Tuesday, 20 October 2009

1304 The Common Touch,In the service of the Country with Lost and the Peter Green Splinter Group

Sometimes I only write my way into a theme, sometimes I write myself out of one theme into another, but this evening I am as clear as I can ever be about what I want to try and say, sparked by two very different Television programmes experienced at 8 and then 9pm. The first was about the capitalist merging of copy goods with branded goods manufactured in China as this country becomes the economic power of the world. The second was a brilliant episode of Lost which brings the 4th series into a new dimension, explaining much that has gone before and which is to come, or does it?. One programme blurring the nature of what is fake with what is real and one which created a coherent explanation for the ability to believe one is in two different dimension of actual time without any physical transformation.

I had woken early, struggling to break from a dream in order to put the rubbish bin out. The dream involved my mother in her latter days, something which I cannot recall happening before, and a building, a familiar scenario, with the building a college or residential facility which also becomes and office, occasionally department kind of store, or a large house, and while these buildings are familiar or have familiar aspects there are always problems in that I cannot ever get back to where I have been and want to be, exiting some distance away, again in territory with familiar aspects, but sometime distance away from the place I anticipated and always thinking I know how to get back and never being able to do so.
On getting up I redrafted and corrected yesterdays writing. Sometimes my days become more circular than others. It was cold as I pushed the bin out under the half opened garage back door. I boiled the kettle and only then decided on coffee rather than first thought tea, and cheese slices on toast rather than cereal. I thought if I wake up quickly and feel physically alert I will start the house clean cycle once more. What happened to the forecast sleet and snow? Perhaps the radio or TV will tell me. I did not start the house clean and failed to answer my query about the weather forecasting. I heard the bin men come and then later the recycle box run which I had forgotten as my box had not built up over the fortnight, so it did not matter than I have to wait another two weeks. I forgot to bring the bin back in until darkness remembering when taking the evening meal plate into the kitchen.

I had some of the cold chicken as a salad for lunch, another portion will suffice for tomorrow, and a tomato soup around 5 and a ham omelette around 7pm, a banana at lunchtime and too much butterscotch whip around 9 as I was then too tired to prepare some fresh pineapple, followed by strong percolated coffee at 10 to keep me going until the writing is done for the day.
I worked long and hard on my work project during the day in order to meet the new monthly out target of 125 new sets of cards, 3000 in total, my average since the autumn of 2003 when I first got underway. This work included information on the volume about scientific Matter which I quickly decided must commence with scientific creation and the 57 ( after one quick count) non scientific creation belief system from around our planet of which three are Islam, Judaism and Christianity and then the multitude of second and third sub category beliefs system which emerged as individual human being wrestled with the emerging sciences and the extent to which belief was put into practice and was not.

As I worked I first listened to a two hour set of the Peter Green Splinter Group, which I had never heard of before until I realised this was Peter Green, born Peter Greenbaum of Fleetwood Mac, who started with John Mayal's Bluesbreakers, after Eric Clapton's departure. In the beginning there was Adam and Eve, then you and me and we are all connected. He created Fleetwood Mac and with success followed the predicable route of taking drugs, particularly the hallucinatory LSD which a psychiatrist I admired used to take very disturbed adolescents and others, sinking deeper into the criminal and self destructive abyss, on a bad trip into their childhood and the precipitating experience of their subsequent behaviour, but which in his instance may have precipitated his schizophrenia, the self administered LSD trips I mean. With the help of family and friends Peter resurfaced with new music in the late 1970's/early80's and then again in the 1990's with the Splinter Group. Like Clapton he collected guitars having over 100, he should have had 101 which would have been interesting. In 2004 a further tour was planned and cancelled and then with the British Blues All Stars but this was also cancelled because of the difficulty he continued to experience with his problems, in part caused by the medication. His large body of work remains on record and some on film. It is timeless music which will be played long after much of today's output of popular music is forgotten.

In the afternoon as my work momentum flagged I enjoyed the 1941 British Classic film The Common Touch which was a romantic view of a Christian socialist capitalism in which an eighteen year old finds himself inheriting a major company, decides to investigate the effects of a plan cooked up by his chief executive to make personal profit from a deal which will evict the residents of a homeless shelter used by those who have been to prison or fallen on other hard times. He and a friend dress down to live in the shelter until they discover something to thwart the plans and convince his Board to adopt a socialist approach to the planned development. There is a sub plot in this film where a high class singer declines the proposal of marriage from an England Test Match Cricketer, of the Gentlemen public school wing in the days when the Players were the professionals who tried to make a livelihood full time from the game while the Gentlemen had separate interests which provided their income and life style. Bernard Miles had a miniscule role as a steward at Lords.

