When Texas

executes a corporation in the electric chair
for crimes against the state, then I will believe
the legal fiction that 'corporations are people'.

My Fourth Christmas Card Of 2013

Piet Mondrian 'Still Life'.

Education

is a hall of mirrors that children
are spun through at speed in the hope
that afterwards they might vaguely
see themselves in the distortions
they were exposed to. And even more
that they recognise behind the twisted images
their sponsors-their families, driven beyond despair.

When Power Equals Forgetfulness

I recently saw the film 'Philomena' and enjoyed it
at many levels. It was much more than 'an entertainment'.
One thought it left me with was how records are kept
of people's lives;the longer and deeper a person
is institutionalised the more complex the records
of their 'being kept' become, the less the kept know
of what their keepers write about them. All to keep
to the rules, until finally the inmate is bound by
the opacity of the rules by which they are looked after.

With a lot of help some people get better, and some
help comes from the place that hindered them into ill health
in the first place. One condition of their relative wholeness
is how the now enlightened institution still does all it can
to stop the former patient from asking 'Can I see
what you wrote about me?'. They are fobbed off
with polite resolve that won't be broken by comments
like 'Not that much was written', and 'It stopped being
relevant after you left' or 'We threw most of it away,
what there is left would not make sense to you. But the letter
of your admission was saved, it says 'It was all for the best'.
Their former life is made to seem as if it just never happened.
This leaves the ex-cared for relatively whole in the present day,
but now more fully aware that they have a past full of holes
that they know test of other people's ability to accept them.

Any authority can write away somebody's life,
religious or secular, authorities are all alike
in their arrogance, opacity, and selective amnesia.

Technology Is Only Ever A Means

never an end, the end point is always the use the end user puts it to.
 Thinking a little harder about what we do often helps. 

The Limits Of Modern Charity

Every time I go into my nearest town
I see The Big Issue being sold. When
I see the sellers I give them a pound
in return for which they cheerfully ask
after my welfare. The last time I gave
I looked at the coin and looked at the lady.
I recalled the sobriquet by which the coin
was known-'a Margaret Thatcher'-the size,
hardiness and metallic nature of the coin
and the person were comparable. I answered
her enquiry and felt mortified by the memory
she raised as I offered her the coin. Is money,
however much it is shared and whatever we give
or have, always so inherently mean as to keep those
that have the least on the lowest possible social rung?

I Am Worth Only As Much As My Next 'Thankyou'

Work is over-hyped, except as a route
to the cheap grace of financial indebtedness,
which in turn raises The Protestant Work Ethic
to new highs in legal but legalistic tax avoidance
and the avoidance of all social responsibility.
Surely life is much more accountable when a person
is honestly beholden to the state through the constraints
of 'A life on welfare'. There any currency of repayment
is through personal thrift, small but daily acts of kindness,
and finally a gracious manner toward a neighbour.
Because after that there is little else left to argue over.