thelogicalview.co.uk

Category: A Blog

  • The British and Water: The River Wye and South East Water Ltd.

    We Brits, and probably we Ancient Brits did as well, always talk about the weather. Why is this? Because if it isn’t raining, or drizzling, or spitting, it soon will be. And when it isn’t raining, or drizzling, or spitting, or drenching up on the Atlantic seaboard of Cymru or Eire or Gall-Ghaidheil all the way up the west coast of the many islands, rocky shores, seaweed, sandy bays, rugged ancient rocks, the Light is very beautiful, and the many dark rain clouds make the possibility of seeing a rainbow. And there are some lovely clear sunny days too, or a few anyway.

    Rain is water falling out of the sky when a cloud gets too heavy. Water on the ground is rivers, ponds, streams, burns, lochs, lakes, springs, tarns, dewponds, waterfalls, tributaries, fjords, rockpools, and puddles. Human society uses man-made reservoirs, farmers have iron drinking troughs for the animals or a big farm bucket, domestic households used to have a water butt, and there is an elaborate network of purifying and pumping stations, and the water pipes serving households and businesses. There is also an elaborate network of ah-em, the sewerage.

    In the last few weeks water has been much in the news here in Britain, and for polarised reasons. These increasing hot and dry periods in the south, especially the south east, are hitting the headlines in the most basic way because humans need water to survive and without it we only last a few days. We are not a Saharan Euphorbia or one of the many native cactus plants of the southern landmass of America. Humans need more than a few drops of water every few months, as does every mammal, large or small.

    To have 1000s of households without water, and in hot weather, and in a modern society where a household runs on water is disastrous, and the 1000s of customers of South East Water Ltd. have experienced days of outage. In a modern household in Britain of today water is used for flushing the toilet, the shower, the bath, the washing machine, probably a dishwasher, and running kitchen taps. Those with a garden, and who do things in the garden, often run a hose over plants and some even over the lawn.

    The average use of water per head each day in the ‘UK’ is c.150 litres. That’s a lot. Lined up in 5 litre large containers that’s 30 of them, and then it looks like even more.

    South East Water Ltd. is Ltd. because it is a private company, under a parent company (such is the appropriation of biological terms which the modern world uses) of HDF (UK) Holdings Limited. The name (UK) would suggest British owned. But no, the parent company itself is owned by the Utilities Trust of Australia 50%, the NatWest Pension Fund and Desjardins which have 25% each, and then an assortment of international investors who believed a water company in the south east of England was a good move. It was Mrs Thatcher who in 1989 pushed through the privatisation of the water industry in England and Wales. Water continues to fall as rain over the ‘UK’ without heed to its devolved jurisdictions or county administration, or privatised or public utility companies.

    So far so difficult for the household in south east England. Individual consumers blame the company for executive pay, not fixing leaks, and not preparing for hot weather. The company says there was simply not enough water, which there wasn’t, and – and – consumption went up in the very strangely hot weather, thereby emptying reserves even quicker. All this happened without any major electrical failure, on which the entire human water system relies in Britain.

    Head west about 200 miles and on Sunday 24th May the River Wye was granted a legal charter at the Hay Literary Festival. This legal status means the River Wye is the first ‘UK’ river to gain charter status. The charter gives legal rights to flow the water from source to estuary, to biodiversity, to be free from pollution, amongst a few others.

    The launching of the charter at a Literary Festival, albeit Hay (on Wye), which is the original heavyweight of Literary Festivals, and its location of on the Wye, nevertheless, it is a Literary Festival, not a legal or political conference. Avara Foods campaigners say have majorly polluted the river in its mass chicken farming business, and that Welsh Water have failed to act over sewage spills. Apart from the unnatural nutrients from intensive farming which are choking waterways over most of Britain, the matter of sewage is a difficult one because all mammals, chickens and humans, produce the by product of what is termed sewage in modern Britain.

    Giving a legal charter is a little confusing for the River Wye. It flows down the ‘UK’ borders of England and Wales, and it also is subject to the rain falling from the sky. In wet weather the flow will be fuller and faster, and may even flood, as in 2021 after Storm Christoph, and no human would be able to bring a case for damages against the river, because it has no money, no corporate structure, no offices, and no telephone contact number. In very dry weather the flow will be much reduced, though unlikely never to flow because the catchment area is such that it is a watery area and springs and small tributaries are enough to gather water into a river.

    If the granting of a charter will stop the intensive chicken farming (done to provide the very cheap supermarket and takeaway food the ‘UK’ citizens crave) that would be very good in a few decades time for all the delicate life forms injured or killed by the human activity, when the river has adjusted again. If it doesn’t stop the chicken farming, what is the point of a charter? A river cannot represent itself in court, and legal status means a legal standard to adhere to. If neither regional council on either side of the river, nor the devolved government of the Welsh Senedd or the Westminster Parliament Dept. of Environment have done anything, nor Severn Trent Water on the English side, when they do have statutory power, what is a literary collaboration between those same regional councils and environmental pressure groups going to do? To do to actually change anything?

    It is not possible for humans to stop producing sewage and the ageing water network cannot cope with processing the now c.70 million humans by products. When the networks were constructed the population was about 20 million and domestic household water consumption was hardly anything. Water butts were the norm in outside spaces and wet wipes and other pipe clogging throwaways had not been invented.

