Category: My Thoughts

Everything which isn’t specifically related to one subject

Posted on

Reaction to Terrorism

The IRA (Irish Republican Army) managed to kill over 1,700 whilst waging was on the British in an attempt to create a United Ireland.

What did Britain do to bring this to and end?

There were a great many conversations both official and not behind the scenes with their political masters, Sinn Fein trying to broker a deal.

What did Britain not do?

Britain did not argue that they had a right to defend themselves, that all those living in Northern Ireland must travel to the south and then send in the bombers to flatten Northern Ireland.

Why did the British government not openly just bomb places where they thought terrorists might be?

Well, because terrorists look like the rest of us, they do not have any unique features which makes them easy to spot. There were some incursions into strongholds but they were generally a bit of a disaster.

What you see here is what the IRA very often looked like. Particularly they’d look like this at the funerals of their comrades.

Not that the civilians around them were not cowering in fear, they are clapping. This is the general story of terrorism. They succeed because they have the backing of a significant proportion of civilians.

In the 1930’s the Nazi’s under the leadership of Adolf Hitler came to power by distraction techniques. The populous were told that were it not for those ‘really’ in power (the jews), Germany would be a great nation, the World power.

Something very similar is happening in the United Kingdom currently. The government of the day will hide their own mistakes by blaming minority groups, immigrants, those on benefits, those who ‘won’t’ work for the problems of the country. It will also blame Covid-19 as well. What it will not do is say that leaving the European Union was a huge mistake.

Whilst we were part of the EU many industries sprung up and prospered employing a great many immigrants from within the Union. Many thousands of those left and suddenly, we do not have enough workers to operate in those industries we now rely on. The NHS, Logistics, hospitality, all of them desperate for workers.

Our economy took a nose dive and we have not recovered as the other power houses of the world have, we are still lagging woefully behind other wealthy nations but, it is not the UK Government but, the people who have caused this.

Back to Terrorism.

Decades ago the state of Israel was created, Great Britain played no small part in that creation. The trouble is, the land wasn’t empty, there were people already there. Conflicts came about, not to the surprise of anyone. The Muslim Arabs were pushed back into internationally agreed locations and that would be that except, it wasn’t.

Using the argument that it needed to create buffer zones to defend the country, Israel began building settlements on the land beyond their agreed border. They also refused to leave the occupied lands.

In the last decade, they ‘left’ Gaza, an area where these Muslims live supposedly for them to become their own country. Except, they didn’t really leave. They remained controlling every aspect of movement there with their military and checkpoints all over the place forcing the residents to justify themselves.

It’s way more complicated than that, there was and is wrong on both sides.

What the terrorists ‘Hamas’ did by killing so many innocents a short while ago was and remains appalling. The adopted typical terrorists tactics of targeting the innocent.

In reprisals, over 4,500 people in Gaza have thus far been killed by Israel in their retaliation on Hamas, the majority of those will be innocent civilians.

Is it proportionate? If we take it down to playground levels it’s like this:

You killed 1700 of my people so I am killing 4500 of yours, that’ll show you!

Of course, those figures will continue to grow. Inevitably, because it always is the case, Israel will kill many times more innocents than those killed in any terrorist attack by Hamas.

Does it matter in what way a baby is killed?

One side shoots the baby dead in the arms of its mother, the other side drops a bomb on the house of a mother carrying her baby. In both cases, the baby is just as dead and it achieved nothing except another lost life.

Personally, and I have heard this so much throughout my life, I am sick of Jewish people playing the victim card. Do they know what? It was not just Jewish people that were targeted by Hitler. The ‘Holocaust’ is generally taken to be the Killing of Jews by the Nazi’s (and their allies), over 6million of them and that is, in every way, appalling. There is no way any group can be compensated for that but, giving them their own homeland is certainly a worthy start.

