thelogicalview.co.uk

Category: A Blog

  • Q: COP30…what has changed?

    A: The Earth has got hotter

    In the next few days the aeroplanes will be lining up to carry (not ferry, that was the only long distance transport before aeroplanes) the c.50,000 humans attending this COP back to their home nations, all around the spinning mass of rock which is Earth. No doubt there is great anticipation for the next COP when surely the solution to the crisis on Earth will be found, and of course another great gathering of talking around ‘the table’, hearing latest research, eating and drinking, and of course buying things from local traders to show support for the global market we all now inhabit. Probably no delegates will be walking home, except for the local Belem civic leaders, and that does not dent the c.50,000 who will be setting off, jetting off, in aeroplanes, disrupting the atmosphere and adding a great burden to the the crisis of the natural world, who does not use aeroplanes, or air con, or imported food and drink, or digital tech, or electrical appliances.

    If a quick sketch on the back of an envelope was made, and of which this writer is such a great believer and user of, of the balance of global causation of this crisis, how would this look? The indigenous peoples who do not consume out of their local area, and do not need fridges, cars, and who observe the dictatorship of Helios the whole year round, and of natural water supply and simple biology, they would be on the bottom line – in the doodle. Above that, in the middle band, how about dividing two categories of broadly speaking, the consumers and the producers?

    Because China and India did not appear at this party gathering, they are put as baddies, and of course the USA is nothing but a baddie for all the leftie leaning political and social media and young people in the west. So those two huge blocks of jurisdiction were not there, and no doubt have many black marks allocated to them for that. But if the picture was switched around and producers who are blamed for this increasing CO2 and all the rest of the measurable collapse were on the righthand side and it was the consumers who were on the left, so Consumers = Production, then where does the balance of crisis causation lie?

    Because within the atmosphere is really all one unit, so a rising temperature will eventually affect everything, because the natural world is not confined or contained within one jurisdiction’s opinion, or behaviour, where is this crisis generating? People will say ‘the Industrial Revolution’ and yes sure, it did set off some pretty unnatural processes, although the initial coal and steam industry was still very localised because of the manual work involved, by men, like shovelling coal into the engine of a steam train, or pulling coal up from deep underground, and using water at useful places where it was running downhill from gravity meant the power was already there to enable the industrial processes.

    Using electricity in industry was a different scale altogether, and a different scale of damage to the natural environment, which the human has only as its survival, just like all other species. But now, in the last few decades, the mating of industry and digital, well, if that is put alongside the measurable crisis to life conditions, surely the correlation is too clear to ignore.

    If the ‘bad’ producers were behind the = sign instead of in front as the causation, and not the west opinionating about who is doing the damage, if consumer power was the measure, where does that come from? Since New Labour opened universities to all, and with the result every local college, tech college, tiny institution and even uni’s which had never existed in any form sprang into existence in the ‘UK’ like mushrooms after a spring rainfall, how many air flights are taken each year ferrying, in the modern sense of that word, international students to and from the ‘UK’? How many giant container tankers full of goods are being transported from China each week to ….. not France or Portugal or Spain, but to the ‘UK’? How much food is produced in regions which need their water and manpower to survive themselves, into the ‘UK’ requiring masses of power for cold storage and preservation to ensure perfection in supermarkets? How many Brits are now taking several air flights a year to hot countries, or even to see the Arctic ice before the last snowflake melts? Beyond the Consumer = Producer equation there is even another quick sketched line above – the absolutely absurd. With the USA now facing really difficult questions about borders and consumption and some sense of responsibility coming back into view, is it the ‘UK’ which sits at the peak of the digital era pyramid, alone and absurd?

    If a global scientific conference cannot or will not start at the absolute baseline, what is the point? The baseline has not gone away and there is further to fall the higher we go. Modern belief in science and ‘human rights’ to have consumer goods of 2025 which many young people have only known in their lifetime, it does not change facts in any way, only increases the divergence. Even the Emperor must be saying now, ‘Guys, can’t you see, I have no clothes!!’ But that point has passed, until the big digital collapse, and then no one will be looking to another COP to save the world.

  • ‘In Poverty’ and the upcoming Budget

    Finance in the ‘UK’

    It is Budget time again, and the intricacies of big finance is way beyond this blog in both knowledge and interest. However, being a baseline blog, never far from the surface of Earth and always – always – with the framework of facts that all aspects of an individual human and a human society can only ultimately be within the overarching facts, that Earth is dependent on the Sun, in both gravity and Light/heat, and that the life zone is dependent on conditions and food and water within the atmosphere, without which none of us would exist.

    Within the political zone, many eyes focus onto that entirely man-made and the now even stranger modern construction of big finance, and the two-way flow of money into the government, and out again to the citizens in all the various services and complications of the modern ‘UK’.

