PRESERVING FOR THE BIG UNKNOWN AND FOLLOWING MY FEET THROUGH ISRAEL

One of the major jobs on my  'to do' list will be to check my digital stuff, mostly photographs and family group stuff with photos.  I have absolutely no doubt it will be one of those jobs that will roll over every month, maybe, every year.  Perish the thought! But, if I don't get onto it, there will be lots of stuff  that's been important in my life that could be in a 'guddle' - a nice onomatopoeic Scottish word - at worst, lost for future generations; that's assuming they want it.  As I have been interested to know something of my heritage, I believe it is a valid assumption that they will do, and I am therefore, making the assumption.

Storage media that we have used for over a decade, like CD's and DVD's do have a limited shelf life; about a decade. External hard drives live a bit longer. VHS cassette tapes weaken in use. I was therefore, interested when I heard there was a new Disc available; (note spelling, not with a 'K'). It has a thousand year life, a whole millennium!  That would certainly do for me. I would have to buy a DVD writer that works with the technology.  There are a few around.  In every other respect, it seems, the Discs can be used for reading in the drives I already have. Obviously, we know that the length of life of anything can be limited by new developments.  I reckon, so long as there's a reader drive, somehow or another, in a thousand years, if the world still exists, (the other big, big unknown) the media can still be accessed.

I looked at photo CD's that are officially past their perishable date.  So far they seem okay. The pictures stored on one were of  Israel. These pictures show the Roman Aqueduct, it runs along  the fine sandy Beach at Caesaria (named after Caesar Augustus) further than my eyes could see.  Like all places in this ancient land, it has an illustrious history.

If all the disks awake my memories and give me pleasure like this one, the task will not be that bad, probably, just lengthy.

Next, at a market in Jerusalem, not the ancient Shouk/Souk, it's a market that the people who live in the city use for their everyday purchases.  This visit was pre-tram times.  These days trams stop nearby.

Round the corner from a small popular restaurant in the market, called Azur, I saw a group of men outside a cafe playing Backgammon, a game that is popular in The Middle East. Last time I visited, the Azur restaurant had changed location and if I am not mistaken, I believe it had moved here, to the more spacious cafe premises.

This is the ancient Shouk/Souk in Jerusalem, where you walk on cobbled streets interspersed

with stone steps worn by the feet that have climbed them through millennia. Either side of the steps  are narrow ramps for carts to negotiate the steps up or down, just as they always have done here.

You smell this before you see it. Such a mix of wonderful aromas, and all the spices are so artistically displayed.  I have seen similar displays in other markets.  I thought this one was quite special.

 A visit to The Holy Sepulchre. It felt and looked like pure theatre. People were not going to be given access  to this shrine, while it was being commandeered by the Eastern Orthodox Priests and friends, doing their photo shoot.  About 30 minutes later,  when the 'models' had retired to the side aisle, waiting people were ushered in four at a time.  I would not have stayed in the queue, bar encouragement from a friend.

Inside the shrine was a tiny light ante room with an artifact displayed in it. Did a person the proportions of the priest in the picture, really get in there? The little one in black would have had no problem. Eventually it was my turn. I was unable to decipher the lettering relating to the artifact, so, had no idea what it was.

A woman in front of me moved into another small room with a marble tomb structure. you couldn't see the ends.  She dropped to her knees, and using her rosary prayed. I waited  respectfully in the doorway. Someone else had just been allowed into the ante- room. Prayers finished, the woman jumped up, got out a camera and took a lot of flash pictures. 

The tomb room was gilded with everything and anything in Eastern Orthodox church style. You get a sense of it with the decoration you see around the Sepulchre door. Simplicity, it was not.

There are three major Christian sects, at least, represented here, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox. The latter appear to have the guardianship of the place, whether by default or agreement I do not know.  Each Christian representative has their own areas of the Sepulchre. It is worth taking a guided tour as there is much to be explained. It was interesting to see that the Roman Catholic Chapel was relatively very small.  Not all is harmonious  here, you do hear of physical discord in the religious camps. 

Excavations in The Shouk  have revealed ancient fortifications.  On the way through the market, this ancient  museum of life, was the Golden Menorah. It is The First Golden Temple Menorah Constructed since the destruction of the Holy Temple. It is undoubtedly a cultural and religious standard bearer as well as a fascinating and beautifully crafted object.