However, it is estimated that a similar figure (close on 6 million) non Jewish people were killed by the Nazi’s (and their allies) also. The closest any of those got to being military targets were Russian Prisoners of War which amounts to around half the number. The rest were civilians ranging from political opposition, homosexuals, disabled people, gypsies, Polish People, ethnic Serbs, a small number (by comparison, of criminals), Jehovah’s Witness and black people. For some of those groups the best anyone can do is guess at the numbers as all records of them existing went with them.

Most of those groups were never compensated, many more survived inhumane treatment and torture, many used for medical experimentation. All of them victims of the same people and in the same war. A war which ended in 1945, nearly 80 years ago.

My point here is, absolutely, what happened to innocent Jewish people was the worst possible. There is no pretending it was in anyway ‘OK’ but, Hitler is dead, he lost, Germany is not the same country and the rest of the world should not have to apologies for ever more.

When a group of people portray themselves as victims, quite wrongly but ‘actually’, society will start to resent them. Right now it is seen and has been seen since 1945, that no Jewish person can be told they may be wrong ever.

Donald Trump claimed he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York and still his supporters would support him. This is how it now feels each and every time someone says anything at all against Jewish people. We should be allowed to say that, you know what, what you are doing is a war crime, you have to stop and not be afraid of the consequences of that.

Ironically, the motivation, so he says, of Putin (Russia) is to get rid of undesirables on their border and to create a buffer zone around Russia so that NATO cannot threaten them. Sound familiar?

Hamas can only be defeated by killing every Muslim, there is no other way. Every civilian killed has a family member left behind now ready to join the fight against Israel.

My personal view is, Israel needs to be taken out of this conflict, they’re too close. Let them mourn their losses, let the rest of the world, NATO, the United Nations, the Muslim League satisfy the future of the Muslims living in Gaza and the West Bank.

Maybe, it is high time the lines, the borders are redrawn to include a new nation of Palestine giving to the Muslims a fair and equal share of the natural resources of the land for agriculture and industry to thrive with an international peace force. Israel should make her defences solid, impossible to be overcome and remain firmly within their own borders.

It is in neither the teachings of Allah or the words within the Bible which sanction the taking of innocent lives but rather, the interpretations of blood thirsty groups seeking their own agenda.

Posted on

Why it’s gone wrong

Religion, faith, belief or, whatever we want to call it, well, it needs looking at again don’t you think?

“In the Beginning”

Well, I guess different faith system believe different versions of ‘the beginning’ but, even so, it seems a good place to start!

In the belief system I was thrown into as a child it was all very simple. It was never discussed, it was always these absolute facts:

God created man, man got bored so he created woman. Woman was weak and easily influenced and did the only thing God had, for reasons no one can fathom, told them not to do so, God cast them out.

Sure, that’s not quite any text I have read but then, let’s get something very clear here just adopting a little logic shall we. God did not write the Old Testament, neither did Adam and neither did Eve so, someone who was, without any doubt whatsoever, not there, did write it, indeed, several different people.

So, who wrote the early bible?

Safe to say, it was not the kids of Adam and Eve, shall we ignore the elephant in the room (except there were no elephants), the obvious somewhat weird relationship between Adam and Eve. Let’s take that a little further shall we, their kids, Cain, Abel & Seth, all guys. Adam and Eve supposedly lived 900 years, again, somewhat strange as no dating system yet existed. Yet, in those 900 years not one mention of you know, a girl. Had they a daughter then one of the other three, if not all of them, would have needed to have sex with her to begat the spawn of the planet and, if not their sister, their mother? I think we can say from all biblical references with the exception of Jesus, there were no virgin births and yet, pretty soon we had a heavily populated planet full of a lot of very bad people with the exception of Noah and his family. That God (or maybe not) that the incest had stopped by this time.

So, we have already established that really, the story of the creation was, for a very long time indeed, passed down through the generations and we are all aware of how well that works out for accuracy which brings into question a great deal of detail. But, this is what I was taught as absolute fact which cannot be questioned, indeed, I remember trying to a silenced room and then told not to question the word of God … except, it wasn’t the word of God. Way back I established that ‘God’ did not write it any more than he is writing this or, maybe he is, he works in mysterious ways.

