Post Paris Terror Thoughts

I had planned to write about several stories which had appeared in last week’s news but that plan changed after the tragic events in Paris last Friday evening.

It goes without saying no words can sufficiently condemn the actions of the perpetrators and whilst any attack like this is indefensible, it’s somehow all the worse when you consider it seemed to be deliberately aimed at the younger generation.

Equally as worrying though is the reaction to the bombings and the number of knee-jerk reactions, from many different perspectives, many of which play into the hands of extremists.

Let’s look at some of the issues in more detail.

Islam is to blame for these attacks.

This is simple to debunk, Islam is not to blame for these attacks. Islam is used as a “justification”, an excuse by these terrorists. The so-called jihadists have no more to do with mainstream Islam than, for example, the Ku Klux Clan has to do with mainstream Christianity.

Yet people are quick to vilify all Muslims because of the actions of a small minority.

More fundamentally, although it’s probably not the best word to use in these circumstances, I despair that any form of religion still has a place at all in the 21^st century.

Yes, religion and the existence of a form of god or higher being had a “justification” when what happens in the natural world cannot easily be explained.  However, those days are long gone and most, if not all, of these so called “mysteries” can now be explained by science, especially was we gather an understanding of quantum physics.

I despair that I live in a country where we have an established church and it is intrinsically tied in with how the country is run. I find it incredulous that bishops, who earn a very generous stipend and often live in luxury palaces, are afforded a role in Government just because they promulgate some myth about sky fairies.

I am offended that Christian churches preach about looking after the poor yet both the Church of England and Roman Catholic churches are holders of incredible, indeed obscene, wealth which does not find its way to the poor who need help. How many starving Bishops are there, how many Bishops live in poverty? They are all hypocrites, although – to his credit – the current Pope does seem to be trying to address it, although he is doomed to fail and it would not surprise me at all if he “passed away” before too much “damage” was done to the way of life of the Curia, which makes the Mafia look like pussy cats by comparison.

I’m of the generation where I was indoctrinated as a child at school. The Christian story, and story is what it is, was taught as fact – you could not, were not allowed to, argue against or question it. The Bible, we were taught, was fact – rubbish, it’s a collection of “morality” tales no more or less valid than a book like Aesop’s Fables.   

I wonder how many people realise two of the four Gospels in the new testament were written some 300 years after the events they set out to contemporaneously relate? How many of the books of the New Testament were written to fit in with the political climate of the time and to secure the dominant positions of the early leaders of the church?

As a child I fell for the story hook, line and sinker to the extent I even used to go to church.

Eventually I saw through the fairy stories, the myths and hypocrisy.  Not long after I left the church the hypocrisy was underlined when the assistant curate at the church I attended ended up being a guest of Her Majesty because of his penchant of putting boys over his knee and spanking their bare backsides, using his “trusted” role to gain access to his victims.

Of course, IS and their likes want the bombings to lead to more Islamophobia and they see it as “justification” for their existence. It’s a case, in their eyes, of it being the world against Islam. Every anti-Muslim post, every anti-Muslim article, every anti-Muslim tweet plays into the hands of these sick people.

Perversely, it also plays into the hands of right wing extremists in this country, the likes of the self-styled Britain First, who want to foster discord in society and yet, not as bad as IS, they are potentially just as, if not more, dangerous. 

Migrants are to blame for the Paris bombings

This is an area where there is no black or white answer, indeed it’s a horrible murky grey issue but it’s an issue being exploited by both sides.

Most of those coming to Europe are genuine migrants, fleeing the civil war in Syria. Be it fleeing the Assad regime or the so called IS. However, it is also abundantly clear there are those who are not genuine refugees, in the internationally legally defined meaning of a refugee. Some are economic migrants and it is naïve in the extreme to assume the exodus is not being used as cover by terrorists.

The problem is how do you identify who falls into which category?

The more worrying problem is we, in Europe, are now too late to do anything about it, the door has been opened, the genie has been let out of the bottle.

What should have happened, and I realise this will offend the lovey-dovey lefties, is all those wanting refugee status should have been put in camps in the first safe country they arrived in and they should have then processed individually with full background checks carried out. Yes, it would have taken a long time and it would put pressure on receiving countries but with international support it could have been managed.

Now we have absolutely no idea who is roaming free in Europe, not helped by the EU open border policy.

Of course many have latched onto this on social media.

Some are calling for the demonization and expulsion of all migrants – this is not the answer. It’s not physically possible and in the case of genuine refugees it just compounds their situation and it more likely to fester more discontent and play into the hands of the terrorists.

