Dictionaries are constantly changing. Here are some of the new meanings for the 2018 edition of the Foxbridge English Dictionary;

Fabrics – a high quality wall

Wombat – a litter collecting bat

Rocket – a small rock

Womble – a litter collecting bull

Patent – a hired tent

Treatable – being kind to bulls

Trump – a dinosaur with a large backside

Stable – instructions from a Toreador

Infer – a place to find fleas

Amble – a bull that is best in the morning

Tame – instruction from a Yorkshire shooting instructor

Amiable – a bull that likes you

Transport – women’s races run by men

Reasonable – a bull with a good understanding of logic

Safety – tea that isn’t dangerous

Shambles – bulls that aren’t really bulls

Krakatoa – an excellent motorway recovery man

Feeble – a bull with a good head for business

Tweet – planning a meal in Yorkshire

Forest – what a seat is for

Bible – what to do when bulls are cheap

People Carrier – a thing for carrying poles for your peas

Rambling – gaudy jewellery for rams

Pizza – Zhar Peter

Come along children! Find your places quickly. All sitting down; I am waiting…

Now today we are going to be doing something very important. We are going to be the Houses of Parliament. That is why the chairs are different this morning.

Well there aren’t any houses in the houses of parliament, Boris. It’s just a name. I don’t know why they are called houses. Just imagine it to be one big house.

…with a garden?

No, Boris, there is no garden. Well because they don’t like flowers.

Now if you remember we need someone to be prime minister. Put your hand up if you would like to be prime minister!

Well there must be someone wants to be prime minister. Come on what about you Teresa? You will? Oh thank you very much. Make a space for Teresa so she can sit in the middle behind the pile of boxes.

Well, Boris those boxes are called the despatch box. It’s where people speak from. No not from inside a box. Outside.

Now we have a prime minister, so we need a leader of the opposition.

You would like to be one Jeremy? Thank you. You can sit opposite Teresa. No don’t make faces at her that’s not very nice.

Who is making that humming noise? Stop it please.

Who else do we need children? Any ideas.

Father Christmas! Well that would be funny wouldn’t it? No, I don’t think we need a Father Christmas. Nor, a tree, nor presents, you are just be silly Jeremy! Settle down everyone! Sit up straight!

Thank you. What a silly idea that was. Anyone else with a sensible suggestion.

We need a Phoney Secretary do we Amber? I think you mean Home Secretary. Yes, you can be one. Move up next to Teresa. Nicely! Good.

And a Fun Secretary! Well what a funny name! No, that’s a Foreign Secretary we need, though I expect we could all do with a Fun Secretary.

He would give out free sweets would he Jeremy? I think politicians have to have better ideas than that. Well, because I do. Well because the country would quickly run out of sweets.

No you can’t put up taxes to pay for the sweets. No you can’t. Not today, or any day. Because you are the leader of the opposition Jeremy that’s why. You are not in power.

You know who is. Yes you do. Who can help Jeremy remember who is in power children?

Yes Teresa, you and your party are in power. They are called the Conservative party.

Who is whistling? Come on. Oh it’s you Boris! Why are you whistling Happy Birthday? Because there is a party. No, it’s not that kind of party. You like party’s do you? I expect we all do but let us remain focused. Concentrate on what we are doing.

So now we have a government and an opposition, what are we going to do? Any ideas? Oh, what a lot of hands up!

Okay, Jeremy, what would you like to say?

That’s not a good policy. Keeping out the Jews has never worked Jeremy. Well because it’s prejudice. Well that means, not liking someone without any reason. No I do like the head teacher. Yes, I do. The provision of parking spaces to junior members of school staff is not what we are going to debate, Jeremy. No I am not a Jew either.

We want a nice policy. Teresa, do you have any ideas?

Not really. Oh. What sort of prime minister has no ideas!

Jeremy, that kind of language can go into the toilets and be flushed out! Off you go. Sit in the toilets until you have cleaned out your mouth. Now!

Oh you have thought of something have you Teresa? More Grammar Schools! Well with so many things going on the world, I wonder why you think that is important?

So you can have a better chance of getting into one next year? Well that is some sort of a reason.

Who has a better idea for a policy? You have one Boris do you?

Hating Russia! Oh dear. We do have a lot of prejudice in our class this morning. No we are not going to have a vote on it Boris. Well because it is a stupid idea. And hating the North Koreans, and the Chinese…we are not going to vote at all unless someone has a sensible policy!