On that note, one thing we are all taught as Christians is, The Lords Prayer which starts with this line:

Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name

There we go, right there. We actually have no accurate record of God’s name, it certainly isn’t ‘God’ so, huge fail there. When were we given this because, sure as night as day, it was at a time when we surely knew the name of God? Jesus gave it to us so, in historical and literary terms, quite recently. So inaccurate were the writings of the New Testament, let alone the old, it was never mentioned, nothing, the name of God totally lost in time, the one thing Jesus told us to be hallowed about, we were meant to honour that name and there it was, Gone and the best we can do is to guess at it.

Interpretation or translation, take your pick

Much if not all of ‘the Bible’ was written in Hebrew, I am not an expert here and confess, some of it could have been written in Greek or, indeed, Italian or Latin, lots of different people had a hand in it.

Even if we accepted it was just written in a language we do not understand as, indeed, the way it was written really is very difficult to translate with any efficient accuracy. Even if we accept it had to be translated, how much can we trust those who translated it. Indeed, it’s rarely said to be translated but more, interpreted.

So, what’s wrong with interpretation?

It carries bias whether intentioned or not. For example, have you ever been in an art gallery and watched some ‘experts’ talking. They will say things, about a painting done hundreds of years ago, what the artist was ‘thinking’. That is an interpretation based on their own take on what they have seen or heard. This might not be an issue except that we are told we have to follow the Bible to the letter. But, what if the interpretation was just wrong? Not intentional, they just presumed it could mean one thing but it actually meant something else. The trouble is, the beliefs of the day will have clouded what they were have thought was meant.

Is man sleeping with man as though with woman to mean a homosexual relationship? To many, of course, yes it does. Could it not mean something else though if we knew more about how they lived back then.

It was very much stated in a military context whereby men were having sex with each other not because they were homosexual but because they were horny and any port will do in a storm. What the passage was actually doing was telling civilians that they were better offering them up their underage daughters rather than making them do what was unnatural to them. Clearly there is something very questionable about selling off a mere female child to a bunch of soldiers but, this is what they believed was the right thing to do back then. From that interpretation, the whole notion that the author was attacking homosexuality is just incorrect. Much the shame as eating shell fish (I just had some prawns so I should clearly be put to death). Mixed fibres, working on the Sabbath (depending what you follow that is either Saturday or Sunday so difficult to know who should be stoned there)

Moving on

So, we had all that Old Testament stuff and much of it was really helpful at a time when coming up with any rule based system was problematic. Along comes ‘Jesus’ (Maybe not his real name, see accuracy of writing above), and he effectively acknowledged how useful it was but rather taught that his followers were now meant to follow his lead, he alone spoke for his father ‘God’ so, his words and his words alone were the direct words of God. As we established previously, very little in the Old Testament writings was said to be directly from God, yes, thank you Moses, I’ve not forgotten you’re part in this.

Since the coming of Jesus religious groups have been really busy.

The Jews argue that actually, Jesus was nothing special, a profit at best. The Muslims rather went with Allah, Latter Day Saints, John Smith other religions just going way out there doing whatever. The Catholics, bless them, still proclaim to have a direct link with God and claim to speak for him and, only they can rewrite the bible or add addendums to it because it was what God wanted them to do. The Church of England only exists because Henry VIII of England couldn’t get his own way and divorce his first wife.

Now, we can each individually decide which faith groups have it right and which wrong, I’d argue, most of them, the majority and the largest of them, have it wrong.

Who is right?

Effectively, no one can claim to be absolutely right and those who do must be absolutely wrong because, quite simply put, they were not there.

What most of these people taught us, add Jesus and Allah in there (Not sure what the Jews are holding onto to), both of those spoke of peace, love, understand, respect and so on.

Neither wrote anything, to my knowledge, about having to have strong religious leaders dictating to ‘their’ followers how they ‘must’ live their lives.

