(acknowledging the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band who used the same title)

A news team is set up in the front garden of the Prime Minister’s private home; a mid-terraced house in Richmond.

Well Prime Minister, this is a surprise. I don’t think any of us were expecting a garden party quite so soon, if at all!

Ye of little faith…

Well, you hadn’t really involved any of us in what you were thinking or negotiating or if you were drilling for details…

I don’t give away my plans…

Not even amongst friends?

I called a general election and I told the cabinet what I had decided at Chequers but both turned out to be a mistakes. I should have remained silent.

Like a stealth submarine?

Yes, exactly like that.

But can’t you see how worrying that can be? Would you like a vol-au-vent?

I gave plenty of reassurance to the British public and industry. I seem to remember saying ad museum, ‘I am getting a ‘good deal’ for Britain.’

Bit of a slip of the tongue that…

I’ll have a salmon one thanks. What slip of the tongue?

Well didn’t you mean the United Kingdom?

Pedantry will do no favours in your journalistic career young lady. I have the DUCK party, or whatever they are called, on my side. With them I have a complete majority.

(faces camera) Well, talking of sides, I guess we are all here today to admire the work you have done on your shared rainwater downpipe.

Yes, I have painted it pink.

Yes, but only one half.

…because pink is an optimistic colour and symbolises a rosy future for Britain and her allies in this war.

War?

Sorry, wrong auto-cue. I mean just Britain…that is…the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland. Is that right?

So from your point of view standing here in your front garden, you can see just a pink downpipe?

Correct. Have you finished your questions now, because I prefer talking with someone who doesn’t ask questions?

I was going to ask Prime Minister, why you didn’t also paint the other half of the downpipe. It’s a kind of…grey.

I can’t see that. I honestly only want to get the best downpipe and that is what I sincerely believe I have achieved. I can’t understand why anyone should think differently.

Well I have spoke with Mr Singh, your neighbour, and he tells me he doesn’t like your pink colour and he wishes you had never decided to paint it.

Mr Singh? So that’s his name. I always wondered. No, in answer to his views, I don’t think he is in a position to say what I should and shouldn’t do with my half of the drainpipe. He can’t see from his front garden what I can see from my front garden.

Did you try to negotiate?

I offered to paint it all pink but he refused.

Did you offer to do nothing?

I asked all the May family about this and they voted to paint the blessed thing. I voted not to paint it but I have to go with the majority.

Even though you gave the cat the casting vote?

Animals have feelings…

So on a whim you have chosen to change a situation that was working perfectly into one where there is division and uncertainty.

Yes, because the alternative is unthinkable?

The alternative of doing nothing and keeping it as it was?

No, no…that is far too risky. I mean the alternative is to remove the downpipe and allow all kind of damage to not only my house, but this Mr. Singh’s house. I think that is a bad outcome for both houses.

Could you not have just left it alone?

I have ruled out asking the family again. I have ruled out a lot of things. This is what the cat voted for and in a democracy, ‘ the winner takes it all’. Ooh! I feel like dancing all of a sudden?

Do you think you have much longer as prime minister?

Of course I do. Who else is going to run my house? I like to form an idea and carry it through to the end. Whether it works or not I should get a Peerage for being strong. That is why I shall continue to say I like my pink half of the drain pipe. Pink is not only a good happy colour but it’s a nice colour and I am going to keep it, whatever other people say.

And if one takes a few paces this way….to the boundary between the two houses, you can see that it really does look quite ridiculous from here. Can you see there is another view point…?

Yes, I wonder?

So can see the problem how other’s see it?

No, no, young lady, I wonder if I chose the right shade of pink? In this light it looks a bit, Salmon.

Who is in Charge?

When it comes to trying to work out the rules of life, you might expect religions to help. But I have just given up on reading a book (called Home Deus by Yuval Noah Harari) in which the author dismisses religions on the grounds that they teach fatalism.

It is true that many adherents to various religions believe in ‘Divine Judgment’ or ‘the will of God’. You know which religions I refer to.

And yet I would argue that this belief is due to, at best a neglectful misunderstanding of scripture and, at worst a willful misunderstanding of scripture. Because, if you are the type of person who likes to sit on the sidelines and watch the football match rather than play football, this is a view that fits your attitude to life. The car will not start in the morning as you leave for work, because ‘God has willed it’, not because you neglect your car. Or on a larger scale, the sea opens and the Israelite s escape the Egyptian army, because God has the power of miracles.

To me, this view of life denies one’s own power and responsibility. It has given permission for the ‘blame culture’ of today.

This ‘blame culture’ view, also means that an individual does not have to take responsibility for their actions. At it most extreme manifestation it gives permission for the horror committed by terrorists in the name of God. Even disciplined armies fight wars with ‘God on our side’. The fact that both sides claim this right is a contradiction ignored, perhaps because it would make war and sacrifice a nonsense, such as in the first World War.

