Socio-Cultural Meander: Fe/male

A few months ago, I was given a recommendation to watch the documentary, Adult Human Female. I’ve included the video below:

Not what it says on the tin.

In my cynical optimism, I acted on the recommendation half-expecting the documentary to be about the celebration of all things female and feminine as well as the struggles of being a woman in modern times.

Instead, as fully expected, the documentary was a bunch of talking heads discussing the ‘trans issue’. That is, men who have decided, or are compelled, to identify, and live as, the opposite gender. I say gender not sex because sex is fixed at the genetic level. Gender is sex-based behaviour and, I believe, can be fluid since there have been effeminate men and masculine women for God knows how long.

The more I watched this documentary, which is around 90 mins in length so quite short, the more I realised why they were exclusively discussing the problems with trans-women.

They were feminists. Mostly academics at that, hailing from the social sciences. And because of that, they can’t talk about all that is female and feminine. It goes against ‘equality’, you see.

This has bothered me for some years but watching this documentary just condensed the issue in that concise runtime. For decades, the feminist movement has, in essence, been pushing women to become more and more like men. Women should work like men, be paid like men, have sex like men, own cars and property like men, run businesses like men, etc, etc.

This documentary distilled, quite unwittingly I’m sure, how masculine women have become. Or, at least, how masculine they have been conditioned to be. The complete absence of any discussion about femininity in this documentary should serve as evidence of that.

And it highlighted another issue that’s been floating around in recent years – the ‘trans movement’ is the response to the feminist one in that, if women are to be encouraged to enter traditionally male spaces, then why can’t men enter traditionally female ones?

It’s likely escaped many that, over the last several decades, the push has been uni-directional. Women are to operate in the male domains and yet, has there been a call for men to operate in the female domains? Where women are being encouraged to foster careers in business, finance, engineering, etc, where is the same call for men to become nurses, primary school teachers or run childcare services?

There isn’t one.

Why is that?

Without looking into it, the first thing that springs to mind is tax.

When the first wave of feminism was in its infancy, I believe governments in the West saw an opportunity. Here we have a group of disgruntled women who believed that they should be given the same rights as men. Why they think they should have them is unimportant to governments. Maybe they’ve been forced to live alone because men didn’t find them attractive; maybe they were too disagreeable; they may have been infertile and hated their functional sisters and their happy families. Doesn’t matter. The point is, the first right they wanted was the one to vote and to then take part in matters of public discourse. Did they seek to usurp men thinking themselves morally superior? Who knows.

But that there provided an excellent opportunity for exploitation.

First – a 19th Century definition of voting from the National Archives:

“In order to vote, a person had to own property or pay certain taxes to qualify, which excluded most working class people. There were also constituencies with several voters that elected two MPs to Parliament, such as Old Sarum in Salisbury.”

Now, that defintion doesn’t explicitly state that women weren’t allowed to vote. If rich enough to own property and pay these ‘certain’ taxes, it wouldn’t matter what sex you were. Governments aren’t sexist when money is concerned.

But in order for women to be given the vote, they’d have to pay tax. From 1869 in the UK, women started entering the workforce ergo they could pay tax thus providing the conditions to vote. In 1928, British women over 21 could vote under Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928.

To put this into context, let’s look at the following extract from this government table:

These are the figures for the female population in the UK in Mid-1928. The top row is the age range and the bottom is the population within that age range. Look at everything from 20-24 onwards. I won’t ask you to total it up because it’s 13,925,400. That figure would represent the potential maximum number of voters the UK government would have gained by having allowed women into the workplace since 1869. It also represents the additional taxpayers the UK government had gained since 1869.

It is here that I’d argue the decline of the feminine began in this country. The traditional contract was that the man’s work was to exchange his time, labour, knowledge and skills for money which would be used to allow the woman to carry out her work of being mother to her children and caretaker of the household. Here, she would nurture, nourish and encourage her children in areas relevant to their circumstances. Depending on the socio-economic status of the parents, the children would either, once old enough, be put to work at a mill or a farm or sent away to be formally educated.

But bringing women into workplace en masse saw the beginning of the end of the previously luxurious position of being able to give up working to focus on motherhood and raising a family. Something that working to middle class women were not previously afforded. Until Feminism.

It is not to say that there are no benefits from this venture. For the first time, the majority of women were not reliant on a husband to provide stable income. For the first time, the majority of women could pursue careers that allowed them to fulfill the upper eschalons of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Today, we have more female CEO’s, directors, entrepreneurs and managers than at any other point in recorded history.

Whilst that has helped boost the economies of the countries where such workplace shifts have taken place, it has made one thing abundantly clear.

Women have become men.

It has long been, and still remains, the domain of the masculine to have an external purpose that makes death worthwhile. Because men do not have the ability to create life, they cannot mature emotionally or mentally from within. Men must go out and face the dangers and struggles set by the world and either overcome them or die. That still rings true today. Men make up the bulk of criminals, addicts and homeless; the very ones who stood against the world and crumbled before it.

And yet, women are not men in this regard. They are more likely to get social housing, benefits, and access to food, water and medicine if they have hit rock bottom. On the streets of my home city of Glasgow, I look at the queues for the food banks and, I’d say, at least 70% are men.

So, at the very bottom of Western society, women are not men for the most part. At the upper end, it has become the case.

Work

I am a consultant and my clients are major organisations operating in various sectors. What I have noticed over the last 10 years or so is that there is little difference between how female managers act compared to male ones. They can be just as aggressive, assertive and arrogant, sometimes more so because they are, seemingly, having to over-compensate since they are still under the impression that they are a fairly rare entity in the business world and have to fight that bit harder to stay where they are.

My observations and experience have been quite the opposite.

From the age of 19, I have worked in Finance and I have had 9 female line managers and 4 male line managers. At my last client, (a major insurance broker) the bulk of the floor was made up of women. The Global Head was a woman; her deputy was a woman and all the team managers and assistant managers were women. Hell, most of the teams were all women. And that was one floor in their Glasgow office. If I spoke to anyone in London, bar my boss who was male, I’d be speaking to a woman. I worked in Special Projects and only myself and a Senior Finance Manager were men. The rest were women.

My current client (a major supermarket) sees me engaging with more women than men as well, however, the trend continues. It’s the managers that are female. The people that do the day-to-day running of things. The problem-solvers are men. The people that fix things to make sure they can keep running are men, myself included.

So, what does this tell me? Well, maybe women aren’t quite so much men after all in the workplace. However, I’m doing to disagree with what I just said because I know that a lot of those women don’t want to be there. They don’t want to have to lead and make big decisions. They’re doing it but I can see it drains them.

With my current client, I am helping a number of women. A project manager, a business analyst and several end users of various specialisms. They all defer to me when it comes to making decisions. With the end users, I expect that. They’re not supposed to know anything about what I’m helping with. The analyst and the project manager, on the other hand, do have a say in what gets done and how. And yet, I am being deferred to.

Now, to be fair, it is just as likely that it is because I have been brought in as an experienced professional that my advice is being sought after, however, it’s not my place to make the decisions since I don’t work for the company and don’t know it as fully as they do. And yet, I have been deferred to to make significant decisions. Indeed, the only other person who is deferred to is the Financial Planning and Analysis Lead. Another man.

Similarly, with my insurance broker client, the Global Head would confide almost weekly about how there was too much to do and that she was drowning in work (a phrase my ex used a lot, funnily enough). She wasted two half-days with meetings consisting of about 10 people (half flew up from London) where she proceeded to try and effectively do the job she’d borrowed me for. What was produced was a mess but that’s to be expected since she’s an accountant and not experienced in the breadth of business areas I am. And yet, she still felt the need to prove something. It didn’t work and I still had to go away and fix it which was the job she’d borrowed me for in the first place. The impression given was that she had to at least appear to be trying to do something to make the integration of a recently acquired company’s processes easier. I could tell she just needed someone to come along and fix it for her. I did because that’s why she borrowed me from the project I was supposed to be on which was having a delayed start.

During my career, I have heard a number of women in fairly senior positions express how they’d prefer to be at home or be a ‘kept woman’. Of course, such admissions will never make it to the papers since that would create a huge feminist backlash. ‘If women want to go back home then feminism hasn’t been done properly!’, I hear them cry.

And don’t take my word for it. This Time article looks at a survey showing that 56% of American women with children under 18 would prefer to stay at home whilst 39% with children over 18 had the same preference.

What does that say? It tells me that there are a lot women that do not want to be in the workplace. And why would they? Whether you’re a high or low earner, the situation is very similar. They are working for people that simply do not have the same level of care for them that a family would. Does a company find it amazing whenever Jean bakes her chocolate chip cookies? No. They are devoured but not treasured. A family would make an occasion over something so simple because it’s showing gratitude for an an act of love and care. That same act is not treated the same way in the workplace. Believe me, I’ve eaten many a homebaked cake, biscuit, pie, etc at work and it has not endeared those people to me in the same way as my gran’s shortbread or my mum’s mince pies. There tends to be an underlying agenda with baked goods in the office. To quote the excellent Valve game, Portal – “The cake is a lie.”

But I digress. In order for women to make it in the corporate world, they must adopt a masculine persona. This does not come easily to many and I have seen the strain it puts on them as they are drained of femininity. In fact, one senior manager at a previous client seemed to adopt a coping strategy with her clothes. On days where she was having big meetings, she would sport a black pencil skirt suit and heels. When she was not having meetings, she wore long, flowing skirts, pumps, frilly tops and lots of necklaces.

Now, we could argue that women would have a better time of it in the workplace if it were more feminine. Why must business, engineering, technology, etc be so masculine. The feminists would have us believe we’re all the same. That there are no differences between men and women.

This says different.

The article linked above discussed the gender-equality paradaox. That is, when a country becomes more gender-equal, the chance of sex-typical jobs being chosen increase. In large part, this comes down to the biology of each sex. Women are more people-oriented whilst men are more thing-oriented.

However, most people-oriented professions don’t pay well despite being of high social value. A nurse in the UK gets paid an average salary of £34,000 which, whilst above national average, is not on par with a doctor at an average salary of £76,000. There is certainly more risk and responsibility in being a doctor and it helps with the ladies.

That drive to be accomplished so that he may be deemed worthy of passing on his genes is a huge factor in why men aspire to be a high-ranking professional. Simply put…it’s sexy. Women are drawn to man who is competent, accomplished and can keep control of himself under pressure. Being a risk-taker shows a man’s willingness to assert dominance over any domain. Again, a highly attractive trait.

No man wanted to be a rockstar, surgeon, fighter pilot, actor or athlete purely on the virtue of the occupation alone. Getting laid by, preferably, numerous women is the subconscious objective.

So, why is there this push to get women operating in the same spaces and at the same level as men?

Without evidence, my bet is on companies wanting to increase their profitability and less to do with women actually wanting those jobs. They are told it’s great for them and they can be ‘strong and independent’ if they are in control of their career?

How many believe that?

I point now to this Harvard Business Review article from 2002 which discusses the myth of women being able to ‘have it all’. Over 20 years ago, this article was published yet its relevance remains today as nothing has moved on for women wanting children whilst also holding down a career.

The article states that, in the United States, 33% of executive women aged 41-55 are childless. That rises to 42% at corporate level. And yet, despite yearning for a child, they do not have one.

‘In the words of one senior manager, the typical high-achieving woman childless at midlife has not made a choice but a “creeping nonchoice.”’

Having read the article, I concluded that this adopting of a masculine persona masks a woman’s feminine nature and, therefore, her primary evolutionary purpose to the point that the gentle ticking of the biological clock becomes more a gong or air-raid siren the closer to menopause she is. And yet, for many, it’s too late.

Masculinising women in the workplace may indeed be good for business. After all, if you can double your high and low-skilled workforces, you increase your profits. On top of that, by utilising women’s more agreeable nature, a businesss is more likely to get what it wants in the way it wants it. In short, I see this century-old push to get women out of the home and into the workplace as nothing but a huge profitability exploit for both business and government. And who’s in charge of both?

Equal Is Not The Same

The ugly side of delusional feminism.

I’m now entering the meat of what I want to say. The video above is of a male team (Wrexham A.F.C) comprised of former and retired professional football (soccer) players against members of the current US women’s team. The match was 40 minutes of two halves of 20 minutes. I must note that, at the time, the USA were the women’s world champions and ranked number one in the world.

The result? 12-0 to Wrexham.

I have played football since I was boy on the school playground, in parks, on 5-a-side pitches and full size pitches. I can tell you that the men weren’t really trying. In fact, it looked like the men didn’t want to score.

And yet, before the match, the women’s captain aggressively stated that the men would be ‘going down’. Where, exactly? Hell, maybe since they fought against their nature for the sake of money.

But wait. We’ve got it all wrong. According to this article, the result was out of context. The US co-captain, Heather O’ Reilly, said, at half-time, that “We’re super proud, so happy to be here at this event,” and that “Hopefully we’ve proven to anybody, just go for it, just live.” followed by “What’s the worst thing that could happen? We could lose 16-0 to Wrexham? We don’t care. We’re living, we’re being bold, we’re being brave.”

So, it doesn’t matter. The loss means nothing because they are being ‘bold’, ‘brave’ and ‘living’. And if it was just a kick around, sure. A friendly Guys vs Girls match would just be a bit of fun. But when you’re a the number one professional women’s national team going up against male former professional players and competing for $1million then treating the match like it had no meaning is stupidly arrogant. Where’s the integrity and humility? Where’s the accountability for the loss and acknowledgment that you were beaten by a better team? If it were another women’s team, I’m sure there’d be generous amounts of honour but since this was a bunch of ‘old’ men, what does it matter? They don’t deserve any respect, right? Let’s just be disgraceful losers and rebrand our behaviour to justify it.

This attitude does not only occur in sport. It has been rife in mainstream Hollywood films and TV shows for the last 5-8 years. The latest Charlie’s Angels reboot, the all-female Ghostbusters, Netflix’s The Witcher, Amazon’s Rings of Power and anything by Disney from Avengers Endgame onwards.

They all have female leads that abandon femininity, embrace the worst aspects of masculinity and then proceed to go on a destructive path. If they were men, they’d be called selfish jerks at best. But, since they’re female, they are ‘strong, independent women’.

But if this is the type of conditioning that young women are being exposed to then the coming generations will be in trouble. Having a generation of women raised to become narcisisstic, crass, vulgar, emotionally numb and deepy insecure does not make them strong or independent. It makes them weak and scared but they lack the emotional intelligence to recognise and acknowledge it and so will just carry on like it’s everyone else’s fault.

And, on the other side, we have boys raised by single mothers who become what previous generations cried out for from a man – Being in touch with his Feminine Side so he’s comfortable being emotionally vulnerable. But when you have a emotionally mature, kind, caring and, dare I say, soft man come up against a woman whose best male role models were abusers, rapists, harassers and manipulators, then it won’t end well for either. The man will be emotionally and mentally bruised, if not scarred whilst the woman flees and eventually regrets her actions but thinks she’s unworthy of forgiveness and redemption and therefore just goes deeper into the pit of despair. I’ve seen it all too often.

In days gone by, such an interaction would have been the other way round. It would be the woman trying to soften the hardened man, scared she may be rejected but is strong enough to risk it out of deep care. And the man would have been hardened by either war or work where he’s seen his fair share of things going fatally wrong that he shuts himself off and becomes a drone. Now, we have emotionally stable men trying to let emotionally unstable women know the world can be safe and comfortable. That they can relax. But many of those women have been too scarred and just think it a trick on the man’s part to gain control of her. It’s Beauty and the Beast gender-swapped and perverted.

And that, dear reader, is a failing on many of the societal structures that played an integral part in keeping the relationship between men and women strong and healthy. Whether it be religion, schools, communities or families, they’ve all been broken down to the point where that sacred relationship is now fracturing.

For women, the focus is less on marriage and family but career and fun. The trouble is that fun is the domain of children and career the domain of men. Many women have jobs. Few have a career as that requires motivation to keep moving up the ladder whether in one organisation or across many. In my experience, the highest I’ve seen women go has been to senior management level and even then, it’s not many compared to men. I’ve never met a female director. When we talk of the glass ceiling, I don’t believe it’s an invisible barrier placed by men to ‘keep women down’. I think it’s the point at which most women decide to stop progressing in the workplace. And the reason for that, I’d argue, is twofold – One, they realise the workplace does not make them as fulfilled as they were led to believe and, Two – they want to start a family.

But a lot of the women I’ve encountered who have stagnated career-wise haven’t switched over and started families. They’ve concentrated on fun. Go see how many women you can find who are over thirty-five, single, not had a promotion since their late-twenties but insist on having fun. It’s a lot more than you think.

As I said earlier, fun is for children. It is where you can safely engage in an activity where there are no consequences or drawbacks. No real commitment is required either since it’s not serious. Fun doesn’t matter once it’s over.

And hence, I say any woman who regards herself as ‘fun’ should be treated with caution. For this is another aspect of the modern female I’ve observed where they engage in behaviour that is similar to men but without the context. Men may well be enthusiastic when it comes to taking part in activities whether it’s getting hammered with the boys, playing sport, watching games or films, playing computer games together or talking about their favourite things over a drink. What the modern woman fails to realise is that these interactions are all competitions because men are competitive and combative. As the more aggressive sex, we challenge each other when together. If that challenge is met competently and calmly, that man will earn the honour and respect of the others. On the outside, some of these activites may appear mindless (Take any Top Gear challenge, for example) but the purpose is to check that each member of the group is capable of taking on a real challenge when it comes and whatever form it may be in. Yes, the men may have real fun doing it but it only becomes fun when each group member pulls their weight.

And these tests continue until death. How many women would actively engage in being tested by their peers in such a manner? Not many, I’d wager.

And so, having groups of women acting as if they’re ‘having fun’ just like a group of men is akin to a group of battle reenactment actors going up against an actual army. One group might like to think they’re soldiers whilst the other actually are soldiers.

Having spent their teens and twenties at university and, presumably, holding down a job, many women get to their thirties and forties and find themselves in a stalemate – Give up the career or give up on being a mother and grandmother. Which would the biggest regret on their deathbed, I wonder? Working longer and harder to become a department head of a company that doesn’t care or mother to children that love and cherish her existence?

This article looks at the ever decreasing spiral that is Western birthrates. Whilst I agree with most of what it says, what it fails to address, or admit given the author is a woman, is that by abandoning the basic function of being a woman, the feminist movement will, ultimately, if nothing is done, see the human race wipe itself out. Encouraging women to act more like men will not result in any liberation except for the liberation of existence.

And this is another facet of being a man that women are getting wrong. A man’s career is his purpose. It is his way of protecting and caring for his wife and children. If the woman is also in the workplace, who’s looking after the children? By being in the workplace along with the men, they are being put into direct competition with those they are meant to love, honour and protect.

Men are part of the Artifical Order, therefore, through the creation of artefacts, we provide value to the species. From spears and fire to roads, paper, buildings, computers, cars, etc, a man’s labour culminates in the creation of something that, ultimately, doesn’t occur naturally.

Women belong to the Natural Order meaning they belong to the creative force which is Nature since their primary purpose is to bring about the next generation of humanity. What Feminism is doing is eroding femininity in favour of masculinity which will, if it continues down its chosen path, see the human race extinct through women actively choosing to not perform the single most important job in all of humanity.

To give birth!

With declining fertility rates in 97% of countries, the population will age rapidly in the 2040’s and it will be partly down to women being encouraged to forego having children. In reality, we need to learn to reembrace, support, celebrate and love the Mother rather than continue to shun Her. To not do so will ensure annihilation.

Sport

By conditioning women into this masculine persona, the erosion of male and female relations has been occuring. Take the football example from earlier. By so blindly believing they can beat men at physical activity, it highlights to serve that some women are so far removed from their femininity that they may well believe themselves to be men. And if that is the case, then maybe feminism has achieved an element of equality albeit misguided.

And misguided it is. In 2013, Serena Williams (then women’s tennis no.1) went on record to say that she’d never play Andy Murray (then men’s tennis no.2) as he would ‘destroy’ her. She acknowledged the differences between the men and women’s game and accepted that men are nastier and more brutal.

However, as a teenager, Serena and her sister, Venus, did play against German male tennis player, Kaarsten Braasch, in 1998. Both teenagers, they played Braasch (then ranked outside the Top 200) for one set each and lost to the German.

Serena has famously, or not so, played against Roger Federer. In 2019, the pair played against each other in a mixed doubles match for the Hopman Cup tournament. Switzerland beat the USA in straight sets.

Setting aside single instances, it’s concerning that these physical contests between men and women seem to be on the increase as though driven by this same deranged mentality that there are no differences between the sexes. In WWE, there are mixed-sex matches, however, the women get to hit the men whilst the men must restrain themselves against the women. Here’s an example.

All’s fair when the man can’t hit back.

In this match, not only is the male opponent smaller than the female but he actively assists in helping Rhea Ripley perform her manoeuvres. On top of that, he doesn’t attack or defend himself and spends the whole match being used by Rhea.

It’s also equality when the woman hits back against a woman.

In the above match highlights, forward to 3.45, Rhea Ripley does not show the same strength when performing a similar move against her female competitor, Liv Morgan. Yet, in the match I showed against Akira, go to 2.36, she lifts him with ease. Note, Akira pushes against her so he’s actually supporting her to complete the move.

I know WWE is hardly a standard bearer for gender relations but the fact that this is going on in such a popular entertainment format begs the question – What happens when young girls see this and start picking fights with boys thinking they can just throw them around?

Glad you asked because it’s already happening:

Equality until it isn’t

There’s a plethora of these Man vs Woman videos about but this won had decent variety for it’s reasonably short length. The point here is to illustrate that, even in the military, most of the time, the man is beating the woman. The only times a woman beats a man is if she’s professional and he’s not or she has a significant weight advantage over the man i.e. she’s twice his size or greater.

And what you’ll notice when you go an watch such videos is that, going by the footage, the men involved are good men. How do I know? They’re not humiliating the women straight away. They’re being gentle and letting the women they’re going up against be cocky. But there comes a point in each encounter when the woman thinks she has the man and that’s when he steps in and puts her down. He’s a gentleman until she stops being a lady.

In 2007, Wimbledon was the last of the major tournaments in tennis to offer equal prize money for men and women. Both winners get £2.35m whilst the runner-up gets £1.175m. Great for equality but then, equality doesn’t always mean fair.

Where the women play best of three sets, the men play best of five so, already, the men are effectively underpaid as they are doing more work and have been since the ‘Open Era’ of tennis started in 1968.

The men

This is a dangerous and stupid road we’re heading down. In my home city of Glasgow, it’s the women that are becoming more and more aggressive to the men. Shouting, screaming and hitting. I see it on the streets. The men, for the most part, just take it because they can. They take it because they have to. The consequences for retaliation are more severe since, as mentioned previously, the laws are made to predominantly keep men in line because men know how violent men can be.

But how far does it go with female aggression that it becomes reasonable for a man to retaliate without recourse? Why does it even have to go far at all? Are women seeing themselves so much as men that they believe they can start being verbally and physically aggressive? Going from what I see more regualrly and footage I’ve found, it seems so.

And why is that?

Simple.

Men have an instinct to protect women. I’ll rephrase that. I like to think that most men have a protective instinct since there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary to say that all men have this.

For those that do, how much of that is being eroded?

Over the last five years, I’ve found myself less likely to step in when a woman looks to be in a vulnerable state. The amount of harassment cases in the press (how much of it is spin is uncertain) makes it less worthy of a man’s time now to stand up and help a woman out when it’s clear she’s in need of help, even in danger. The endless messaging of how women now are ‘strong and independent’ and ‘don’t need a man’ have been blasting over the PA of the Internet loud enough that many men have heard it loud and clear and packed up and shipped off where they can be on their own and at peace.

The current MGTOW (Men Go Their Own Way) and Red Pill movements have been a direct response to the aggressive feminist messaging of recent times. If women don’t need a man, fine. The supply of men will be voluntarily reduced by those that don’t need the hassle of such a woman. It’s not that they don’t a want relationship. Many do, but if all they’re going to get is hounded and harassed for not living up to the standards the woman has set then, in their eyes, it’s simply not worth it.