I am waiting.

I am waiting.

Is your hand up Teresa? It is. What is your policy?

Britain should leave Europe and the rest of the world and head off into space.

Oh dear.

There goes the bell. After break it’s reading skills so bring your reading books. Go nicely out of class now and don’t run in the corridors!

Just think readers. One day, these children could well be in charge of the country!

Sergei Skripal was the latest in a series of ‘blame Russia’ scenarios. Relations with Western Europe have deteriorated decade after decade. Certainly Russia has it’s domestic difficulties – but that is not the business of other states. It has also been in the background and benefited from the ‘invasion’ or ‘repatriation’ of satellite states like Ukraine and Crimea. In ‘retaliation’ Western Europe has imposed sanctions and frozen asserts held in the West.

But is Russia the problem it has been made out to be by the western media? How have British, French, German citizens suffered or has their national security been threatened by Russia? Probably not. The West appears to become interested when it can adopt the role of ‘moderator’ or ‘high moral ground’ or ‘defender of freedom’ or ‘not tolerating weapons of mass destruction’. It tries to go through the United Nations with complaints against Russia of this nature, only to be vetoed by, well Russia.

The Second World War did not end well. It did not end well if you perceived future world peace to depend on something more than the defeat of Fascism. At the time, it was natural to see the aim of the war was to defeat Fascism. Few had the vision of General George S Patton, who declared that the West should carry on the fight to the doors of the Kremlin. Why? Because he saw that Europe was about to be divided down the middle, East and West.

So, for no more noble a reason than ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend‘ Churchill and Roosevelt, found themselves sat at the negotiating table with one of the most evil dictators, Joseph Stalin. The resulting negotiations didn’t go well. The Soviet Union grabbed land. A lot of land, including half of Berlin, the jewel in the devil’s crown.

So the war ended in division rather than unity – and the price? The creation of the state of Israel. Why was that so important? The very influential Jewish lobby, in the States and Europe, were perhaps the only beneficiaries from the war.

The post war years have been held in a state of military limbo by technology, rather than statesmanship. That technology was the practical application of nuclear energy, as an ultimate weapon of war and a source of energy.

Beneath this culture of mutual fear and respect, the two ‘sides’ have co-existed peacefully. The Soviet Union has undergone change with the collapse of communism, because of it’s own short fuse.

On the positive side, countries that had had their infrastructure demolished, like Germany and Japan, were able to rebuild. Ironically, war is a good thing for the economy of the world. New inventions, social change, opportunities over stagnation, contribute to a ‘leap forward’ on a scale that might have taken decades without war.

If you felt that the time is ripe for more catastrophic destruction, for more ‘reinvention’ of society and technology, then you might be right. The traditional ways of the post war years, have brought about great social benefits but failed to settle national conflicts or appease petty nationalism. So real or imaginary, a more ‘united and free‘ world awaits those who survive the next world war.

With a seriously deplete world population following a nuclear, biological and chemical war, human kind will be forced to come together just to survive. What will be left of the biosphere will be regarded as far more precious, than it is now. Our survival depends on the planets survival.

So, what do these people (dubbed the ‘Deep State’) do? They have been drip drip dripping hate and disharmony amongst nations for the last fifty years. Why has the United States of America chosen to fight so many foreign wars from which it’s citizens did not benefit and when there was no threat to the national security of their country? Soldiers died because their leaders told them there was a problem that needed solving.

Why have the Palestinians been treated with Aparthied and Genocide by those who pretend to know better? 

When Sergei Skripal and his daughter are attacked with a nerve agent on the streets of a county town in the United Kingdom, ‘who done it?’

We all enjoy detective stories. We are particularly pleased when the obvious villain turns out not to be the murderer. The real murderer has remained in the background as the least likely villain. The murderer places clues to mislead the detective. Yes, we all know the format.

When we look for a motive for attempting to murder Comrade Colonel Skripal in Salisbury with a nerve agent, why do we leap to the conclusion the writer intends us to?

Why can we not see that there could be several other persons in the country house who also have a motive for murder. Perhaps Colonel Skripal had upset some members of the Russian Mafia? Perhaps Colonel Skripal was being punished by third parties for someone he killed or double crossed in the past? Perhaps Colonel Skripal was used as a pawn by the Deep State to make the Western powers blame Russia?

