Thursday 17 February 2011

Steps to Political Stimulation

I promised I would write to you soon, promised that these updates on all the little preoccupations  of my life will come at you hard and fast, I promised to entertain and (to use a phrase in keeping with current affairs) ‘electrify’. But I broke my promise, and I understand if you would like to call me Nick Clegg.

Bad jokes aside I have been rubbish! But I’m going to try and rectify the mistakes of my past, and become a model citizen in the blogging world. Volunteering my thoughts in aid of the less unfortunate, helping kids understand the world around them, guiding them on the path to a better future, and entertaining those at the old folks home… ladies and gentleman I present to you the Big Pratyesh (BP for short)!

My first steps into the blogging world, and I’ve been thrown head first into the Big Society. Thanks Cameron, Brown, Blair, Bush and whoever else thought this would be a good idea, there’s nothing like being thrown into the deep end and told to swim!

So what’s the big hullabuloo about, well the government wants a big society (I thought we already had a pretty big one), and what this means is that they want to shift blame, sorry I mean ‘power’ to local governments and the local people, to help build a society which is self efficient and not reliant on the government, or state, to provide local amenities. According to the 10 Downing Street website, its aim is “to create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a big society that will 'take power away from politicians and give it to people’”.

My first question or concern is that, do we not live in a democracy, where we should have this “power” anyway? Secondly, if we take power away from the politicians why do we need politicians? This all seems like political jargon, it all seems like a move where politicians (who have decided on the massive cuts – even though the people disagree) will not be held accountable if society collapses. The people, who this hypothetical power belongs to, will be held responsible for the destruction of society rather than the politician in central government who are getting paid to do less and less everyday will reap the rewards of any success.

My argument is exemplified perfectly by a question asked on question time last week (10.02.11). An audience member posed the question that because of the government cuts one of their services were being cut (can’t remember which one, there are so many) even though the conservative panelist was saying it would not affect those key areas. His answer was that we have made the cuts, but the local government does not have to take away this service, that the central government is encouraging them not to. the outburst that this received was, you are making a 40% cut to our funding, and we cannot afford to keep these services! Central government’s cuts are forcing the local government cuts to cut the services that can’t afford to be cut, to make up for the deficit. At the same time they are jeopardizing thousands of jobs, but want these people recently rendered useless to society, to then become helpful to society, but this time for free… hmmmm.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for volunteering, and giving back to your community, in more than just an economical manner, and I do! I coach cricket at my local club and local schools, I am volunteer co-coordinator for my cricket club, I am the joint Communications officer at the same club. I do a lot of work, but I couldn’t do those things if I didn’t have a job that supported me financially, I would be dedicating my time to finding a job! I do it because I love it, and you can’t force people to volunteer… its contradictory.
Politicians are beyond me, Politics are beyond me, and the systems in place for democracy or any form of government are beyond me!

Democracy is stupid; you get 51% of the population which is happy and 49% that are not happy! Democracy does not give power to the people, but rather gives the illusion of power. People say, well at least it’s better than a dictatorship, well it’s not, all we are doing is choosing which dictator we want in charge and rather than it being one dictator, it’s a cabinet of dictators. I would rather have a proper dictator, who does not try to confound the people with illusions of grandeur, but says, I am in charge and you will do as I say.
We are so confounded by our dreams of freedom that we subject ourselves to become the slaves of our own deception, our own delusion and the dereliction of our true freedoms for a system that does not, has not and never will work!

Politics, you can’t really avoid it can you, it’s an addiction, to talk, write about something you can’t really change! 

Well Egypt stopped talking and they took action. They got over their addiction, and have now truly become free, for a moment, when civility has taken a back seat and the illusion of broken promises have been shattered they are truly free, in a moment of chaos. But just for this moment.

Finally… My politics have been stimulated! For a moment!

Now to something more important… The return of the great one, the Bruhma Bull, the People’s champion, the jabroni-beating, pie-eating, trail-blazing, eyebrow-raising, faster than a cheetah, stronger than a buck, the hottest thing in all of entertainment, returned to the WWE.

Finally… the rock has come back…. Home

And damn am I glad to see the great one, back and electrifying the crowd, like he never left! I must admit there has been something missing in the WWE recently and I think its him… A big name, that can run his mouth and have the crowd hanging on to his every word, repeating his every catch phrase and reacting to his every move. You know that when, only the rumors of his return caused such a big stir, the crowd have genuinely missed some that layeths the smack down on all their candy asses!