    Finance now in the ‘UK’ is all about up, and preferably up and up. Those who are fascinated by profit and wealth and high net value and the lifestyle that comes with that are a big feature in the ‘UK’ over last decades, but so also is the equally opposite bottom of the ladder – as seen comparatively – of ‘the poor’, those ‘living in poverty.’ A government in power covers all rungs on that ladder (a ladder as seen by the western Protestant finance societal model but not the societal base for some countries on Earth, and not anywhere existing in the natural world), and Budget time is the focal point of all that, even for laymen like this blog. This blog is written from the wider context.

    Over the last 10 years from the observer’s point of view, two major sections of life or society, or opinion, have come fully into being. One is the expanding benefit system, expanding in different benefits and expanding in numbers claiming and which numbers now include people from all over Earth and their family networks from all over Earth with 100s of different cultures, languages, view of society, and view of the ‘UK’.

    The other is the prominence of identity to ‘be in poverty’ which from organisations like the Rowntree Foundation is all about a monetary value and how one person or family compares with the average or the top earners, it is probably more specific like that, but this is a general blog and will never misquote or plagiarise, but is often speaking in general terms. The fact is that poverty is clear if complete destitution is obvious, but societal poverty is related to all sorts of things, even apart from the new financial requirements of tech and online games and Netflix and all the various digital medias which require subscriptions, and of course pizza. The takeaway bill for pizza in the ‘UK.’ In the interests of being vaguely specific, a quick Google search just came up with £2.5-3 billion a year spent on takeaway pizza in the ‘UK’. That’s a lot of money.

    It is a fact that the current Labour government talk a lot about not only ‘women and girls’ but children ‘in poverty’ and the poverty being a reason for not attaining what politics is promising every young person. The life of a schoolchild deemed to be in poverty has some pretty good aspects to it, one being the amount of holiday activities paid for by Councils and private organisations contracting into Councils to be able to provide the outdoors activities, the psychological activities, the wellbeing and the giving the feeling that the children in poverty are just as loved as those who live in households deemed not to be in poverty.

    A radio news programme last weekend quoted the welfare bill in its entirety as spending in two weeks what the Defence budget spends in a year. If the social media wars are to be believed, the ‘UK’ is going to have to muster an army in the near future, so this massive imbalance between x26 spent on societal issues, much of which is illness against x1 of the Defence budget as viewed from an Earth – society equation does not look good. The Chancellor needs to raise money, and raise it fast, yet a large proportion of the citizens in the ‘UK’ do not pay any tax at all, yet consume so much resources in finance, health, education, and Council services.

    Ten years ago in a gathering, sort of political, but definitely a discussion event, the economist Richard Murphy was speaking and this blog typer and he had a discussion on tax, and that it would be a good idea for every adult citizen to pay tax, regardless of what the income was, benefits or earnings. It was only those two humans in the room who thought that was a good idea. Everyone else thought it would be very unfair, and not even thinkable. To this blog which is deeply interested in the long history of belief and income to outcome, all under the facts of Earth and Sun and gravity, then how a society not just is governed but how it relates to each other is ultimately a question of survival, even if the comfortable existence in the ‘UK’ these days does not think of actual survival.

    This writer has observed since, and still, that alignment of the citizen – money – tax, it could be said to only have become more relevant, because of the new scale of events, and the scale of the problems. Still the question remains, and if in reverse logic the Chancellor turned round the spotlight away from the demarcated sections of society and looked solely at the bottom line of an all inclusive group of citizens of the ‘UK’, with all income as just a monetary income regardless of source, then what better way of levelling up (levelling down) and inclusivity than creating a new financial framework of income – tax. This human said to Richard Murphy what if there was no Personal Allowance? Why is it needed? In 2025, why is the government not consulting the tax philosophers such as Prof Murphy to open the possibility of a rethink of this horrible impasse. If the tax bands applied to every citizen of adult age so those in receipt of small benefits

    If tax bands applied from the first £1, say 0.5p in the £1 and rising through the income levels for every single adult citizen, regardless of source of income, how would that change society? Society, this blog believes, has its own identity, or does in a healthy group of humans with more chance of survival than when it is missing. The x26 amount spent on benefits compared to Defence would then soon start to even out, but as important, the frameworks within society would be of citizens, not politically enabled identities. The ‘UK’ would not be seen as such an Eldorado, and those families living entirely on benefits would gain an understanding of how a society works and of how difficult it is to balance a life and governance.