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

GREASE TO SLIME

David Cameron's palms greased up to the hilt by Murdoch and other press barons are now, definitely slimy.  (D.C is the British Prime Minister, leading a coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats).

If I were a victim of  the gross press intrusion, like that which has been reported through the major Leveson Enquiry, (which was ordered by the Prime Minister) I know what I would be thinking of the leader of our so-called democracy.  This man, who stated he would be the champion of the victims of  horrendous press slander and intrusion, attempted to dilute to virtually nothing, the safeguards proposed against future diabolical media behaviour.  

To add insult to injury, Cameron did not want statute to deal with media transgressions, nor any statutory underpinning of the loose Medieval instrument he proposed in place of law, a Royal Charter.  Left open and unguarded, a Charter could easily be quietly tampered with by ministers and any effective elements could be neutralised.   Who needs a champion like him.... certainly not vulnerable and traduced people!

It speaks volumes for the coalition of the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, that the preferred inter-party agreement which evolved in the early hours of Monday 18th March 2013, does contain some statutory back-up to counter ministerial interference.  Though not perfect, it was,finally hammered out in the office of the Labour Party Leader, Ed Miliband, together with Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, (also leader of the Liberal Democrats) and their various advisers.  Oliver Letwin, who we hear little of, and who is Minister of State For Policy, attended on behalf of the Conservative Party.  The pressure group, 'Hacked Off,' representing the victims, have noted their approval of this agreement

The media barons still will not like it. They will not easily give up any of the power they have taken, (and been allowed to run with) without any authority to do so.

Cameron can now hold out both palms and say to his media handlers, "Hey boys, I tried to scupper the new regulation, you saw I did". No doubt, he'll be fervently hoping he has done enough to bank sufficient credit with the media barons, for them to 'crown him'  as their man - in their news and propaganda media - at the next General Election.    
 
 Politics is a very dirty business. 

DON'T THEY LOVE SEX AND THEIR OWN VOICES

Don't they love the sound of their own voices. Don't they hate a story that produces some better news than they wanted to hear. Don't they love spending time on prurient irrelevancies when there are really important weightier concerns around to hear about. 

We are hardly short of noteworthy news in all its forms at the present time. Instead, as there is a court judgement given that is favourable to the media, what do we get, a headline and discussion on someone's private life, because it gives the media a chance to indulge in a 'holier than thou' frenzy of righteousness.

Meantime, a relatively good news story, the decisive yes vote in the German Parliament supporting Euro emergency funds gets the 'if it [the vote] had gone the other way' treatment, which it decisively did not, 'there would have been ruination'. Well, Armageddon did not make a visitation today and the media did not get the story that they had so hyped up and hoped to report on.

There are three other world stories: 

One is about a pastor in Iran who is threatened with the death penalty for his Christian faith. The death penalty will be lifted if he renounces his Christian beliefs. The penalty meted, is outwith the state and Sharia laws. It sounds like exemplary and dangerous posturing.

The second major concern is the sentencing to hefty terms of imprisonment of Bahrain medical staff who treated injured people at the time of the protests there. As far as could be seen, the nurses and doctors were performing humanitarian acts to save people's lives. That's what they are trained to do. Many protested about the types of injuries they saw appearing in the emergency units. The apparent silence from the Americans, Europe and the UK on this issue is shameful. 

And another little matter of some interest. Rev.Desmond Tutu invited the Dalai Lama to his Birthday party in South Africa. The South African Government have a delegation in China at present. The Dalai Lama's visa request to attend the celebration is now on the back burner....no guesses needed as to why. The retired Archbishop is not at all amused by the political antics. There were no blocking tactics in the past, when The Dalai Lama was invited  to the South Africa for Nelson Mandela's celebrations.

THERE MUST NOT BE A HIDING PLACE FOR ABUSERS

There is no place for institutionalised pedophilia. There should never be. I will offend some people, no doubt. I trust that right-thinking people will not be offended and will support my view and that of countless others. I highly applaud Enda Kenny the Irish prime Minister for his straight-speaking to the Catholic hierarchy on the subject of the systematic... "abuse and torture of children" by the Catholic Church. The abuse of children in all kinds of disgusting ways has gone on too long under the long black cloak of tacit support of the Papacy and its representatives. It has been further compounded in the guise of the sanctity of the priestly confessional. When will that element be un-knitted? Until this weak area is dealt with, there will be continuing protection for abusers. There is no clear leadership from the Vatican nor its senior clergy on preventing the abuse of children by its own ministry. They provide a continuing defence for their structural inadequacies and criminality.