    In the south east, the water company is blamed, and in the west, the River Wye has been granted a legal charter to flow free from human damage. Other countries have done similar, in Canada and New Zealand, but therein lies the difference. Humans around the world are generally more respectful of the reality and necessity of water in the whole of life. And coming further down the modern political scale, the societies which really worship and revere water are those who live from that water. The pan African reverence for water Mami Wata, Nyami Nyami of the Zambezi, Oshun, and the once world over gods and goddesses of springs and rivers who guarded the flow and appreciated the respect and honour given by the humans. The vast life giving source to ocean of the Ganges for half a billion people will also be suffering from modern existence no doubt, but the psychology, the spirit and the survival of the people who live from a river as their only water source is about as polarised as could be from us spoilt people in the ‘UK’ who blame everyone except looking at the societal and household relationship with water.

  • The Westminster Bubble: Has it burst?

    Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Tories, (the Conservative and Unionist Party in the ‘UK’ Parliament) said yesterday that with the carrying on in the Labour Party there is no governance in the ‘UK’ at the moment. She also said recently that it is a surprising change (those two words are this blog’s but she said words meaning that) from the election of the Labour Party in the huge majority in the last election (which was not even a blink of the eye ago in geological time) and the sycophantic adorers of Sir Kier Starmer to now everyone fighting amongst themselves. The word ‘sycophantic’ is the definite one she used, the others are an approximate exact, if there is such terminology.

    The word sycophantic is absolutely spot on, and again, she is the one to say the obvious. (Is this writer a member of the Tory Party? No, it is not, (however it always does vote under its civic duty). That the Labour Party arrived in Parliament to their new seats as not opposition but ‘in power’ and spent the first year with the many female MPs openly adoring Sir Kier and adoring their new power, and alongside that having apparently nothing to say other than everything is all the Tory’s fault, an approx. two-year in power reality check is a useful timespan.

    Many Moons have come and gone, and the Earth has nearly completed two whole circles around Sol in this vast unfathomable universe in which we spin.

    Has the Westminster bubble burst? It would appear so. And before we ask if it has burst, we have to ask what it is in the first place. It is a term which loosely floated around in the 1990s to describe the growing network of humans in and around the Parliament of the ‘UK’ like advisors (special), lobby correspondents, researchers, civil servants, no doubt the Today programme journalists were right in the centre of that bubble, those who were coming into Parliament via Universities (real universities and real subjects like PPE or History) not via err work, probably the rise of the intern, and helped in its bubble formation no doubt by the increasing lack of intelligence in the House of Lords as Prime Minsters of both colours, red and blue, squeezed as many of their cronies into the House of Lords with its blurred boundaries which operated when everyone knew what they were doing but not when they don’t.

    The Oxford English Dictionary in 2016 included the Westminster Bubble in its entries, thus making this bubble a fact of life in the ‘UK’. It was around the time of the Brexit vote, and in such confusions as went on in the lack of government jurisprudence it was easy to see how such a term as the Westminster Bubble would be formalised. And it is apt, because the Bubble in and around Westminster did show so totally removed from the general British public who when it goes to vote does so knowing which box it is putting that cross in, and why. Or it did back in 2016.

    A bubble does exist in the natural world. It is a little bit of gas contained in a little film of liquid around. It is the opposite of a drop and a drop especially in these parts of 55′-56’N is usually a big drop of rain and many of them, but it can be a drizzle drop or a medium drop, and they can last a short time or a long, and if we still spoke native languages above 55’N then we would have about 99 words for rain like the Eskimo’s used to for snow (before the western consumer destroyed their environment).

    A bubble also arises upwards, from fish blowing bubbles, snails blow bubbles to deter predators and this writer’s life long fascination with snails and spiders has seen many of these wondrous mechanisms within the life force, bubbles appear and disappear in running streams, waves as they break and as they lose momentum on the beach, in volcanoes, the Argyroneta aquatica, the diving bell spiders who expertly manages his life and bubbles, and the big mud baths in Rotorua in which this writer has sat a long time ago and experience, and smelt, the primitive sulphuric mud bubbles rise and burst, and which it acknowledges the site as sacred to the Maori tribe and offers its gratitude here for being allowed to enter.

    Then there are the western bubbles, the soapy ones. They arise when washing up with Fairy liquid or any of the new other detergents available, or when blowing through the hoop of fun bubble liquid and blowing slow to get a big bubble or blowing fast to get many small ones. The point is to watch their beautiful (Sun)light catching dance and wonder how long they will last, because everybody knows it is not going to be long. And thinking about it, there is also the western bubble gum bubble and it could be a way less damaging to health and the environment to have developed a nicotine bubble gum and legally prevent the viral growth of vapes, and to have made a special bubble gum bag for disposal because it is annoying to walk over a discarded one, but that would be the job of a Health Secretary.

    The reason this blog asks Has the Westminster Bubble Burst, is because it apparently has. There is no Health Secretary performing the role of Secretary of State for Health. ‘The State’ is a fairly serious matter in the ‘UK’ at the present time since the inception of the totally un-thought out National Health System of the Labour Party, and here in 2026, it is the Labour Party which has abandoned the governance of health. Kemi Badenoch is 150% right that there is no governance in the ‘UK’ at the moment. She does not put inverted marks because the Conservative Party is the Unionist Party.

