Music, or Not... It's all a matter of opinion

I have listened to music for as long as I can remember, I don’t recall songs in the family, but ever since I listened to Uncle Mac on a Saturday morning; music has played a significant part of my life. There is music out there that inspires me, soothes me, drives me on, makes me emotional, makes me happy, and that reflects every mood you can imagine, and music that reminds me of most of the incidents of my life.

As, I think, with most people, the music I consider best, most important to me is the music I was listening to as a youth and young man, growing up, in my scuffling days. Nowadays I echo the words of my parents generation, the music is ok, but not as good as when I was younger. I always said I would never go that way… 

I have always tried to follow contemporary music, the music of the day, but my tastes are very broad, ranging from traditional, rock, blues, jazz, opera, classical, medieval… a broad range of stuff. I don’t, however, like to pigeon-hole music, it simply doesn’t work. There are some performances that fir snugly into a category, but the majority, especially when you look at albums, concerts and careers, that span many genres.

I personally prefer to consider music in three categories, I like it, I don’t like it, I am ambivalent towards it, and what fits into each category will be your own, we will all have different lists under each heading. It doesn’t mean the music I love is better than the music you love, or vice versa. Of course some music is “good” in that it conforms to the musical rules, is technically well played and sung, but that doesn’t mean it is enjoyable necessarily, as there is some music that doesn’t conform to the rules, is technically badly played and sung, but can still be enjoyable.

The thing that horrifies me about music nowadays, what has devalued new music over the last 10 or 15 years can be summed up in two words… Simon Cowell. Of course Cowell wasn’t the first to do what he does, but he is probably the best at it, and the current “master”.

Historically people made music, yes, many had managers, producers and the rest, but historically most artists, certainly the ones that lasted more than the one brief spark of fame, learned their craft on the streets, in clubs, pubs, colleges and bottom of the bill at festivals and concert halls. They learned to respond, they learned to adapt their material, they learned what was liked, what wasn’t. They could build on the good things and grow into mature quality performers. If you are playing a small club to 100 people, you can see their response to what you do petty clearly.

Too many artists now think the road to success is through the talent show route, Britain’s Got Talent, X-Factor… and of course that is the way to short term success… every series, thousands of “wannabees”  makes total fools of themselves, lining Cowell’s pockets in the process, for the sake of the life changing payday. Of course if they can invent a heartrending back story they have a better chance of being “talented”.

Listen critically to these shows, the 12 or so individuals or bands that get to the live finals have all displayed some qualities in the auditions and early part of the process, then in the finals, under the glare of a massive publicity machine, the are morphed by the show into 12 identikit acts, singing songs they wouldn’t touch in real life, in a way they wouldn’t sing them for themselves, to identikit arrangements… until they are all totally interchangeable, and interchangeable with last years class as well…it is all bland manufactured music. These people haven’t learned their craft around the live circuit, benefit parasitically from the expertise of the soulless machine that Cowell presides over to turn out mindless identikit

 music .

Look now at the music racks in the supermarkets… what percent of the CD’s on display are spawned by these talent shows? I don’t have a figure, but it is pretty high. So where is the space for the talented artists who learn their craft and do it for themselves.. no chance. At least now with u-tube and downloads they can get their names and product out to more people, but the machine will never support anyone like that, because, well, they are too maverick, they have not sold their souls or integrity…

Very few people have come through this process and gone on to develop careers as stars, there are exceptions, of course, in the like sof Will Young who is a gifted artist and entertainer, and I feel Leona Lewis will also achieve status. Others are currently very successful, mainly because of their youth, looks and charm (I’m told) such as One Direction and JLS, but do either have anything of their own to offer the world?

The most hapless and appalling offshoots though are the acts that achieve success through novelty value…such as Jedward and Chico.

I’d prefer not to comment on the singers who have been in the finals of Britain’s got Talent and gone on to “stardom”.

The other musical area which I detest, as much as the “reality show” syndrome is the bad crooner or standard singer. One thing I demand when listening to music that the arrangement and performance be sympathetic to the lyric, it doesn’t have to be the same arrangement and style as the original versions, even where the original can be remembered. It does however have to be sympathetic.