There have been too many cover-ups of unacceptable institutionalised structures and behaviours. The media has been the latest institution, where we have witnessed the media taking freely unto itself the right to hack victims phones, be the victims dead or alive, be they celebrities, or, you and me and our families. The media barons have always had power without responsibility. The present unpacking of it, shows a broader and deeper corruption of power than some suspected, few appreciated and the majority had no knowledge of.

Notwithstanding the fresh outcries of current gross abuses of trust and power, there is still the outstanding, currently unresolved, Steven Lawrence case and the institutionalised racism demonstrated by the British Police in the handling of his murder. This matter still rumbles on.

What kind of society have we mired ourselves in, allowed ourselves to be manipulated into? The Police at the highest levels, have shown at best lack of judgement, at worst, institutionalised racism and corruption. Our Parliamentarians have not performed any better and it has suited them to let things ride. Do we get the Press that we want and deserve, or have we got a media that has manipulative, controlling, corrupt structures, to suit their needs? If that is so, they have taken power we did not give them that they did not have any right to take. Can we say did not notice? If we did notice, I would say, as small cogs in the machine, we were disempowered and therefore, individually, rendered powerless

Now the The Catholic Church is being confronted with its sexual criminality in the strongest terms. We are witnessing some fracturing of the power of the media. British politicians are cautiously tip-toeing around a media circus 'crime-scene' from one which some of them have derived great benefit. In a few cases politicians have been victims of media telephone hacking and blagging. Senior police officers are also in a very uncomfortable place.

As quoted on the 30th April 2011 by lawyer David Pascoe "JUSTICE HAS NO TIME LIMIT", (source: Birmingham N. Post & Courier 1st May 2011). And neither should it.

YO YO FOOTBALL JAMBOREES AND AGEING PIN-UPS

The British football politics are arrogant and breathtaking. The media's self-serving announcements at the top of the news reports about the winners of the various FIFA favours, is sour. In fact it's spiteful and nasty. There are other far more important matters in the world requiring of attention, and football games, in the global scheme of things, are nondescript.

Was there really a belief that because we are the United Kingdom, we had a right to major consideration?

Was there really a belief that sending the Prime Minister on yo-yo, jamborees, to show his face, along with an old,  ( in sports terms)  football pin-up and a member of the Royals, would secure "a world cup [in the prime-minister's lifetime]"?

Did we really believe that having named and shamed the FIFA organisation, having accused individuals on its voting board of corruption, that Britain would be benignly received? 

There is a case for political, diplomatic, and media circumspection here and rather a lot less arrogance.

MEMORIES OF CHILDREN'S PROGRAMMES

Early children's television programmes were full of spoken received English, (previously known as the King's or Queen's English) which the majority of folk did not speak. Thinking back, the BBC 'Listen With Mother' radio slot in the weekday afternoons was equally as plummy and posh. While children probably accepted there was a bunch of chatterers who did not speak not like them, their families and their friends, the important thing was, the programmes were theirs, they belonged to them. It introduced young minds and ears to listening to stories and mini serialisations. The plum speech didn't matter, anyway, you didn't copy their speech patterns, you just learned to understand it....like learning another language!

Television was a similar story, but I think changes in interaction and speech patterns altered marginally quicker than they did with the children's radio programme slot. As we did not have a television in our house, I only saw children's programmes very occasionally. There was, I remember, the odd stripey-dressed puppet Andy Pandy and The Flowerpot Men in monochrome, jumping around inside a small square bottle-bottomed window. I have no idea what he or they did. 

When I became parent myself, I watched the children's programmes on television with the kids. The daily radio children's slots had vanished long ago.  Rosie and Jim,  who were lively-looking squeaky-voiced puppets, appeared on their brightly painted canal barge houseboat; a programme with Tony Robinson,(now the presenter of the archaeological digs T.V Time Team)  who, in those days, sat at a computer and during the programme he would summon the animation shape of  'Wordeee', to demonstrate the sound, the use and the writing of the magic 'e'.  

I watched the whole series of Sesame Street, it was brilliant for teaching young eyes, ears and minds all sorts of useful things, like sign recognition; snippets of various genres of music; titbits about nature and loads of activities. The little parable style stories, beautifully enacted by colourfully dressed animal characters guided by adults from many ethnic backgrounds, introduced children to the real multi-cultural world.

