Wow! A full year.....

 

....since I last posted something on here. I should be thoroughly ashamed and give myself forty lashes for laziness.

But I won't.  Essentially it's been more self preservation.  This particular blog is devoted usually to meaningless rants about what is going on in the world, books I've read and enjoyed (even if no-one else has), political whinges...pretty much everything in my dull retired life not connected to travel (my other blog, The World According to Travellin' Bob at https//travellin-bob.blogspot.com has all that).  But even that had a fallow 2025 - nothing posted since May.  Very remiss of me and I clearly have some catching up to do.

Because, actually, 2025 was a pretty good year.  For a start, for the first time - and I'm now touching wood.... - since 2020 I had no serious health issues.  Sure, the odd cold or stomach upset that probably everybody has at some point every year, but this time nothing serious.  No dashes to the A&E room at the local hospital after an accident walking the dog.  No Covid or other serious infection, and no attacks of depression (but I know it's still in me, as with other sufferers, so I guard against it as best I can).  And, thanks be to God, no resurgence of any other condition that may require corrective surgery.  Ok, ok, the joints ache a bit more, the eyesight's not as good as it once was, nor the hearing, and I have to rest a bit more often and for longer periods - but I'm 73 next month, for goodness' sake!  As with anything that's been around the block a few times we humans wear out too, and I'm no different.  Thankfully, My Beloved and the kids remained strong and healthy as well.

I read a lot of good books, no more of which were reviewed here (there were a couple of reviews last year) - sorry about that.  I listened to loads and loads of good music on a variety of radio stations and streaming services (caning the internet), and other streamers provided hours of entertainment like movies, tv series, sports and travel documentaries. I weaned myself off the news providers like CNN, the BBC and so on: that was easy - changing my tv and channel package took care of that, and I have to say I'm a lot happier for doing it.  

And I travelled, more than since pre-Covid times.  Partly that's a result of my improved health, of course, but also the kids are older and can be left to their own devices now (they can both cook very well, even if washing up remains problematical!).  We're also in a slightly better financial position so that's made things better too.  My Beloved was also able to take an unplanned summer off from her work, and we decided to make the most of it.

A lot of the trips were short ones, around the city and surroundings, but we went further afield too.  In May we headed to Venice (I posted a piece about that, the last one on The World According to... referenced above) and had a brilliant time.  I managed a couple of trips back to England, in January and September/October to take care of some personal business: both trips ended up a little trying, as such things often do, but successfully I believe.  I will say no more.  My Beloved came with me the second time, and we had a lot of fun re-visiting London landmarks and going to new places - I must get around to documenting some of that too, on the The World According to....  Job for next week, methinks.

We managed a few days at the seaside, in the Tri-Cities on the Baltic coast here (that's Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia).  It was only a long weekend, taking our daughter and our dog, but the weather was hot and sunny, and My Beloved and I (plus the dog) spent most of our time on the beach while our girl enjoyed being with her friends.  But the highlight came in early September when all of us (animals excepted) had our first real family holiday since Croatia 2018 (I discount a short break at the coast here in 2021 since illness interrupted that and made it less than a holiday): 10 days in Malaga, and it was brilliant.  Again, a more detailed piece will follow on The World According to... shortly.

So for us: a great year.  For the rest of the world - not so much.  In fact, I would venture to suggest it was probably the worst year so far this century - worse than 2016 and That Stupid Referendum Decision that has, as detailed in LBC presenter James O'Brien's brilliant book, ...Broken Britain.  Perhaps worse even than the Pandemic Years, when at least we were all suffering together, battling the same insidious, invisible enemy, all over the world.  We didn't triumph over it, whatever some people would have us believe: Covid is still out there, still mutating and still (sometimes) taking lives, but the sometimes ridiculously maligned vaccines that were developed and distributed in record time back then seem to have helped most of us build enough resistance in our bodies to avoid the worst of the plague now.  Probably the virus mutations themselves also crippled itself too, and weakened its virulence: I don't know, I'm no scientist - but we do seem able to live with it now.

No, 2025 globally was awful.   The war in Ukraine dragged on (it's now in its fifth year, and shows little sign of ending).  Russia continued to successfully attack cities and civilians hundreds of miles into Ukrainian territory, killing tens of thousands of innocent people (the elderly, men, women and children) just trying to live a normal life using an arsenal of drones and missiles - it's like Hitler's V1 and V2 weapons, only in use simultaneously and in much greater numbers every bloody day.  Ukraine forces battled ferociously (and reasonably successfully) to stop any further incursions into its eastern territory, aided by NATO weaponry and training (but not troops on the battlefield).  But so far, despite diplomatic efforts, there is still no real end in sight.

The genocide of Gazans by the Israelis, in response to the Hamas terrorist atrocity three years ago, was allegedly ended after a US and Qatar brokered cease fire, after almost 100,000 civilian deaths and the reduction to rubble of the vast majority of buildings and infrastructure.  But given that the IDF broke the terms of the agreement the day after it came into force (and continues to do so even now, three months later, on an almost daily basis, as well as blocking aid convoys and expelling aid agencies like MSF) it's impossible - at least for me! - to accept the conflict is over.  It angers me that more is not being made of either situation (Ukraine or Gaza) by the world's press - they should be all over it.  Or maybe they are, and I've just become immune to it......fuck, I hope not.

There is a link between both.  In January Donald bloody Trump was elected as President.  Again.  Despite being stupid, old and perhaps borderline senile (or simply nuts); despite being demonstrably the worst President in history; despite being shown to have tried to overturn, illegally, the previous election in 2020; despite even being a proven felon, mysogenist and liar (and potentially a serious, serial sex offender) the American public somehow chose to elect the bloke for a second time.  He proceeded to ride roughshod over all the laws, local and international, that have been the basis of Western democracy for at least 80 years, withdrawn the US from over 50 UN agencies, including the COP climate change body, because (his words) "they are of no value to the US and cost us billions of dollars for no benefit", undermined the NATO Alliance and took the side of both Putin and Netanyahu in their respective atrocities, and been openly abusive and rude to virtually every international leader, president, prime minister or senior official he had spoken to - all idiots and anti-American losers apparently.    Perhaps worst of all, he created an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency that reports directly to him, dresses in military fatigues and balaclavas, and is armed to the teeth.  It is charged with the rounding up and deportment of "illegals and criminal gangs", dumping them in interrogation centres while they, allegedly, check their visa status, before deporting them.  From Day One they have made mistakes: the one that sticks in my mind  is that of the Welsh girl in her early twenties, on vacation, who was picked up in one their sweeps (simply in the wrong place at the wrong time), and held in a squalid cell for a couple of days before being "processed". Despite having a valid ESTA visa in her British passport and absolutely no connection with any illegals or criminal gangs, she was deported, in chains.  No apologies.  There have been many cases like this one, and recently matters have got even darker: over a ten day period, two innocent bystanders were gunned down and killed in Minneapolis, both subsequently branded "domestic terrorists" or "radical left agents" by Trump and his apologists, despite being nothing of the sort, and despite the global outrage.  ICE is, in effect, Trump's personal militia in the same way as the SS were Hitler's, and the KGB (or at least its forerunners) Stalin's.  These are dangerous times. 

The new Labour government in the UK struggled with its new responsibilities - fourteen years in Opposition while the Conservatives and their allies proceeded to trash the country's economy and way of life - not helped by a well-meaning new leader in Sir Keir Starmer perhaps struggling most. Despite having basically good policies, their implementation has been often muddled and ill-thought out, and there have been rather too many U-Turns for comfort.  Their popularity has plunged in the opinion polls, and they start this year on rocky ground: not so much from a resurgent Tory party (that is just as deeply in the doldrums, and just as disorganised) but from a surge in popularity for both the LibDems and the Greens, and also distressingly from Farage's racist and lying Reform party that is now swollen by an increasing number of senior Conservative MPs - some of them recent Cabinet members in senior positions - that share Farage's fascist views and have hence defected to the party.  Dangerous times here, too.

Climate change action seems to have dropped way down the agenda of many governments, not the least those of the US and the UK.  The die was cast by Trump's insistence (one he held during his first term of office) that climate change is a "scam, the biggest in history" and his decision to withdraw the country from all the major UN and independent bodies trying to combat the very very real crisis.  The last UN  reporting showed that the key 1.5C rise over pre-industrial values that was expected to be reached by 2035 has been hit already, and is likely to be reached again this year - and beyond.  It's believed to be the tipping point before irreversible climate change and we've hit it much earlier than expected. It should have been a huge alarm call for the world to double down on their efforts to develop mitigation measures to cope, like outright bans on fossil fuels and speeding up the development and deployment of more renewable sources (such as wind turbines).  But no: such is the power that Trump and his allies currently wield, and the lurch to extreme right fascist political agendas across the world, that governments have retreated from  (and indeed abandoned) commitments made at successive COP conferences.  History will not view these moves with much fondness, when the books are finally written (assuming there are enough of us left to worry about such things).