And the trouble with such messaging is that it’s predominantly the good men that hear the messages and take action to avoid women as much as possible. And if more of those good men take heed then women end up with a pool of the kind of men they don’t want for a relationship but can be a lot of fun for a night with potentially lifelong ramifications.

Equality’s alright if he looks like a woman, I suppose.

One woman. One man. One ring. Okay, most men will have disowned this excuse for having the gall to enter a ring with a real woman and pretend he’s not a he. Which, by willingly having a fight with a woman, he ain’t. He can stay trans but that’s providing the women take him which, based on this, I don’t think they will.

The male (going by the alias, Alana Mclaughlin) was untrained and unskilled in Mixed Martial Arts and went up against Celine Provost, a skilled female amateur.

For most of the match, the male, I’ll call him Alan, was clumsily reluctant about engaging his female opponent.

Between minutes 12 and 14 is where Alan let go and left Celine crouching above a pool of her own blood whilst the commentator declared the match ‘a victory for the trans community’.

Really? Watching a man beat up a woman for sport is now a victory? And why is it?

To be dealt with in the next part.

The troubling thing here is that Celine did go along with the match. I have no information on why she did so I can only assume she thought it would raise her profile. If you look at her expression when the referee declares the winner, she looks utterly baffled by what’s happened to her. It seems clear she’s never been hit the way Alan hit her. And neither she should have.

I’ve purposely avoided mentioning the ‘T’ word again as I’ll go through it more in the next part. But, I wanted to use that instance to show that men (albeit heavily diluted ones) are being pitted against women for sport.

Where to from there? It’s already happening in cycling, swimming, running, netball, basketball, volleyball, etc. Men, under the disguise of Trans identification, are taking over women’s sport.

To Be So Equal, It’s Unequal

One arena where there has been a huge push for more women is Formula One. Already, a highly exclusive sport where, in a given season, there are 20-24 spots available. There, gender isn’t a direct barrier. Money, talent, skill, discipline and determination are as much the barrier as physicality. Women have tried and, in its 73-year history, only five women made it to the grid. In 1980, Desiré Wilson won the Brands Hatch round of the British Aurora F1 Championship, a UK-specific offshoot of F1 proper.

Aside from that sole victory, the most successful proper female F1 driver has been Lella Lombardi who made 12 starts from 17 entries and managed to score points.

The last woman to enter F1 was in 1992 where Giovanna Amati drove for Brabham. She made three entries but no starts.

What’s interesting about Giovanna is that she never won any of the lower formulas. Ordinarily, you have to win the feeder series’ before getting a shot at F1. Giovanna was somehow signed with no titles to her name.

In the 21st Century, there have been concerted efforts to get more women on the grid of F1. Scotland’s Suzie Wolff came close and even got to test a Williams F1 car and eventually signed as a test and development driver in 2012. Another high profile figure was Carmine Jordá who signed a deal with Lotus in 2015 to have a run in the car.

Of all the efforts to get a woman on the grid, none have made it. The situation got so tense that demands were made to grant a woman a place. Bernie Ecclestone, then owner of the sport, wouldn’t allow it and instead another solution was to be found. The result was the W Series. A womens-only formula.

That is to say that segregating the women from the men to then allow a woman to compete against the men in the most elite motorsport was the only solution that could be found?

Why not just have them do what every man has done? Go out and compete against the men fair and square. Is that not equality? As I mentioned, in that sport, if you have the money, talent, skill, discipline and determination then you take your shot and make the most of it. Thousands upon thousands of men and boys have tried and failed to get into one of those hallowed seats, so why should women be any different?

“I think any platform that gives females an equal opportunity, that is great. Or even just a leg up, because we haven’t ever had it. Women deserve a leg up, and the W Series provides that and I have no issue with that. The best drivers will come out of it and hopefully it will then make [F1] team bosses see them a bit more.”

That was Claire Williams back in 2021. She’s the team principal of Williams Racing, a team founded by her late father, Frank. I couldn’t find any elaboration on why she thinks women specifically deserve a leg up in F1 when it doesn’t actively exclude women as proven by the very fact she is the team principal of a Formula One team. But then, she did inherit the position from her father after he’d built it up to being one of the most successful teams in the history of the sport, so…

With Jamie Chadwick winning all three W Series championships and with sponsors struggling with the feasibility of the championship, the series went into administration in the middle of June 2023.

And yet, Alice Powell, an original entrant from the inaugural 2019 season, insists “W Series DID NOT fail”.

Why?

She said, to the BBC, “At the end of the day, W Series got me out racing again, whether you agreed with the championship or not.”

Well, as long as she got some racing from the hundreds of millions spent that, ultimately, went down the drain. She had some fun, didn’t she? That’s all that matters. How can it have failed if they all got some racing out of it?

Because it failed in its objective of getting a woman a seat in F1. No matter how many prominent male and female figures backed this series, it did not achieve what it set out to do.

In addition, not only did the sponsors deem it unviable, so did the fans. Averaging 710,000 viewers, it compared poorly against F1 and its average of 70.3million viewers with cumulative figures of 1.54billion. Formula 3, W Series’ equivalent, has enjoyed a peak of 188million. Couldn’t find stats on average viewership though.

So, why continue to push for something that neither sponsors are willing to back and viewers aren’t willing to watch? F3 and F2 are lower tier race series but they are still watched by millions around the world. Granted, they are older than the W Series but, in reality, viewers aren’t as bothered by that as sponsors.

It all comes down to racing. If it’s good enough, people will watch regardless of whether it’s men or women in the cars.

I’ll go back to tennis. Huge numbers of viewers for both men and women’s iterations. Clearly, audiences love seeing the best women go against each other just as much as they love watching the best men try and win against each other. But not motorsport. Not football. Not rugby. Not boxing. Yes, to MMA and WWE but no to basketball.

What’s the common denominator?

I’ll tell you. The sports where, at elite level, women are trying to compete with men, they fail because women cannot compete at that same level. The WNBA is the peak of female basketball but that peak is not the same peak as the NBA. With W Series, Jamie Chadwick may have wiped the floor with her competition but that does not mean she can compete in F1.

Going back to Serena Williams, she has stated that she sees men and women’s tennis as two separate sports based on differences between men and women. That’s fair, reasonable and healthy and should be the same across all sports. There’s no shame in being the best woman in the world at a sport. Why this incessant need to push into men’s territory? It will only, and has, come back to bite them.

Relations

The creep into men’s sport and workplaces has one thing in common – Status.

The shift has been in that direction of high-status positions which come with equally high pay but also, if you’re not careful, high pressure and consequences for failure.

The trouble is that, in pushing women in this direction, we see a further erosion of their feminine nature and this has had serious consequences on their relations with men.

In order to operate at such levels, you need to be competitive, combative, cooperate, aggressive, assertive, driven, clever, strategic and devious as well be able to deliver results on time under immense pressure. In top level positions, you fail once, you’re gone.

This is, and continues to be, the way men operate. We operate like this because we need to show our potential female mate that we are the best mate for her. In doing so, she might grant us the opportunity to pass our genes on thus fulfilling our biological evolutionary purpose. We also do it to show our male peers who’s top dog.

But women don’t have that same purpose. So, what happens when women act like men but then still seek a male partner to have a relationship with and, potentially, start a family with?

In essence, the man ends up dating someone who, whilst physically and biologically female, is emotionally, mentally and spiritually male. Thus, we have a man with XY and a man with XX chromosomes.

The two rarely go together and, I’d argue, it’s the underlying reason for a lot of failed relationships and divorces. They may not know it on a conscious level, but a career-driven woman is only going to try and outdo her career-driven man. Similarly, a career-driven woman will only love a man of little to no ambition or prospects for a time as he’ll feed one aspect of her femininity; That aspect being her maternal instinct. This is problematic but it’s unfortunately common. Instead of having a family, the man ends up being the surrogate child to the woman creating a perverse Oedipal relationship. He takes from her as he’s largely useless but is charming enough to make her blind and she gives because her insecurity keeps her from finding someone who would make her a real wife and mother. Perhaps, on some level, such a woman fears a secure and stable man because that would then cause her to confront her lost femininity. It would also mean she couldn’t control him.

Equally, two driven partners will only go to war against each other as both try to take the wheel of the relationship. In the end, neither win and the relationship runs off the road, crashes and burns. The man, trying to assert his masculinity, is going up against a woman who denies her femininity and tries to assert her masculinity also.

A way I like to think about it is this – You and a partner have started a business. One partner looks after finance and operations and the other looks after sales and marketing. In the beginning, the business is doing well with both partners doing their assigned roles. They’ll discuss matters relating to those roles but don’t interfere in the running of them. But, one day, the sales and marketing partner starts trying to tell the finance and operations partner how to manage the books and structure the company. Initially resistant, the finance and operations partner either gives in or starts hiding things from the sales and marketing partner. With trust broken, the company starts a downhill struggle to which it will never recover. And all because one partner thought they could tell the other how to be better at something they don’t know anything about.

This is the crux of the issue. Women, under feminism, are effectively trying to tell men how to be men whilst trying to be men themselves. But Hell mend any man that tells a woman to be a woman.

For relationships, it’s going to be failure after failure. With loneliness on the rise, feminism has its part to play in this social epidemic that no one is talking about. What’s needed is a return to traditional feminine roles.

But the governments of the world have us pegged there too. Here in the UK, it’s still possible to raise a family on one wage in moderate comfort. That wage is £40,000 and would put the earner into the 75th percentile or bottom of the top 25% of earners, before tax. See how the whole tax and workforce thing from a century ago has come back to haunt us? Now, only one in four people have a chance of the traditional family, economically-speaking. This tradition has only been eroded in the last thirty years or so. And with the manipulation of prices, the wedge between men and women will be driven even deeper until such times that only one in four people can actually support themselves let alone a family.

But is there a more sinister and dangerous objective that drives feminist women to high-status roles?

Let’s play Devil’s Advocate for a moment. One of the tenets of modern feminism is: All women are oppressed.

It’s a blanket statement and it’s one I’ve seen fairly ordinary women believe. The alleged Glass Ceiling is just men keeping women from achieving higher positions and surpassing them. Meanwhile, we’ve had Queens, female Prime Ministers, CEO’s, entrepreneurs, singers, actors, scientists and inventors. Granted, in some arenas, women are not as abundant as men but surely that’s merely down to the differences between men and women?

This leads to another tenet: We’re all equal.

If you’re oppressed, you’re not equal. You’re less. If you subscribe to feminist rhetoric, you are saying that, if we scale it right down, your best friend is also the person who’s been bullying you all your life. One of those is true and the other is denial. You can’t have both.

What can be true is to concede that some women are oppressed. Especially in the Middle East. You do not hear women from the Middle East complain about oppression precisely because they are oppressed and scared for their own lives as well as those of their female friends, mothers, aunts and daughters. A more open, democratic society allows honest discourse and here we have feminists abusing the system, which men built, to demonise the very sex that has granted them the means to speak their mind.

I come back to the video at the top of the post. At 43m 10s, we hear a woman tell of her time in the fire brigade where she ended up leaving because the men ‘made her feel uncomfortable’. She does not go on to explain why or give examples to back up her statement. It is to be accepted. However, by not offering any reason, she’s left herself open to interpretation. Feminists will believe her outright without question whilst others, like myself, would like to know more.

My guess is that, yes indeed, she was made to feel uncomfortable but not because she’s a woman as she alludes to. I’d wager it’s because she wasn’t able to pull her weight and the men had to step in and compensate before something serious happened. In the world of Men, if you’re a liability, you’re gone. Yes, Men will help each other but you must have proven yourself competent first. From my understanding of women, there seems to be more leniency due to a tendency to be more compassionate, caring and understanding. With this woman, I reckon she wasn’t up to whatever task/s were set for her but the men were told to help her since HR, in all likelihood, wanted her there to prove diversity works.

I’m sorry, but I do not see that woman swinging an axe in a burning building and breaking down a door in one go to then go and pick up a 100kg man who’s collapsed from smoke inhalation. All while not panicking.

Which brings me to the third tenet: Believe All Women.

Amber Heard, anyone?

How about Lucy Letby?

Former UK Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells?

Former Natwest CEO, Alison Rose?

Elizabeth Bathory?

Mary I of England?

Amanda Knox?

Hancock Prospecting CEO, Gina Rinehart?

I guess their actions were the fault of Men.

It’s eight examples of women across varying timelines and occupying various echalons of society, but they all know/knew what they were doing. No man had to tell them a thing.

Back in June, I was in Switzerland to see one of my favourite bands, Rammstein, play in Bern. The week of the concert, the media published news of frontman Till Lindeman being alleged to have drugged a female fan to get her to have sex with him. The fan accused him on Twitter of touching her then ‘getting angry’ when she refused to have sex. This all took place at a private, invite-only pre-show event called ‘Row Zero’ where fans get the chance to spend time with the band prior to a show.

On the day of the show in Bern, I turned up to the Wankdorf Stadium to see a crowd of feminist protesters holding placards, shouting and throwing things at the fans. Bare in mind, no investigation had been opened. Only allegations had been put forward. But the protesters not only deemed Till Lindemann guilty, but the crowd too. It seemed that fans, as far as the protesters were concerned, turning up to an event, booked months in advance, and who would have had no idea that allegations would have been presented, are just as at fault as the man who may/may not have done anything.

To make it worse, the police did nothing to move the protesters away from the crowd. They stood and watched as abuse, as well as bottles and cans, were hurled at people, some of whom were young children, who just wanted to see a good show. It was evident the police had chosen a side when they’re job is to maintain social order not encourage and allow social disorder.

The concert itself seemed tainted well before it started and due to the allegations. The crowd were not enthusiastic and the band, whilst they played competently, were not as Teutonically passionate as I’d seen them in previous times. Till himself was uncharacteristically vocal and seemed to get upset with a stage hand who came on to take the pot lid away during the song ‘Mein Teil’, shouting ‘NEIN!’ into the microphone and stomping on the lid to stop the stage hand from taking it away. It was odd behaviour for a man whose entire stage presence is one of stoicism and professionalism.

As it turned out, the female fan backpedalled and said nothing happened which begs the question, why accuse someone of something so serious as attempted rape induced by drugs if nothing happened? Why did Berlin police open a case against Till Lindemann shortly after the Bern concert only to drop it two and a half months later due to a ‘lack of evidence’? One allegation affected, most certainly, one show and no doubt many others as well as the fans, the band, the crew and Till himself.

Rammstein played their remaining 19 shows and concluded their tour on 5th August while the investigation continued before concluding itself on August 29th. Till and the band played to over half a million people to keep their promise to fans whilst the other members of the band stuck with Till to show solidarity and keep their friendship alive. A man’s entire livelihood was threatened, his image to be tarnished and fans , if Bern was anything to go by, may not have gotten Rammstein at their consummate best. All because one woman said Till touched her and got angry. But, then, maybe he didn’t.

This is the severity that many high-profile men have had to deal with, guilty or not. Till Lindeman, and those that follow and support him, all suffered repercussions of one form or another yet were expected to handle them whilst the woman who made the allegations has had no action taken against her despite admitting nothing happened.

Again, this woman offered no explanation to back up her claim. She expected her statement to be taken as fact. And, again, I have to wonder why she would make such a serious claim only to withdraw it completely later.

My guess would be that she went to the Row Zero party with the expectation of trying to get Till to herself. By that, I mean, she wanted to have sex alone with him. I saw some of the women at Bern enter Row Zero and how they were dressed. They were not there intent on discussing music or philosophy.

I reckon that Till may well have wanted to have sex with his future accuser but not alone. Maybe with other women or maybe a mix. She refused, seeing the image she’d dreamed of shatter and got upset and so chose to lash out on Twitter rather than either take the rejection and accept it or accept his terms of engagement. That’s how I think it went down but we’ll never know for sure.

All that being a long-winded way of saying that, no. Not all women should be believed no more than all men should be believed. Not blindly, by any means, that’s for sure.

And so, how does this all fit in with relations? Well, it seems we’re entering a new form of tyranny. One where women get to be both perpetrator and victim at once. In the case of Amber Heard, Johnny Depp did not make her pay the $18million the court said she owed him so she got off exceptionally lightly and will be able to continue to have a life albeit probably not one in Hollywood.

The case against Lucy Letby is already one of softness. Despite murdering babies and denying mothers and fathers their own children, experts have been talking about how she’ll spend her first few years in solitary confinement since other inmates do not take kindly to crimes against children. She will likely be protected initially before being released into the general prison populace and even then, she may get special protection afterwards.

And the Rammstein fan? After an initial backlash on Twitter, it seems her life has returned to normal. The same cannot be said for Till Lindemann and Rammstein. They are touring in 2024 but we’ll see if anymore allegations come to light.

The crux of this is that relations between men and women are becoming more fractured. Men are increasingly not approaching women, either in a sexual or romantic context, precisely because they see cases like those aforementioned and think if it can affect the high status men, it would ruin an ordinary man and so, they do not bother.

And, meanwhile, I see increasingly that more women are perpetuating the notion that ‘all men’ are rapists, cheaters, abusers, etc. It’s hardly surprising since that’s about all the men left available after all the good, single men have decided to not bother with the hassle of having their entire livelihood ruined because one woman took something the wrong way. Better to avoid than suffer the potential consequences.

And if this continues, we’ll find ourselves at a point where men and women do not engage at all.

It’s this aggression and insistence that ‘all men’ are X,Y,Z that is helping to divide the sexes further. And men simply have no way to tackle it since the accusers have all the outwardly intent of a man but as soon as they’re caught and questioned, retreat into female vulnerability. It’s guerrilla warfare of the mind and soul and it will, if allowed to continue, tear us apart.

And where has it come from? Generations of gradually fracturing family units, which brings me to –

The Failure of Men

The masculinisation of women, I think, has as much to do with women as it does men. Specifically, the failure of fathers and husbands. All the abusive, neglectful, hateful, spiteful, bitter, violent men that did not do their duty and love and care for their wives, mothers, daughters, etc. It’s these men who have had a huge impact on the erosion of femininity and the increase in the masculine among women.

I have known women raised by their father who ended up struggling to reconcile their feminine nature with the masculine persona that’s been projected on to them; Or women abused by an uncle who turned to martial arts so they could toughen up and make sure they don’t get taken advantage of again.

There was a woman who’s been through a traumatic childbirth but ended up being treated as nothing more than a child by her father instead of being allowed to rest, heal and grow.

Such actions build resentment in women and I can certainly understand their reluctance to trust a man when their impression of masculinity has been one of control, neglect and abuse.

However, that imprint stays with a lot of young women and they end up attracted to the very same type of man that they hate. They have been programmed and conditioned to be turned on, aroused, get butteflies, the ‘feel’s, however you want to call it, by these destructive male role models only to then want that in a sexual/romantic partner.

Which brings me to –

The Macho Woman

I’m not talking about Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor here. Those women adopted a masculine persona to survive the Hell they’d been put in. But they were naturally feminine women.

I’m talking about this.

The kind of woman who goes out, parties hard, drinks harder, likes to get fucked then goes and picks a fight with another woman so hard the police have to get involved.

Sound familiar with a certain type of man?

The kind that thinks he’s strong, tough and has a way with the ladies, but, in reality, is deeply insecure and only preys on less secure women to make himself feel better.

For the last twenty years or so, we’ve had the female version, the ‘ladette’, here in the UK and she’s in a similar vein. Likes to think she’s strong, tough and can drink as hard as the boys and likes her sex to be fast and rough.

As far as career goes, the macho woman follows suit with her male counterpart. Likes to play up what she does for a living and make herself sound big and important when she’s earning a low to middle income and has no real aspirations or skills to go higher.

And she’ll pick fights for the sake of it just to make sure she’s right.

In truth, she’s broken.

Sex

Integral to relationships between men women is sex. We are now in an age of hookup culture where, just as sixties feminists wanted, women get to fuck like men.

Or do they?

The Pill has all but taken consequence and accountability for a woman’s reckless actions away from her. Historically, if a woman had sex during her fertile period, she’d fall pregnant and it was game over. If she was married, she had a husband to take care of her and her child. If she was married and the child was not her husband’s, she’d either be turned out or her husband would turn cuckold and raise a child that wasn’t his. Neither situation would be ideal as the former could lead to destitution whilst the latter could lead to social ruin.

A woman having a child out of wedlock was frowned upon as the child had no stable home environment.

Now, though it’s alright. A woman can sleep with who she wants, get pregnant and either, kill the embryo or, if she decided to keep it, get state mandated funding from the father. Or just child benefit from the state itself. There are subsidies for childcare if she can’t get her parents or his parents to look after the child while she works, if she works. If she doesn’t, her benefits will increase as a result of the child.

All this is to say that the consequences of unprotected sex are far less severe than they used to be for a woman in the Western world. For a man, they’re the same. Either raise a child you didn’t intend on having and sacrifice some of your time, energy and money or sacrifice a slice of your wages as mandated by the courts. If a man has no intention of being with the mother of his child, then he must be held to account and made to pay. But what of the woman? She was equally irresponsible.

But, no. How could she be? She’s just an innocent woman who was taken advantage of.

Sure. In some cases, that will happen. But there are plenty of instances where such an outcome could have been avoided and plenty where it was planned.

But how does it happen in the first place?

The example I like to use is the case of the insecure man meeting the insecure woman at a bar.

The insecure woman is out with her girlfriends looking for a night of drinking and dancing i.e. that ‘fun’ thing I mentioned earlier. But also, be in consciously or not, she is seeking validation and affirmation as an attractive woman.

Enter the insecure man. His objective is, yes, to be out with the boys for a few drinks and a laugh but it is always to be ‘on the pull’. He is actively seeking validation and affirmation as an attractive man.

But an insecure man differs from a secure man in a number of ways. Where a secure man will look at his surroundings and see if there is a suitable opportunity to naturally approach the woman he’s interested in, the insecure man will either bottle it or throw caution to the wind. If it’s the former, nothing happens and he’ll feel even more insecure. If it’s the latter, he’ll be far more abrupt and forceful.

He spies a group of (macho) women in the bar, steadily drinking themselves into oblivion. A secure man would never approach such women except to maybe get them a taxi. For the insecure man, such a group presents a prime opportunity.

Maybe he has an eye on woman in particular. Maybe, he’s not fussy. Either way, he’s going over with all the tricks of the trade in his head and in his swagger. Faux confidence is full to the brim,

The insecure woman is, as part of the group, out with her friends for good night out, just like her male counterparts. But the main goal for tonight is to have a good night out. No one wants to pull.

However, should an insecure man on the prowl say the right things and push the right buttons, an insecure woman could be swayed to allow herself to be pulled whether she wants it or not.

Why is that?

Well, women want validation of desirability. That desirability is driven by their youth, health and fertility. And in order to get access to that, a man must be able to negotiate his way to it. And in order for him to do that, he must display his masculine traits as well as his dedication to his chosen female.

Now, an insecure woman is easy prey for an insecure man because she’s unsure of her inherent feminine worth. An insecure man is playing at being a genuinely masculine man and so will be reliant on the insecure woman not being able to weed him out.

He whispers sweet nothings, buys her drinks, maybe some food then coerces her back to his place. The pair have sex. He feels great. She…less so. He’s achieved his goal. She feels used.

And she’s right to. Because she was.

The primary evolutuionary purpose of a woman is to give birth. For that, she requires the stability and security offered by a man. She needs that because she’s vulnerable during pregnancy and for many years after giving birth where her child will be dependent on her for care. She needs a man that stable and secure because she needs to be looked after in order for her to look after the child.

In short, she wants a relationship. Something an insecure man can’t offer.

And, as an important addition, the macho woman persona of today’s women conflicts with their femininity. Add on any insecurities and you have a woman that is cripplingly unable to handle the very thing she desires. This has given rise to…

The Femcel

This movement of women, whose male counterpart will be looked at in the next post, is comprised of those who deem themselves to be undesirable and unattractive enough to the men they want that they believe those men will not have sex with them let alone have a relationship with them. In this regard, they have deigned themselves to be involuntarily celibate to the men they want most to have relations with. Instead, they choose to have sex with men they’d rather have nothing to do with just to feel some inkling that they are desirable.