I have to wonder what are the priests and those who preach within religions thinking? Perhaps two hundred years ago the ‘fire and brimstone’ and ‘you will go to hell’ threats were of a time when understanding in the sciences, arts and humanities, was not as sophisticated as today. Which implies that the ‘you don’t have to take responsibility because God is in charge’, philosophy is still preached. Even when people ask why good people are murdered or run over by a bus, (how could a benign God have allowed this to happen?) the priests reply is an empty echo of  the dogma they learned in the seminary.

In between the philosophical positions of ‘the will of God’ and ‘the freewill of man’ is a belief in ‘fate’.

I once asked a work colleague, whose daughter was born severely disabled and whose plight was the centre of a charity, how he handled such a situation. His reply was two words; ‘shit happens’. Whether this referred to his daughter or to his family life or both was unclear but what was clear was a ‘fatalistic’ view.

In this philosophy, no person or external power is to blame for anything. It’s a way of life explored by the dice man in the novel of the same name. The dice man sets out to make all his important decisions by throwing a die. Whatever the result, good or bad, moral or immoral, he did it. But fatalists walk with the same crutches as those who attribute causes and consequences to Divine influence. The crutches of ‘nothing to do with me.’

The more realistic answer, in my view, is the opposite. Everything that happens is ‘to do with me’. We have been given free will and as a result are in charge and fully responsible for our actions. I believe this because I am able and willing to take responsibility for my actions and able to learn from my mistakes. In my view this is the only way (and the gift to humanity) to learn and eliminate the karma with which we are born.

In this way my thinking is different from those religions that preach of a hell awaiting sinners. I think we are already in hell because that is what the world is to many, even or especially today. Heaven is not a place for eternal retirement playing x to the power n rounds of golf. Heaven is here on earth in every moment of time, when we use our freewill to see it.

Free will is a wonderful gift when used wisely. In it’s most powerful manifestation it gives human beings the power of miracles. Jim cured himself of cancer and Joy refused to get on the plane that would later crash. These are not people being crushed by a vengeful God or an indifferent fate; they are the autonomous creations of God.

Everything is up for negotiation in life, even when and how we are going to die. That is how the Zen Masters of the past have predicted the exact time and day of their death and written to their pupils informing them.

Time to get a grip.

When a report hits the television screens of a computer driven car being involved in a collision on a public road, suspicions are levelled at the computer driven car.

Little consideration is given to the possibility that some idiot drove into it.

There was an advertisement for a German make of car where the other road users are stereo typed as clowns. The driver of the car being promoted had to avoid the foolishness of bizarre drivers of other cars, dressed as clowns. Both were of course up to the job.

Nothing opens the lid on the workings of the human brain as well as studying driving habits, prejudices, self opinion, assumed level of skill, courtesy, un-controlled emotion…well probably the whole spectrum of human mental and emotional behaviour.

Like actors in an ancient Greek tragedy who’s personality is refracted by a mask, drivers on modern roads change who they are. An alternative ego takes over prepared to face risk of being one of the ten people who die on the roads of the United Kingdom each day. Ready to take part in, not play, but real tragedies.

Few would say, when asked, that they are bad drivers. In fact there is almost an inverse square law where the worse the driver, the better they think they are. For instance, the young 18 year old showing off to his or her mates squeezed into the back seats, and the front suicide seat, will demonstrate the rally driving skills acquired in their imaginations. Clearly rally driving is not part of the driving test. This divergence between imagination and reality accounts for a large number of tragic deaths.

At the other end of the scale are the elderly. As old age takes away their reflexes and eyesight, their imaginations and determination to remain ‘independent’ reinforces a fantasy that they are very experienced and therefore safe drivers.

And everyone between these age extremes, has some wolf clothing or other that they put over their woolly fleeces when driving. I can say this with some certainty, because I watch drivers on public roads. At any given moment, I would say that between 8 and 9 out of ten drivers are exceeding the speed limit.

I drive at the maximum legal speed limit when safe to do so, which makes me a ‘slow driver.’ I know this because most drivers are desperate to overtake me. This is especially on motorways where there is a dedicated lane for driving stupidly fast which many drivers never leave.

I read on the internet a driver criticising what he termed, ‘slow drivers’ and this started me thinking. What is a ‘slow driver?

Am I one of those drivers that infuriate him because I do not cross the maximum legal speed limit?

The rule of thumb used to be ‘keep up with the traffic’, but with speed cameras on duty, why go with the sheep to the slaughter? If you wish to obey traffic laws, you will be an unpopular driver.

I expect there is a particular type of slow driver who the motorway police sometimes encounter. It’s characteristically the elderly lady in a small car wearing ash tray glasses and limited by a fear of moving from second into third gear, especially on motorways where the traffic is ‘going much to fast’ in her view.

I don’t think I have ever encountered such a person in my driving years. But I will encounter a fast driver exceeding the speed limit, taking unnecessary and futile risks to his and other’s lives, for the sake of arriving somewhere a few minutes quicker.

I have to share what I now know about arriving at one’s destination early or on time. I have practised it for years and am rarely late. I even have time to park, check my emails, collect my stuff together and remove valuables from my car. Do you want to know how I beat all the ‘fast drivers’. I leave five minutes early and arrive five minutes early.

