Woolwich thoughts

The gruesome murder of Lee Rigby wasn't a 9/11 moment, but the impact on me is equally deep and profound.

A day on and I still feel slightly numb about it.

We don't know the full facts yet, that's true, but we know enough to feel nothing but revulsion to the sub-human vermin who killed this young father of a two year old child.

This young father of a two year old child.  The very thought of it

Something possessed these two men, and for all we know their accomplices, to kill someone, anyone, in the pursuit of I don't really understand what.

The islamification of the UK, maybe, or maybe they were just out and out nutters.  My guess is both.

The personal story will come out soon enough, of a family wrecked by the crazed actions of a fanatic in the name of his god.  A son who will grow up without a father.  But why?

Are muslims the problem?  No, I don't think so.

Many - most? - muslims seem to be decent enough people.  I oppose many of their practices such as the cruel killing of animals, the oppression of women (something they share with other religions), their anti-gay stance (something they share with other religions) and I don't really understand why anyone really believes in a supernatural dictator.

I think the problem is islam.

As I have said before, my newspaper is rarely without something about religion and when catholic priests aren't shagging young boys or attacking gays whilst at the same time secretly indulging in gay practices, that religion is usually islam.

My heart sank when I saw one of the alleged murderers ranting at a camera, his hands seemingly covered in the blood of his victim, apologising to the women who had witnessed his barbarity.

What?  He was apologising to that part of the population which his religion, and not just the extreme side, hates most of all: women.

It seems the killers didn't even try to escape.  They were happy to hang around and gloat at their own evil until the agents of the law laid them low and the paramedics saved their lives.

Yes, the paramedics saved their lives.

Plenty of people are saying their lives didn't deserve to be saved and in my heart I agree with that.

They struck at the heart of our country, killing someone whose job, probably his vocation, his destiny, was to keep the country safe.

You shouldn't kill anyone for no reason.  In fact, I don't think you should kill anyone for a reason either.

We're better than them.  We're civilised.  We show the true compassion that doesn't have to stem from scripture.

The British people were magnificent in their support and their restraint.

The odious EDL went out on the streets in some areas but the rest of us stayed strong.

Politicians read the mood of the country, none more so than Andy Burnham who, speaking as an opposition shadow secretary of state, praised the government for everything they were doing.

More details will emerge in the days to come and some will be gruesome.

The blame game will begin and doubtless the police and security services will get a kicking.  But let us not forget who the bad guys really are.

I'm still shocked and not a little upset by what happened but I do know that we have to stay strong in order to preserve what freedom we have and not be cowed by the agents of destruction.

We don't blame every single muslim either because most muslims will condemn what happened.

But it remains my view that we must strive to convince people that the true way forward, to sideline extreme religion, is to embrace secularism.

Everyone should be free to follow a religion or none at all but all of us should live by the same rules.

No special privileges, no opt outs.

I am certainly not advocating a situation whereby the faithful need to emigrate to Vatican City, Israel or Islamabad if they want to live by the word of their gods but if we are to end this awful religious conflict we need common ground, a common set of rules by which we all need to abide.

I fear that no politician will have the bottle to put the genie back in the bottle and sadly the genie has now grown too big anyway.

We need to change though, of that there is no doubt.

RIP Lee Rigby.

God no

I grew up in a house that god never visited.

Whilst he was speaking to others, he never seemed to talk to me.

Some people, though none from my family, even went to church where they talked and sang to god.

They seemed happy enough, as I was happy godless.

Most of my friends had been christened at birth in a formal religious ceremony. I found out later in life that my mother, who had no religion either (not that she ever talked about it: I just kind of knew), decided to leave it to me to make my own mind up when I was old enough.

I later realised that things could have been very different.

There is no such thing as a muslim, sikh, jewish or Christian child. But there are the children of muslims, Sikh, jews and Christians who are then regarded, even branded, in their religion.

It seems daft to me.

