What happens when you vote a clown or reality TV star into power?

The absolute mess that we find ourselves within the western world.

Boris Johnson isn’t sorry about the party, he’s sorry that he’s been found out.

Anyone who spent a little bit of effort looking into who he was as a person would know that he shouldn’t have ever been within a hundred miles of becoming prime minister. He’s been fired twice for lying, made contemptuous remarks about other religions or races and considers himself well above any rules. This is not new news.

And this whole party gate situation is just another scandal that Johnson can add to his CV.

Free school meal U turn, atrocious handling of the pandemic and the 37 billion pound test and trace system that wasn’t fit for purpose but made friends in high places rich should have warranted public anger significantly more than it did.

And as usual, the rules are bent, the mps come in defence and don’t answer questions properly, and if there is to be any sense of accountability such as something alongside the lines of a resignation, I won’t be one bit excited about it or hopeful or faithful in the political system.

Because it’s rigged, it’s fundamentally broken, the cronyism and sleaziness remains and too many people have been gaslit.

Brexit continues to screw up the country in numerous way and onwards they go, ploughing along as if everything’s hunky dory courtesy of our sense of national pride.

What pride is exactly to be had in a clown of a prime minister who is a compulsive liar and a prince trying to use his royal status and money to protect himself from being prosecuted in a Sex scandal?

And if Johnson goes, he will likely be replaced by someone who may be not quite as shameless but still has a false sense of superiority and contempt for everyday people.

The political class needs an overhaul, of boring, sensible, considered, pragmatic and a hell of a lot more virtuous people.

For now, my adult life has been a continuing downward trajectory of disillusionment of those in power and I’ve no hope it will get any better until a hell of a lot more people really stop to consider what it is they want in a leader.

Or Brokeuary potentially.

My alternative names for the month that is January.

In the U.K. January can feel like a slog. The festivities of Christmas in the rear view mirror, but looming bills to pay it off and seemingly ages before pay days lay before us, or self assessment forms to fill in for the self employed.

On top of that is the weather. You go to work in the dark, you come home in the dark. It’s perpetually grey and rainy.

This all can grind against you and it lowers our mood for sure.

It’s important to keep a patch of blue sky above you and over the weekend, I hiked a mountain and then cycled the vale the following day and felt so much better for it.

The weather was dry so I jumped on the opportunity. It doesn’t cost anything but has all the potential to lift your spirits.

Whatever environment we find ourselves in and no matter how much it wants to weigh us down, I encourage everyone to find the persistence and resilience to get through the darker times and make the best of each day.

Peace of mind for everyone during a challenging month.

Adam McKay directed this new Netflix release which everyone is talking about and I know of him because of ‘The Big Short’.

It was quite refreshing to watch ‘The Big Short’ insofar as it called out the evil self centred bankers for who they were. Greed, corruption and short sightedness that crashed the entire global mark, explained in a way that is digestible for the majority of people who are willing to pay attention.

And it makes sense that the same director would have the courage to take on a film that catches the modern day zeitgeist.

From a critical perspective, the film does feel heavy handed and sometimes disjointed and I can underside why some critics would have a problem with it but the core of the film and it’s intention overrides that. It’s also rather funny and outright bonkers at times.

Modern life can be inane and feel like utter insanity.

One of the biggest issues is ignorance. I may be omitting tact here but ignorance is a huge problem and it’s viscous cycle is caused by the fact that being ignorant means one thinks they are right when they are wrong and cannot see otherwise! The best metaphor I’ve heard to describe this is ‘tail wagging the dog’.

Trump was a symptom of a decline of democracy. The ride towards authoritarianism is a problem and it’s happening now.

People are so polarised. It’s as if you go online and no one on opposing spectrums can agree on anything, not least the basic facts! Leonardo Decaprios rant is a primal scream of rage at humans inability to accept objective principles, never mind the mass media’s obsession with trivialising everything. You speak the truth and then you get marginalised and shut down.

And the news would rather entertain and excite than inform. Virality supersedes reality.

Opinion is easier to sway through the voice of a celebrity than the actual experts working behind the scenes. And money and celebrity status doesn’t equate to their voice necessarily being the right ones to listen to! There are plenty of self proclaimed messiahs out there who think they know better.

It’s a case of belief falling into illusion vs. reason finding truth. Philosophy should be taught in schools more prevalently so people can tell the difference and think about the way they think a bit more.

It’s perfectly fine to say I don’t know and there’s a better voice out there than mine to speak about this.

It should also be acceptable and respectable for people to concede they are wrong.

Instead, we vote in narcissistic lunatics unfit for their roles and bury our heads in national pride whilst they rig the system for their own selfish needs.

If you want to dig further, listen to Gaslit Nation. What Sarah Kendzior and Andre Chalupa cover is uncomfortable and makes your blood boil but it’s necessary to confront the reality.

The main allegory here is climate change. Greta Thunberg gets tonnes of flack for telling the truth whilst leaders promise everything, deliver the bare minimum and now greenwash us.

I’m glad a cultural exposé is out there to be talked about. McKay and his actors and crew took their art form and used it to show what they see.

Amidst the chaos we are in, what do you see?

This is not an easy thing to write about but needless to say I feel I must.

116 123 is the Samaritans hotline and if you feel like you need to call it, do so.

Several people I know or know of have committed suicide.

Young, talented, brilliant and loved people and every one is tragedy and it is both shocking and hurts like hell to know that this feels like and eventually becomes the only option for some people.

Unless you’ve been there, it’s incomprehensible to imagine that level of suffering.