Great calm and benefit would be had by Western leaders to look at this and past ‘hate’ stories reported about Russia, and ask whether Russia is a real problem to the West, or not.

In 1949 it was thought not. But throughout the cold and largely phoney war, the Soviet Union and then Russia, has been portrayed as ‘the enemy’. But listen to it’s leaders and watch it’s actions. It knows that going into Afghanistan was a mistake. It knows that it does not have the material wealth of the West and is a relatively small player in world politics and in world trade. Only the weakness of the West will allow it to become a grizzly bear instead of a teddy bear. Only by demonising it relentlessly will the West persuade it’s own citizens that Russia is the problem and justify the devastating war which may happen in Northern Syria very shortly.

The Russians are Europeans, like it or not. Europe does not benefit from being divided by cultural, nationalistic, militaristic, social, economic, religious, technological and aspirational differences. Instead of falling apart, Europe needs to aim to come together, because of, not despite it’s differences however uneasy that may feel. If it does not – if there are no statesmen or women, big enough to see the world picture, then the world picture will have to emerge from the ashes of all out war, just as it did before, but far more quickly and over far larger an area.

Brexit or Ukexit?

The group of islands up above the 51^st parallel or there about, has taken millenium to get itself together. It has spent much of it’s time being totally disparate and weak. The Romans exploited this and had a relatively easy time invading and colonising. Then the Normans were able to exploit confusion over who was king and who was not, and seized the throne from Harold, who was out of breath from fighting the Vikings ‘up north’.

The Normans built some very nice castles to prevent the locals thinking about things for themselves. Then followed some extremely nice cathedrals, giving work to masons and keeping general labourers off the streets.

This very French version of order settled things down amongst the disparate Nations, who previously had not believed they had anything in common.

The Welsh were subdued to English rule, as were the Picts in Scotland. Even the Irish felt okay until religion raised it’s ugly mitre. But after much time arguing about which version of Christianity was the better, a line separated the protestant counties of Ireland in the north from the cat’olics in the south.

Everything was going so well, that the British set about subduing much of the world and helped themselves to payment in return.

The British Empire was based mainly on the way it had been divided and ruled by foreigners. They just did the same to the rest of the world. So successful were they had they decided to call themselves, ‘Great Britain’.

At some later point, the protestant provinces of Northern Ireland gate crashed the party, and  added to ‘Great Britain’, you get the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I have summarised the history of the last two thousand years for the sake of the politicians who continue to use the conflated word ‘Brexit’, thinking they describe the process of leaving the European Union.

Whilst we all enjoy these conflations, one small matter should be considered before they are used. They should mean what they say. I am not sorry for being pedantic and spoiling what superficially sounds like a jolly good new word, but using this term shows an alarming misunderstanding of history and the referendum of June 2016.

The question was whether the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should leave the European Union. I know that various nationalist politicians have made their own interpretations of who voted what – Scotland for instance voted to remain. But the question on the ballot paper did not ask whether Scotland should leave the European Union. As the examiners at school say, ‘read the question before you answer it’.

Neither London (remain) nor Wales (leave) nor Northern Ireland (can’t remember) voted as nationalists but internationalists – that is, United Kingdom citizens.

If we wonder why it is necessary to talk down this petty nationalism, perhaps the issue is that the UK has never become united. The simple geography of the nation having a capital in the south of the country, has enabled those with a geographical view to complain about the government being ‘far removed’ – geographically and by inference, politically.

If you stand on a cliff in Northern Ireland, on a clear day you can see a cliff in Scotland. The two countries are separated on by a narrow fetch of water and yet politically, this schism causes a disproportionate amount of angst.

So these disparate nations, joined together by history more than geography, have entered the national psyche so deeply that not even the most politically correct pedant in parliament has objected to the use of the new word, Brexit.

But, Britain is not exiting. The United Kingdom is exiting. It’s that simple. And you have to start using Ukexit because it should be offensive to the good souls of Northern Ireland and Gibraltar not to. I say this conscious of the illusion of authority I gain by making a complaint on behalf of a third party – known as ‘political correctness’. I live in neither place so cannot speak on their behalf. But wouldn’t it be thrilling is someone somewhere spotted this almost Freudian use of Brexit? Are we frightened to face the shadows of the past?