We don’t have three year old Keynesians or anarcho-syndicalists because they’re just children and they wouldn’t understand. So why are children expected to understand religion? It’s obvious: the devout need to ensure there is another generation of god worshippers to take their place.

I wasn’t so much a full on atheist, as I am now. It just didn’t interest me. There were other more interesting things to do. And anyway, god wasn’t talking to me.

I didn’t research the subject too much, but it became blindingly obvious soon enough that religion was often at the heart of conflict.

Every item on the news seemed to be about the Middle East and Israel, Northern Ireland and the odd genocide here and there.

And it was true.

Plenty of mass murderers have been atheists but none, so far as I could tell, committed murder or even genocide in the name of atheism.

As I got older, I became more interested in god, or rather the lack of one in my life.

God still wasn’t there for me and, despite what the devout kept telling us, he didn’t seem to be a lot of help to those who did consider him real.

I suppose it was around the time of 9/11 when I really found atheism by way of what a group of Islamic fascists did in the name of allah.

And being a born again atheist, having found godlessness, I wanted to know more about it.

Why did so many people believe in a celestial dictator, despite there being little or no evidence that he ever existed? Had anyone found Noah’s Ark yet? After all, we have found fossils that go back hundreds of millions of years. The boat must have been massive.

Moreover, why did they want to worship him in the first place? After all, the god of the old testament was among the greatest mass murderers of all time. It seemed to me he was a nasty piece of work.

And now I read the papers and watch TV and see nothing but religion.

Half of my newspaper is filled with religious murder, rape, conflict, suppression and abuse of women. The list goes on forever.

People say that we should respect religion.

Well, when I was young I was taught you earn respect and I don’t think any religion has earned mine.

Yes, I think islam is the worst of a bad bunch right now – even if the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury (and Prince Charles) saw Sharia law in our country as a good thing – but it’s in very bad company.

To me, religion is still the big lie and but for the teaching (I’d call it brainwashing if I wasn’t so sensitive a topic) of the word of god to young children it would die a death.

A few weeks ago, I heard about the ‘miracle of Dhaka’ when a young girl was found beneath the debris of the clothes factory that collapsed when it had long been presumed everyone had died in the original accident.

My first thought was what the bloody hell god was doing by allowing it to collapse in the first place?

Live forever?

The main news last week was not the utterly vacuous Queen’s Speech in which the increasingly doddery HM read out some words that someone else had written on the few subjects on which the coalition parties still agree.

No. The media led, and in some instances still leads, on the retirement of a football manager.

Not any old football manager, but arguably the greatest one there ever was, Sir Alex Ferguson.

The obituaries for a man who looks far from dead to me are still being played out in the media and there is a souvenir pull out in my newspaper. (Who reads and keeps these things?)

To me, the main feeling over Lord Ferg’s retirement is a reminder that nothing is permanent because for a long time I thought lots of things were permanent.

For years, I assumed my children would be forever young, needing to be waited on hand and foot (that’s still partly true, actually) and generally cajoled through life courtesy of the wisdom I had acquired over a lifetime. Some chance.

Childhood was over all to quickly and now when I see a young baby or a toddler, I think to myself, and sometimes say to the parents, enjoy these days while you can. They soon grow up. At least they’re still there, if not children anymore.

I thought my mother would be there forever, even when her health, and that of my stepfather, declined and they went into care.

I’d visit her every week, sometimes more often. Now and then, a health blip would cause concern, make them that bit weaker, but they’d recover, right?

But in 1999, my mother didn’t recover as an almighty heart attack proved too much for her now spindly and vulnerable frame and suddenly a phone call told me she was gone.

Well, hang on: your mother is there forever. But how she isn’t. How is that fair?

My stepfather struggled on, ravaged by Parkinsons, but I would at least be able to spend some time with him and that would last, well, forever. But one day, the home called me. He was dying and I needed to get there quick.

So I drove there and was with him as he drew his final breath, an incredibly powerful experience than I almost bottled out of feeling, tempted as I was to go into the next room.

