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.

I heard an interviewee on the radio use the phrase ‘joy through suffering’. He had used hard drugs like heroine and cocaine, that had practically ruined his life. He had pulled through and was now a successful restaurant owner and chef in New York.

He was not talking about the ‘joy of suffering’. That is different and reserved for the sadistic. But he had realised that suffering is a part of being human in a way that cannot be avoided.

Suddenly our bodies don’t work, the environment plays dirty tricks – as can other humans, accidents and deliberates* of all kinds shatter or partially shatter lives. (*I made that word up but you know what I mean)

Guatama Buddha contemplated the state of suffering and how to deal with it, from which came Buddhism – sorry if that is an oversimplification to Buddhists. He realised that his life of luxury as a prince was teaching him nothing about the human condition.

I don’t know what he would make of the modern expectation of ‘being happy’. In a largely secular and technology led society, the west has been able to create lives in which we hardly suffer. Being ‘unhappy’ is something to get away from, rather than adapt and learn from. In the United Kingdom we should hardly be surprised when we bring up a generation of young people who have been wrapped in the metaphorical ‘cotton wool’, to whom any discomfort is intolerable. (This was the finding of a recent ‘think tank’)

There is a fairy story called ‘The Princess and the Pea’ which illustrates the point. The Princess could feel a pea under the mattress of her bed and it was causing her discomfort. She orders another mattress on top of her present one, but this did not solve the problem. She continued piling mattress upon mattress, but was never comfortable.

There is something about the nature of suffering which is encapsulated in this story. With an unrealistic attitude to ‘comfort’ you will never rest. Much, or even most of suffering, is in the mind rather than the body. I don’t think the moral of the story was ‘remove the cause’ although this clearly is another dimension. The story is more about the mental attitude which – even today – we recognise as the ‘princess’ syndrome; avoiding suffering and never being satisfied.

It’s a kind of curse on mankind, this suffering business – said to have been introduced by God as a punishment after Eve (maybe a bit of a princess) wanted what she was told she could not have.

In Christianity ‘Jesus died on the cross for our sins’, as if the suffering of one is an reason and / or excuse for others not to experience the same. The flaw in this ‘magical’ doctrine is exposed when Christians experience suffering. They wonder what sort of God gives cancer to a cute child, or kills a family in a car crash.

The only comfort pill offered is the promise that heaven awaits Christians after death. Not everyone however is convinced and it’s not just Christianity who believes in this promise. Muslims are promised an entry to paradise after death. Unprovable statements are not only possibly true, but possibly untrue. Hardly worthy of ways of living, you might think.

Joy through suffering is something more tangible. It doesn’t mean to me a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ but rather a row of lights in the tunnel. Those who really suffer through disability or disease, often display a sort of optimism which is not explainable to the observer. What gets blind people out of bed in the morning? And yet their disability is something they come to terms with and find joy in living, other than through the eyes.

At a mental level, suffering is a meditative state, that requires and exercises the hidden strength that I believe, we all contain. Humans are incredibly resilient – physically and mentally. Mentally we can endure incredible hardship such as solitary confinement, and emerge from the experience stronger, wiser.

So let your children cry a little. Let them experience how hard it is sometimes to be a human being. Let them be aware of others who suffer – other children in war zones who appear briefly – dazed and depleted on our television screens.

Suffering teaches us through experience and observation. Without it we cannot know the opposite of suffering. And that is a joy, the joy of being human and able to embrace contradictions.

I was once asked in a job interview whether I thought mixed education was a good idea. My answer was that I thought the longer men and women had to understand each other, the better. Pretty smart answer but it pointed at the problem rather than a solution. Here, after a good many decades of experience is a maxim I present for some thought;

Men have strength, women have beauty.

Clearly it’s not true for all men and all women but it’s as good a summary of the difference between the genders as I can think. It’s a Ying Yang thing of course. Some men strive to be beautiful and some women strive to be strong. In reality, we are each a unique blend of both. This is because our minds reflect both masculine and feminine aspects as defined by the great psychologist, Professor Carl Jung. But to keep the idea focused, let us accept that as a generalisation, it has some ability to steer our thoughts in the right direction.

