Aversion to gambling

Whilst far from unique, the depth of my aversion to gambling is unusual. It pains me to see people forfeiting their wages in the hope of winning a jackpot. I hate being told about next week's housekeeping money being fed into insatiable slot machines. I feel sickeningly upset when I hear about a student who, having spent their year's student loan at the local casino, then runs up thousands of pounds of debt in a futile attempt to assuage a gnawing hunger to gamble.

My aversion has multiple components:

1. I detest the anxiety involved when hoping to win (anything). There is already more than enough anxiety in my life, and adding to it would be perverse.Clearly, some people enjoy the frisson that is probably a key part of the experience for them, an enjoyment that maintains their behaviour.
2. I cannot bear the disappointment of losing money. For some people, it is losing that spurs them into further gambling in the hope of recovering their losses.
3. When I hear about someone losing money, I find it easy to imagine how I would feel were I to lose that money (sympathy rather than empathy)
4. I imagine the consequences of losing evey last penny, and being unable to afford to buy food, warmth, light. I lived on the bread line back in the 1980s, and feel a powerful urge to avoid a life of penury.
5. I imagine losing all my possessions: house, car, computer, smartphone, books, music, DVDs. These are things I have chosen carefully, and in which I have invested much of myself: they mean a lot to me.
6. I imagine losing the important relationships in my life. There is a desolate scene in The Full Monty in which the character who also plays Mr Chuckles loses his family.
7. I imagine the shame of having to admit to people that I have gambled everything away.
8. I imagine the fear of being caught up in the murky underworld of debt recovery. The scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, in which Tom and his mates are threatened by Barry "The Baptist" with mutilation and shame if they don't pay a gambling debt, is nauseatingly unsettling.

I feel ethically antagonistic to the idea of business turnover and profit deriving from people losing their money. Harsh though it may sound, I cannot but help think of these businesses as behaving parasitically. I am also aware that a proportion of gambling that takes place probably attracts the attention of organised crime (or is that just in the movies?), also parasitical, with which I wish to have no involvement, and have every desire to avoid funding.
A society that places emphasis on gambling is a society that peddles fantasies of escape from reality.
In contrast, I feel strongly drawn towards a work ethic that prizes working for a living, with a concomitant ethic that prizes working hard, for which one should be proportionately rewarded. I believe that I become more who I truly am through engagement in my work, and especially by working hard. Gambling is the antithesis of these ethical principles, and an implication of gambling is that work is for suckers.
As we have witnessed, with astronomical quantities of money disappearing from national economies as a result of the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the US, followed by the collapse of some commercial banks, followed by the near bankrpting of countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Iceland, how money is spent can have a very significant impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. When money is spent on the wrong things, in this case on speculation, governments fall, workers are thrown out of their jobs, pensioners lose their pensions, and the standard of living drops. Speculation of this kind is no different from gambling, except that vast numbers of innocent people are swept up in the subsequent destruction. I can't help but wonder what would happen to national economies were people to stop gambling and start businesses instead.

There is considered to be something glamourous about a casino When Ian Fleming's character James Bond walks into a casino, we are being told that he associates with very wealthy, champagne-sipping people who can afford to dress elegantly, and who wish to suggest they are so wealthy that they can afford to risk losing some of their wealth. The reality of casinos in Sunderland, UK, or I guess Las Vegas, Nevada, is perhaps rather more seedy. The gambler's hope (although not the only reason why they gamble) is to win money. Their msitake is to over-estimate the probability of winning. A casino is a business that understands the probabilities, the net effect of which is always to relieve people of their money, albeit perhaps over a period of time Were the opposite true, casinos as businesses could not exist. Regarding betting, the sleigtht of hand is slightly different: for bookmakers: to survive in business, the odds have to be weighted in favour of the business. Lottery's work slightly differently again, in which the prize money is dependent on total stakes, and the lottery company makes its money by retaiinng a proportion of the stakes.

I have never bought a lottery ticket, and even though they seem to be sold everywhere in the UK,  I do not know how to mark a lottery ticket. At the odds of 14,000,000 to 1 against winning, it seems incredible to me that people do buy lottery tickets - maybe it manifests the intensity of their desperation for a better life.. I have never visited a casino, and find it easy to imagine the range of negative feelings that I would probably experience were I to do so. I once went into a betting shop, simply because I did not know what they look like. I felt sorry for the people who spend so much of their lives in such places, for the one I visited was grim. Far from feeling tempted to place a bet, I felt soiled, and could not leave fast enough.

...to be continued...