Think bubble emerges from head of prime minister Teresa Darling Buds, of May – so much simpler if we didn’t have to include Northern Ireland and Gibraltar in these negotiations. We are not sure how they voted in the 2016 referendum and we don’t think it significant any way. By the way how many people are there in Gibraltar? Is there a parliament at the moment in Northern Ireland? Who are the DUP and what do they think? Should we include the Falkland Islanders? Do they use the Euro as a currency like the French ex-colonies do? Could we get the Mexicans to build a wall between Eire and Northern Ireland? Oh! I can’t bear all these questions! Let’s just forget everywhere else except Britain. Brexit is a good word. We will only think and say Brexit.

Oversimplifying can create an untrue picture lacking in important detail. However there are times when the opposite is true. Sometimes if there is too much detail, the overall picture is lost.

One particular example is the description ‘Accident and Emergency’ departments at hospitals. The Health Service in the United Kingdom is often overwhelmed with patients, particularly in the winter. Significant resources have been put into trying to direct patients away from Accident Emergency. Many could be dealt with at their doctor’s or even self help using the internet. Another simple option, is to change the name ‘Accident and Emergency’ to ‘Emergency’.

Desperate calls went out to the public recently, imploring patients to only attend ‘A and E’ if it is an emergency. How much easier this request would be if the department is simply called, ‘Emergency’, because that is what it is.

The adage of the word ‘Accident’ is probably historical going back to the days when professionals like solicitors and doctors used strings of meaningless words to baffle and impress. But when you examine what an accident is, it could be all sorts of things – of varying urgency. A child may fall over accidentally and graze a knee; not urgent. Or a farmer may fall into a combined harvester; urgent. Accident is a redundant word because it allows the non-urgent through the doors, with the urgent. This criticism does apply to the use of the word ’emergency’ as it is just what it says and is exactly what the department is set up to deal with.

So to save a bit of departmental cash, reduce the trolley waiting, reduce the queues of ambulances, reduce the pressure on health service staff, and present patients more speedily with an appropriate outcome – let’s have ‘Emergency Departments’ in hospitals. It’s  a small change but it might help focus the minds of the public who are at present either confused or trying to exploit the system and get treatment more quickly than seeing a local Doctor.

I have a similar suggestion to offer to the ‘Fire and Rescue’ service in the United Kingdom. I think this is another example of using two words when one would do. Again, the verbiage evolved historically from what was originally a service to put out fires. Residents would take out insurance and place a disc on the front of their house representing their insurance provider. When the house caught fire, the company sent along a carriage and men equipped to extinguish the fire.

In the present day, I would argue it is time to re-assess what the ‘Fire Service’ does. Most of it’s call outs are to road traffic collisions. It’s task is to help cut out victims from the wreckage, put out or prevent fire and explosion and contain any hazardous material.

But if a vehicle enters a river or lake, the Fire and Rescue service have no means to swim or dive. They have been known in the past to use their breathing apparatus designed to prevent smoke inhalation to go under water, but I expect this is no longer allowed. What this means is that the rescuers cannot rescue.

Similarly, persons needing help in extreme environments, like mountains or coastlines, have to be dealt with by specialist teams like Mountain Rescue, Coastguard and RNLI lifeboats. These organisations are partially governmental and part run by volunteers. Surely, it is time for all of the organisations involved in rescue, to pool resources and work together.

Most firemen and women are young and fit and quite able to walk up a mountain with a stretcher and carry a casualty off the mountain – with appropriate leadership skills and persons with detail local knowledge working in the rescue team.

I once asked a senior fire officer how many fires he had attended in a year. His area of responsibility was an average sized town in Surrey, England. The answer was four! For this reason many fire stations are manned by ‘retained’ personnel, who work part time.

The retained fire station in the town I used to live in, burnt down because it did not have a fire alarm system!

I think it is time for the Fire and Rescue Service to be given greater scope and responsibility. No more long breakfasts, Playstation marathons and night shifts spent in bed. Time to rewrite the aim of the service. I believe that there is no better word to describe it’s broadest function which is  ‘rescue’.

We have all enjoyed watching Thunderbirds operating ‘International Rescue’. Any rescue, anywhere and the puppet team were deployed in a suitable rocket to deal.

