It is right and proper to use the values of our own time to assess someone in another time. That is natural, and it is also essential.
However we must ALSO try to understand the person in the context of their times.
It is right and proper to use the values of our own time to assess someone in another time. That is natural, and it is also essential.
If we did not do it how could we condemn our Celtic ancestors for head hunting? child sacrifice by Aztecs? Victorian values of slave blacks and women? the beating of children in the 50s?
However we must ALSO try to understand the person in the context of their times. Is their attitude to another class or race standard in their times? Then they are just normal at that time. the exceptional person who did challenge what we now see as injustice might be particularly honoured.
But the person who did not should not be condemned. They should simply be noted as passively part of their times, on that issue.
They might be admirable on other issues. Kipling had a very independent, intelligent response to Church narrowmindedness for example.
Let's accept that we do not live in a timeless zone. People should be judged by the standards of BOTH our time, and their own.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Friday, 13 November 2009
Cameron's Tory voluntary work
"On a more local level [Camron's policy] would publish booklets giving advice on how a local community could organise on behalf of itself, whether it is parents setting up schools or tenants forming more active associations."
I am not hostile to this, far from it. It would be grand.
But it would need far reaching changes to back it up.
At present people are working far too long hours, are heavily stressed by unjust and corrupt companies and councils. Bullying is epidemic and so is its twin, depression.
If not working long hours people are being cut adrift into the hopelessness and lethargy of unemployment as jobs are cut, debts cannot be serviced, bailiffs become brigands, repossession stalks the land.
I know from bitter experience that organising volunteers in today's climate is almost impossible. People are too exhausted, time starved, depressed and despairing.
More factors need addressing.
Women, who were always traditionally the backbone of the voluntary sector have been pressed into far more paid employment than they actually want. That's the property bubble. It's not going to get better soon as legacy debts still have to be serviced.
In fact a large part of voluntary work lack, desert estates, feral young, is lack of mothering.
People, both women and men, have been de-educated out of working in groups. In trying to run groups I've found it almost impossible over the last decade compared to the previous two decades. People have little or no idea how to put a group beyond individual "complaint." That has been steered so that action groups don't form, and problems are reduced to (weak) individual complaints.
Finally the restrictions on voluntary work by the unemployed are destructive especially in a period of high unemployment. The more voluntary work the better but the huge army of the unemployed is actually prevented from maintaining their morale and contributing to society.
I can't see why the puritanical powers that be couldn't allow a long term unemployed person to stay on benefits given proof of satisfactory voluntary work. It's contributing after all and at a cheap cost.
Anyway reviving and expanding the voluntary sector is going to take a LOT more than encouraging leaflets, and funding. Ken Livingstone and the GLC did just that but those were very different times without the exhaustion and despair, with a pool of women available, and a strong cooperative group ethos available.
Looking at Red Ken's early projects in the GLC would help Cameron a lot. One important lack in that period was long term advice to projects in how to use their funding. Some schemes were simply unrealistic, embarrassingly so. Too many used it to create jobs that when the tap turned off, collapsed the whole project because it had become dependent on those paid workers. Funds need to be used instead, to recruit and coordinate volunteers, to find and renovate cheap ramshackle properties etc that will serve the project even if politics whips away the funds.
It's going to need a lot more than leaflets and funding.
I am not hostile to this, far from it. It would be grand.
But it would need far reaching changes to back it up.
At present people are working far too long hours, are heavily stressed by unjust and corrupt companies and councils. Bullying is epidemic and so is its twin, depression.
If not working long hours people are being cut adrift into the hopelessness and lethargy of unemployment as jobs are cut, debts cannot be serviced, bailiffs become brigands, repossession stalks the land.
I know from bitter experience that organising volunteers in today's climate is almost impossible. People are too exhausted, time starved, depressed and despairing.
More factors need addressing.
Women, who were always traditionally the backbone of the voluntary sector have been pressed into far more paid employment than they actually want. That's the property bubble. It's not going to get better soon as legacy debts still have to be serviced.
In fact a large part of voluntary work lack, desert estates, feral young, is lack of mothering.
People, both women and men, have been de-educated out of working in groups. In trying to run groups I've found it almost impossible over the last decade compared to the previous two decades. People have little or no idea how to put a group beyond individual "complaint." That has been steered so that action groups don't form, and problems are reduced to (weak) individual complaints.
Finally the restrictions on voluntary work by the unemployed are destructive especially in a period of high unemployment. The more voluntary work the better but the huge army of the unemployed is actually prevented from maintaining their morale and contributing to society.
I can't see why the puritanical powers that be couldn't allow a long term unemployed person to stay on benefits given proof of satisfactory voluntary work. It's contributing after all and at a cheap cost.
Anyway reviving and expanding the voluntary sector is going to take a LOT more than encouraging leaflets, and funding. Ken Livingstone and the GLC did just that but those were very different times without the exhaustion and despair, with a pool of women available, and a strong cooperative group ethos available.
Looking at Red Ken's early projects in the GLC would help Cameron a lot. One important lack in that period was long term advice to projects in how to use their funding. Some schemes were simply unrealistic, embarrassingly so. Too many used it to create jobs that when the tap turned off, collapsed the whole project because it had become dependent on those paid workers. Funds need to be used instead, to recruit and coordinate volunteers, to find and renovate cheap ramshackle properties etc that will serve the project even if politics whips away the funds.
