Reply

Dear Jack Loreno,
You are my little boy, my little king, you always have been you always will be. I am sorry we are so far away from each other. I told you 2 years ago that I may not see you for a very long time, that doesn't make it right or any easier. I am 7,000 miles away Jack and as with many people money is very very short. I post photos of you,Joseph and me everyday. I never forget, not even for a second. You do have 2 younger brothers now Jack and I hope hope that one day you can meet them and be their big brother, they will love you so much, as I do. Your Grandma and Grandad have tried to visit you and have you visit them so many times but they are not allowed. I am not sure it is you writing these words or that you will get my reply, I hope you do. I love you my son more than you can ever know, you have been kept from me for so long and I hope that changes, but as I told you the last time we were together that is not up to me. If I have to wait until you are 18 I will wait, and then I will find you. I love you, I love you.

Someone published my mini travel journal!

http://www.pressenza.com/2016/04/postcard-from-philippines/

Brexit or not?

I have walked the streets of almost every European country, daytime and nighttime. From Sweden to Spain and Ireland to Turkey, France to Hungary and all in between and hitched through and travelled through all. The ONLY country I never feel safe in is England. I always hoped that the European way would rub off on us, but it does appear I am wrong. British people want to have their god given right to to not be able to walk the streets because  of violent gangs of children of teenagers who wear the flags of their tribes ruling the streets. We encourage our youth to wear our flag as they make our cities No Go areas for families at the weekend. Yes, proud to be British, but not today. The right wing take us down a path to disaster and xenophobia. It took the Harold Wilsons decades to make sure we came into Europe as a powerful nation in the centre of everything. We as a nation need to embrace Europe and learn from the way they treat their own people. At midnight on a Saturday night in Barcelona or Athens families play with their children, they don't hide inside their homes, in Berlin they have beer festivals where generations drink together, in France they set up artificial beaches in the middle of their capital without problems.  Where I come from the local pub turns into a full scale riot when the sun comes out and women can never ever be out after dark.
We need them,we need them to teach us how to become civilised, how to drink without killing each other. A darkness is settling over our world and we can only fight it together.
United we stand, divided we fall.

Liverpool, 1984. Torn by riots caused by The Tories was cast adrift by every Tory government, they never put money in as they knew they had no votes there. Europe did. The amount of signs that cropped up around Liverpool "A European Union Project".
Today the Tories are about to take over the board of the BBC, the first time in its history a serving government will choose the management  of our beloved BBC. We leave Europe, there will be nothing to stop the Tories from cutting another £30 from disabled people,nothing to stop them from introducing charges for primary schools.Nothing to stop them giving banks more bonuses and powers!  Europe  is our only defense , our only defense. Cameron is running a quasi campaign, but inside he is waiting to become our overlord, changing election rules, changing human rights rules, right to protest laws, everything. We are walking into the biggest trap laid in history, a trap that will chain our children for generations to come. Wake the Fuck up and see what is in front of you!

How many times has the European Court of Human Rights overruled a Tory govt on how much a person needs to live, or how a person is given access to free and impartial legal representation? We only hear about terrorists, but European conventions have protected many more normal British people being shafted by the British government.
Only this week we see that 500,000 British disabled people are being fucked by the govt. People with limbs missing, blind people are having their equipment,  the equipment necessary for them to live a life being taken away. The govt is bold now, they feel that by the time these cases come to court, we will no longer be in Europe, so who gives a Fuck?  Not the British people that's for sure! The British people are only concerned about migrants now, and today advised that old people could begin picking the fruit and vegetables once Johnny foreigner has gone!
The Bullingdon Club have won, they want, they have planned this. David Cameron will accept defeat and congratulate Boris, it's no coincidence that Cameron said he will not run again. He will hand over the reins to Boris. By that time, they will have changed the rules for voting and the boundaries so much that a Conservative government will be guaranteed for the next 50 years! The same people that burnt £50 notes in front of beggars' faces will have a free hand, unhindered by Europe.
The idea behind The European Union was to prevent us ever falling into war again. To prevent the U.S. having to implement The Marshall Plan where billions of American dollars were used to stabilise Europe and prevent mass starvation  after The War. To do that it was agreed that certain nations would need a leg up and the others would need to give that leg up, otherwise our southern neighbours would quite easily have gone the way of Yugoslavia, much much earlier, which the statesman at that time knew would mean refugees and eventual military action. Through the European Union we avoided that, but we ignored our bordering neighbours. Syria is a direct result of our inaction, and exactly what we were trying to avoid.
Ignore the rest of the world at your peril. In the EU or not, the refugees will come.
Once we leave, the European Union itself could disintegrate, we cannot expect them to hold the fort. Greece will leave first, then Portugal,  then Spain, then Italy. Right wing governments will prevail, nationalism will win, and we will have started it. A Europe full of right wing governments with high unemployment.....wait, haven't I heard this before?!
Barack Obama has an absolute right to his view about Europe as his country does not want to fight another war in Europe, or AGAIN pay billions and billions of dollars to rebuild a failed continent as his country did after World War 2.