    The Radio 4 journalists speak of civil war in the Labour Party, and seem very excited by this. The different contenders begin their positioning for …. for what? For a battle which seeks to replace Sir Kier, by a Health Secretary who has resigned the role, and by a regional mayor (set up under Tony Blair’s idiot and chaotic legislation on devolution) who has yet to win a by election in a region which strongly voted to leave the EU yet the Labour hopefuls state they will bring the ‘UK’ back into the EU.

    The constitutional chaos is extraordinary, almost impossible to believe, unless you live in a bubble. Funny how the term ‘Westminster Bubble’ arose from the rising of a group of people all engaging with themselves (as the rise of the social sciences allows, or encourages even) and the greater distance between the common man and those in SW1, or related through the airwaves, and the very bubble that was created is now sought by those who do not realise its burst! In the rapidly distintergrating constitutional structure of the ‘UK’, what exactly are they fighting over?

    Would it not be more honest if an interim government were brought in from some other part of the world, like the UN peacekeeping troops goes off to various areas of the world to impose western values on what a society should be? And the ‘UK’ would not have a choice of where the peacekeeping troops came from? That would be a big shock to all left leaning citizens. Or if not that solution, then repurpose College Green into what it already is, the place where journalists interview MPs, and where much of the bubble business is carried on, turn into a jousting arena, put up tents with flags and ribbons, provide much beer and ale, and wait for the contest to begin. Contenders for the Crown of the Labour Party would have a three stage contest, the joust, on horseback with spear and shield, the arm wrestle, and the problem solving which is 25 fairly difficult scenarios and equations to work out on paper with no i-phone allowed. And if none of the contenders, at the moment there appears to be Sir Kier wishing to stay, Andy Burnham, and Wes Streeting, if they do not survive the contest or simply cannot manage it, then it’s open for anyone else wishing to enter the jousting ring and lay down their challenge. Some of the Reform folks would be big and strong, and as in times of genuine civil war in this country and all round the world and in the past Roman Empire and in our Kings and Queens, might was right, so are we back to that?

    Given that governance has collapsed, the many new parties have no ready internal structure to step in, and democracy prevents any quick solution anyway, what is the alternative but an enjoyable day out on College Green, having a beer, watching the contenders make their case. The weather is heading into drier days, less raindrops falling from the sky, a local folk band could come and play, a hog roast be put on, just like the days of olde. It would be far more civilised to do it openly and transparently, and it’s worth a go.

  • Trump -v- Iran: The road to Hell?

    To break this down, who is President Donald Trump? Who is Iran? What is Hell?

    Donald Trump is the elected President of the United States of America (identifiable in international politics by a flag and a national anthem). At their (this writer is neither American nor in America) last election it was all hands for Trump, meaning the overwhelming majority of both Houses and a wide diversity of humans and genders. Political commentators call this a landslide victory but this blog does not appropriate such terms for the use of modern politics.

    What is Iran? Iran is the land definition of the Islamic Republic of Iran, right central in the east-west historical complications arising from Christianity gaining power in the Roman Empire and disrupting the natural course of events. President Masoud Pezeshkian, only in leadership less than a year after the USA killed President Rainsi, is a heart surgeon and even though being President means he could not also be working as a heart surgeon, he would still be able to perform a complicated operation if needed.

    What is Hell? Hell is the place formalized by the Christians and their text, where non-believers will spend eternity while the believers live in heaven, but as with all of Christianity, it was constructed by appropriating all various aspects from contemporary Greek and Roman, and surrounding cultures, and all native cultures have our own particular beliefs about life on earth and the cosmos, and the humans within that. As yet there is no evidence of the Christian’s Hell, although there is abundant evidence of spirit life after death, and there is no evidence of their heaven either. Hell on earth however is now a reality and the stakes only get higher and higher.

    Why the title Trump -v- Iran? Should it not be Trump -v- Pezeshkian? A previous ‘post’ did ask of the difference between leader of land and leader of ideology, with the very simple demarcation of the leader of a land has nowhere else to go. They could be given a place in a friendly country, but they would still be the person of that land, not of their new living place. Running that line through present day leaders of the human world, it is a quick check on what exactly conflicts are about.

    Tribal conflicts are as olde as the hills, and took place and still do in and around hills, rivers, moorlands, equatorial forests, mountains and icy lands, but not as icy as Eskimos because they are too busy for such things and too desecrated by film crews arriving to film the last polar bear and in the process melting the very ice flow the polar bear needs, paradoxically. No, true tribal conflicts are a normal part of life on Earth. Each tribe has a leader, the people do not have much choice but because they are all so busy the folks don’t really make a fuss because they know the leader is doing his or her (Boudica a good example here) job and would be the first to die in conflict. That’s an honest way to live.

    The leader of a land however, is not that much difference to a tribal leader, only the scale is larger. They are still speaking for the land and the people of that land. The USA killed the previous Iranian leader but another one quickly stepped in. Some of the citizens might not like it, but the leadership continuity was fairly simple, and very continuous when compared with err… current events in the ‘UK’.