Tales of men with strength are in abundance. From Samson in the Bible, Atlas in ancient Greek myth and the modern versions of the same; Superman and his hero buddies. Although the reality of personal combat is that there is always going to be someone stronger than you, the pride and vanity of the male, beef up his own self image. Some are tempted to enter the gymnasium, consume buckets of steroids and whole chickens as they construct bigger and better versions of their muscular / skeletal bodies. We see this image and the myth that it is in advertising and the media in general. It is as if we really need to believe in this larger than life image super hero character who lifts cars and throws elephants for amusement. Children quickly pick up on this and boys contort their super hero dolls as they bish bash and bosh everything that comes their way.

There is something in the male psyche that believes in this myth so much, that men enact their Alpha-male instincts through out their lives, long after it has been productive in attracting a mate. Cars tend to get bigger, faster – more muscular – as men put on the spare tyre and decades of decadence. What ever their figure outside the car, once behind the wheel, nobody suspects their muscular impotence and shallow self importance.

Women on the other side of this paradigm, have similar fairy tales, myths and legends to indulge their fantasies of beauty. From Snow White and the mirror that specialises as a beautician, to Helen of Troy – the most beautiful woman in the world – women have just as hard a time as the men in creating themselves. Young girls quickly pick up on this female obsession, and their adolescence is made sometime intolerable as a result. Enter a department store anywhere in the world and your first experience is polish, perfume, powder and pinkness. Women with immaculate make up and whiter than white clothing, beam out at prospective customers. And so a woman’s lot is to work this farrow for their whole lives, becoming more and more frustrated as the years pass. Unlike the men, they have no where to hide their fading petals, other than in the golden rooms where plastic surgeons pull and tuck sliding flesh back into place.

Somewhere between these Barbie dolls and Action Men – these two paradigms collide. They bring together enough fissile material, that in the confines of a ballroom, bar, office – create the atomic explosion humans know as, love. Men are mesmerised by the projected image of perfect beauty that appears on the females face.  Women in turn feel the strong arms of the male curl around her protectively, reassuringly supporting her myth created fragility.

Men become complete when they have a beautiful women in tow, whether they are Mark Anthony washing down Cleopatra with milk or president of the United States of America with the skeletal form of Melania T, that follows him around.

What a pity then that this state of things begins to fall apart with age. Only those couples who have a relationship below the surface of these deceptions, experience a psychic spring in their old age, while the others experience a winter.

We have to lose the fascination in the myths of strength and beauty, to find what is really happening in the dance between the genders.

Dance on old couple, for this is your tune, your moment and our inspiration.

I was watching my cat this morning out of my bathroom window. It did one of those mad pounces into the undergrowth and came out with a mouse. It then played with this poor creature picking it up and dropping it, pushing it with a paw, during which time the mouse shrieked in panic and terror. I wondered, why in such a situation in which death was certain, would a mouse shriek? I have heard animals in their death throws at night and the sound penetrates eerily. But this mouse could hardly be heard, so soft was it’s cry for help. On the other side of the valley I could hear hunting dogs barked in their cages; they would never go quietly.

And it then struck me what an accurate metaphor this is for the latest mass shooting in Florida, North America. On the news we watch the supporters of their lost loved ones holding vigils, whilst the hunting dogs- the politicians – bark. Mr Trump apparently believes the FBI have only enough resources to deal with two cases at once. One is an investigation into him and the other preventing mass shootings in schools. Clearly, in his view, if no resources were put into investigating him, all mass shootings would be prevented. Could he have an ulterior motive that he thinks no one, least of all the numbskull in the FBI, will spot?

I listened to a radio interview with an ex-close aid of his who said that a lot of Mr Trumps tweets, are jokes. Well if this is a joke, I can’t get it.

The ‘right to bear arms’ which many North Americans hold dear, is a general statement, that did not consider future technical developments or evolving attitudes in society. Amendments are possible to the constitution and the vagueness of this particular ‘right’ could be exploited by lawyers. For instance there are four specific areas that do not change the ‘right to bear arms’ but would reduce mass shootings. The first is raising the minimum age for this right, the second is increasing supervision, the third is tighter control of ammunition and the fourth is restricting availability of disproportionately lethal weapons.