Babies

❤

Evil Tory

The Tories this week cut disabled benefits by £30 per week, they voted against cutting the tampon tax, they are in a fight to the death with trainee doctors, they have cut legal aid so that vulnerable  women are in danger of real violence, they seem to be proud of how many food banks and soup kitchens the UK now has.

They cut a deal with banks and Facebook and Google and Starbucks so they can pay as little tax as possible, they continue to sell arms to Saudi Arabia.
These people are your enemies, they only care about themselves and are lining their own and their families pockets.
They are the scum of the earth, and they spit in your face and know you won't do anything. Britain 2016.
They also know they can fool you into blaming the unemployed,the disenfranchised, they know that racism is in their interest, they can put up a good show, they know exactly what they are doing. Education gets worse, that suits them, makes the people easier to control. What The Fuck?

When a government punishes those unable to defend themselves....in particular the disabled and no one bats an eyelid that country has passed a line,a line that a civilised country should never pass. Never mind immigrants, never mind Europe, the British government has just put thousands of 'British' disabled people in danger..and no one gives a Fuck!  Smoke and mirrors.

We remain the 5th richest country on this planet, in the universe as far as we know, yet we have just punished the weakest among us, diversity, equality, paralympics...all have no meaning to these evil fuckers. Let the weak pay for the mistakes of the powerful. "The path of the righteous man  is beset on all sides with the inequities and the tyranny of evil men and Blessed is he who through the power of goodwill.......
he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
The British people are essentially self centred, narcissistic,  and can only think about their own fucking gardens! Today I feel ashamed that I am British, a country that voted in such an evil government. A government that in the name of austerity has given tax cuts to the richest, a government that has allowed the banks that caused the crisis to go free and actively stopped any punitive measures against those banks.
A government that today cut £30 a week from disabled people.
£30 per week.
Some of us know how that could feel.
When you have no way of making up that money, it begins to mount up. Charles Dickens wrote about the misery of a great proportion of the British people. These people have no way to adapt to this cut. This could be the single most evil move by a British government ever. We all know there are 'fakers' the statistics say 0.3 of them are faking. 0.3. That means 97.7 are real. Some of these people literally cannot speak, they have no voice, some cannot walk.
Are these the people to punish for the mistakes of the rich? They had no say, they had no role. The rest of us can fight and are close to fighting, many people are hungry. Yet to choose the disabled to punish and hope we won't  notice! I know, I hope, our ideals , our beliefs have not sunken so low that we as a society will allow the weakest to be punished in this way.

Come Whoam To Thy Childer an' Me

Come Whoam To Thy Childer an' Me
Edwin Waugh

Aw've just mended th' fire wi' a cob;
Owd Swaddle has brought thi new shoon;
There's some nice bacon-collops o'th hob
An' a quart o' ale posset i'th oon;
Aw've brought thi top-cwot, doesto know
For th'rain's comin' deawn very dree;
An th' har'stone's as white as new snow;—
Come whoam to thi childer an' me

When aw put little Sally to bed,
Hoo cried. 'cose her feyther weren't theer,
So aw kiss'd th' little thing, an aw said
Thae'd bring her a ribbon fro' th' fair;
An' aw gave her a doll, an some rags
An' a nice little white cotton-bo';
An' aw kiss'd her again; but hoo said
'At hoo wanted to kiss thee an' o'

An' Dick, too, aw'd sich wark wi' him,
Afore aw could get him up stairs;
Thae towd him thae'd bring him a drum,
he said, when he're sayin his prayers
Then he looked i' my face, an' he said,
"Has th' boggarts taen houd o' my dad?"
An' he cried till his e'en were quite red;—
He likes thee some weel, does yon lad!

At th' lung-length, aw geet 'em laid still;
An' aw hearken't folks' feet 'at went by;
So aw iron't o' my clooas reet well,
An' aw hanged 'em o'th maiden to dry;
When aw'd mended thi stockin's an' shirts,
Aw sit deawn to knit i' my cheer,
An' aw rayley did feel rayther hurt,—
Mon, aw'm one-ly when theaw arrn't theer.