So, in a nutshell, given this blog is my safety valve, often a means to let off steam about things that make me angry and matter to me - and doing so does make me feel better after sharing them - there was just too much going on, too much to mentally process .... simply, too much anger .... for me to cope last year.  The words jumbled up in my mind and events happened too quickly for me to manage let alone write and publish. I would not be surprised if this year is similar, but having conquered my news junkie tendencies, and drastically reduced my social media presence I hope I'll be able to focus better on entertaining rather than enraging (or boring) people with my writing.  

But enough of this depressing negativity!  It's a new year (well, a few weeks back anyway) and not time to dwell on this stuff - unless you're a politician charged with dealing with it. Thankfully I'm not.  But it's rather time for a look ahead, to what I plan to do for this year, God and health permitting.  

So: we have much to celebrate in 2026, not least the 20th wedding anniversary of My Beloved and I next month.  For a number of, at the time, sensible reasons I don't think either of us expected to get this far - and yet here we are, still together and still in love.  We've fought many battles, struggled to make ends meet, and still have at least one disagreement a day - but here we are, still together and still as committed.

Then our son hits 21 in October (by which time hopefully he will have passed his driving test) and our daughter, remarkably, turns 18 in May, shortly before she leaves school, finally.  I look at them every day and wonder just where the hell the time has gone!  I think of my three elder sons back home in England: all in their 40's now, with their own lives and careers, and between them two sons and two daughters - my grandkids.  So among my plans are to go to visit them all a couple of times at least.  

We've made no firm holiday plans yet, but our son has just booked a trip to Hong Kong with a friend of his in May - it's a place I'd like to visit myself at some point.  As a family, we're thinking about alternatives - the Canaries is a possibility (I quite fancy a trip to Fuerteventura and/or Gran Canaria), as is Morocco and maybe Greece. So we'll probably end up going somewhere completely off the radar.  My Beloved is off to Bilbao with her best friends for a few days in April, and no doubt they will go somewhere else together later in the year - it's their thing. Or perhaps England: a trip to Cornwall via Stonehenge is something under consideration too.  But wherever we end up going, we'll enjoy our time together and I'll aim to document the best bits.

There are also a couple of places I'd like to go, solo.  First up: the sleeper train from Warsaw to Swinoujscie, on the Polish Baltic Coast.  It's also right on the border with Germany, and the boardwalk running from the town to the typical sandy Baltic beach runs between two marker posts that delineate where the official border is.  You don't have to go that way: walk west along the beach from any place in the town and you will cross it and be in the German town of Ahlbeck.  From there it's possible to continue strolling along the sands to Peenemunde, the infamous site of the Nazi rocket development centre that spawned the V1 and V2 weapons that came close to winning the Second World War, and subsequently continued its work in the US after the War's end as the basis for NASA's own space exploration program.  Given my interest in rail travel, history and space science I think I will thoroughly enjoy that one.

Second is Schengen.  We all know about the EU's travel zone where borders are basically meaningless and travel is allowed between participating states passport free that is named after the place.  I've benefited from it since it's introduction in both my working and personal life, and I've never understood Britain's objection to it.  But I had no idea where the place actually is.  The answer: a quiet corner of Luxembourg where the borders of the country meet those of France and Germany.  The marker point where the borders actually meet is smack in the middle of the River Moselle that flows through the town (well - a village really: it's population is only a few hundred strong). But there is a network of cycle and footpaths that winds through the village and others in both France and Germany, crossing and re-crossing the borders at will, and winds through the countryside that is wine making country: vineyards abound in all three countries.  I went through the area on a train once, travelling from Dusseldorf to Luxembourg (my flight had been diverted due to bad weather) and it's a lovely area that made me think of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings.  Taking my Nordic poles for a stroll around there would be enchanting, I think.

Third.  When our kids were smaller, ten to fifteen years ago, we used to take them on skiing trips with some friends to the mountains in the south of the country.  We stayed in a small (but now growing) ski resort town called Szczyrk, and once in an even smaller place fifty odd kilometres away, on the Slovak border, called Zwardon.  I didn't ski, but enjoyed the clean fresh and cold air, and the trips to the mountain tops on sometimes rickety ski-lifts to the top of the ski runs, from where the views on sunny days, across the mountain tops to the High Tatras in the west beyond Krakow, were stunning. There are many hiking trails through and around the resorts, and I've often thought I'd enjoy going there, out of the ski season, in spring or late summer, and trek the easier ones with hiking boots and Nordic poles and a backpack with food, drink and a good book to read on rest stops.   Perhaps this could be the year for that, too, just a long weekend or something.

Fourth.  There are cities and places in Poland that I either haven't visited, or want to return too.  Bialystok is one: I spent a day there the year before last and decided at some point I'd like to return for a day or two and see more of the place.  Close by is the Bialolenka forest, a national park with a wide variety of animals including bison, wild boar and deer roaming freely.  There are small bed-and-breakfast hostels and hotels in the forest and it's a place we've been talking about visiting for a while now.  Poznan too is a vibrant city two thirds of the way to Berlin: I visited once, in my early years here, before the kids came along, so it's about time I went back and had a closer look.  Maybe I could double-bubble and take in Berlin on the same trip (given it's only a couple of hours away by train).

I also continue to read voraciously.  My To Read pile extends to about ten books now - novels, history, travel, short story compilations...a good variety.  It will no doubt grow as I see and buy others that are rolling around in my head already.  So as I finish them - or at least the best of them - expect a review and recommendation piece here.  I doubt I will write anything beyond the blogs - I simply don't have the new and fresh story ideas that fed my fingers in past years.  I still have the manuscripts, some finished and some far from complete, of all the stuff, and who knows, at some point I may revisit them.  Just for the fun of it, you understand, as I doubt any of it will ever find its way into a bookshop near you.  One day I'll pass them along to my kids to do with as they wish - but by then I'll be beyond caring, frankly.  Please God that will be ten or more years away!  But my blogs will continue: I enjoy writing them even if they are seldom (if ever) read : they keep my mind active in a way other passtimes never will.  That seems to me to be important.

So there you go.  Let's see what the year 2026 brings.  I hope it will match last year, but for good or ill, I will write up the (less personal) stories here.

Three Books.

 

As ever, my Christmas presents included a couple of books, and I bought more on my trip to London over the New Year.  And, as ever, the choices are eclectic, not limited to a single genre - the perils of a butteffly mind, probably, flitting from one topic to another with no rhyme or reason.  A glance at my unread pile (built up over the past year or so) reveals it includes a Nevile Shute classic (A Town like Alice); three Orwells in a collection of all his long fiction that I bought years ago but haven't got around to finishing yet; Moby Dick; David Copperfield; a history book about the break up of Eastern Europe, how and why it came about and its aftermath; and a thousand-odd pages of Olga Tokarczuk's epic The Books of Jacob (again, bought a year ago but still not started). So plenty to keep me going for the rest of this year, I think - and my Three Reads in a Month achieved  in January - the first time for years I've managed that! - unlikely to be repeated any time soon. 

So without further ado, let's review my January read.  Three different books, and all highly enjoyable (at least to me) and thoroughly recomended.  Of course, that's all subjective, but what the hell.

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First up: A History of Britain in Ten Enemies by Terry Deary.  I've seen his stuff in bookshops before but passed them by: primarily, he's a writer of history with a target audience of teenage schoolkids - his Horrible Histories series is very popular.  I actually enjoyed it very much: there were few things I hadn't come across before, except for some particularly unpleasant Viking torture and execution practices, but the book is very well written with plenty of humour.  The usual suspects are included in the list of enemies - the Vikings, the Romans, The Spanish Arrmada, the French and of course the Germans - as well as the Irish, who I had never really thought of as enemies (despite The Troubles), and the Americans, who are supposed to enjoy a Special Realtionship with us.  The Epilogue, how the past has led to the present British character, is in itself worth the book's cost in my view.   A fun read.

Salman Rushdie is a bit of a Marmite writer - love him or hate him, with no middle ground, an acquired taste - and one that thankfully I've acquired.  I've read his Booker Prize and Booker of Bookers winning Midnight's Children (well deserved on both counts) and the controversial Satanic Verses that left him in fear of his life and under protection for a decade - and I still can't understand quite why it upset the Muslim community as much as it clearly did. They are extraordinary books, mixing satire and fantasy, life and love and laughter, both Eastern and Western cultures. His short stories are similar.  I also read a collection of essays and speeches he has made about his craft, called Languages of Truth: 2001 - 2020 that was a fascinating glimpse into his inspirations and his beliefs. So when Victory City came out a couple of years ago it went straight onto my Must Buy list.  It was well worth the wait.  It's another fantastical story, set in India in the Middle Ages, and chronicles the magical founding of a city and empire, its rise, stagnation and eventual collapse, through a mythical epic poem written by the city's founder: a young girl acquired (for want of a better term) by a goddess who inhabits her body, leading to two hundred and fifty years of life.  It sounds weird, and it is, but Rushdie's quite extraordinary imagination and use of language brings it to life with a mix of humour and brutality.  Best book I've read for ages and I thorougly recommend it.