    That Donald Trump was elected by so many, so hoping for a simpler era and even the radio news had interviews of American citizens openly saying they would go through harder times willingly, just to get to that simpler state of affairs, where goods bought and consumed within America had been made in America. That is the equation of leadership to citizen, and the massive majority in the USA to end the hot air of the lefties and get back to something functional, well, there were a lot of folks who quietly said how they wished for something like that here. Such things have to be said quietly in the ‘UK’, such is the political conflict and the risk of being prosecution for having been radicalised for speaking facts.

    To take out a President not too far from your own centre of power is within the margins of reality and possibility, as Venezuela found earlier this year when the USA removed their President and took him away. But conflict far from geographical reality, on matters of religion – the Christian west -v- Middle East Islam, trade and energy – the blocking of just one small waterway on the planet of Earth has already resulted in global crisis, and the methods of warfare – now nuclear arms conflict, drones, warships in the Gulf region, all the various conflicts going on around Iran and which this writer is not entitled to comment on, and the supply of weapons and who is funding who, these three points could be said to constitute Hell on Earth.

    There would be a worse Hell, if Sol, Helios, Ghrian, throws a solar flare on the scale of the Carrington Event somewhere back 150 years ago, all electricity will fail on this spinning mass of rock in space. If Campi Flegrei in the Phlegraean Fields erupts that will change the course of events in 2026. And the ‘UK’ is facing a big Hell with its dwindling food and water resources and not a lot of friends left. But in this equation of the present Trump -v- Iran, where the President of Iran speaks for a land and yes with the Islamic religion on that land but with the long history of Arabic science and philosophy still intact, and Donald Trump speaks for military might and the USA resuming its global glory, where will this end?

    This blog has a useful suggestion which could be considered. It has already suggested that a new Nobel Peace Prize be hastily convened, that of Nuclear Dismantlement. If the model of France was followed that nuclear turns to heating homes and businesses then that reduces the need for oil at all then those Middle Eastern countries who have been destroyed by western need and greed might have a little more respect than is due at the moment. If there is no nuclear weapon as the overall threat then Iran might not be so keen to enrich their uranium.

    If all warfare was further reduced to no manufactured armourments, which includes drones, guns, warships, submarines, war planes, all remote surveillance and all arsenal in the smaller bombs and bullets what would be left?

    Archery would be left, a fine method of defence, hunting, and all round societal fitness. Knowing how to find the wood, make a bow, sharpen a flint for an arrowhead, these things are good for young people to learn. Hand to hand combat separates the men from the boys (as the phrase goes, and it had better not continue with the gender terms because it is illegal in the ‘UK’ to talk of function nowadays).

    Arm wrestling is a clear winner and loser, and can be observed by onlookers for any foul play. The armies at the frontier in centuries before air and digital warfare took its hold, that was horrible for those in that frontline, but it was clear at least. Or, clarity in the other direction could also be considered, that somebody with the power to approach that button, put their finger on the nuclear and just press. That would end Hell on Earth and the plight of the natural world which through no doing of its own finds its habitat disappearing, its food and survival just running out, and the changing temperatures forcing it to migrate into places it was never designed to exist and survive. Or maybe Sol could throw that solar flare, a strong overarm flare to reset reality on Earth if the leaders of the Protestant west cannot stop this progressive disintegration. If a poll was held with citizens obliged to vote, what would the citizens of the USA vote for now, so caught between the rock and the hard place they are?

    And where does it leave the population of Iran, also caught between a rock and a hard place with democracy having got its foot in the door? Where and what is Hell in 2026?

  • Constitutional collapse in the ‘UK’: May 2026

    Democracy? What does it mean?

    Thursday, May 7th, 2026, some citizens in the ‘UK’ are going to the polls. This means either sending in a pre-arranged postal vote, or going to a local centre which acts as a polling station for the day. The local centres could be a school, a church (but not a high church, more usually a Methodist church or similar), a leisure centre, also a synagogue in areas with a high percentage of Jewish inhabitants, but mosques are not used as polling stations.

    So complicated it is between the old and the new in the long standing county councils, borough councils, the newly formed ‘Parliaments’ of devolved government from New Labour, and the new mayoral position of London, now expanded into mayoral elections by the people for large cities, like Manchester, that 2026 would be a good time to take stock of this electoral chaos.

    The range of devolved governmental categories (societal functions which require governance) range through health, education, energy, transport, oh so many, and all fundamental to life in the twenty-first century. The range of political parties standing in each election is also oh so many, all with their own views on all the different functions of society. The range of voting options from lifelong supporter to protest vote, also so many. And the option to vote or not vote at all, also skews any coherent outcome. The voting turnout for all the different devolved ‘Parliaments, the county councils, the local councils, and the Mayoral elections varies in percentage, but nowhere will be 100%. Possibly overall, if an ethnic-religious-politics poll were taken, Muslim voters and those voting for Gaza would form the highest respondents to the jewel in the Crown of the ‘UK’, of democracy.

    By electoral event, is the elections to the Welsh Senedd going to have the highest turnout? And will Plaid Cymru be elected over Reform, or Reform over Plaid? Either way, Wales is where the traction is. Wales is where the citizens are speaking Welsh (a beautiful language) and returning their landscape to native names, and the schools to being Welsh speaking, regardless of any individual student or their household. You just have to be on board with the governance. And that is governance. Yes possibly the Welsh polling stations will have the highest number of participants, which means the fewest number of those refusing to put a cross on a paper.