It's going to need a lot more than leaflets and funding.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Barefooting
I have been a barefooter all my life - I'm 60 now.
My mother, now 86 was also one and her mother and brother too. I can tell you that my mama has always been exquisitely elegant in Paris type clothes, perfect make up - and gorgeous toe rings and ankle chains.
The family tradition continues with my huge 18yrs son who has never worn shoes for more than a couple of hours very occasionally for a high formal event like a funeral.
Sigh. We got the constant stupid ignorant question "Can't you afford shoes?" This goes back to the snobbery of the early 20thC when only the well off could afford shoes every day.
Barefooting is not unhealthy, dirty or unsafe.
Read about it and make up your own mind.
Barefooting is not unhealthy, dirty or unsafe.
In fact it's far healthier than wearing shoes which cramp and distort feet creating all kinds of health problems including bad backs.
My son was always far better balanced, better at climbing, and even calmer than other kids in shoes. Shoes HURT when you're not used to them which applies to all small kids.
I watched my son climb Cheddar Gorge around 60ft up - at 8yrs. Perfectly safe, he was like a tough little ape. It's also stood him well for martial arts where he's a demon fighter mostly due to strong sure balance.
Barefooting not dirty. Skin does not make dirt stick like dead skin (leather) or plastics do. The dirt drops off much quicker as you walk into a building so when oters are still tracking it in, you're not.
Bare feet don't get put on tables! or anywhere offensive any more than shoes are.
As for the common question on stepping in muck well you don't. Within weeks you learn to scan without being aware you're doing it. You step in it far less than shoe wearers who tend to be careless where they put their feet.
Bare feet don't SMELL! Sweat doesn't build up, soak into sock or shoe and go stale. It instantly ventilates and the foot stays dry. (This is an important issue for teenage males.)
Barefooting is safe. The skin on the sole rapidly toughens - it takes around 4 - 6 weeks. In fact it becomes tougher than many shoes. In summer when I barefoot more I don't even think about glass, splinters. I can just walk on 'em! and they drop away.
I did wash my son's feet when small in salt water every few nights just in case of tiny cuts but I was probably being overprotective.
Regarding chemicals etc there is very little protection from flip flops either. Liquid splashes in between the sole of sandal and sole of foot.
So most bio- or mineral-hazards are fenced off places, if serious, and only closed in shoes or boots are adequate. same as a building site or science lab.
There ARE a few hazards. Don't walk barefoot at night in the park because of rusty metal sharps, and dirty needles, for which ditto city centres. Don't walk barefoot in tropical countries because of parasites that lie in the earth there.
Otherwise FREE THE FEET!
While getting used to it, do it for longer and longer periods, like breaking in new shoes. Wash in salt water till the skin hardens. Expect to take around 4 - 6 weeks to learn to automatically scan the ground for yuck without noticing you're doing it.
Enjoy the massive sensuality of it. Ground textures are amazingly varied. The strength in bare feet travels up the spine so it's good for posture. Release those poor battered toes from potential bunions and corns, ingrown toenails. Gain a beautiful sense of balance as you move about.
If nothing else do give up shoes indoors. It saves your carpets or flooring because it's so much cleaner than tracking dirt in on shoes: and you get a lot of the benefits from part of each day barefooting.
Shoe manufacturers make a FORTUNE out of the damage you're doing your feet.
Free the feet - or choose not to barefoot.
But at least now you know a bit about it so you won't say (or think) incredibly stupid ignorant things about it.
Link - stunning pic of girl barefooting in snow!
Link Society for Barefoot Living
My mother, now 86 was also one and her mother and brother too. I can tell you that my mama has always been exquisitely elegant in Paris type clothes, perfect make up - and gorgeous toe rings and ankle chains.
The family tradition continues with my huge 18yrs son who has never worn shoes for more than a couple of hours very occasionally for a high formal event like a funeral.
Sigh. We got the constant stupid ignorant question "Can't you afford shoes?" This goes back to the snobbery of the early 20thC when only the well off could afford shoes every day.
Barefooting is not unhealthy, dirty or unsafe.
Read about it and make up your own mind.
Barefooting is not unhealthy, dirty or unsafe.
In fact it's far healthier than wearing shoes which cramp and distort feet creating all kinds of health problems including bad backs.
My son was always far better balanced, better at climbing, and even calmer than other kids in shoes. Shoes HURT when you're not used to them which applies to all small kids.
I watched my son climb Cheddar Gorge around 60ft up - at 8yrs. Perfectly safe, he was like a tough little ape. It's also stood him well for martial arts where he's a demon fighter mostly due to strong sure balance.
Barefooting not dirty. Skin does not make dirt stick like dead skin (leather) or plastics do. The dirt drops off much quicker as you walk into a building so when oters are still tracking it in, you're not.
Bare feet don't get put on tables! or anywhere offensive any more than shoes are.
As for the common question on stepping in muck well you don't. Within weeks you learn to scan without being aware you're doing it. You step in it far less than shoe wearers who tend to be careless where they put their feet.
Bare feet don't SMELL! Sweat doesn't build up, soak into sock or shoe and go stale. It instantly ventilates and the foot stays dry. (This is an important issue for teenage males.)
Barefooting is safe. The skin on the sole rapidly toughens - it takes around 4 - 6 weeks. In fact it becomes tougher than many shoes. In summer when I barefoot more I don't even think about glass, splinters. I can just walk on 'em! and they drop away.
