No Smoking at the Bar, Please!

Those of you who live outside the UK may well be oblivious to the change that has taken place to our way of life here.
Some of you who do live here may be unaffected.
And some of you rejoice at the change.

For those of you who don't know, it has been illegal to smoke in enclosed public areas since July 1st.
This includes pubs.

Now I am one of the people affected by this, in that I am a twenty a day smoker.
Naturally, I am used to having a cigarette with my pint.
So how- if it all- has this affected me?

My local pub, the pub I mainly drink at, is very much a working man's pub. It's not a pub where people take a girl to for a meal.
It is a pub where men go to watch Skysports, where the regulars all know eachother, where you have to tell the barmaid you DON'T want another drink, or one will be poured for you anyway.
Eighty percent, if not more, of the regulars are smokers.
If you didn't want to go to a smoky pub, you wouldn't go there.




Nevertheless, the pub has coped well. The Landlord put a new door in, leading direct from the bar into the yard behind and erected a canopy.
Signs direct attention to the door to the yard.

On occasions when there are a handful of people in the pub, the whole pub tends to go out together, much the same way as people do in offices.
And when everyone is out in the yard, there's a fair bit of moaning about the ban.
A semi-serious discussion is ongoing about setting up a fund whereby regulars pay a subscription every week to allow the landlord to keep it a smoking pub. The fund would be used to pay any fines he might get under the new legislation.
It's fighting talk, but it won't happen.

People are starting to enjoy the half hour exodus to the yard. It seems to get people talking to people they hardly talked to before.
It feels a bit like air raid shelters must have been like in the Blitz, especially when it's raining.

When the weather is fine, people seem to take their drinks out and stay.

It's true pubs generally are emptier. It is only the die hard regulars of specific pubs that are going out of loyalty in spite of the ban, because their pub is an important part of their social circle.
But I think the rest will slowly come back when they realise that pubs haven't in fact died.

They can't kill the great British pub that easily.

And You Voted Tony to be....

Indicted as a war criminal. Decisively.



Thirteen of you want to see Tony in a stripy shirt heading off in a big white van.
Eight of you agreed with his choice as Middle East Peace Envoy. I can only guess those of you who voted this way thought this was a joke.

It isn't. That IS what he's going to do.

Four of you want to see him receive a peerage(???)
Baron Blair of Bungussomecash?

One of you wanted to buy his memoirs.
I think that was Heart of Darkness.

This week's issue is actually something where your opinions are important to me on a serious level.
Some of you may be aware of subjects up for discussion at the moment within Blogpower.
The issue is whether to expell a member of Blogpower.
I'm not going to give you a full history- those who don't know the story and want to have a look can read it at defending the blog, or by looking at back posts at Nourishing Obscurity or Central News. My opinions as they were, can be found in my archives.

Of all the issues being debated, there are two which affect my own opinion. One concerns some dodgy goings on during the recent awards that you can read about at the sites listed above, should you wish.

The other is wider.

Currently, Blogpower is not as diverse, inclusive, or representative of the wider bloggosphere as it could be. Clearly, we are not attracting left of centre bloggers, female bloggers, bloggers from other faith backgrounds, etc.

Put another way, if you're on my blogroll, it means I visit your site and value your contributions here. I will say that I'm privileged to have some of the quality visitors I do.
And many of them would be worthy additions to Blogpower.



To me, the decisive factor is, does including blogs that openly champion their support for racist parties narrow the range of people who become interested in Blogpower?

BP members are voting between now and Friday. My vote will depend on what readers here think.

Have your say.

The Apartheid we Ignore

Last night I posted on how readily we accept myths regarding Native American peoples.
Now let's take a look at today's reality.

For Native Americans still exist, across both the Americas.
And not just as minorities, either.



Here we have Miss Peru. Cute isn't she?
Very European looking don't you think?

Could be at a Milan fashion show?