It was this Elle article that gave me some more insight although, I’d had plenty as a younger man debating with women my age on how one-night stands were just masturbation with another human being; cold, mechanical and generally there to serve the needs of an insecure man. Now those women will be in their thirties, I wonder if their views have changed on the matter. Maybe some of them are femcels now.

My point here is that being reduced to sleeping with men you don’t like is not much of a choice. As the article puts, it would be ‘akin to choosing between starving and eating poisoned food.’ The picture is clear. Women want to be desired and some are willing to stoop low to be that. But should they and why are they unwillingly entering into masochistic relations?

If the previous elements of this post are taken into account – Feminism; career over family; status over virtue; the Macho Woman; and an increasing lack of decent men raising decent boys and girls then it could stand to reason that this creates a melting pot of discordance within the female psyche that rejects so much that it becomes rejected but refuses to change to become accepted and so will hatefully accept the scraps of desire offered but will then blame that on being rejected.

What we end up with is women that reject feminine qualities of health, fertility, kindness, softness, nurturing and beauty because they want to be seen as equal to be men, but, to do that, must adopt that masculine persona so hard they think they are men when pursuing a career. However, when it comes to finding a partner to build a family, they come up short because no masculine man wants a masculine woman ergo they end up drawing the short straw in having to suffer less-than-ideal men for sexual encounters only which fuels their hatred of the men that rejected them whilst also fuelling their hatred of themselves for allowing themselves to be used by men they reject, except they can’t reject themselves because women aren’t wrong so it must be the Patriarchy.

I think I got it.

And all because women are less inclined to be women.

Part two is next.

Streaming Meander – Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Spoiler Review Essay

Boldly going…down the drain.

I never considered myself a fan of Star Trek or a Star Trek nerd or a Trekkie. I watched every series as a boy with my parents on BBC2 here in the UK. I remember going to a Star Trek exhibition in Edinburgh in the early 90’s (I would have been 5 or 6) and seeing Deep Space Nine revealed as the next chapter in Star Trek’s history. I remember enjoying the shows especially the huge space battles. When ‘Old Trek’ offically ended after series five of Enterprise, it certainly was an ending. The Roddenberry style of Star Trek was over. His vision captured across 6 separate shows (I’m including The Animated Series), 31 series, 10 films and 5 decades. The characters and ships have had a huge impact on popular culture across the world. It seemed that, after such a long run, it deserved to rest in peace.

Then, in my twenties, we got the start of ‘New Trek’ with J.J. Abrams’ ‘Star Trek’ released in 2009. Unlike, ‘New Who’, which came out 4 years prior, this was not a continuation of the era of Captains Picard, Sisko and Janeway. No, Abrams (Whose father George worked on the Original Series. Make of that what you will) decided to go in a new-but-old direction. Going back to the beginning with Kirk et al, but with a modern twist. Flashy visuals (with enough lens-flare to give the blind back their sight), contemporary dialogue, fast-pace, cheap gags, loose tongues and looser plots. This was the start of a more insidious form of storytelling. The kind where it looks like the previous stuff but is actually an insult to the original creator and previous shows because it doesn’t uphold the core principles which it represents.

And the audience lapped it up.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/jzgn6x/star_trek_movies_from_1979_to_2016_domestic_box/

14 years later, it’s still the highest grossing Star Trek film ever (adjusted for inflation). It’s clear that by the time ‘Nemesis’ was released in 2002, ‘Old Trek’ had run out of dilithium as had, most likely, the actors and crew.

And so, Abrams ushered in the new era with much fanfare and fan-service. For loyal viewers of ‘Old Trek’, there were plenty of references, member-berries and an extended cameo from Leonard Nimoy (Original Spock) to help with the transition and reminding those fans that the writers hadn’t forgotten about the old stuff. They just didn’t care.

Because Abrams ‘Kelvin Timeline’ version of ‘Star Trek’ allowed for less faithful versions of the older characters. Kirk was all action and no reason; Spock was more impulsive and less logical; Bones more whiny and less convincing. Uhura went from being a consumate professional to an officer that priortised domestic disputes over her captain’s orders. Whilst I enjoyed the film and its two sequels, as man in in my mid-thirties, I see now that this era of Star Trek is a reflection of the state within Hollywood and beyond.

Abrams directed ‘Into Darkness’ which was just a ‘Wrath of Khan’ ripoff but it served as the final stepping stone to the directors chair he really wanted – Star Wars. In 2015, ‘Episode VII – The Force Awakens’ grossed over $2billion worldwide and handed Abrams a sizeable paycheque.

With Abrams out of Trek, it was director Justin Lin who had to finish, what’s still, the trilogy. Coming out in 2016, ‘Star Trek Beyond’ was the lowest grossing of the Kelvin-era films but still ended up sixth-highest grossing Trek film overall. Oddly, it was the lack of Abrams that saw saw this film feel more like traditional Trek. Was that the reason for audiences not liking it as much? Who knows.

With three new films, it was time for Star Trek to return to its home – the small screen. 2017 saw the first new Trek show appear in over a decade with ‘Star Trek – Discovery’.

I watched the first series and was…confused, frustrated and unimpressed. The episodes moved along at breakneck speed, I heard the crew talk but not speak thus I got to know none of the characters. The protagonist (singular as this show focused on one person, not a crew), First Officer Michael Burnham, shot a Klingon Torchbearer which ended peace with the Federation and started a new war. She also shot her captain after disobeying her orders and assumed command of the USS Shengzhou. Both captain and ship were lost. Burnham was tried for mutiny and sentenced to life in prison but only served six months before serving on the USS Discovery. That was episode 1 and I gave the rest of the show a shot.

I found the storylines so weak, I don’t remember them. Same goes for the action, characters and dialogue with the exception of constant talking, swearing, disrespect and insubordination. And crying. Lots of crying. I remember wondering if there was a twist coming where the crew were actually pirates who had stolen the ship. Nope. This was a Starfleet crew, apparently.

I had issues with the ship too. Far, far too advanced for pre-Kirk era Trek.

Anyway. Minor rant over. I’ll get on with the main topic.

When I watched the final episode of the final series of Picard, I was…underwhelmed and relieved. This was better than series one (which I couldn’t finish) and I believe it’s far better than series two (which I didn’t watch). But it’s ‘better’ in a relative sense. It’s like being utterly ravenous and your only options are fast food places. It’s two in the morning and it’s a choice of McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC or the kebab shop. All are equally as bad. You know it. They know it. But you must choose. Picard series three is the kebab shop. It has the illusion of nourishment but it’s likely going to make your stomach hurt just as much as the booze you had too much of.

Firstly, it’s been 20 years since the cast of The Next Generation played their characters with the major exception of Patrick Stewart and the minor exceptions of Brent Spiner, Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes who briefly reprised their roles in series one.

Physically, they all look in very good health which is nice to see. However, I couldn’t buy into their characters anymore. Too much time has passed. 20 years of not doing something does that. If I stopped driving now at 35 and picked it back up at 55, I will not be as good then as I am now. I could do it, but I wouldn’t be able to do it in the same way I do it now.

The actors can look back at footage and dig into their memories to help invoke the spirit of the character but that’s it. You get the spirit of, not the full flesh and blood being. I felt I was watching nothing more than echoes of once beloved characters.

Now, to get round this, I tried to imagine the actors were playing their characters as separate entities. After Nemesis, the crew went their own ways and didn’t really talk to each other which I struggled with since this crew were very close-knit and went through a few lifetimes worth of adventures. Even if they hadn’t spoken to each other in two decades, they should have fallen right back into their places just as if they were back on the Enterprise.

But they didn’t. Not quite.

The fact here is that the cast haven’t done much since Nemesis, again with the exception of Patrick Stewart altough most of his roles are voicework now. Barring a cameo in the last Doctor Strange film as an alternate timeline version of Professor Charles Xavier, his last big screen outing was also reprising that role in 2017’s Logan and there. In both films, he was largely confined to a wheelchair and didn’t have many lines.

I looked at the IMDB listings for the other members of the cast and it’s very much the same story. Since Nemesis, there’s a lot of voicework and straight to TV/DVD film and TV roles. Marina Sirtis was in The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time of all things; Jonathan Frakes took quite a few uncredited roles; Levar Burton was in Rise of the Zombies; Michael Dorn has also done a lot of voicework and managed a recurring role in six episodes of Castle; Gates McFadden…a lot of voicework; Brent Spiner…some TV episodes and the obligatory voicework.

Series three of Picard must have looked pretty damned good. I say nothing else.

And at their time of life, I can’t blame them for, what’s likely, a last hurrah in the spotlight. If only the hurrah was worthy of being the last.

I can forgive the actors. They do a good job after all this time. I didn’t like Worf. Can’t buy him as a pacifist with no reason given for being so. I can buy him as a Buddhist Monk Warrior who would rather not fight but will whip you if you bring the fight to him. That’s the older Worf I see. I also don’t buy his instant friendship with Raffi. It’s simply not earned.

I felt Picard had been allowed to regain his authority this series as there were a number of occasions where his assertiveness shone through. Riker was, more or less, the same and Troi had become considerably more maternal and nurturing which is hardly surprising since her and Riker had a child.

Dr. Crusher had changed substanially but the story allowed for the reason to play out. Gone was the caring and, sometimes, timid doctor and in came a no-nonsense version. Still caring but only when she had time to be. This Crusher was far more focused and no wonder. Her son (later to be revealed as Jean-Luc’s too) was being chased by the first of the series’ antagonists.

Geordi was largely unchanged with the exception of being a father to two 20+ year-old daughters who are both in Starfleet. There were moments towards the end where we saw him wrangle with being a high-ranking Starfleet officer and a father. Something I think most fans wouldn’t have expected given his luck with women on TNG. We never found out who the mother was.

And then there’s Data. By far, to me, the most enjoyable new iteration of a TNG character. Essentially, he is a 3-in-1 having incorporated the personalities of both Lore and Adam Soong, brother of Dr Noonian Soong. When he’s up and running, he’s very much a rounded character. Still has the logic and innocent curiousity of Data but there’s a temperance that comes from Lore and Soong which, ultimately, helps make Data human.

Outside of the TNG cast, I did actually like this series’ version of Seven of Nine. I found the badass lesbian from series one to be a bit too hollow. In this final series, she’s matured as a character and there seems to be some of the Starfleet officer from Voyager melded with the more rebellious version. A decent compromise.

Second – The effects, whilst far improved over the older shows, couldn’t always compete with the traditional models.

Third – Why do all Starfleet vessels have dark interiors? Is it supposed to make the show ‘edgy’? Imagine working in an environment with poor lighting and gloss black everywhere. You’d go mad!

Fourth – The story structure. The mystery box form of writing is very boring and very predictable. Things shown in the first three episodes but not revealed until episode nine ended up lacklustre and underwhelming since I’d already guessed them by the time they came round to be being shown. The writers really need to bring things forward much earlier to make things a bit more unexpected then take it from there. But, that’s asking too much of the writers who, let’s face it, are being pushed by the executives to write in a way that gets people hooked and therefore, they’ll subscribe to Paramount+ or Amazon Prime.

You know what else gets people to subscribe to your streaming service? A good, compelling story. Not cliffhanger after tease after cliffhanger until you’re so numb that you just want the show to end. And it was only ten episodes. Old Trek ran for 20-22 episodes a series with a similar runtime but there were no mystery boxes. You’d get an overarching story in the shape of the Borg or the Dominion War but plenty of episodes were dedicated to letting you know how each character functions when they’re not in a crisis as well as having standalone stories that were event-driven.

Current Trek doesn’t have that luxury. Despite having ten episodes, it doesn’t cram much in when it really should. We could have had more character development as opposed to mindless plot points or silly action sequences like watching the Titan thrownan asteroid at another ship. There was so much dead air and wasted opportunity. It could have truly been a great final voyage.

Fifth – The big one. The story itself. We largely follow the journey of Jack Crusher – son of Beverely and Jean-Luc though, for reasons not explained satisfactorily, in my opinion, Picard doesn’t know about his son until about halfway through.

Jack and Beverley are being chased by a formidable ship called the Shrike.

If a giant, futuristic, space-travelling, mechanical spider and scorpion had a baby.

It’s rare that we see Federation vessels having to run and hide as the only way of dealing with an enemy but the Shrike is a rare enemy ship. Unlike many of the enemy ships seen in Star Trek, the Shrike is a dedicated hunting vessel, armed with all manner of things to capture its prey including a subspace portal weapon to stop a ship running away.

The Shrike’s captain, Vadic, (played with full camp by Amanda Plummer) is after Jack. Turns out he’s needed by Vadic’s boss –

Same but different? If it looks like a ‘Insert Baddie Name Here’, sounds like a ‘Insert Baddie Name Here’ then it must be a ‘Insert Baddie Name Here’, right? Oh, wait until Episode 9, you fools! Stop guessing so early!

Yes, it’s a Borg. And the crew of the Shrike are Changelings including Vadic.

Jack, being son of Locutus, is able to transmit commands to the Borg Collective. I’m skipping to the end because there are several episodes of fluff with him having visions and dreams of black vines (Borg nanotubes) leading to a red door. The Borg Queen needs Jack so he can be plugged into the Collective ahead of Federation Day where all of Starfleet’s current vessels will be at Earth. Quite stupidly on the Federation’s part (and conveniently for the writers), the whole of the current fleet is networked and therefore can act as a single unit. It’s like they just never learned what not to do after dealing with the Borg, isn’t it?

Coming back to the first half of the series now where Vadic and the Changelings end up despatched, seemingly killed. I had a major problem with this. The Changelings and the Borg are working together to bring down the Federation from within. On paper, sounds wonderfully insidious and terrifying. In reality, the Changelings stole Picard’s genetic code from the Daestrom Institute where it could be encoded into the transporters so that everytime crew used it, their code would become entangled with Picard’s (which has a receiver gene from the Borg). Jack would then transmit Borg commands to the assimilated fleet.

Do you see the problem? It requires a lot of convenient things to happen conveniently. First off, the Changelings need to break into a maximum security facility. Which they do, with ease. Second, Jack needs captured and coerced into plugging into the Collective. Which he does. Plus, someone has to then break into a master transporter server of some kind to then upload Picards’s genetic code so it can be scrambled with any crew member that uses the transporter. Assuming the entire crew of every single ship uses the transporter, which the writers have assumed here. We did not see infected crew members go round assimilating other crew members. They became Borg and immediately focused on terminating the unassimilated, i.e. any crew member over 25. Again, no specific reason given for this though I’d assume it’s to ensure longevity of the organic components of the new drones since the Borg were seeking to rebuild.

Hardly compelling and unpredicatable when the story revolves around plot points that only work when the required character slots neatly into the required situation regardless of how moronic it is.

And also –

That’s a Borg HyperCube (I’m calling it that because it’s ridiculously larger than a regular Cube) in the Eye of Jupiter! Starfleet didn’t notice this thing on their doorstep?! C’mon! Jean-Luc points it out having spotted it with his own eyes whilst it was a green speck. The writers seriously couldn’t come up with a better place for the remnants of the Borg to hide out except for the backdoor of the very adversary that defeated them over and over again? Bullshit.

And let’s just continue with the antagonists. They have the last vestiges of the Borg and the Changelings in the same series. Working together except they’re not. It was apparent that Vadic was in charge of the Changelings and she appeared to be taking orders from either the Borg Queen or a high-ranking Borg drone but it was never explained or shown just who she was reporting to. It was also never explained why the Borg and Changelings were working together. It was inferred that they were teaming up to destroy the Federation since both factions had been reduced to shadows of their former selves from the events of First Contact, Voyager and Deep Space Nine.

Instead, we got Vadic as the antagonist for the first eight episodes before the final two have the Borg as the antagonist. The switch was clunky and awkward and kept the two factions very much separate.

A far more terrifying prospect would have been that, with reduced resources, the Borg and Changelings created a sub-species which could imitate the appearance and physiology of anyone in Starfleet but have Borg nanoprobes running in its bloodstream. All you’d need is one of these new sub-species to infiltrate each Starfleet vessel and convert the officers into more of the subspecies. With the Changelings having developed the ability to imitate physiology and the Borg having refined their nano-technology to operate without implants, the pair would have had the perfect means to attack Starfleet without them knowing until it was too late. Both factions could sit back and relish their revenge playing out as Starfleet destroyed itself.

Not the original, but maybe the best?

I’ll move on to the issue I had with bringing back the Enterprise D. Not that it wasn’t lovely or heartwarming to see the old girl again, but there was another ship at the Fleet Museum that would have better served the plot. The only Federation vessel that scared the Borg and was capable of tackling a small fleet of Cubes without much hassle.

Voyager.

Yes, we had the TNG crew and so it would have been odd for them to take Voyager into battle. However, we had Commodore La Forge say that he’d spent 20 years working on the Enterprise D. He could have also done some retrofitting to other ships in the museum. After all, Geordi was known for having some clever contingencies up his sleeve in case certain scenarios arose. It would not have been out of character or scope of the story that he’d made some tasteful modifications to all vessels in the museum in case the main fleet was ever compromised. Just imagine what a powerhouse the Enterprise could have been with the Voyager tech on-board.

This would have then allowed for a great story and fan opportunity. You’d still have the gloryshot of the TNG crew back on the bridge of the Enterprise D but, afterwards, they’d meet round the conference table and discuss which ships to take and who should take them.

This would have then allowed for another plothole to be resolved. Geordi mentioned that he had some drones loading torpedoes in the torpedo bay. But that was it. I agree with Dave Cullen that it is unfeasible for a Galaxy-Class starship to be manned by a skeleton crew of six when its full crew was between 1,000 and 6,000. This is where Geordi could have easily said he’d deployed drones to critical areas like Engineering and that he’d do the same for the other ships chosen as backup.

And on to those ships. The obvious first choice is Voyager with Seven as captain and Raffi as pilot. The next choice would have been the HMS Bounty with Worf as captain and Geordi as pilot. The Bounty would support the Enterprise against the Hypercube whilst Voyager supported the Titan. Whilst having Voyager and the Enterprise work together would be very cool, I think it would take some of the spotlight off the Enterprise since the Borg are very aware of Voyager.

The Enterprise, as flagship of the makeshift fleet, would be captained by Picard with Riker as Number One, Troi as Counselor whilst Data would pilot and Beverley could provide additional tactical support as well as medical.

But if Seven’s on Voyager then who would captain the Titan after Shaw died?

Commander Ro Laren.

It seemed the writers wanted to bring her back but didn’t know what to do with her so killed her off after one episode. It wasn’t an overly noble or heroic death either nor did we get a complete reconciliation between her and Picard. By keeping her until the last episode, more time could have been spent with her passing the intelligence she had on the Borg and Changelings as well as allow her and Picard to heal their divide. Then, she could have gone into battle with the Titan, it could have been destroyed saving the rest of the fleet or Laren could have been killed in a last stand against her newly converted crew. Either way, the character could have gone out memorably having earned it and fans would have felt she’d been redeemed. Plus, we’d have had the death of a main character which didn’t happen in this show.

Speaking of worthy deaths of main characters, I was not a fan of Captain Shaw. Some commentators thought he was a great foil for Picard and Riker. I’m not sure how since my take on the character was another attempt to gaslight the viewer into thinking that two exemplary Starfleet were anything less than that.

The character of Shaw was weak, paranoid, contrived and contrary. Qualities that should not be present in a captain. He reminded me of the captain that took over from Admiral Cain (Another memorable Michelle Forbes character) on the Pegasus in the Battlestar Galactica reboot. An engineer and only high-ranking member left after Cain’s mutinous and murderous betrayal, he couldn’t handle command and defaulted to his engineering background and kept trying to fix things himself instead of, well, commanding.

To be a foil, Shaw should not have been captain. He should have been first officer with Seven as captain. A captain needs to be fair, just, balanced, objective and optimistic as well a brave and daring in times of crisis and great need. The first officer can play bad cop and present alternatives to the captain. In this role, Shaw would have been good. But I guess we needed another straight, white male character in an ‘oppressive’ role whilst Seven was in the ‘oppressed’ role. It wasn’t heavy-handed but the subtext was there.

But blurting out his personal issues with Picard in Ten Forward was pathetic and showed a complete lack of understanding that Picard had been taken by the Borg and was no longer Picard. This lack of emotional maturity further weakened the character in my eyes. The better thing to do would have been to have summoned Picard to his ready-room and express his initial issues with having the former Locutus of Borg on board but to then explain how he got passed them and now accepts that Picard is Picard. This would have been the behaviour of a captain rather than spewing his problems out in a bar whilst other members of his crew are around.

His death had some nobility but didn’t redeem the character much, in my opinion.

Titan – Lesser than the God-like Enterprise but no less worthy.

The final issues I had were relating to the Titan. A ship which punched well above its weight, it became a little favourite of mine. Like an unassuming small dog that’s spent its life amongst larger dogs, this thing used its size to its advantage and made sure to out-manoeuvre the Shrike when it couldn’t outgun or outrun it.

At the end of the final episode, we’re forwarded a year on from the Borg being defeated to where Seven of Nine shares a few moments with Captain Tuvok who reveals she’s being promoted to Captain. This was correct, I felt. The character genuinely has all the makings of a great captain given her tutelage came from Janeway and Picard. But in Shaw’s recommendation, he specifically states that his reason for promoting her was, in part, because she’s reckless. And yet, he was criticising Picard and Riker of the same thing hence the chip on his shoulder. Seven is not a pirate, mercenary or some other kind of nefarious space-traveller. She’s smart, brave, objective, calm and is capable of making the right decision in a crisis even if it’s not ‘by the book’. That doesn’t make her reckless. It makes her competent with a willingness to bend the rules if the situation dictates it. I get the sense that the writers were trying to keep the current trend with ‘New Trek’ that insubordination is a desirable trait. It isn’t. Enough said.

It’s a bit like saying your Fiat is now a Ferrari because it’s in the same family. Just not very convincing.

We then join Jack Crusher who is being dropped off by his parents to his first official Starfleet posting as Special Counselor aboard the new Enterprise.

But the main fleet would still have, presumably, been in tatters a year on. They had the Enterprise D at their disposal. It could have remained the flagship until a real Enterprise G was built to retire the D…again.

And to give Jack Crusher such a senior position at the age of 23-24 appears to be another attempt by the writers to rub it in about how they likely got this gig. When approaching the Enterprise, there’s a discussion about how Jack got the post due to nepotism on having two Admirals and legendary officers as parents. Jack himself is the one who utters the line ‘Names mean almost everything.’ after revealing the Titan had been rechristened in his father’s honour.

Which is another odd thing I found. Picard had no connection to the Titan. The Enterprise D was his ship. Riker was in command of a previous Titan. If anything, a more fitting act would have been for Jean-Luc to hand command of the Enterpise D over to Riker so he could serve as captain of the temporary flagship. That way, the Enterprise D and Riker could retire together.

Command of the current Titan would have remained with Seven and would have been fitting for her character’s development. I understand Star Trek: Legacy is in the works and is likely to be about the further adventures of the Enterprise G. I will not be watching.

So, to sum up, I felt that this final series of Picard was better than what I saw of the first series. And that’s it. Yes, it may not be as cheesy as early episodes of TNG but this was contrived and designed with a cynical agenda in mind – To keep people subscribed to Paramount+. I hope people wise up to this model of programming and start unsubscribing until the quality of said programming increases significantly.

Until that happens, there is always ‘Old Trek’ to go back to. I still have the rest of Deep Space Nine to watch on Netflix followed by Voyager and Enterprise. ‘New Trek’ is just a pale imitation.

Star Trek is dead. May it live long and prosper.

Economic Cultural Meander: Subscribing Into Poverty – Part 3

If you’ve never been loved, nurtured or encouraged, how do you know who you are? You don’t.

