Goodbye Shaun Downey

To quote the man himself – though he didn’t have the chance to warn us this time – “hiatus”. “Termination”.

Terrible news – Shaun Downey died a young man of 50.  I didn’t know him well but he was clearly a very fine person. I thought I’d say so here because I couldn’t get a comment up on his blog and because I can’t attend the gathering of bloggers who will raise a toast to him later this month.

Spring is the wrong time for death. Buds and sun rays insult bereavement horribly – I wish his family well. Recently Sean was photographing spring flowers. Just look at these.  And the cats, ayayay – I only sometimes overcame my disapproval of his contributions to this internet epidemic. And it was Sean who first alerted me to the extreme sedentary nature of British sport, which I then went on about for most of the Olympics. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if we shared politics, other times I was. Ultimately so what – you can tell from his blog that he was a man of humour and love.

Here’s a proper obit, inside another.

Update

Also from Simply Jews, from Khanya – Shaun’s Poor Mouth can still speak, and Knatolee whose hen haiku contest Sean won. A lot of people Shaun hardly or never met felt a connection with him, a gift that until now I assumed was unique to celebrities. Roland Dodds found him somehow, and liked his style.

Lost in space, but I don’t know where he is

This one’s for Neil and about him – Monochrome, by The Sundays, the final song from their final album Static and Silence.

It’s four in the morning July in ’69
Me and my sister
We crept down like shadows
They’re bringing the moon right down to our sitting room
Static and silence and a monochrome vision

They’re dancing around
Slow puppets silver ground
And the world is watching with joy
We hear a voice from above and it’s history
And we stayed awake all night

And something is said and the whole room laughs aloud
Me and my sister
Looking on like shadows
The end of an age as we watched them walk in a glow
Lost in space, but I don’t know where it is

They’re dancing around
Slow puppets silver ground
And the stars and stripes in the sand
We hear a voice from above and it’s history
And we stayed awake all night

They’re dancing around
It sends a shiver down my spine
And I run to look in the sky and
I half expect to hear them asking to come down
Oh will they fly or will they fall
To be excited by a long late night

Better out than in

When you are with a parent who is prematurely close to the end of their life, many things might happen for the first time. And all over the world, people are experiencing these things. I had never – as an adult – spent the night in my dad’s room. Never fed my dad before, or wiped his face, or collected his vomit in a bowl. Never checked for excrement. Never put my finger in his mouth to try to clean it. Never touched a stiff dehydrated tongue before. Never scrutinised anybody’s body language for signs of pain before. Never held my parents’ friends while they sobbed before. Never seen my grown-up brother cry. Never seen a person die before, or realised that there could be so many last breaths followed by a hanging silence before the next one, or that even a death immobilised by morphine would be a sudden and noisy spasm. Never heard my own keening as if it were somebody else’s voice before. Hadn’t realised that missing dad would grow rather than fade the longer I don’t see him, or that the memories of his illness would crowd out the other memories until it became hard to think of him at all. I often feel the urge to tweet my dad, which is ridiculous. The last thing he said to me was “Thank you love” and when he tried to touch my cheek I had to lift his hand. But the last thing I heard him say, days later, was a shout of pain. I hadn’t realised that he could still say anything, or that for him dying might not only have been an ordeal but also horribly boring. He was very particular – he like to have things just so. He was also a tremendous stoic all his life, not least at the end. I hadn’t realised that when people – especially older people who know about this – seem cavalier about life’s frustrations it may be because they understand that time will eventually catch up with them too, and that moment gets nearer with every heartbeat. To think that these things have been for all of us, all through time, and I’d never given them a moment’s thought, even though I’ve always known that all flesh is grass.

Pinging world

Still here.

My dad died, his cancer sped up, it was terrible, still is. We were also lucky to get him off the NHS ward where they were lovely but overworked, including by a confused and lecherous patient who wouldn’t stay in his bed, and to a hospice where we could stay. Sue Ryder, which is a charity and so depends on charitable donations. I think we got the pain control as good as it could be, and that is the be all and end all and what hospices specialise in. It’s been 6 weeks since I made it through a day without feeling stricken that I won’t see or touch him again, but thankfully my grief is very well-behaved and discreet. I find my dad in the garden and so I’m gardening very devotedly. The other thing that reminds me of him are my finger nails, which I stopped biting in the hospital since you spread germs that way. A side effect was that I could tickle his feet, which he used to like a lot. Now I can tickle my other half’s. Other than that,they’re almost more trouble than they’re worth, stained from soil and chlorophyll so I end up painting them to hide it.

Was invited to a seder – first seder in maybe 20 years, it was fun. I liked the stuffed courgettes and the little children (couldn’t eat a whole one) very much. I’m a bit worried that the wine brought out the worst in me during a game of squares, where I recall murmuring to my young opponent “None of this adult-lets-kid-win stuff – I’m playing for real” followed by exaggerated jubilation as I cleaned up shouting “Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! &tc”. The magnanimous angel child suffered all this with unbelievable dignity – he probably felt sorry for me.