I recall watching a TV variety show, with one of these so called crooners topping the bill. He ended on a jolly bouncy song, where he danced energetically around the stage exhorting the audience to clap along to the beat. That in itself is no bad thing, a crowd pleasing jolly climax. The song he chose for this performance was a song written by Joni Mitchell, charting her frame of mind at he break up of a major relationship, a song called Both Sides Now. It is a very personal and introverted acknowledgement of sorrow and despair. It is not the sort of song that can be treated as this artist treated it.

These crooners are, in my view, parasitic performers with no soul or integrity, just cashing in on a song which was popular at the time, regardless of it’s meaning and content.

There are of course, crooners of this type who read songs perfectly, the obvious examples being Frank Sinatra and Matt Munro, both of who seemed to understand every lyric and to reflect it beautifully in the performances.

I don’t think I am a luddite when it comes to music, as I said earlier my tastes are wide, much of the music I listen to dates back before my own lifetime.. I thrill to a Mahler Symphony, the blues of Robert Johnson, the jazz stylings of Django Rheinhardt, I worship the traditional ballad singing of the Watersons, the Copper Family. Many of my favourite artists grew out of the hippy generation, such as the Grateful Dead. Bob Dylan has been an inspiration to me and a route into other art forms, and we will never see the like of the Beatles again.

When the music of my generation grew too pompous and grandiose, up came some wonderful music, a total antidote to it, and I stlll love the music of the Clash and the Sex Pistols who refreshed things when it was needed, unfortunately, the punk rising was as short lived as it was meteoric, and left behind a bit of a void that has been filled with what is, in my opinion, a bland vapid form of identikit popular music springing out of shows which valued production and formula above originality and talent, and as far as I can see despised ant form of originality or personality.

I long to see a 21^st century version of the Sex Pistols appear, in whatever guise, to busrst the bubble of mediocrity and revitalise music as an artform.

As I said right at the beginning, music is a subjective thing, not good or bad, but liked or not liked. I have tried to share some of my views on why I dislike some music so totally. In my personal opinion, this music is simply dumbing down music and art, and leads to reducing everything to the lowest common denominator, which is something I sadly regret.

Football.. what has gone wrong?

OK, I admit it, I’m a football fan. Support my home town team, Leicester City. (I’m not looking for sympathy by saying that) and have a strong liking for the Spurs. Everyone should support their home town team, even if they move away and watch someone else their team should be the home town team, Y’know the old saying, first love never dies.

My first memories of football are going to a second eleven match in the 57/58 season, I then remember the Munich air disaster, and the United’s incredible rise to reach the cup final that same season.

After that I was a regular at Filbert Street, supporting the City, but so impressed by the wonderful Spurs team of the early 60’s… one of the two greatest sides ever to play in the football league. I was a regular at Filbert Street for the next 16 years, during which time I was privileged to see the other of the two greatest sides… Manchester United circa 1969 with George Best, Dennis Law, Bobby Charlton and the rest.

You can’t compare teams across generations, too many things change, the ball, the footwear, even the rules… so we cannot say that either of these sides were the best… both stood head and shoulders above everything else at the time, or whether Barcelona’s current side is the greatest… all three were magnificent sides and played glorious flowing football, with a smile, and entertained.

I became an armchair fan in the mid 70’s because I was spending most of my weekends in a city that didn’t have a professional team, and lost the habit of going. It corresponded with the break-up of the best Leicester team I’ve seen, that built by Jimmy Bloomfield in the early seventies. The fact that I had seen friends badly hurt in the endemic football violence at the time didn’t help.

I was still a keen television, armchair, fan, kept on top of everything, and was thrilled when my boyhood hero’s, Spurs, started the trend of importing players, starting with the great Ricky Villa and Ossie Ardiles.

I still watch football, still get passionate about it sometimes, but it doesn’t move me like it used to. There are many reasons for this… I’m older… have more interests, have worked weekends… but the two things that have disillusioned me and driven me away from football are Sky TV and the obscene amounts of money they have poured into the game.