That a young person aged eighteen, can buy a gun is absurd. This age could be raised to at least twenty one, maybe higher. The reason to make it higher is that statistically, young men are already the most likely age group to commit and be victim of violent crimes. The founding fathers didn’t know that and could not be expected to.

Any young person using a firearm, could be supervised by a person who has held a gun licence for a prescribed period, say five years. This would apply whilst carrying it in a public place and at a range. It’s a probationary period, tolerate by learner drivers and equally applicable to guns.

The second amendment only refers to bearing arms, not ammunition. Advocates for civilian possession of firearms would argue that ammunition is a firearm, but that is not the legal definition of a firearm in the UK so why should it be in North America? If the firearm is kept at home under the pillow of the delinquent son or daughter the rest of the family can sleep soundly, knowing the ammunition is at the firing range. That would apply to the parents as well, as there have been cases of parents shooting their children as they climb in windows late at night, having forgotten their key or broken a curfew. Everyone would get a good nights’ sleep.

Lastly, if I were a North American, could I go out and buy an Abrams tank and keep it on my lawn for ‘self defence’? It is a self propelled gun by any definition, after all. Hopefully this would not be allowed, so somewhere down the list of proportionate lethality, common sense kicks in. Do civilians need assault rifles for instance? I would argue not, but there is a line to be drawn and hopefully even the pro-firearm lobby would not like my tank pointing across the road at their house. Lawyers on both sides – get to work!

Once the laws have been worked on, there is another debate to be had. Are the ‘shooters’ mad or bad? In most cases their minds have been ruffled by something, and sociologists and psychiatrists could write books on each one; their deprived childhood, loss of loved ones, abuse by loved ones, trauma of all kinds. Yet do these events send every disturbed person out with a gun to ‘get their own back’ on perceived perpetrators? Probably not – so what makes that happen?

Others would argue that these shooters are just bad people who the devil has entered and deserve execution.

The two opposing views are clearly defined in a book I am reading called ‘The Truth About Why People do Bad Things’ by Tom Gash and published by Penguin. Mr Gash used to work as an adviser on ‘home affairs’ in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in the UK.

Approaching the whole issue of crime with a clear head, he noticed two distinct attitudes, promoted by news media and popular entertainment. One he called the ‘heroes and villains’ and the other ‘victims and survivors’. The first is the shoot out by the cops, and courts that throw offenders into prison for long periods.

The second is trying to understand the causes of why people commit crime and tackling those causes. You might recognise the first to be common in right wing political policy and the second to be the stand point of the political left. We all tend towards one explanation or the other and most of the time we are wrong because we believe the myths perpetrated around crime. Read the book if you want to follow that thought. I raise it here because ‘gun control’ is clearly in the grip of mythical views, held by ‘opposing’ parties. I would like to believe that both sides hold a lot of common views such as the sanctity of life, the right of young people to go to school without fear.

Obfuscation

Obfuscation is a word that sounds great and deserves more use. The problem is that we live in an age of ‘transparency’. This means that everything we say and think is as clear as clear can be. Or is it?

Thinking has always been a challenge for humans. Even in ‘sophisticated’ education systems, it is not a subject which is taught. We are so close to it that, like fish that can’t see water, thinking is not something we think about. And because of this we don’t ‘see’ when the water is cloudy, which is a lot of the time.

The first problem are the neural pathways, the patterns which develop from habitual thought. We run our thoughts in ruts which over time become deeper and deeper.

The second is our use of language to construct thoughts. In English there are plenty of words but many, like obfuscation, recede from non-use. We prefer to use language that is packed with emotion rather than clarity. Or we just use completely the wrong words to obfuscate. It’s about time I gave an example and here is one used by the late Dave Allen in a monologue he performed about flying.

‘When a plane is late, it is described as delayed. Delayed, just delayed…what does that mean?’ I paraphrase but you get the thrust. It takes the sharp logic of a comedian – the fool – to cut into foolishness.

‘Oh that’s nobody’s fault then!’ we all think. ‘The plane is just delayed.’ Perhaps the captain stopped off on the way to the airport to buy his wife some flowers, or her husband that classic car magazine he likes, what’s it called? Perhaps they forgot that the plane had to be somewhere else before it arrived here and they understandably didn’t allow for that. Perhaps a flying duck hit the windscreen and took the head off the pilot. Some unimportant but entirely rational things that we don’t need to know about because we are just passengers.