And last but not least, LBC journalist and presenter James O'Brien's critique of all things Brexit, How They Broke Britain. I freely admit I am biased, and nothing will ever convince me that the Referendum was a Good Idea and its result anything but a catastrophic error of judgement.  But the book is not only about that.  It details how a surprisingly small number of people, press barons, journalists and politicians, over an extended period of time used the tools of their trades to change (even pollute) the entire media and political landscape to satisfy their own beliefs and designs, largely for personal political and financial ends, with the entire electorate no more than pawns (or, in the Russian expression, "useful idiots") to achieve it.  The usual suspects are there, the likes of Cameron and Farage, Johnson and Murdoch, and the conclusion in each case, meticulously researched and presented with apparently unrelated incidents and stories linked together to present a coherent picture, perhaps for the first time,  explains the mess Britain now finds itself in. I expected to come away from the book angry and disgusted but I didn't: I was simply saddened that the system (I can't think of a better word) has been so devalued and broken by these individuals that it will take a generation or more to clean up the mess, while the perpetrators will get away, by and large, unpunished, their bank accounts both on and offshore swollen obscenely, while the NHS crumbles and the food banks proliferate as the economy crumbles and stagnates.  It is nothing less than a national tragedy.  Read the book and weep.

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And on that cheery note, I shall make myself a cup of coffee, and get back to this month's first read, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities - a more readable and accessible book than most of his stuff in my view.

Happy days.

On writing

 

So here we are.  New year, new goals, as I've written elsewhere.  And it's started pretty well. all things considered.  Spending the New Year break flat and cat sitting in London for my son helped: the solitude (not to mention a week indoors with a streaming cold) meant I could crack on and try to write something and read more than I usually can at home surrounded by kids and animals and other distractions.

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The writing was easier than it has been for a while, and led to a rage against social media in general and Facebook in particular that perhaps went on a bit too long (but what the hell - I was happy with it and it made the points I wanted to make) and a travelogue about the area of  London I was staying in.  Both went live on my blogs during January, together with a 2024 review/2025 plan that I wrote and published at the end of December. Very different subjects.... 

I had a comment from a friend who had read them asking me how I did it - and I really haven't a clue.  I think that's true of all writers - an idea presents itself and you run with it and see what comes out.  For me at least, there is no real planning, and sometimes little detailed research: I just have this fixed idea and start bashing away at the keyboard, and stop when it's finished. Ideas, points of view, words and complete sentences spew out faster than I can get them down (as a two fingered typist I'm not the fastest...), I review and re-write as I go along.  Add at least one picture that is (more or less) perinent to the subject matter as a header, and voila!  Job done. 

Stories are the same.  An idea arrives and I try to do something.  It's weird and I don't understand it at all.  The first book I wrote, way back in the early 90s, came about because I was bored at work.  It came to me fully formed while I was sitting at my desk, 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, my day's work essentially finished, the papers read, and little prospect of anything else coming to me that day.  How staring blankly at the office wall (no windows in our room) triggered my sub-conscious into thinking about an incident that had taken place in my life fifteen years before, then embellished it with a few more incidents, gave me a full list of characters and locations and even dialogue, is totally beyond my comprehension, but I got up from my desk, slung my jacket on and headed to Ryman's the stationers round the corner (it's closed now, but the office is still there with different tennants: my employer went bust a year later) , bought a couple of 100-page notebooks, went to my desk, and started writing.

It took me a month.  At the end of it, one book was full, the other half so, but the story was there in my scrawled hand-writing.  As ever, it had changed a bit as I went along, but it was complete.  And there it stayed, for years, gathering dust. When the company went bust, I decided to try and write some more, in between applying for jobs and getting rejected, simply to fill my days, and had a similar experience.  It was another memory trigger, of a little fishing village in Cornwall I had holidayed in several times during the 80s, the entire drive down there, beaches, even a specific flat we had rented.  I thought about my work life, the investment banking environment I had spent twenty odd years of my life in - how to mix them?  I started writing, a nightime drive across Bodmin Moor in a sports car - bang.  Again the idea came more or less fully formed and I went with it.  Not a book this time, but a short story, kind of a murder mystery-cum-ghost yarn.  I needed to do a little research about one location I used but that was 10 minutes on Google Maps (when I typed a revision several years later) but there it was: complete in a week or so concentrated scribbling in another notebook.  It went into the drawer of my desk with the book, and like that one didn't see the light of day for several years.  

It's the recurring theme. Another half a dozen shorts have poured out over the years, usually when I've been either unemployed or else addressing some kind of mental crisis (at least one, perhaps two, helped me get through a bout of post-COVID depression by exorcising some ghosts in my psyche).  Nowadays I write straight to the LibreOffice suite on my Beast, since that is now just as quick and easy as writing longhand in exercise books and then copying over (my handwriting is depressingly poor nowadays since the advent of emails and MS Office and I can hardly read it).  They are all gathered together in a single document on my hard driive.  The book is also now laboriously copied over, revised and revised again, and a third time, and exists as a separate document and PDF file.  I'm working on a memoir (and have been for at least 7 years) and tried to re-hash ten years and more of travel blogs into a travel book-cum-memoir but it was approaching a thousand pages and still growing when I realised that much of it was completely out of date and gave it up as a bad job and deleted it.  The source blogs are still there in the archive of my The World According to Travellin' Bob blog where they make more sense as a series of specific date/time experiences than collected into anything even vaguely narrative.

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And so it goes.  I can spend ages without a single word or thought popping out, then with no rhyme or reason a torrent pours out from some nether region of my brain.  I've tried disciplining myself to writing so many words a day, as a prompt, but it doesn't make a difference at all. I can't force it.  It just comes and goes, like good weather or indigestion.  Which is why, like it or not, I'll never be a professional writer (much as I would like that).  The lack of a publisher is another reason - and that, as much as anything, is down to my laziness or lack of confidence.  It's so hard to get any kind of a deal nowadays, publishing - at least the traditional variety - is so much a closed shop these days, no-one willing to take a punt on a first timer like me, and actually preparing a manuscript and punting it around publishers large and small and agencies reputable or otherwise, simply to get a pile of rejection slips simply doesn't seem worth the effort somehow. Self-publishing via Amazon/Kindle or similar is an alternative, but that has its own trials and tribulations, not least in the realms of publicity and marketing (neither of which I have a clue about).

So why do I do it?  What's the point?  Simply put, it's something I need to do.  It's scratching this mental itch that I can't ignore..  I enjoy doing it.  I enjoy reading the final result, and feel a staisfaction of a job well done.  It keeps me occupied when there is nothing watchable on the telly (all too often the case) or the weather is bad (ditto).  It keeps my aging brain active in a good and productive way that no amount of shopping or gardening or dog-walking ever will, It''s not about money - never has been and I know never will be..  And I'm fine with that.  I honestly believe my writing is better now, now readable, and I have certainly read stuff, some of it well rewarded and well liked, that in my opinion isn't as good - but of course, that's just my opinion.  The few people who have read my stuff are generally complimentary (but honest and critical too, when needed) but I know I'll never have a mass audience.

Am I wasting my time then? No, not as far as I'm concerned.  When you boil it all down to the basics, I honestly think most writers write for the same reasons as me - for themselves, and because they have a story to tell, something to say, a point to make - and only a very fortunate few make any money from doing so.  I'm not one of that number.

And I'm fine with that.  Money isn't the most important thing in my life, and never will be.

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This, like all my writing, Is a living document and I rarely know where it's going and how it will all end when I start - this post is a perfect case in point.  The entire thing was meant to be a reminder of what I published and announced on Facebook and Skype in January and a brief review of each of the three books I read during the month (and I have no idea the last time I did that!), but My Muse had other ideas and dumped this lot out onto the page instead). She's a capricious bitch not to be trusted, but it's ok.  I like the piece, and it gives me the chance to add another later with the book reviews.  Happy days.

Fact Checking or Free Speech?

 

I've written before about social media not being all it's cracked up to be, and definitely not the panacaea to all ills that its devoted fanboys and practitioners insist it is.  For a year or two I've been vacillating back and forth between staying put and dumping it from my life - and I still am.  But I think crunch time is almost upon me to make a final call.  It's all to do with how people, the ones that run this stuff and in so doing generate obscene profits for themselves (and presumably less obscene profits for the minions who work for them) are behaving.   I'm talking about you, Elon.  And you, Zuck.