    Back in 500s BCE Athens, where Cleisthenes established the first model of democracy, things were a little different to today. The unexpected revenue from a silver mine, a nice climate, and a manageable size of central Athens for just a few. It is the phrase ‘being roped in’ which this blog wishes to point out, after listening to days of news items on just how many people in the ‘UK’ are disillusioned with politics and not intending to vote at all. In Athens 2,500 years ago, to be ‘roped in’ meant literally that, and for the reason to ensure that all those within democracy voted.

    This was not citizens of the whole world, because the known world was very small to the Athenians of the 500s BCE, and only male citizens of Athens, not women, metics (foreign tradesmen), or slaves. Voting was direct on policies, as was the requirement to serve in the government roles, there was no voting for someone or something, it was all direct, and all carried out in the surrounds of the city state of that ancient Mediterranean lands.

    To ensure no young men were hanging around in the agora (market place, the centre of life in the ancient world), slaves would pass a long rope around dipped in red dye to round up those young men and herd them towards the Pnyx Hill to participate in the Assembly, whether they liked it or not, and many didn’t. Anyone found with red dye on their clothes or arm would be fined.

    So, is that democracy? Well, yes, from the original. And if not the original, then what is there?

    So in this catastrophic collapse of all things governmental and societal in the ‘UK’, what simpler way of restoring some clarity than making voting compulsory? How hard is it to put a cross on a paper? Or even to ‘spoil the vote’ which here in the ‘UK’ means putting a rip on the paper or a line through it to show the human is voting for no one? If the Labour government, while it is in power, wished to restore some electoral clarity, in times where there is none, then why not pass a law that every citizen is required to make some mark on the ballot paper?

    Or if that is not possible, or seen as too onerous for the citizens of Britain, why not abolish democracy altogether? What is the alternative? With the disintegration of the established parties looming, and the many new parties rising but with no governmental coherence, now would be the time to rethink this fairly awkward situation where the ‘UK’ Parliament looks global and believes it can bring democracy to the world, yet its own electoral scaffolding is collapsing.

  • Constitutional collapse in the ‘UK’: Devolved elections 2026

    Tony Blair: Architect of Chaos

    Tony Blair, previously a barrister specialising in employment and commercial law before arriving at his destination of Prime Minister, leader of the Labour (labour = work in normal talk) Party, won the 1997 general election under the promise of, ‘New Labour, Britain deserves better.’ ‘Better’ was to decentralise power in the ‘UK’ and begin legislation for a Scottish Parliament of its own, and a Welsh Assembly of its own. The 1998 establishment of this new chaos in Northern Ireland was even more chaotic but the Stormont Parliament was put together. He did not stop there. Big cities were granted their own ‘constitution’ too in direct elections for their own mayors, thus creating many, many new constitutional arrangements within the ‘UK’. (Nothing for Cornwall or the Kingdom of Galloway though).

    Why Wales would have merely an Assembly and Scotland a Parliament was already a constitutional conundrum of the highest order. Why big cities would have a mayor, (maybe to emulate the completely different societal history of France, only added to the constitutional conundrum of the ‘UK’.

    This blog is about the societal arrangements of the human under the governance of Grian (old Irish), howl (old Cornish), Helios, and beyond any names, the physical facts of Earth as a spinning mass of rock in a vast space, held in place by Helios and gravity. How does the function of governance work technically, for survival of a species, as compared with all life forms within the atmosphere on Earth and human societies since the last Ice Age?

    All life forms on Earth apart from the human still adhere to the same requirements and responsibilities for their societies. The human shows as the extreme divergence from reality in the devolved powers elections of May 2026 in the ‘UK’. The fact that it was a commercial and employment lawyer, who would have had to read the fine technicalities of a contract or a scenario, set in motion such a monumental collapse of structure is beyond rational belief. The meeting of the Cult of the Personal, the Cult of the Individual shows in the starkest relief. To ‘give’ power to the regions and the cities (apart from Cornwall and Galloway) in the expectation that ‘they’ would ‘love’ Tony Blair and his team of Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, and love the Labour Party is the constitutional proof that the ‘UK’ on exists in inverted commas, ‘Westminster Parliament’ only exists in inverted commas, and in Britain and Eire (geography so no inverted commas needed there), there is no coherent government or governance to be found.

  • Astronauts back on Earth. What’s the next step for mankind?

    Saturday 11th April, the Independent newspaper’s New York correspondent reported that ‘Astronauts who went further into space than any other humans have returned to Earth after a dramatic re-entry and splashdown near San Diego. All four will become instant space celebrities and help humans understand their existence. For two, however, their mission took on a special journey as they became the first Black man and first woman to go to the moon.’

    Mmm… From the Logical perspective, this is all very problematic. Where to start? Perhaps in unfolding order, because this is all so very illogical. To return to Earth in a dramatic re-entry, this is merely lucky given how many times the Artemis II ‘mission’ was delayed from serious technical faults. Technical faults in an old Morris Minor were solved by a man in a workshop looking in various drawers for the right screw size, and sorting it there and then. The exciting dramatic re-entry could have been the opposite of a dramatic death. A splashdown from a spacecraft is not fair in the stress caused to fish and whales and seagulls whose brains have remained, and will remain, in Reality.