Reform of the House of Lords

The first, and most obvious thing to admit is that reform of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK parliament, is not the highest of priorities for anyone much at present, with the exception of Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats. In these economically straitened times there are more pressing issues. Perhaps the constitutional issue of Scottish independence is more deserving of centre stage.
However, even though not pressing, the House of Lords does still require reformation, and if not now, then when? The chamber is populated mostly by 92 hereditary peers, 26 Lords Spiritual and a large number of political appointees. Many of the hereditary peers were cleared out some years ago by the Blair government..It would be very hard to assert that the 786 peers who currently make up the House of Lords are a representative sample of the UK population. A majority of the lords passed middle age quite a few summers ago. There are too few (181) women, too few black and Asian people, and too few people with disabilities. I am happy to support reform of the House of Lords.
The popular solution to the objection that the House is unrepresentative is to suggest that membership should be by popular election - either 80% or 100% of members being elected. However, I see little value in replicating the process of electing members of the House of Commons. Instead, my preference would be for an all-appointed House, made up of every facet of British life. So there would be representatives from:

1. trades unions (TUC)
2. the employer's federation (CBI)
3. BBC radio
4. commercial radio
5. BBC television 
6. commercial television
7. the film industry
8. the live music and recorded music industries
9. the theatre 
10. the visual arts
11. the Consumers' Association
12. the construction industry
13. the road transport industry
14. the rail industry 
15. the airline industry
16. the airports 
17. the sea ports
18. the coast guard
19. the police 
20. the fire and rescue service
21. the ambulance service
22. the British Army
23. the Royal Navy
24. the Royal Air Force
25. military intelligence
26. the Anglican Church 
27. the Roman Catholic Church (this might require a change in Canon Law)
28. the Greek Orthodox Church
29. the Methodist Church
30. Jehovah's Witnesseses
31. the Salvation Army
32. the Baptist Church
33. the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
34. the Unitarian Church
35. the Humanist Association
36. an Orthodox Jew
37. a Reformed Jew
38. a Sunni Muslim
39. a Shia Muslim
40. a Hindu
41. a Jain
42. a Buddhist
43. a pagan
44. every significant ethnic group in the country, including Roma people;
45. Russell Group universities
46. Million + universities
47. FE colleges
48. sixth form colleges 
49. secondary schools
50. primary schools
51. teachers' unions
52. headteachers
53. hospitals
54. the British Medical Association
55. nurses and midwives
56. dentists 
57. chiropodists;
58. social work
59. probation
60. prison service
61. the charitable sector
62. volunteer organisations
63. the National Trust
64. animal protection organisations
65. conservation organisations (such as CPRE)
66. political parties across the political spectrum, including the far right and far left
67. London
68. English Midlands
69. North East England
70. North West England
71. South East England
72. South West England
73. Southern England
    
74. Northern Ireland 
75. Highland Scotland
76. Lowland Scotland
77. Wales
78. the EU
79. the US
80. the BRIC countries
81. the Commonwealth
82. young people
83. pensioners

The purpose of this rainbow of representation would be to ensure that any significant legislation could be exposed to scrutiny by every group that has any kind of interest in it, and that the views expressed would receive a formal public platform. Whilst I have lobbied MPs (members of the House of Commons) on several occasions, I have never seen the point in contacting a member of the House of Lords. My proposal would mean that everyone in the country would have someone to contact about any legislative issue. I believe that such a House would command respect across the UK. However, the politicians in the House of Commons, when it comes to choosing how to reform the House of Lords, will, no doubt, simply plump for popular elections, as they always do, claiming that "it's more democratic". Does SMS text voting for one's preferred celebrity constitute high quality democracy? After the Second World War, Winston Churchill, hardly a bastion of socialist values, was instrumental in enhancing the quality of democracy in North Africa by promoting the creation of trades unions. Organisations (such as a trades union) give ordinary people a voice.
What would the reformed House be called? How about the House of Representatives?

Sunday thoughts

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland, said in a recent interview for BBC1's Sunday Politics in Scotland, that it is "immoral" how the less well-off had been made to "suffer" for the failings in the financial services sector.The cardinal's somewhat intemperate language would suggest that he considers issues in terms of the absolutes of good and bad, rather than in more nuanced shades and tones. He fails to recognise that the ethics of the current UK administration continue to remain validly self-consistent, best characterised by the phrase 'rich people looking after rich people'. I find myself in agreement with the cardinal's sentiment. In my ethical framework it is not okay that the welfare state is, in part, being dismantled. To add insult to injury, the abrading is happening in order to pay for the problems created by a sector that has no need for the welfare state. Let the banking and financial sector pay for its own mistakes. In my political analysis, the UK economy is far too dependent on the City of London-based financial sector. I should much rather the UK economy were based on skilled and high-tech manufacturing, but with an emphasis on reducing consumption. If there were economic austerity to be faced by ordinary people, let it be because the economy of the UK were being rebalanced away from financial services towards sustainable ways of living.