Now let's look at some more typical Peruvians.
Non-European, like the majority of the population.



Aside from Mexico, Argentina and Chile, the countries of Latin America have non-white majorities. In Brazil and Ecuador, people of African descent form a large part of the population, remnants of slavery. Slaves worked the Brazil coffee plantations until 1889.

In many countries, First Nations people form the overwhelming majority of the population.
White Creoles are confined mainly to coastal areas, or in the case of Paraguay and Bolivia, to Asuncion and La Paz, respectively.

In almost all, wealth- and as a result, political control- is mainly in the hands of White Creole elites. The order the conquistadors established, still stands.

The Maya have not gone, they STILL CONSTITUTE TWO THIRDS of the population of Guatemala. In Bolivia, 85% of the people are pure Native, as against 2% Creole.



This Apartheid is largely maintained by US investment and/or military backing when needed.
The US war on drugs in Latin America is about preventing economic challenges to US backed investment, which perpetuates the power of the Creole elites.

We cannot give the Cherokee or the Iroquois back their land.
We cannot give the Sioux, the Pawnee or the Navajo back their land.

But we can look to the plight of the Native peoples of Latin America, the bottom caste in their own homelands.
They can get their countries back, if the world demands it.

We've proved that before.

Crazy Horse said 'Make Love Not War.'

Well, he probably didn't.
But a book somewhere probably says he did.
It sells.

You may have heard of Grey Owl, an early precursor of the Ecology Movement.



If you haven't, suffice to say, thousands poured to hear the lectures of this Native American in his Ojibwa garb, tell of the wisdom of his people, of how man was at war with nature.
At his death in 1938, it transpired that he was in fact, one Archie Belaney from Devon. He had no Native American blood in him, and his message was more Belaney than Ojibwa.
Doesn't mean it wasn't a good message.
A hoax, but a harmless one.

But interesting that his message was heard far clearer as Grey Owl, than maybe it would have been was it known to be Archie Belaney.

There's still a market for books purporting to be the wisdom of Native Americans. Our bookshops are flooded with 'The words of Humming Bird' and the like.
On the one hand, we seek wisdoms other than our own conventional Western ones.
One the other, we know that there are peoples we have done wrong to.
So I guess it feels heartwarming in some way to unite the two, the wisdom of the peoples we wronged.

Unfortunately, the marketers of these sorts of 'wisdoms' tap into this.
It categorically is NOT native American wisdoms you receive.
It is sixties mysticism ascribed to Native American beliefs. We like what we read and we hope it is Native American belief. It's not.



Let us look at the facts.
I'm unsure that the Ghost Dance, pictured above, was a particularly wise phenomenon. The idea that wearing a big white shirt and dancing a special dance made you immune to bullets does not seem wise to me. I'm not sure I'd be exactly running for wise words from the culture that produced that kind of wisdom.

As for Environmental advice, the extermination of the buffalo by Native American stampede hunting hardly commends them to me as Environmentalists.

Yes, they were robbed blind by White men. Robbed of two continents.
But whatever virtues their cultures had, superior wisdom to their supplanters cannot have been one of them.

'White man speaks with forked tongue.'
That bit was Native American Wisdom.

There was much that we should mourn about Native America. But let's not acribe to them answers they never had.
Because if they did, they didn't use them.

Of course, if you want to get really Pseud, you have the 'knowledge' that purports to be Mayan.



These are the 'writings' that claim to be translated from Mayan inscriptions revealing prophecy, wisdom , the story of the universe, etc.
Though not how the authors learned to translate Mayan script.

One would think from some of these books that the Mayans alone lived in true wise peace, in balance with their environment. The 'Mayan Prophecies' is such an example.

These books never mention the human sacrifice culture at the heart of Mayan society, and how that contributed to loving thy neighbour and preserving the balance of nature...