But nothing happened. His breathing got slower, shallower and then just stopped, along with his heart.

So what was happening to all this permanence, the people who would always be around?

My father, with whom I had a difficult relationship, was still going strong, living now in Canada.

I visited him for his 75th birthday in 2004 and we became closer and again for his 80th where we became closer still.

Now he was the picture of good and robust health. He’d had his scares along the way but at least he, the salty dog of the sea, would be there for me in the years prior to my own dotage?

And then, in 2011, after a short illness, he took his leave of this world and within a few days I found myself on board an aircraft to Canada to speak at the celebration of his life.

Permanence lay shattered as all the older members of my close family had now gone and I had become the senior member of the family. How did that happen?

I took for granted the presence of my family for too long.

Yes, I loved them and valued them but I don’t think I took account of the possibility that one day it would just be me and the rest of us who were left behind.

I could, I suppose, have prolonged the feeling of permanence, of living forever, by reading the good book (if you can call a book like the bible ‘the good book’ given all it’s murder, mayhem and bloodshed) and convinced myself I would survive my own death and meet again the my family members who, I assume, would magically turn up in heaven after their cremation.

But rather than seek false hope based on faith (believe without evidence), wasn’t it better to accept the inevitable, that God wasn’t really here and that nothing lasts forever?

Sir Alex Ferguson isn’t going to live forever and he can’t walk on water either (not that you’d know that from listening to the football phone-ins).

He wasn’t going to lead Manchester United into eternity, which at least gives a different sort of hope for the rest of us who don’t support them.

Like many people, I feel the same as I did 20 years ago, apart from the increasingly whitening hair and aching bones and joints – oh, and the hangovers that seem to last so much longer – and, well that will do for now. Maybe I am feeling my age after all and, contrary to the belief of my youth, I’m not immortal.

Sir Alex retiring is a useful reminder that you’d best do the things you want to do and can afford to do because, sadly to Noel Gallagher’s desperate plea that he wants to “live forever” the bad news is that none of us will.

On that happy note…

Ban men's nipples?

I am not going to start this blog by decrying the recent warm and sunny weather, especially not after the last year of continuous rain, but it has undoubtedly had its drawbacks too.

The sun certainly does make me feel better and it certainly encourages me to reach for my Bumper Book of Cliches to remind everyone that 'if the weather was always like this, no one would ever go abroad.'

That's a ridiculous statement really because the weather is never going to be sunny and warm for very long in this country.

So we book our holidays in the sun just to be on the safe side.

Walking through the city during the last few days and I saw the bad side of nice weather.

I was at work for some of it, which is always a drag, but at least I was fully dressed. I cannot say the same thing of all of my fellow human beings.

This is not going to be a sly dig at the legions of overweight women, propelling prams and pushchairs, whilst simultaneously devouring a product from Greggs (other high fat takeways are available) and smoking.

This is no mean feat and is, once more, proof that women are far more able to multitask than us mere males.

I'd be desperately concerned at the prospect at casually inhaling a chunk of swede or biting through the filter of a Lambert and Butler. But that's just me!

Anyway, what I found most unsettling was bare chested men.

Now I am as broadminded as you can get.

I have sunbathed on beaches - reluctantly, obviously - whilst women have displayed their wares for the rays to do their work. In fact, I have often advocated such behaviour should be compulsory but I have a real issue with young (and not always young) men revealing their torsos in public.

Most of them are young and relatively slim, or even thin, and few possess a six pack (to be fair my six pack is more likely to be half a dozen cans of Thatchers Gold) but as soon as the temperature exceeds 10c, off comes the T shirt.

They are usually with female partner and frequently with child.

I can only guess that there are one of two reasons they behave like this: one that it's less hot being semi-naked and secondly that they think they look attractive.

Perhaps I am being unkind and that they do look attractive to a certain group of females or worse still I am merely jealous.

But I can't say I enjoy the site of male nipples as I carefully scour the clothes section of T K Maxx.

