@bazbt3

What follows is simply a repost of my 2015 'Paris' post, but with the city and date changed:

Life is complicated. Living it is easy. Put one foot in front of another, breathe in, breathe out, drink, blink, eat, pee, poo, sleep, work, play, laugh, cry. And then it's over.

There is more, of course. Aspiration. The latest smartphone, TV, games console, car, a house, family, friends, safety.

And then there's freedom.

Those of us who have it are incredibly lucky. Yet still we moan about the overreaching of the states we live in. Surveillance everywhere, taxes for female sanitary items, too many traffic wardens…

Imagine being invaded by a foreign power, your independence taken away, large men with brutal attitudes and frightening weapons always in your face for reasons you cannot understand. Imagine your school, your playground, hospital, workplace, all rendered unusable by decades of conflict. Imagine your home bulldozed one day just because someone wants the plot of land it sits on. Imagine a peaceful day broken by a knock on the roof, followed only minutes later by the destruction of your home, your neighbourhood.

Imagine all of this for every day of your life, no hiding place, no security, no hope of ever influencing the people who so callously disregard you. No hope of ever getting them to change their attitudes, so in thrall are they to the bigots who elect them and pay for their advanced weapons systems.

I cannot.

I cannot begin to imagine my life being shaped by the influences that cause someone to become a terrorist. But what I can do is attempt to at least understand why.

I'm not about to start down that road right now, not in a blog post. Mine isn't a knee-jerk reaction shaped by the latest news, the cause forgotten about in a desire to have someone else do something about it. Something quick. Retribution.

Even in my comfortable existence I've not forgotten one fact, apparently beyond the wit of a sizeable proportion of the people commenting on the Nice killings of Thursday 14th July 2016… And all the other atrocities carried out in the past in the name of our freedoms to give us our comfortable lives.

It's a statement that covers a multitude of 'sins.'

Religions don't kill people, people kill people.

Install.

Bang!

I…

Delete.

In reality, I can't register here in the UK. Lunchtime is perhaps not the best time; the demand must be overwhelming. Maybe later then.

Today the thirteenth:

• Day of July 2016,
• Prime Minister during Queen Elizabeth II's reign,
• Stone was added to my collection of weights.

I once tried to read Stephen Hawking's book 'A Brief History Of Time'. I made the conscious decision to fail to complete it right about the time I attempted to balance an apple and orange on a ruler - a ruler suspended on nothing.

Failure: not specifically mine; the book is impenetrable to most readers without numbers, mathematics.

I'm deeply enmeshed in this post-Brexit English political realignment. Peripherally of course; an interested observer.

Realising that an email to my MP and a tweet asking a direct question aren't going to get me anywhere, I'll find it easy when the time comes to admit defeat and go back to my days of blissful ignorance.

Unless…

Looking over the shambles that English politics has become I'm better off not bothering to understand; just as a final state of apparent idiocy is attained - a plateau - someone comes along and ramps it up a notch!

Excellent for political commentators, pundits, sales of newspapers and, of course, building on a sense of outrage.

Dust settled after the vote for the Labour leadership ballot admissions? Why not change the expectations of a new generation of Labour supporters keen to have a say in the election of the 'next' leader - by excluding the last 6 months of signups?

To be honest, after the Brexit lies I'm surprised if anyone will take politicians seriously again - let alone vote next time they're eligible to!

Happy days.

Eh‽

Well, here goes!

Ordinary people haven't voted until this referendum. Protest votes aplenty skewed the result away from everyone's expectations to a nightmare scenario no-one had envisaged.

'Remain' were expected to win, 'Leave' were expected to have fought a valiantly English fight and to then go on to better things, safe in the knowledge they had respect from those on their side.

Lovely. Everyone's happy see?

Damnit if this carefully-thought-out plan didn't go titsup - causing this unholy meltdown we'll be suffering with for years to come.

If only…

Theresa May was asked today if she'd like to be Prime Minister today - once David Cameron formally resigned of course. The incoming rookie will be the 13th Prime Minister of Queen Elizabeth's reign, appointed on this 13th day of July.

Definitely an indicator of SOMETHING this 13 thing, especially if you're interested in coincidences, fate, and you're looking askance at the future like I am.

Back in the real world: Emperor Akihito of Japan wants to retire; Strictly Come Dancing's Len Goodman will retire after the next series; the US Presidential election is heating up nicely - the Republican candidate having promised to pick a VP/running mate by the end of the week…

Extraordinary circumstances all.

Some more positive mews, er… news: Larry the cat keeps his No.10 job despite the rumours the outgoing Prime Minister wasn't a cat lover.

Here's hoping the incoming PM is a cat lover - a redeeming quality, something for ordinary people to relate to.

I just heard the government's House of Commons majority is only 12.

Time for a coalition of like-minded political bodies? Naah, it's more likely time for that centre-left party to be formed. You know, just like the Liberal Democrats but made up of cast-off from Labour and UKIP, and… (shudders.)

All I can think of right now is Ivan Lendl's sex face.

I'm sorry to bring this up.

I should go and cook hotdogs for the girls, perhaps that'll take my mind off it?

Oh dear. I wrote to my MP 2 weeks ago, hopeful of a quick response (even a brush-off) to my Brexit-related question.

Zero reply subsequent to the automatic acknowledgment. So much for democracy.

Yes, yes I did expect something in return. After all, "We aim to beable [sic] to do so within 5 working days." is pretty clear.