Equally as dangerous as calling for the expulsion of migrants is arguing none of these “migrants” can be terrorists.

A friend of mine shared a post on Facebook yesterday which naively attempted to debunk the idea one of the bombers could have been a migrant. I’m hoping the friend, who is a very intelligent person, who shared it did so to show the stupidity of the argument, rather than endorsing the sentiments.

Anyone who says or believes no terrorists came in with the migrants is sadly deluded.

It doesn’t need to be a large number of the migrants, even a couple of dozen out of the tens of thousands is enough to wreak havoc. To deny the possibility is simply dangerous and absurd. 

Why the focus on Paris when there are bombings throughout the world?

This has been a common theme on social media.

Of course there is more of a focus on the bombings in Paris throughout Europe – when something happens in your own back yard it is more significant, it’s more personal.

I’ve been to Paris, I love Paris, I’ve eaten on the terrace of a French restaurant more times than I care to remember, it could have been me.

This attack could have happened anywhere in Europe, it’s just unfortunate it was Paris, it could have been Brussels, Berlin, London even Milton Keynes where I live.

Those in the Western World can relate more closely to events in Paris, most of us recognise it could easily have been us or our loved ones involved – it’s more personal.

It doesn’t mean we don’t care about those killed in other terrorist attacks – however we only have so much compassion we can give, if we spent our entire lives worrying about every single victim throughout the world we would be jabbering wrecks.

I also wonder how many of those arguing the case for treating other terrorist victims the same way are making the point as if to say “look at me, aren’t I compassionate?”

Compassion is not measured by the wearing your heart on your sleeve.

Comparisons have been made with bombings in Beirut and Baghdad in the days either side of the Paris attacks. Yes it is sad people have died in those attacks and their lives are no less valuable than those lost in Paris.

Thankfully it’s rare for such atrocities to occur in Europe, however – and it’s a reflection of how humans react - if there were bombings in Europe on a near daily basis it would soon stop becoming headline news – it’s news because it is exceptional in the context of Western Europe.      

Excluding Paris, 6,711 people have been killed in terrorist attacks so far in 2015, of which 6,018 can be attributed to IS or their affiliates – every single one of the deaths is regrettable (apart from the terrorists who killed themselves in the process of carrying out their deeds) but I’m not going to lose sleep over those I cannot relate to. If that last statement offends some people – tough but I’m not going to be a hypocrite and show faux compassion.

What next?

This is not the time for political point scoring but leaders (and former leaders) in the “West” need to examine their consciences as their actions led to the growth if the likes of IS.

I wonder how easily Tony Bliar and George W Bush sleep at night – probably very well as they aren’t paying the price for their actions. Perhaps if the International Courts grew some balls then they would be bought to account for their actions.

Unfortunately,  IS is here and cannot be ignored. Action, and decisive action, needs to be taken to deal with them. It’s not a perfect situation by any stretch of the imagination but it’s where we are.

I saw a post on Facebook this morning calling the French terrorists for bombing IS targets in Syria today – that has to be one of the most out of touch, naive comments I’ve seen since the Paris attacks – what does the poster want to do – ignore them and hope they go away? Negotiate – with whom? Put them on the naughty step?

The world needs to unite to address this problem – this is the opportunity for the United Nations, for the first time in its existence, to do what it says on the tin – it will not be easy, the price will be high but the IS problem will not go away unless decisive action is taken.    

Chicken

Yep, I chickened out.

I know I said I was going to walk into the polling station and write “none of the above” on my ballot paper – but that was before I had the nightmare.

In this nightmare the Conservative and Labour candidates in my constituency had exactly the same number of votes and the vote was decided with a toss of a coin, which the Labour candidate won.

That win then gave Labour one seat more than the Conservatives in Parliament which meant Ed Mili-bland and Ed Balls-up became Prime Minister and Chancellor respectively and all because I spoiled my ballot paper.

Luckily it was only a dream but if it happened in reality I would never be able to live with myself  - the thought that by spoiling my paper I could have put Milli-bland in power would be enough to send me to MK station and throw myself in front of a Pendolino.

So, as much as I dislike Cameron I could not take the chance.

I Hate Shopping

I’m the first to admit I’m not a natural shopper.

When I have to go and buy clothes it’s a matter of diving into a shop, seeing what I quite like, buy it and out. I can buy a complete wardrobe of clothes in under an hour and they’ll last me a couple of years.