I accept platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter - sorry, I will not call it by its ridiculous single letter re-brand - and their various competitors serve a useful purpose to a lot of people, me included.  To re-iterate, I am an ex-pat, and increasingly rarely get the chance to go back to my homeland, so Facebook is a fast and effective way of keeping in touch with my old circle of Friends and Family back home, see the latest pics of my grandkids, and so on. But I'm finding my Feed is getting more and more clogged up with adverts and junk and frankly distressing posts from all kinds of Groups and (to a lesser extent) individuals that are not of the least interest to me.  I don't use Instagram (don't even understand its appeal, nor that of TikTok - but then I'm old, not a teenager, and have no need or desire to seek publicity) and never used Twitter or seen the point of it, even when Dorsey was running it rather than Musk.  And don't get me started on the totally misnamed Truth Social and its disgusting owner.....

So to me the waters have been muddy for a while now, and even the term "social media" is frankly completely misleading nowadays. Something "social", all my life, has meant somewhere, whether pub or club or internet platform, where you can get together and meet up with like-minded people of all shapes and sizes, both sexes and all ethnicities, and enjoy yourself.  Have a bit of food and drink, talk football or music, gossip about politics and personalities (another God-awful term: social media is littered with the bloody things!) and yes, take the piss out of each other.  Sure, you could have arguments and sometimes get angry, but that was simply human nature and nobody really minded.  Buy your adversary a beer and move on.  Simple.  All Facebook and co did was provide another, wider and more accessible, forum for doing precisely the same things but with a bigger and more widespread audience, some of whom you didn't know, had never met and were never likely to.  All a part of globalization (yet another recent and misrepresentative term from the internet age we're mired in).

Then it all got a bit nasty.  The internet has always been poorly regulated, if at all.  Its creators did so for purely altruistic reasons, to share knowledge and improve communications between like minded and essentially closed communities, with the expectation that in time it would grow but remain their ideal force for good.  But it didn't just grow, slowly and organically as the founders had expected.  It exploded - especially when expanding tech companies like Microsoft and Google and Apple got involved, creating and providing small and affordable computers and efficient tools to speed up the information transfer.  Like efficient and free browsers to find stuff on the internet and share it with others; easy to learn operating systems that enabled that; simple file systems to store increasing amounts of content; and easy to use and understand productivity packages to produce stuff and send it somewhere.  It was all good, and very soon became indispensable: writing letters and posting them (sadly in my view) was replaced by typing and sending emails because it was much easier and faster and safer to do so; writing a document of any kind easier to manage on a computer rather than using a typewriter because you could see what you were doing better on-screen and make immediate corrections as you went along without having to use bottles of white ink and brushes to messily cover up and re-type your typo's (or worse still throw away your document and start over).

Social media, once the network and technical infrastructure arrived to support it, was the logical progression, and it too exploded.  And again, its creators, like those at Microsoft and Google and Apple and all the others before them, did it on the basis of everything remaining all sweetness and light, fun to be around and making everyone's life easier and more productive.  And, once some bright spark came up with the idea of flogging advertising space, incredibly, obscenely profitable.  Which to me is crazy - highly intelligent men and women, visionaries and geniuses (genii?) completely misunderstanding human nature!  And governments, being more interested in using these wonderful tools to their own end and remaining in power, come hell or high water, with little or no interest in "the public good", went along with the internet's freewheeling unregulated nature - because it was much easier to do that and let someone else clear up the mess when (if?) it all went pear-shaped.

I think the Greek term for all this is hubris.....  Too many people in High Places, both in government and in the tech industry, thought the salad days would last for ever and put personal gain before the public good.  They fucked up.

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Bad Actors have probably infested cyber-space (terminology again, sorry) since Day One.  That too is human nature: we're not all good people.  But over the last perhaps 15 years or so, the Bad Actors seem to have got the upper hand.  Inexorably, the unpleasant, abusive, racist, xenophobic, nonsense has spread.  Keeping your Facebook account free from it nowadays is, it seems to me, totally impossible.  Perhaps keeping your postings Private is supposed to help, but it doesn't - there is not, as far as I know, any way of guaranteeing that only your Friends will see you stuff.  The only way to get close to that seems to be using some kind of private messaging system like Messenger (perhaps Meta would like to explain why it bought What'sApp, Messenger's competitor, but not kill it off or combine the two?  Makes no business or financial sense to me...) but doing that seems to defeat the entire objective - sharing every damn thing with everybody in the world -  of Facebook.

There has always been a need for moderation, some way of keeping the worst of the poison away - and God knows there's been a shitload of that flying around.  But the moderators have often been asleep at the wheel, or perhaps unsure what exactly they were supposed to be doing. Surely "moderation" means keeping the worst bits of garbage from appearing and spreading like the plague. And to do that it means making sure that anything questionable needs to be checked and double checked, or triple or quadruple checked if necessary, to identify any grain of truth that might justify allowing the post, and blocking it if there is no such grain.

Example: the rise of ISIS and radical Islamism was undoubtedly aided and abetted through Facebook accounts and Tweets, especially in recruiting and radicalizing large numbers of young dissatisfied Muslims to their cause.  How many innocent lives have been lost as a result is impossible to gauge.  Why were the accounts allowed to proliferate? Why were their lies allowed to spread?

Example: during the Brexit referendum, personal data was illegally harvested from tens of thousands of British Facebook accounts, sold to and used by the Leave campaign groups to create targeted adverts and sway the result in their favour.  No harm done to individuals, perhaps - but the country's economy and trade has been decimated as a result.  The propaganda spread by people like Farage and Gove and Patel in support of the Leave campaign was mostly errant nonsense and untrue, and easily verifiable - and yet there seemed to be no effort to do so.  Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people accepted them as gospel - enough to skew the debate (such as it was...) and win the vote.

Example: during the last three US Elections, huge numbers of fake accounts have been found, many of them operating from Chinese and, particularly, Russian troll farms, spreading reams of propaganda and misinformation (ok, let's give it it's true name: lies) that clearly affected voting patterns.  The activity is illegal, whether "their" guy won or lost is immaterial.  Not all of those identified were closed, and the denials from Moscow and Beijing accepted with little question.

Example: during the Covid Pandemic, social media was awash with conspiracy theories, more lies and more misinformation about the origins of the virus, its severity and effects, and the safety of the vaccines that were developed incredibly quickly to combat it, that were often endorsed by sitting Presidents (messrs Trump and Bolsonaro spring immediately to mind but there were others) and hence taken as gospel by their followers.  Again, uncountable numbers of people died as a result.  Quite how anyone could believe claims that the virus didn't exist and/or a complete hoax, or that injecting bleach into the bloodstream could kill it, or that the virus was created in a Beijing laboratory funded by the CIA  defies all logic and common sense.  And yet they spread, unchecked, across Facebook, Twitter and the rest.

There are many other "bad" examples, but those four are enough to be going on with.  Demonstrations, both violent and otherwise, for and against causes as distinct as climate change; support for the farming community; the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza; the NHS crisis; and anti-migrant have been organised and co-ordinated using social media in Britain, frequently and deliberately scheduled for the same day, time and location to cause maximum disruption and conflict - and usually succeeding in doing so.  Again, no checks and balances.

I fully accept that people have a democratic right to express their views on any subject - I'm doing so in this essay, and it's probable that every post I make does the same thing, but we'll get to that shortly - and social media is, these days, the Go To method of expresiing those views.  But if the platform of choice openly incites one side against the other, undoubtedly increasing the likelihood or civil disobedience (or if you prefer violent clashes between the two competing demonstrations and/or the police monitoring the marches and/or innocent bystanders including kids) then is there not a clear case for the platform - whether Facebook or Twitter or whoever, to say hang on a mo, we shouldn't allow this post.....and block and remove it?

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You're never going to get rid of conspiracy theories. They've always been there and always will be, and to be honest some of them can be innocent and quite amusing.  The Flat Earth Society has been around since I was a kid, sixty odd years ago, and despite all evidence to the contrary - i.e. documentary proof, photos and eye-witness testimony that the Earth is not flat like a plate but actually a ball with a circumference in excess of 40,000 km - there are still people around who insist that it's all a lie, a conspiracy by the Deep State and/or Illuminati with who knows what aim (certainly the Flat Earth Society are not specific about that).  But it seems to me the members of the Flat Earth Society are not malevolent, merely misguided.

There are others who firmly believe that Paul McCartney actually died in 1966 and was replaced by a jobbing guitarist called Billy Shears (hence the lyric on Sgt.Pepper) who had plastic surgery to look exactly like Macca and has done everything in his life since then as Macca ....recording albums, touring, writing songs and operas and, presumably, breeding.  But again, it's a harmless enough conspiracy and as far as I know nobody has ever been threatened for failing to believe it.

