Wildewire

I confess that most weeks with absolutely no green are tiresome, but in the 9th (?) week of the UK 'lockdown' it is proving more difficult for me than is reasonable. Facebook is my main diversion as I've found no new job opportunities for which I can apply for a while. -A month ago I found out that I've been shortlisted for a job I think I'd actually enjoy, but they're not going to interview until the lockdown eases. My problem with Facebook is that people  state their opinions regardless of science or (my interpretation of) common sense and are adamant about their "right" to do so. I've locked horns with friends keen to end the lockdown including one who's severely asthmatic and has at least one very small child and another who keeps announcing that it is a "hoax" but won't elaborate on that statement.  The government wants state schools to reopen on June 1st but public schools like Eton et al won't reopen until Septemb...

When an ex-partner/fomer MEGA crush recently shared on Facebook his abhorrence of the word Queer as a descriptor for non-heterosexual people, I realised that my feelings about the word have shifted. "Reclaiming" words of hate is a complicated business; when "Queer" became fashionable in UK in the early 1980s I noticed that Queers were almost entirely white, under thirty, had cash enough to be in all the "right" bars wearing a uniform that featured jeans, tight white tee shirts and green "bomber-style" jackets with orange lining. As a black man, I never felt part of that crowd. It amused me that a particular journalist, who was a High Priest of the 'movement' at the time was, a few years ago, calling out guys who dressed like that. The fact that he no longer looks good in that drag might have something to do with it. My attitude to "Queer" changed when I made friends with a couple of different straight guys who are comfortabl...

The sanctuary project has not progressed. It has been well over a year since I discovered that one of the main people in the group had a completely different and largely incompatible concept of what we were trying to achieve; they were openly antigonistic to the idea of being open to the visitors who form both the spiritual and financial engine of the project.  I did my usual of taking on all the planning and realised my mistake when, despite a week-end meeting where we went through proposals line by line, my two partners displayed a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the project. This has happened before: when I started Intercultural Arts, I took on all the planning and got a group to act as its trustees. All I asked them to do was to read monthly reports on the project's progress, which proved too much. By the end; I was shouldering so much of the project on my own I began to miss submissions and incur fines which is why I closed it down. This has been the first tim...

I'm definitely less productive at the moment than I have been. My morning Facebook binge has gone from around ninety minutes to more than a couple of hours. I'm depressed by people who post their opinions- that the Covid-19 virus was man-made, that it is being disseminated via 5G telephone masts, that the lockdown is a Nazi -(yes "Nazi" plot) etc. Someone I know claimed that people VOLUNTEERING to take part in vaccine trials were succombing to "the Nazi National Health Service". I asked her to explain and she doubled down with more of her OPINION- as we know; opinion overrules science and empirical fact. I decided to unfriend her rather than enter into futile debate. Another friend posted about "this man-made virus". When I asked him to share his source material he talked about governmental management failures, but wouldn't accept that wasn't the same as saying the virus had been man made. This friend is older and [fact] sparsely educated...

An interesting by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the responses of people with extreme religious beliefs who claim that their faith is stronger than the virus. Sadly, for them; the virus didn't get the note and there have been a succession of "pastors" "immams" and others dropping dead from "Covid 19 complications" (AKA their own stupidity and arrogance) and unknown numbers of their "flocks" and their famillies who've been infected and/or died. When one "pastor" claimed that he'd continue his services until he was "in jail or in hospital" just two weeks before he was in a morgue it was clear that he DID understand the risks but flouted them anyway. Well... The pandemic and self-isolation instructions have come at Easter; one of the most lucrative times in the "Christian" calendar. "Churches", especially in America where they pay no tax have business plans built around estimations o...

The doorbell rang on Sunday. It was a guy I'd helped out almost ten years ago when he was suffering abuse from his Thai wife who, once she'd become a mother, told him how she was going to kick him out of their house and make him pay for it until the kid was 16. He was a friend of a longterm lodger. When I met him his wife attacked him regularly- I took photographic evidence and I contacted various social support oganisation and social work officials on his behalf all of whom were poised and ready to deal with a very real issue that men up here refuse to acknowledge. He did nothing. He refused to contact these people who were waiting to help him. I literally took it to the point where I couldn't do any more- he would have to step up. Eventually the various officials, two of whom were embarrassed at their work because of this told me there was nothing they could do any more. I was left feeling VERY exposed, embarrassed and quite annoyed. I didn't cut ties with him imm...

I just hope that we; the people, will be able to hang onto the practical changes being implemented to combat the global pandemic. This is an opportunity for the biggest redistribution of wealth... ever! A little over ten years ago, governments across the world used financial reserves to prop up the failing banking system; the prevailing wisdom was that without the banks world economies would fail. Now that people are unable to work and therefore earn, they will be getting into debt, what will the banks do now? If people can't pay their mortgages, or rent will they be evicted? If they can't pay for utilities, will they be disconnected? Either way; the situation is unprecedented and there will be a moment when we, the people will have the power to make things change for our permanent betterment or we will allow "them" to restore the stinking status quo. Perennially intractable issues like housing the homeless have suddenly been implemented and most people are real...