Destabilised From The Inside

Before I even discuss emotional poverty, I think it’s best to direct you towards a definition. I found this from a book by Dr. Ruby Payne called ‘Emotional Poverty in all Demographics: How to Reduce Anger, Anxiety amd Violence in the Classroom’. Her definition is thus:

‘when the integration and regulation of the brain are underdeveloped, the inner self is weak, and bonding and attachment is unstable

Whilst that book is for professional devlopment, what I’ve taken from it is that an overall lack of structure and cohesion creates emotional detachment which results in an individual becoming fractured and fragmented. This breaking up of the psyche can lead to destuructive and isolating behaviours.

But what causes this?

This article by the Mom Collective references Dr. Payne’s book and it suggests that things like the death of a parent, bullying, racism and moving (house) a lot are some of principle reasons.

If such events are not addressed at a young age then the child will grow into a less stable adult. I believe it’s one of the main reasons therapy in young adults is so high nowadays. The parents of the last forty years aren’t there for their children in the same that the parents born in World War 2 and back were there for their children. The Boomers appear to have been the catalyst for emotional decline as being the first where both parents could choose to work with neither staying at home to tend to their child, instead relying on the school to do the bulk of the care work.

In the 21st Century, I’ve seen a significant drop in emotional health between my generation (Millenial) and the current Gen Z (birth years circa 1995 – 2010 and Generation Alpha (birth years circa 2011 – 2026). There’s a sense of unassuredness masked by a veneer of false confidence in them which I believe comes from not having having been raised correctly.

I think I was part of the last generation that was encouraged to go out and play in parks, forests, fields, etc and be home in time for dinner. When I visit my home village, I hardly see any children playing. There’s either not enough of them now or they’re encouraged to stay indoors and play on a tablet, console or watch TV in their room. They’re given a prison out of compassion in an attempt to protect their children from the ‘dangers’ of the outside world at a time where it’s far safer than it’s ever been. All this does is create a crutch for them in the future where emotional resilience forms the bedrock of being able to tackle real world problems effectively as an adult. You don’t learn much from scripted events in games, films and TV shows compared to developing and maintaining connections with your peers.

But let’s get back to the aforementioned definition. How does an inner self become so weak that the attachments and bonds created with others is unstable?

From my own experience, I can say that neglect is a major factor. Parents that take a very hands-off approach to raising their children can create a lot of emotional problems. If parents show little to no interest in their own children, it should come of little surprise that that child will grow up with a low opinion of themselves and end up over-exerting themselves to make as big an impression as possible on people just to earn the slightest bit of attention.

Conversely, I’ve experienced children that were so spoiled with material items, but not truly disciplined, that they grew up to have little-to-no respect for their parents. It seemed the parents wanted to be popular with their children rather than respected. This has been the case with a childhood friend. She and her younger brother got anything they wanted despite being absolute brats. Now adults, the parents have been enslaved into acting on every whim of their adult children. Needless to say, they have been aged significantly by this and, I’d argue, robbed of any real quality time with their grandchildren. But then, if you don’t spend real time with your children don’t expect them to want to spend time with you when they get older.

I never kept in touch with those children after finishing secondary school but I get reports that their lives are not steady and structured. The son is on his second child with two different women, has no employment or financial stability and doesn’t seem to be able to provide a home for his children. His father has built a second shed in his garden just to store his son’s excess stuff.

The daughter has subscribed to the alternative lifestyle. Hair of various shades, sexually ambiguous and promiscuous (always was) and seems to have turned her boyfriend into becoming a neutered ‘they’. From what I’ve gathered, her job situation is also unstable having had 17 jobs since 2010.

I think what these examples serve to highlight are how important it is for parents to attach and bond to their children.

It’s become all too common now for parents to give up on the actual parenting and outsource it to technology, the government and other people. You’re not a parent if you think a child can be looked after by a screen and a controller or anyone that isn’t you. What you are is neglectful of your child and your duties towards them. It should be a pleasure and privilege to have a child to take care of. To love, support and watch them grow into well-rounded individuals with a sense of self. But how many see their children as an expense they say they can’t afford? How many tell their children they gave up on their dreams because of their children? How many don’t say these things but project them? Too many, I’d wager.

It’s not the child’s fault they were born therefore the blame cannot be passed on to them because the lives of the parents have now been deemed as disrupted.

This study from the Guttmacher Institute may give some insight as to why Millenials onward are the most likely generations to develop emotional problems.

Source: Guttmacher Institute (2022) – Unintended pregancy and abortion

The graph above is for the UK and shows that, over a 29-year period, an average of 35% of pregnancies were unintended and, of those, an average of 13% end in abortion. The Institute doesn’t provide figures until its graph for 2015-2019 where it stated that there were 1,150,000 pregnancies annually. That must be an average but they don’t state it so I’ll take them at their word. In that four-year period, 545,000 were unintended and 197,000 ended in abortion. Again, they don’t state but this must also be annually.

If we believe these figures to be a true reflection of the percentages of unintended pregnancies and abortions then it stands to reason that, on average, a third of children born during the assessed timeframe could develop mental and emotional problems because they were not planned or, even worse, not wanted but had anyway.

How do I come to this conclusion?

Let’s take an abortion. Woman is raped and unwillingly impregnated. She gets rid of the foetus. She finds a man worth having a child with but hasn’t dealt with the trauma of her previous pregnancy. Second pregnancy goes to term and the child is born. That child, through no fault of its own, is not bonded with its mother. In fact, its mother rejects it because all she can think about is the rape. She’s not emotionally healthy therefore the child grows up resented and neglected by its mother. It may well be cared for well enough by the father but living with a mother that hates you because of what you are not is a very scary and confusing environment for that child to grow up in. The child will, in all likelihood, develop problems with their image, worth, abilites, etc because they do not have the backing of two supportive parents. This will create a multitude of problems as the child gets older and requires more sophisticated guidance and, possibly, treatment.

It’s a made-up scenario but it’s entirely feasible. An unintended pregancy can be a double-edged sword. For couples that have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, it’s a Godsend. For those that didn’t want children or had them already, it could change their minds or just be a surprise and welcome addition. Conversely, it could be a burden.

A child is a responsibility and should be a privilege. Never a burden. To treat one as the latter only does harm.

And if the child is treated as a burden then you have to look at the environment that’s being provided. If they were unintended and unwanted, the enviornment the child grows up in will not be one that fosters a whole individual. Instead, they will become fractured and unsure of who they are and why they are here which can lead to a whole host of problems.

This blog post from Psychotrauma Practitioner, Vivian Broughton, is full of insights. I’ve copied over the bullet points from the Catch 22 section:

  • the mother doesn’t want to get pregnant and have a child
  • the pregnancy was a mistake
  • the conception was violent, or by rape
  • the conception was coercive, unpleasant, boring, unemotional
  • conception was seen as a duty
  • the mother hates the father
  • pregnancy is unpleasant and the mother is often sick
  • the mother is ambivalent about having a child
  • the mother is frightened of pregnancy and giving birth
  • the mother has been told many frightening things about having children
  • due to her own childhood trauma the mother is still psychologically a child and sees her child as a rival for satisfaction of her wants and needs
  • the mother sees children as a nuisance, a drain on her resources and opportunities
  • the mother may suffer from her own trauma from being unwanted, even hated, by her mother
  • she may unconsciously see her child as, finally, someone weaker than her that she can take revenge on for her own victimisation
  • if the mother has been abused as a child she may see her unborn child as a potential abuser
  • for many reasons the mother may prefer a child of the opposite gender, not wanting the child as he/she is

This list is neither exhaustive nor does it include the reasons a father might not want a child. However, across the sexes, the reasons are quite similiar.

What this post does discuss is the fact that a child unwanted by its parents will pick it up…eventually. They will become consciously aware of the fact that at least one of their parents didn’t want them. Once this thought has embedded itself into a child’s psyche, it will dominate to the point that the child may disassociate themselves from their parents in a number of ways. They may become more introverted and isolate themselves; their behaviour could become more erratic and violent; or they may become overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness.

The problem with mental and emotional poverty is that it’s arguably the worst kind because it is largely invisible. It requires objective observation and granting the affected person the space where they can feel comfortable to openly discuss their experience.

If they even realise what’s happened.

Then the problem becomes a person that wanders through life without even knowing they’ve been deprived of a decent upbringing. And even if you’re sure of it, you cannot force awareness to the affected person as that will unsettle their psyche to the point where they may be unable to function properly. Whilst they might be concsiously aware, they can still be deluding themselves to the point they create an illusion of stability to the public and themselves. Breaking that illusion could send the person into a downward spiral of destruction.

So, what to do?

Accept it. Rather than subscribe to a delusion, subscribe to reality. The parents should be confronted about the nature of their child’s conception and the effect it’s had on their lives. It’ll be tough. It’ll bring about feelings of anger, guilt, shame, betrayal, hate, etc but, by getting the truth out in the open, the child and their parents can at least move forward honestly however that may look be it together or apart. The main thing is gaining some closure over how the child came to be in this world. Then they can go about the rest of their life with either some or all of the void filled.

If this happened more then, perhaps, we’d have far less young people wandering around seeking some semblance of structure however loose it may be. I can only think they’d be all the healthier for it.

Because that’s all any child really needs, isn’t it? Some structure. A structure forged out of love, responsibility and a duty of care. Without it, we become wayward and end up falling into all kinds of emotional traps later in life which can lead us down very dark paths. Some may find/fight their way back to a worthwhile path but many won’t. Of course, that can happen to those who had a good upbringing. The difference there is that such a child is likely to get themselves back on a good footing and avoid such traps in the future because they’ve been taught.

But then, the unfortunate truth is that it’s fashionable to not look after children anymore. At least, in the UK.

Speaking of emotional traps.

This BBC article highlights the childcare subsidies for parents in England. They are expected to come into force in between April 2024 and September 2025. The main points are:

  • Eligible working parents of two-year-olds will get 15 hours of free childcare per week from April 2024
  • Children between nine months and two years old will get 15 hours of free childcare from September 2024
  • All eligible under-5s will get 30 hours of free childcare from September 2025

So, parents will effectively be paid to not look after their children. The state shall provide a carer who will, in all likelihood, become the person the child has the strongest bond with during these crucial early years.

And once it’s done? I imagine the child will have a similar relationship with their parents as those who are sent to public school in England (private in Scotland).

This article from Brighton Therapy Partnership discusses the effects of ‘Boarding School Syndrome’. Whilst it’s not a medical condition, it’s effects are quite real.

One such effect is losing the ability to form relationships with parents and other family members. And it’s not surprising. The child is at home and is then sent off to live with strangers for several months only to return for holidays. In some cases, the child is away for years. It can help some if the parents are in an abusive relationship. For the children that aren’t, it can cause depression, confusion and a sense of loss. They may think they’ve done something wrong to deserve being sent away.

That’s just one effect. Now, let’s take the UK government’s childcare proposal. The child is under five and the parents leave whilst a stranger comes to look after them. Imagine the problems that could cause.

Of course, rather than pay a stranger to spend 15-30 hours a week looking after someone else’s children, why not give that money to, I don’t know, the parents? If the mother/father wants to stay at home with their children then why not have that be their occupation for a few years? If the parents would prefer to split things, then the money gets divided.

Ah. But that would be giving power back to parents and communites and we can’t have that, can we?

I’ll not divert in the political direction. That’s a whole other topic.

I will, however, finish by saying that being emotionally malnourished does not allow someone to function well in the world. You can come from a rich background, have gone to the best schools and a great university where you received a top class degree which landed you an excellent job at a reputable company. But if you weren’t loved fully by your parents, none of that will matter. I’ve seen it in big organisations. These people are cold but not because they’re evil but because human intimacy is alien to them.

Conversely, I went to school with a guy who was highly intellectual. His mother was a housewife and his father a postman. He became a lawyer. Why? Because his parents loved him enough to give all they could so he could achieve a life beyond his upbringing. And he did.

Cultural Economic Meander: Subscribed into Poverty – Part 2

And that’s before they’ve become sober enough to check their bank balance.

I covered the car quite extensively in the first part of this blog. In this second part, I’ll run you through the other ways subscription can make you worse off.

Living in the Cuckoo’s Nest

The way house prices are going, a house this size will cost you £150,000 in 2050.

Renting. The principle is simple. Someone buys a property, lives in it for a minimum of two years (in the UK) then converts the mortgage from residential to buy to let. Then, they remove anything of value, get an estate agent involved to manage the property, hike the price well above the mortgage value then get someone poorer and more desperate to come in and pay for the property. You, the poor schmuck, ends up paying over the odds whilst an agent gets 10% to maange the place and the owner simply cashes in. More so if the mortgage has been paid off. The property increases in value as supply runs low since more and more people rent their properties out making renting a vastly expensive venture.

I was helping a friend out recently who has moved to Glasgow from Central America to start a position with the University of Glasgow. They hadn’t sorted a place to stay and asked for my help since I’m the only person they know that lives in the city. Despite having gone over their finances and suggested a budget of between £400 and £600 a month for rent (which is still possible) to keep their living costs as low as possible whilst still granting them their own space, they opted for a flat in the West End, near the University with poorly fitted windows, which makes it cold and the landlady allows heating for two hours a day, and they’re sharing with a fellow colleague. Yet, the University would have paid for them to stay in a hotel for up to three months to take the time to find a place to live.

Were they happy with their choice of accommodation? No. Why? It was too much (bills are not included so half their wages are gone on the flat), it was cold (‘but Spring is almost here. It’ll be fine.’) and they’re sharing with someone when they wanted their own place.

I said nothing. In reality, they made the choice because of convenience. The property is a short walk to work, plus they get the prestige of living in a posh part of Glasgow. See that thing about paying for a badge in the previous blog? Apply it to location for property. People will pay over the odds for the perception of living in an affluent area even if they themselves are not affluent. A lot of people do it, especially in cities.

This New York Times article points at two common reasons why some people live in nicer areas or houses than their income would suggest – hidden debt or wealth.

Certainly, in the case of young students and graduates, it’s not uncommon for their wealthier parents to bankroll some or all the living costs to help their children find their feet. I worked with one young graduate at Royal Bank of Scotland. She lived in a flat owned by her father, a wealth management advisor. As far as I remember, she didn’t have to pay rent but did have to pay for utilities. Council tax may have been taken care of too. However, her flatmate was charged rent at the going rate. And she was certainly not affluent being a budding photographer and film director.

So, how avoid renting? It’s tricky but possible. If you’re willing, you could club together with friends and buy a house together. For clarity, I am talking more about those leaving home for the first time in an attempt to avoid getting into the renting cycle.

Good financial guidance and support from family is important here. Not every family is going to be able to offer it but, for those that can, it should be utilised. If they can provide, then they will likely be involved every step of the way to ensure the property not only provides good value for money, but will be a suitable place to live in. This is the kind of activiy that can also more fully reinforce the familial bonds as the family has become the preferred choice. I’m not suggesting they buy it for you. Most cannot do that. I’m suggesting contributions to a deposit or acting as guarantor on the mortgage. If split two, three or four ways, the upfront costs are less and the living costs lowered by the number of people living in the property.

By going this route, you will have to learn several skills to make this work. Your financial skills will need to be up to par to be able to maintain your end of the bargain.

If you can’t make a payment, you will need to communicate in advance to your housemates. To do so will require acknowledgement of your accountability to your peers. This will teach humility and vulnerability.

Diplomacy will also be a vital skill as house/flat-sharing is seldom plain sailing. There will be discussions, debates, conflicts and arguments over everything from bills to alarm clocks, sleeping habits to relationships, and chores to house activities.

It won’t be comfortable but nothing worthwhile ever is. What you should gain from the experience is the ability to manage yourself and people far better than before. And, at the end, you can sell the property and split the proceeds or rent it out and continue splitting the proceeds.

Ultimately, renting should, ideally, only be for the short term either whilst you’re working in another location or saving up for a home, if the family option isn’t available.

Are You Entertained?

So much choice but how much of it do you actually use and is it worth constantly paying for?

Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, Sky, the TV Licence, Hulu, Now TV. The list of television and streaming services gets longer by the year. But how much do you watch and how many of the damned things do you actually need? Starting at £4.99 a month (Apple TV) and going as high as £71 a month for Sky Q, Netflix, Sky Sports & BT Sport. How much entertainment is really required?

Of course, I’m not suggesting you live without some form of entertainment. We all need to unwind and sitting on the sofa watching a favourite film or TV show is a comfortable way to relax.

Music services have increased in popularity. I moved to Amazon’s Prime Music streaming service and sold all my CD’s. I reckoned that if I listened to just 8 new albums a year, it was presenting value. I have recently moved to Spotify to be able to listening to their exclusive podcasts as well as new music. There’s an increase in price but the knowledge and wisdom gained from the likes of Joe Rogan’s podcast makes the extra expense worthwhile. That alone, to me, is worth the subscription price. In addition, I still get to listen to new music and I take part in a friend’s weekly themed playlists so there’s a community element too.

But entertainment should be a luxury not an essential. If you’re not getting anything out of it, why keep paying? I stopped paying the UK’s TV Licence fee (which funds the BBC) because it stopped presenting value for money. I enjoyed Doctor Who but it started going down the drain as did Top Gear; Coverage of Formula 1 ceased on the BBC and moved to Channel 4 which only showed highights as live coverage moved to Sky; and international rugby was split between the BBC and ITV for the Six Nations tournament whilst the Autumn Internationals (played in the Northern Hemisphere) have moved exclusively to Amazon’s Prime Video. For the very little I used the BBC for, it just ended up getting worse so I stopped paying for it. Why fund something you no longer get any joy from?

With Spotify, or other music streaming services, I have found considerable value. I listen to it daily and it allows me to listen anywhere on whatever device be it my PC, laptop, phone, earphones or the car. And, being a vinyl collector, I use the service to sample new music, to listen to over and over before making a decision on whether I like it enough to justify buying on vinyl. So, for me, music streaming has been worthwhile.

Now, these services are nothing compared to going out whether it’s drinking, cinema, theatre, clubbing, etc. Cinema is the cheapest here as a ticket is still around £10 and, as long as you don’t buy any drinks or snacks on the premises, it will stay at that. Theatre is next cheapest. More expensive ticket, on average, but same rules apply to keep it at ticket price.

It’s the clubbing and drinking that causes the financial strain. According to these figures, a night out in the UK costs, on average, £56.10. From my experience, I would agree with that, allowing for inflation since I was out doing such things. However, these figures do not factor in travel costs which would add anywhere between £5 and £20 depending on how far you live and the mode of transport used.

I think it’s also worth mention in here the habitual spending. Being a vinyl collector has stopped that habit for me, specifically of CD’s and blu-rays. I would buy the latest CD of a band I kind of liked just because the CD was cheap and I’d buy a blu-ray of a film I saw at the cinema even though I thought the film was OK. Thousands gone on stuff I didn’t like enough to watch or listen to more than once, if watched or listened to at all. I stopped buying CD’s in 2018 and, in 2021, decided to buy vinyl because it would be a different experience over CD and streaming. But before investing, I made the conscious effort to plan out how I was going to operate this hobby. I started with my six favourite bands, concentrated on them and worked out from there. At the very least, if I didn’t enjoy the vinyl experience or got fed up, I’d have music I knew I’d always enjoy. As it’s turned out, I’m fully enjoying the experience but I’m careful to not get into the old habit of buying for the sake of it. If there are two albums I really like by a band I sort-of like, I get those two albums and that’s it. Of course, apply this to whatever you think you needlessly spend money on. I’m sure the results will surprise, maybe shock, you once you’ve calculated it out.

These Boots Are Made For…Projection Of My Insecurity?

Better than letting everyone know where your fashion allegiances lie, I’m sure.

Clothes. Specifically, designer ones. Whether it’s sports brands like Adidas or Nike, or fashion brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, the price tag rarely meets the quality of the garment or footwear. With trainers, once you’re over £50 you stop paying for the actual material and start paying for the brand. I learned this from my marketing module but it came out in practice when a pair of £50 Adidas trainers barely lasted a year of mixed use between walking, hiking and the gym. I decided to stump up £85 for Adidas’ ‘walking’ trainers. Still, barely a year and a 1,000 miles later, they were dead. I have taken the decision to pay for much better footwear as they will last over ten years and I get them resoled for free which will just extend the life. For the winter months, I’ve been using a pair a Loake’s Wolf winter boots. They cost £330 but they are used daily and are designed for urban walking and forest trails. They were bought September ’22 and, despite regular use, aren’t really showing any signs of wear. Plus, the sheepskin lining is not only comfortable but warm.

Yes, you will pay signifincantly more upfront, usually over £200 a pair, but when you can expect to get at least ten years from one pair, it starts to make sense. The same goes for trousers, shirts, jumpers, etc. By paying more upfront for better quality, you save in the long run as long as you look after them. The problem here is breaking out of the cyclical mindset that so many people have where they ‘need’ to change their wardrobe every 2-3 years and ‘treat’ themselves to new shoes, jackets, bags, etc. It’s this mindset that prevents being able to buy better and less often.

The other thing that holds a lot of people back is wanting to appear like they have sufficient money to keep affording regular wardrobe changes. In reality, people with money rarely change their wardrobe often because they know something you don’t – Clothes don’t make the person. You make you. Yes, they may be wearing more expensive clothes, accessories and footwear but can you tell? No. Why not? Because it’s gone on quality and not on advertising other companies which is precisly what happens when you give in to designer brands; you become their walking advert thus you are exploited because you’ve paid over the odds for cheaply made, poor quality items.

Also, those who have made the switch have matured mentally and emotionally enough to realise that clothes are just that. Clothes. They’re designed to keep us warm and protect us from the elements as well as cover up areas we don’t want others to see in public. And with this more mature mindset comes more mature colours and styles. They may be flamboyant or muted but the pallette is always tasteful and leads you to the face of the wearer because that’s what’s important. Paying attention to the person you’re with and not their body which is fast becoming the norm here in the UK and I’m seeing it spread to Western Europe to a lesser extent.

What I’ve also found when I made the switch was I became that bit more relaxed because I wasn’t having the additional worry of hoping that whatever style, pattern or image my clothes had were sending the wrong message. I sit here now in a grey henley shirt and jeans. I’m sending no subliminal message meaning as I’m in control of what message I do send which will be via my mouth.

And for music fans, anyone thinking that they’re getting a better deal buying a band hoodie at £85 versus a merino wool pullover for the same money, guess again. That band/artist hoodie costs £4-£6 to make. You are paying to advertise that band or artist. Alternatively, just enjoy the live music. You paid for the ticket. If you want to buy anything else, maybe get an album off them and support them that way but band clothing is just the same as sports and designer brands.

“Ah, but I’m showing my support by wearing their shirt.” is what some will say. Sure, you are showing support but if it’s Lady Gaga or Metallica how much more support do you think they need? It’s a bit different if it’s a local band or a friend’s band where they do need the support of as many people to help get their name out. If you love the music, get a shirt and help spread their name. You never know, you may just be helping the next headliner. And small bands don’t charge exorbitant prices for their t-shirts because the cuts from the venue, record label and event organiser won’t be as big. Strangely enough, they all use the same manufacturers as the major acts be it Gildan, Fruit of the Loom, etc.

Repairing your own clothes is the skill here that can save you some money. Naturally, you’d need to practice so small rips and tears are good for starters. If your mother or grandmother can’t show you, there are plenty of resources online to show you how to stitch and sow. The materials are inexpensive and will cost you less than buying a replacement shirt, jumper, skirt, etc.

Credit To You

It’s not easy being green.

Credit score. A lot of people won’t know what that is let alone how to get one and improve it.

A credit score is a measure of how likely banks and other financial institutions are to give you a loan, credit card or other form of borrowing. This is dicatated by your spending habits which is a reflection of how you run your life.

Just from looking at a person’s bank statements, it’s easy to see where their money goes. This is precisely what lenders do and to determine whether you’re a safe pair of hands or irresponsible.

But how is this calculated?