Essentially people will believe anything you throw at them, if it tickles their fancy.  And that's ok - until it isn't.  Prime example: Trump insisting that he actually won the 2020 Presidential Election, the result was a hoax, his victory was stolen and his loyal supporters should "fight like hell" to overturn it.  And?  Well, several thousand complete morons attacked the Capitol Building, stormed past police, trashed the place and tried to find VP Mike Pence to "string him up".  There were many casualtiies and even deaths in the riot that ensued.  But that's ok, said the morons, the President told us to do it and he knows what he's doing.  Which is of course bullshit.  This is a text-book conspiracy with a purely malignant aim, that was allowed to run unchecked - and continues to do so four years later.  It has divided a nation, transformed a once great Party - the Republicans, the GOP - into the tool of a would-be dictator hellbent on overturning the Constitution and replacing it with God knows what, and facilitated the Second Coming of The Donald.  God help us all!

Social media played its part in that shambles, and as a result Facebook and Twitter (then still the property of Dorsey) tightened up their moderations and clamped down on anything that seemed a little excessive.  Not to be outdone, the Orange Oaf started his own social media platform, using nearly identical formats and colour schemes to Twitter, hilariously branded it Truth Social (the meaning of both words clearly beyond the man's comprehension) and touted it as the new platform that guarantees Freedom of Speech (as long as you only agree with his version of it) with no moderation as it only publishes the Truth (that is to say, his own version of truth). He's been using it constantly since then to stir up his own World Vision, based on a whole raft of bollocks, conspiracies and lies, all tailored to suit his particular demographic.  That used to be easily recognisable: basically the Great American Unwashed, poorly educated, unemployed, often with psychological issues, drink and drug addictions, and taken in by the man's promise to Make America Great Again, tear down the System and destroy the (mythical) Deep State.  But the lines have since blurred.  For the life of me, I can't grasp why this has happened - his speeches are often incoherent rants, still replaying 2020's perceived injustice, or complaining about the various criminal investigations launched after the January 6th Capitol Riots, or railing against the fake media (whatever the hell that is...) - but all of it appeals to an increasingly big chunk of the population who have their own axes to grind against the government (for which read Deep State or Radical Left Extremists a.k.a. The Democrat party).

Come the 2024 Election and unbelievably the man wins by a landslide, both Electoral College and popular vote - despite pretty much every opinion poll, right up to the day before voting, predicting a Democrat victory.  Again, social media played its role - of course it did.  Trump's team managed it far better than Biden's (in the same way that in the Brexit Referendum the Leave campaign made better use of it than the Remain campaign), especially with Truth Social now acting as Trump's personal mouthpiece in a way that Twitter (run by Dorsey in 2020, remember, and still perhaps reflecting his more liberal democratic views) hadn't last time out.  All done with little or no checks and balances to weed out the more fictitious and dangerous pronouncements.

And now there is the Musk factor.  Already a known conspiracy theorist, he acquired Twitter in 2022 and re-named it X (go figure....I can't!) and immediately turned it into a conspiracy theorist's dream home.  Post whatever shit you want, seemed to be the message, we'll publish it all, no matter how extreme - it's called Free Speech.....  And he's remained true to his word. And gone further.  His support for Trump, massive cash donations to the Re-elction fund, setting up a quasi-legal prize draw that paid a million dollars to any registered voter who entered by simply registering to vote regardless of voting preference (I assume the two winners, before the Election Committee stepped in, both being Republican voters was purely coincidental) all helped - and on his Election Trump rewarded him with a place on his incoming cabinet.

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Musk has always been crowing about his support for Free Speech, with no restrictions, and has changed Twitter to become a bastion of it.  Zuckerberg has vacillated between pro-Free Speech/anything goes and pro-Moderation, and strengthened Meta's moderation team after the Cambridge Analytica scandal (the Brexit data sale I referred to earlier). He hired Nick Clegg, who had been the leader of the Liberal Democrat party wiped out in the 2014 Election after being Deputy Leader of the 2010 Tory/LibDem coalition, because the party dropped a pledge to abolish university tuition fees. He had little option, Tory Leader Cameron refused to accept the policy and as the senior party in the coalition that ended LibDem hopes.  Clegg was appointed Meta Vice President responsible for Global Affairs and Communication - with moderation falling under his wing.  Now and again, appearing  before Congressional Hearings with other Big Tech luminaries,  Zuckerberg would apologise for something or other, but always with reservations and caveats, and always failing completely to sound either believable or sincere.

But now, that has changed.  Clegg has resigned from Meta and Zuckerberg has pledged to reduce moderation and promote Free Speech on his platforms, and made a significant donation to Trump's coffers.  The reason is fairly obvious, if unspoken - money.  With Musk now in charge of Twitter and responsible for reducing regulation in Trump's government, and with Trump himself (and all his cabinet and senior party officials in House and Congress) being equally pro-Free Speech  (as long as it mirrors Trump's own version of it) Zuckerberg has no option. He has to toe the line in this new extreme Right Wing MAGA Republican America, or else he could be forced out.  And of course, he's not the only one: pretty much all the Big Tech major players and those in other industries, are doing the same.

It is truly a sick state of affairs.

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Here is my problem.  

I am a supporter of Free Speech - to me it's a fundamental human right.  We are all entitled to form our own opinions, and should be able to state them or write about them without fear of reprisals.  I do it all the time on this Blogger platform, on my blog on the Vivaldi Community platform, in discussions on Facebook and the Supporter's Forum belonging to the football team I support.  Not everyone agrees with them, and I have many lively conversations and arguments (ok, discussions) with other community members - they sometimes get quite heated, too.  And that is perfectly ok as far as I'm concerned, because the people I interact with respect my right to hold different views to theirs (and vice versa).

In over ten years of doing this, I have only had three cases where my views have prompted a complaint and moderation.  Once I expressed criticism of the Netanyahu government's conduct in relation to the Gaza crisis (my view remains that it has gone way beyond the "proportional response" permissable under International Law).  The essay prompted a reader comment that I was an anti-Semite and terrorist supporter, and demanded withdrawal of the post; I refused, apologised to the guy for offending him and pointed out that in the same post I had condemned Hamas without reservation. He then lodged a complaint to the Vivaldi moderators who asked me to credit my information sources - which I did gladly, and heard no more.  The post is still there.  That is how moderation should work - two-way, fair and impartial.  

The other two issues were on LinkedIn: in one, I called someone an idiot for a particular comment he had made (it was spectacularly stupid and not made in response to something I had written), the person complained and my post removed because the term "idiot" broke house rules and was deemed offensive.  The second was in relation, again, to Gaza, where I once more suggested the Israeli government had gone too far - and again the cries of "anti Semite" and "terrorist sympathiser" were thrown at me, my apology to the poster not accepted and a complaint made.  The post was removed.  I tried to appeal it using the tools on the platform and pointed out that I would also like an apology for being slandered in that way after I had already apologised but the system rejected my input.   Essentially, despite following the process, I was not allowed to make a counter claim.

I am perfectly fine with all three cases, perhaps less so with the second LinkedIn one, but at least something had been challenged and dealt with fairly.  I still believe the people who had complained were being pretty petty and thin skinned: but it takes all sorts.  Personally, I don't mind if someone calls me out, as long as there is a dialogue where both parties accept we simply have differences of opinion.  Human nature.  If Twitter, or Meta or anyone else removed moderation for spats like that it's fine, I guess - but people need to understand that they need to develop a thicker skin.  As my mum used to say, if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.

But in my view, some things must still be subject to moderation and fact checking. Specifically, lies and misinformation, because they can (and do) lead to far worse consequences than calling someone an idiot, or a Leftie Remainer (I've been called that many times!).  There are plenty of examples of lies being spread on social media platforms that have not been challenged, moderated or removed that have led to serious consequences.  There were many during the Brexit campaign, as I wrote earlier here, and that possibly led to the murder of a Remain supporting MP just a few days before the vote by a Brexit supporting anti-Islam thug.  People died because lies were posted on Facebook to the effect that the Covid vaccines were a ruse by Bill Gates and the Deep State to inject "tracking devices" into everybody so that Deep State operatives knew where we were at any given time (I know, I know - it's stupid on so many levels but a neighbour of mine lectured me to that effect when I said I was going for my innoculation. Needless to say he caught Covid and was seriously ill, but thankfully recovered).  All of these could have been disproved, fairly easily, with a little fact checking, and removed.