    What is an instant space celebrity? Is that why they went on the mission, to become a celebrity and to have hours of air time describing their emotions as they disappeared behind the Moon, and came round again? Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford (the once heavyweight centre of knowledge for 100s of years) Chris Lintott, told the BBC, “The value of the images coming back from Artemis and its crew is artistic, not scientific.” So is Prof. Lintott changing Departments at the (once) venerable University of Oxford, into Art & Digital Design, and will the artistic images sent back by the crew be nominated for the big art prizes of the world?

    This blog holds in great interest the knowledge from the pre-Socratics of Miletus, who knew a very great deal about astronomy a long time before western knowledge thinks it began, and when the humans had their feet on the ground with the eyes looking upwards, and life was not luxurious enough to think human existence was anything other than what it is (and still is, looking from Logic). Which is outwith any human ken (in latitude 55′-56’N talk). In plain English, that means irrelevant to waste time thinking about.

    Alas the totalitarian social sciences have got a foot in the spacecraft door and achieved their highest and further ever measurement, now of melanin level in the skin and sex, with melanin given a capital ‘B’. The female was not given a capital ‘W’, nor the two white males (whatever white means), given a capital ‘W’. The social scientists have triumphed. How long before an autistic person is rounded up to go on Artemis III? A person who uses a wheelchair? In the name of inclusion a menopausal woman, to show the white male dominated realms of science have been smashed?

    So after all the false starts, the millions and billions spent to get those beautiful artistic images, what is the next step for mankind? Between 1968-1972 the American Apollo mission resulted in 12 astronauts (humans in spacesuits) physically standing on the surface of the Moon, and this is put under knowledge, not art. Artemis III has already been stated to not be contemplating a human actually on the Moon, but Artemis IV is the intended human on the Moon, with the old fashioned can by then kicked so far down the old fashioned road that it never needs to be proved.

    What is the next step or steps for mankind? Where are we going (in modern parlance)? What is it all about? Just like the public sector of the ‘UK’ which is so completely uncountable, modern scientific knowledge is following the same course and economy, resources, and ‘individual centred’ both Illogical and completely crazy. Is this the furthest western human behaviour has ever travelled from common sense?

  • Knowledge of the Ancients: Pliny the Elder, (23-79CE), on British farming and the Iran oil crisis

    Knowledge of the Ancients as opposed to Wisdom of the Ancients has therefore been shown as different. There is not a neat available definition of Knowledge of the Ancients, nor of Ancient Knowledge, probably because knowledge is self explanatory. Knowledge of the Ancients and Ancient Knowledge, they hang together around Knowledge as opposed to Wisdom, and Ancient Knowledge is the general term for knowledge passed down through generations. Knowledge, generations, these words are all related to human and societal practices over genetic millennia or centuries at least, for it to become knowledge.

    For the purpose of this purely pagan blog this is good, because humans habit in, or inhabit, on an Earth based existence, and more than that, their generations before have gained their knowledge from centuries and millennia on the same region of land, hence the knowledge, because knowledge comes from observing the land, the the majestic rising and setting of Helios overhead. It does not actually matter who goes around who, but we know that it is Earth which spins around Helios, but either way, knowledge is needed for Earth based existence. Ancient Knowledge is Knowledge on and of the land, for survival basically.

    So Knowledge of the Ancients, which is ancient, is by a human and yet it is what is known which is that useful knowledge. It is and it is not paradoxical. It is both. Pliny the Elder was a human, yet it is his astonishing depth and breadth of geography, natural history, minerals and metals, ethnography and societal practices in the lands around the Roman Empire, both within and outside its frontiers which is the knowledge and information. He is no longer in physical, but the knowledge he imparted does remain. And because knowledge is based on fact, or physical and material reality (which this blog does include psychic phenomena because it is factual and real) how can Pliny the Elder connect with British farming and the Iran oil disruption chaos of 2026?

    In Pliny’s day, the first century CE, he would not now know what we are talking about if we said oil disruption due to American aggression in Iran. Pliny in his wide travels, observation, enquiry and knowledge might well have known of Iran, or Iranshahr, as the natives of the region called themselves. He would well have known the Persians, as called by Greeks and Romans, a constant presence and worry to successive Emperors on the eastern borders.

    Pliny the Elder, born in Italy into the new and optomistic Roman Empire and dying in the eruption of Vesuvius 79CE, when in his official capacity and acting with the bravery which men of service possess, going ashore to enquire of the situation and to reassure terrified citizens. The eruption of Vesuvius was way bigger than any human knowledge, plans, intention, ability, or biology, and a man of great cognitive capacity, experience and observation died along with all other biology, as all biology does under superior forces of Earth or Helios.

    In the unfortunate loss of his many other works, the Natural History remains, and contains a vast range of knowledge, knowledge, not wisdom. Pliny in Book XVII, on Aboriculture, states how the tribes of Britain and Gaul use seaweed as fertilizer and how effective this is. Gaul, modern day France, has a very, very long coastline. Britain, with our complicated geography has an even longer coastline, and therefore even more seaweed.

    In 2026, these few months into the year and the global disruption from the unexpected rush to war over no one is quite sure what, other than the USA is going in hard to a completely different geographical and cultural region, and way of ‘doing business,’ several nutshells have stood out loud and clear. Well, to this writer anyway. One is the stated anxiety within the ‘UK’ that British farming will soon be in crisis because it cannot get the fertilizers needed to …. fertilize the farming land of Britain. Was there ever such a strange juxtaposition?