But I think the most interesting, and for me the best thing to come out of his return was him picking apart John Cena. And maybe this, just maybe, will force Cena to get out of is confort zone, stop kissing ass and work on his character, and maybe he may just turn heel. Now I know I speculated this last time with the Nexus thing… but I think the Rock has the presense to turn him, the big enough fan base for Cena to go heel and WWE not to loose their Face.

Now we come to the Awesome one. This I thought was brilliant! Many people have thought that the Rock is picking him apart and ‘disrespecting’ him… but my thoughts on this was that he was showing the Miz a lot of Respect and kudos. I say this because the Rock who has escalated into something so big, was not so different, he was running around calling himself the Great one, the most electrifying man in sports entertainment… do you see the similarities? Between the great one and the awesome one, the most electrifying man in all of entertainment and the most must see superstar in the WWE. I think the Rock recognizes that there is massive star potential in him.


Well I must say… This has been exciting and I will try to do this more often… I promise!
And on that not I leave you… with my first steps into the political world, satisfying the blogging worlds need to complain about politics but just sit there, take it and do nothing about it. Although the political world around me doesn’t seem very optimistic, but rather bleak and miserable, the world of wrestling looks to be promising… FINALLY!

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Birth

My name is PD, and as far as you, my reader's, are concerned this is the day of my birth. My integration into the blogger's world after floating around for several years in the embryonic fluids of paper and ink. I can See the light! And it's getting brighter, blinding, like the embers of the sun, coming closer, burning my retina, actually its quite welcoming! A place to share my thoughts on the world around me, the events, the people and the things that surround me in other words the little preoccupations that postpone the inevitability of my primary desire - Death - as Freud would analyse.

This is my LP, my first recording of the sounds that make up my existence, my First LP, which I guess I should frame, or do I wait until it reaches Platinum? Who know's the little eccentricities of the world today? Who cares?   and what better time to start with than today! The day I fell ill! Happy times. Being cooped up in my bed all day, drinking hot soup and tea to ease the pain in my throat, while wrapped up in blanket - Wicks Vapour rub drowning my body - and a good film or two. not to mention the wrestling - which I will get to later on in the first LP. Although I have been suffering from a serious case of man flu - the worst kind - It hasn't been the worst day - as you can probably tell. Missing a day of work, maybe 2? Lets see, and watching TV. YES.

I started of the day by exercising my thoughts on weather to go to work or not, and on feeling cold with my blanket and warm without it - I decided there was something wrong with me, and taking the informed decision to go back to bed in the comfort of my own bed - without the freezing cold blanket off course!

Now I come to the Wrestling, WWE Monday Night Raw, the longest running weekly episodic TV show. But what made this episode special was that it followed the Hell in a cell Pay-per-view event - which by the way was one of the best pay-per-view shows from WWE in a long while - in which John Cena - The biggest face of WWE - lost to Wade Barrett of  Nexus (WWE's Biggest heel faction) and as a result Cena had to Join the Nexus, the result left the WWE universe in shock, made the kids cry, and the fans leave early. Well I for one was massively happy with this result, as Cena's character was becoming stale, and uneventful, his stories predictive and boring, his comeback's as inevitable, well now we see how good John Cena is: Can he be a Heel, or will he stay a little baby face? Well on this episode of Raw it looked like he was going to do his usual jibe of turning a bad situation into something advantageous for himself, in this case dismantling Nexus from within, but in a fantastic turn of events, the "stupid" computerised Raw GM announces that if Cena did not comply with Wade Barrett's orders he will be fired from the WWE! And Lo and behold Cena Helped Wade Barret win the 20 man battle Royal, even walking out him self at the end, could this be as big as Hulk Hogan and The Rock turning heel? We shall find out?

Other than the excitement of watching Raw, all I did was cuddle up under my blanket and watch: Airplane, Cool Runnings and Memento, three films which put a smile on my face, apart from Memento, which was slightly more shocking and disturbing, but a masterpiece from a Director who has quickly become my favourite - Christopher Nolan.

Well that's it for this episode of Life's Little Preoccupations, hopefully the content of my post will be slightly more interesting next time round!