I then planned to have as background to further work what I thought was to be a World War 2 film, In the service of the country, only to discover it was a Russian language film in which their secret service set out to thwart an Arabic, Muslim, Terrorist group's attempt to launch Armageddon on all non believers commencing with bombings in Moscow, New York and Berlin city shopping centres. The hero of the civil service team is a cross between the leader of the A Team and bionic Superman Ninja, with his sidekick Lara Croft who take on Cat Woman, the brain behind what was is in fact a capitalist heist to strip some of the oil made Arab wealth, 200 million dollars to 14 accounts in Switzerland, letting off a few real bombs to cause some devastation and loss of human life to keep the Muslim extremists content, much like the American Mafia funded the attempted capitalist return to Cuba. I watched the nonsense because I became very tired and at times it was difficult to keep my eyes open to watch the action let alone read the sub titles. It was an interesting Russian perspective, given he 75% popular vote for the replacement of Putin as Prime Minister while he moves into the Presidency, well it could have been 99.99 percent like the good old days. This reminds me to mention that the Clinton succession is running out of steam which means that I hope Obama is now on assassination watch, especially as a new Presidential assassination film opens this weekend and is bound to trigger another political, Mafia. American secret state within a state, capitalist conspiracy, religious extremist, racist assassination attempt, or is their secret service that incompetent to enable a lone individual to get close enough?

It was while I was trying to recover from this prolonged siesta that it looked as if an hour long programme about the extent to which the major international capitalist companies were being shafted by their own greed until they worked out if you cant beat them you should join them. I have no idea when western capitalists first worked out that China would solve all their problems of squeezed profit margins and bonuses because of the accumulative effects in their countries of minimum wage legislation, structured and protected workers rights with good wage levels, good holiday and pension arrangements, and the need for higher taxes to provide social expenditure on top of that required for security. The prospect of unlimited wealth from trading with Russian and China was only identified as possibilities when I attended a senior management course in the mid 1980's, although by then the capitalists understood that one had to internationalise in order to be able to move the enterprises when political, trade union and trading conditions became too difficult to maintain and further profits in any particular country.

The allegation is a confusing film (which appeared to be on the side of capitalist enterprises who have little thought on the impact of their machinations on workers at home or overseas), is that the firms are now, at best, only going through the motions of opposing the copying of brand images, and that they are unofficially cashing in themselves where they can on the parallel manufacturing and trading.
The story in this documentary is that the companies were so keen to get into the emerging Chinese exporting market that they took up with whichever bilingual Chinese fixer that came their way, not realising that in order to maximise the profit potential and therefore speed up the economic growth of their country, the individual, often which official connections, if not outright blessing, would directly or indirectly set up other production units to create copies which would undercut the Brand and also make more profit because they did not have the same chain of profiteers to service. The reason why the Branded goods went to China more than to Russia because they could recreate the slave labour conditions of the industrial revolution, getting volunteers to work 100 hours a week in for coppers or cents, often using adolescents and children.

As with the agricultural workers driven to the Industrial revolution factories in the UK or the theoretically emancipated black and Mexican slave labour in the USA, the earnings were still better than previously, with the prospect of advancement for a few who were able to understand and use the system for their personal gain. The hoot is that many of those exploiting the Brands names by making authentic copies, are principled communists who have worked out that this is a good way to pay back the Western capitalist for their years of trying to break communist power and authority. I just do not understand how western capitalists get away with describing these goods as fake or counterfeit.
Take Burberry for example, who have closed British factories with the consequence that Burberry is now a Chinese made good and made according to Chinese labour conditions. Somewhere in China there are other workers making Burberry like goods sold in China and overseas, at less price. Top Shop in the UK sells look alike fashion goods where the originals cost £1000 for £50. I do not understand the difference. The gripe appears to be who pockets the profits. It is not about the impact of the development on British working conditions, protected through membership of the ECC and which was once hated by socialists and defended by capitalists.

