillwalker and had done the Welsh peak a few times.

He wanted to go with some other people to guide him and make sure he didn't fall off, but also to describe the scene as he went up so he could not just enjoy the memories, but keep them going. I guess if you lose a major faculty it's probably a good idea to reinstate those memories from time to time, something which we who can hear and see will naturally do by browsing old photos, listening to old records, chatting with friends and family about past events and situations.

As a nice relevant return gesture he said he would walk we three through an abandoned railway tunnel with a bend in it, near Betws-Y-Coed, so that we could have the experience of what it might be like to be blind. Pretty awesome, eh?

(I've been back since, it's been absorbed and re opened as part of one of Wales's many heritage railways so you can't do it now.)

Anyway we did those things, and it was all good fun and uplifting and there was some drinking and me chucking one of the more enthusiastic members of the party out of the tent, another story.

So that's this blog. I'll take you up your Life Mountain and remind you of the views that you've either forgotten, or describe the views you might see. You can lead me into your darkness and we can come out of the tunnel at the other end.

I don't care if you don't agree with me, it really doesn't matter. Take what you want. If you say something nasty I am very tough, I've had death threats for saying I don't like contemporary jazz, so, giant Meh. And I will assume you are a 15 year old American teenager sitting enraged in front of his laptop with his hand in his pants. So don't.

Oh, you thought this blog would be all holy with no swearing, and some lofty spiritual mission. AH.... did you? Bless.....

Why am I calling myself The Shaman Nan? Well I AM a Nan, and a shaman is a Wise Person. If you think I am stupid and talking shite that's fine, I hate the notion of perfection anyway.

...what's with the tiara? It was my wedding anniversary - 2012....I made the tiara myself and I always wear it on July 27 every year.