    Equal to that, if all Councils ran a holiday programme for pretty much every week of school holidays, and across the devolved governments, that every child is out at activity and education camps regardless of income or the ‘being on benefits means poverty’ mentality, because it can be the reverse meaning those ‘in poverty’ get a distorted view of entitlement and that such wonderful activities are a part of fundamental rights. If each county Council was tasked with activating all children in every holiday, with a few days off for Christmas, doing all sorts of outdoor learning, physically tough regimes and sailing and woodworking, and in the spare time helping the Council with litter picking, painting fences, thinking about making flood defences, learning how to shear a sheep and skin a deer, fish, and make bread, and practice technical drawing, then with all their parents paying tax and all adults on the same page, all children on the same page, how much would that automatically reset this societal collapse happening?

    In the offices of government it must be so easy to just adjust a few technical systems, issue a few new documents, send out the new Directive to all Jobcentres and to HMRC, that simply, every pound of income is under the same incremental tax bands. And it would be so simple to bring the young citizens onto the same page, and all have the same opportunity to experience holiday activity. What would the balance of voters be? Many young people would be probably an automatic vote against any party that did that, but how many would feel a sense of relief that society could ease down and onto the same page, all citizens, instead of this strange antagonism of income and tax? It is not too late, and might even be a vote winner if the upcoming Budget introduced something really really simple.

  • COP……how many?

    ………30?

    It’s 2025 by the western calendar, and Belem in Brazil, at c.1.5’South in latitude ‘is hosting’ a vast global conference of c.55,000 (and a few more) scientists, politicians, journalists of course, experts, environmental speakers of all ages, intergovernmental orgs, non-governmental orgs, leaders from within Brazil honoured, or at least appearing to be, chosen as the venue for this global event, and somewhere in the mix …. c.3,000 indigenous peoples from all over the spinning mass of rock with the tiny little atmosphere zone around it which we call Earth will be at this global event, and feted with the title ‘Guardians of Biodiversity.’ They must be delighted.

    This blog is not counter culture. It is not written by a hippy. Far from it.

    Belem, a city of human society, and the capital city of the state of Para (apologies, this writer is not clever with tech so cannot put the right accent above the a there) is pretty much on the Equator. The Equator is the place at which Helios shines constantly, because the Earth being a spinning mass of rock in space but held by gravity into an orbit has its poles further away from Helios and at an angle therefore the Light of the Sun falls obliquely not directly. This creates vastly different climatic conditions over the surface of this mass of rock spinning in space. In 55-56’N this morning it is fairly cold (not nearly cold enough for the time of the seasonal year) and very wet. In Belem it is probably pretty hot, because being on or near enough the Equator is either hot and dry or hot and wet.

    The city of Belem as everyone knows is at the mouth of the river Amazon, that vast, really vast, wilderness of earth meeting water, the fertility and scale and complexity and sheer wonder that has arisen out of this mass of rock spinning in space with an atmosphere around it. Belem is not ‘on the Brazilian coast’ because humans in the past knew their geography and knew that the sheltered places were just up the river at a suitable point where boats could tie up and humans meet on the river bank, with walkable routes leading to and from that river point. So, just a few miles up the River Amazon is Belem.

    Belem, like many places on Earth, was a major centre for the colonial period when the natural resources were endless. The not mouth but delta system of the Amazon, because these geographies are vast and complex and only make sense from the overall scale, contains the salt water, the fresh water, the precipitation which comes down in humid regions, the unmeasurable biodiversity of the rainforest – forest with a lot of rain – the habitation of so many millions and billions of living creatures from the too tiny to see to the visible animals and birds and spiders and of course trees, those giant trees which produced the sap which was required for the growing production of western rubber requirements ….. and of course, living creatures of humans, who are now called in the Amazon, indigenous. Belem is called the ‘city of mango trees’ so it’s in the name, there are many many mango trees around the delta of the Amazon river.

    A mango is now a favoured western but there are two ‘mango’s.’ One is the native plant of the delta system of the Amazon, and is part of the infrastructure (to use a modern word) with its roots holding together the underlying complexity in that liminal zone of salt and freshwater, land and sea. The other mango is a cultivated plant giving those wonderful fruits, now combined with words such as ‘smoothie’ in the west. The trading port on the site of Belem, over thousands of years a network of small trading between those who could make boats (from scratch, of tree trunks and animal skins), did as history knows, come then under the Portugese government – or Crown as things were then – and the scale erupted into trans-Atlantic trade, either willing or enforced, but still only along certain trade routes and involving a very difficult sea journey over the Atlantic Ocean – by the Portugese it must be reminded, for they were the first to cross that vast stretch of water to establish trade goods, and yes, to use humans from the west coast of Africa to work the new plantations. Portugal is far south of c.55-56’N. But still, all travel was by land and sea, and did very, very, very little damage to the overall life conditions within the atmosphere of this spinning mass of rock in space. It did not damage, because it could not, the life zone around Earth was vast, self-regulating, and assisted greatly by regions such as the Amazon with its unmeasurable array of water and flora, land and sea. The so-called indigenous people in the region, living in the nature-dictated societal groupings of tribe, were not even divisible from their ‘environment.’