The programme illustrated my point by interviewing one engaging woman who is able to frequent travel the world and who always visit her Bagman friend in Marbella who is able to provide her and her friends with bag look a likes costing a tenth or twentieth of the original where there is usually a waiting list which means that when you get your original it is already out of date. So the original manufacturing brand name must be raking it in within six months of orders making and selling bag ten to twenty to forty and fifty times the actual cost of materials and labour and others are able to also make money from silly women with too much money and just as little social conscience. This reminds me to have a moan about all those creating markets on E Bay for example by giving publicity to the mark up on scare resource items. I have long suspected the complaint was coming from those such as footballers and those associated with football clubs who planned to make money by selling their allocation of tickets to the official resale market, the companies which provide hospitality packages at all the main sporting, theatrical and cultural events. What they not like is ordinary punters getting in on the act as this undercuts the price which celebrity interests can get for their tickets, and the demand for the inflated hospitality packages. You think I am joking? On the news this day the HSBC bank was writing off billions because of its involvement in the sub prime market in the USA, but still announced record overall profits in the billions because of its gains in the Far East. I was also fascinated by a local news programme which is spending the week promoting the new Emirates route from Newcastle airport to Dubai with its links to the Australasia, nice work if you can get and afford it. It is obviously a freebie promoted by the airline and Dubai. However my complaint is not that this is the nature of society, but by the increasingly flimsy pretence of it all as the general population becomes more educated.

Earlier in the day I had planned to spend time reading what Wikipedia has to say on Time but was over taken by this week's brilliant episode of Lost, one of the best of the 70 odd so far. Earlier in the 4th series the ultra realist Sayed had set off with the true love never hath so finer an advocate, Desmond, in the helicopter to the ship, only to fail to keep strictly on its course, and for Time to slip out of Time but with significant consequence Desmond who finds himself switching with increasing rapidity between his time in the British Army (it does not have an British army feel though) and being on the helicopter and the off island moored freighter. The reason why he has been affected in this way is because his previous experience of significant radioactivity and the electro magnetic storm which the helicopter passes through on its way to the freighter. In the past series the whole issue of convergent electro magnetic polarity was explored. In this episode the communications officer on the freighter and a friend have been also affected when they take the ship to shore boat and veer off the only course portal which craft can travel to and from the island. One of the two has already died and the other is shortly to die which emphasises the need for Desmond to find a treatment if one is possible. It is because on the island there is Daniel Faraday the Oxford experimental physicist who has worked out a means of transporting the brain (not the body) into the future and back in which you can experience the realities but not alter it… a device to ensure that those watching the programme cannot conclude that the mystery of the island is about alternate dimensions and realities, especially as in this series there are forward flashes as well as flashbacks. The beauty of this programme is that it provides a coherent explanation for what is happening with a Romeo and Juliet love story

During moments of onboard ship reality Desmond and Sayed are able to communicate with the island by telephone and with Daniel Faraday, the physicist from the freighter who explains that some of those who veer of the narrow sea or air course to the island experience a mental form of time travel in which the individual inhabits their actual physical body and memory in both dimensions and in order to stabilise himself in both and not bring his present to an untimely end he has to connect with a meaningful constant from both times, and which in this instance is Penny, the love of both their lives.

On discovering that Desmond believes the year is 1996, Daniel instructs him that the next time he is back in this reality he must go as quickly as he can to find him at Oxford University where he works and is at the early theoretical and experimental period of his brain travel work. When this happens he reacts that Desmond is a set up by colleagues to who ridicule his work but he has provided in the future a key to ensure that when in the past Daniel recognises that only someone inhabiting the future could know of the detail. He then explains to Desmond that in order to survive he must make contact with someone, a constant, from both moments in time.

The beauty of this story line will not be appreciated by those who do not know the history of Desmond's relationship with Penny and that she is using her family wealth to fund an ongoing search to find out what happened to Desmond and that despite what has happened between them and the years of separation, their love has remained constant, except for the time in 1996 which is where the brain time shift has taken him. To break the chain which is quickly leading to a brain seizure an death he must make contact with Penny in the present, where there is a double complication, he does not have her phone number, and the ship to outside world communication system has been sabotaged. Sayed the communications specialist is able to solve the latter but to get the phone number he has to go back mentally to 1996,find Penny's father and persuades him to given her whereabouts, he gives her address not her phone number, so Desmond visits and persuades Penny to give her number as a means of getting rid of him, and he registers with her that he will ring her on Christmas even eight years from hence, which he is able to do, they express their undying love how ever long it will take for them to be together, if ever, and in do doing he is saved, for now. The episode ends with Faraday going through his master notebooks where eight years before he has made a note, if things go wrong Desmond is my constant. Thus the situation is circular as I believe is time, and that what is imagined or dreamt reality and what is authentic reality is all part of reality, just as what is a fake, and what is a copy, or good representation or reproduction are all valid perspective of one reality.

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