The same cardinal, who is well-known for speaking out on controversial issues, recently lambasted the UK government for wishing to provide a legal definition of marriage. The cardinal believes that only the Christian church ought to be allowed to define marriage. A major part of the problem is that the Roman Catholic church, amongst several, has a conservative and extremely outdated view of what constitutes an appropriate relationship, whereas the British public, along with populations across the economically developed world, have been rejecting en masse practices that belong (at best) to a different era. By seeking to bring up to date the concept and practices of marriage, the UK government is patently seeking to revive its popularity. Therefore, it seems to me, this is an issue of competence. I defend the assertion by the UK parliament of its right to determine issues that apply to people across the country. I also defend the right of the Roman Catholic church to determine its own attitude towards marriage.If the Roman Catholic church does not wish to embrace the practice of marrying same-sex couples, it does not seem necessary to force them to do so. Gay couples can choose to marry in a civil ceremony (and I'm not sure how this would differ from a civil partnership) or in a church of another denomination. I am certain that the Religious Society of Friends will be enthusiastic to hold gay weddings for Quakers.

It is looking increasingly likely that, in due course, the Anglican church will split in two over issues of sexuality. Gene Robinson's enthronement in a see of the Episcopal Church in the US exposed attitudes in the worldwide Anglican Church that appear indistinguishable from homophobia. In an effort to keep the Anglican communion in one piece, Archbishop Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Church, introduced a covenant to which each of the Anglican national churches was expected to sign up. However, the Church of England refused to sign it on the basis of its exclusion of gay clergy. It is far from clear to me why both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches are so willing to see themselves portrayed as irretrievably homophobic.Recently, the Catholic Education Society contact the Roman Catholic schools in the UK, inviting them to use in school assemblies material concerning the Roman Catholic church's objection to gay marriage, and urging the schools to encourage their pupils to sign an on-line petition against gay marriage. It is not hard to imagine the effect this may have on young people who feel uncertain or uneasy about their emergent sexuality.

The Church of England is feeling challenged about the likely reduction in the number of its bishops who sit by right in the House of Lords (the upper chamber of the UK parliament). That the bishops are present at all owes itself to the fact that the Church of England is the established church of England - despite the fact that the House of Lords scrutinises legislation that applies variously or severally to the four countries of the UK. On the face of it, this sounds like an excellent reason for removing all of the bishops from the House of Lords. However, I believe that there is a place for senior representatives of each of the major religions and Christian denominations, including the churches in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. As a scrutinising body, the work of the House of Lords would be enhanced by having the views of as many as possible of the constituent bodies that make up the complex organism that is the UK

John Hughes 1936 - 1992

Today is the twentieth anniversary of my father's death. I miss him. I am sad that he is not here with us. I am sad that we have not had the benefit of his presence these past twenty years. I am sad for him that he has missed the past twenty years: time with his family would have meant a lot to him; time listening to music, watching plays and movies, reading and writing; time out walking on the moors; time counselling his clients; time managing his house and garden; time he never had. He should now be a mere 76 years old, maybe getting a little frail, but still with the energy and spark to engage, to contend, to contest, to affirm, to support, to love. Much of his life was sad in one way or another: raised fatherless in wartime London; injured in Cyprus during compulsory military service; married far too young having got his teenage girlfriend pregnant; periods of unemployment; more mouths to feed and a wife who knew little financial discipline; long working hours in a hell-hole industrial town; redundancy; divorce; isolation. His health declined, made worse by tobacco and alcohol: he suffered a bout of hepatitis. He had the first of several heart attacks in the mid-1980s, the final heart attack being fatal. I am hugely thankful that he was able to find love with Anne, to remarry and move to Cornwall. Would that much more of his life had been of that ilk.

I write this, not to claim special knowledge, special understanding or a special relationship with him. Each of my siblings (full, half and step) have their own experiences of him. I think that he impacted positivley on the lives of many people with whom he came into contact, especially in Cornwall and Devon. Each will have their own memories of him. I write this as a kind of wayside shrine, twenty years along the road. Not being one for cut flowers, I would perhaps plant a flowering rose in his memory, and maybe a peppermint bush as well.