Well, typically, there are five factors involved:

  1. Payment History (35% of your score) – Here in the UK, there are three main ways to pay bills. You can transfer the money yourself in by cash or card to the payment details given by your creditor; You can set up a Standing Order in which case you have instructed your bank to make a payment on your behalf to the details provided on a given date at a given payment frequency or; You can set up a Direct Debit in which case you have authorised the creditor (company you owe money to) to collect the money straight out of your bank account. Doing the latter ensures more of the company swings towards the company. As long as you have sufficient funds in your account, you’ll never miss a payment. With a Standing Order, it’s best to set it up 2-3 days before the bill is due to ensure payment gets there on time. And if you’re doing it yourself, it’s all on you. Of course, this is the riskier option and more likely to make you miss a payment even with the best memory and reminders. If you get distracted and forget the payment, it’s going to be a mark against you. Generally, in the UK, we go by Direct Debit where possible. That way we can concentrate on other things. But if you’re reliant on transferring money yourself and keep missing payments, these will be reported to the bank and credit rating agencies. Typically, any payments over 30 days will be reported but constantly missing payments across your accounts will see a mark against you on your credit file and lower your score.
  2. Existing Debt (30% of your score) – Lenders will look at the entirety of your credit facility across loans and credit cards. Keeping a good payment history will mean your always bringing your debt down, but if you’re taking on too much debt against your salary and bills, your score will go down. For credit cards, ensuring a total usage of less than 25% across all your cards and credit facilities will make sure your score isn’t affected. Of course, one-off emergencies happen and this should be one of the main functions of the credit facility. Your score will drop a bit but if you’re paying back then you take the hit knowing your score will improve.
  3. Length of Credit History (15% of your score) – Keeping a credit card and using it over a number of years shows lenders you are actually responsible with credit. It may seem counterintuitive at first to apply for a credit card when you don’t need to borrow, but keeping one on you and using it for something small then paying it back straight away shows you can use a credit facility correctly.
  4. Types of Accounts (10% of your score) – A variety of borrowing can improve your score. A mortgage provides a good foundation as that will typically be your main debt for 15-30 years. Add on credit cards and installment loans and you will have sufficient facilites to provide evidence of good, stable borrowing habits.
  5. Recent Credit Activity (10% of your score) – Making two or more credit applications within a six month period (in the UK, at least) will indicate to a lender that you are in desperate situation. Whilst this may not be the case (I applied for three credit facilities within a short period to bump up my overall credit facility to boost my score to improve my ability to get a mortgage since I’m on a house hunt), it will temprorarily drop your score. By spacing out your applications, it will indicate that you are not in financial trouble.

So, why add credit to this blog? Well, money dictates your life. The quicker we accept that, the better. Whilst many think that the idea of borrowing is a bad thing, that’s only the case if you’re poor at handling money. Debt is a financial instrument and allows you to obtain things you either can’t afford outright or would rather spread the cost of via disposable income rather than taking a hit in your savings. For example, if you have £200,000 in the bank, you could buy a house outright but then you’d have a house and no financial cushion because you spent it buying a house so, now, you’re in a tough financial position because you’d have to build your savings back up.

Similarly, most people will take 15-30 years to even set enough aside (if they have the discipline) to be able to buy a house outright. Meanwhile, where are you living whilst waiting to buy a house outright? It’s simply easier to get in a position to be able to borrow from a bank to get a place to live and pay back with interest. This principle applies for other forms of borrowing, however, where a mortgage won’t harm your rating, paying a credit card back outside of your interest free period will as you will be charged for late payments and interest will accumulate on your outstanding balance. So, generally speaking, borrowing is fine to be able to get something you need now but make sure you understand the rules of that borrowing before applying. And never borrow more than you can afford as this will put you in a negative cycle and lead you towards loan sharks and payday lenders when you get into a habit of borrowing to pay off a loan to pay off a credit card that you forgot about for a few months or years. That’s the worst case scenario for poor financial discipline.

So, in summary, the Credit Score is a reflection of how well you handle debt. It’s a tool and nothing to be ashamed of when used responsibily and always within your means. The skill here is learning how to use debt so that you can better control your finances. Do that and you’ll have taken an improtant step in enriching your life.

You Are What You Eat

The foodies equivalent of a one-night stand

Food and drink. This is a fairly major moneysink especially if your breakfast, lunch and dinner is bought in the form of takeaway or ready-made meals. Not only are they more expensive but the amount of processing that goes into these foods is unreal. Yes, we lead busier lives now and it’s far easier to pop into a supermarket and pick up a sandwich for lunch or grab a takeaway for dinner on the way home but, hold on. How much time do you spend waiting in a queue for that sandwich or waiting on your takeaway being made? How much of your lunch hour is spent just getting lunch rather than sitting down and enjoying it? How far out of your way do you have to go?

These questions are worth noting. Again, the main selling point here is convenience. But what exactly is convenient about running around for food when you can take it with you? What’s more convenient than a packed lunch? It’s cost you less, is healthier and you just pull it out your bag or work fridge and eat. You don’t have to waste time deciding what you want. It’s already there. Just enjoy.

Ah, but. What about the social aspect? What about it? Can you really afford to be spending £3-£10 a day on lunch just to hang out with work colleagues? At that price, you’re entering into a private member’s club where the membership benefits are you get to spend time with people who, most likely, won’t want to become actual friends. Are you likely to develop your career from lunch? Maybe, but for most people, no.

Ok, I admit, that might be a bit harsh. We do need to blow off some steam at work but, really, do you have to spend so much of your hard-earned cash doing so?

So, let’s look at these using a 5-day working week, 22-day working month and 260-day working year:

Breakfast – £2 to £10 a day. Weekly – £10 to £50 a week. Monthly – £44 to £220. Annually – £620 to £2,600.

Lunch – £3 to £20 a day. Weekly – £15 to £100. Monthly – £66 to £440. Annually – £780 to £5,200

Dinner – £5 to £30 a day. Weekly- £25 to £150. Monthly – £110 to £660. Annually – £1,300 to £7,800

And if you’re doing all three:

Daily – £10 to £60. Weekly – £50 to 300. Monthly – £220 to £1,320. Annually – £2,600 to £15,600.

Consider those figures. Whether you’re doing just one meal a day, two or three. Just look at the annual cost. I’ll reiterate. Convenience costs. There are areas where paying for convenience makes sense and others where it doesn’t. Food and drink is one for the former. For example, think of how much food you could feed yourself with for the low-end weekly cost of dinner? A single person who can cook can easily make two working months of healthy, nutritious dinners for £25. How? Well, if you have a freezer, you cook a batch and freeze it. If you have a big enough freezer, you make one batch for two, maybe, four weeks

Ah, but. Yes – it does mean you could be eating the same thing for a while but if you can’t really afford takeway dinners, you have little to argue with. Similarly, if you are able to afford takeaway dinners every night, you could be cooking yourself even better food for less.

And ready meals? In the time it takes to heat one of them up in the oven or microwave, you could have cooked something cheaper, tastier and healthier. Italian food is perfect for this as the cuisine is built on the principle of cheap, fresh and few ingredients. Dishes such as carbonara and puttanesca can be done in less than 15 minutes and, if you’re cooking for one, you will have leftovers to put in that freezer that you, hopefully, have.

In addition, by cooking more of your own meals, you will be more in control of your nutrition which, in turn, would provide a number of health benefits when compared to eating overly processed and unnourishing foods. The other benefit of doing this is that you gain a skill and by gaining it, you will keep more money in your pocket the better you get at it.

Building A Better You

Nae juice an’ aw purridge!

Fitness, when coupled with nutrition, is the foundation for a richer, healthier life. You can think more clearly which will lead to better decision-making. The more exercise you do, the better conditioned your muscles, bones and organs will become which will lead to a more capable body thus you will have more energy as your body has become more efficient.

However, fitness doesn’t have to cost anything more than a pair of decent trainers. For those who aren’t all that fit and have been duped into thinking you need a personal trainer, gym membership and specialist clothing – stop! You don’t! Not at the start. The very least you can start doing is walk. Get yourself a decent pair of trainers (under £50) and walk as far as you can until you can’t. Doesn’t matter if that’s 100 metres or 1 mile. Keep going and it will start getting easier. The greatest obstacle you’ll overcome here is yourself. Your mind has been conditioned into a state of deprivation and incapability. Your subconscious tells you you can’t get fit. Every time you go beyond the distance you previously couldn’t, your subconscious will start to change. Instead of sending you discouranging messages, it will send encouraging ones. Eventually, you will believe you can do things.

But if you go and get yourself a gym membership and a personal trainer straight away, the money you’re trying to save will be wasted. All a personal trainer is going to do (for a minimum of £30 an hour) is be your fitness companion. You tell them what you want to achieve, if you can articulate it, and they’ll find some way to make you believe you can achieve it via the longest possible route thus extracting the most money they can from you (most trainers aren’t paid by the gyms they operate in unless they’re with clients) whilst effectively gaslighting you into thinking you’re getting better. In all my years of going to a gym, I haven’t seen one person get fitter, lose fat, get shredded through a trainer. I had one for a year and I didn’t achieve my goal, however, I think I got a more honest trainer that did give me two pieces of information that came true when I put them into practice:

  • Change in diet leads to fat loss more than exercise.
  • It takes years of discipline and commitment for changes to take place naturally, particularly if you’re strength training.

Two years after I stopped using the personal trainer, I put his advice into practice but that was only because I’d managed to break through more layers of negative subconscious messaging. By changing my diet and adhering to the trainer’s advice (less than 2,000 calories per day for 5 days with 2 refill days of up to 3,500 calories), I lost 4 inches off my waist the first year; 2 inches the following year and I’m now losing the excess abdominal fat. I could lose it faster but I’m not an athlete, bodybuilder, powerlifter, etc. I have no need to get ‘shredded’ fast. The fact is, I’ve found what works for me , stuck to it and am now seeing the results.

But, fitness is still important. You can’t achieve a more efficient and healthy body through diet. The two go hand-in-hand. A fitter body will get more nutrients out of the lower calorie (but higher protein content) diet you give it. Think of a car engine. An inefficient engine will work a bit better when given more energy dense fuel. But an efficient engine will work even better on that fuel as it’s capable of getting more from it.

To continue the analogy, you can’t expect an engine to run well on fizzy juice so why do some think their body is fine with a diet of cheap fuel? All you end up doing depriving yourself of better health. When your body starts to improve through fitness, it affects the mind. The body will start telling the mind what it needs and, if you listen, you’ll give it what it needs.

Real food.

Real as in, fresh. Raw meat and vegetables that need to be prepared and cooked into something tasty as well as nutritious. If you’ve developed your cooking, you’ll reap the dividends in the fitness arena. Good health and good food will create a positive cycle which will result in you wanting to just keep getting better, whatever that looks like to you.

And a fitter, healthier body, if maintained, will also mean you go into your twilight years with less chance of significant health risks. For example, too much excess fat and you’re putting your joints under stress for decades which, once your muscle mass starts to decline, your body won’t be able to sustain the extra weight and you’ll end up with arthritis in your joints. By maintaining a good level of fitness (not talking elite athlete levels), you set yourself to being more able to enjoy old age with less health problems.

Does that mean you can’t have a lazy day and a takeaway? Of course not. We’re entitled to downtime and indulgence from time to time. This is about establishing good habits for the immediate and long-term health of your body. And rest and relaxation comes into that hence the refill days I mentioned earlier. I use them in between gym days so I might have a takeaway, eat out or make myself a mountain of food because, over the course of a week, I’m still consuming less calories than if I was eating 2,500 – 3,000 a day. Plus, I like to make sure I walk at least three miles a day so some exercise has been done. Easy to do if you’ve errands to run.

I’ve covered the two main aspects of what we think of when it comes to poverty – Financial and Physical. But we can’t neglect the impact of mental, emotional and spiritual poverty. I’ll cover those in the next part.

Cultural Economic Meander – Subscribed into Poverty: Part 1

The Pampered West. It’s All Champagne, Rolls-Royce’s and Mansions.

When we think of poverty, a lot of the Developed World has been conditioned into thinking of extreme poverty; People in Africa with no clean water, little food and wearing someone else’s unwanted clothes. These are issues we ordinary folk can’t do much to help the situation. If our own governments can’t reduce the political and economic corrption in African nations, why would we fare any better?

What I want to address is the relative poverty that can be found in many Developed Nations.

A large portion of this comes from a lack of financial literacy. In many cases, the only way to understand money is to have either been brought up with it, in which case you’ve been taught by family and social peers, or you entered into the Finance profession, in which case understanding money is your livelihood.

Unless you’re in one of those two categories, most people aren’t going to be utilising their finances effectively. And from that, their lack of understanding leads them to making poor financial choices leading them to becoming more and more impoverished over time.

Over time, either through my own behaviour or those I know, one thing that ensures a person stays poorer is the subscription. Whether it’s magazines, a gym, food delivery, cinema, gaming or streaming services, the subscription, and it’s various forms, can lead you to having much less money over time than if you took that same money and did something else with it, like save for home improvments, a much needed holiday, emergency savings or topping up a pension or investment fund. I know, they sound boring but if you’re reading this and think those things are boring then you’re probably going to be benefit from reading this.

Yes,Sir. You can buy it for less than £20,000. Just don’t tell us how much you earn and we won’t tell you the implications. Fair?

Theft on Wheels

Aside from a house, the biggest financial purchase most people make is a car. Personally, I’ve bought my cars second-hand. From years of watching old-school car programmes, the general consensus when buying a car was to buy used. Why? You get a lot more for your money. Now, to buy a second-hand car you do need to read up on what to look for with the particular model you’re interested in. There are loads of sites (Parkers, What Car, CarWow, etc) which will take you through the general issues that crop up with used versions of a car and give advice on which spec is best to go for and how much you should expect to pay. To do that, you need to figure out how much you’re willing to spend, how many miles you’re covering a year (which dictates fuel type), what body style is going to suit your lifestyle best and what creature comforts are must-have and what ones you can do without.

So, if your budget is, say, £20,000 and you earn £40,000 a year, you have a family, like long, frequent road trips, don’t want to be spending too much time at fuel stations and would benefit from heated seats, climate control and Apple Carplay/Android Auto then a 2005 Bentley Continental 6.0 GT for £18,995 with 58,200 miles on the clock is the very wrong choice.

But why, you ask? It’s within budget so why not splash out?

This very scenario was presented to me a few months ago when my dad, who had bought a new Skoda Superb Estate in 2021, was, for some reason, looking at his next car. Now, I consider my dad to fairly savvy when it comes to money but he’s not a car person. I am. And what I told him was that – yes, you can buy a hyper-luxurious car for the price of a Volkswagen Golf, but it keeps its associated running costs. Those stay the same.

So, according to Parkers, Vehicle Excise Duty (Road Tax was abolished 1937 in the UK. All funds go to the General Treasury and not used solely for the upkeep of roads. Just one reason why UK roads are poor compared to other countries.) is £360 and, according to Stratton Motor Company, a 10,000 mile service has a fixed cost of £599. In part, the fairly low price will be because it’ll use Volkswagen parts since Bentley is owned by Volkswagen. And so you’d think, yes, it’s more expensive but not as much as expected.

Tyres – Using an example with 19″ tyres, I found, on blackcircles, the cheapest tyre was £86.09. And you think, yeah, sounds great. Problem with cheap tyres is they won’t last. I bought my Jaguar XF S (3.0 litre V6 diesel) with economy tyres on it. Fuel economy was terrible (struggled to get 400 miles from a tank) and they had all the grip of a wet fish on ice. A set of Falken’s saw me get up to 500 miles but then I swapped the 20″ wheels for 18″ (with Pirelli P Zero tyres. Not great.) and I was getting between 500 and 600 miles on average. Between 600 and 700 miles on a longer run. A remap, and some good modifications along with a set of Bridgestone Eagle Touring (Developed with Jaguar) tyres sees me getting between 600 and 700 miles regularly. I expect to get between 700 and 800 from longer runs next time I go to Europe. And it does all that with a 64 litre fuel tank. The Bentley has a 90 litre tank and an expected range of 316 miles.

But back to tyres. The cheapest tyres are a great way to increase your running costs. On a vehicle like this, a full tank (taking average UK petrol prices at 148.12p per litre), it’ll cost you £133.31 to fill the tank from empty every 316 miles. If you fill up once a month, and most people fill up more regulalry, the fuel bill comes in at £1,600 a year. And that’s on the smallest wheels. You’re likely going to be over £2,000 for 22″ wheels.

Then there’s the consumables. Tyres were briefly covered. In reality, you should get the best tyres for the car. They improve handling, fuel economy and road noise. Sticking with blackcircles, the best rated tyre they offer for the Bentley is the Bridgestone Turanza T005. Rated A for wet handling and B for fuel economy whilst producing 72db road noise making them the third quietest tyre on offer from this site. Price? £221.10 a corner fully fitted. If you drive sensibly, you should ger 28,000 miles for your £884.40. I paid £160 a corner and should get 50-55,000 miles.

Then we have brakes. According to Flying Spares, a set of rear discs and pads will set you back £539.34 inc.VAT. Front discs and pads are £1,443.23 inc.VAT. These are OEM spec parts not third-party. From memory, I think I paid less than £400 front and rear including fitting for the Jag. On average, the brakes and pads could get between 20k and 60k miles depending on driving style.

Wheels – Damage the standard 19″ wheels and a refurb won’t cost too much. Crack them, however, and you need to replace them. Using Flying Spares again, the cheapest new OEM spec 19″ wheel is £592.22. Most expensive is £1,679.99. That’s the price for one wheel. Used, you can get a set from £600 but you’re best getting them checked by a reputable fitter before getting them put in the car.

The Cost of Keeping Up with the Jones’

Already, you can see how much such a vehicle can end up costing on a modest salary. And I haven’t even touched repairs but, believe me, you want a good stack of cash if anything goes wrong with the engine, turbos or gearbox. For the salary mentioned, this kind of car is a lot of stress. I know it seems like an extreme example but I put it in here because it happens. People do drive around in cars that may suit their lifestyle but, ultimately, don’t suit their budget. I have been to poorer parts of Glasgow where the terraced council houses are in serious need of some TLC but, somehow, there’s at least one brand new Mercedes AMG 55, Audi A8 or BMW X7 in a drive. These cars cost more than the house! Now, either they’re doing dodgy maths and buying a cheap house to afford an expensive car or, more likely, they’re getting themselves into serious debt to fund a lifestyle they can’t afford, or they’re involved in some illicit dealings.

Yes, driving an old but seriously cool Bentley is tempting for under £20k but you’d be better off with a diesel estate. If you insist on a bit of prestige, a Mercedes-Benz E-Class estate is an excellent workhorse. If the badge is of no consequence, anything from Ford, Volkswagen, Renault, etc will do.

The point here is that the sticker price is not the only price. Just because you can buy something aspirational for a modest sum doesn’t make it wise to do so. You must look at how much it’s going to cost over the long-term. The simple thing to do is break down the cost over 3, 5, 10 years, etc and see what you’re depriving yourself of. Could you afford a better place to live, better quality food, tuition towards a professional qulaification or maybe take your family away on some more meaningful holidays? Or does a fancy car mean that much you’re willing to sacrifice a better future for the sake of a badge?

Over £200,000! For a Golf! You must be joking! Or…are you?

Leasing is a popular form of accessing vehicles. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The lease price is actually the depreciation cost. Every car loses value. Some more than others. I’ll give an example:

Volkswagen Golf. The Mark 8 starts from £25,765.00. You can lease a base model 1.5L TSI Life 5dr (Petrol with manual gearbox) from CarWow for £252 a month over a 2-year contract and an annual mileage limit of 8,000 miles. You do get your warranty, dealer service (basic) and Vehicle Excise Duty (£165 a year)included but that’s . Your cost over two years is £6,048. That same model, with 7,844 miles on the clock, can be found used for £20,750 for a 2021 model. PCP on it is £356 a month.

Taking the base price less the contract term price, we get £19,627. However, we must factor in £330 for VED which gives us £19,957. Basic dealer service is £195 (£390 for the contract term) giving us £20,347. The remaining £403 covers warranty, if used. Of course, given that lease companies deal in bulk and manaufacturers won’t charge themselves these prices for servicing and warranty, the only true fixed cost here is VED.

The point here is that leasing is the practice of literally handing money over to a company that owns the vehicle. Your monthly payment compensates the lease company for the depreciation and your deposit is payment for the privilege of using the vehicle. Do that over ten years and you’ll have spent £5,000 in deposits and, if you keep the same monthly payment value, £30,240. £35,240 spent to not own a vehicle. And that’s a cheap family car. Plus, you still have to pay for fuel, MOT, insurance and any repairs outside of warranty. Do you see the problem?

With some research, you can get a far better second-hand vehicle for less and actually save money. Plus, because it’s yours, you can sell it and recoup some of your costs back. I spent £15,000 on my 2012 Jaguar in 2017. It’s running costs aren’t much more than my previous car, a 2003 BMW 320D which had similiar costs to an equivalent Ford Mondeo, and it’s currently worth half that in stock trim. But beacuse it’s mine and I will be its last owner, I made some tasteful and worthwhile changes to not only improve its looks and performance but fuel economy too. Those changes will give it a second-hand value of £10-12k. In addition, I have a good relationship with an independent Jaguar garage who takes care of the bulk of the car’s needs. As far as actual repairs have gone, I’ve bought a used set of 18″ alloys to replace my 20″ because there was a crack in the rear left one. But, because the car was mine, I sold the wheels and made a profit because they came with the car and sold them for more than I bought the used wheels for which was £550 against selling my other wheels for £700.

Other than that, the oil sump failed causing oil to leak. Cost was £140. Not an issue with the car, but I had the winscreen replaced twice! Done through insurance, the cost to me was £100 a time. The parking brake fuse had corroded and needed replaced which cost me £200. A height sensor failed sticking the car in Sport mode. Another £200. And, most recently, the intercooler failed causing the car to go into ‘Restricted Performance’ mode. Cost of the replacement intercooler and fitting was £400. That went ‘bang’ too so another was fitted at no cost. So far, it’s working.

Currently, in over five and a half years of ownership, I’ve spent £1,140 in actual repairs for things that have actually gone wrong.

After four years of ownership, I felt the car had proved itself so, because I like to make things my own, I set about making the car a bit more personal. Not everyone wants to do that but not being stuck in a lease deal means I have the option and freedom to do just that.

And the best part of buying instead of leasing? Whether you buy the car with cash outright or through finance, once bought, you only have to pay for maintenance and repair. If you keep leasing, you keep paying full price. Sure, the selling point a lot of these companies make is that you don’t have to worry about the hassle of selling the car afterwards. Simply return it to the lease company who’ll sell it at no loss to them because you’ve paid the depreciation. They’ll continue to be in the money. You won’t.

Just to pad the Golf example out, let’s say you kept leasing a Golf from 17 (age you can get a licence in the UK) through to your death at, let’s say, 90. If you were able to pay £252 a month for 73 years, you’d have spent £220,752 on leasing an average family car. That’s a well specced Bentley Continental GT. Or an average family house. And, don’t forget, you have to pay insurance, fuel and non-warranty repairs. Alternatively, you spend, say, up to £20,000 on a good used car, run it for 20 years or so which is perfectly feasible if well maintained and not driven stupidly. By the time you’re 90 you’d be on your fifth car and would have spent, at most, £80,000 but extracted maximum use out of each vehicle. If you buy carefully, you might have ended up with a classic or two and been able to sell them for more than they were bought for. Again, the point here is you can get some money back. It might be a few hundred pounds a time or you might get lucky and turn a profit. But you shouldn’t buy a car looking to make money. It’s about utility, mobility and freedom. And enjoyment.

This has taken up a blog post all on its own so, I will make a second part to go over other areas.

Techno-Ethical Meander: God Creates Man, Man Kills God, Man Creates God.

Artificial Intelligence. If there were ever two words uttered that could strike a cold, deep fear into humanity those two would be second on a list of two. The other pair being Nuclear War.

Consequently, the two sets of doom-laden pairs seem to be fatally intertwined. If you pay attention to science fiction, that is. Total Recall gave us false memory impants and mutants born of pollution and radiation; Terminator had Skynet declare humanity unfit to live and therefore declared nuclear war against it. To clean up the remnants, the terrifying A.I. created humanoid killing machines to track down the survivors; Judge Dredd gave us megacities designed to protect humanity after a nuclear war engineered by President Booth who later deregulated A.I. to allow for the creation of smarter robots to create another war against his own Judges.