I said earlier you can’t judge if the current players are better than those I grew up watching. You can’t doubt the ability of the likes of Renaldo, Drogba, Rooney, Giggs and the rest, you can admire them as players, but you can’t love them! They are not people to look up to… I would rather see a George Best, Tony Currie, Rodney Marsh, Charlie Cooke, Charlie George any day… gifted players with terrific flair, but never afraid to smile, express themselves and really enjoy themselves on the pitch. I miss that.

I recall a story a friend told me in the mid-sixties… around the time England were winning the World Cup… he used to leave the ground, walk into town for his Sports Mercury, and catch a bus home. His bus happened to go by the ground, and most weeks the City Left Winger (Stringy) would get on the bus, carrying a kit bag, and would always talk to other punters who wanted to ask him about the game. At that time football was a working mans’ game for a working man to play.

Anyway, football was played on a Saturday at 3.00 in the afternoon, an ideal time, cos you could have a beer and lunch, go to the match and get home at a reasonable time, relatively… Sunderland fans going to Plymouth would still be late home of course. But all the games kicked off at the same time, we saw edited highlights at night, and there were midweek games at each end of the season.

The introduction of all-seater stadia is a different debate, not for here, but of course it cost money to do it, and of course the fans paid it ultimately.

With the introduction of the premier league and Sky TV, everything was to change. For Sky to cover their costs and make money, they have to show games live to attract advertising revenue, several games, each week. This led to games being played at different times throughout the Saturday and Sunday, as well as Monday night. This of course leads to being able to watch several games every weekend. Much as I loved football I cannot watch that much, it is wasted, sure you can pick you games, but it means now that whenever you go to a pub or many restaurants over the weekend there is football playing on a multitude of screens around the place. Most people ignore it, but it is intrusive and for most, unwelcome.

The worst thing about this is that the tail is wagging the dog… the football league will rearrange matches, hold back kick-offs, play at all sorts of times to accommodate Sky’s scheduling. Some games are rescheduled for security reasons, which I think is a bit doubtful as a concept, but at least can be understood.

Sky has encouraged the ballyhoo around the teams lining up with countless mascots, flags and banners and doing the ritual handshake. To me that is a farce, just pointless in my view.

Of course Sky also started the “treat” of having cameras at every angle and point around the pitch, we can see every tackle, goal, foul, pass, offside and the rest about 15 times. All that does it disrupts the flow of the match (on TV) and gives pompous pundits the chance to pillory referees, who have a bloody hard job refereeing a bunch of prima donnas who fall down and writhe in agony if a hair comes out of place, without being castigated every weekend by every TV pundit. In the days before trial by television, half the fun was that you only saw it as the ref saw it… and the debates were part of the fans ritual. Having said that, the one piece of technology we do need doesn’t yet exist… goal-line technology.

With the huge amount of money the clubs get from Sky for selling their birth-right to be on wall to wall TV, I would like to see them use the money to subsidise admission, especially in these days of austerity, so as in my youth, families could all go together to watch the match without having to sell the car to get in.

Instead the money goes on multi million pound transfer fees, telephone number salaries and teams of hangers on, psychologists, dieticians and the rest reducing the beautiful game to a clinical science.

It is then the fans who pay… £60, £70 per ticket is not unusual, what does that mean for a family… potentially £240 for admission? In the 60’s and 70’s in the ground you could buy a beer, a hotdog, a burger, pie, Bovril coffee or whatever, I don’t recall the prices, but they were comfortably affordable… these days burgers at £6… how can that be justified?

Ever been to Wembley, or watched a game on the TV? Of course you have, what do you notice, half of the crowd are missing for the first ten minutes of second half… they are munching their prawn sandwiches and drinking champagne in a plush corporate hospitality suite. Are these people football fans… no. They are corporate guests, there for the event, the business opportunities not the football. So, what about the loyal fans?