    It is about 2,000 years since Pliny the Elder put together his comprehensive Historia Naturalis, compiling the intricacies of Ancient Knowledge of human and land. The completeness of human on land, survival over seasons and cycles, years and years, going into 100s, going into millennia, it is a wondrous thing. And Pliny certainly thought so.

    In this nutshell of British farming and the oil crisis in Iran, if this were to be explained to someone like Pliny of how it came to be seen as a problem, what would we say? All the centuries through to somewhere around 1815 when trade had opened up and cheaper imports were available, still of the sea kelp and other seaweed to reduce down for that potash and soda ash, to nutrient rich, but cheaper, British farms used what was plentifully available, and from the ancient knowledge of those who were born, lived, and worked the land and shorelines. That is less than 200 years ago.

    Fast forward another 100 years, and the new world of ‘science,’ and the departure from the real facts of life, the logical way of living, and the cheap, synthetic, fake, chemical fertilizers were offered as an alternative. The devil incarnate. To manufacture the phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen based fertilizers, which sound so natural but are not, requires the use of fossil fuels, oil and natural gas. The chemical process is way above this writer’s ken, and a nutshell does not have space to contain the chemical formulas, mining extraction processes, all the heavy equipment used to create those cheap synthetic chemical fertilizers. How it is all extracted, formulated into a synthetic and toxic fertilizer, shipped to the ‘UK’, and poured onto the land must be a very complicated and energy consuming process. But the end point is cheaper and easier. But than what we ask?

    It is a surprise at finding there is any link at all between British farmland and Iran. Under common sense, if the same materials are still in situ around the same coastlines of Britain as Pliny wrote of 2,000 years ago, and which had existed for at least another 7,000 years before after the melting of the last Ice Age, and the Ancient Knowledge holding as true as ever had been, why is there any crisis in Britain?

    Why has leadership in Britain allowed such a divergence? Why can the government not communicate with all coastal County Councils, including Cornwall (who is not devolved and why not?), Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to ask who still hold this Ancient Knowledge? There must be a few crofters on the far reaches of Western Isles and Scotland who still live by traditional methods. Why are government officials not hot footing it out to find those people, to ask them, to look to common sense and gratitude in the abundance which lies around us? Why is there not a module inserted into the curriculum of all secondary age pupils on which seaweeds to recognise, how to pick, how to reduce down, how to spread on the land? In the sad facts of State -v- biology in the ‘UK’, the chaos caused in Iran does not have a clearer focus than this. Probably the government has started a billion pound research programme, which will take 10 years, and never deliver (the information, not the seaweed to fertilizer). Meanwhile, ancient cultures retain their link over millennia of old to young, young become old, pass old to young, and if anything this crisis is showing, it is who has the right to opinionate, and who doesn’t.

  • Wisdom of the Ancients: Pliny the Elder (23-79CE) on British farming and the Iran oil crisis.

    What does Wisdom of the Ancients mean? According to the Collins Dictionary, Ancient Wisdom is “pre-Christian knowledge, philosophy and beliefs.” That is two words where the definition encompasses an enormous plethora of combinations and confusions. Some knowledge will have stayed the same, like Helios rises and sets, and that humans need food and water to survive, and other philosophies and beliefs will have morphed into (way too) many since the contrived and cobbling together of the (very many) appropriated images and metaphors to create ‘Christianity’ in the early centuries of the CE.

    Wisdom of the Ancients refers therefore to humans as the focus, it is the wisdom of ‘them.’ Seagulls, earthworms, limpets, snails, lions, beavers, mountain goats, whales and spiders have Wisdom of the Ancients and Moderns, because there is no division in time for them, other than how to deal with the modern human behaviour. There is no Collins Dictionary definition of Wisdom of the Ancients (Collins being a factual and historical publishing house with fine post WWII offices in 13-14 St. James Street, London W1, just as the other real publishers also had houses round about so folks could meet and discuss. Internet screens are not based on anything of any real substance, including this one). When a modern human refers to Wisdom of the Ancients, it is therefore a contrived term, a new-agey kind of catch all for high and divine mystical knowledge derived from any tradition you want it to, regardless of your own culture, ethnicity (genetics of the parents), factual knowledge of those other cultures from having spent time on the ground, or how often you might change your mind and pick and mix another one.

    That short rant over, and having clarified it to itself, this blog post will start again, using the better term of ‘Knowledge of the Ancients.’

  • The far-right and the far left in the ‘UK’… or, far right out of politics altogether?

    Under the principles of Archimedes where opposites balance equally, how does this apply to the political situation of the ‘UK’ in 2026?

    Public discourse in political and left wing media talk refers to the far-right, with its own hyphen, plenty of analysis, and BBC programmes, as within the bounds of politics, but a dangerous extreme, some feral group of people who are a real danger to politics and society. As such people are a material part of a human society, existing as it does, as it has to, on the surface of the spinning Earth, how do directions of left and right sit within the principles of Archimedes where two different mediums inevitably balance within the greater whole. For Archimedes it was a container of water, for the terms left and right in the ‘UK’ the container is the political syste.