If the United Kingdom had a national ‘Rescue Service’, the disparate teams of specialists would be brought together. Their remit will be to rescue, whether from a burning building, a lake, a mountain, underground, at the scenes of civil disaster like earthquakes or shipping disasters. In the latter case teams could even be offered to help other nations at times of extreme and urgent need.

In this process, the skills and courage of present Fire and Rescue personnel will be challenged to reach new heights and create full time, full-on employment. The voluntary organisations will work with them as attachments to the Rescue Service teams with their specialist skills.

Here then are two examples where the ‘job title’ of organisations is holding them back from what they do best. With shorter names and sharper aims, more will be achieved by professionals and volunteers, doing what they do best.

What level of proof do you need to accuse a state of murder?

If you are the leader of a state, you will want to discourage your intelligence agents from defecting. It’s always been a problem when you employ individuals because they have the ability to act duplicitously. They can bite the hand that feeds them and start taking food from another hand. They will play one state against another for a variety of motives. It might be blackmail, monetary gain, vengeance, political or other motives. What ever the motive these are not individuals either side can trust. They are insincere, loose canons with low or no morals – the opposite of the fictional James Bond if you like!

A state should then be glad when double agents are discovered and run to the side they upset least. Kim Philby was such an agent for the USSR and fled the UK to live in a communist style block of flats. Not so glamorous.

Sergei Scripal defected to the UK and ended up in a semi on a dull looking housing estate in Salisbury. A slightly more salubrious end to a shabby career. He made no attempt to change his identity and walked around in public as if he deserved nothing less. There is now a police investigation into his attempted murder. Perhaps it will come to light who he upset when living in Salisbury. Had he become a keen rose gardener and supporter of Salisbury United football team, or had the leopard retained his spots? You have to really upset people to make them risk murdering you. So who and how many other countries, organisations, people had he upset since his defection, as well as Russia before his leap to ‘safety’. 

It’s like a detective novel in which numerous characters have means, motive and opportunity and the plot moves from one to the other. Each time, the reader thinks the murderer is discovered, another character is introduced, also with means, motive and opportunity.

We should all know by now, that a murder investigation takes time. How often has a senior police officer been interviewed after a high profile, public interest murder to announce that the investigation is ‘on going’ and ‘all leads are being followed’ and ‘we appeal for witnesses to come forward’. Investigations are slow and painstaking because there has to be enough evidence to convict the suspect in a court of law beyond any doubt. Until then, the suspect is considered innocent.

Compare this well understood scenario with the present accusations against Russia and it’s leader, Vladimir Putin. He asks to see the evidence that Russia was involved. Not an unreasonable request, surely?

Initially he declined to comment, when asked by Prime Minister Teresa May if he did it, or knows how the nerve agent left Russia. The ‘no comment’ answer he gave is what most solicitors advise their clients to do. Perfectly legal and not an admission of guilt. Yet the UK government and it’s press, seem to be applying a lower standard of proof that in a criminal court – even though what happened was criminal. If the gun was made in China, this proves the Chinese government committed the murder? Well no! Where a gun or nerve agent is made, does not prove that country is guilty.

But perhaps I am missing the point. Perhaps there is a political agenda here, where accusations are made to suit a general mood of distrust, disapproval and condemnation by the UK towards Russia. Perhaps that agenda is more important than things like facts, in which case you have to ask, why?

Remember that the first world war was started with an assassination of the Arch Duke Ferdinand by a Serb. Austria and Serbia strutted around each other with the backing of their respective European allies. After the first shot, the hell which was to be the ‘war to end all wars’, was almost inevitable. So could there be anything more important than being certain of your facts before starting the next world war? Should we go to war based on evidence or a catalogue of assumptions and prejudices? Even if there will be no hot war, the cold war was no holiday – for those who remember or know their history.

It is as if we have not learnt, as a human race, that history has a way of repeating itself when change does not rectify mistakes.

When we remember the Prime Minister Tony Blair, telling parliament that Sadam Hussein has to be removed and his weapons of mass destruction destroyed, we should remember how most believed him or gave him the benefit of the doubt. Very simplisticly we had been told that Sadam Hussein was a ‘bad guy’ and by inference everyone who opposed him was a ‘good guy’. This some how justified the Allies to commit the evil Sadam was accused of.