Don't get me wrong - men's nipples have their place (although I am not clear where that place is given their general uselessness) - but I would suggest the streets of Bristol is not that place.

For my next campaign, it's the immediate banning of men's nipples in public.

It worked with smoking so the next step is obvious, isn't it?

Spare us the retirement stuff, Ronnie

I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to tire of the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan’s constant threats to retire from the game.

For those of you who have never heard of O’Sullivan, he is regarded by many experts as the greatest player who ever drew a cue. An amazing talent with a touch of genius.

And because he is a genius, it therefore follows that he will have demons, dark places, where his mind goes from time to time.

Well, I can relate to that. At least the dark places bit.

O’Sullivan’s main demon is mental illness and I know all about that, having spent a lifetime battling soul-destroying depression and anxieties.

I know all about the places you can go, how dark and painful they can be and how sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact an oncoming train.

And what’s more, I have known many others who have been similarly afflicted to varying degrees.

Some get by, courtesy of therapy or prescription drugs (my own route of choice and necessity) and others don’t and haven’t.

I have friends and acquaintances who have not managed quite so well and in extreme cases some have taken their own lives. Off the top of my head, five people who I knew very well have killed themselves. I didn’t realise it was that many until I seriously thought about it.

O’Sullivan has gone public with his illness and I thank him for doing that. It says to many people that they are not alone, that their position in society has no bearing on the sometimes crippling effects of mental illness.

But it also reminds me that there is precious little help out there for sufferers.

Yes, there is basic counseling for those who suffer mild or even middling conditions and there are always drugs to kill the worst pains. But that’s as far as it goes.

Mental illness remains the great unknown. A therapist told me that in his experience only one in ten people with mental illness are known to the health service. The rest presumably muddle on and get by in their different ways.

And I’ve been there.

I must have seen a dozen or more therapists and counselors and even once a doctor who was referred to a Mr, meaning he was not an ordinary doctor.

It has usually worked to some extent or other but it never goes away.

Most of us do not live the lives of wealthy sportsmen and women who can work when they choose to, as O’Sullivan says he did, in order to pay his children’s private school fees. We get by the best we can without any such option.

I read also that O’Sullivan is fortunate, and wealthy, enough to have access to the eminent sports psychologist Steve Peters who he credits for getting to the green baize in the first place.

In the post Thatcher society where so many still measure success by how much money they have, there is no point in knocking O’Sullivan for having the resources to buy better medical care for himself in the same way that he buys privileged education for his children.

There’s nothing illegal about it. He earns a fortune through his brilliant snooker and he spends the money in the way he chooses. Fair enough.

Personally, I don’t agree with David Cameron’s assertion that he wants to “spread privilege”. For me, it’s about extending the equality of opportunity for the many, not handing them privileges, presumably thanks to the patronage of the privileged.

It’s true that money cannot always buy you perfect health. You only need to look at the passing of Steve Jobs to see that. But in non fatal conditions, like mental illness, some people can buy better mental health.

Good luck to Ronnie O’Sullivan.

I applaud his strength in overcoming mental illness to achieve great heights in his chosen field.

And regardless of any superior treatment and help he is able to buy, it won’t take away the fundamentals of his illness. Mental illness is, in my experience, for life.

But for the majority of ordinary folk and working when it suits us, wrapping it all in is not an option. If I threaten to retire, I suspect my employer would be only too glad to hold open the door for me!

O’Sullivan has his demons, they cannot be underestimated and we must always take them into account.

But please spare us the retirement stuff.

The effects of mental illness must be very damaging to the economy, never mind society, but as a society and certainly as governments (of successive colours) we don’t seem to regard it as worth treating.

Ex smokers are the worst

I start with a confession.

Although I have not smoked a cigarette in nearly 20 years, I do enjoy one from time to time.

It is only later on in the same day when I think to myself: did I really smoke that fag?

I don’t remember buying a pack of cigarettes or scrounging one off someone else.

I never scrounged fags anyway because other people’s brands always tasted worse than mine. I was a Peter Stuyvesant man until 31st December 1993.