Then we have the players, I don’t know where to start… I can’t blame Sky for the international employment agreements, but without the Sky money we wouldn’t have our football clubs employing so many imported mercenaries. Of course not every non-British player in the league is a Tevez, but many are, also many are more like a Zola, who was an old school professional, and indeed a credit.

The problem with so many imports in the league is of course that there are less British players, which restricts the number of players available for international selection for the home nations, which means that average players can establish themselves in the international teams because the only competition for their place is not British, this often leads the players to become arrogant, complacent and treat the international games lightly… I can see no other explanation for some of their miserable performances. Please think of your own names here… I will refrain from putting them.

Another thing I want to mention is the oligarchs at Chelsea and Manchester City…men who apparently love the game, but you feel are motivated by the huge profits available from TV deals and from the merchandising. In these cases, they have used their money to attract what they consider to be the cream of world football to their clubs and paid them such unimaginable amounts of money to do it. They have an injury, don’t worry, we’ll pay £40 million for a replacement for a few weeks… it upends the playing field. With these oligarchs the other clubs can’t compete.

You have to admire Manchester United and Arsenal (even if grudgingly) because both clubs have built up their success by shrewd purchases, high quality academies and bringing their own players through. They both now have the status to attract top players without being blackmailed into paying telephone number salaries, the shirt is reward enough for most (not all, of course, but probably the majority)

The final thing is that these clubs now have such huge squads, top teams squads of 25 can all be current internationals, many of them commanding transfer fees in excess of the cost of other whole teams, many of them commanding salaries in excess of other clubs entire salary bills.

Finally, the squad system, also a product of the way the game has been driven by the Sky billions, means that when you pay your kings ransom for your ticket, you are not going to get to see half of the players you want to, half will be on the bench, others not even In the match-day squad. This, I believe, short-changes fans who want to see the players that they have heard about and admire.

I am probably a curmudgeonly old luddite, especially in this, but I yearn for the days when a football club represented the people of the town, the players had a real connection with the club and supporters, a pride in the shirt, and if they were playing well, they played, if they lost form, they were replaced by a reserve, often a youngster looking to start his career.

In 1967 Glasgow Celtic became the first British side to win the European Cup, and every player was born within 25 miles of their stadium. These days most of the players don’t live within 25 miles of the ground… they live in wealthy enclaves and commute… they know they will probably be playing elsewhere in a couple of years!

OK, I’ve done, and most will think bloody old fart, always wants the old days back, it was much better when I was a youth…  for the most part I don’t and it wasn’t… but in this, yes, I do want to see football go back to it’s roots, but I also know there is no way it ever can.

I think the potential demise of Rangers could be optimistic… maybe it will lead to similar events in some English clubs which could herald a return to sensible business models, sustainable salaries, and make the game once again a working mans’ game not a corporate business opportunity. I know it cannot happen, not only because there are so few working men now… but I can dream

Care Crisis Lobby

A few weeks ago I received an email from Rethink Mental Illness, inviting all supporters to participate in the CareCrisis Lobby at Westminster on March 6^th. My motivation now is to do all I can to support people with Mental Illness and their carers because I have seen the problems from the inside, and have seen how unsupported they are.

The current Welfare Bill, in my view, reduces the level of support for vulnerable people and make things worse for them, so I signed on the dotted line and went along.

I secured an appointment with my MP, and considered what points I should put to him. I decided the main points would be around adequate care plans for discharge, on-going support after discharge, the benefit forms which do not adequately cater for mental illness, the inadequacy of policing of the Mental Health Service by the CQC, lack of response to physical issues whilst mentally ill, and lack of dignity and basic care all too often seen on the acute wards. A big agenda, but it is a big subject.

I arrived in London and went to the Care Crisis lobby meeting, where I told my story “for the records” was interviewed about why I was there, what I wanted to achieve, and met many wonderful people all fighting the same causes.

From there I went to the Rethink meeting, down the road, where I was again greeted as a long lost friend. I was allocated a support worker to look after me for the afternoon in Westminster Hall. It was my first experience of this kind of event and although I felt confident of my subject and what I wanted to say, I was now feeling a bit daunted, so I really appreciated this support.