Another common usage of language that is a perfect example of obfuscation, is the term ‘road accident’. My local radio keeps reporting all sorts of accidents on the road in which nobody is, apparently, to blame. Two cars just accidentally collided head on. Well that’s all right then. Accidents will happen. No, there is always blame and on the roads the apportion of blame is vital for insurance companies, highways departments, car designers, government policy makers, driving instructors and emergency services to name but a few. The emergency services spotted the the misuse of the word ‘accident’ maybe ten years ago and refer to ‘road traffic collisions’. Much clearer and with obfuscation removed.

If the police looked at their collision statistics I wonder if they find a spike during the ‘rush hour’. This is the time of day when you might expect cars are going fast, rushing to work or home. But no. The ‘rush hour’ is the time of day when traffic slows down or stops. How do foreigners understand these obfuscated English idioms?

The railways have a different approach to obfuscation for which I expect they would like some credit. But in my view, the reasons they give for ‘delays’ are so diverse and absurd that obfuscation is being achieved whilst pretending to ‘keep the customer informed’. I am sure they have a database of reasons why the train is delayed and reasons are reasonable – aren’t they?

In the summer I had to take a train to my stepson’s wedding. ‘This train is cancelled due to a fire next to the track.’ Brutal but honest, you might think. I ignored the advice to use the flame-proof buses laid on for the emergency, since I had a bicycle with me. There was another train on it’s way so I waited on the platform. When it arrived I parked myself and my bicycle on the train next to the guard. A fellow passenger asked the guard about the fire. He said he knew nothing about it. As the train pulled away he rang the driver who said he didn’t know about any fire and we all carried on to my destination. In the last year my train journeys have been ‘delayed’ by staff not turning up for work, lorries hitting bridges, aliens landing, level crossing barriers not working…and I know that what they are trying to tell me but don’t want to, is that they on strike.

One final dig then at the rail dispute. The train company want to run all trains without guards. The guards insist they are important for the safety of passengers – like knowing when there is a fire on the line. The guard on that train commented ‘I am always the last to know’ – about the fire. A comment that a local journalist would have loved to have quoted since the guards have been on strike for over a year! I happen to agree that all trains should have a guard, but the guards have failed to make a reasonable case. Perhaps they need a book of words and a course on how to think – or is that what lawyers are for? No, we in the Union of Railway Workers are much cleverererer than lawyers. We’ll just continue obfuscating under the cloak of safety. Oh really?

A friend recently showed me a picture produced by her daughter. It was of a face, painstakingly created in photographic detail with a pen. It was exceptionally accurate in proportion and detail.

‘She’s a better artist than you or me,’ I was told.

I know what my friend meant. She meant that her daughter was highly technically competent. On that point I would not argue, but does that make her a competent artist?

Realism, as a style, has come and gone through the ages. I would have hoped that with the advent of the camera, most artists would chose to create an image that cameras can not. Realism is after all, ninety percent technique and one per cent content. An art critic would ask, ‘- very proficient, but what does it mean?’

For me a creation, whatever it is, has to achieve a balance between form and content. With buildings, for instance, an engineer can design a perfectly functional building. They do, regularly, in fact the western world has built it’s cities of perfectly functional buildings – that have no meaning, no content. You might expect an architect to be able to introduce that missing element, but with the modern style of minimalism, architects have veered towards engineering solutions. Society is partly to blame for this, because I would argue, it has lost sight of meaningful ideas, inspiration – that which it loves and holds most dear. We all love different things now and in this chaos, we dumb down content – even eliminate content – in order to achieve, if not consensus, then tolerance.

When I was practising architecture in Australia, I worked for an inspirational Chinese Australian who was also an alchemist. Not short on content for his inspirations, he told me that ‘all buildings should tell a story’. I have always followed this from that moment. It is obvious that all great literature, all great art, all great architecture, all great music – tells a story. Without this ‘content’ it is a mere representation of something else, as a photographic image is a representation of something else. So many soulless items, places, stories, tunes, films, pictures, sculptures – have no story to tell! Ironically, in societies that have no story to tell, such art is not recognised as meaningless but lauded as ‘clever’.