Jesus really gave people one simple choice, follow him and his way of thinking and, it’s all cool, you will be rewarded. He may or may not have mentioned heaven, that actually really doesn’t much matter. For Jesus, doing the right thing was the reward in of itself. Imagine if you had the power in yourself to improve the life of someone else, isn’t there a huge emotional reward in that? I know there is because of all those videos on TikTok showing people doing it and how many likes they get so … lots of people instinctively know that. It is this knowing which means we ‘get’ it.

Do we get it if we are mean to people all week then go to Church on Sunday, say a few prayers and go home ready to start another week of being mean? I think not.

So, what of going to church?

Back to interpretation again. Whoever said that ‘church’ was a building or needed someone wearing a dress at the front telling us what to do?

Have you ever just been out some time and suddenly you look around and everything is just perfect? That is the church of God, that is where you will find the meaning of the whole faith thing.

Take this, just a road. But look beyond, all that crisp whiteness, a perfect high cloud sky, that’s perfection right there, see beyond the barriers.

The classic sunset, trail lights from planes carrying people living their dreams, that’s the church right there

Water, all over the place providing and sustaining life, that’s where the church is, that is where we find our spiritual leader.

We can find the true meaning of religion all around us if we just look and this is what was trying to be conveyed over the thousands of years since anyone tried to tell anyone else. Stop, look, feel and understand. When you feel that magic, share it.

How has religion been corrupted?

Church of England: Only started so that one man could go back on a promise he made to someone. Several hundred years later it is ruled by an adulterer who married the woman he was having sex with whilst married, that’s not idle gossip, it’s the truth. But, at least I am free to say that.

Catholic Church, they’ve added so many things to what their followers must and must not do as though they are the direct orders of God, most of those things go against what Jesus taught. They are also, as are other faiths, about any part of the Old Testament they feel doesn’t need to be followed and which does. They do not know, God does not directly speak to them or any part of their faith but they force their followers to believe it or be cast out. They have a huge wealth whilst people around the world starve to death. Their Pope makes is very clear he believes that homosexuality is a sin because those who the Catholic church chose to interpret the scriptures were told to latch onto anything which divided and weakened. Let us not be under any delusions here, to control people you must threaten them and weaken them, create division and force them to choose. Is this the art of a loving faith in line with the actual words of Jesus who said nothing about homosexuality, nothing about men being superior and so on. But, at least I am free to say that.

Muslims, That is about as much as I dare write about them, that certainly should not be right from any faith group?

Jews, Likewise, we are not allowed to say they do anything at all wrong, it’s just strictly not allowed. Anything they do has to be right, it cannot be reported otherwise, indeed, their belief system is classed by many as a ‘race’, a state which cannot be disagreed with. The holocaust only happened to them, not to the gays, to the disabled, to the Polish or, indeed, anyone Hitler chose to get rid of yet, it has to be seen as a Jewish thing, one only the Jews were victims of, they managed to get their own country on the strength of it! Crazy stuff. But, at least I am free to say that. though I will be condemned as wrong because, this is the way for some reason.

It’s an old cliché but

Why can we not all get along?

The answer?

Religion stops us, we have to be right in our own faiths because that is what the leaders of those faiths tells us, only ‘we’ are right and ‘they’ are wrong. What if there was no ‘us’ but just ‘we’? Wouldn’t that make for a better place? Just people being kind, showing the love, getting along.

It’ll never happen.

Posted on

Reparations?

I am not seeking to offend but more to better understand what I currently do not.

As I understand it, many of the black people from the 15th to 19th centuries came from Africa which may or may not have looked like the above picture but I cannot include pictorial evidence of all possible locations.

Some of their current ancestors are seeking reparations.

‘the action of making amends for a wrong one has done, by providing payment or other assistance to those who have been wronged’

Now, I am fairly certain that I have ancestors from Ireland, they may have well been affected by the potato famine and were forced to the UK to survive.

Honestly, I know it was Ireland, the rest is speculation.