The Rethink Team took all of us with appointments across to Westminster Hall and did so much to get people to practice their questions if they wanted to, to explain what was going on and to generally keep everyone relaxed and calm.

I was, I think, privileged. Although my MP had contacted me the day before to say that sadly he could not keep the appointment, his PA would meet me if I was happy with that.

I met the PA, with my Rethink Supporter, in the Central Lobby, rather than in Westminster Hall, and despite the grandeur of the setting, it was more comfortable for me, and I was able to spend nearly 50 minutes talking to her, putting my points, without being interrupted or side-tracked. I was really delighted with the meeting and she took pages of notes which she promised to discuss with the MP at the first opportunity.

After the meetings, the Rethink group gathered to go back to the Care Crisis event, where I was again interviewed to compare what I had wanted to achieve with what I had achieved.

After that, I was enjoying a hard earned coffee, ok my third, after all that talking in Westminster, when  I was approached and asked if I was me… I confirmed that I was and was told “We’ve been watching your tweets go up, and wanted to talk to you for some quotes”, so I was happy to do another interview.

From there, I went back to the Rethink Meeting Room for a debrief on the events of the afternoon.

I had a really good day, was looked after so well by the Rethink Staff and encouraged and made to feel welcome at all times by everyone I met. It made for a really interesting and rewarding day for me.

The main point, of course, is whether the government will take notice of what everyone told them, it is probably too early to know that, but I have heard from my MP that he is going to take up a number of the points for me, and the overall feedback I have heard has been very positive.

I would like to thank Rethink for providing me, and hundreds more, this opportunity to put our concerns to our MP’s. This is such a huge and important debate and I was so delighted to be involved, and make my points heard by people who can actually have an impact on the bill.

The Dream Died

It doesn’t take a genius to know that the country, indeed the planet is in a bad way, and that the government hasn’t a clue how to deal with it, society is crumbling and optimism has seldom been at a lower ebb. Yet only 50 years ago Prime Minister MacMillan was saying, with some justification, “you have never had it so good”

MacMillan’s epitaph was “A man so powerful he could do anything he wanted to…. So he didn’t” I had to think about that, but what a powerful epitaph that is.

Of course he took the leadership after the second devastating world war in 25 years, rationing was still in place on many items. But he was right, there was a tremendous feeling of relief in the air after the dark days of the war, because so many men, and women, had perished, people now had some money so manufacturing was thriving and there were plenty of jobs.

The class system, which started to crumble with the loss of the Titanic, and further through the first world war was falling apart. By the mid-fifties maids were only found in the very richest households, and the NHS was delivering credible medicine and treatment to the masses. Housing was improving dramatically with the huge council housing estates being erected in the suburbs of most major cities.

Things were looking up for most families.

This, however, was the start of the road to the situation we now find ourselves in.

Historically people had large families, a throwback to the days of high infant mortality, and lived in small areas, generation after generation. Now families were settling down to more manageable numbers, the fear of mortality and further wars had been more or less neutralized in most areas (now this is a very good development in many ways but that is not the subject of this article). However, young married couples were able to get good accommodation in council houses, and started to move away from their parents and grandparents, which had the effect of narrowing their field of immediate support, This was the start of the break-down of the extended family, which was so important a part of the community support network.

As the fifties grew into the sixties, youth culture started to grow, before then, youngsters had looked exactly like their parents, youngsters were now finding their own styles and ways of living. The arts were at the forefront of this revolution. Youth culture took on new identities, the Teddy Boys, Angry Young Men, Beatniks, Mods, Rocker, Hippies… these groups all defined by the music they favoured and dress style the adopted. Youth had become almost another race, almost another species

The “Swinging Sixties” were so creative for the arts, but also rather devisive as part of the joy of the ‘scene’ for the youngsters was that their music and heroes offended their parents, the more offense they caused, the better they liked them. With the Summer of Love came the hippy generation, which I fully bought into.

But by now a significant number of the younger generation were living, albeit vicariously, the rock’n’roll life style.

More and more younger people were leaving home to live in the bigger cities where there was perceived to be more “action”, and more people were starting to play music, travelling with their songs, setting up new bases in different cities.