The Matrix showed us how we’d lose our fight against the Machines thanks to our inventing of A.I and how we’d all end up their equivalent of batteries to keep them charged whilst our minds are distracted by an A.I. simulation of the former real world.

The short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison, tells of an Allied Mastercomputer that takes control of a future Cold War by assuming responsibility of all weapons leading to mass genocide that almost wipes out humanity.

Other stories, while they don’t directly link A.I. and Nuclear War, hint at the relationship. Interstellar, the Avatar films, Dune, 1984, Brave New World and the Alien films to name a few. They all come to the same inevitable conclusion. Either A.I. will result in a nuclear event that wipes out humanity or it will somehow be involved in a nuclear event that wipes humanity out.

In many ways, such dystopian visions of the future have become more prevalent with the large-scale removal of religion in most of the developed world. We’ve replaced faith with science and technology. Trust with facts. Hope with authoritarian projections. We are largely Godless now in the West. Is it such a stretch to think we’d convert to the religion of A.I. if it became Godlike? Without a deity to put our faith in, we have no teachings to help guide us into a future that can be more fulfilling for ourselves. We just have the word of other humans who don’t always have humanity’s best intentions at heart. Without faith, we are left with fear and with fear, we move into the realm of the uncertain. If we spend too long with uncertainty, we become depressed before developing resentment towards those we believe responsible. Faith is the key component of applying structure to uncertainty.

It’s a bleak outlook, such is the nature of dystopian storytelling. But what about current day A.I.?

In truth, current forms of Artificial Intelligence are far from those that instill a sense of existential dread. The only thing artifical about them is that they’re intelligent. A.I. requires data, a lot of data, before it can start to do anything. Data Pools, Data Lakes, Big Data, it’ll use it all. Essentially, it’s a massive bookworm. Give it plenty to read then ask it questions it can relate to using what it’s read to give you an answer. It might not be right but, at the least, it could be humorous or, more likely, frustrating. If it’s starved of information, it’s useless. What we call A.I. is nothing more than an active program that has access to a lot of data. However, it can organise that data to match the context of the question asked of it so there is something intelligent about that. Isn’t there?

No. Unfortunately, the code built into A.I. assistants is given a series of shortcut prompts based on the most likely questions it’ll be asked. It’s then programmed on how to answer those questions. At present, we have nothing more than a lot of humans doing all the thinking then having that masquerade as A.I.

Ah, but wait! How come my Alexa/Siri/Google smart device couldn’t understand my accent when I asked for the latest Taylor Swift album, I hear you ask? Well, some poor bugger (or a team of poor buggers) have to sit and listen to every request that Alexa didn’t understand. This will be detailed in an error log then fed back to Amazon, Apple, Google, etc where the aforementiond poor buggers have to listen to every request that wasn’t executed. Once deciphered, the correct entries are entered against that individual request so when you next ask for something whilst a bit inebriated, the A.I. assistant will know what you asked for and play it. It’s smart humans making all this work.

But what about Tesla’s Autopilot?

Whilst the code is extremely advanced, the template for the system’s responses is based on how human drivers operate. At present, the system is Level 2 autonomous (Level 5 puts us into full self-driving territory) so it can assist with long distance drives but still requires human supervision for the more complex tasks. It’s not unlike aviation autopilot (invented in 1912 by Sperry Corporation) where that takes over once the plane is at cruising altitude and speed therefore freeing the pilot and co-pilot to do more important tasks like figure out how to avoid a flock of geese.

Use of autopilot as a sort of A.I. assist is pretty simple. Once the pilot gets the plane at the right altitude, heading and speed, the autopilot maintaines what the pilot’s already done. Driving is very different. Far more complex and far more factors and nuances to account for.

But A.I. should highlight the wondrous complexity of the human brain. A person of average intelligence can be taught to operate a car then be allowed to use one autonomously whenver they like. The brain just does it once the information has been consciously processed then passed to the subconscious the stored in the memory. Most people can be taught a complex skill like driving within 24 hours yet we have spent years developing systems that will allow a car to essentially drive itself.

But why? Why bother with A.I.? Who asked for it? It seems we all did.

Technology has been an inherent part of the human experience ever since we learned to rub two bits of flint/wood together and make a fire. Then we used animals to catch other animals. Then we made weapons to better kill the animals the other animals caught. Then we used bigger animals to cover distances faster or move heavy things then we ditched animals and built machines to do the heavy work we couldn’t.

It’s all been the same pattern. Improve and replace. Accountants were up in arms with fear when Microsoft introduced Excel. They thought their jobs were going to be replaced by a spreadsheet. Of course, in reality, that didn’t happen but what did happen was the more time consuming parts of accountancy, the calculations, were largely taken by Excel freeing the accountants up to do more.

So, they were right. Their jobs were being taken by the software. Just the boring parts.

And that’s what we do with each new tool. We make it because it increases efficency and improves productivity whilst reducing the workload allocated to menial, time-consuming tasks. Where I would wash the dishes when I lived with my parents, my younger brother has to load a dishwasher and switch it on to wash overnight.

A.I. is simply a tool. ChatGPT has been doing the rounds recently and with it, a fair bit of scaremongering. On the one hand, it could be trained to give therapy whilst, on the other, it could be used to filter language perceived to be offensive.

An A.I. chatbot like ChatGPT has great potential. It could be used to offer suggestions when a person is alone and needs help. It may be able to search for help if someone is in trouble and unable to speak, assuming there’s signal and the person has access to the device running the app. I’ve seen A.I. programs realise certain what-if scenarios such as ‘What if Lord of the Rings was made as an 80’s dark fantasy film?’. Text-to-image A.I., like Midjourney, does just that. You can see an example of the output below:

A.I. can be used with a desire for good. But through you, it can wield an evil power.

If you’ve watched the above video, or even just a bit of it, you can see what happens with a fairly simple but well articulated prompt. The system has referenced the books, films and the aesthetics of dark fantasy films from the 1980’s to give us a glimpse of what could have been if the films were made when fantasy was at its peak. The fact that it’s been able to create exactly what most people would think of is astounding. For humans to do that, you’d need highly creative and skilled artists to draw, paint or sculpt what this A.I. could do. Does that mean that we’ll be getting an 80’s style dark fantasy version of Lord of the Rings soon? Not really. Making a film is extremely complex and the foundation of any film is the script which means writing. And literary A.I. is far from convincing because it’s doing the same thing. It’s accessing existing material to then create a story in accordance to the prompt it’s been given. It just doesn’t understand language and story well enough yet. And it doesn’t have imagination or the ability to refer to its own experiences to create a relateable narrative.

So, if an A.I. can create a fantasy nerd’s wet dream then what else can it do? A lot.

According to this tutorial site, A.I. is expected to have a heavy impact in 18 industry sectors this year. From harvesting crops to checking a car’s build quality to detecting fraud, A.I. is being pushed to do a lot of work this year and in the next few.

Now, where Excel caused accountants everywhere to go all skittish over being replaced, there is now a very real chance a huge amount of people will be left without a job because A.I. can do it better, faster and cheaper.

And what will happen to the people that have been replaced?

According to the World Economic Forum’s (Apply all the pinches of salt you need) “The Future of Jobs Report 2020”, it’s estimated that 85million jobs will be replaced but 97 million new jobs will be created by 2025. By that estimation, all the people that are replaced by A.I. will have a new job to go to. Maybe becoming a human supervisor for the A.I. that’s now doing their job.

That’s certainly one avenue but as this article rightly points out, there will always be a need for human input to improve the technology. Humans created it therefore humans improve it. We’re a long way off from creating a technology that can think for itself and make a plan on how to improve itself. This isn’t even at baby stage. We’re at the cell clustering stage. Right now, what we have is very sophisticated code that runs a lot of laborious tasks. That’s it.

But what about in several decades or centuries? The real problem there is that we may very well have made something that could threaten us. Or put us in our place. Like the gods of old, we may well create something so transcendent that its judgement of us is without question. And then what? We make the myths anew? Super strength, speed, agility, healing, intellect, etc, we could well end up with new versions of Hercules, Athena, Isis, Thor, Zeues, Achilles, Medusa, etc. Gorgons, Titans, Gods and Demigods could end up stalking the Earth waging war with each other. Seems far fetched but a century ago we were pulling things by horse and steam engine. Now, we have huge supply ships, cargo planes, trucks, lorries and electric vans delivering things all over the world. If you went back to the 1920’s with a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy or Airbus A600 Beluga, I don’t think it would be an overestimation that people might react like it’s a god or demon of some kind. New technology will always put fear into those yet to understand. If you’re keeping track, you just roll with it.

And if we did end up with sentient artificial beings, we could find ourselves at their mercy. If they deem us worthless, we could be removed from this Earth. If they develop a God complex, they may demand we bow before their magnificence and superiority to ensure our survival. A whole new new form of religion could be created dedicated to appeasing these new Gods at the expense of our own freedom. Whilst such scenarios could be some way off, it’s worth keeping in mind.

The question just now isn’t so much, “Will A.I. kill us all?” but, more pertinently, “Will A.I. be used by organisations for sinister purposes?”. Looking at what’s been coming out after the COVID-19 pandemic, A.I. is certainly being used to accelerate certain organisational goals. As A.I. advances, those organisations will be able to more fully realise any agendas they want being realised. The Chinese Social Credit Scoring system is on its way here in Europe; Smart Speakers always listen and not just to your music requests; Deepfake technology seamlessly makes one person look and sound like another; 3D body scanners take complete scans of your body at the airport. Throw in a good bit of Deepfake and, according to a camera, you could be the suspect of a serious crime; Smart monitors that allow communication throughout a house could be hacked allowing kidnappers and paedophiles access to your child; Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface, whilst initially being developed to help restore sensory and motor functions, could also be hacked/monitored maybe to the point where our own thoughts are no longer private. Or worse, you could be physically or mentally punished for having certain thoughts so you become conditioned into complying with whatever behaviour these organisations deem appropriate.

Without God, as fictional as such an entity may be, certain men are making it their business to take His place since we so readily lost faith.

Do not question why the tool exists. Instead, question the motives of those who created it and why they’re the ones wielding it.

Musical Meander: The Great Vinyl Comeback

For 2022, several sources have confirmed that vinyl had its strongest year after 15 years of coming back on the market. It’s been such a strong year for growth that in markets like the U.S. and UK, the format outsold the CD for the first time in 30 and 35 years respectively. But why might this be considering streaming has been the defacto medium for the last few years?

There are many reasons why the record has been making such a healthy return to popularity. I can’t speak for everyone, so I’ll go through my reasons for picking up the format as I seriously considered buying music again in 2021.

I had been an avid music buyer since the early 2000’s, buying CD’s then ripping them to my PC so I could listen to my music on my CD player then hi-fi then on the go through my MP3 player and, finally, my iPod. My ritual, by the time I went to university in 2005, was always to listen to the CD first before ripping it to my iPod. Rarely, did I listen to the CD after that since it was on my PC’s hard drive. Even in my first car, a 1999 Nissan Micra, I had burned copies of albums that stayed in the car so I didn’t lose or damage my bought copy. And yet, despite rarely listening to the actual disc, I kept buying CD’s. They were cheap, easy to transport and store and, at the time, allowed me to explore music with decent sound quality but only after tweaking the setups on all my devices.

I continued to buy CD’s right through to 2018 where my final CD was the debut album of Japanese Power Metal band, Lovebites. By that time, I was moving again from Edinburgh to my home city of Glasgow and I realised that the 12 boxes of CD’s I rarely listened to were simply dead weight. I had amassed a collection somewhere between 300 and 500 albums over at least 20 years, yet barely listened to the actual disc the music was contained on. Finally admitting this to myself, I sold all bar a few choice items before the end of the year and missed nothing. I had been using a streaming service and could listen to everything I’d ever owned before right from my mobile phone. On top of that, I can make playlists for various occasions, the biggest being a roadtrip playlist over 36 hours long. If I were to buy each track on that playlist, I’d be a few hundred pounds short so the streaming service offers a relatively low-cost method of listening to music I’m happy to listen to once in a while but perhaps wouldn’t want to own.

Indeed, I enjoy the flexibility streaming provides over CD. In my current car, I retrofitted Android Auto in 2021 with an IDCORE unit so I could not only improve functionality in my vehicle but give the sound system a boost as well since IDCORE are, first and foremost, music experts. And it’s been great not having to mess with my phone to sort out music and podcasts when I can manage it all on the car’s infotainment screen.

It was around that time that I realised my love of owning music hadn’t gone away. I now owned a piece of hardware that seriously enhanced my listening experience whilst travelling, but what about at home?

Unfortunately, streaming at home didn’t see me enjoy music as much. The live scene’s sound had improved over the last few years meaning a distinct reduction in distortion meaning little to no tinnitus after a gig. I had been able to enjoy hearing the individual instruments on stage for some time and wanted that kind of experience at home. With streaming and CD, there’s just too much compression. I don’t care how many alleged ‘lossless’ formats there are, they all cannot match the live experience. But there was one format I’d never tried. Vinyl.

And who better to get me buying music again and, therefore, vinyl but Iron Maiden. One of my favourite bands had announced their post-lockdown album, Senjutsu, and I was really excited. So excited that I had decided to pre-order the red and black marble record. One problem. I had no record player.

Another problem. I didn’t know where to begin with record players since I never grew up with one. My grandparents got rid of theirs before I was born and I remember my parents having a turntable as part of a hifi system but it was barely used. Similarly, a record player I bought for my dad years ago highlighted my lack of knowledge with the medium. It was a 1 by One all-in-one record player. Automatic movement with USB connection. I paid £50 for it new. Absolute crap. The sound was so thin and frail, you’d think you were hearing music being pushed through a tin can. If that was your first vinyl experience, you wouldn’t want to hear it again. No, I needed to do some serious research into what made a record sing, so to speak.

Whilst conducting that research, I kept buying records. I was in a new job earning very good money and so had the disposable income such a hobby required, since I also noted that this hobby would not be cheap when it came to sourcing albums by favourite bands that had either seldom seen a reissue or had never been reissued. So, I kept researching what made a good vinyl setup before giving myself a budget to work with. All the while, I kept amassing a record collection with nothing to use them on.

Since buying my first record in September 2021, it wasn’t until February 2022 that I finally bought my setup. I had also bought 52 records before doing this. You could say it’s a chicken and egg situation. I could have bought the setup first but would then have to buy records to listen to, meanwhile, I’d be cycling through the same records over and over whilst waiting on getting the next record. At least with the way I did it, I had a good selection ready to go. The setup itself consists of a Pro-Ject Primary-E turntable hooked up to a Cambridge Audio AXA35 amp hooked up to Wharfedale Diamond 9.0 speakers. A decent setup for a first-timer.

The question that had been in the back of my head in the run-up to getting the equipment was – “What if it sounded terrible?”. I could just picture myself getting all excited to finally being able to listen to a record only to find it just didn’t sound as expected. That was the worry.

A worry, whilst justified, ended up being erased swiftly and definitively as I thought I’d test the system with two records initially. Not with the first record I bought, but Iron Maiden’s 2006 masterpiece, A Matter of Life and Death. Still, I think, the bands most musically accomplished album, and one I know inside out. It would allow my ear to find any difference between the 2015 remaster put on vinyl versus the CD and streaming versions I’d been listening to since the album came out.

Well…my God! I was blown away. Hairs were raised and I was having the kind of low-grade euphoria found in ASMR. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t have the volume turned up particularly high but it carried its way through my flat (92sqm) like a knife through butter. My flatmate had to ask me to turn it down. That never happened with digital.

But it’s not a loudness thing. It’s a flow thing. When I have music playing on my PC and move to the kitchen, I hear muffled distortion. The flat itself is in a 19th century building so there’s easily 3ft of stone between rooms alongside insulation and plaster when it was redeveloped into flats. With vinyl, the music just sounds further away. It’s like walking away from a conversation to go make a cup of tea. I can still hear what’s being said when I’m 10-20 metres away. The conversation doesn’t get all warped. That’ was the first difference I noticed.

The second came when I put on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. I actually found myself sitting just listening to the music as it took me back to the 70’s when it was created, such was the clarity. I could actually see the band in my head record the album as it played. Never before has that happened.

Third thing I noticed came when playing Nightwish’s Imaginaerum. Depth. Heaps of it. The sound is just so immersive, you feel that it’s happening around you rather than being pointed directly at you like with digital compression. Music just pours out the speakers and fills up the room. I can hold a conversation with my flatmate in person or with colleagues over Teams and I can hear everything just fine at the set volume of 30db.

Other things my ear picks up are differences in production. Older records (pre-1990) tend to have much more open sound compared to much of the records made in the 21st Century. This is, in part, down to the the fact that those older records were using analogue recording equipment whilst nowadays it’s almost exclusively digital. Which begs another question – Why listen to modern records at all when they’re recorded digitally?

To answer that much better than I can, I recommend reading this article from Aesthetics for Birds. My takeaway from it is that digital and analog processes occur at some point suring the recording process so, in fact, the manner with which a record was made doesn’t have as much bearing on the listening experience as what the listener chooses to listen to the recording on. Interestingly, the article mentions that the ‘warmth’ associated with vinyl occurs due to the equipment adding additional harmonics or ‘overtones’ that weren’t there during the original recording resulting in the finished product, in many cases, sounding better than the artist/band intended.

That ‘warmth’ is what I referred to as ‘flow’, but I’d also state it’s about projection. Any good actor will tell you there’s a fine line between projecting and shouting. The end result is the same. Their voice fills the room, however, the response from the audience is different. Projection doesn’t irritate the ear and turn off the audience from what the actor is communicating. It encourages engagement and attention. Shouting creates an unpleasant distortion which, in the context of a listening or audio-visual experience, makes the audience uncomfortable. I have found that this effect is more prevalent with digital as the loudness of the recording can be increased.

But why raise the volume when that will only create further distortion? The answer is simple. Most listeners of music are casual/passive participants. Relatively few genuinely care about the music itself and really only want a distraction. Turn up the volume and the bass and you have a distraction. People will do this so they don’t have to pay attention to their commute or the people their with. As a whisky appreciator, there’s an overlap with music. I’m a member of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society and when I go to appreciate a dram at the rooms on Bath Street in Glasgow, the music is not loud. It’s well projected. You can appreciate the music, the whisky and the company you’re in simultaneously. And this is down to the intention of everyone involved. We are there to appreciate the quality of what’s been produced and the quality of the people we’re with. If we move over to any regular bar or pub, you do not see people sitting having good conversation whilst appreciating a good drink. You see people shouting at each other in a noisy establishment drinking cheap booze sold at high prices with the express purpose of making high profits. The intent of the people who go to these loud places is not to engage with other people on any meaningful level. It’s to get wasted and use that inebriated state as an excuse to behave poorly then refer to that time as ‘good’ because they got heavily intoxicated together and spent a lot of money doing so. The loud music is just a soundtrack to their choices.

A bit of a diversion but, for anyone that reads my articles regularly, it’s par for the course. The point I’m making is that the medium chosen to listen to music all comes down to the type of person. It can simply be down to appreciators and non-appreciators. Non-appreciators will not want to connect with the music in any real way but rather exploit it for their own purposes. An appreciator will make the time and effort to ensure they get as much from the experience as possible. That means spending good money (whatever that means to the individual) on equipment and ensuring it’s placed well enough to maximise the listening enjoyment because, as the article also stated, the equipment itself and its positioning have a major impact on the end result. For me, a record is one-off payment to a lifetime ticket to a specific music event. I can attend whenever I want, but I must attend to make the most of it.

I also want to draw attention to the atmospherics and sub-sonic sounds that are removed in digital formats. This makes the format easier to distribute over the web but, to my ears, reduces the overall experience. Yes, you can tweak settings on the streaming app, mobile device and earphones to get a setup that works well but you can’t completely replace that which was taken out. From my own experience, I don’t get that eerie sense of realism with digital formats that I do with vinyl. How do digital afficionados explain vinyl giving the impression of having the artist there in the room with you? Two of my favourite albums to write to are Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker and David Bowie’s Blackstar. Both albums with a sadly tragic commonality. They were the last albums released shortly before their deaths. I have listened to both albums quite religiously as part of my writing sessions at home on my desktop PC and both haunt me. When I eventually got them both on record, the haunting became real, particularly with Cohen given his style being more reading poetry to music. It felt like he was right behind me, cigarette in hand, just casually speaking to me from beyond the grave. Digital does not do that simply because it’s a lossy format and takes out a lot that of things lower down the frequency range that are actually important to the listening experience. Again, to the casual listener, this doesn’t matter when all you want is loud and bass-ridden music. I go back to my whisky analogy with the process of chill-filtration. This is the process by which distillers will intentionally remove a lot of the fats and oils that give whisky its flavour by bringing the spirit down to below zero then forcing it through a series of fine filters to get rid of those oils. The end result is a product devoid of the flavour it once had. And why do this especially since the spirit spends many years in oak casks? The casual consumer doesn’t understand that a bit of haze at room temperature is fine and just part of the natural process as the oils from the wood warm up and release from the alcohol. But instead of educating the consumer on this, distilleries spend millions getting rid of the flavour that’s taken years to get there. The same goes for music. A band or artist can spend years working on an album only for much of its depth, detail and richness to be removed for the sake of creating a sanitised product that can be fed to the masses that don’t give a damn in the first place. Yes, you can create consistency this way and that’s only important when all you’re interested in is ensuring money comes in.

Not that money isn’t important but musicians are, typically, in the business of making music first and, if they’re good, they can make money from it. Sometimes, if they’re really good and lucky, they can make a lot. We can say the same for any creative endeavour. The creator wants their creation to go out unfiltered, raw and authentic to what their vision intended. Its the industry they work in that applies the filters. Sometimes, for good reason, like keeping the artist on track and not veering too far off to the point that the output is incoherent and sometiems, for bad reasons, like restraining the creator so much that the output is nothing like the intention.

So, we could argue that the vinyl comeback is a product of an increasing number of people who no longer tolerate being spoon-fed sanitised produce. In much the same way that gourmet food and artisanal drinks are increasing in popularity here in the UK, it seems that music is getting the same treatment with people demanding a better experience at home. And they’ll pay for it. We’re here for a short time and people are becoming increasingly aware of that fact, so why waste your money on McDonald’s when you can support a local or national burger place that uses real food and is better for you? Do it less and you enjoy it more.

For me, I want the music, the whole music and nothing but the music. As intended. Bootleg quality or a production that could turn my room into a concert hall. I don’t care. I want my music as it was laid down by the people that made it at that point in time. I never knew that The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash had a piano playing throughout. I never heard it on CD or streaming yet vinyl makes it clear just like it makes clear that Till Lindemann counts himself in on Stein Um Stein from Rammstein’s fourth album, Reise, Reise. These are things that just enhance the whole listening experience because they were present at time of recording.

But that experience comes at a cost and it is higher than digital. My setup is considered a beginners setup but it cost me about £600 all in. For that, you can get a high-end digital setup and have an excellent experience. If your budget won’t go that far, a bit of patience and careful research will let you get a good starter setup for less than half what I paid new. What this tells me is that the potential of vinyl scales much higher than digital. And I think the reason why is quite simple. It’s real. You have a recording of real people using real instruments which has been stored in real time then printed on to a real item and is then fed back using real items especially if you use an analogue amplifier. It is not a reconstruction or interpretation of what happened in the recording studio. It’s just the music with a bit of cleaning up done during mastering.

But it’s not all plain sailing once you get a decent setup. This can get serious with serious money attached to it. If, like me, you are a fan of niche or cult bands, getting a hold of some records can become expensive. The key here is patience and knowing when to act on the impulse to buy. This is a hobby and should remain so. Always set aside a budger realistic to you. If you lack a high level of disposable income, carefully consider whether moving to vinyl is an appropriate move for you. I have spent a few thousand pounds on records because my income allows it, however, had I been earning less, I would have restained myself on just what to buy and when because my finances dictate what I get to do, how often and to what extent. Currently, I’m looking for another job as my previous contract ended much earlier than expected, so I won’t be buying new records though I have a few on order that will get to me in good time. Meanwhile, I have plenty to enjoy. However, it does mean I may pick up a few cheaper second-hand records from local record shops.