In a society that is rich in meaning and understands itself, all it’s creators reflect that commonality -either consciously or not. That is why tourists flock to the ‘old town’ and ignore the modern estates and factories surrounding famous cities. In the past, there was a commonality of consciousness, that included cultural myths, legends and stories – both sacred and profane – that were constant through the generations.

If you doubt this, then consider some modern artists who have achieved enduring high status. ‘The Beatles’ for instance were not only lucky for being spotted and commercially developed – they were a combination of gifted minds that came together to tell stories through popular music. The content of their songs, like the ‘greats’ who had gone before them in the 50’s (Matt Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Louis and Ella), told timeless tales of human emotion. This was combined with inspired composition of tunes and accompaniment making the opposite of a perfect storm – a perfect creation.

This is a modern example, but the principle of storytelling has always been true. The ancient Greeks for instance, produced perfect statues of their gods – into which the god moved – because the statue was perfect. The stories surrounding the gods then inhabited the sculptures. Everything made sense.

Art has to make sense, not just be well made. If an artist can create with these two aspects of creativity in equal measure, the result will give satisfaction. If it synchronises with the spirit of the age, as often art does, then that artist may become appreciated by society and famous. But that is not a given and many great artists, never achieve fame. In fact, I would argue that currently, many famous people do not achieve great art.

The music you hear today is discordant and if there are words to the song you can’t hear them. If you could hear them, they would not be the poetry of Bob Dylan or Blake, but rather – devoid of meaning. I am exaggerating but switch your radio on and you will get my drift.

The art and sculpture of today often leaves the onlooker without words, not in awe but in astonishment of the poverty of meaning.

Listen to a short story told on the radio or a film and too often the end is an anticlimax. The story has no end because the story lacks inspiration – meaning.

Western Societies produce designers and artists with such a wide range of styles and techniques to chose from, that style and technique is almost all there is.

Nobody dare pronounce a shark in a tank as naked ignorance. Instead such installations are produced on a commercial scale for wealthy people who have no idea what to buy or why – no personal story to tell – just the fragments of another person’s madness to barter and boast about in the corridors of their affluent poverty.

Some people are convinced that the United Kingdom has been integrated into Europe over the last forty years.

There is an argument however that many of the signs and symbols of UK independence have never been given up.

There was a controversy recently over the colour of the UK passport after leaving the EU. This surely is a detail when judged against the content of the passport. On the front is written ‘The United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland’. How could this offend a patriot? Inside the design and content is entirely determined by the government of the UK. If you are abroad and need a new passport photograph for instance, you will not find it easy to obtain a photograph with a Passport Office prescribed white background. Photograph machines in Spain for instance, have grey backgrounds which is the preference of the Spanish Government. The UK Passport Office state very clearly that if you submit photographs with grey backgrounds they will be returned and no passport issued until they are changed.

When you renew your UK passport, it will not have the number of your previous passport, but a new one. Imagine how confusing this is to other European countries who do not do this. Is Europol going to be able to track these changing passport numbers?

Such squabbling over details is common across the entire European Union. Most of the time it isn’t serious but when it comes to European Armies trying to share ammunition for their weapons unsuccessfully, you realise it can have real implications.

But let’s go back to European documentation. After a passport, your driving licence might be considered the next most personal State-issued document. Europe has never issued a European driving licence. If you move around Europe, after a year in one country, you need a driving licence issued by that country. During that time you might have committed various offences ranging from parking to drink driving. How is the penalty point system administered? Are police in the UK really going to spend time with drivers of foreign lorries trying to put points on their licence through the UK courts, when the driver is leaving the country in a few days?

Does such a disjointed system make it easier or more difficult for a criminal or terrorist to move around Europe?

It would be less serious if the car registration system was unified across Europe. But no, just as passports and driving licences have been made ‘European’ by putting the European symbol on them, the same has happened to car registration plates. Each European car has a more or less, meaningless blue badge with a circle of stars. So what? More seriously it means that as you cross borders in Europe, speed cameras may not be set up to read numbers on ‘foreign plates’ often because of different backgrounds.

People may not realise it, but number plate recognition systems are in place on most major roads, borders and travel hubs. Surely they should be allowed to work without hindrance from multiple letter styles and backgrounds? Not that it matters because as far as I am aware there is no European car registration database.