    As there is a term of far-right, what is the opposite? The term far-left is not in daily parlance, instead things like left wing extremism, anti-capitalism, or the Communist, Marxist, Socialist Workers Party are the very left, and are clear in the equal and opposite to ‘all things right’. Militant left rarely is used these days, although the effects of the obstructive efforts of trades unions pervades all of industry, and the Militant Tendency, the Trotskyist group within the Labour party in 1964 does not now make headlines. Instead the very left, including all those who demonstrate and state views of social matters, Gaza, ‘UK’ politics, welfare state cuts, and all things which look to the right of centre, push into politics, that the government and the State will solve everything.

    The far-right could be seen as the opposite, but in reverse direction, facing out of the political system far, far away, into a much more basic and simple societal organisation, and of course more aligned with the real facts, which are the basic and simple societal organisation permitted by Earth and its tiny few miles of life below and above the surface of this spinning ball of rock in the infinite universe.

    The very left political folks, who might be called anarchists or people wishing to overthrow capitalism government in the ‘UK’, equally go far, far left, and out of politics altogether. What if the far, far-right set off east, and the far, far-left set off west, and in opposite directions went all the way around the world (because we are on a spinning mass of rock, held in place by the power of Helios, the light, the warmth, the gravity), were not allowed to fight when they passed each other the other side of Earth, and came back to meet in the ‘UK’? There is not much natural space left now with the population increased from 50million in 1950 to c.70 million in 2026, the concrete spreading daily, and the high rise flats going into the sky, but there would be somewhere on the coast in mid latitudes where venison is plentiful and still some fish in the sea, a fresh water supply and lots of trees down in the storm useful to build houses.

    The meeting point again of extreme right and extreme left then might sit easily together, having left the political realm altogether and arrived in the post-political ‘UK’ and where a simple and practical human grouping could be formed, with a flag of their choice on the town gates, and a life blissfully free of political definitions.

  • Just Stop Oil…!

    This is the name of the ‘UK’ protest organisation, ended in 2025 by court action with lots of them now in prison, and a lot of disruption to society caused by actions of blocking roads, etc.

    The Just Stop Oil protest group does not want any more licences granted for fossil fuels extraction, which are the coal and gas and oil, formed over millions of years and lying peacefully in the Earth until a few hundred years ago. Humans have of course been mining for millennia, hence the Chalcolithic era away from Neolithic farming where only stone, wood, antler, or anything else to hand was used, and into the Bronze Age and the Iron Age….and on and on the scale of development away from the true facts of existence it went.

    Looking from the top of the wobbling ladder of 2026, with pretty much everything in the industrial-dependent world made out of something which requires fossil fuels or at least something in the machinery which made the goods, and add in plastic which is pretty much everything these days, and liquid paraffin which is in a lot of cosmetics, even apart from the obvious of transport and heating of domestic and office life, it is a relevant question to ask of what exactly is the relationship of the western world to oil?

    Just Stop Oil sounds a sensible slogan, if the extraction of fossil fuels is doing damage, which everyone knows it is, or anyone remotely observant of the natural world knows it is. To just stop extracting oil would mean that soon-ish, given the rate of consumption by the industrialised and consuming humans, all the existing goods and transport options will run out and everything will Just Stop because there is no Oil.

    Do the Just Stop Oil protesters mean that nothing is based on fossil fuels, and that will inevitably mean we slide back to somewhere about 1750 CE before coal came into industrial production, or just that an equivalent lifestyle of modern times is available from not using fossil fuels? If there were no oil used the protesters would have no transport to arrive at the disruption sites, no glue to stick themselves to fences, no clothes to wear and no food or drink while out on protests, but of course if there were no oil in western society there would be no need to protest in the first place.

    With Trump’s catastrophe in the Middle East, where clearly no cartographer ancient or modern was consulted, the reverse situation of oil is high in the news, panic in case the supply becomes unavailable, and the sudden rise in price because paradoxically it becomes a valuable commodity, liquid gold indeed it is. Everyone actively wants it now.

    It’s a really strange relationship the western humans have with their goods and society and view of Helion, Earth and gravity. The failing soil in even the fertile latitudes of mid Britain and the dried up and polluted chalk streams and water courses still have an inkling of life in them, and walking on the earth are thousands of venisons and rabbits, grey squirrels and pigeons, and vegetables still grow and fruit trees produce apples, and there are a few fish around the one teeming waters.

    Confusing it is that President Trump began his rule by speaking of America consumes what America produces, and the relief to many around Earth (the spinning mass of rock with a tiny atmosphere enabling a fragile life) that someone was talking about limitations onto society instead of endless promises, it is very hard that the same person now apparently sheds all reason and puts the equivalent of the nuclear under the very ancient lands of what the west calls the Middle East.

    The ‘UK’ Labour Party are disintegrating in the polls (the whole network of political paraphenalia connected to democracy, which itself is collapsing in rationale and in practice) but if an edict was sent out of a National Self-Sufficiency Week, somewhere into May or June when the tilt of Earth’s axis in the spinning System of the Sun, itself in the vast galaxy called the Milky Way, brings Light and warmth to the northern hemisphere, to live with no fossil fuels at all for a quarter lunar cycle, preferably the half cycle around the Full Moon to add some cheer to what would be a miserable week for all those who do not remember 1750, and a hard week for all of us because much physical work would be required and much organisation at a very local level. But at least the night would be for sleep, and there would be no news coverage of the real apocalypse of cultural and political and consumption expectation going on and going who knows where.