I did wash my son's feet when small in salt water every few nights just in case of tiny cuts but I was probably being overprotective.
Regarding chemicals etc there is very little protection from flip flops either. Liquid splashes in between the sole of sandal and sole of foot.
So most bio- or mineral-hazards are fenced off places, if serious, and only closed in shoes or boots are adequate. same as a building site or science lab.
There ARE a few hazards. Don't walk barefoot at night in the park because of rusty metal sharps, and dirty needles, for which ditto city centres. Don't walk barefoot in tropical countries because of parasites that lie in the earth there.
Otherwise FREE THE FEET!
While getting used to it, do it for longer and longer periods, like breaking in new shoes. Wash in salt water till the skin hardens. Expect to take around 4 - 6 weeks to learn to automatically scan the ground for yuck without noticing you're doing it.
Enjoy the massive sensuality of it. Ground textures are amazingly varied. The strength in bare feet travels up the spine so it's good for posture. Release those poor battered toes from potential bunions and corns, ingrown toenails. Gain a beautiful sense of balance as you move about.
If nothing else do give up shoes indoors. It saves your carpets or flooring because it's so much cleaner than tracking dirt in on shoes: and you get a lot of the benefits from part of each day barefooting.
Shoe manufacturers make a FORTUNE out of the damage you're doing your feet.
Free the feet - or choose not to barefoot.
But at least now you know a bit about it so you won't say (or think) incredibly stupid ignorant things about it.
Link - stunning pic of girl barefooting in snow!
Link Society for Barefoot Living
Friday, 2 October 2009
Ardi our Grandmother
Ardi has emerged as the much older ancestress than Lucy of Africa.
See here.
I don't understand why (some) Christians can't hold their beliefs alongside the theory of evolution.
Nor do I see why evolution excludes the Goddess (and/or God if you prefer.)
Evolution is a theory. It's not fact. It's not "true."
It IS a good theory that holds up pretty well matching the facts we know.
It does however have some problems but then no theory is perfect.
Any theory shatters in contact with realities - they are so complex.
Goddess or God is not a matter of logic. She is a deep meaning in our lives. She is great and powerful enough to BE the force of evolution. No problem.
It's sad (to me) if people can't feel that deep meaning. Being a tiny pointless scrap of a machine universe os horrible and it certainly doesn't match my experience. The Goddess finds it a big joke!
Our latest ancestor looks beautiful. Blessed be.
[No further text ignore link to read more]
See here.
I don't understand why (some) Christians can't hold their beliefs alongside the theory of evolution.
Nor do I see why evolution excludes the Goddess (and/or God if you prefer.)
Evolution is a theory. It's not fact. It's not "true."
It IS a good theory that holds up pretty well matching the facts we know.
It does however have some problems but then no theory is perfect.
Any theory shatters in contact with realities - they are so complex.
Goddess or God is not a matter of logic. She is a deep meaning in our lives. She is great and powerful enough to BE the force of evolution. No problem.
It's sad (to me) if people can't feel that deep meaning. Being a tiny pointless scrap of a machine universe os horrible and it certainly doesn't match my experience. The Goddess finds it a big joke!
Our latest ancestor looks beautiful. Blessed be.
[No further text ignore link to read more]
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Anne, the Most Happy
No post for a while because I've been setting up "Pagan Britain" email community.
Also lots of Y Mabinogi reading: "Rhiannon" by Gruffydd arrived from the library, and "Celts and Aryans." Oh and a busy day getting Tal enrolled at college.
ANNE BOLEYN
Thoroughly enjoying the Anne Boleyn Files - one of my greatest heroines together with her daughter Bess. I hate it that Anne is usually shown as a sexy vamp, ignoring her fine mind, especially her significant religious influence, and her acute political acumen.
I am surprised though that Claire on the Anne Boleyn Files doesn't explore the overriding issue of Anne's maternity. It deserves a blog section on its own Claire. I will outline the plot here, including the staggering effect this issue had on Britain's future! and the sexual politics that contributed to Anne's downfall.
I agree with Claire that Henry wanted the impossible. He wanted the independent intellectual Anne: he absolutely adored her ability to companion his mind and soul as well as his body. But, once they MARRIED she was his WIFE and QUEEN.
This was a relatively impersonal role to play. Anne herself was not bred to be a royal wife, and she failed to adapt from high hearted mistress, to dignified queen.
It is worth noting that Anne and Henry are by no means unusual. Through the ages men with a bit going for them have yearned after the independent woman. But once won, the story shifts abruptly especially if she submits to marriage. Suddenly she is a WIFE, and she is judged very differently. What is MINE should be reassuring, supportive, not unsettling and challenging.
Many an independent couple has fallen foul of this stereotype I think.
But more than any other reason, more than making an enmity of Cromwell, more than opening up a precedent for other ambitious women (or their families) was Anne's maternity. She did not bear a living son, any more than Katherine had before her. Both women were rejected for this, although both had been greatly loved and honoured for a time.
I believe that if Anne had borne a son she could pretty easily have seen Cromwell off and other aspirant women too. Henry would have adored her not anly as his fiery companion of heart and soul and mind, but as his Madonna, Mother of the Royal Prince. This was the crux of her power, her magic, more than any other source.