In a sense, we demean the real people of these cultures by misrepresenting them this way.
By ascribing to them a culture they did not have, and values they did not have, we help obliterate their legacy. We turn them into what we want our consciences to be today, not what our consciences should have turned to yesterday.
There may not have been the wisdoms there that we wish there were, but there was humanity. There was a dignity and a fighting spirit to match their opponents, if the numbers, the technology, and sadly, the wisdom, were pretty one sided.

And of course, the real Native American could do with some real help. Not just in the States, but in those many countries where Native Americans are a majority of the population, but kept down by Creole elites.

Or is the real Native America less interesting?

Wage Slavery

'We work to live, not live to work.'



That's the maxim of today. How often do we hear it?
Certainly it's true of me.
Probably it's true of many of you.

We sell our blood, toil, sweat and tears forty hours a week. The best hours.
To earn tokens to exchange for material goods.

Most of it simply pays for us to live. The rest goes on the odd luxuries that we can enjoy in the time we're allowed off.

Would we do if it if we didn't get the tokens?
For most of us, no.

The only good thing most of us can say we actually acheive, is that we get paid.

In a societal sense, most of the jobs most of us do, are completely useless.
We see the modern world of work in 'The Office', and we all see ourselves. That's why the comedy works.



Being paid is great, to be sure. It's great knowing you can support the life to which you have become accustomed.

But do you actually like and respect the people you ultimately work for?
Do you admire their ethics?
Do you think your employeers are making the world a better place overall for their existence?

Or is it just about the paycheck?

I know we all have to do it, we have no choice, but isn't it terrible we have to waste our lives in such pointless labours?

The Forbidden Taboo of The Middle East

This has been a post I've been putting off a long time.
But it had to come one day.

The reason for my hesitancy in writing this are simple. It's a contentious subject. But sometimes contentious points need to be aired. Reading a post today by James Higham made me realise, sometimes things need to be said.

Here it is;
Israel is one of the conerstones of the Middle East problem.
I know both Lord Nazh and Jeremy Jacobs will disagree with me here, but we still see the whole situation through Pro Western eyes. And Israel, is a Western state, settled by Europeans. If the Hungarians count as Europeans, then Ashkenazi Jews must surely do so, for they lived in Europe almost as long. Ashkenazi Jews account for 80% of Israel's Jewish population.

Of course the Islamic world looks at Israel and finds our values hypocritical. It looks at our condemnation of white supremacy in South Africa and Rhodesia, and then sees similar concepts tolerated because those perpetrating it were the victims of white supremacists.

In 1917- When the overwhelming majority of the Holy Lands people were Arab Muslims- TE Lawrence led the arabs to revolt against their Turkish Masters in return for an Arab homeland. Including the Holy Land.
But The British government reneged.

The Zionists were promised this land, land they could say their ancestors lived in once.
Like all England was once Welsh land.

But then again, displacing non-European peoples to give land to Europeans was acceptable then.
Because that's it was.

Later in 1947, the UN was asked to arbitrate. It divided the Holy Land as shown below.



Orange shows the UN proposed Israel.
Yellow shows the UN proposed Palestine.

This is much more than the Palestinians have been allotted since, even under these 'generous' peace efforts. We think they're being over the top asking for sovereignty over the West Bank.

This is what the UN in 1947 thought was fair.

So who do we call the aggressors?
And does 1933-1945 mean that we must make ourselves hated by 800 million Muslims because we show ourselves unfair?

Two wrongs don't make a right.
But we judge Israel as if they do.

Monday is Polling Day

Well a lot of you voted in last week's Poll.
I did think it might be close, bearing in mind how traditional people were on the marriage issue.

But it was very conclusive.

22 of you voted to legalise.
9 of you voted against.

This week is all about appropriate ways to thank a great man for all he's done for us.



As you can probably imagine, I'm in a state of mourning.
How will we cope without him.

A void in our national life.

Anyway, on the right are a few ideas of how to best reward the man we have come to see as the father of our people.

Which does he truly deserve?

Have your say.