    Fast forward to 2025, and a very recent in history event under the umbrella of the United Nations, an organisation which has many arms going into government, health, migration, education, human rights, and every nebulous zone of society possible, now at COP30 has these c.55,000+ humans in a vast conference for 10 days, speaking about …. about what? Well, it’s obvious what they’re there for, it is to save ‘biodiversity’, because biodiversity is the modern research subject, and everybody knows there is a problem. To complete the loop, the 3,000 ish of indigenous peoples who are being flown in as exhibits, they will be given the feted reception (and again, there would possibly be an accent on that French word but is beyond this writer’s capability) of ‘Guardians of Biodiversity.’ Not ‘Champions of….’, no, that would be just too obviously mad. Mad, illogical, nonsensical, and utterly hypocritical, and probably would be refused by any unoffficial spokesman for those indigenous people who would not recognise what a ‘Champion’ was. ‘Guardians …’ yes, a clever term to offer them.

    As long as there are those ‘Guardians of Biodiversity’ sitting at this massive global event all is well. The loop is complete and the work has credibility. Everyone is there to try and ‘save the planet.’

    If COP30 is read through the reverse logic, and the vast and minute data of science and the natural world is reversed into basic facts of heat, water, food, should not a conference like COP30 publish the facts of its own event and publish how many flights were taken, how many different linking flights from origin to Belem, how many litres of water have been used by delegates attending COP30, how much power has been required for air conditioning to ensure the delegates don’t pass out in the humidity, how much food has been flown in (weight on planes adds fuel requirements), how much each hotel has been required to provide in facilities and local workforce who will be ‘let go’ after the delegates have (flown) home, and how much money will have gone into the preparation, event itself, and in dismantling all the conference apparatus, and including that from the protestors who have also flown there, and the indigenous who probably feel they could not refuse this new western domination, and ….. how much hot air has been produced?

    Leaving aside the irony of a global company called Amazon (which it must be stated this writer has never used as it saw the outset of how it decimated the book trade and then went on to decimate everything else which includes The Amazon delta), and in the interests of data, why is COP30 not required to include itself in this data machine of research and concern over the collapse of the survival-support of everything including humans? Should it not quanitfy the amount of water used which requires power to get it to come out of a tap, the amount of flights, the amount of CO2 added, the amount of money paid to get it all going fine, and above all, the degree of temperature rise that it has added?

    If the ‘Guardians of Biodiversity’ collectively made their end of conference statement as ‘Stop COP31’ would anybody believe they meant it? Would it be absorbed into another protest slogan and another ‘we listened to everybody’ in the roundup of the successful COP30, as delegates look forward to the next extravaganza. Short of a global power cut in the next big Solar Flare, is there anything now which can return humans to a reason and common sense?

  • The Vexed question of Vexillology – Part 3

    Vexillology = vexillum + logia

    Vexillology is not a historic subject of study, it was not in the Trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic, and it was not the Quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.

    Vexillology as a distinct focus (and a focus is a looking towards, into, amongst something, not looking out and out and out)is pretty recent in history, though contains some finely focused minds, and here is the reference – https://fiav.org/the-origins-of-organized-vexillology/

    Because similar interests gravitate towards each other (gravity as the underlying principle of the whole of existence on Earth and without it where would we be?), within a few decades the focused interests had developed – https://fiav.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ICV20-28-Schmoger-The-Roman-vexillum.pdf

    In layman’s terms (the non-expert), the vexillum was the portable square red cloth hanging from a crossbar, so facing head on, therefore designed to be visible. Velum = sail in Latin. It was the only cloth flag of the Roman Empire and when there is only one, it is possible to define the meaning, or the message, or the point of it, or the function. The letters SPQR – Senatus Populusque Romanus – define a totality of geography, a place, governance, and citizens, but why would someone bother to go to the effort of making such an object? It was for military function, to define Roman jurisdiction and territory.

    The vexilloid, also a relatively recent term and from Whitney Smith, likewise did not create something new but the slightly different word defines the difference between the cloth flag and the staff with carved emblem. A vexilloid equally defines from within, and looking over the whole Earth (which a human cannot do, except through modern digital tech which is all going down at the next big solar flare) that symbol of a wooden staff with carved emblem and local relevance such as feathers is still a fundamental part of indigenous societies,

    The combination of language and physical objects arising from the ve – velum, the various vex’s, the focused knowledge within vexillology and the now Vexed question of Vexillology, are all from within the trajectory of the Roman Empire, to be still lodged within the ‘UK’, the further possible landmass (taking the Channel as not too hard to cross) of western Europe. In Europe we do not have vexilloids now, apart from ceremonial function of state and religion, and historical re-enactment societies, but we do have a lot of vexillums, as being a cloth on a pole.