...

For a while you were, about which I feel grateful. You died, and are now no more: I feel an aching loss. Who you were touched the lives of many, and shaped the lives of some, of whom I am one. Who you were will not be forgotten.

Spring 2012 UK Budget - the last straw

I have cancelled my e-mails from the LibDems. I shall no longer deliver LibDem leaflets. This (by which I mean how the coalition govermnent has been behaving) is not merely different, it is in many respects the opposiite of what I voted for.

I confess: I voted for wealth redistribution, but from the likes of bankers with their generous salaries and eye-watering bonueses to families struggling to survive on minimum wage incomes or no income at all; not from poor people for whose meagre expenditure a 20% VAT on most goods is punitive; and from pensioners who are now being faced with a reduction in their tax allowance, to the richest peope whose top rate of income tax is being reduced from 50% to 45%, and who typically employ accountants in order to avoid paying tax.

I voted for public spending: on hospitals, nurseries, schools, colleges, universities, research and development, roads, railways, affordable housing.and a cleaner environment; not on futile wars overseas, or on a high prestige sports jamboree in London, or a high profile, high prestige, high cost, high speed railway line to carry rich people from their country homes in the Midlands to their fat-cat jobs in the City of London.

I voted for the proper funding of the National Health Service (NHS), and for a better system of care in the community for people with dementia / mental health issues. Instead, the Coalition government has set up mechanisms for privatising the NHS, and planned to create meaningless competition where there need be none.

I voted for access to higher education unfettered by tution fees. Instead, many universities will be charging tuition fees of GBP 9,000 p.a., so that students will leave university up to GBP 30,000 in debt.

I voted for job creation, so that there would not be another lost generation as there was under Margaret Thatcher. Instead, the unemployment figures in the UK are higher than ever, and youth unemployment has rocketed. Apprenticeships have been replaced by internships.

I voted for green safe energy, accompanied by a promise to block any attempt to return to nuclear power. Instead, EDF have been given the green light to start planning new nuclear power stations even before the reactors at Fukushima have fully cooled.

I voted for clean politics, not the grubby world of "donations for dinner", and the sordid cash for influence being offered by the (now former) Conservative Party Treasurer. Whilst it may not be fair to lay this charge at the feet of the Libdems, it is the LibDems who keep in power those for whom the charge is relevant.

I saw how coalition governments work in other countries, and thought that it would be the same in the UK: only goverment that needs to happen hapepns. I was willing, even excited, to give coalition politics the benefit of the doubt. However, the LibDems have shown themselves to be utterly complicit with the Conservative Party political agenda. How can I, or anyone, distinguish between the two parties in the coalition? The situation resembles that of the pigs at the end of George Orwell's novel 1984, who became indistinguishable from the farmer they overthrew.

My cup of tea

About two years ago I discovered, to my horror, that a even single cup of tea or coffee was elevating my blood pressure substantially for several days. As well as monitoring my blood pressure, I checked out my experience on the internet, discovering that although the condition is not especially common, it is well-recorded. Sadly, decaffeination does not resolve the issue: I know this because I tried switching to decaffeinated tea and coffee. I think that the problem is, in part, that decaffeination does not remove all the caffeine, and in part because teas and coffees contain a cocktail of potent chemicals, some or many of which are unaffected by the decaffeination process. On reflection, I now recall that if I drank tea on an empty stomach, such as before breakfast, I would feel extremely nauseous until I ate something substantial. Further, drinking cheap green tea was likely to make me feel nauseous regardless of the repleteness of my stomach.

I still hanker after a nice cup of both tea and coffee. I would give much once again to be able to sip a delicate sencha (Japanese), a smoky lapsang souchong (Chinese), a light darjeeling (Indian), a malty assam (Indian), an aromatic Earl Grey (Imperial British), or even just a fruity flavoured tea, such as lemon or peach. There is a type of Chinese tea, puer tea, the name of which I frequently forget, that costs the earth because it gets buried in the ground for a year or something, that I never knew about until after I stopped drinking tea. Many years ago I was given a pack of russian caravan tea, but I did not rate it especially highly. Likewise the cannonball tea, the leaves of which were rolled into small pellets. The mountains of the moon tea I drank at Betty's in York was remarkable only in name. On the other hand, when I was in Japan, I mostly drank roasted tea. Now I can no longer drink tea, I am limited to tisannes. For a reason I do not understand, I can only drink a small quantity of chamomile. Every day I make myself an infusion of hawthorn, linden and marshmallow. I struggle to drink a litre of it through the day even though it barely tastes of anything. I find both hibiscus and rosehip too acidic and astringent. Blackcurrant elevates my blood pressure, as does licorice. I can usually drink something that has strawberries in it, so a red berry or fruits of the forest melange can be okay, although the tea bags of this name that I bought in Italy were fairly disgusting. In contrast, the elaborate tisanes avaiilable in Germany, including in the motorway service staations, were extremely pleasant, being made with chunks of dried fruit and visiible slivers of spices: although expensive, they were worth drinking.