So despite having given up, how come I am still smoking?

It’s because, from time to time, I dream about smoking and more specifically I dream I am smoking, as if I have never given up.

And that’s strange because the longer I stayed away from smoking, the more I came to hate it.

I hate the smell, I hate the cost but most of all I hate the terrible damage cigarettes do to people and many of those people were related to me.

My mother survived into her seventies you might say despite her terrible habit but in truth life in terms of a meaningful existence had ceased to be long before then.

All her medical conditions, the heart disease, the odd mini-stroke, the blockages in her legs that almost brought about amputation caused her absolute agony, indescribable pain that ruined her life.

But still she continued to ‘enjoy’ the habit that did the damage.

Her mother’s health was badly affected by cigarettes and it certainly killed her father who died of lung cancer.

Like most smokers, I suspect, I believed that I would somehow be immune to the 300 or so carcinogens that loiter in each cigarette, that the worst thing that would happen to me would be dog’s breath (and that’s an insult to dogs) and that my clothes would smell (and my house, my pets and, if I carried on smoking that long) my children too.

Smoking killed other people but not me. And the earth-shattering splutter emanating from my chest each morning was nothing to worry about, or rather nothing to think about because if I had thought about it I’d have never have started smoking in the first place. No. The day’s first fag would clear the tubes!

It didn’t occur to me how much I stank of cigarettes until someone told me. My friend Christine in Manchester, with whom I was staying, mentioned how bad my breath was. That’s what friends are for, I thought, but it wasn’t welcome advice.

It was several years before I made a serious attempt to quit.

And on 1st January 1994 we managed it and we managed it for good.

The last pack I bought cost £2.48 but now the same brand retails at something like £8 a pack. If we were to start smoking now at the same rate as we did pre 1994, we’d spend well over £100,000 (of taxed income) over the next 20 years, assuming we’d live long enough to spend it.

My father, who died in 2011, was an ex smoker too and blamed some of the conditions he had in later life on smoking. He was also a militant anti-smoker.

He lived in Ottawa and at the time of this story there was no smoking ban in public places such as restaurants. He hated ‘second hand smoke’ as he called it and did everything in his power to avoid it.

One day he telephoned a local restaurant to book a table for 20. He went through the menu in great detail, ensuring that the bill would be monumental. The manager was suitably impressed and went out of his way to be helpful.

At the end of the conversation, my father asked, “Oh by the way, do you allow smoking in your restaurant. This is very important to me!”

“Why of course, Sir,” came the reply. “We have no restrictions here.”

“In that case,” said my father, “Please cancel the booking forthwith and I’ll be in touch when you have banned smoking from your restaurant!”

Petty? Childish? Maybe, but he was making a point in a way in which I’d never have the brass neck to do!

In England, at least, we have now had nearly six years where smoking has been banned from public places.

And from where I am sitting, occasionally in the pub for example, it is hard to imagine we ever allowed smoking in public at all.

It must be awful being the smoker these days, scratching around for somewhere outside in the cold and rain for a place to indulge the habit, the expensive and ultimately fateful addiction. And I totally understand why they carry on smoking. Quitting was hard, the hardest thing I ever did.

I almost feel a little dirty when I wake up having smoked in Dream Land because just for a moment it seems real and I’m the hopeless nicotine addict of 1993 and before, stinking to high heaven with dog’s breath and a lot less money.

An old friend of mine, sadly long gone, was once admitted to hospital after a heart attack and was being cared for in the Coronary Care Unit of a local hospital.

When I visited him a few days later, he asked me how many of the 15 people in the ward, having suffered varying degrees of heart problems, were smokers.

I guess five or six.

“All of us,” he replied, “And some of them have had limbs removed. They get the nurses to wheel them outside for a fag.”

He died the next year and whilst it took me a few years following to really learn the lesson, I’m glad I finally did.

You can’t fight the fellow with the bright night gown and the fight will be immeasurably more painful and futile with each passing cigarette.