"Aw've a drum an' a trumpet for Dick;
Aw've a yard o' blue ribbon for Sal;
Aw've a book full o' babs, an' a stick
An' some 'bacco an' pipes for mysel';
Aw've brought thee some coffee an' tay,—
Iv thae'll feel i' my pocket, tha'll see;
An' aw've bought tho a new cap to-day,—
But Aw al'ays brings summat for thee!

"God bless tho', my lass; aw'll go whoam,
An' aw'll kiss the an' th' childer o' round;
Thae knows, that wherever aw roam,
Aw'm fain to get back to th' owd ground;
Aw can do wi' a crack o'er a glass;
Aw can do wi' a bit of a spree;
But aw've no gradely comfort, my lass,
excepy wi' yon childer and thee"

The 1%

The divide gets bigger. In the UK they are established, no need to lie anymore, they will spend the next 5 years cementing their grip. In Hong Kong they already have, and the people are too passive to do anything. You allow it. You struggle everyday but never ask why. You swallow the Tories brainwashing that everyone needs to raise themselves up, that scroungers are the reason the country is in debt, yet long term unemployment benefit is less than 1% of the welfare bill. The govts continue to allow monopolies to charge you exorbitant prices,
electricity, gas, food. A block of cheese that cost $20 here in Hong Kong 7 years ago now costs $80, for no concrete reason except only 2 companies sell it. The smokescreen of migrants is just that, a smokescreen Germany has problems, but between 30 EU countries the effect would be negligible. The controlling forces use their power and influence to split the working classes, the lower classes, because that's what you are, what we all are. They continue to argue about a living wage, as they allow big business to pay no tax, and as for banks....not a single banker is behind bars after costing every country billions and billions in losses. The elite protect the elite, history will look at this time as a time of mass deception, a mass redistribution of wealth to those 1%, a time when wars were started to propagate the deceit. You are living at a time when the 1% are fucking the whole of humanity, your support of the status quo will be the death of your children, your grandchildren. Open your eyes, see what is front of you.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0UW007?utm_source=Facebook

7 years ago

On the beach

https://youtu.be/41-4hzJKrik

My four sons.

2016 Oscar winners

The 9 main nominations and the winners according to me;

BEST PICTURE

The Big Short 
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant 
Room 
Spotlight

WINNER The Revenant 2nd Brooklyn

BEST DIRECTOR

Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adam McKay, The Big Short 
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Lenny Abrahamson, Room

WINNER THE REVENANT
BEST ACTOR

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant 
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl 
Matt Damon, The Martian 
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs 
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo

WINNER. LEONARDO
BEST ACTRESS

Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room 
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

WINNER SAOIRSE RONAN

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale, The Big Short
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Tom Hardy, The Revenant Mark Ruffalo,Spotlight
Sylvester Stallone, Creed

WINNER TOM HARDY

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Rooney Mara, Carol
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl 
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

WINNER JENNIFER JASON LEIGH 2ND ALICIA VIKANDER

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer,Spotlight
Matt Charman, Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen, Bridge of Spies 
Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, and Alan Wenkus,Straight Outta Compton
Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley, Inside Out
Alex Garland, Ex Machina

WINNER INSIDE OUT

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Drew Goddard, The Martian
Nick Hornby, Brooklyn
Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short
Phyllis Nagy, Carol
Emma Donahue, Room

WINNER BROOKLYN

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant
Edward Lachman, Carol
Roger Deakins, Sicario
John Seale, Mad Max: Fury Road 
Robert Richardson, The Hateful Eight

WINNER THE REVENANT.

New Year 2016

The loneliness of the long distance swimmer.

The loneliness of the long distance swimmer.

I admire those that attempt to swim the channel. I admire them, as I have been trying to swim it for years.
The initial push into the cold deep sea, with an immeasurable distance before you, and that is only the horizon, and you know quite clearly that there will be many horizons in front, a distance so vast, so huge, that only the mad would attempt it. You are critised even from the outset, and throughout you are told to give it up.
Yet you push off, into the cold, cold waters. Very quickly, a little too quickly the waves rise, the current begins to push you back, but you push and push and you reach what you believe to be that first horizon.  You feel elated, you feel as if you can conquer, and you again begin the reach for the next horizon. You don't get far, the waves are bigger here, you find yourself rising and falling so fast, so much, your head goes under, you gasp, yet you still have strength to propel yourself forward.
And so it goes.
Then you slow down, your arms are tired, you cannot hear the voices anymore, only your own breath, the waves still move you and throw you, but you are numb, you are numb.
This dream  seems to go on forever, up down, back and forth, back and forth.
Then you look up, you see a light on the horizon, you hear a distant cry, a  voice. You fight again, you fight to get to that horizon, you go further under, you are tossed wildly up and around, but now you have a direction, you have a wild feeling, a new energy.
Steady, steady steady, you plough on, you ride the waves, you feel  their rhythm, and you know them. Then you see the land, still a long long way, could be an illusion you tell yourself, but it's still the right way, the right direction. You know you can and will get there, but now is not the time for celebration, the sea is a hard place, and you must keep your wits about you.
Plod on, keep on.