CALMING OR KARMIC

There is calming sound emanating from my radio. It could even be karmic. Just about anything has got to be superior to the other media programmes pussy-footing around pretending not to saying anything about what they call 'the big day', oh and saying nothing, which of course, they are not Work that one out. 

The guy I heard, who said the hamlet where he lives had received no visits, no posters, ( did that include mail shots I wonder) sounds like he lives in paradise. It can't be a social vacuum, because he was able to be contacted by the media.

There is very important news on the world stage, an important chunk of it, not so far from our shores. Dear me, the navel-gazing has really befuddled any useful thinking.

Everybody else can stay up and watch the antics on the television. Here's one person who won't be. I'm sure the presenters will have lots of self-fulfilling and gratuitous fun.

I HOPE IT BACK FIRES - BIG TIME!

There is no heart, not yet, in the current election campaign. There is too much scripted play on personal emotions, rather than caring for, or about 'you', or the country, from one corner of the political divide. Is this more American style importing from the light blue front man, along with paraphrasing Nixon, Kennedy and Obama. Some original thinking would be a surprise. 

There's much bandying about cutting out the cancerous elements of society; at times it seems that the older generation are being lumped into it. Hear also, the very rushed emotive sound bites about the care and treatment of cancer that are meant to painfully bite, for a political cause, no empathic purpose attached, cynically used for the power trip. 

Then there's the emphasis on celebrity culture. Substance matters not a jot. Why not vote in the footballer, David Beckham, or his wife, Victoria who has experience of being a media wife. Britain's Got Talent; no chance, we like to denigrate ourselves. 

There is no doubt about what the papers and other media are doing. There are very one-sided reports and commentary, also, there is carefully selected imagery. As usual they are playing at being king-makers. Their proprietors, who greatly influence their newspapers' output and editorial management, have no vote in this country, no locus, yet they are allowed to take power without responsibility. I hope it back-fires,big time.

There are so many contrasting sound bites to generate fear factors. The biggest fear factor is supposed to be electing a hung Parliament. Heaven help us all if our Parliamentarians have to talk nicely to one another and behave like decent and sensible grown ups ought to. That would never do, would it. What kind of example would that set to our young people and the country at large?

 LOVELY MEDIA!

I get thoroughly bored with those who jump on the media's favourite bandwagon for the day or the week, rarely giving time for any other non-sensational information to seep out, if it is given space to. Not to mention, of course,  hearing about issues other than the navel gazing variety.   You would almost believe that the media is neutral, balanced, unbiased, sweet and nice.

 VOYEURISTIC  HEADLINE GRABBERS

As I wandered out of a store past the newspaper stand,  two  front page  headline 'view grabbers' as I call them, caught my eye. 

One 'grabber', a banner, boldly stated, " How I beat depression". At that moment, I could think of many possibilities for beating it, the main one being, don't buy newspapers, and especially, not that one.  If I was feeling down or seriously depressed, would I want to read a newspaper?

Under a rather nice smiling picture of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, in another daily rag,  a headline ran..."Diana, secret lover to marry".  The story, such as it might have been, (I did not seek it out) was to be found somewhere on the inside pages.   I snorted with disgust and went out of the store, into the wet night.  The media will stoop to anything,  by encouraging, even appealing to, voyeuristic tendencies,  to try to sell  its footage.

 ...NOW THERE'S A CLAIM TO FAME

A friend arrived in town, visiting from Washington State, (where she'd returned to after three years living here in the UK).  It brought back memories of how well informed she felt she was on global issues when she lived in the UK, in comparison to now, where a lot of unfamiliar information jumped out at her on this visit. Yes, she said, the Americans knew about the latest Tsunami and the earthquake in Sumatra because it was an American interest.

One part of our wide-ranging conversation went as follows:

Who is this man, he's all over the London newspapers? ... London is going to make him your prime minister at your next election ... They are...who?...  Cam somebody.  You mean David Cameron? ....  Yeah, that's him.  You are going to turn Conservative. We've not heard a peep about him in the States....   And you think London is going to elect him?  ... It looks like it... It is a UK election you know, not just a London one. On the other hand, the media are busy being king-makers, and they'll ensure who they want is elected. ... They always do, Oprah Winfrey was all powerful in our last elections, she is credited as turning the election, all by herself.  

Now there's a claim to fame.  I wonder if Oprah could weave her magic in the UK from London or Cardiff or Edinburgh.