Anne DID conceive a son. By birthing Elizabeth she disappointed Henry but he rallied and "forgave" her. He still came to her bed and she conceived again, this time a son. Of course they did not know that for certain, but she would have strongly assured the King of it.
What went wrong was one of those strange, almost eerie turning points of history. Henry was a strong virile man of 44. On 24 January 1536 he had a fall during a joust. He was unconscious and carried into the palace. Seeing him as if dead, and told he would die, Anne reacted with deep shock. She miscarried their boy child.
Had Henry not fallen as he did, Anne was likely to have had a healthy boy, for she had borne a healthy child before.
The tragic incident also changed Henry forever. From being active and manly he was forced to live as a semi-invalid for the rest of his life. Any active older man finds this tough, but this was a man used to getting his own way, a powerful King. His body was broken, a failure – and so was hers.
He became increasingly tyrannical, partly to demonstrate his power still, but quite possibly because he had suffered a brain injury in the fall.
This was no longer the tender lover, the jovial friend, Anne and others had known. Henry became spiteful, a petty bully, and unlovable. A proud woman such as Anne would have found him hard to bear in his unpredictable rages and self pity.
Whether or not his brain was damaged, and this does seem likely, we do know that Henry lived with a wound in his leg that would not heal, and caused him frequent pain. A persistent hurt that will not improve drains energy and optimism; and this pampered prince had little experience of coping with lengthy or permanent physical limitation.
Anne had loss to bear, but a miscarriage for her was not the end of the world - for her on her own. She could look to try again. But the king was older, and he had gone through all this before with Catherine, dead baby after dead baby after dead baby over two decades.
For Henry his tragedy in 1536 was immense. He had lost his manhood in two huge ways.
His baby son gone, the hope of England reduced to a bloody flux. We know he was a tender father to all his children, so this was not only his fear and loss as a sovereign. No doubt he felt the death of the little boy too. But more than anything he had failed his dynasty, failed his colossal father, the shrewd conqueror Henry VII.
It was still part of being a sacred king that he should be "fit", whole, healthy and fertile. Henry was none of that now. In ancient times he would have been sacrificed, or forced into exile for a king must be a perfect specimen.
Possibly Henry was always at heart insecure. Brought up as the younger indulged brother to Arthur the serious Prince groomed to rule, Henry had not expected, nor been expected, to become a King. His childhood was to be treated as less important, a playboy.
Brother Arthur’s death as a young man thrust Henry unprepared into the direct royal lineage. Significantly he was the one who insisted on being Your Majesty, to reinforce on his grandeur. His great father had never needed that. But now His Majesty was failing – yet again – at this most sensitive and intimate task: to provide a son for his realm. What the meanest peasant or potboy could do, he could not. (He had had illegitimate sons, but that meant little.)
Secondly his own personal strength had gone too. His world had closed down, shrunk to an indoor, limited, observer life, seeing other men hunting and jousting and dancing - the things he had so loved and so excelled. To sit about, to hobble with a stick, when once he leaped ran and rode - this was bitterly cruel. He did not help himself by overeating for comfort, becoming bulky, putting yet more strain on his leg. Henry did not face old age gracefully.
His double loss, with the horror and frustration of long years behind him with Catherine's many dead babies, the prospect of yet more of the same misery with Anne, plus the agony of his unhealed leg wound, pain in his head, and raging emotions out of control; Henry was in a bad way. Certainly he was in no state to rise up smiling, comfort his Lady Anne, bounce into bed and try again. Her comparative youth and health would also be hard to bear as a contrast to his weakness.
In the grip of great loss, depression and fear, many people even today consider whether they are “cursed”, jinxed, dogged with “bad luck.” It is so much easier to think that some outside target for our pain and anger is to blame, instead of a huge daunting complex of events we cannot control.
If we are cursed then we can get the curse lifted, and regain control. But to solve a complex situation of misfortune requires long gruelling effort and courage to work through. Even then there is no guarantee of success.
No wonder the market for protection magic, removing curses, is as brisk as it ever was. Henry did not live in an age of science with technology all about him as its result. That age was just beginning, still on a shaky basis. He was surrounded by priests, prayers – and he lived with suppressed fear that his great rebellion against the Pope had set off divine retribution. The God of the Bible had after all always targeted sons: Abraham's Isaac, the Egyptians' first born, and his own Jesus. Henry had good reason to fear the hand of God.
But in his extremity there was a way out. The priesthood was clear that the cause of sin was always female. Had he not been tempted just as Adam had been tempted? By a beautiful women who had spoken to him of freedom, and offered it to him with her body?
Hurt, grieving, afraid, desperate for escape, the King had a sweet young girl placed upon his knee. Quiet Jane, who did not argue, who was so young, so gently healthy, so suited to motherhood.
Once a lover turns against his love, his hatred can be as intense, as deep as his love once was. It can be aggravated by the haunting of former times. Henry knew he was still vulnerable to Anne so he refused to see her, in case she reached his heart again. She had to die to cleanse him of his curse.
If Henry had not fallen, if Anne had borne her boy and he lived, there would have been no Bloody Mary, and no Elizabeth. There would have been a glorious Edwardian Age perhaps, and a very different history with no Stuart kings, no German Georges.