This was wonderful for the arts, a real cross pollination of ideas and cultures, thriving centres for music, poetry, writing, painting, and despite the mountains of utter rot we thrilled to, this was possibly the most creative period in the arts since the renaissance. Consequently I was in a sort of heaven.

On the other hand, along with the new styles we took a freedom, partly because we could, after the austerity of the war and the earlier great depression and wanted to live in our way, without the stultifying pressures and strictures of the 3 piece suit, bowler hat and nine to five.

We shunned the values of our parents, and more than any other, thought that the enlightenment from the marijuana, the dabbling with Buddhist texts, the freedom to love whoever we wanted to whenever we wanted to, the anti-war protests, ban the bomb marches and the rest made us better than previous generations, made us think we had the answers, made us know better.

We ran headlong into a glorious new morning of enlightenment and freedom. Who were we kidding? We were running when we had barely learned to walk. With hindsight it was always going to blow up in our faces.

Of course as our parents and grandparents were retiring, we had to start taking some responsibility. And we hadn’t a clue!!!

Our life styles had split so many families up, yes we could write, ring, go home for Christmas and so on, but we didn’t have the day to day support in bringing up our children and living our lives. We were now having families, miles away from family, it was becoming fashionable to live in a cellular way, once married, or at least co-habiting, it was not done to stay near our parents… families were now just the couple and their children, no parents, grandparents on hand, no life-long neighbours to support you. In fact we barely knew who our neighbours were now.

We still craved our freedom, and took it now vicariously by giving our children even more freedom than we took as youths and young adults.

Of course they accepted that freedom, and like us, took their own, took the boundaries several steps further. In short, they rebelled against us and rejected our values

By the end of the Seventies a new phenomenon arrived on the scene. Mrs Thatcher. Whatever you feel about her politics is irrelevant. What she did was to pit the working man against the authorities, she set out to crush the miners protest against pit closures (whether this was right or wrong doesn’t matter here) and her tactics were, well, aggressive. There was massive anger within the country over this, as the miners strike riots split the country, split families.

She also did much with the rates, or council tax, or poll-tax or whatever it was called. Again her stance was unmoving, and however unpopular there was no compromise, no discussion, and it caused massive civil unrest.

The streets of most cities in England erupted in an orgy of violence and flames in the spring of 1981.

Now many of the people who had been the backbone of a stable country were retiring, the hippy generation were basically now gaining the positions of influence, and families are now spread across the four corners of the country, if not the world. What chance was there for a society where the leaders were more used to saying “wow man look at the groovy colours”

The main influence of Thatchers rule was to both destroy our manufacturing industries along with the unions and to convince everyone that they could, and should, own everything and have wealth.

Of course in some ways you cant argue with that, but it led to a headlong rush into commercialism, everyone was out to make the fast buck, the survival of the richest, and a person’s worth was judged by bank balance and size of motor car, not what they are and do.

There are some wealthy people, wealthy beyond imagining, are also wonderful generous human beings, Bill Gates springs to mind. There are good, bad and indifferent in any group, any selection of people.

The tensions created under Thatchers watch were not defused, there remained tension between haves and have-nots, and as the world shrank with round the clock reporting, satellities and the rest, news expanded to offer more and more revelations of ‘foul play’ amongst the movers and shakers, creating even more dissatisfaction among the population.

The increase in net immigration has fuelled the tensions, adding a horrifying, tragic and undesirable racial element to the mix. The issue is not about ‘race’ or ‘job’s here, it is a logistical issue of space. In the UK now the most of the population is living in incredibly crowded spaces, relatively speaking, and the permanent feelings of surveillance from CCTV etc makes us all tend to go home and draw the curtains, we mix with friends and family, but not with our communities, which further isolates us. With isolation comes suspicion and fear, further fuelling the tensions and stresses we are all living with.