Many European countries gave up their national currencies for the Euro. In rich countries like Germany, their goods and services suddenly became highly exportable overnight. Not so in the UK, which decided to keep the pound and kept UK goods and services relatively more expensive than Europe. For it’s citizens, they are forced to pay every time they buy a product in Euro’s or go abroad for a holiday. Pensioners living in Europe have their precious pounds squeezed through an exchange rate every month, and in the last year or so, have lost 15% of their income.

These are a few of the more high profile indicators of what living in the European Union means to the average UK citizen. I would not pretend to understand whether a similar hollow process has taken place in the European Courts and Parliament. Has there really been any serious integration between nations? At a superficial level at least, each has retained their signs of nationality and ignored the benefits of integrating economies, law enforcement, migration and customs control or defence.

The deckchairs have been well and truly moved around on the Steamship Europe since it’s inception. Little has happened to change the ship’s course or speed, as it enters ice berg infested waters.

Emissions Impossible

There is a traditional story where a number of people are holding onto an elephant in a dark room. Each has hold of a particular part of the elephant. The person holding the trunk describes an elephant as long, tube shaped, rough skinned with a breathing hole at one end. Another describes an elephant as long and thin with a hairy tassel at the end. That person is holding the tail. You get the idea. No individual is able to examine the elephant as a complete elephant, due to their limitations.

So it is that many of today’s problems are viewed by specialists in the subject, never getting a grip of the whole problem. Take car emissions as an example.

At the time of the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the level of Co2 in the atmosphere was viewed as an important means to reduce global warming through the greenhouse effect. So it was that diesel engines were favoured over petrol engines, as they produce far less Co2. Measured in terms of input / output, as petrol engine will produce 200g of Co2 / km and a diesel engine 120g of Co2 / km. (source for figures; Sadiq Khan – theconversation.com)

Twenty years on the problem is viewed from a different angle. City mayors have highlighted the large numbers of deaths associated with or resulting from, respiratory diseases. When the debate on diesel or petrol cars is considered from this angle, petrol cars produce 30% less nitrogen oxides than diesel cars without filters, that is the older diesel vehicles such as buses and taxis.

So the description of the elephant ( that is the problem ) has changed. The problem would be different again if viewed from the point of view of particulates in emissions or nitrous oxide or nitrogen dioxide. So the debate can ramble on all the time missing the whole problem- in our analogy, what does the elephant look like?

The observers will not consider the whole problem until the question is asked, ‘how do we get rid of the internal combustion engine?’ – for that is clearly the real problem.

For many years it has been possible to run buses and taxis on compressed air – the emissions from which are, well, air.

The first cars of the 19^th century were electric cars but the technology, patent payoffs and markets, forced the world to adopt the internal combustion engine using fossil fuels.

Technology and markets are now, once again, creating change in a way that governments have been comparatively powerless or inept to bring about. Currently the development of super capacitor batteries at affordable prices, is about to bring about a revolution in vehicles powered by electric motors. The world has waited a long time for this development and it comes not a moment too late. Beyond this is the vision of the 700mph Hyperloop – which I foresaw when I was a schoolboy in the 1960’s while the rest of the world was concentrating on vehicle body styles and disc brakes.

Already the Nation States which have become wealthy on the sale of their fossil fuel reserves such as Saudi Arabia – are diversifying their economies. They know what is coming.

When the world no longer needs oil as a fuel, many environmental, cost and safety problems will be solved. There will be less vehicle noise and air pollution in cities, more reliable engines needing less servicing, computer guided vehicles eliminating human error and so on.

We will then have a true understanding of what the real problems have been facing the human race since it first conceived of private transportation for the masses. That is what the elephant looks like.

In the same way, as a human race, we need to consider problems outside the fashion or Zeitgeist of the moment. Instead of specialists, we need to encourage and reward innovators and visionaries, more than anyone else. They hold the key to ending many of the problems the world still faces, in the way that science fiction writers seeded the space race. Today’s ‘race’ is giving ten billion people a fair share of the planet’s resources, it’s beauty and promise, stable governments and an eternal peace. The elephant might be big, but it’s not too big to be understood and studied. We just need to stand back, look and consider – in way few people have done before. It’s not impossible.