More recently, in the last week or so, Elon himself has posted a whole string of inflammatory statements accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer and one of his ministers, who has spent her entire working life protecting and helping abused women and children, of being "complicit" in the mass rape of women and children and demanding their resignation, and calling for a General Election because Labour is "not fit to rule" and should be replaced by Nigel Farage and the Reform Party (and the next day rolling back, posting that Farage "doesn't have what it takes"...  All a complete pack of lies, demonstrably so, and none of Elon Musk's business - he should focus on kow-towing to his new Orange paymaster.  Oh, and he in turn has suggested the US will "take over" Greenland and the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and make Canada the 51st State.  It would be laughable if the fat fuck hadn't then refused to rule out using the US military to achieve all of this.... 

That little lot - and there is plenty more, as bad and worse - is not free speech.  It's lies, blatant untruths specifically couched to prompt a reaction that could turn violent very easily (security around certain government ministers because of a perceived danger as a result of Musk's nonsense has already been put in place).  And yet in this new Metaverse the fact checking of that shit will henceforth stop, in the pursuit of Free Speech.

It is not, I repeat, Free Speech.  It is lying, dangerous and unfettered.  And if Musk and Zuckerberg think otherwise, if they will not apply some common sense and responsibility then they are as certifiably insane as their new Orange Master whose ring they are busily slobbering over.  And they are certainly not fit to run companies the size of Meta, or Twitter or Tesla or SpaceX or the Trump Organization - never mind the United States and the Free World... 

These are scary times indeed.

That was (another) year that was...

 

...and frankly I'm bloody glad to see the back of it.

I've been racking my brains to say anything good at all about 2024, anything even vaguely positive, and have come up with very little. So let's try listing my thoughts, in no particular order, good and bad.

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Good Stuff.

Well, the Tories were voted out of office.  Finally.  After 14 years of ruining the country, incompetence and lying. In a landslide. Their demise also got rid of no-marks like Hancock, and Truss, and Johnson, and a whole list of other crooks, chancers and dead-weights who no-one (apart from their families, probably) cares about.  Good riddance to them all.

In came Keir Starmer and Labour, full of plans to improve the lot of the ordinary man in the street (rather than fleece them like the Nasty Party did). Hurrah.

I am still alive, and healthy. Cancer free (with the caveat that I am due a further check up in January).  

I'm reading more than since the Pandemic faded into memory (though the virus itself remains active, despite what the nay-sayers would have you believe) and trying to write too. It's tough, though.

My Beloved and my kids are well, and healthy too. As are my dog and cat, and the rest of my family, scattered throughout the world (at least, to the best of my knowledge). I thank my god for that. 

After four years of solid stress, struggle and spending we finally moved into our new flat, meaning I now sleep on a bed rather than on the settee, and soon will have a proper desk and workspace of my own in the corner of our room, overlooking the kids playground beside the block.  I should be able to focus and produce more....

 Bad Stuff.

Starmer's Honeymoon Period in office lasted about a week before the gutter press, led by GB News, the Daily Mail and Talk TV, aided by a bunch of keyboard warriors and wannabe celebrities, started the rumour mill rolling with totally undefined and unsubstantiated claims about him and other members of the government, that have turned a large minority of the electorate against the government.   Already.  After 5 months.

Brexiteer-in-Chief, serial liar and failed commodity trader, loser of seven previous attempts at being elected to Parliament, finally got in.  Representing Clacton, one of the most rampantly anti-European parts of the UK.  Nigel Farage (for it is he) has since spent as much time in the US trying to help his mate Donald J. Trump (another serial liar....) with his Presidential bid.

And against all odds he succeeded.  Dear old Joe Biden finally admitted defeat 12 weeks or so prior to voting and stepped aside in favour of VP Kamala Harris.  The problem was the US of A is still unable to bring itself to elect a woman to the Office, never mind a black California prosecutor who has never given birth.  The MAGA Republicans, led by the Orange Oaf, rallied round and elected the convicted felon (not no mention a known sex offender and loser of a civil case for rape).  Yes, Trump is the next President of the US.  Insanity or foolishness - you be the judge.

The slaughter in Gaza has shown little sign of ending, and indeed spread to Lebanon and Syria as Bibi the Butcher continues his single handed efforts to wipe out the entire Arab population in the Middle East.  The ICJ arrest warrants issued against him for violating international law, suspected war crimes and genocide mean no more to him than the multiple UN Resolutions about the Palestinian conflict that have been ignored by the Israeli government since 1948.  He is aided, abetted and financed by the US government (and to a lesser extent those of the UK and EU, amongst others).  Madness and murder most foul.

Vlad the Impaler's Special Military Operation (AKA the Invasion of Ukraine) is still grinding on, approaching its third anniversary.  Ukraine fights on, with strong support from the EU, the UK and NATO - but that may all soon change: Trump is widely expected to pull US support for both Ukraine and NATO soon after taking office (which will please his mate Vlad no end), and support is waning in a number of European countries that now have strong nationalist parties in government (or largest in opposition) like Hungary, Serbia, Czechia, and even Italy and Germany.  Putin has also threatened a nuclear response if any NATO ally takes direct action in support of Ukraine or allows the weaponry it has provided to be used to attack targets on Russian soil, including that seized in the invasion. Scary and shameful stuff.

Anti-Islamic sentiment and anti-immigration parties and supporters are gaining even more traction across Europe, leading to increased racial tensions and public unrest.  And it will get worse, because...

...all the promises made by governments to tackle climate change at past COP Summits have been broken, abandoned or watered down. We are rushing headlong towards a global catastrophe, including producing a massive increase in climate refugees looking for shelter and aid,  that I didn't expect to see but am increasingly likely to.

My football club, the mighty Ebbsfleet United, spent the entire year battling relegation from the National League.  We stayed up on the final day of last season, after changing managers, but the new gaffer turned out to be worse than the bloke he replaced. He was sacked a month into to the new season with the club bottom of the league, and replaced by a well-respected young coach with excellent coaching qualifications and experience at senior clubs in both England and Scotland.  He turned out to be even worse and was sacked after two months, with the club rooted to the bottom and totally devoid of any confidence or quality.  The club captain stepped up, retired from playing and vowed to keep us up.  He has presided over four games (at time of writing) and four (more) defeats.  We are doomed.

I've been suffering from writer's block most of the year: my 2024 target of a weekly blog post has been closer to one a month or less.  I'm also stuck on my books, still unfinished and unpublished, and not had a new or original idea for a story this year.  But I soldier on....

Finally, my beloved elder sister passed away in the summer.  She was approaching 84, and had been living with an inoperable heart defect for several years, so it was not unexpected, and indeed a relief.  But it's still losing my closest relative, and came less than a year since my other sister passed away after a struggle against undiagnosed dementia for three years or more.  It leaves me the last man standing in my family.  It's a sobering thought.

You see, I'm getting older, nearly 72.  Sure, I'm well and cancer free, but I can't hide that my health is failing.  The back and knee and hip pains, when they bite, take longer to recover from.  My eye-sight and reflexes aren't as good and I've given up driving as I no longer feel safe doing so.  My beloved bike has been in storage for 18 months on doctor's orders (because of my cancer) and is likely to remain there - if I can't walk a straight line, trying to do so on a bike is probably not a good idea.  I get tired quicker and more frequently, often dozing off in front of the tv mid-evening. And I'm not as strong, can't do so much lifting or other physical work at home.  It comes to us all, I know, sooner or later, but I find it very hard to accept it's now happening to me.....  Reality bites.

So you can see why I look forward to 2025 - it can't be any worse.  Can it?

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So let's look forward now.  Forget all the big stuff I mentioned above, there is bugger all I can do to influence any of it.  What can I do to make it a good year?  For me and my family?  Me first.

I MUST exercise more. I let it slip this year, didn't do as much as I should, largely because so much time was spent with the move to the new place, fretting about all the big bad stuff, and mourning my sisters.  For Christmas I had a set of Nordic Walking poles, and I intend to make use of them a lot.  I tried them out a day or so ago with a 4km stroll, and found them helpful, once I'd found my rhythm.  They're supposed to help with balance and promote full-body movement that in turn helps build strength and muscle tone, lose weight and improve co-ordination, all of which will do me the power of good.  I need to keep it up, a similar yomp every other day at least.

I also need to focus on my mental health - I've been all over the place this year, with the good days and bad pretty much in balance.  I read a book recently about meditation and training yourself in positivity and better rest, and I need to do more of that.  It may be easier with my own space: I tried some meditation and mindfulness exercises from the book but with all the distractions in a family home I lacked focus and felt no benefit.  That needs to change.  Recently I've also come very close to sliding back into the depression that plagued me post-Covid and frankly that scared me.  It was not a good place to be and I do NOT want to relapse - if I do, it will I'm sure be worse and harder to pull through.

If I succeed in both those objectives, then I will be happier and better able to get back to my writing.  I also intend to embark on some self-improvement, learn some new things. I would love to take a degree course, History and Politics, perhaps. or English Literature, something of that nature, but I know I won't be able to afford the Open University course fees.  Yet, anyway - perhaps in the future.  But I can start small, use the Coursera platform that has a wide range of free courses - not all of them degrees needing months of solid work, but short certification courses: there are some there that appeal to me.