But, how would I know if I personally should be receiving some sort of payment or assistance?

My logic goes along these lines:

For me to seek reparations I would need to know that something which happened to my ancestors has had a severe enough negative impact on my current life, surely that is the case?

As it happens, I am doing OK. Quite likely, had my great, great grandfather not have come here from Ireland, I would not exist at all, an absolute certainty. By that token, I must surely be grateful for the move.

Heading back to the Caribbean … what happened to the folk of Africa being taken away from their history, family, culture or any religion was egregious. However, the most recent event was over 100 years ago so we are talking about those of a similar connection historically to me and my Irish roots.

How many of those currently existing from slave origins can argue that they are worse off that they would have been were their ancestors not slaves? Could it be, like me, they’d simply not exist now?

If it could happen that their true roots were discovered and the land, village or town still existed or could be recreated, would they want to have that life now?

Let’s say their ancestor was a tribal King, lived in a grand dwelling, had a wife and kids (or many wives and kids however it was), if that could be recreated, is that what is wanted or, is this actually just about a bunch of people who have seen an opportunity to make some money and are on that bandwagon?

Absolutely, all those who still live with the wealth of slavery could and likely should be stripped of it much as criminals now are not allowed to keep their ill gotten gains. Trouble there is, when they made their fortune back in the day, they broke no laws and these things are so rarely retrospective.

But, those families should apologise and perhaps, out of kindness, help charities supporting black people who descended from slavery.

The reality is, nothing can make anything better for those slaves, none of which are alive now.

Maybe it is time to let that dark past go?

What might be a better idea is to focus international efforts on modern slavery. Yes, illegal slavery still goes on and very little is ever done to tackle it. The UK is actively making laws to make it easier!

But, that’s not just black people, it could be anyone, any culture, colour or whatever.

So, perhaps, get some international money together and stamp out ALL slavery. Finally move into a new era?

If any racists read this and think I am part of their group, go do one! I am not by any definition a racist and just really want, in all areas of life, true equality.

Posted on

Trying to find who I really am

Knowing I was different
Hating most parts of living with parents
Holiday with the 1st Boyfriend
Last Family Holiday with my Parents
My Young and fit mode
Heterosexual marriage
Acting the content family man
Trying to be very gay
Neither gay or straight
Doing an ill advised C4 Documentary
Trying to straddle two worlds
Professional Photographer Mode
Silly Goth Period
Trying not to be fat
Trying to get fit
Trying to be really gay
First Philippines Trip
Chilling at Home
Last time I ‘worked’

You can see from the pictures which range almost 50 years that I have looked very different over the years. These appearances barely hint at how many perceptions there are of who I actually am. To the point now, in 2023, I also don’t really know who I am either.

As a kid as young as 5 I was very aware that there was something different about me.

I knew for an absolute fact that I didn’t find girls in any way interesting and yet, I found other boys very interesting yet, not their sport or Action Man.

My Dad blamed my difference, from his perspective, on the fact that I was brought up by many women. I was off school a lot, in hospital a lot and that means those who were around at the time, all women, cared for me whoever was available at the time. My memory of my dad was a man who either wanted me to do things I had zero interest in such as sport or the one who handed out the discipline. He would years later tell me outright I was a huge disappointment to him.

I tried to get into sport but, I just didn’t match the other boys mentality who ‘were’ into sport. In football there would be 2 goalkeepers and 19 guys running around a ball. I was the 20th guy who actually had the ball they’d not notice me take running to the other end of the pitch and scoring against a goal keeper who had long since given up the will to live. Rather than seeing any ‘talent’ it was made clear to me by the teachers I was not a team player and needed to sort out my attitude. Same applied to Rugby and basketball. I’d be going it alone before the others even knew the ball had gone. I only ever got critical comment for that from both the adults and the other boys. Eventually I stopped making any effort at all and just sat doing nothing whenever I could get away with it. I never felt part of anything ever.