  • The complications around royal sex

    The multi layered matter of Prince Andrew and Virginia Guiffre

    Global media now being mostly digital after the century or two of print media, (the newspaper purchased, unfolded and read), this week for regular citizens again it is Prince Andrew in the news because of the book of, or by, or about, Virginia Giuffre. There must have been other people in the meetups and the evenings at Tramp, with that name and maybe Annabel’s as well being the two, or two of the, places where a young lady looking for the highlife and rich men would have achieved that aim. And why not, because that is how society works and still works in the world of say football, where young men earning a small fortune each week have no shortage of females seeking their attention. It’s just life, isn’t it?

    Why is this so distorted the way Prince Andrew and Virginia Guiffre are taking the global digital media? If a young lady says she was sex trafficked then that is what she says, but surely there are so many more questions than that. One is the law, and what is the actual crime here? Under ‘UK’ law, the age of 16 is the legal age for consenting sex, and if someone – male, female, or anything in between – believes the other person is consenting then that is consent. If a two-week discussion was held then the moment would have passed, and that’s just sex isn’t it. Someone aged 16 is not breaking the law in the ‘UK.’ It is a different matter for gypsies, or travelling community under their new name, who still go on biology, and in biology males and females are in the reproduction or sex as leisure zone as soon as biology says so, and that’s probably about 12 or 13 in most cases, but ‘UK’ law does not apply to the travelling community. They conversely have protected rights, another anomoly of life in the ‘UK’.

    In this fevered climate of anti-Andrew, and the triumph of some females who have succeeded in getting his royal titles removed, it has to be asked, is this from the American love of all things British royal, and Andrew is seen as letting the golden image down where the royals can do no wrong? Or is it misanthropy at the most public? There is another question to ask, that as Virginia Guiffre wrote that she was trafficked, which implies duress and an almost hostage process and from just the news headlines over the year or so that reaches those of us who do not follow such things in depth the pair of Epstein and Maxwell were up to some pretty odd things, and that is the question of jurisdiction. Sorry about that long sentence, it might or might not make sense (dyslexia). In the USA the age of 16 is not legal to have sex, so surely this should be a matter for within the USA on the ‘underage’ question. It has become an America-royal family news level, but the actual legality surely is not underage in the ‘UK’, is underage in the USA?

    If the matter was turned round to also focus back down the line, even right back to the origin of the person, which is birth from two parents, childhood, etc., then the life of this unfortunate young lady was not very good all along, apparently. And in the natural world, the weak and unprotected are the ones likely to be consumed first by the predator (which in the natural world is a totally different thing, it contributes to overall health of the ecosystem, not detracts from it). In human society why is global sociology and media only going one way?

    The unfortunate young lady apparently had a bad father, and when there is a bad parent (male or female it has to be said), that weakens life for thereon, and can never fully be rectified. So, the fact she had a difficult life makes the story all the more emotive. However …. one thing is missing, and that is the mother. Where was she in all this? And in this global interconnectivity, why could a call not be made from the young lady to her mother to say she was in difficulty, and could she help get her out of it and back to the USA?

    News coverage has also been in the ‘UK’ in events of Rochdale, in a different level of social class, but these are all similar questions if seen from a wider focus. Why can the ‘UK’ and the USA not look the other way and ask what is so fundamentally and tragically wrong with society that these situations arise at all? It is a valid question to ask.

  • Don’t bite the hand that funds you – at any price…

    Collapse of the Chinese spy case at the highest level in the UK

    Firstly the referencing. The phrase ‘Don’t bite the hand that funds you’ comes from one chapter of a book in the 1990s when this human was a low-key journalist and the book was to be reviewed. The title of the book could not be found but the title has stuck in its head since then as being clever, one of those phrases which dances this way and that, obviously from ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ and yet – and yet – saying so much more. Feeding is physical food. Funding is a whole different zone, and to be advised to not bite that hand that funds, well, the zone merely increases in complexity. This blog has added the phrase – at any price… And in this cut and paste world, here the referencing is made to best of ability, and intention does still speak for itself.

    So if the above phrase was applied to events in the last few days in the ‘UK’, where a case against two men suspected of spying for China was ready for action by the CPS, the Home Office and MI5, all the background preparation in place and in big legal cases that means a lot of work and a lot of documentation yet in the reverse of the straw that broke the camels back, the highest governing power in the land (of the ‘UK’) refused to tick the box to set the case rolling.

    This blog is interested in how humans organise themselves, how their societies are structured under the simple fact of Helios, Earth and gravity, with the requirement of food, water and shelter for survival. “Friend or foe?” until recently (and the last 50 or 100 years are a mere blink of time) used to be clear, or easy to determine after just a few steps, and the status would be measured from within a perimeter of governance. The jurisdiction of the territory was clear, and the jurisdiction of the surrounding and further territories also a clear definition. “Friend or foe?” would be towards a viable entity, whether a person or a society. Viable in biology means living, viable in the English language means something a bit different.