Now the United Kingdom has a foreign secretary who wishes to stylise Russia’s hosting of the World Cup as Nazi Germany’s hosting of the Olympic games in 1936. The logic of the metaphor is plain. ‘Bad guy’ and ‘sporting event’ are the same. But isn’t that, well, over simplistic! Does the metaphor really fit? Should heart rule head or head rule heart when it comes to war making?

I am not suggesting Mr Putin is a nice guy…I don’t think even he, would want that name. But he is as cunning as an Arctic fox, an actor with as many faces as suits his need, a master strategist and – look out Boris – a world statesman.

When he asked for the evidence that Russia attempted to kill Mr Scripal, it was a moment he had planned for. For certain he has answers for the events of the next six months because the politicians of the United Kingdom, excepting Jeremy Corbin the labour leader, have reacted exactly as they were meant to react by somebody or some agency. That person or agency is very likely to be behind the attack in Salisbury.

If you don’t follow me, then watch Sergio Leone’s ‘A Fist Full of Dollars’ and take notes. It’s what the British used to be good at – divide and rule – but obviously, now our politicians are divided and being ruled.

The disunited of the United Kingdom, have to get used to the idea that they are now pawns on the world black and white board, not a King or Queen.

(At least that is, until the scaffolding comes down from the control tower of the air craft carrier I saw parked in Portsmouth harbour last week. And when the air craft arrive in 2020 and the software integration problems are solved – Britain will be out of Europe and ‘great’ again – Putin permitting.)

Communism

The Workers Committee of the United Peoples Party (UPP) orders; everyone must be equally miserable. Those who fail to conform will find extra helpings of misery in a labour camp. By the way, labour camps do not exist and anyone who challenges this will be sent to one.

Socialism

We, the brothers and sisters, say; The rich have the least amount of misery and the poor have the most misery. We support the most miserable in their oppression by the least miserable and demand some of it; that is not being miserable, we think, or is it the other way round. Anyway, we want MORE!

Liberalism

The government has decided that research shows; If you are miserable that’s fine, but we need to find out why. All the others, must support those less miserable with a few coffee mornings, knitting marathons and bring and buy sales. Ten pounds could buy beer, mobile phone minutes and cigarettes for a miserable family for a day.

Conservatism

The government would like you to know that; Your money that you see us spending would not have dragged you out of your misery. Everyone knows that you can’t buy happiness, but persevere with those high hopes and tell us when you have dragged yourself out of your misery. Until then, you are on your own and get used to it.

Fascism

The Propaganda Ministry have produced this happy music and colour movie about how you are not miserable, which you must watch, or you will be detained for questioning and possible deportation to an undisclosed destination, with your family, friends and companion animals.

Anarchy

We the people say; Whatever. Either way it doesn’t matter because we are all going to die!

Britain has been floundering under the illusion of being ‘Great’ for many decades. To determine what was ever meant by that word, let us look at the dictionary definition.

The first meaning is ‘large’. As an archipelago in the North Sea, the area of Britain is not as large as France or Spain, and against the super-powers like China and Russia, it is small.

Perhaps it is ‘good’ then, another meaning for ‘great’. If we take good as meaning ‘of high quality’ rather than benevolent, then Britain has produced many high quality goods and intellectual ideas and ideals. That is something to be proud about but hardly enough to warrant a title for the country of Britain. A prime example of passed engineering excellence is the SS Great Britain designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It marked the transition from wooden sailing ships to iron hulled ships with steam engines and a single propeller. That was a ‘great’ move forward for the entire world and Britain’s place in it.

Through dominating sea trade and it’s naval power, Britain became an ‘important’ world player, and I think this is closest to the meaning of it’s present appellation. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain ruled the waves and in doing so, ruled a large number of countries. Empires, however are historically prone to collapse and the British Empire was no exception. Now the Empire not boasted about and has been reduced to autonomous Commonwealth Countries. This includes such countries as Australia who are on the edge of losing patience with a absent, non-Australian, Head of State.

Britain is still a player in world politics, but I would argue it hardly deserves to continue to call itself ‘great’. Some British Citizens think that by leaving the European Union, the UK will be important again. By what merit? I expect it is more likely to sink in the ranks of minor world powers rather than be elevated. Where will it’s influence with it’s immediate neighbours be, let alone countries further away? Without a say in Brussels, it will be lesser rather than greater, I think.