Perhaps there would have been no witch craze for one thing. The fear of a powerful woman might not have been invoked by a king's pained nightmare about Anne, his determined Queen and Great Whore. Nor would her mighty daughter have killed Mary Stuart, and left her son the Stuart king motherless, in terror of strong women. A world without the Malleus Maleficarum would nave been better off.
Also lots of Y Mabinogi reading: "Rhiannon" by Gruffydd arrived from the library, and "Celts and Aryans." Oh and a busy day getting Tal enrolled at college.
ANNE BOLEYN
Thoroughly enjoying the Anne Boleyn Files - one of my greatest heroines together with her daughter Bess. I hate it that Anne is usually shown as a sexy vamp, ignoring her fine mind, especially her significant religious influence, and her acute political acumen.
I am surprised though that Claire on the Anne Boleyn Files doesn't explore the overriding issue of Anne's maternity. It deserves a blog section on its own Claire. I will outline the plot here, including the staggering effect this issue had on Britain's future! and the sexual politics that contributed to Anne's downfall.
I agree with Claire that Henry wanted the impossible. He wanted the independent intellectual Anne: he absolutely adored her ability to companion his mind and soul as well as his body. But, once they MARRIED she was his WIFE and QUEEN.
This was a relatively impersonal role to play. Anne herself was not bred to be a royal wife, and she failed to adapt from high hearted mistress, to dignified queen.
It is worth noting that Anne and Henry are by no means unusual. Through the ages men with a bit going for them have yearned after the independent woman. But once won, the story shifts abruptly especially if she submits to marriage. Suddenly she is a WIFE, and she is judged very differently. What is MINE should be reassuring, supportive, not unsettling and challenging.
Many an independent couple has fallen foul of this stereotype I think.
But more than any other reason, more than making an enmity of Cromwell, more than opening up a precedent for other ambitious women (or their families) was Anne's maternity. She did not bear a living son, any more than Katherine had before her. Both women were rejected for this, although both had been greatly loved and honoured for a time.
I believe that if Anne had borne a son she could pretty easily have seen Cromwell off and other aspirant women too. Henry would have adored her not anly as his fiery companion of heart and soul and mind, but as his Madonna, Mother of the Royal Prince. This was the crux of her power, her magic, more than any other source.
Anne DID conceive a son. By birthing Elizabeth she disappointed Henry but he rallied and "forgave" her. He still came to her bed and she conceived again, this time a son. Of course they did not know that for certain, but she would have strongly assured the King of it.
What went wrong was one of those strange, almost eerie turning points of history. Henry was a strong virile man of 44. On 24 January 1536 he had a fall during a joust. He was unconscious and carried into the palace. Seeing him as if dead, and told he would die, Anne reacted with deep shock. She miscarried their boy child.
Had Henry not fallen as he did, Anne was likely to have had a healthy boy, for she had borne a healthy child before.
The tragic incident also changed Henry forever. From being active and manly he was forced to live as a semi-invalid for the rest of his life. Any active older man finds this tough, but this was a man used to getting his own way, a powerful King. His body was broken, a failure – and so was hers.
He became increasingly tyrannical, partly to demonstrate his power still, but quite possibly because he had suffered a brain injury in the fall.
This was no longer the tender lover, the jovial friend, Anne and others had known. Henry became spiteful, a petty bully, and unlovable. A proud woman such as Anne would have found him hard to bear in his unpredictable rages and self pity.
Whether or not his brain was damaged, and this does seem likely, we do know that Henry lived with a wound in his leg that would not heal, and caused him frequent pain. A persistent hurt that will not improve drains energy and optimism; and this pampered prince had little experience of coping with lengthy or permanent physical limitation.
Anne had loss to bear, but a miscarriage for her was not the end of the world - for her on her own. She could look to try again. But the king was older, and he had gone through all this before with Catherine, dead baby after dead baby after dead baby over two decades.
For Henry his tragedy in 1536 was immense. He had lost his manhood in two huge ways.
His baby son gone, the hope of England reduced to a bloody flux. We know he was a tender father to all his children, so this was not only his fear and loss as a sovereign. No doubt he felt the death of the little boy too. But more than anything he had failed his dynasty, failed his colossal father, the shrewd conqueror Henry VII.
It was still part of being a sacred king that he should be "fit", whole, healthy and fertile. Henry was none of that now. In ancient times he would have been sacrificed, or forced into exile for a king must be a perfect specimen.
Possibly Henry was always at heart insecure. Brought up as the younger indulged brother to Arthur the serious Prince groomed to rule, Henry had not expected, nor been expected, to become a King. His childhood was to be treated as less important, a playboy.
Brother Arthur’s death as a young man thrust Henry unprepared into the direct royal lineage. Significantly he was the one who insisted on being Your Majesty, to reinforce on his grandeur. His great father had never needed that. But now His Majesty was failing – yet again – at this most sensitive and intimate task: to provide a son for his realm. What the meanest peasant or potboy could do, he could not. (He had had illegitimate sons, but that meant little.)
Secondly his own personal strength had gone too. His world had closed down, shrunk to an indoor, limited, observer life, seeing other men hunting and jousting and dancing - the things he had so loved and so excelled. To sit about, to hobble with a stick, when once he leaped ran and rode - this was bitterly cruel. He did not help himself by overeating for comfort, becoming bulky, putting yet more strain on his leg. Henry did not face old age gracefully.