    This last week could not be a clearer portrayal of the abysmal state of affairs in the ‘UK’ of 2025. The office of the Prime Minister as the highest point in government/governance was the one in this case who collapsed the dominoes back down the line, yet a high level legal case involving state security and the implications of international espionage would be expected to have all the force of every power in the land to keep that exterior strong.

    Probably not much food comes from China, apart from the eons old trade of real food for real Chinese people, and the now millions of Chinese students in the major (and minor) universities, all of whom are seen to be carefully shopping, communicating in their own language, usually Mandarin, cooking together, and taking their studies very seriously. In the city centres of London, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester… the Chinese supermarkets are full of goods a Chinese person knows how to use. And the Chinese takeaways, they are still an integrated part of many cities and towns. So that is food from China, but apart from that, fresh food is not really a big commodity coming into the ‘UK’. Not like the fruit and vegetables and so much else arriving from many parts of the world, using their water, disrupting the networks, even New Zealand is turning over its land to grow more vines for wine, to transport the heavy bottles all the way to the ‘UK.’

    That is why the phrase, ‘Don’t bite the hand that funds you,’ which as said earlier came from a book chapter in the 1990s, just says it all. If like a biological dye which is tracked through veins and arteries the finance originating from China was run through the manufacturing, university, utilities, technology, household consumer, medical and scientific networks in the ‘UK’ how would it be possible to make one clear statement that ‘China is a threat’? A threat to what? A threat to national security requires a clear recipient and there is none.

    In a strange contortion of reality, the case collapse of the last week appears as an inversion of the principles of survival. A threat to the national survival and security of societal existence would be if the entire Chinese network of finance in the ‘UK’ disappeared. The cost of biting that Chinese hand which funds us is not even contemplatable because there is now no way of asking who is friend and who is foe. It would be more honest of the Prime Minister if he declared the ‘UK’ a vassal state of China. The Treaty of Nanking was only in 1842, a mere 180 or so years ago, when clear lines of ethnicity, national governments, climatic zones, culture and language were taken as the baseline of human societies, and power of governments showed as a very clear line, as the Chinese government well remember after the imposed Treaties by the British and the French (and the French).

    What a bizarre state of affairs this is in 2025.

  • Autism: The Debate over Diagnosis

    Autism is in the headlines again, as it does periodically, and alas always from the negative viewpoint. A viewpoint is the point of view of the opinionator, and the point from which it is viewed is the opinion itself. The opionator directs its opinion at the subject, which in this case is autism – again.

    It was President Trump, who so often speaks so much common sense, cuts to the point, sets the ball rolling, puts it up in the air and for so often most people to say, well, there is some truth in that. And as this blog is interested in the measurement of anything and everything to the baseline facts – which are Helios, Earth, gravity, and the tiny life zone around our spinning planet – the matter of societal leadership of life forms within this life zone is of great interest to this writer. However, it was President Trump who last week spoke of the problem of the increasing rate of an autism diagnosis.

    Yes, it is a fact that the rate of diagnoses have increased exponentially, in both the USA and the ‘UK’. However, just an elemental kind of analysis of this must ask the basic question of is it that more and more people are ‘catching’ autism, this awful disease as described by those whose viewpoint is that autism is entirely negative? If so, then the cause for this change must be found, as believed by those people, and negated, so as to avoid people getting autism, or coming out of the womb as autistic, when they wouldn’t have been before. It has been a long time that people have been looking for the cure to make sure these odd people don’t hold back society any longer in its rush to the promised nirvana. Autistic people are not much fun to be around, don’t see the point of selfies, and don’t contribute much to the economy in pointless Valentine merchandise and daily takeaway pizzas. So far no cure, only the reverse apparently, more and more people ‘are getting autism’.

    Taking a different viewpoint, looking from a different perspective, and putting this question back into the fundamental facts of human society living in the life zone which is the tiny, tiny little space around Earth, which is governed by Helios and gravity, then it is a valid question to ask how do we know there are more people ‘catching autism’, and that it isn’t more a question of societal changes? When a landslide happens, the topography changes and the habitat is not as before, and many many lives are disrupted – from earthworms to birds to snails to mammals to bacteria, to water life, and of course the humans. If a river dries up, on which societies of humans and other life forms depended for centuries, all along a long length from source to estuary, then there is huge disruption of normal societal balances, much crisis and stress, and the disruption is apparent because of the loss of the underpinning of existence.