At home, and I know from the perspective of my sister, this is different, mum favoured me and dad favoured my sister. I likely did get away with doing a lot because I was that bit younger but, I didn’t feel any sort of equality of treatment any more than I think my sister did. To make matters much worse for me, I had zero privacy during puberty and a young man needs privacy during that time. My room was essentially the corridor to my sisters room. It was already small but I had to keep it clear for her to go back and forth to her private bedroom. There was a lot I had to repress back then. I did say it made me unhappy but, even when she moved out I wasn’t allowed a private space, it was and remained her route to her bedroom whenever she came round which was often.

In the early 1980’s we moved to a larger house where I finally had my own room. At 20 I met and fell in love with a younger guy. It was totally illegal back then, being gay was not legal until a man was 21 so, we were both criminals. As such, we kept our relationship secret. When we were together it just felt right. I honestly feel that had things been of a different age this might have grown into something but, as it was, we both went the heterosexual route around the same time. It did mean that in my mind I was now totally comfortable with being gay and yet, to the outside world I was straight.

Soon after I met and got married. We went on to have 4 children and some of my friends knew me as gay, some assumed I was bisexual and she also thought I was bisexual. 9 years later I admitted to her outright I was not in any way bisexual and all this time I was living an act of heterosexuality and it made me incredibly unhappy.

3 Years after that and I had a wandered into the gay world where I discovered things were not what I thought they’d be. I had thought I’d just be accepted as a gay guy who happened to have children (and a wife at the time) but this wasn’t the case with so many gay guys. I so much as heard them say so when they thought I wasn’t listening or, perhaps they said it wanting me to hear. Why was I even there, I wasn’t really gay, I was just one of those guys who can’t make his mind up.

I didn’t know what to wear, how to be gay so went through a few ‘looks’, none of which really worked.

Over time I developed some really good friendships. I lost my gay virginity to one of those friends when he raped me. I want to see it as consent but we never had the conversation ever before the event, I was asleep and woke up to him fucking me anally. He’d finished before I had the chance to react.

I bottled that up, put it down to what gay guys do, what being gay is all about but, must as I loved that guy that memory is still so clear to me.

I see a relationship as ‘love’ and sex is the consequence of that love. I’ve never got satisfaction from casual sex, it’s not part of the way my mind works.

Am I messed up though because, the majority of men seem to think that casual sex is totally the way to be whether they are gay or straight. Is it unusual to be wanting love, respect and follow on that from that, mutual sexual satisfaction?

I’ve tried to keep up with the trends embracing trendy, fit, emo and goth. I quite liked my fit look.

To manage my parenting role over the years I discovered quickly that not mentioning the ‘gay’ thing was the best thing to do. Teachers and social workers are not trained to deal with diversity, they certainly were not when it most mattered to me. I got asked once by a social worker, considering my ‘condition’ whether it was appropriate to take my son into the toilet to change his nappy! I want to say that attitude was uncommon but, it was more often that not. Even now I still get letters home addressed to ‘Mrs’ and often in my old surname of Williams as it matches that of my two disabled kids so, they presume they are writing to their mum despite her having no direct parenting role for 23 years.

I have had relationships (with men) since my heterosexual divorce. They either didn’t support me enough in my parenting, they cheated on me, they lied to me, they got physically violent or made a point of letting me know I was not sexually attractive to them.

I have real serious trust issues!

Sexually I am unable to enjoy it as I have a mental block that it’s all about them, that none of it is going to be about me and, as such, it’s crap. So few made the effort to resolve that one so it just enforces that feeling.

Over the past decade my health has declined. I have effectively become yet another person.

I like to say that I would define myself as Steve or I am who I am. That would work except that I have presented so many versions of me over the years, I don’t really know who or what I am any longer.

I’m living a life trying to be the me everyone individually believes they know which is different depending on who ‘they’ are.

But, as I started this I shall finish it with me knowing I am different, that knowing this makes me feel crap (not depressed just crap) and I have no idea how to find out who I actually am now.