His double loss, with the horror and frustration of long years behind him with Catherine's many dead babies, the prospect of yet more of the same misery with Anne, plus the agony of his unhealed leg wound, pain in his head, and raging emotions out of control; Henry was in a bad way. Certainly he was in no state to rise up smiling, comfort his Lady Anne, bounce into bed and try again. Her comparative youth and health would also be hard to bear as a contrast to his weakness.
In the grip of great loss, depression and fear, many people even today consider whether they are “cursed”, jinxed, dogged with “bad luck.” It is so much easier to think that some outside target for our pain and anger is to blame, instead of a huge daunting complex of events we cannot control.
If we are cursed then we can get the curse lifted, and regain control. But to solve a complex situation of misfortune requires long gruelling effort and courage to work through. Even then there is no guarantee of success.
No wonder the market for protection magic, removing curses, is as brisk as it ever was. Henry did not live in an age of science with technology all about him as its result. That age was just beginning, still on a shaky basis. He was surrounded by priests, prayers – and he lived with suppressed fear that his great rebellion against the Pope had set off divine retribution. The God of the Bible had after all always targeted sons: Abraham's Isaac, the Egyptians' first born, and his own Jesus. Henry had good reason to fear the hand of God.
But in his extremity there was a way out. The priesthood was clear that the cause of sin was always female. Had he not been tempted just as Adam had been tempted? By a beautiful women who had spoken to him of freedom, and offered it to him with her body?
Hurt, grieving, afraid, desperate for escape, the King had a sweet young girl placed upon his knee. Quiet Jane, who did not argue, who was so young, so gently healthy, so suited to motherhood.
Once a lover turns against his love, his hatred can be as intense, as deep as his love once was. It can be aggravated by the haunting of former times. Henry knew he was still vulnerable to Anne so he refused to see her, in case she reached his heart again. She had to die to cleanse him of his curse.
If Henry had not fallen, if Anne had borne her boy and he lived, there would have been no Bloody Mary, and no Elizabeth. There would have been a glorious Edwardian Age perhaps, and a very different history with no Stuart kings, no German Georges.
Perhaps there would have been no witch craze for one thing. The fear of a powerful woman might not have been invoked by a king's pained nightmare about Anne, his determined Queen and Great Whore. Nor would her mighty daughter have killed Mary Stuart, and left her son the Stuart king motherless, in terror of strong women. A world without the Malleus Maleficarum would nave been better off.
Saturday, 15 August 2009
Trading eggs
From the Daily Mail today:
Egg donation can mean "ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome as a result. She is now in early menopause and infertile herself. Not only that, she is unable to walk and in a wheelchair."
Since the medical risks to the donor are so high, she should be compensated for taking the risk.
£10 - £12,000 sounds quite low to me.
Perhaps the prejudice here is that women are buying and selling motherhood, that great sacred cow. Don't get me wrong, I venerate mothering too! But our strong feelings block us thinking sensibly about it.
Also there is a cruelly sentimental idea that WOMEN should do helpful things for nothing, or offer their bodies for nothing.
Unless we abolish the rich and the poor, then richer people will buy physical services from poorer people. That can be cooking, cleaning, massage, prostitution, wet-nursing, organ donation and egg donation.
[Ignore Read more link - this is the full post.]
Egg donation can mean "ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome as a result. She is now in early menopause and infertile herself. Not only that, she is unable to walk and in a wheelchair."
Since the medical risks to the donor are so high, she should be compensated for taking the risk.
£10 - £12,000 sounds quite low to me.
Perhaps the prejudice here is that women are buying and selling motherhood, that great sacred cow. Don't get me wrong, I venerate mothering too! But our strong feelings block us thinking sensibly about it.
Also there is a cruelly sentimental idea that WOMEN should do helpful things for nothing, or offer their bodies for nothing.
Unless we abolish the rich and the poor, then richer people will buy physical services from poorer people. That can be cooking, cleaning, massage, prostitution, wet-nursing, organ donation and egg donation.
[Ignore Read more link - this is the full post.]
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Welfare scroungers
The indignation of those who want welfare mothers' money cut off, or their unnecessary children aborted, are understandable. They are also deeply ignorant of what social welfare is for. I say that without disrespect: few do know this.
Welfare is certainly in part idealistic, to ensure people and particularly children, do not starve, and do not die for lack of warmth and shelter. That is what would happen to these children if we did not pay welfare for them. It's not the feckless mother who matters, but the innocent child.
That's the idealistic part. The cold hard cash part, the much stronger reason for welfare is to consider what happens without it? Crime and riots.
You think crime is bad now? Look at history where no one could walk anywhere alone.
The middle and upper classes carried swordsticks as a matter of course; the lower clawss carried knives.
Trees had to be cut back 10ft from a road by law so robbers could not hide in them. Think of that when you pop over to visit the parents on Sundays. Travellers always went in groups for safety.
Dead bodies had to be removed daily from the gutters which had frozen to death in the night, or starved. Death by starvation is long drawn out and painful by the way.
To survive such harsh conditions the poor put their children to work at 5 or 7 years. Little kids doing dangerous dirty work. One big option was prostitution naturally.
But a lot of that didn't matter because the rich, the bankers of those days, still made their money. What really annoyed them was the damage to property if the poor rioted. Unfortunately that could mean warehouses, offices, even wealthy homes being burned down.
Another thing that made welfare attractive ws that dirty starving people get diseased, and many infectious diseases are stupidly unaware of clss differences. The beggar on the street could infect the respectable who came near them. Oh dear.