    What if the same principles are put into the last few decades of western civilization which in this case is the Protestant (in the general sense) band of the ‘UK’ and the USA, not the Catholic countries of Iberia, Gaul, underneath the Germanic countries, into Poland and eastern Europe, and back around Italy and the Mediterranean islands? This increased rate of diagnosis in the ‘UK’ and the USA is the subject of this debate, all from the point of view that it shows a problem going on, which must be found, eradicated, and then the autistic people will also disappear. What if the problem turned round and asked the societies and government, why is it taking away the habitat of the autistic folks? This is using autism in the general sense, not the difference between us autistics and the Aspergers, who call themselves Aspies and get on well together, have different motor skills, often say they feel lonely, and gravitate towards social integration. We all have great difficulty with sensory overload, and a few other similarities, so this post doesn’t need to turn into a 5,000 word essay on the difference between Aspies and us autistics.

    Even to a few decades ago there was a rich habitat for autistic people, healthy biodiversity in society, civic life, libraries, education, real science with eyes and brain before the data age, small scale railways, government at regional council and national level, even after Tony Blair introduced the not at all thought out devolution of parliaments to various parts of the ‘UK’ there was a healthy habitat for autistic people. Turning that round, it can be said as pretty much a fact, that a healthy society depends on people who care about systems, structure, well regulated organisations, that children have access to informative projects in libraries, that civil servants work without ego but just doing the job of regulating and enabling and checking, and that those who have a particular ability and aptitude in certain areas are pointed in that direction and left to it, without being in a petri dish of researchers and data. It used to be such, and the point is that it really did. The autistic people were seamlessly woven into the fabric of society, and even if people would think they were just a bit odd in the lack of social flair and desire for self publicity, even then it would not be anything like a problem to society itself, because most autistic people were very useful in society.

    Now the fabric of society has been collapsed, the autistic children who would once have had shelves of books, musical instruments, steady careers as a clerk or a piano tuner or a librarian or a teacher (of certain subjects) or the reliable council worker or the so many other aspects of a society, now have only a strange world of schools built of modern materials which bang and echo, no windows that open, chaotic lessons where most are on their smartphones, flipping through images which autistic people just don’t get, modern lighting which really, really hurts our eyes, and a relentless focus on the emotional, the wellbeing, the individual experience, which for us autistics is a real nightmare and panic, because we simply do not put ourselves forward like that. So, instead of asking why is autism on the increase, why not ask why is society causing so much stress to autistic people? Maybe it is the stress that is being diagnosed, not a diagnosis ‘finding a new autistic person.’?

    So, if President Trump wants to lessen, or eradicate the problem of autism, the simplest way of all would be to put back all the facets of society in which autistic people thrive, and often underpin in their reliability. If real books, real building of stone or wood, real food, real lighting of minimal and old fashioned light bulbs, and windows that open were introduced into all towns and cities, and the strange obsession with individual feelings and expression and being respected was just quietly shelved, then maybe the ‘new’ autistic children would soon be part of the natural habitat, in our often genetic lines of autism and which was able to contribute so very much to society in the past. From the viewpoint of humans functioning in the life zone, on Earth, the function of the autistic is really really necessary, and as the litmus test of a healthy society for all, to mark it on the autistic line of functioning, well, just how much stress would that reduce for the rest of society as well? Probably a lot.

  • The Vexed Question of Vexillology – Part 2

    What is a flag?

    It is an easy question. It is a piece of fabric, usually rectangular, somewhere in the scale of 18ins to 4 feet long so in the scale of Earth this is really tiny, and attached to the top of a pole. If it was just the fabric without the pole, and people ran around with them, it would not be called a flag. If the fabric rectangle was stuck up on a fence or a doorway, it would be called a banner. And if it was a long rectangle and carried by several people along a routeway, it would still be called a banner.

    Still a flag is not just a piece of fabric on a pole. It has to have both those, but it is the fabric which defines what the flag is. Now the word can be used as in ‘flagging someone down’ when someone waves their arm at the side of the road, and the car stops. Or, ‘flagging it up,’ when we need to highlight something, pull it out and get it into focus, and usually means that there’s a problem, great or small, but in this way of usage it is something that needs flagging up, it needs some attention, through to need for fixing a problem before it becomes really apparent.

    A flag, the object itself, is all about the fabric – not the fabric of linen, silk, cotton, though that is necessary because it isn’t possible to make a flag of wool, you don’t knit flags, but the reason for the flag. The flag is sending a message, stating facts, defining and demarcating, in about the most precise and specific way, which is why they are flags. Even more profound, the physical symbol of the flag – which is both pole and fabric – speaks its message either by a blank colour, like white or red, or by a vast array of different images and colour arrangements.

    So, a flag is a micro of a macro, but as in all alignments and axes (plural of axis), there’s no pick ‘n’ mix, no mix and match, no one size fits all. Oh no. A flag is a micro of a clearly defined realm, and the entirety of that macro fits perfectly into the few feet of fabric on a pole.