One common complaint of vinyl is the crackle, pops and knocking you hear. This is simply a lack of understanding. You are dealing with a physical item which has grooves in it. Teeny, tiny little trenches where debris, dirt and dust can get stuck. This will get gathered by the stylus and degrade the sound coming from the record. A lot of people don’t know that, surprisingly. All you have to do is clean the record. I use anti-static fluid that I spray on to a newly purchased record being listened to for the first time. I then use a wide velvet brush to clean the record then a fine bristle brush to clean the velvet one. I do this regardless of whether it’s brand new or just new to me as there’s no guarantee the record will be clean when posted or bought from a shop. Records borrowed from my parents have sat in storage for over 30 years. Many have had to be cleaned 3-5 times per side to stop the stylus jumping and for the true sound to come out. It’s a relatively small amount of effort to ensure a clean sound. Once done, I doubt the record will need cleaned for some months as they are properly stored.

Storage is another complaint. Yes, you have to store them and correctly. I store my records like I store my whisky. In a cool, dark, dry place. Vinyl, like whisky, does not like changes in temperature or moisture. It needs a consistently low temperature and low humidity out of direct sunlight. But, if you have the space, a record collection can be a wonderful thing to look at. Visitors can trawl through your collection and it can let them connect a bit more with you as your music preferences can tell things about you that you may not strictly express. Depending on how open you are, this can be a good or bad thing.

As well as having part of yourself on display, the records themselves now come in particularly attractive finishes. Coloured vinyl, whilst I don’t think it has any impact on the quality of sound, does add a nice aesthetic enhancement. A marble, split-colour, splatter, swirl or solid colour does make for a nice visual especially the splatter and swirl patterns when they’re spinning round.

It’s not that I dislike digital. It has its place, but I think its prevalence in the West is a reflection of our increasing disconnect with each other. We all want to connect again especially after lockdown. Gigs have felt different. People are a bit friendlier and kinder. I think we’ve realised what we’ve missed out on and if vinyl helps us connect better with our world and the people that exist in it, I’m happy to continue participating.

Environmental Meander: What’s In a Barrel of Oil?

There are plenty of infographics that will tell you just what comes out of a barrel of crude oil. And I am going to base this article on one of those since the information is largely the same across the board. But what I want to do with this article is highlight just how intertwined with oil modern life is and how difficult it’s likely to be to wean ourselves of the sticky, thick black stuff.

For reference, the article I’m using is from the Visual Capitalist (Conte, Niccolo; Sep 14, 2021) and can be found here: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/whats-made-barrel-of-oil/

In the oil industry, a barrel is the standard unit of measurement used when it comes, not only to the buying and selling of oil, but from the standard size of the barrel used to contain and trnasport oil that’s been dug out the ground. The capacity of a barrel is 42 gallons (190.9 litres).

From that, I’ll get the big one out the way. Petrol/Gasoline comprises of 42.7% of the output (17.9 gallons/81.37 litres) and that’s used to largely power private vehicles of which there are roughly 1.5billion worldwide. Of that, 78% (Statista – https://www.statista.com/statistics/827460/global-car-sales-by-fuel-technology/) are powered by petrol.

Next, diesel. 27.4% (11.5 gallons/52.31 litres) . This is the fuel of industry and goes to power trucks, lorries, diggers, mining equipement, back-up generators, etc. For private vehicles, 14% use diesel.

Aviation uses 5.8% (2.44 gallons/11.07 litres) of the content of a barrel of oil in the creation of jet fuel of which there are three mains types:

  • Jet A is primarily used in the United States. This fuel is developed to be heavier with a higher flash point and freezing point than standard kerosene.
  • Jet A1 is the most used jet fuel worldwide. Jet A1 has a lower freezing point (-47° C) than Jet A (-40° C) so it is especially suitable for international travel through varying climates. This type of fuel also contains static dissipater additives that decrease static charges that form during movement. Despite the differences between Jet A and Jet A1, flight operators use both fuels interchangeably.
  • Jet B is the most common alternative to the jet fuel and AVGAS, primarily used in civil aviation. Jet B has a uniquely low freezing point of -76° C, making it useful in extremely cold areas.

(Source – National Aviation Academy: https://www.naa.edu/aviation-fuel/)

After aviation, Heavy Fuel takes 5% of the barrel (2.1 gallons/9.54 litres). This is a much cheaper fuel as it’s less refined and therefore thicker compared to the previously mentioned fuels. As a result of being less refined, it emits more black carbon than the other fuels when burned. This is the fuel of choice for the shipping industry.

So, 80.9% of the barrel is used for fuelling vehicles that are vital to our everyday lives. But what about the remaining 19.1%?

Well, 4% (1.68 gallons/7.64 litres) goes into the very thing that land vehicles and aircraft need to move around effectively. Asphalt. Or, as we call it here in the UK, bitumen. It’s the sticky black glue that holds the rock/sand combo together that creates roads, runways, pavements, car parks and even tennis courts.

Moving down, we get to Light Fuel which takes up 3% of the barrel (1.26 gallons/5.73 litres). This sulfur-free oil is used in places where low levels of pollution is acceptable i.e. indoors powering heaters, powering farm and mining equipment, providing back-up power to nuclear power plants. Given these uses, it works in Arctic weather and is therefore well suited to working in demanding conditions.

Hydrocarbon gas liquids take up 2% (0.84 gallons/3.82 litres) of the remaining barrel. These compounds are the likes of butane and propane which go into fuelling lighters, camping stoves, barbecues and water heating systems. They are also used in other non-fuel based compunds like plastic, solvents, paint and synthetic rubber,

The final 10.1% (4.24gallons/19.28 litres) gives us a small plethora of compounds from residual fuels to petrochemical feedstocks and other materials like wax and plastics. Various petroleum products are created which are then used to blend in with and create finished fuel products.

So, that’s what’s in a barrel of oil, but let’s scale that up. Per day this year (Statista, 2022), the world has consumed, on average, 99.4million barrels of oil.

To let you see what that looks like:

  • 1.78billion gallons of petrol
  • 1.14billion gallons of diesel
  • 242.5million gallons of aviation fuel
  • 208.7million gallons of Heavy Fuel
  • 166.9million gallons of Asphalt
  • 125.2million gallons of Light Fuel
  • 83.5million Hydrocarbon gas liquids
  • 421.5million gallons of other compounds

That’s daily. I won’t bother with an annual breakdown as it’s clear already a great amount of oil is used to run our lives. Well, the Developed World’s lives anyway.

But the big question is how to move away from a substance that’s been so damned instrumental in being the answer to so many problems, whilst being instrumental in creating so many problems of its own?

I’m not going to claim I have any answers. Merely suggestions. These are far too big and require international cooperation on levels rarely seen throughout human history.

Firstly, we need to come to sensible arrangements regarding mixed use of alternatives. The rechargeable battery used in electric cars is not, as a I see it, a long-term solution. It’s excellent for making loads of money in the short-term for manufacturers, but the issue with them is they cannot be reused as they, as with all recharagable batteries currently, have a finite number of charging cycles. Once the battery can no longer hold a charge, it’s sent to landfill like everything else as the materials used to make the battery have been exhausted.

And those materials are not environmentally friendly either. Nickel Manganese cobalt, Lithium-ion, Neodyium, Nickel Metal Hydride, Lithium Sulphur and Lead-Acid are used in full electric and hybrid vehicles. These minerals are rare and need dug out the ground so a lot of mining is involved meaning more Light Fuel and diesel being burned. In the case of Lithium-ion, the main refineries are in China which are powered by coal. As for Cobalt, this is extracted in South Africa where child labour is widely used so there’s a humanitarian element to this as well.

Shiny, but deadly.

Then there’s Nickel. The mining of ore kicks up plumes of sulphur dioxide and toxic metal dust that contains the Nickel itself along with Copper, Cobalt and Chromium. The bulk of the mining is done in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia and South Africa (https://www.ifpenergiesnouvelles.com/article/nickel-energy-transition-why-it-called-devils-metal). The processes are largely powered by coal and most of the companies will not agree or adhere to any kind of standards that will reduce the environmental impact of the activity. Having said that, it’s been reported the Philippines has, as of 2017, closed down 17 Nickel mines out of environmental concerns.

And these are some of the issues for battery production for electric cars. Once you’ve gathered these materials and made the battery, you now have an item which takes up a third of the weight of the vehicle. And given a lot of electric cars are over 2 tonnes, the battery weighs more than the largest engine fitted to a production car in the 21st Century so far. That engine being the quad-turbo W16 found in the Bugatti Chiron which weighs 400kg. However, with the battery being the floor, it can aid with handling but creates the engineering problem of the battery making a significant contribution to the inertia that needs to be overcome to get the vehicle moving in the first place.

So, what to do? There’s been talk of an air and aluminium battery which, if it works, would remove the need for mining rare and resource-intensive materials. The battery itself has high energy density to low weight (8.1 kWh kg−1 to 2.71 g cm−3) and, in theory, could provide an electric car with 1,000 miles of range. Sounds great but the technology is still in devlopment and not likely to come to market until the 2030’s at the earliest. Realistically, it’ll be the 2050’s before production-ready cars are on the road.

Hydrogen – Ideal Output. Far From Ideal Input.

We then have hydrogen as an alternative fuel source but its problem is its size. We are dealing with the most abundant element in the known universe but it’s so small, it sticks to other elements like oxygen and carbon. In order to extract the hydrogen, we have to cool gas down to well below freezing to make it a liquid thereby not only making the extraction process easier but it prevents the hydrogen from escaping as its density has been increased from the reduction in temperature. That in itself requires a lot of energy. Once the hydrogen molecules have been detached, you then have to send the liquid hydrogen along pipes which will result in loss of hydrogen and cost more in energy to keep the pipes cold. Those pipes will lead to depots where hydrogen can be loaded on to trucks to then be distributed to filling stations. All of which requires energy and will likely lead to more loss. In principle, hydrogen is an ideal solution for powering vehicles, particularly in fuel cell form, but the problem is…everything else.

Ford did make a prototype Focus in the early 2000’s which had an on-board hydrogen generator. It could take any water source, purify it then use the clean water to make hydrogen to power the car. Weirdly, this never came to market and I can’t find any reference to it since I saw it in Auto Express. Odd, that.

Goes Like An Old F1 Engine. But Will It Need Replaced As Often As One?

Other forms of engine are in the works. The Omega hydrogen rotary engine (https://www.carthrottle.com/post/this-pistonless-25000rpm-capable-engine-shows-ice-could-have-a-future/)weighing a measly 16kg but with an output of 160hp and and 170 lb ft of torque is ideal for a regular family car. And it’s modular so you can add engines dependant on your requirements. What’s the drawback? There are no seals and the components, whilst few, operate within very tight tolerances and require pressure generation to be at least ten times that of an ordinary combustion engine to overcome the lack of seals. And it revs to 25,000rpm which is more than the V10 era F1 cars that revved to 20,000rpm. In a domestic vehicle, the precision engineering will have to be there to ensure reliability. The average person doesn’t want to be changing engines after one drive unlike F1.

Solar powered cars were tried in the late 90’s and haven’t really been heard of since and for good reason. The technology still isn’t efficient enough to harness the heaps of energy the Sun sends our way every hour.

Note that I’ve been talking about how to best power cars. What about everything else? As I see it, the car is a test bed for perfecting new technologies since everything else is much bigger, more demanding and operates in far more rigourous conditions where much higher standards are required. Imagine a battery-powered freighter using current techology? It wouldn’t get out of the port before needing a charge. And planes? Forget it. In 2021, Rolls-Royce managed to fly their electric single-seater aircraft, ‘Spirit of Innovation’, on electric power at 345mph for over 3kms. That’s nothing. Yes, it’s early days but serious innovations need done before we can talk about passenger aircraft running on anything not based on oil. It’s all well me saying that whilst I sit here not involved in the slightest, but I think industries are spreading themselves too thin by investigating too many alternatives and not having a clear plan on how to achieve the highly ambitious ‘net zero’ targets by 2050.

Nuclear ships have been in use by the military for decades. This technology has been proven in military marine applications so why not for commercial ships? Well, it was demonstrated in 1959 with the NS Savannah (https://www.engineering.com/story/why-are-there-no-atomic-cargo-ships) which operated safely until 1972. However, in the 70’s oil prices were low and replacing or retrofitting existing fleets with even more expensive nuclear ships or nuclear engines just wasn’t econimically viable. Oil was going for $2 a barrel which made bunker oil/Heavy Fuel dirt cheap (emphasis on dirt) back then. But cargo vessels were much smaller and carrying less goods compared to today’s supersized craft carrying record loads of goods. From an engineering and economic standpoint, nuclear would be an excellent option today for shipping companies. One nuclear craft could run for 30 years before needing to refuel meaning the companies wouldn’t have to worry about the price of fuel for a long time but it also buys them time to stockpile cash for when refuelling day comes.

Additionally, think of all the skilled people who’ve spent years working on nuclear military craft who could use their skills on a civilian boat? Not only use, but train civilian professionals in how to maintain a nuclear-powered craft. The problem? Nuclear activists that have the technical literacy of roadkill that have been successfully lobbying for over 50 years.

NS Savannah – Nuclear Pioneer Since 1959

The big problem with electric is generation. At present, if every car in the world was electric, we’d be outsourcing pollution to the power plants that generate the electricity. That’s not the way to go. That’s a cheap and dirty trick that will allow politicians to hit their targets before leaving office.

And I’ve only covered transport so far. But within transport, we have the other oil-based products that go into the very vehicles we’re trying to wean off oil. The interiors have plastic whilst the exterior uses rubber for seals and tyres. The paint is also oil-based so just because you run an electric car doesn’t mean you’re green. You’re still heavily supporting the petrochemical industry in every other way.

And it has only been fuel that companies have been talking about. Removing our reliance on oil also means ridding ourselves of its ancillary products, otherwise we’re just kidding ourselves that we’re ‘carbon-neutral’ whilst drinking out of a reusable mug made of plastic, coated with paint and filled with hot contents created using electricity generated by a coal-powered plant. It’s like saying you’re vegan whilst wearing the oh-so-cool leather jacket you love.

Speaking of leather, vegan leather is also oil-based as it’s made from various types of plastic. Sustainable, my arse.

And then there’s industrial, economic and national politics to consider. Developing new forms of energy means depriving energy-generating countries of current revenue which will affect their political clout on the international stage. Corporations that provide materials will also be deprived on an equivalent clout meaning their attempts to lobby rival energy sources will be less effective. They won’t want that.

Just like Edison did to Tesla in the battle between DC and AC, and the oil industry did to the alcohol and steam-powered cars, you can be sure that whatever non oil-based fuel we end up using, it’ll be the least efficient and most expensive because profit always goes ahead of progress and preservation. I don’t care about all the piped up talk about ‘environment’ this, ‘clean’ that or ‘green’ over there. First and foremost, greedy individuals in positions of influence need their pockets lined because they’re selfish and do not have the planet’s interest at heart. Second, they have agendas designed to keep themselves in their positions of power and influence and will shut down anything that threatens that. Thirdly, for cleaner fuels to have any chance, you need governments and corporations from the main countries of production to get on-board and commit to investing in truly sustainable sources of energy. To do that, you have to get rid of the corrupt bureaucrats from points 1 and 2 and replace them with honest, diligent people who will do the work to hit the agreed goal.

In reality, we’re not in a fight for the planet and the future of life on it. We’re in a fight against the destructive elements of human nature and how to mitigate its impact for the future of life on this planet.

TV Meander: The Lord of the Rings – The Rings of Power Essay Review (Spoilers)

The horse was not impressed when its stunt double came on set.

When the Rings of Power was announced earlier this year and the first trailer dropped, I wasn’t exactly filled with excitement, hope or optimism. Reason One being that I didn’t see the need for anything related to Lord of the Rings to come out ever again. We got Peter Jackson’s excellent trilogy and that should have been enough. Reason Two was that the trailer looked like footage for a fantasy RPG that was due to be released ten years ago and the dialogue hardly seemed worthy of the title attached to it.

Alas, I decided to give it a watch when it arrived in September. Admittedly, I was in a rare slump of boredom and needed to pass a couple of hours so I thought I’d give it a chance.

And what was I treated to? Two hours of, largely, what the trailer already showed. Bright but bland visuals; Aspirational but flat dialogue and a protagonist that had been written like a villian.

Yes, Galadriel may well be the ‘good guy’ in this show but in name only. When you look at her motivations, objectives and agendas they read better as a villian hellbent on exacting vengeance for some slight long ago. Essentially, she’s Walter White gone full Heisenberg and with a similiarly thin sliver of a justifiable cause for her actions. She is unreasonable. impatient, violent, impulsive, traitorous, selfish, arrogant and narcissistic. This is not someone you get behind. This is someone you tray and stp or you walk away from altogether. How was this character allowed to be written this way? The Galadriel in the books is certainly not to be fully trusted. She does have a lust for power but has enough wisdom and good in her to not let it get the better of her. This iteration is a mindless animal that will threaten at will to get what she wants. And that’s all she does. Threaten. That’s not a sign of strength. That’s cowardice and empty cowardice at that. This Galadriel has all the machismo and bravado of chav on a night out with the lads wanting to look ‘tough’ just to impress some girls in the hopes he might pull. Hardly a noble endeavour.

And where’s the magic? Galadriel is a powerful sorceress and yet we are shown no powers at all. Another of Galadriel’s strengths was her combined use of magic with her femininity. She was subtle, fairly passive but could always influence to get what she wanted. She was always in control despite appearing somewhat aloof. But, with femininty being under attack in Western Culture, this Galadriel is a guy with long hair, a suit of armour and a sword. Effectively, Aragorn and Legolas put together but with a result that’s nowhere near as good as either. Certainly, far less noble.

And the actress isn’t good. Nowhere near the calibre of Cate Blanchett. Granted, this is a younger (by 3,000 years) iteration and maybe not as wise but the lore does not describe a younger Galadriel as being a reckless, empty being who only believes that what they’ve experienced is of most import regardless of its relevance or value.

In fact, none of the performances are particularly worthy of being in such a production. It’s highly concerning when the only name I recognise in this is Sir Lenny Henry. And Amazon reportedly spent £399million on the first series which is similiar, in today’s money, to how much Jackson’s trilogy cost which, if you include the extended versions, had a longer run time. How could they not secure respected film or television actors with such a budget? Could it be that any who saw the script politely declined and gave no reason other than ‘scheduling conflicts’? Were any actors even given a script to read or did Amazon figure they knew what their response would be, bypassed them, and went straight to lesser actors who’d work for the cash on offer rather than try to make a prestigious career?

It’s a shame because I can see that some of the actors are doing their damndest to make the material work with their performances, particularly Robert Aramayo who plays a younger Elrond. And, as earnest as he is, I don’t see him as becoming the Elrond we knew from Jackson’s trilogy.

The Elves, in general, are just too human. The dialogue too contemporary. There’s no ethereal, otherwordly nature to them. These are beings that treat centuries like days and yet they speak and act no better than an inexperienced human. Or perhaps that’s more a reflection of the writers?

And it’s not just the Elves. There’s a similar lack of depth, maturity and wisdom in the Dwarves, Harfoots and Numenorians. Ironically, the only ones that seem to have possess anything like these qualities are the Orcs and Uruks. Again, maybe that’s a reflection of where the writers are in their collective consciousness. Believing themselves to be some misunderstood but truly wonderful and talented people, if only others could see it. Just the kind of thinking a traditional villain would have.

I don’t understand the motivation for this series. Where there remains plenty of demand for comic book films and TV shows, there hasn’t, as far as I can tell, been any push for anything more from the world of Tolkien. Fantasy, yes, but Tolkien not so much. As I said earlier, we were given an excellent, lovingly crafted trilogy from Peter Jackson which may as well have been a recording of the main events that shaped the Third Age of Middle-Earth. The Hobbit Trilogy was not really needed either but was a half-decent return to Middle-Earth. With that, the fly in the ointment was that it was taking so long to get made that original director, Guillermo Del Toro, left the project to go and make Pacific Rim whislt Peter Jackson was brough back on board despite having gone on record to say he didn’t want to return. And look what happened. We got something that looked like Middle-Earth but just didn’t have the same warmth and depth of Lord of the Rings. Ultimately, a weak story in the form of fusing The Hobbit with the The Appendices from Return of the King, provided a set of films that didn’t live up to its predecessor.

And here were are again. About a decade after The Hobbit arrived about a decade after Lord of the Rings, we revisit Middle-Earth with further lack of lustre. On the surface, I can’t fault the costume design, set design or the bulk of the visual effects and CGI. For the most part, it all looks high quality which it should given the budget.

But it’s the very thing that let The Hobbit Trilogy down that’s missing. The writing. The story just isn’t there. This series lacked a coherent narrative and, as such, waivered between storylines of hunting Sauron (despite being shown no reason why), avenging a dead brother, saving the Elves, not upsetting the Dwarves, a maid becoming a leader of war that falls in love with an elf, a young Isildur that goes from useless to more useless and the Harfoots leaving their dead behind whilst tending to a Gandalf who’s not named Gandalf.

And not one of them is compelling. Outside of characters from the books and films, I cannot tell you who any of the characters are. They are devoid of any sparkle of personality. It seems to be a trend with a lot of pop culture TV and films now. Make the characters husks but as long as they’re pretty and exist in a shiny, colourful land people will watch. How hollow a pursuit. I saw the trailier for the French (at last!) adaption of The Three Musketeers this morning and my God did it look amazing. Everything I’d expect from the country that gave us that masterpiece. It’s the kind of story that’s been missing from film for too. A real one. One of human heart, endeavour, honour, pride, tragedy and betrayal. Things are too clean at the moment and trust the French to come along and give us a bit of dirt in the best way possible.

Anyway, back to this polished turd. The main issue is that there isn’t one. There are several. The score is uninspired but I can tell the composer has been trying to get subtle and elegant but fails on the important part. Being memorable. The visuals are too high definition to the point that the whole thing looks like a fantasy. You may say that’s the point, but remember, Tolkien was creating a mythology for England when he wrote The Lord of the Rings and its associated works. Therefore, it’s roots are embedded in Europe. And so, Middle-Earth is essentially an alternate version of England or Europe from thousands of years ago and back then, things were not clean. Yes, it can be believed the Elves would be so pristine. They are highly advanced in all respects, after all. But for the rest of the races, they should not be so clean in a world where toilets and sinks don’t exist. The Dwarves and Harfoots look remarkably well kept for people living under mountains and on the road who are also not averse to manual labour.

And on the subject of people, there is a race problem. This is likely going to be controversial, but Middle-Earth is set in Europe, mainly Northern Europe, so why do we have a Asian and African people here? Tolkien did point out in the prologue to Lord of the Rings that the Harfoots were ‘browner-skinned’ but anyone of any other colour was not mentioned as being in Middle-Earth but beyond it like those of Harad (based on Arabian/North African peoples) and beyond who were described as ‘black skinned’ or ‘dark men’. But they were not in Middle-Earth.