So welfare was developed to keep the poorest in moderate comfort so they wouldn't in desperation riot, burn, and otherwise damage the all important property. That welfare gradually led to a reduction in violent crime was also a positive as knifing did affect the middles and uppers, sadly. But it did work because ordinary people were able to stop carrying weapons everywhere.
If the recipients of welfare lie about stoned or drunk, so much the better. Addled heads don't organise riots and are ineffective at serious crime. There's burglary and mugging yes bit that really only affects the less well off who can't afford gated estates, chauffeurs and bodyguards. Poor things life is tough.
Given this kind of rational agenda, kieeping the very poor in a state of uneducated stupidity, drunk, drugged, messy, incapable, is all much better than having them out and about, starving and desperate causing trouble for their betters.
Baby P still might have survived this benevolent welfare state. Only the Social Workers were too busy tapping keyboards updating their reports for ContactPoint. This is a project which is now admitted to be a colossal failure. 80% of Social Workers' time was spent on feeding its machines. Not much time for looking after little boys.
Of course Social Workers are a dim lot, the dregs of the professions. Anyone who can get a real professional job wouldn't apply. But for badly educated products of state schools with few qualifications it's a well paid niche.
Once it was a not bad profession but it has gone down so badly the good older staff left years ago leaving young inexperienced (mostly) women who haven't had children and have no idea what good parenting is.
But oh how exciting to be able to bustle into people's lives, ask them lots of personal questions and write grown up reports about it! That this is done on the idea of "helping" is positively orgasmic though there is little understanding that helping = interference.
Most genuine families in need would benefit from a sensible home help to do some housework, get shopping, and teach how to do these things together with basic child discipline. Clipboards, meetings and reports are not what is required. But rolled up sleeves and washing up is a bit, well, shabby compared to toting a briefcase to meetings.
ContactPoint which drained what little intelligence and energy Social Workers had, was established following the Laming Report (after Victoria Climbie died of hunger and abuse in the bath). It's now being discontinued I believe hacving cost us billions of public money.
The word was at the time that Victoria really died because the SWs didn't want to visit her as her auhnt was scary and aggressive. So much nicer to visit nice families, who were cowed and polite, for a nice cup of tea. While Victoria died.
No doubt something similar happened to Peter, SWs eagerly investigating nice pleasant healthy families wrecking their lives with the spectre of the child stealers. While Peter died.
All right, if you still want to stop the Underclass from breeding because welfare is admittedly getting a bit expensive - about the same as spend on the military both are to protect us from violence. So let's look at how to stop ladies like Peter's mother from breeding.
Some suggest cutting benefits on the 3rd child. But that would still create a brood of 3 useless mouths and a useless mother.
So why not stop benefits after the first child?
That would cut the numbers of the Underclass in half in a generation. Neat.
All right what do we do when she has the 2nd child? Let her manage on the same money? Of course the children (both) would suffer but then they do anyway fed on junk food, TV and violence.
So perhaps we take away the second child so a deserving family can adopt it. Pretty soon we'd have shortage of adopting parents.
Never mind, China shows the way. Pregnant women are not difficult to control and can be easily taken to hospital and aborted. A little upsetting yes but so much better for everyone. Might as sterilise at the same time, so much more efficient.
Of course there will be quite a few cases of error where mothers making serious attempts to work are aborted and sterilised forcibly. But sacrifices have to be made for a sane society to exist.
After a while it becomes much tidier to collect up such mothers/ families, and put them in big compounds. Give them labout to keep them out of mischief. Dormitory accommodation is a LOT cheaper than flats and houses and catering on a mass basis much cheaper too.
In fact they don't really need money, and clothes can be issued in a plain type. As they will begin to look quite grey and different to ordinary people their guards will be rather prone to bullying them but that'll act as a deterrent for others to stay out of the Underclass.
It's a problem that their cheap labour, and their older children doing "work experience" undercuts other slightly less poor people trying to earn a living. More people end up faqlling in to the compound way of life but hey they'll be in out of the way places where WE don't have to think about them.
As for their disabled children probably best to painlessly end their sad little lives. Why prolong their useless existences? Tidy them up for heravens sake.
Now the rest of us can get on with our respectable tidy lives. We'd earn quite low wages with free State labour being used alongside us.
We'd live in terror of losing that badly paid work because that would mean ending up in the Compounds, or as some call them, camps. With forced labour, disabled kids killed off neatly, our other children candidates for adoption by the rich. Some of the camp children could be sent to war which would mop up some of their numbers.
But hey sacrifices have to be made. It would at least be a sane, rational society. The banks would make their huge profits. MPs and company directors would make their money too.
Wonderful. Hitler would be delighted.
Welfare is certainly in part idealistic, to ensure people and particularly children, do not starve, and do not die for lack of warmth and shelter. That is what would happen to these children if we did not pay welfare for them. It's not the feckless mother who matters, but the innocent child.
That's the idealistic part. The cold hard cash part, the much stronger reason for welfare is to consider what happens without it? Crime and riots.
You think crime is bad now? Look at history where no one could walk anywhere alone.
The middle and upper classes carried swordsticks as a matter of course; the lower clawss carried knives.
Trees had to be cut back 10ft from a road by law so robbers could not hide in them. Think of that when you pop over to visit the parents on Sundays. Travellers always went in groups for safety.
