Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Potted thoughts

Looking at Dominic Cummings;  Well first let me say he has swallowed a whole lot of books and their theories and then regurgitated them into his blogs.  Okay says he, lets head for the highly intelligent person, whip them into shape and allow them full throttle over the landscape of our lives and the government of this country.  
In fact he reminds me of those  brick like computer books that came with the first computers that entered our homes.  A blow by blow account of how to use your computers (tedious and dull) and in his case how to run the country.  Is this what we have engineered in this particular generation a person who sees the managerial side in such a manner. 
Perhaps more frightening is this, that which is being taught in our schools and colleges to unleash on us a robotic figure wedded to a particular ideology.  Rachel mentions Seumas Milne on the Left, and the same restricted viewpoint is there as well.  What were our two opposing political parties aiming for? Do we need such radical restructuring?  Maybe yes is my answer, after all it is the young who inherit the earth.  But in the era of AI are we not already beginning to be the robots, calculating how to win a viewpoint, a statistical nightmare trying to herd kittens.
I came across a figure like Cummings very early on.  This was Derek Wall, a Green Party figure in Bath.  He emerged as a young lad on my then husband's  archaeological dig.  Intensive, very intellectual, an argumentative soul.  I remember him now grown up marching into a GP meeting room with several of his cohorts and changing the vote in his favour.  He was frightening in his determination to rule.  This was the split in the GP, into red/green. a socialist split that took many years to come to terms with the radicalism of the people involved.  Perhaps comfortingly, he now sits on the sideline but to be honest I have never scrutinised the inner workings of the GP party.
It will be an interesting year 2020, will Johnson fulfil any of his promises, or will there be a sneaky attrition of many values, and will Cummings still rule quietly in the Cabinet, undermining the old guard. And do we want that old guard back anyway?


5 comments:

  1. You are right Thelma. It will be an interesting year. Personally - and I know that this is wicked of me - I am hoping that Johnson comes off his scrambling motorcycle on the island of Mustique where he is currently holidaying - and goes careering head first into an unforgiving rock or tree. I applaud you for investigating The World According to Dominic Cummings. Not the kind of world I really wish to inhabit.

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  2. He is interesting but scary, bit like the baddies in 007 Sceptre which I have just been watching.;)

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  3. I am glad you were able to do your research Thelma. I suggest Momentum might be a good place to go next because they will have a bearing on the future of the Labour Party and selection of new Leader. (I find the other comment here intolerant and not good for restoration and healing and have tried to ignore it and it has delayed me in commenting).

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    1. I had a feeling that YP and yourself did not get on Rachel, but a sense of humour is good when debating politics and I am sure when the fur stopped flying you would both get on.

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    2. It is irrelevant to me who wrote it; it is too negative and I do not regard such comments on social media as anything but ignorant.

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