And since the climate of Middle-Earth is very similar to Europe, it makes no sense for other races to be there in the same way anyone from Middle-Earth wouldn’t suit being in the hotter, harsher climates beyond their continent. And yet, this series panders to the racial narcissists who cannot relate to anyone in a fictional show that doesn’t match their skin colour. A black Dwarf is a genetic impossibility since the pigmentation is dependant on higher levels of melanin being present in the DNA which is dependent on sun exposure. Dwarves are hardly exposed to the sun so why is there a black Dwarf? I say ‘a’ because there’s one and only one. Same goes for the black Elf (lives in a forest), Harfoot (lives in the countryside) and Numenorian (lives on the coast). There is one of each. Just one. How did they get there? There’s no story reason provided for why we only see one black member of these races. What could it be? It’s like the writers want to make some kind of point. Oh, right. We must be inclusive and diverse since this show ‘reflects the world we live in today’. I live in Scotland. It’s 96% white. I live in Glasgow which is pretty multiethnic. This show does not reflect my country. I’d rather it reflected Tolkien’s world but he’s dead and so is his son and caretaker, Christopher. Now that the creator’s longstanding guardian is gone, amateur writers think they can just run amok on a work that sits somewhere between legendary fiction and a sacred text? It’s insulting and so is this show. This is what happens when a fan (Jeff Bezos) thinks he can emulate the creator of the thing he’s a fan of. Bezos is not Tolkien. Tolkien was a linguistic expert and language professor at Oxford. He was a sergeant in the First World War and took part in the Battle of the Somme. His time was one of true, brutal terror and a very real possibility of losing a way of life to tyranny, madness and death. Bezos started Amazon in his garage selling books then, after devising a more efficient logistics method, went on to create a company that has nigh-on perfected delivering goods to people from its site. One man is humble, wise yet hardened by his time and gifted the world a fiction with no equal. The other has made a fortune from catering to convenience and impulse spending. Bezos may be a fan of Tolkien but I doubt Tolkien would be a fan of Bezos. In fact, Bezos may well be seen as a contemporary iteration of Sauron. Gaining power through fear, greed, deception and oppression.

I’ve wandered off, but I think it was worthwhile. Speaking of Sauron, the character of Halbrand was too clearly telegraphed as being the ‘secret’ antagonist. Anyone who has a vague understanding of story would see passed the ‘down-to-earth’ persona displayed when he’s introduced. Galadriel doesn’t even cotton on to who he is. Remember what I said about no magic? The real Galadriel would have sensed Halbrand’s dark power and grown concerned and suspicious. Maybe even scared. This one lacks any kind of intuition and literally has to be shouted at in the last episode. Because shouting in this day and age is the equivalent of being the slaughterer of millions and creator of dark, foul beings that would desecrate the world we live in. Yeah, these writers aren’t a patch on Tolkien. No skill, no thought and no life experience to draw from. This show has been nothing but an expensive (likely tax deductable, though) vanity project to inflate the ego of Bezos, the showrunners and the writers. I can’t even hate it or dislike it. That would require a substance to exist that is worth garnering such a response. This show has none and therefore isn’t worthy of a mild or strong response in the negative. And that, generally, sums it up.

Isildur, heir to the throne of Gondor, is a hapless, naive idiot with no real skills on offer and not a shred of the honour, courage and nobility required to become King of Gondor, Arnor and the Dunedain. Curiously, he’s shown as being Mediterranean or North African in his complexion yet, magically, he;ll grow up to become white. I wonder if that’s why he let the One Ring rule him?

His father, Elendil, is portrayed as similarly lacking in any ability to rule the same kingdoms. He’s effectively a ‘yes man’ with a sword that barely treads on the terribly fragile toes of Galadriel. He has no authority or agency and merely tags along at Galadriel’s whim.

And then there’s a bizarre sense of sentimentality to the show. It’s like the writer’s aimed for warmth, connection and friendship, missed completely, and ended up using it as a reason to resolve many a conflict. As long as the other person ‘feels’ good then the conflict’s gone, right? No, not really, but this lot think it does and so the plot gets to move along on its one-dimensional rails.

I’ve written this now. It’s out my system. My final comment is that, as result of this shameful attempt to cash-in on a great writer, I treated myself to some beautiful HarperCollins editions of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. I’ll do the same for the rest of Tolkien’s work, but these will do for now. I also bought the extended trilogy on 4K blu-ray despite not having a 4K TV yet. I imagine many others who watched this show did something similar.

Film Meander: Declunking The Dark Knight Rises

It’s been 10 years since the last of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dark Knight’ Trilogy and whilst the box office takings for the final instalment surpassed its predecessor, the film itself didn’t get quite the same reception after the intitial hype died down. At the time of viewing in the IMAX of Glasgow’s Science Centre, I remember the sheer thrills and scale of the film as it tried so very hard to up the ante on ‘The Dark Knight’. And whilst the emotional heft was certainly there, the structural heft wasn’t. Even when viewing for the first time, certain narrative beats and sub-plots seemed off but were dismissed for the sake of wanting to see how everything wrapped up.

And it did wrap up. The Bruce Wayne/Batman arc did come to a close so ‘Rises’ did do its job of giving the main character a good sendoff. But did it have to be so jarring?

A number of alternatives were whirring through my head back in 2012 as to how to make a film that should have been monumental actually be that. Yes, it had epic set pieces but many fell flat – the truck chase at the end being one such example.

But I must also factor in the pressures director, Christopher Nolan, would have been facing whilst writing and filming the third instalment of a hugely popular franchise. Chief among them would have been the untimely death of Heath Ledger. Rumour has it that the original script for ‘Rises’ was going to have The Joker in it (there’s a trilogy poster with all the villians in different poses which is all the pictorial evidence I can find to support this), but when news of Ledger’s death surfaced, Nolan would have had to quickly write in another villain. I can’t find anything to suggest that Bane was going to be the original villain all along or if he was pencilled in after Ledger’s death.

The second source of pressure I know of was that Nolan was reimagining Superman whilst suffering writer’s block for ‘Rises’. It’s one thing to take on one of pop cultures major icons, but to take on two titans of the comic pantheon and reimagine them in a realistic manner for cinema is quite something. His script ended up going to Zack Snyder who then gave us 2013’s ‘Man of Steel’.

And the third source of pressure I know of was that Warner Bros. were wnating Nolan to head up the DC Extended Universe of films and serve as overseer of the narrative to ensure each entry fitted in just like Joss Whedon was tasked with at Marvel. Problem with asking an independent filmmaker to latch himself to one genre of films for ex-number of years is that he’s no longer independent and will quickly lose interest in the genre no matter how much you pay him. In the end, Nolan stuck to his guns and gave us Interstellar instead followed by Dunkirk and Tenet. He’s no longer with Warner Bros. for his next film – ‘Oppenheimer’.

Back to the topic. I’m going to tidy up ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ as I strongly believe it needs it and, if I were in Nolan’s shoes minus the pressures, I would have written things quite differently. However, I’m not making up any old crap. I will be using elements from the film itself and the previous two entries to ensure a cohesive narrative. Elements may be removed but any added in must be from the previous two films. I’m not in the business of second-guessing Christoper Nolan so any amendments to the story will be in keeping with the established narrative.

Off we go then.

Prologue – As much as Quantum of Solace wasn’t a patch on Casino Royale, Nolan should have taken a page out of that film’s book and started ‘Rises’ straight after ‘The Dark Knight’. Batman has lost his childhood friend and romantic interest, Rachel; seen off two SWAT teams; taken down the Joker; saved Commissioner Gordon’s son from Harvey Dent but failing to save Dent himself; taken a literal fall after saving Gordon’s son then a metaphorical one by taking the heat from Dent and putting himself in the firing line for Dent’s killings. He’s broken, beaten, battered and tired. And he still has to ride home and evade capture from the police.

By having ‘Rises’ start here, the audience doesn’t need a refresh of what happened in ‘The Dark Knight’. They already know which is why they’re going to see this film. It cuts a lot of time out and allows it to be used to build up new characters like Bane and Selina Kyle.

So, how would this look? I’ve always imagined this scene following Batman on the Batpod as he’s heading back to the makeshift Batcave. Along the way, the lights are knocked out and the audience hears the crash of the Batpod against something hard and the thud of Batman hitting the tarmac. Some temporary lights come on and there stands a hulking masked man surrounded by a small army of his followers all armed to the hilt. Behind them are two giant military trucks blocking the road.

Where ‘Rises’ takes about 45 minutes to reintroduce Batman and over an hour before he fights Bane for the first time, here the first fight takes place within 5 minutes. It’ll take the audience by surprise and throw them into despair knowing that Batman has just been through a lot and is not in any shape to take on one menacing brute let alone a group.

The hulked menace would introduce himself as Bane and his group as The League of Shadows. If you take a lot of the events of ‘Rises’ first fight between these two and transpose them here, you can achieve a greater effect because it’s being done right at the start of the film. Batman gets his back broken and is taken out of the game straight away.

And how would Bane know about Batman’s identity? One character that wasn’t used in ‘Rises’ but had a linchpin role in ‘The Dark Knight’ was Colman Reese. The man who attempted to blackmail Lucius Fox over the identity of Batman. Here, after having actually broken Batman’s back, Bane could introduce Reese as a member of the The League of Shadows which would tie back to ‘Batman Begins’ where Ra’s Al Ghul stated Gotham was so corrupt that they had infiltrated every level of its infrastructure. It would not be improbable for The League to have someone snooping around Wayne Enterprises.

The League could have killed Bruce there and then but, given how adamant he was on saving his city, Bane elects to make him suffer. Having throughly humliated his opponent, Bane leaves Bruce on the road. When the trucks leave, Bruce calls Alfred who comes and collects him. All-in-all this is 20 minutes of the film and Bruce Wayne is broken in every sense. This would set up the eight years since Batman was last sighted from ‘Rises’ as well as the storyline of Bruce Wayne becoming a recluse, however, the reason for that could be over the death of Rachel as well as that of Harvey Dent.

The Beginning – With Batman out the picture and his identity confirmed, Bane targets Wayne Enterprises as first to be brought down. Bruce, meanwhile, is crippled in Wayne Manor and has fallen into a deep depression over his failure as Gotham’s protector. Despite being unable to do anything, he still reads up on news every morning with a newspaper and keeps Gotham News (which would reveal the official reason for Bruce Wayne becoming reclusive to being a skiing accident resulting in a broken back) on all the time. Alfred becomes concerned that his master is resorting to a form of torture to punish himself.

By having an action setpiece right at the start doing the heavy lifting, the film would have more time to delve into the machinations of Bane and Selina Kyle. With the audience knowing Bane’s plan, the focus could be on Selina Kyle as an apathetic figure to highlight the gradual destruction of Gotham. Keeping true to the comics, she could be a cat burglar taking advantage of the current situation Bane has put the city in. With the elites scared, she could have several identities and occupations (at service level) where she gains access to the homes of wealthy families and gets to work. The film would then have the time to let the audience see her as a Robin Hood figure where she takes from the rich, gives some to the poor and keeps the rest for herself. These would be the intimate street-level sections intersplicing with Bane’s high-level masterplan sections with occasional flips to Bruce to let the audience know he’s not been forgotten about. But the first hour could easily focus on letting Bane and Selina get fully entrenched in the audience’s mind.

One thing I think would show urgency would be removing the passing of Harvey Dent at the start of ‘Rises’. Instead, Bane puts Commissoner Gordon in front of a camera and forces him to tell the city exactly what happened on the night Batman was last seen. Gordon, under duress, tells Gotham what happened and reveals Harvey Dent, not Batman, as being behind the killings from ‘The Dark Knight’. While this hurts Bruce emotionally, what he doesn’t realise is that, secretly, the people are hopeful that their guardian hasn’t abandoned them. But this is the first year of The League’s martial law.

The Middle – Over the next hour, we would get advances on Bane’s plan as he becomes more and more tyrannical. After forcing a confession from Commissioner Gordon, the police start to crumble as they fall to their new master. The Department of Justice falls too after hearing of Dent’s criminal acts. The kangaroo courts from ‘Rises’ can make an appearance here as the audience is shown more of Bane’s mental prowess; that he’s far more than a thug for hire. Scarecrow is brought back, but rather than have him mask-less, he’s in full mask and been granted the means to conjure up all the psychotropic drugs he wants. As presiding judge, the audience watches as Scarecrow psychologically tortures each member of the elite class being brought up for judgement.

Selina Kyle, however, is busy getting in a little too deep as she poses as a new maid for the newly restored Wayne Manor. Like in ‘Rises’ where she’s asked to take food upstairs and leave it on a small table outside Bruce’s room, a similar instruction is given, only Selina sees the door slightly open. Taking her chance, she enters the room and finds it empty. She sees stacks and stacks of Gotham newspapers. The TV is left on the news channel but the media looks very different under Bane’s rule. Rather than reporting the news, it’s turned into a full-blown propaganda machine. She sees weights, computers, documents and all sorts lying around. The master bedroom has become a makeshift Batcave since Bruce has been unable to make it down to the actual Batcave.

Selina, feeling she’s chancing things too much, becomes intrigued by a number of articles that are sitting near his bed. One about the capture of the Joker; one on the death of Rachel; and one on Gordon’s confession which unmasked Harvey Dent. Rachel, she could understand, but the other two, she wasn’t so sure of. She starts to look around the room some more and finds a pile dedicated to the remaining two alongside a pile dedicated to Batman.

As she rifles through some of the papers in the ‘Batman’ pile, she sees a small article about Bruce Wayne having entered into a period of mourning following the death of his childhood friend, Rachel Dawes. She sees the article was printed eight years ago. She rifles through some more papers but goes to the very first one at the bottom. She becomes visibly harassed at the potential information she may be about to uncover. The first paper has the headline ‘Will Batman Return?’ and is printed a month after his last sighting which the article mentions. She puts the two together and gasps. Then a hand grabs her shoulder. It’s Bruce Wayne. And he’s alot better.

Selina tries to escape but Bruce doesn’t let her. She drops the maid act and goes full Cat on him, but Bruce, despite not being at full strength, doesn’t let her get away. Quite quickly, he subdues her. It’s there the hints of attraction show as Selina realises she’s finally met someone like her – wrestling with inner demons as well as those in Gotham but where she mostly takes, she knows Bruce has been giving everything to save Gotham as Batman. Over time, Selina stops going to Wayne Manor as a maid but as herself. Eventually, she’s shown the Batcave and is entrusted with the knowledge that Bruce intends to go back out as Batman and take out Bane. Both Selina and Alfred, who have developed quite a surrogate father-daughter relationship, try to convince Bruce that he should be running for Mayor and using the resources of Wayne Enterprises to overthrow Bane’s corrupt regime. But Bruce is adamant that going back out as Batman is what the city needs. that,He promises that. if he survives, he’ll run for Mayor as the city won’t need Batman.

The End – With the full eight years now passed, Bruce Wayne is back to full health but has spent the time grieving, getting over his grief, deepening his relationships with Alfred and Selina and learning about Bane and planning his strategy on removing him and the league permanently from their tyrannical rule. In the brief sections in the second act, we see Bruce speaking to various people on the phone. It turns out one of them was Lucius Fox. Now CEO of Wayne Enterprises, he’s not only been running the company but he’s still been commissioning special R&D projects for his old boss. One of which is the Bat.

What we would then have is a repeat of the opening but flipped in Batman’s favour. Bane is in an armoured car flanked by tanks and armoured trucks as he’s making his way from one place to another. Above, he has two helicopters and snipers placed at strategic locations along the route. Whilst travelling under the cover of darkness is generally safer, it doesn’t prove so tonight. The snipers are being taken out by Selina with the aid of a nifty portable zipline and guidance from Batman in the Bat hovering silently high above the helicopers. When the snipers are clear, the Bat descends and comes in behind the two helicopters. One is struck with a grappling hook followed by an EMP. Disabled, the helicopter drops but is held by the Bat. Batman lowers the helicopter on the top of a building then repeats for the second one.

The Bat descends further and neutralises the tanks and armoured trucks. A weaponised sleeping gas is released knocking out the occupants with the exception of Bane whose mask filters it out.

At this point, Batman seriously considers pulling the trigger on his missiles and blowing up Bane’s terrorist group, ridding Gotham of the tyranny that’s plagued it for almost a decade. Instead, he goes down to the ground and leaves the safety of the Bat. Selina, still up on the skycrapers, watches in disbelief as the man she loves is about to get himself needlessly killed.

People living in the surrounding buildings start stepping out to see what’s going on. Something tells them it’s safe to go out tonight. What they see is Batman stepping out the Bat ready to take down Bane. The crowd gathers behind Batman in the distance whilst Bane has his unconscious army. Both are alone. Neither are scared.

Similiar to ‘Rises’, I think this second face-off should have little to no words spoken. Both men know why they’re there and so does the audience. In fact, I think it would be more impactful to have no words at all as the dialogue in ‘Rises’ was clunky and detracted from the fact that both men were fighting over Gotham and their plans for it.

And so, a brawl ensues. The crowd don’t cheer. They stand quietly as they watch their guardian stand up to the one they could not. I think if we take Round 1 of Batman vs. Bane from ‘Rises’, minus the dialogue, and keep the tense anticipation, it would be a visceral, nail-biting and intimate way to bring the series to a close. Batman has studied Bane ever since he was crippled by him. He knows where to get him. He just has to be patient. At the same time, Bane hasn’t gotten lazy. He’s expected a comeback from Batman and has gotten bigger and sharper in the eight years since their last encounter. He knows Batman at full strength is very different to the one he crippled with relative ease.

So, we could mix in the elements from the second fight where Batman dislodges one of the pipes from Bane’s mask, leaving him temporarily vulnerable to pain. What we would see is two highly trained and experienced fighters carefully and precisely deliver their blows, trying to figure each other out. As they start to understand each other, both become more fierce and intense with their moves. We’d go from sparring to boxing to something more like MMA with intent to kill. Bane would have Batman on the ropes and deliver a jab to his lower back which would send him tumbling down. Selina arrives but hides in the shadows to look on as she sees Bane lift Bruce up ready to break his back again. The crowd looks on helplessly as they believe their saviour is about to fail when…a blinding light comes from the Bat. Batman is dropped as Bane is blinded by the intense light. Batman pounces to his feet, showing no sign of injury, then mercilessly lays into Bane, ripping the pipes off his mask with his bladed gauntlets. Bane, racked with pain, topples like a felled tree and begins to shrivel up as the the anasthetic wears off. The only sound aside from Batman;s heavy brething is the howl of agony from Bane.

Feeling assured their saviour has indeed saved them from their oppressive regime, the crowd slowly, cautiously make their way towards Batman. Selina stays in the shadows knowing the Bruce needs to know how much the people value him.

Unsure of what to do, the crowd intially stand silent. Eventually, one mother simply nods and thanks Batman. This is followed by another then another until the whole crowd is thanking him. Not loudly. They’re not cheering his name. They’re humbly expressing their gratitude for they know this man is of the shadows. The crowd disperses as armoured police vans arrive led by Gordon in a squad car. As Gotham police officers begin hauling the still unconscious mercenaries into the vans at gunpoint, Batman simply walks away towards the Bat. Selina emerges behind him and taps him on the shoulder. Batman turns round to be met his Selina’s lips locking against his. Neither smile for they know the kiss wasn’t about happiness. It was about having found that which was missing.

Both enter the Bat. As it begins its ascension, Gordon looks up and simply says ‘Thank you.’

Epilogue: A paper slams on to a desk. The headline says that it’s been a month since Batman defeated Bane. A smaller article shows that Bruce Wayne has reappeared and is committed to following following in his parents footsteps and engaging in philanthropy as he was unable to do so during Bane’s rule.

The desk was Bruce Wayne’s and he’s no longer in the master bedroom but one of Wayne Manor’s many offices. Alfred, who delivered the paper, begins asking questions about whether the philanthropy was a publicity stunt. Bruce assures him that it wasn’t and that he really does want to help regenerate the city without using Batman. Not completely convinced, Alfred leaves the room allowing Bruce to make a number of phones calls. A montage would start showing Bruce meeting with a number of affluent and influential people from businessmen to politicians to fellow socialites. Newspaper reels would start festuring more about Bruce Wayne and beginning rumours about his meetings with various public and corporate figures.

In the end, what was merely an off-the-cuff remark from Selina transpires to be Bruce’s new goal. He’s been building up to run for Mayor. With Bane and the League gone, we get snippets of the work Bruce has been doing to help improve and stabilise the city. Supplying Wayne Enterprises tech to hospitals and schools; funding children’s homes; setting up skills centres to get those who lost their livelihoods back on their feet. These acts show how serious and dedicated Bruce is to not only running the city but making it thrive again. He’s realised what he can do as Bruce Wayne now the need for Batman has gone.

We’d move to election night. In total, a year would have now passed since Batman and Bane faced off. Bruce is sitting at his office desk, ruminating over that night whilst rolling a slim box in his hand. Selina knocks on the door and he snaps out of his thoughts to stand up and kiss Selina like a husband would his wife. They’re not married but the relationship has moved on significantly. They would gently but intently flirt then move on to evening’s events. Selina would make sure that Bruce had his speech. He would check his inside pocket and confirm he did. Alfred would drive the pair to the rally point where Bruce would step out to a huge cheer. He’d give his speech which would be humble yet powerful. The crowd would cheer louder at the end and the camera would fade out.

When it fades back in, we see Bruce sitting at a different desk. It’s a week later and he’s now Mayor Wayne. He’s holding that same box in his hand from election night. The door knocks and in comes Commissioner Gordon.

As Mayor, it’s part of Bruce’s duty to meet with all the departments in the city. He kept Gotham City Police Department to the end. Gordon would sit down somewhat awkwardly as he doesn’t feel particularly warm to the new Mayor. The pair talk about how their respective offices would work and that Bruce would be working closely with them to make sure the levels of organised crime remain at zero. Gordon starts taking potshots at Wayne Enterprises and wondering if he could get his financial crime guys in to take a closer look at the company’s books. Bruce says he could but there’d be no need. Gordon would be taken aback by such compliance.

The pair would chat more and, having reached a relatively amicable agreement on how they’d work, Gordon would get up to leave. He’d stop just before the door and clumsily fumble around his inside suit pocket to bring out a small, thin box. He’d walk back to Bruce’s desk, nervously put the box down and explain it’s a tradition that the force give the new Mayor a gift. Bruce thanks Gordon and proceeds to open the box which has a black and gold Mont Blanc fountain pen in it. Gordon would snidily quip that he should be getting used to signing bills rather than spending them; digging at the playboy. Bruce takes it on the chin and holds his arm out. Gordon looks and sees that the new Mayor is presenting him with a small, thin box of his own. When asked about why the Mayor is giving the Commissioner a gift, Bruce simply replies: ‘Assurance that the city’s in safe hands.’

Puzzled, Gordon goes to leave, but before he does, Bruce tells him that he’d best open the gift alone. Gordon leaves even more puzzled. The film would fade out.

On the fade in, Gordon would be finishing up for the night. As he’s switching lights off in his office, he walks back over to his desk realising he’s forgotten something. Mayor Wayne’s gift. He was that bewildred by it, he’d almost forgotten it. He sat at his desk and opened the top drawer to bring out the box handed to him earlier. Nervously, he opened it and, upon seeing what’s inside, begins to cry. The audience wouldn’t see why. Not yet although they know why. Gordon would breakdown and start hailing platitudes then curse himself. He’d pull the item from the box and reveal a Batarang. In the turmoil of emotion, all he’d do in the end is smile and let out a laugh. The film would end with Gordon leaving his office certainly assured that the city was in the safest hands possible.

And that’s it. That’s my interpretation of how I think ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ should have gone. I think this streamlines the story more and focuses more on the new characters of Bane and Selina Kyle whilst getting rid of side characters from the original that, I felt, muddied the plot, such as Miranda Tate, Officer Blake and Officer Foley. It gets rid of the generally pointless, albeit spectacular, plane sequence at the start whilst also removing the undewhelming nuclear bomb subplot that culimated in the mediocre truck chase.

Bruce Wayne gets a full arc with no real reason to use Batman anymore since he becomes Mayor. He’s fulfilled his potential, lived up to his family legacy, created one of his own and is deeply happy with Selina at his side. In the original, it was odd for Batman to ‘die’ and for Bruce Wayne to do so as well with no explanation on how Bruce came to die. Here, Bruce is legally alive and Batman ‘dies’ because Gotham no longer needs him. He was there at the city’s worst time and he got rid of the filth as it kicked and screamed its way out. With the city on its way to its best state, Batman isn’t needed by Gotham and Bruce certainly doesn’t need Gotham.

There are a number of other niggles I have with it, despite still enjoying it, but I won’t dwell on them here. Instead, I’ll let you read my thoughts on how the film should have gone and let you make up your own mind.