Saw my brother a couple of days later. We ate vegan Eritrean at Adulis in Oval before striking out broadly north on foot, following our nose. We didn’t meant to go to the Imperial War Museum, and once there didn’t mean to visit the Holocaust Exhibition (I was exposed to Holocaust history way too young and began to avoid it as soon as I could) but we kept climbing the stairs and soon there was nothing else except that, and given it was Pesach it didn’t seem right to turn our backs. I liked that in each room you could watch and listen to survivors – the same faces all along – telling their experiences of that particular aspect – from life before the Nazis, the atrocities they witnessed, the liberation of their camp, to how their experiences affected them in their lives that followed. The other thing I liked was that at each stage the curators restored what I think in this matter is rightful emphasis to individuals rather than social forces. Names of the architects and perpetrators of the genocide and mass murders were named, and faces were faced. At the same time, at every stage the exhibition escaped the utterly counterproductive view of the hated, friendless Jew by describing the efforts of those who opposed the Nazis, from the Danish government to the White Rose. I appreciated the scale model of Auschwitz-Birkenau for getting the picture of how industrialised and peculiarly 20th Century it was. This is a well-documented set-back for the waxing Holocaust revisionism of those who hate Jews as a project – and their allies – unwittingly or wittingly – in this enterprise, those who hate Israel.

Went to a hustings in advance of the May 3rd GLA elections. The Chair allowed people to waste questions on things that the GLA has no control over. The Conservative incumbent is the most knowledgeable and articulate but I cannot vote for a party which has attacked British society as the Conservatives had. The Labour candidate was thin. The Lib Dem candidate comported himself as if he were some kind of umpire rather than a candidate. The Green candidate was good at criticism but flimsy on plans and examples – unconvincing.  That said, I thank them all for making it a contest. Notwithstanding dislike, disdain and mistrust for both Green and Labour mayoral candidates, I can’t imagine voting any other way. It’s down to the least worst choice.

Not voting is holding the door open for the far right, who thrive on a low turnout.

My ideal candidate would be a place-based – definitely not religious – communitarian emphasising the importance of individual actions in regeneration. They would support a London Living Wage and campaign on the side against wage inequality. They would meet calls for more police on the streets with initiatives to give young people a thrill and opportunities to gain kudos. Transport would be cheap and cheaper before 7.30am and after 8pm. There would be electric vehicle charging points and car share schemes. Bike lanes would be expanded. And now I need to call my mother.

 

Good luck to them

They will need it.

 

Abandoning Afghans doesn’t mean “peace”

(Chris Riddle, Observer Comment, Sunday 15 November 2009.)

Karzai is disgusting but there’s no peace to be had by leaving – not for her, not for their children, not for us. They don’t want us to go.

As Neil D says on Harry’s Place, “Abandon Afghans? Not in my name”.

And I’m checking for what Kellie has to say.

Update: here’s what he says:

“There is an old chestnut that never goes away about there being no military solution in a conflict like this, only a political one. And it’s half true.

The problem is with the other half, the half made up of an enemy which believes very much in a military solution, or a terror solution. Before anyone can negotiate with them, this enemy has to actually recognise that there is no military solution available to them, and to reach that point they will have to be fought. Fighting them isn’t the solution in itself, but it’s a necessary part of creating the conditions for a political solution, or as may be more likely, the multiple political solutions necessary in a conflict this complex.”

Read on – you will also find in that post some links to video recorded discussions about the way forward, from knowledgeable, experienced people.

24,315 and 92,049

Here are our war dead.

Civilians estimated to have lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, including at the hands of insurgents. I’m taking the lower estimates – the upper ones are higher.

They were caught up in the fighting, or unable to get what they needed to survive.

126 and 179

Here are our war dead.

War isn’t ever glorious, but soldiers are damn brave, they died for me, and I’m full of gratitude.

It’s why I wear a poppy. Rest in peace, soldiers.

George Osborne’s unjust Conservative public sector pay freeze

Summary piece, with anticipated savings, on the very good Left Foot Forward blog, along with a link to a comparison with Labour’s.

Preparing for a pay freeze for the higher earners is definitely a good idea – but only public sector? Starting at the arbitrary wage of £18k? Osborne claims more in expenses for mortage interest than £18k.

Peston says that it’s not firm, that it’s a shot across the boughs in demand of some sensitivity in pay demands. And if you are going to take away the only currency most people understand by way of recognition for good work, how the hell can you think you can get away without replacing it with some other form of recognition?

From the post, the sustainable measures the Conservatives don’t intend to take:

• They will NOT withdraw the personal allowance on income tax for those earning over £100,000 (worth £1.5bn a year);
• They will NOT address the anomaly which sees a quarter of all pensions tax relief going to the top 1.5% of savers (raising £3.1bn a year); and
• They have NOT signed up to the 0.5% increase in all rates of National Insurance Contributions (raising £3.35bn a year).

More on Osborne’s plans:

• Stumbling and Mumbling’s Chris Dillow casts aspersion, based on his analysis of bond markets (I’m shrugging in ignorance), on the need for deep cuts.
• Robert Peston looks at the fine print, raises a lot of good questions eg (“Or do they pay what George Osborne has signalled as the new maximum – viz £197,689 (actually presumably it’s a bit less than that, since the Tories would impose a pay cut on all ministers)? But if a newly recruited boss of Royal Mail, or the BBC or the Bank of England were paid less than £200,000 a year, surely all his or her more junior colleagues would also have to see their pay slashed?“) and links through to the Stephanie Flanders and Nick Robinson.
• Bad idea on turn-off bitchery.

National Rail – avoiding the injustice of a penalty fare

Goes without saying that dodging is a disgusting thing to do, which amounts to stealing a free ride from your fellow passengers and contributing to the poverty of the transport network.

I want to pay my fare, and I have an annual network Gold Card. In theory this entitles me to discounts galore. In reality, I have to pay again for this by arriving half an hour early at the station.

I have to queue to get my discounts – namely my travel up to boundary zone 4 and my 33% discount on the price of the ticket.

I have to wait in queues of sometimes 50 people, some of whom don’t understand the difference between ticketing and information, sometimes for 30 minutes. This is absolutely unacceptable and after reading this Evening Standard guide, I’m damned if I’ll do it again.

HT: Ibis