Maybe she's not made her mind up about quashing Brexit? Maybe my expectations, low as they are, are still too high? Maybe I expect that when someone makes a statement that that they'll follow through. Nobody's perfect though.

Ahhh… but my MP first voted for her leader, then when (and this is an assumption) external pressure was applied, she stepped away from both her leader and shadow cabinet duties. But still…

Now I know I'm being unfair. The workload imposed by her constituency duties must be immense. As a constituent with a very real fear of the unknown situation into which we've been tossed, I'm sure a response will come eventually; just not to be directly.

Damnit though, it seems I gave away my name, home and email addresses for nothing.

I… What was I thinking‽

At the end of the day no leader nor system lasts forever. Everything is replaced by something better…

Sure it is.

Why is everyone who's anyone (and a lot of those who aren't) dealing in certainties, in absolutes, these days?

How has it got to a point at which an insubstantial, purely emotional case can trump any number of facts, and be accepted as reality?

It pains me to see the moral high ground taken by winners at the expense of losers, and unachievable objectives put forward as eminently possible by authority figures then lapped up by people desperate for change.

Perhaps the only certainty remaining is that death and taxes will catch us up eventually.

Perhaps.

Engineering is my trade, that's something to which I've referred in the past. Engineers don't deal in absolutes, in certainties. Engineers reduce the possibility that edge cases can ruin a successful outcome. Engineers take facts and… It's very rare indeed that 100% certainty intrudes into our world.

Discovering that vast numbers of people cannot begin to take on board and process even simple facts, cannot search out alternative sources and make choices independent of those handed to them on a gold platter (platter retained by those dispensing the advice) - it's now just a part of this journey towards political awareness I started in May this year.

Criticism?

Regrettably, yes.

Everyone has the right to offer an opinion, especially after a vote that's gone against them.

Anyone want to point at a worrying development: that two candidates for very high office (leading a country!) have seemingly exaggerated their competencies to lead, based their campaigns on the understanding that pandering to raw emotions will triumph over cold hard facts, and say it'll be alright?

Meanwhile, in the real world, it was the school Summer Fair today. Stalls selling stuff, stalls offering games of skill and chance, face painting, glitter tattoos, a (non-traditional but fun) dance part-way through the afternoon, a stall selling bags for the children to decorate, and food and drink and, well, lots of fun!

From a purely personal perspective, the very best thing about today was the greatest of male achievememts: me tossing two out of the three hoops over a thing, and thus winning prizes for my girls. Tossing. Testosterone restored!

Unusually for me, I took something odd away from the decision by the PTA and school to setup indoors to beat the wet weather. Was it the soft toy as big as daughter 2? No. It's adaptability, something that defines how successful an enterprise can be; a willingness to make plans to get the very best from a situation. Our political classes have failed to do so; preferring a Monty Python approach to responsibility: "Run Away!!"

Next up, a PTA takeover of British government. Don't discount it.

Censorship is something we're likely to see more of as time passes, as the illusion of democracy intensifies. Paradoxically we'll know about it due to the limited 'sense' inherent in our laws.

Ok, 'sense' might be overstating things a bit.

We live in an age of Super-Injunctions denying even the reporting of a legal action, DMCA takedown notices requiring immediate content removal without the luxury of rebuttal, and censorship by weight of numbers of uninformed and excessively antagonistic comments (don't read the comments on web sites!)

An initiative coming from the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) - the organisation documenting and influencing the standards upon which the Internet relies to work smoothly - looks quite interesting.

Brand new status code HTTP 451 (in honour of Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' novel) should serve a notification indicating that the requested page is unavailable due to a block imposed as a result of a legal demand.

Unfortunately only time will tell how useful this will be. Actually no, scratch that dismissive response; it will be at least an indicator of the 'freeness' of 'our' 'society'.

Now, tinfoil hats arent required here, just common sense.

Grab a friendly politician and…

Ah, a flaw.

Formulating government policy or a political manifesto is very much like making up a typical Facebook scam. Create a convincing document, pass it about a bit, and word-of-mouth accelerates its uptake.

The problem is simple: there's nothing substantial about the thing. Attractive photos? Check! Lots of testimony from interested parties? Check! But try to get in touch with anyone concerned - to attempt to delve deeper, and there's nothing there.

The political stuff has at least the illusion one can contact someone, whereas the Facebook stuff has zero contact details, at most 3 posts to establish provenance.

Where policy and FB scams differ: any company giving stuff away has the competition as a loss-leader. They have adverts for their products liberally interspersed with the competition details. They take a conservative approach to the giveaways; independently add their physical address, telephone number, email address, Facebook and Twitter usernames, and web site details. They'd have to be absolute loonies to miss out on the chance of a sale.

National and international advertising campaigns reliant on word-of-mouth do well, with minimal outlay.

A question: which has the biggest impact on identity?

Is it giving away one's Facebook details to a faceless entity which won't be around for longer has it takes the site administrators to catch on?

Or is it the voluntary subscription to an ideology which one has and almost-zero hope of influencing, and which alters dependent on the whim of that most capricious breed, the politician?

Which of them brings the most real disappointment?

It's obvious.

Yet how can people's hopes and dreams, and the constant let-downs be stopped? Conventional wisdom says that voters don't care to vote because votes are wasted.

Well,THAT one's been well-understood truly debunked, HASN'T it!

So wherever we go from here?

Fact-checking.

Its easy, requires only seconds (or minutes) and a very limited knowledge of how to formulate an Internet search.

Don't believe the hype.

(Nothing to see here.)

tl;dr