Tory conference

Tory conference.
So the triumphant pig fucking, champagne swilling cunt motherfuckers are meeting to guffaw at their victory. Be afraid, be very afraid. The next 5 years will be aimed at undoing everything that was gained in the decades after the second world war, when returning soldiers and the women who had been working to the bone had decided they were fed up being fucked up the arse by the ruling classes. Thatcher began the dismantling of the state, the selling off of all the peoples' property. The privatisation of key industries was criminally completed on the cheap, benefitting only those already in power, a mass redistribution of wealth to the rich, and still it continues. The Tories don't care about you, you are oiks, cannon fodder, the unwashed. They managed to bribe and trick the last generation into believing they were stake holders, they too could share the wealth, by selling them their own shitty council houses in their shitty council estates in their shitty towns, those houses weren't the fucking government's to sell! Those houses were never replaced and now there is the worst housing crisis in 60 years. But hey ho, it kept the oiks happy and persuaded them to vote Tory. As they slash the armed forces and decimate the police, they have proven they don't care if you are stabbed or murdered as you walk down the street by the ever growing homeless. They don't care as you bleed to death as you wait for an ambulance that doesn't come, or in the E.R. as the NHS can no longer employ enough doctors or nurses.
Freedom, justice? Your right to a defence lawyer has gone, your right to legal aid when you are raped or beaten has gone, your right to any form of legal aid has gone. You can't buy insurance for that, at least you can use your house to pay.
A right to education! Don't be fucking stupid, watch those fees go up and up, you will spend your life paying back that shit. Unemployed, maybe your steel works closed down as the bastards invited Chinese companies to do the work, As a 50 year old, highly skilled steel worker you have tried to get a job in Mcdonalds and Starbucks...but can't. Now you can't afford school uniforms for your kids or school meals, or bus fares, which have all been cut by your council, your kids are therefore excluded from school and you are up in court without a lawyer.  Protecting the local economy, then why are most of the shops empty and why doesn't Amazon pay enough tax?
The middle classes are managed, thrown the odd bone , just enough to throw the stupid fuckers off what is really happening and appeal to their vanity. The poor are thrown to the lions, our town centres and sprawling suburbs will soon make the world of Mad Max look like Butlins.
Welcome to Tory heaven, if you voted for them, then fuck you, you get what you deserve, you will be fucked like a pig.

Smokescreen

50k Jews, 60k Hungarians (Ironic!) 50k Ugandans (of Asian descent), 30k Vietnamese, 20k Kosavans, plus Sierra Leone, Somalia, Ethiopia and many more, those are the refugees, plus the Caribbeans,the Pakistanis, the Chinese, the Polish migrants, and of course the Irish. And the French, and the Germans and the Americans, and the Australians and the......
We are a country of immigrants, take a look at your own family tree and you will find foreign blood. Enoch Powell said in the 60s there would be 'rivers of blood', certainly doesn't seem like that where my family and extended family live, rivers of cups of tea maybe!  3 years ago the enemy was people on the dole, facebook was full of stories and rhetoric about 'spongers', Of course it turnsnout that 0.01% of the welfare bill is down to fraud. Whereas corporate fraud is worth billions upon billions, the bail out of the banks cost not just billions, but hundreds of billions. If you count to to a million it will take you 37 days, if you count to a billion it will take 15 years....most people have no real idea what these numbers mean, now multiply that by 500 or 600, yet public enemy number 1 was a fella selling dvds at the market whilst signing on!
That got old, and too many people saw through it, so the government needed another smokescreen as they fucked pigs, sipped champagne and laughed at how they still are fetting away with it.
UKIP was born, its leader being an ex stockbroker who they chose because he appears to be a fucking dick. He did his job, his job being, shift the blame, and make an almighty smokescreen as we fuck the British people up the arse. Whip up the unclean, the unwashed, those that can no longer express their violence at football matches, basically the mob. This method is tried and tested, and has been used in every major revolution....whip the ignorant into a fervour, pay them, give them beer, tell them to shout loudly, tell them that 'patriotism' is your way, and all that disagree must hate their country! Use images of the military to back you up, even though the majority of the military hate everything you stand for, as they believe in a free, non fascist, non rascist world.
Create such a chasm between people that they will forget as we fuck them, and fuvk them, and fuck them.

