‘Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in [removed by me] today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think – have you not met his like here in [removed by me]? Here in [removed by me]? I have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyL4mObb8kA&feature=player_embedded

Close your eyes and you can imagine this quote referring to the excess of the super rich, those with mega yachts, private jets, Caribbean Islands etc etc.  Or it could refer to a decadent corpulent west gorging on Welfarism and trash TV.  A declining, increasingly illiterate society, who prefer the images of illusion over critical thought processes.

Open your eyes now.  It’s actually from a book called: “The World Without Us.”  I bought it on impulse. A misanthropic impulse of course.  I enjoyed it!  The author is referring to the decline of ancient cultures,  the  Mayans or the Easter Islanders.

Do you have to be a misanthropic pessimist, part Malthusian,  part Hobbesian, to see the parallel here, or did I just smoke too much at University?

I don’t know why, but the idea of a new beginning appeals to me, I know it appeals to most of us, fortunately, most of us don’t get a chance to exercise our impulse for clean slates.  Most religions are about a new beginning, as are  Fascism, Stalinism, Communism and dare I say it, James Lovelock, darling of the Green Terror.  I think it puts me in bad company.  Fortunately I only want to be like Greta Garbo… why won’t they all just leave me alone!

” Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests.  The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.”

Expected? EXPECTED? Ex-fucking-spected!!!!!!!! So there you go, thats simple.  Translated… “Yeah we know all you arseholes are concerned about the environment but we just print books, we have no intention of checking the provenance of our paper sources but our disclaimer makes us one  of the good guys. So up yours.”

Hodder on a moment Hodder & Stoughton… do you not have an obligation to check?  Wankers!

“By 1914 the British Empire could claim dominion over 750 million people or around a quarter of the earth’s population. Yet, remarkably, much of the governance, commerce, banking and military engagement of this vast worldwide enterprise was managed by Scots, a nation of only 4 million at the time. Scotland in fact claimed not simply a reasonable but a quite indecent share of the imperial spoils.

Nowhere was this more true than of India, South Asia, Hong Kong and China in the centuries after 1700 where such giant businesses as Jardine Matheson, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the Mackinnon Group, Guthrie and Company and the Burmah Oil Company were all of Scottish origin.

This lecture, employing the fruits of recent scholarship and research, will seek to describe the extraordinary scale and impact of the Scottish commercial empire in the east, explain its expansion, especially in the Victorian era, and finally account for its relative decline in the twentieth century.”

http://www.edinburghcampaign.com/Network/Default.aspx?PageID=441

For any rational, sane individual who cares just a wee bit about other people, this is stomach churning stuff.  There really is not much to be said.  Suffice that without poverty, there would be no catholics, which is why the Vatican has always, historically, sided with right wing elites from South America to Spain, Ireland and Africa.  The sheer poverty in the Philipinnes is a direct result of elites plundering for decades with the connivance of pathetic priests.

Sad but there you go!  There’s more to come on the Philipinnes, mostly because I love the country, am fascinated by the tolerance and positivity of the people in face of evil and I hope to foment rebellion there!

Sze’s latest pile of shite  from yesterday’s letter’s page, forges a new path for her, ploughs new depths and is printed in full below.  You can judge for yourself what her issues are:

“Andrew Newell (”Let’s see the Union Jack”, April 26) and his like-minded compatriots who were dismayed “to see a PRC flag flying from the war memorial in Statue Square, and no Union Flag” should learn to appreciate the Chinese people’s historical perspective and respect the reality that the PRC flag now represents China.

The Cenotaph was erected originally as a memorial to the war dead of the first world war, for which China contributed a lot but got nothing in return.

After the Second World War, it was used to commemorate the dead of both wars.The battle over Hong Kong in the Second World War was one between two imperial powers.

Britain’s miserable defeats by the Japanese throughout the entire Asia theatre exposed the fact that it would not be able to recover its pre-war conquests when peace returned.

The subsequent cold war extended the lease of Britain’s colonial administration of Hong Kong, but its reoccupation of Hong Kong after 1945 was nothing if not usurpation of the fruit of victory won by heroic Chinese war efforts.

After the reunion, the only war dead whom Hong Kong people want to commemorate are their compatriots who sacrificed their lives for the protection of the motherland from invasive enemies in the opium wars, imperial aggression and the second world war.