Perhaps the Brits have been leaning on the laurels of their great, great, great grand parents for too long. Greatness has to be earned, not assumed by an illusion of ‘national pride’ and ‘jingoism’. The solution for Great Britain, in my view, is to drop the ‘Great’ and call itself ‘The United Kingdom’.

Consider America. There is another nation that has become rather mixed up in what to call itself. The current president uses the term ‘America’ as short hand for ‘The United States of America’ – as do many. Worryingly some geographical accuracy is lost in the use of the word America. America is after all, a continent stretching from the far north to the far south and includes many other countries, apart from the USA.

Perhaps we should also be worried that Mr. President is going to use the cliché, make America great in his re-election campaign. I wonder whether his use of the abbreviated title of his country, is a kind of bluff that the USA is physically bigger than it is? Is he planning to invade Canada and South America? Or perhaps he is using the ‘great’ adjective to describe importance rather than size. He needs to clarify this if he wants votes from people who think before they vote. Or perhaps not, since most of those who voted him into power are……….(you complete this sentence please).

It is the character of Malvolio, in Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, who said, ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’

Britain achieved greatness, as did the United States of America, that is clear. The problem for both is, not so much recognising how they became great nations, but when they stopped being so. Pride is a dangerous and humorous affliction and if you don’t believe me, watch the play. Be warned, Mr. President and you folks who voted Brexit.

Your great, great, great grandparents achieved great things by hard graft. If you have done nothing to earn your ‘greatness’ you will be found out, and that is true for both people and nations.

Dale sat in the security office of the Elysian Theatre, bemused. The screen displayed the images from twelve cameras and he had opened up number twelve -full screen. It showed the stage itself – there in case of any ‘health and safety incident’ they said, and ‘actors have been known to pass away on stage’. Dale thought that must be an odd experience, to be in a make believe world one moment and another totally new world the next.

He didn’t understand this play. Some Shakespeare fantasy about people running around in a wood falling in love and being watched by overweight fairies. ‘What a thing to pay money for,’ he mused, ‘A Midsummer Nights Time-wasting.’

The play was now in the last scene, where the ‘mechanicals’ enter lead by Peter Quince, who perform a play within the main play. The audience were laughing uncontrollably at the antics of the strange looking men – one dressed as a woman called Thisbe. The character Bottom was whispering sweet nothings to Thisbe through a chink in a makeshift wall. The director had a couple of fairies holding up the wall, and they laughed along with the audiences. Two audiences – because the royal household were also being entertained, three if you include Dale.

Dale didn’t know much about Shakespeare but he did remember the line, All the world is a stage and we are all the actors on it – something like that. Tonight he understood what this meant.

‘Everything we do is a sort of ‘performance’. I sit in a glass box every night next to the stage door, checking in the actors as they make their entrances and exits‘ -another part of that quotation that just came back to him. His uniform might as well have been supplied by Wardrobe. Looking at the quality it probably was! This is his world from where he can look down into the multiple worlds contained inside the theatre – dressing rooms, corridors, front of house, offices – they are all set with the correct props every night and the staff perform their roles as diligently as the actors.

This play explains all this. There is a the fairie kingdom, totally invisible but performing a function and influencing the behaviour of the human characters – even though they didn’t realise it. Just as Dale watches everything and makes sure everything is safe and sometimes he changes the behaviour of the actors without them realising. How? Well he has been know to move around the names on the doors to the dressing rooms just for fun as well as useful stuff like keeping out autograph hunters who huddle at the stage door and try to slip in.

And next to the fairie kingdom, separated by a thin wall with only a chink in it for occasional discourse, is the world of humans. They inhabit many worlds. There are the ‘mechanicals’ (who are now called the working class) with their trades and get it done know how. And at the other extreme the ruling classes like the King and Queen in this play, watching the mechanicals behaviour and having a good laugh at their expense. And then there is the audience of the Elysian Theatre who have made their entrances tonight from their ordinary lives, for an escape into another world.

We are all constantly slipping down rabbit holes or worm holes into other universes. There, stories are unravelling with different actors who happen to believe they are enacting a real life situation but they are not.

Dale had the boxed set of The Matrix. He had watched it many times. He knew that the architect was the one in charge, with his white hair and beard – he was like the medieval images of God – except he wears a business suit. And he loved that moment when the machines break through a hole in the ceiling and face a fire-storm of bullets from the human world – like love words whispered through a chink in a wall.