These tensions if not diffused will continue to ferment, and have to have releases, the inevitable outcome will be civil disturbances of one kind or another, we have seen this manifest itself in football, culminating in the horrors of the Heysel Stadium and the pitched battles at many other grounds, the peaceful protests which suddenly turn explosive and violent and ultimately the mass riots of last summer, which were triggered by a shooting, but that was just the catalyst that sparked the reaction, it was not the underlying problem. Even now, months on, nothing has been done to relieve the tensions, the pressures and tension are still there, bubbling away, and will erupt again and again unless we do something useful.

We also have to consider this… I believe most bad in people is a result of upbringing, lack of the extended family, poor parenting, poor leadership and lack of role models either in the house or in society at large.

So called role models nowadays are pampered prima donnas playing football, talentless uninteresting people trying to sing, comedians who only get a laugh by using four letter words, celebrities who are celebrities only because they are celebrities. So, if badness in youngsters these days is often the blame of the parents, if they were bad parents, what made them so… their parents. For me, it is my generation, the hippy movement that have totally wrecked society. I believe we had a damn good try to make things better, but failed so badly that we destroyed everything we believed in, everything we wanted.

However, there are other options, I also believe that even the best, most loving, supportive parents can produce horrid children, whether they are made like that by external influence or by something in their make-up. I don’t know, but I don’t think every bad child/youth can be blamed on the parents.

The isolation and not knowing our neighbours has fostered a lack of understanding of our neighbours, which leads to distrust, ultimately dislike and fear, a situation heightend if those neighbours are in any way different to us, and the tensions continue to build as society continues to malfunction.

So, our naivety, I think that was it, has led to a succession of situations where successive governments have failed to understand the public, have encouraged a society where the definition of success is to trample over everyone and acquire as much as possible, like a giant game of Monopoly. This has inevitably created jealousies, tensions between rich and poor, between black and white, between different ethnic groups, between neighbours, between football clubs, between churches even.

So, the big question is how to solve it. I don’t think there is an easy way. Governments, laws, churches cannot resolve it, I think it has to come from the people themselves, ourselves, to understand what is happening, to decide that this is wrong and to unite someway to repair the damage. It does however need a catalyst to make that happen, as it took the catalyst of a shooting in Tottenham to make the volcano erupt and trigger the riots, there needs to be an event to stimulate the public to unite and take action.

Who knows what that event could be, logic says it will be a war, (think of the community spirit in the streets of England during the blitz) or maybe an act of terrorism, or maybe even a catastrophic lapse of judgement by a politician, a judge or top banker or the end of this Elizabethan era.

Remembering the adage “for evil to thrive it just takes a good man to be silent” I think we need another velvet revolution. We are all likely to talk amongst our friends, to tweet or even blog about how unjust something is.       We might build up a body of support, but it needs a huge body of support to achieve anything, but it can be done.

We need to tell not only our friends that things are wrong, but to tell the people involved, those who can make the differences, what is wrong. If we do that, as well as gathering support through the country, we will start to see things happen.

Any such movement must be fully inclusive, rich and poor, black and white, old and young, it must not exclude any sector of the society, that way society can start to unite, and challenge those who are perceived as causing the problems, whether it is the government, the church, the press, Simon Cowell or a terror cell.

I can’t see how it can happen yet, I can’t see what the outcome will be if it does, what I do know is that if we don’t start to take this on now, it will be taken out of our hands, the next catalyst could cause something that will make last summer’s riots look like a tea party. I hope to god not, but, none of us can read the future, but I know something has to change in society, and change quickly.

I don’t want to see another world war, I believe war will continue, on a more local basis, as we have seen in Vietnam, South Atlantic, Iraq, Afghanistan... as the major powers will not jeopardise their own countries by trigger all-out war. More terrorist atrocities are perhaps inevitable, but nothing on the scale of 9/11. Perhaps the most likely scenario will be the arrival of a virulent epidemic, like the bird flu that we have been threatened with for so long.

Whatever the cause, it is not a pleasant thought, I am optimistic that the innate goodness and sense of decent people will show us a way of uniting and rebuilding the community, including people of every race, creed, age and type, and allow us to build a better, brighter tomorrow, which is the dream we started with and got so badly wrong