Whilst some government efforts have started to scale towards providing provisions for mental health, it still feels like there’s a long way to go.

To my understanding, there are 7 needs we have:

Self acceptance

Meaning

Hope

Status

Pride

Love

Forgiveness

And modern society tends to stamp all over these needs. Social media constantly amplifies you’re inadequacies as much as marketing does if not more. Your lack of approval or everyone’s life apparently being better and more successful than yours.

Housing crisis, the slow revolution of industrial to digital and the lack of dignified jobs or financial safety nets. Young people are churned out into the real world after education and expected to get ahead straight away. Not to mention economic inequalities as per my previous post.

Even if people have a support network around them, some of us are susceptible to that line of thinking.

And there is a culture where some people can’t bring themselves to talk about it out of the sheer level of fear or psychological viscous circle they fallen into.

And I don’t know the half of it. I’m lucky to be able to express myself and vulnerabilities rather well and exercise always lifts me. I can keep a blue patch of sky above me and encourage everyone to do the same.

And if one can’t and there’s no one immediately to talk to, don’t be ashamed to call that number.

Life is a beautiful gift, and if you don’t see it right now, there’s every chance you can feel that in future.

Greed became an acceptable thing in the 80s.

Financial greed has become one of the fundamental issues at the heart of so many global problems.

The financial crisis and the housing market, the technological revolution, the climate crisis…all of the complacency and unwillingness to follow through on promises that the world needs can be stemmed to short sighted greed.

The world’s richest CEO’s pursuit vanity projects in outer space whilst the Earth itself suffers from a cancer of the atmosphere, more commonly known as climate change.

As each year goes by, there is a tangible sense of anger and resentment, especially when young smart people are working their asses off to get an education, get ahead, keep their LinkedIn profile up to date only to end up in tens of thousands of debt and still even then struggle to attain a job with dignity that can cover the bills.

‘Parasite’ touched upon the issue with one of its opening lines of dialogue, 500 graduates in Korea applying for a single security job.

People do not need to be billionaires. To argue otherwise isn’t based on meritocracy but entitlement. I’ve no problem with people doing well for themselves and becoming rich but there’s a threshold when those who are already rich start pursuing even more wealth for no more than the hedonic treadmill of status or Forbes lists…that’s where the line has to be drawn.

Check out these stats on Oxfam. https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-global-inequality-and-how-even-it

It’s totally unacceptable and some people are waking up to this…but not enough!

It’s time to stop idolising egoistic billionaires and call them out for the greed ridden lunatics they are. And for those going down the legitimacy rabbit hole and gross oversimplification of calling this line of thought communism, it’s not! It’s the necessary cause of action required to make things fairer, eradicate poverty, improve lives across the globe and save the planet. Hyper-capitalism is literally killing the planet.

Tax the rich.

I read a brilliant article today from the Guardian about how our attention has been stolen from us. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/02/attention-span-focus-screens-apps-smartphones-social-media

There’s also a brilliant podcast by Seth Godin on our use of time. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/akimbo-a-podcast-from-seth-godin/id1345042626?i=1000539150843

My phone tells me how much screen time I use and when that information is revealed to me, I only realise then whether I’ve spent too much time online or on the phone.

The pandemic has also altered my state of mind when it comes to use of time and quality of attention over time. Especially when I consider how to make the best of my time when I work from home.

And one of my favourite quotes about time is from Proust.

‘The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.’

Time moves slower when we are aware of time. What habits do we have in place? Are they predominantly good ones or bad ones?

No doubt, we have to fill time in leisure and mere habits but the days I spend pursuing passions are more fulfilling.

Some of the passions I have are as follows:

Playing guitar, composing, producing, mixing, arranging, editing, teaching, listening to and learning music.

Collaborating with and inspiring others to get the best out of each other. Engaging in interesting and open discussions.

Running, cycling, swimming and beating personal records, setting and achieving new goals.

Cooking vegetarian food from scratch. Learning new recipes and trying different things.

Reading books, both fictional and non fictional. listening to podcasts that inform, educate and inspire me.

Supporting Liverpool and watching sports, namely football and F1 and getting into the political or tactical details.

Long walks with friends. Time spent with family and friends.

Writing on my website.

Each day is an opportunity to fill up time with your passions. Sometimes passions find you but I find that it’s more likely that you garner a passion when you work for it.

Ultimately, may each day be filled with time and attention spent on that which is worthwhile. There’s significantly more than a lifetime’s worth of worthwhile out there.

New Year’s Eve is an odd event. It’s a party, it’s a hootananny, it’s hype and anticipation and fireworks and it can be a drunken blur or a suitably peaceful anti-climax.

New Year’s Day is lazy and I like it! There’s a holiday sense to it and it’s usually a peaceful day and that is what it was for me.

And inevitably, there is some sense of reflection involved. The culture drives it when it comes to food and activity for instance. Cue the noon diets and gym memberships in response to the overindulgence of Christmas.

It’s all a bit of an illusion. It’s easy to lose sense of time through the holiday period and the significance of Christmas and New Year’s Day disorientate us. Before long, the weeks of January kick in, work kicks in and we are back into routines.

When it comes to mapping out time, seasons lend themselves to certain things as do holiday periods, but to engage in short, medium or long term possibilities can happen at any time and possibility is available to us all. I like to think we can control those things to some extent as opposed to time dictating it for us. Small choices and steps are available to us now to make things better.

For me personally, 2021 was one of the most creatively diverse years of my life. I made a vast amount of music and collaborated with so many brilliant people and now as we enter 2022, I look forward to sharing my work with you.

I wish everyone peace of mind, success and happiness as we enter the New Year.