Down the pub he sometimes quoted Morpheus in a deep voice;

What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

After the curtain fell he watch actors scuttle home. Titania and Oberon, both obese, left hand in hand.

‘Now that hasn’t happened before,’ he wondered, ‘I wonder what is going on there?’

The exit door spun open in a strong wind. It was raining outside, hard. Car lights flew passed as if propelled by the wind and the Fairy King and Queen, disappeared.

When it comes to the disposal of holy books, there is a problem; how to do it with respect. For burning a Holy Bible or Holy Quran or Holy Torah, is sure to inflame passions amongst the devout as a disrespectful action.

In Pakistan they have a solution. All the old and damaged Qurans are sent to the Mountain of Light, where two miles of tunnels have been dug to become the a respectful resting place for holy books, of any religion.

Quite right you might think, for the disposal of any kind of books cannot be taken lightly. At various times in history, libraries have been deliberately destroyed. Probably one of the worst examples was the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Sacred and secular texts from around the world were destroyed as heresy by the Christian ruling elite.

The Nazi’s in 1930’s Germany, were particular fond of literary bonfires. The more bigoted the ruling power the greater the purge of books, eliminating the ‘unsafe’ from the ‘safe’ reading material, which of course, was most of it.

Such is the power of books, as the custodians of knowledge, that we might be disturbed in our own day by the demise of libraries and book reading. Measure the time the average person spends reading today compared to fifty years ago and I expect the reduction is dramatic.

No longer do children learn poems in schools by heart in the West, any more than they do their mathematical tables. Reading and learning went hand in hand in the pre-internet world.

But it’s not all a sorry tale. Books have been replaced by electronic reading tablets, and audio books extend the audience to those who prefer not to sit for long periods of time reading.

Authors can now by-pass the old ‘publishing houses’ and the editorial dictates of literary agents. As a result, there is a wider range of reading material available than ever before.

And yet, and yet…

Where have our critical faculties gone? In this excess of electronic information, a serious amount of ‘dumbing down’ has taken place. The book readers have become a minority in place of audio and video.

Just take a look at a Saturday evening television schedule and you will see programmes featuring so called celebrities, unskilled game shows and the raising of the cult of sensual pleasures (like food programmes) to high fashion status.

As a society we are making decisions about personal preference using, what I call, emotional reasoning. This is the part of the brain that makes an appraisal in a few seconds when we meet a stranger. Sometimes it is spot on, but we all can think of instances in which it was just plain wrong. When we get to know people better, we use our intellectual reasoning – rational thought – to come to a more balanced appreciation of a new friend or enemy.

Should we be surprised then, that politics around the world, has moved into this area of emotional reasoning. You no longer need a degree in politics be required to work through the complexities of national problems in search of solutions. You no longer need to read broad sheet newspapers, specialist journals or books on the subject. Instead you listen to a report on the television news and if you agree with it – that’s what you think!

Why has this happened? Well I would suggest that complexity can a be a real downer – history proves this point. Mistakes are repeated over and over and over – whether it is trade, war, education, religion, distribution of resources, medicine, agriculture. The list is as endless as the mistakes of mankind. Although we have the capacity to think complex thoughts and make balanced judgements based on a deep and extended examination of a subject – for the emotional reasoner, this is a waste of time. After all – a meal is a meal whether prepared by a three star Michelin chef or a fast food joint.

‘I was hungry before I ate, now I am not.’

This is the power of ignorance. This is how being dumb hands over power to the State to do what it likes, without a single placard of dissent being waved. How bright did the audience in the Colosseum have to be to enjoy the sick spectacles the rulers had arranged for them? Caesar’s – who were slavers, dictators, corrupt, debauched, ruthless hedonists – had their populace worked out and under control.

Compare this, however loosely, to the present day. Are we now making reasoned choices or emotional choices?

The heart can become the master of the head, but if the heart is not focused on love and love alone, it is an ignorant and malign master.

And the first symptom of this taking place, is the burning of the books; the burning of reason, the burning of expertise, the burning of a common good. Amongst the ashes, the powerful and ignorant will dance a shallow, thoughtless dance that just makes them ‘feel good’. That’s enough reason, isn’t it?

But it might not end that way. Some people may climb the Mountain of Light and open up those tunnels and start handing out the Holy Books. Some people may find the digital versions of national libraries, once thought lost. Some people may discover light after the darkness that ignorance brings, just may.