My sons

Don't forget Aylan Kurdl

It is a week since  I saw that terrible photo of that poor little boy on the beach.
The world is slowly moving. If only dead children were as important as banks and bankers, then there would be concrete plans to stop this happening again. This boy is sadly just one of thousands.There have been many pictures of dead children, but possibly because they were not the right colour, their impact was much less. Little Aylan looked just like our children and so the storm grew.
The world is on fire and our leaders continue to play their fiddles.
Last century this happened in Europe, twice....and this is no different. We took our world wars twice to The Middle East, and we left it in pieces, and then propped up its dictators for 60 years, until they had outlived their usefulness. We pretend it's not our business today as they crumble. Yet politics and leaders are not the issue here. It is the desperate families, the women, the children.
Nobody was leaving Syria 5 years ago, it was a civilized society that were proud of their history, one of the cradles of civilisation, since then 200,000 people have died, much of the country has been destroyed, 5 million are fleeing their homes in terror.
We have our problems, 'charity begins at home' are what many people are saying, the subtext being....they are not white.
Throughout this week on my own facebook, through the comments from my own friends' posts....all British, a much more frightening tone comes through again and again....'they are all terrorists' 'let them die' 'send the boats back'  and worse. I can't  imagine our grandparents uttering the same poison. Britain had nothing in the 30s, yet we still had humanity, it was a part of our nationality, a part of being British. I am ashamed today, but yet I still believe we are overall a good people, it's just that the animals make more noise.
There are many facets, many angles to this problem, but shrugging our shoulders will not help. The Gulf states have given billions in aid, but they must accept people. The U.S. and Australia and Canada  must accept people, their countries are huge. The refugees must be fairly spread out throughout Europe, even Russia.  Isis must be defeated and Assad removed, then rebuilding can be done and the refugees will return in droves. The boats must be stopped.  The list goes on and on. The racist fuckwits within our own countries must be ignored.

In the meantime, let's try and put ourselves in one man's shoes;

Alan Kurdi's father Abdullah said that shortly after their boat left  it was hit by waves and the captain swam off.
"I tried to catch my children and wife but there was no hope. One by one they died," Mr Kurdi said.
"I tried to steer the boat but another high wave pushed the boat over. That is when it happened," Mr Kurdi said.
"My children were the most beautiful children in the world. Is there anybody in the world for whom their child is not the most precious thing?" Mr Kurdi said.
"My kids were amazing. They woke me every day to play with me. What is more beautiful than this? Everything is gone.
"I would love to sit next to the grave of my family now and relieve the pain I feel," he said.

Earth 2.0

Today humankind found a planet capable of holding life, where one year is 385 days, with a similar number of planets in its solar system and a sun slightly older than ours. Although it is 1,400 light years away, one day our not too distant ancesters will probably visit it. We will find many many more planets like us and it, and we will find many that are much closer to us, within months and within this decade. This marks the beginning, of the proof we are not alone, and not very special, our galaxy is teeming with life, and now we are certain that there are other planets just like this one. This finding is as important as finding out the world is not flat and not 10,000 years old. Above and beyond!

Greek reality check

Back in the 90s British people paid taxes, they worked 38 hours a week, a third of their pay went to the state, they worked to go to Greece for their holiday. Our government  used a not inconsiderable amount of that tax to help Greece, the same Greece we saw on our holiday, relaxing, sleeping, having a wonderful time, not working 38 hours a week, maybe on paper, and absolutely not paying taxes.
We all knew that couldn't  continue.
So did you, and you voted for and allowed your politicians to lie, thinking 'these fuckers are the same as the holidaymakers, we will tell them everything is okay,  or it will be soon...chill out, here have some ouzo,"
Not much has changed, your prime minister handed a hand written post it note plan to pay your debt in a meeting with your creditors, the people you owe $300billion to!
Oh, we will have a plan later, stop worrying, your people have just voted to say fuck you to those creditors.
That money is owed to the German, Italian,Spanish, French and British people who worked and paid their taxes. Now, you threaten our very system, the system made to bring Europeans together to help each other.
Fuck you Greece, bring your people into line, get out of the sunshine, our children don't  have free education anymore, our disabled suffer, our civil servants earn less, retire later....why shouldn't  yours? ?

Happy 10th birthday

10 years, seems shorter, longer. The journey continues! 1334 posts and counting.