  • The Vexed Question of Vexillology – Part 1

    Or, the reasons, rationale and reappearance of flags in the ‘UK’.

    As 2025 has unfolded, so have many flags, or the word is probably unfurled for a flag, but however it is said, flags have reappeared in 2025 as centre stage. Vexillology is big, but not many folks would know the word, but everybody knows what a flag is.

    This blog, being written by an autistic human, of course in the network of autistic humans there is now and again a human will know every single flag of the world and can prove that within a few seconds, but possibly the identification of flags does not come under Vexillology as such, or maybe forms a subsection of its own within the overall subject area of Vexillology.

    In observing this increasing appearance of flags in the ‘UK’ in 2025, and as this blog is written entirely from the measurement of Helios to Earth to gravity, this reappearance of such physical statements raises so many curious angles. Is there a word of Vexillolosophy? Probably not, but the philosophy of the study of the history and societal position of flags is not really allowed to be discussed in these modern times, and is that because it links back through the jurisdiction of borders, through religion, conflicts, definition, and all of those do ultimately link back, whatever the viewpoint (point-of-view has to link back also to physical) of the human in these multitude of social, political, religious, global, technological and science fictional beliefs in the public realm of today.

  • The Logical Cycle of Seasons

    Last week in a medium sized shop in the mid latitudes of the British Isles, a human checked along the signs hanging above the aisles, and headed into Seasonal Aisle to buy some wooden fence protector. Imagine the surprise when that aisle contained nothing but chocolate, piled high and low and deep, and in so many boxes and packets and bags and specially made little houses and really eye catching words, designs, colours, bits of glitter, but basically the same ingredients of cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar, and milk, give or take a few boxes of dark. And of course, the Season is Christmas.

    Last week was August, today the month turns to September, and for us pagans who notice such things, the Autumn Equinox, Alban Elfed, is still three weeks away. Christmas, which does not exist in either Earth, Helios, or the natural world, but certainly does in the western world for the last two thousand years, is still another three calendar months after that, neatly slotted into that most profound time of year when the tiny baby Light of Helios is born again. From today, the seasonal food now taking up a lot of space in all medium to large supermarket type shops in the UK is for a date about four months away = one third of a solar year. That’s a long time.

    Outside in the still evidence natural world, the blackberries are large and sweet in sunny patches, and many many more ripening to be there for the picking over the next few weeks. Those who know their mushrooms know what this time of year brings, this human only trusts knowledge of a puffball but there are the mycophagists who know what and where to pick in this liminal seasonal zone where the beautiful and bountiful harvest is given. Nuts and berries, and all the cultivated fruit and vegetables of this climatic zone, and which once upon a time would have been a very busy time of preserving and stewing and pie making and jam making and sloe gin pricking and the primitive pleasure of eating a ripe fruit or vegetable straight off the stalk.

    The market, still so much a part of society in much of Europe and especially the Catholic regions of ‘the west’ where supermarkets are still pretty much unchanged over the last few decades appear to exist only to provide what the market really cannot, while the real food goes on in those markets where real food meets real people. Solar time is the definer, the regulator, the arbiter, and like a dial around reality, the market revolves throughout the year, and the work of local producers forms a seamless process through the markets and into the homes of humans who delight in that correlation with ultimately Solar time.

    If the government in the ‘UK’ thought about rebalancing the fragmented links between humans and Earth, and from there of food and water, it could pass a law to say every retail outlet apart from the very small, would have a Seasonal aisle, 365 days a year, with local suppliers all having a little stall, like a real old covered market in the fine towns of the mid latitudes, and which are closing year on year, no trolleys allowed down that aisle because there wouldn’t be room, and money paid directly, in cash, to each producer.

    Farmers markets we have, and unfortunately have become something of a lifestyle symbol, unfortunate as those rows of stalls really do reflect Solar time, while most just load a trolley in the supermarkets and never would visit a farmers market for all sorts of reasons. If the government mandated, passed a supermarket law, requiring one aisle as a local seasonal produce, with the stall holders paying something to overheads but only a small part because they are not part of the supply chain or fraught relations with their suppliers, because they are the suppliers of their own goods.

    Then the seasonal aisle of last week, in August, to encourage a four month buying binge on chocolate before the event of Christmas, would have to rename itself because the real seasonal would be the line up of local produce. It’s a strange situation in the ‘UK’ because to put up a sign saying Christmas aisle in August would have customers startled at the incongruity, even exclaiming Christmas just gets earlier every year, yet that is what it is.

    Solar time has no guises, nature has no way of doing anything other than what it is and for the purpose of the life force itself. To be inside the seasons of Helios and completely sustained, or outside in the shiny wrappings of western time, Halloween horrors soon to come, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, summer alcohol discounts, before Christmas appears again, will there be a government able to bridge this existential gap.