And I am fairly convinced now that driving fast has little effect on one’s arrival time. To any observer of traffic, it can be seen to travel, only as fast as the slowest vehicle. True, you can overtake, but that is a skill not all drivers have, preferring to tail-gate and in this way causing one in eight collisions in the UK. And even if Mr. Toad can find a length of empty road to put his webbed foot on the gas pedal, he is most likely to reach the next traffic jam or red lights, stop and be caught up by the ‘slow drivers’ he thought he had left behind. Traffic in computer simulations resembles a caterpillar in it’s bizarre determination to rush and then wait. Having noted this, traffic controllers reduce the speed of traffic on motorways, such as the M25, to keep volume of moving traffic at it’s maximum.

If we pursue an abstract idea and imagine an empty motorway ( say on the dark side of the moon because I have never seen one ) – even on this motorway where there are no other drivers and no speed limits, driving fast will arithmetically gain very little time. Do the maths if you don’t believe me!

A philosophical way to view travel is as speed, distance and time. All are relative to each other. So for instance if you want to arrive earlier, fresher and more cheaply; don’t go so far. Yes, I mean it! Forget the two hour commute to work each morning and evening and move house! Or consider time as a piece of elastic rather than a series of regular ticks and tocks. Stretch yourself out a little and enjoy driving, being where you are; taking pleasure in the views, watching the people and places or at least allowing your passengers this pleasure since as a driver you are only concentrating on staying alive.

I think we need to begin to change our expectations around getting places quickly by private transport, because hyper-loops and fast trains will make long journeys by car obsolete. We will use hybrid fuel cell / electric Poodle cars which drive themselves and are unable to go over the maximum safe speed limit, even down hill with a tail wind. Driving stupidly close to the car in front to make it’s driver break the law, will not be an option. You won’t even involved in a collision again because if there are only Poodle cars there is are no human X-factors. People who might have died, will not.

Come in Mr. Toad…you time is up!

When I was at school my parents wanted me to study science subjects. My artistic passions were reserved for ‘a hobby’.

I wasn’t very good at Maths but I liked Physics and I emerged with a clutch of mixed art, humanities and science A-levels. Clearly I had usurped my parents dreams of making a pure scientist.

Architecture beckoned as a mix of art and science, and so was to be my career for twenty years.

But I wasn’t to gain an understanding of buildings until I worked an Australian Chinese architect. He explained to me that ‘all buildings should tell a story.’

This planted a seed on fertile soil for Professor Bob Maxwell had helped me explore how buildings carry meaning in signs and symbols.

To explain my point more abstractly, there are two components of any art, whether it is music, literature, painting, architecture etc. These are content and technique. It’s as simple as that. Any creative person must have both a message and the means to express it. The message can therefore be awarded fifty points and the skill of the technique another fifty points. In this way, a ‘perfect’ created entity will score one hundred.

That’s the theory and here’s how it is applied.

Let us consider the Mona Lisa by Leonardo de Vinci. We know that Leonardo concealed many stories in his paintings, so the landscape in the background, the choice of sitter, the smile, the geometry – all tell a tale that has engaged critics for centuries.

Then there is the technique, of which Leonardo was a master. No brush stroke out of place which is perhaps why he carried the painting with him where ever he went.

Now let us apply this same critical method to a poorly written and badly executed popular song; what is generically known as ‘Pop music’.

The lyrics may be without any meaning at all or perhaps allude to a well worn subject.

They may be shouted or mumbled so poorly that no listener can determine what they are. Score 5 for content and 2 for technique.

A popular song must also be measured for it’s musical content. This one has just the two chords and follows the well worn verse / chorus format. It contains repetition of phrases that becomes monotonous, and the tune is easy to anticipate. Score 5 for content and 3 for technique. This song therefore scores in total 10 for content and 5 for technique. It’s a flop because the public are not fooled.

When the Beatles came along with their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club record, it was a revolution. Mainly an about turn from the type of song in the example above. Suddenly there were stories being told with. Original stories with subjects that were well known but not normally the subject of songs. And the production was just as novel, George Martin experimenting with all the effects at his disposal in the recording studio, unlimited by imagination.

Score for Sgt. Pepper; content 45, technique 45 making this a smash hit with 90 out of a 100.

This method or criticism and creativity can be applied to any area of creativity. It is an invaluable tool for critics and artists. Artists who produce a single colour on a canvas with not even a name for the piece, can be score 0, 0 without reservation. Art critics do not need to give the benefit of the doubt when it comes to appreciation. They can quickly see that a work is without content and technique and dismiss it as offering little to the human story.

A shark in a tank? 1 for content (what does it mean?) and 10 for technique ( nature has done most of the work here ).

It should be obvious that this process, which is engaged either consciously or not, is a unification of head with the heart. The heart contains the message and the head delivers it.

We live in an age where the messages are confused and blurred but the head is certain of how clever it is. For this reason people can no longer reason whether God exists or how to write a poem.

We have become a world of science, looking vainly for reason. The only escape from ‘this mess’ (Laurel and Hardy) is to teach our young people the importance of being adept at both heart (art) and science (head).