If I can make progress on all of those objectives, then I'm sure I will feel better about myself, and fitter, which in turn will mean I'm more balanced and patient and just....happier.  Less likely to argue and complain and mope around feeling sorry for myself (way too much of that going on this year) - which should in turn make things much easier and more pleasant for My Beloved and my kids.

They deserve that, after all the nonsense this year.

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Happy New Year, all.  I hope 2025 is a good one,

AI: for good or ill?

 

 

This is a very good book.  It's a collection of short stories and essays set in a possible (probable?) future just 17 years away where AI and related technologies are reaching maturity and playing an increasingly important role in the world - and hence in all our lives.  

The stories are all written by Chen Quifan, a Chinese science-fiction writer who, after university, worked for Baidu and Google in various senior positions related to AI development before turning successfully to writing.  Each story delas with one specific aspect (or prediction) of how the techincnology can - and no doubt will -be used in the near future, whether in education, in healthcare, in warfare or employment (amongst others).  There is a lot of thought provoking stuff in there.  

The essays, meanwhile, one for each story, are written by Kai-Fu Lee, another Chinese authority on this developing technology, and elaborate in detail the specific aspects covered, their histories, easy-to-understand technical descriptions, and how they may develop further - and. perhaps crucially, their downsides (including regulatory and ethicsl problems).  He too has a solid grounding in AI, having held senior positions in AI devlopment with Apple, Microsot and Google.

Their joint knowledge and easy writing styles combine to make an incredibly complex, even esoteric, subject clear and understandable.  I learned a lot from the book....though I confess that the doubts I've had about the sudden proliferation of the technology have not been completely erased - but very much eased.  It's very clear that huge changes to the way we do most things are just around the corner, and I still worry that the massive change in mind-set that I believe is fundamentally needed, by all of us, to gain the biggest benefit is showing little sign of happening any time soon (except perhaps in the younger generations for whom VR gaming and related technologies - including AI itself - are increasingly commonplace) and I wonder how that will play out.

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Throughout the stories there is a common thread, and a couple of them deal specifically with one aspect of human activity that we are all completely familiar with, one way of another: the workplace.  Making a living.  

Let me give some caveats here. I am not an expert in AI; my knowledge of the workplace in this post-COVID hybrid workplace day and age is sketchy and based largely on anecdotal evidence, since I had retired a year or so before the Pandemic hit; and my hands-on knowledge of the recruitment process of today even more outdated, as I'm more comfortable with the pre-LinkedIn (hell, the pre-internet!) days when written CV's, magazine and newspaper ads, the postal service and the telephone ruled us all. I preferred it then, to be honest.....far simpler, and personal relationships were more important than algorithms.

None of which stops me from having feelings about what we as a work community are facing in the coming months and years.

In truth, I have been an AI agnostic since its early days, despite a family connection to its development (someone dear to me worked for DeepMind in its infancy, transitioned with it to Google and hence knows personally many of the main players). To me it was always a staple of the science fiction books I devoured in my younger days (and many of them also pre-dated the computer age, never mind the internet) or something to fear as a recipe for Armageddon (think the Terminator series of movies) - nothing more than that. The concept of a computer being able to play and win a couple of dozen simultaneous chess matches against Grand Masters, or trouncing the best Go! player in the world struck me as being an interesting news story to tuck away on an inside page of the newspapers on a slow news day, but of no real practical use. I think many people, particularly in my age group (at that time my 60s, now 70s and older), were of the same view.

How wrong we were! The development of the technology has happened at breakneck speed, and new applications for it seem to surface every couple of weeks. Many of them are riffs on earlier ideas, some completely new and esoteric - and the vast majority of them quite beyond me. In many ways I'm happy about that: I have enough to worry about as it is - like my health, getting old, the well-being of my kids and grand-kids, money (or the lack of it): simple, everyday things - without needing to concern myself with the stuff of dreams. 

Global warming is simple enough (I only need to look at the news or out of my window to be concerned about that, and understand that, whatever the sceptics may say, it's real, we as a species are major contributors to the problem, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better (if at all). It's a tangible reality, whereas AI is something that happens in the background, out of sight and mind, managed directly by a miniscule portion of the 8billion humans that inhabit this Planet Earth, understood properly by a not much bigger portion, but affecting directly and indirectly everybody else. I would argue that before many more moons have passed it will affect every living thing - not just humans, but plants and animals, fish and insects, even the invisible germs and microbes and bacteria that we host - directly. For good or ill.

I see evidence of AI every day. For instance, when I open my laptop I know that every browser is using AI in its Search functionality - some more than others. CoPilot is there on Edge, glaring at me from the Search Bar on the Home Page for instance: I don't use Chrome, but I'm sure it does something similar. The only browser I know of that has a publicised policy of NOT embedding AI tools is Vivaldi (which is my default, my daily driiver...).  Even Firefox, that beacon of independence and FOSSin the browser space,, is developing its own AI tools (or so I read recently). Every search engine likewise uses AI tools to refine its search algorithm (even another proud FOSS leader that I use on a daily basis, DuckDuckGo).

Many individual websites have also introduced AI tools - LinkedIn, for instance, invites me to use AI to compose every Post or Comment or Article I write, including this one (an abbreviated version, sans book review, was posted there last week). But since I can string words together in a lucid and (I hope!) entertaining and relevant way I don't use it, and never will - and it annoys the hell out of me every time I see that prompt!   Apple and Samsung and the other leading mobile phone companies are embedding their own versions of AI assistants into their flagship models, thereby increasing dramatically the cost of buying the things - which seems to this Old Age Pensioner as compelling a reason as any to revert to my old style Nokia handsets, with limited functionality but replaceable batteries that last about a week on a full charge. Dumb-phones? Not to me! I don't need NASA c.1969 computing power in my pocket, thanks very much.

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So I've done a bit of research, read a lot of articles via Vivaldi, conversed with techies in the user community, taken soundings from my dear-to-me Google employee.....and it's clear to me now that being an AI agnostic is not going to work or make a scrap of difference to my life, now or in the future. Pandora's Box is well and truly wide open, and as everyone knows once that happens its contents can never be returned and the Box resealed. It's HERE, and like it or not always will be (a bit like COVID-19 and its variants, only - please God! - better for us). So, like everyone else, I have to learn to live with it.

But how, exactly? Well in my case it seems easy enough. The most exciting and potentially quickest to mature AI technologies are likely to be in health care and automated vehicle technology. I'm getting older, and therefore likely to need increasing amounts of medical assistance of one kind or another (which is not to say I'm ailing or at death's door: I'm far from that and God willing will remain so for some years). But if AI realises its potential and speeds up the development of medicines and drug treatments, and helps the doctors make more accurate diagnoses quicker, and crucially helps the identification and administration of the best personalised treatments and cures, then I will be delighted to accept the prolonged life that I will enjoy. Yes, I know it's inevitable that at some point I'll pop off, but I'm in no hurry and if AI means I can prolong it further - well, I can live with that.

Similarly, if AI and other technical developments mean that self-driving buses and cabs and trains, 100% safe, can speed me from A to B at a lower cost then what's not to like? I'll happily take that, too. Improved crop yields and food distribution to help with my diet and grocery bills? Yes, please. More renewable energy sources at lower cost to the benefit of we consumers and counter the climate crisis? Damned right, bring it on! Automated weapons systems and robotic troops, both offensive and defensive, to reduce the numbers of casualties in conflicts (or, preferably, obviate the need for conflicts at all - and yes, I know: human nature and all that make that highly unlikely!) - well, less so.

There are loads and loads of other exciting possibilities on offer, some better and more attractive than others, but I will leave you to do your own research on them, and along with the few I'm mentioned decide for yourselves how you feel about them all.

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Which brings us to the elephant in the room. If we accept that advances in AI and robotics are going to reach every part of our human existence, for good or ill, there will come a time - probably sooner rather than later - when work itself, that most basic of human needs (just after eating and sex) will be affected. Seriously so. If AI and robots of one kind or another, are doing most of the work, then what the hell are the rest of us going to be doing? If we accept the premise that once your education is finished right up until you retire 50 or so years later, you need to work to earn as much money as you can, to provide a home and food and clothes and education and all the rest of it for your family, and AI and robots are now doing all that so your job has disappeared - then a) WHO is going to pay for all of those needs and b) WHAT are you going to be doing with yourself?