Dead bodies had to be removed daily from the gutters which had frozen to death in the night, or starved. Death by starvation is long drawn out and painful by the way.
To survive such harsh conditions the poor put their children to work at 5 or 7 years. Little kids doing dangerous dirty work. One big option was prostitution naturally.
But a lot of that didn't matter because the rich, the bankers of those days, still made their money. What really annoyed them was the damage to property if the poor rioted. Unfortunately that could mean warehouses, offices, even wealthy homes being burned down.
Another thing that made welfare attractive ws that dirty starving people get diseased, and many infectious diseases are stupidly unaware of clss differences. The beggar on the street could infect the respectable who came near them. Oh dear.
So welfare was developed to keep the poorest in moderate comfort so they wouldn't in desperation riot, burn, and otherwise damage the all important property. That welfare gradually led to a reduction in violent crime was also a positive as knifing did affect the middles and uppers, sadly. But it did work because ordinary people were able to stop carrying weapons everywhere.
If the recipients of welfare lie about stoned or drunk, so much the better. Addled heads don't organise riots and are ineffective at serious crime. There's burglary and mugging yes bit that really only affects the less well off who can't afford gated estates, chauffeurs and bodyguards. Poor things life is tough.
Given this kind of rational agenda, kieeping the very poor in a state of uneducated stupidity, drunk, drugged, messy, incapable, is all much better than having them out and about, starving and desperate causing trouble for their betters.
Baby P still might have survived this benevolent welfare state. Only the Social Workers were too busy tapping keyboards updating their reports for ContactPoint. This is a project which is now admitted to be a colossal failure. 80% of Social Workers' time was spent on feeding its machines. Not much time for looking after little boys.
Of course Social Workers are a dim lot, the dregs of the professions. Anyone who can get a real professional job wouldn't apply. But for badly educated products of state schools with few qualifications it's a well paid niche.
Once it was a not bad profession but it has gone down so badly the good older staff left years ago leaving young inexperienced (mostly) women who haven't had children and have no idea what good parenting is.
But oh how exciting to be able to bustle into people's lives, ask them lots of personal questions and write grown up reports about it! That this is done on the idea of "helping" is positively orgasmic though there is little understanding that helping = interference.
Most genuine families in need would benefit from a sensible home help to do some housework, get shopping, and teach how to do these things together with basic child discipline. Clipboards, meetings and reports are not what is required. But rolled up sleeves and washing up is a bit, well, shabby compared to toting a briefcase to meetings.
ContactPoint which drained what little intelligence and energy Social Workers had, was established following the Laming Report (after Victoria Climbie died of hunger and abuse in the bath). It's now being discontinued I believe hacving cost us billions of public money.
The word was at the time that Victoria really died because the SWs didn't want to visit her as her auhnt was scary and aggressive. So much nicer to visit nice families, who were cowed and polite, for a nice cup of tea. While Victoria died.
No doubt something similar happened to Peter, SWs eagerly investigating nice pleasant healthy families wrecking their lives with the spectre of the child stealers. While Peter died.
All right, if you still want to stop the Underclass from breeding because welfare is admittedly getting a bit expensive - about the same as spend on the military both are to protect us from violence. So let's look at how to stop ladies like Peter's mother from breeding.
Some suggest cutting benefits on the 3rd child. But that would still create a brood of 3 useless mouths and a useless mother.
So why not stop benefits after the first child?
That would cut the numbers of the Underclass in half in a generation. Neat.
All right what do we do when she has the 2nd child? Let her manage on the same money? Of course the children (both) would suffer but then they do anyway fed on junk food, TV and violence.
So perhaps we take away the second child so a deserving family can adopt it. Pretty soon we'd have shortage of adopting parents.
Never mind, China shows the way. Pregnant women are not difficult to control and can be easily taken to hospital and aborted. A little upsetting yes but so much better for everyone. Might as sterilise at the same time, so much more efficient.
Of course there will be quite a few cases of error where mothers making serious attempts to work are aborted and sterilised forcibly. But sacrifices have to be made for a sane society to exist.
After a while it becomes much tidier to collect up such mothers/ families, and put them in big compounds. Give them labout to keep them out of mischief. Dormitory accommodation is a LOT cheaper than flats and houses and catering on a mass basis much cheaper too.
In fact they don't really need money, and clothes can be issued in a plain type. As they will begin to look quite grey and different to ordinary people their guards will be rather prone to bullying them but that'll act as a deterrent for others to stay out of the Underclass.
It's a problem that their cheap labour, and their older children doing "work experience" undercuts other slightly less poor people trying to earn a living. More people end up faqlling in to the compound way of life but hey they'll be in out of the way places where WE don't have to think about them.
As for their disabled children probably best to painlessly end their sad little lives. Why prolong their useless existences? Tidy them up for heravens sake.
Now the rest of us can get on with our respectable tidy lives. We'd earn quite low wages with free State labour being used alongside us.
We'd live in terror of losing that badly paid work because that would mean ending up in the Compounds, or as some call them, camps. With forced labour, disabled kids killed off neatly, our other children candidates for adoption by the rich. Some of the camp children could be sent to war which would mop up some of their numbers.
But hey sacrifices have to be made. It would at least be a sane, rational society. The banks would make their huge profits. MPs and company directors would make their money too.
Wonderful. Hitler would be delighted.
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