My coffee needs are much easier to describe: give me a decently-made (that is, topped with an appopriate espresso 'crema') double espresso made with finely-ground Monsoon(ed) Malabar beans (a richly-flavoured coffee from south west India the flavour of which is deepened and matured in the monsoon winds of Northern Kerala - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsooned_Malabar).

Wurds

I wrote the following in response to a colleague hearing my voice in my written words

I enjoy the harmonies and dissonances of the relationship between what is spoken and what is written. I buy dictionaries, and have many in my library. However, unlike most people, I am rarely perturbed by poor spelling. I enjoy the multitude of spellings to produce the same sound (to, too, two, tu), and the multitude of sounds permitted from the same spelling (tough, cough, dough, plough). I enjoy the subtleties (as well as its near anagram: subtitles) of nuance between practice and practise (spelt differently but pronounced the same), advice and advise (spelt and pronounced differently), alternate [to take turns] and alternate [a substitute] (spelt the same but pronounced differently). I love fora, formulae, concerti, tableaux and majors general. I love ‘erb tea, bayzle, oreggano, rowt and vayze. I have a strong preference for Munchen, Nurnberg and Koln; for Addawa (Ottawa), DC (Washington DC) and Manhattan (New York City), because these are the names used by the people who live and work in those cities..

In my experience, what is said is often easier to understand if it falls into the natural cadences of spoken English. Of course, William Shakespeare recognised this with his iambic pentameters. In my experience, what is written may also be easier to understand if it falls into the natural cadences of spoken English. What I write is often crafted to sound like how I speak. Perhaps almost equally, what I say is often sufficiently well considered that it sounds like what I would write.

However, I am aware that many people typically speak in stumbling, incomplete and sometimes only semi-coherent clauses. This is given the illusion of a single train of thought or narrative by face-to-face engagement, in much the same way that film creates from a sequence of photographs the illusion of continuous movement. Therefore, to be comprehensible, there must also be formality in what is written.

For this purpose, I sometimes use formulae. For example, in recognising that the Canadian postal coding system [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Canada ] (for example, K1A 0B1) is less prone to transcription errors compared to that used in the UK (for example, DH1 2PZ; W1A 4WW) because the six characters alternate sequentially between letters and numbers, I present times/dates not as spoken but in a consistent formula: 12:34 Friday 12 February 1554. (However, in dating computer files I use the Japanese system: 15540212.)

Surprisingly, perhaps, I welcome the use of clichés in speech when their purpose is to aid intelligibility:  allowing quick links to what is already known and understood, but also listen for their use as a substitute for thought and opinion (sales patter).

My ‘natural’ way of speaking is elaborated code that incorporates my classical and scientific formal education, my experience of travel throughout Europe and North America as well as to Japan, and my familiarity with many cultures through my love of literature and movies. When I feel refreshed I am usually able to speak from the restricted code of the person with whom I am interacting. However, when I am tired I revert to speaking from within my comfort zone involving words of many syllables and that may be unfamiliar to many of the people with whom I work; a consequence of which is that I inadvertently distance people.

I have loved word play from my earliest years, and enjoy subtle puns. Careful attention to nuanced and multiple meanings is also the domain of poetry, where apposition is currency. Of course, for the Mersey poets (Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Modern-Poets-Mersey-McGough/dp/0140421033/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323435629&sr=8-1) poetry involved play.  Although I have written poetry with which I am satisfied, it has rarely arrived by FedEx or DHL, but by scooping ripped-up photographs from beneath Parisian photo booths. Sadly, my tendency towards obsession with minutiae does not serve me well regarding style. Attention to style is required to write extended prose that is worth reading (Dickens, Hardy). Instead, I am left fretting about the inappropriateness of a full stop in a heading, the mosquito bite of a supermarket queue’s limitation to nine items or less, and my Lynne Truss-like frustration with incorrectly-sited apostrophe’s (sic).

I wonder whether the voice audible in the above is that with which people who know me are familiar [implied question mark].