The Cenotaph is turned to good use serving that purpose.”

What a pathitic wee bitch!!!!!!!!!!  But why, Oh why, is the SCMP publishing such utter shite! I’ve met old men that fought in both the first AND the second world wars, the one thing they ALL had in common was an amazing egalitarianism, their immediate enemies not withstanding.  They all knew more about humanity than a bigoted bitch like Sze.  And for the most part, in 1945, people in HK fought against their common enemy, if they fought at all, which of course, many prominent families didn’t, choosing collaboration instead!  In the face of an advancing, cruel and inhumane foe, I wonder whether Sze would fight, yield or collaborate?

Why do these people view colonialism as evil,  the simple facts are:  HK only exists because the British created an environment for hard working Chinese to impove their lot and that of up to 4 succeeding generations; when, at the same time,  their compatriots were being murdered, indoctrinated and starved by meglomania.  Also, conveniently forgotten is the fact that many of the millions of the last generation to “touch base” in HK are only alive precicely because they did in fact escape almost certain death or at the very least a continued mere subsistence existence.

Ok on the face of it, good idea!  But the casting couch is nothing new, ask Marilyn Monroe, and I’m really not sure how you can enforce it.  However, I would like to see a similar law in Hong Kong, if only to save us from the pathetic talentless pseudo stars that are the “canto pop up tartlets” of today.  It’s common knowledge in this town that the industry is controlled by two companies, who shall remain nameless here in case I fall out a window by accident at some point, or even get stabbed in my hospital bed as happened to one journalist.  These companies don’t have tattoos, but there’s tattoos in the background, and every single wee tartlet from one twin to another and beyond, got where she is today, by not insisting on remaining vertical at her interview!

Such is life.  Sorry Seoul.  The law is unenforcable.  But I wish you every success.  And do you want to borrow some canto pop tartlets?

So true, and like the smoking ban, this is a consequence of the Hong Kong approach to policy making.  Take a good idea, pop it in the consultation blender and what emerges is an unrecognisable piece of junk that is impossible to enforce, all because no one in government really wanted to piss anyone off.  Wankers.  Idling engine ban? Lets do it, but only for show!  Smoking Ban? Lets do it, but don’t enforce it!  Liquor Licencing? Lets show we are really strict by making it really difficult to get one!  But lets ignore the seven elevens!  Rules of the road! Stupid colonials… didn’t they realise Asians don’t do traffic regulations.  Consensus politics gives us a pile of shite masquerading as legislation so why do they bother?  ’Cos it’s all smoke and mirrors. They want to be seen to be doing something but in reality prefer to do nothing.  I call it the inverse swan scenario… on the surface everyone is rushing around like maniacs, supposedly getting stuff done, but underneath, or in the offices, everything is smooth and serene, cos everyone is doing nothing except posturing for promotional position.

Wankers!

You want to open a bar?  So you find suitable premises. Pay an intolerably high rental to a rapacious landlord.  Spend a couple of million fitting it out. Navigate your way through a meandering maze of archaic legislation which is over seen by 400 different departments, all of whom send a different case officer for every inspection.  But eventually, after complying with some pretty dumb criteria that defies all logic they finally deem you worthy of a Liquor Licence… provisionally of course.  But you’ve got it, the Holy Grail to profitability.  Now there’s a chance you might get a return on your investment, although up to 70% of new ventures don’t… ever.  But you’re on your way to success.

And then bastards!  Seven Eleven scum open up next door.  They don’t need a liquor licence.  The don’t need fire escapes or toilets, or any of the other mundane criteria required by the Liquor Licencing fuckwits.  They’re allowed to sell alcohol which is fair enough, IF it’s for taking away.  But they break the law with impunity!  They allow people to drink on the premises, they open the bottles for you, they’ll even supply you a paper cup if you fancy sharing a bottle of wine, they sell to kids and drunks… all of which are against the law… but no authority will do a thing about it.  Meanwhile you just kissed goodbye to your investment thanks to the motely crew hanging around your venue, scaring custom away, or worse, buying from Seven Eleven and sneaking in unnoticed.  But hey, it’s Hong Kong and someone will be profiting by looking the other way.

As I said!  Bastards