And it's happening already. Take Amazon: I understand the company is now employing fewer workers in its distribution centres because state-of-the-art robotics and, increasingly, AI means humans are no longer required. The same is probably true of similar on-line retailers. Another example: in the auto industry, the introduction of the assembly line reduced the need for workers 70 or 80 years ago, and increased use of robotics has decreased the need for skilled workers even more over the past 25 years or so. Even bigger vehicles, like buses and trucks, even train and aircraft manufacture, are going the same way. Perhaps it's a coincidence that unemployment numbers have, by and large, risen as a percentage of the working age population in the same time period (although I don't think so: not all of the workers who were sidelined by technology will have been able to re-train and find new jobs).

AI in particular is going to start eating into white collar work too, if it hasn't already done so, as systems are developed using it to take over the more manual office tasks. I'm given to understand that in recruitment the task of initial screening is now being done increasingly using AI - I think I see examples of it every day on LinkedIn as I get pestered to apply for this or that job based on a search of my User Profile for a variety of keywords (ignoring the fact that the Profile also states that I am retired and not interested in any position). There are, again, hundreds of examples of AI taking over what companies may see as mundane, but surely no less important, tasks. No doubt the cost/benefit analysis has suggested that this will save a decent chunk of money that can otherwise be spent on, say, management bonuses or shareholder dividends. And hopefully some of it will also be invested into staff re-training rather than redundancy pay-off's....

It seems to me that we are heading into an era of mass unemployment that will dwarf anything that has ever gone before it, and not a single area of paid human activity will escape it. Jobs will disappear, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and not all of them will offer an alternative. How are we going to manage this transition from a human based economy and work structure to one dominated by machines? How is it all going to be funded? What are we going to do with the legions of men and women who no longer have a financially rewarding occupation? And perhaps most important of all, what are we going to do for future generations, born into a world where work is dominated by AI and robotics, without any prospect themselves of working for a living?

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Being unemployed takes a very different mindset - I know this from personal experience. In my 50 year career in stockbroking, investment banking and IT consultancy I experienced a number of spells out of work. Employers went out of business, or for whatever reason decided I was no longer needed. Sometimes the "rest" only lasted a couple of weeks, sometimes longer - the worst was just under a year. I got through it every time, and generally moved to a position that was better than the previous one, so I did ok. But I found that, eventually, the accumulated stress and uncertainties had not left me at all: they were locked away in my subconscious and eventually killed any enjoyment or desire I had for work. That was when I retired - and found a further (and unexpected) consequence of these "career breaks". My pensions were reduced. Call it naivety or stupidity, but it came as a bit of shock and one I can neither challenge nor do anything about now.

But ignoring that financial impact, being unemployed was difficult. Every time it knocked my self confidence. Every time it made life difficult for my family - they still needed support, food, clothes, all that normal stuff, and it was all much harder for me to provide. We were looked down upon by our neighbours as the company car was replaced by the old banger. I spent hours on the phone, making phone calls for every job that was even halfway suitable, lost count of the rejections, and had to will myself every day to get up and battle on.

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It's tough, but I'm sure you all know that anyway. My personal experience is probably different from anyone else's, of course - but there are also a lot of similarities to what all of us have experienced. I have never, in all my 71 years and counting, met a single person happy to be unemployed. Now imagine a world where the majority of people are unemployed, facing those kinds of issues.

How in God's name are we going to manage that?

How to be an Influencer....

This seems to be one of The BIG questions in today's business environment. Influencers are everywhere - they all seem to be young and beautiful and full of fetching pouts and winning smiles, long blond hair or designer stubble. Oh, and wealthy.

I've only ever seen one under the age of about 30 (although decent make-up can hide a multitude of imperfections and knock years off your apparent age) and he was an old Polish geezer on breakfast tv over the weekend: white hair, neatly trimmed white goatee, blathering on about something or other. My Beloved turned to me and said witheringly, "He's over 70 like you, and an influencer, making lots of money. Why can't you do that?"

I couldn't answer. Because I have absolutely no idea how to become an Influencer. Or even what they are supposed to do,

Apart from looking presentable, what exactly are the qualifications? How do you get them? How do you decide what you want to influence people in? And how do you actually DO that? And monetize it?

It seems to me there are no qualifications, and anyone can talk an absolute pile of nonsense on almost any subject under the sun, on Twitter (or whatever it's called this week), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other social media platform, and provided the individual has the word "Influencer" somewhere in his/her description and a nice photo for his/her thumbnail, then people, especially the young (who, let's be clear, invented the entire concept), will accept the nonsense as nothing less than the gospel truth. And somehow, magically, all the Likes and Shares translate themselves into hard cash, and lo and behold your old Toyota Avensis becomes a shiny new Audi Q7.... Like magic.

OK, perhaps I sound like (or even am, to an extent) a Bitter Old Man, but I'm not, really and truly. I just find it incomprehensible that these activities can be so influential (sorry...) with so little substance - and not all of that good. It's a case of the Blind leading the blind......and blind are lapping it up.

A teenage girl of my acquaintance, like most teenage girls it seems, spends hours every day on social, and follows a number of Influencers. One of them recommended some make-up product or other (I have no idea which one, but it seems it was expensive) to make any teenage girl look a million dollars. The acquaintance duly invested a month's pocket money in a jar of this stuff, plus the face powder that was the recommended accompaniment, and slathered it all over her face every day for a week before leaving for school. Sure, she looked pretty as a picture when she left home every day, but by the end of the week, despite properly cleansing and washing her face every night before bed, she was covered in acne - both cheeks, forehead, even her nose.

That was a couple of years ago. Although it has improved a lot (possibly because she no longer uses the products), her parents have had to shell out a significant amount of dosh on dermatologist appointments and her recommended products to try and help. The hope is that, in time, she will simply grow out of it...... It may of course have had nothing to do with the Influencer, not her fault at all: she was after all not much more than a kid herself, so probably still naive about the Ways of the World (except for the new Ways of making money with little effort or ability in anything else) but I do ask the question whether or not she had sufficient knowledge of the damage any cosmetic can do to sensitive young skin before she started peddling the stuff on social (and no doubt being lucratively rewarded for doing so).

In my day, the kid would have been labelled a con-artist or worse, and not at all looked up to. But then times have changed, and across the entire internet there is a lack of strong governance and sense of responsibility by the platforms themselves, never mind the majority of people and companies who use it for their business growth. How else to explain the rise of, say, Truth Social (its name alone should raise red flags!), or the Chinese outfit that peppers my LinkedIn feed every day with new space-age smoking technology adverts that the system will not allow me to either block, delete or report....

In the old days - so the 20th century and before - influencers were not called Influencers. They were called mum and dad, or grannie and grandad. They were your teachers at school, from the age of 5 and upwards and through college or university, giving you the core knowledge you needed to survive and flourish in life. By definition, they were older than you, with much more experience in living (including, those in my youth, active service in World War Two).

They all guided you in the right way to behave; in respect for other people (particularly those older than you and in positions of responsbility); and in good habits like being on time for school, for trains and buses and planes, and later on for work. Then your seniors at work, your supervisors and managers and peers who happened to have been employed at your factory or office for a longer period, all gave you help and guidance and influenced your own performance and, ultimately, career path. And in so doing they gave you the tools to pass on as guidance to your own kids and grandkids. As an "influence" system I would argue it was far more effective and valuable than any amount of hours trawling through any number of social media platforms or search engines. The advice was always - at least in my experience - grounded in real life, based on real world experience, and rarely if ever unsubstantiated claptrap narrated solely for financial gain. And it worked - there are still habits and behaviours, particularly relating to the workplace, that I find myself following even now in my retirement, and desperately trying (without too much success) to encourage my kids to emulate. But it seems good time-keeping for a start is no longer important.

It seems to me that influencers should carry a Government Health Warning, in the same way that smoking products and alcohol do. They should be compelled to show a high degree of knowledge in their chosen subject of infuence, probably earn a professional qualification of some kind from a respected educational establishment rather than some fly-by-night mail order scam. But I recognise this is highly unlikely to happen - if Big Tech like Microsoft and Apple, Google and Facebook are incapable of governing themselves then what hope is there for a quasi-business sector like "Influencing" to do so? Somewhere between "Zero and You Gotta Be Kidding?" I would suggest.

So I am highly unlikely to ever attain My Beloved's tongue-in-cheek suggestion of "Travellin' Bob: Influencer" and all the Wealth of Croessus that apparantly goes with it. But I will continue to rail against things that annoy me - like the unstoppable rise of AI (that in my view is a clear and present danger to us all); the continued importance of Big Tech and the way it dominates us all whether we like it or not; the evil of Messrs Putin, Trump, the British Conservative Party and the IDF (amongst others); and a host of other niggles. And I will continue to praise and support the good I see in the people of this planet as and when I see fit - climate change activist retirees facing jailtime for calling it out when governments everywhere renege on promises and further endanger us all; health professionals fighting incompetence and shortages every day; volunteers providing food, shelter and help to refugees wherever they may be....; and a host of other praiseworthy activities.

It's what this Blog is all about, after all!