I'm Just Sayin...

This week an old rhythm from the past reached into the present and tweaked at an old way of being and asked whether I wished to go back there. “Can I tempt you out of retirement” it said. Will you consider doing some work on diversity”? I might, I responded; depends on whether you are prepared to shift an old paradigm. But let me take a step back. Years ago I was deeply embedded in that whole equality and diversity training industry - a very British thing. With hindsight I would say that generally it was mostly a complete waste of time – more tick boxing than any real shift. Sometimes when people, especially the police, told me with great authority what they had gleaned about ‘ethnic’ communities from ‘race and diversity’ training, I cringed.   “Diversity training” cannot be about how to treat others of a different race or culture to mine – what was ‘politically correct’. It is about looking at and acknowledging my own shadow, which I projected on to others. That req...

The British political ‘establishment’ (Lib-Lab-Con) are having a collective nervous breakdown this May bank holiday weekend. Frantic attempts to placate, to say they have listened and heard, follows the United Kingdom Independent Party’s (UKIP) success in last week’s local authority elections. The frenzy is generated by the media, bless them. It’s probably true that a part of the electorate hanker for a Britain of the 1950s. It is also true that mid-term local elections provide an opportunity for ‘protest’ about government policies. One elderly male who had secured a local council seat asked why he had fought in the WWII and his father before him in the first world war, only to have the country come to ‘this’.  But what is this ‘this’ about Britain that he wishes to reject? Those who voted for UKIP are characterised by the media as predominantly working class, older and with lower education attainment. The political establishment believe it’s about immigration, and speci...

The body knows that toxic substances—heavy metals and pesticides, for instance—are not only poisonous to the host, but also to pathogens. Such a Catch-22 can lead to environmental illness and immunological breakdown in which the body starts attacking its own toxic cells, but it may be the only choice a bio-system operating with damaged DNA has. {Sol Luckman} Since doing that 16-day fast, I’ve been a bit tardy around blogging because the sluice gates opened and the “stuff” is simply pouring out, especially through my fingers. I think I am observing the toxic elements of the gunk I’ve fed my body over decades being expelled – garbage in, garbage out. I am hoping to live a long life with all my faculties in tact like my oldest living relative, although at 95 she is less mobile because of a leg injury and would find it almost impossible to use the stairs. Nevertheless, a few months ago she decided to get on an airplane and return to the sunshine of the island o...