Decades ago I was coerced into going clothes shopping with my then girlfriend. We arrived at the shopping centre bang on 09:00, just as the shops opened. Just before 17:30 she finally bought the only item of the day, an outfit she had seen in the very first shop some eight hours earlier.

Needless to say she was very soon an ex-girlfriend and that was eight wasted hours of my life I would never get back.

Nowadays I tend to confine my shopping forays to food shopping, even that is fraught with annoyances.

First of all there is the parking. Why does everyone park as near as possible to the entrance of the shop? Why are people so lazy?

I always park in the furthest part of the car park. Finding a space is generally easier and a little bit of exercise hurt nobody.

Now I fully understand supermarkets having disabled parking spaces near the entrance to the store, although nothing makes my blood boil more than when people abuse disabled parking spaces – in the unlikely event I was standing as a politician I would invoke a law which confiscated the car of anyone who misused a disabled parking space.

What I don’t understand is “parent and child” parking spaces. Are children nowadays born without functioning limbs? Are they incapable of walking more than a few yards? Why should people have priority parking because they choose to breed?

When I was a youngster my parents never had a car, it was a good mile to the nearest shops and we were either pushed there in our pram / pushchair or once we were able to walk we walked.

It was the same with going to school – even at infant school it was a walk of just under a mile each way – there was no such thing as a school run. No impatient parents getting as close to the school gates as possible, ignoring the rules of the road and blocking other motorists just to save their precious mite having to walk a few extra paces.

No wonder we have an obesity crisis in our society.

Ideally I prefer to do my food shopping at independent stores but where I live, in the soulless metropolis that is Milton Keynes, such independent stores are few and far between so supermarket shopping is the only practical alternative.

My supermarket of choice is the well known “upmarket” one – not for any snob value, although they do stock some more exotic items not found elsewhere.

The big advantage for me is you can self-scan your shopping as you go around the store. This means you can watch your bill steadily rise as you shop and, yes, it can be very disconcerting when you’re only half way down the third aisle and the total passes the £30 mark.

For me, however, the biggest advantage of self-scan is you don’t have to engage in meaningless inane conversations with checkout operators. I don’t want false bonhomie when I go shopping, I just want to buy, pay and go without engaging in unnecessary social intercourse.

I know most other supermarkets have self-checkouts but they are not the same as scan as you go. You have to scan and pack all in one go and you have to face the perils of the scales. You can guarantee something will be the wrong weight or will be too light to register. You then have to hang around for some rushed worker to come and reset the till – thus undermining the whole “quickness” of the exercise.

The worse offender for this is Morrisons. You only have to sneeze or even move the carrier bag more than a millimetre for the scales to throw a wobbly. On a recent visit after seven of the eight items I attempted to purchase failed to register properly, the person supervising the checkout then wondered why I just walked out and left my shopping there.

Occasionally I do have to visit the other supermarkets as there are some items I need which my preferred store does not stock. These trips usually end up with me being in a bad mood by the end.

Take my visit to the leading supermarket chain yesterday. Being home during the day I tend to food shop at the quietest time of the day and around 10:00 is a good time midweek.

Indeed yesterday there were very few customers in the shop, yet the experience was a nightmare.
Why?

Well the aisles were full of the store’s employees doing shopping for those who cannot be arsed to get off they backsides to do their own shopping.

Why can’t supermarkets fulfil these online orders from the warehouse or an area hub? Why do these orders need to be fulfilled on the main shop floor?

It’s not as if the staff use ordinary trollies either, they use big cumbersome monstrosities? Presumably so they can shop for several customers at once.

Yesterday I was standing slightly back from the shelf comparing at various items, when one of these company shoppers just parked their wagon right in front of me obstructing my view and any access to the items. Then they had the temerity to give me a dirty look when I made a comment.

Talking of supermarket trollies, the one thing that really makes my blood boil, more than anything else, is parents who allow their children to stand in the trolley itself. That is so rude.

Who knows what crap (literally) the child has walked in yet they are then allowed to walk around inside the trolley with impunity. The next person using that trolley is going to put food in it. OK the food may be wrapped but look at this scenario.

Child steps in dog excrement.

Child stands in trolley.

Some remains of said dog excrement transfers to trolley.

Next customer puts packed meat into said trolley.

Excrement transfers to food packaging.

Food then transferred to fridge.

Need I say any more?

If I owned a supermarket any parent who allowed their child to stand in the trolley would be thrown out and banned. The trollies have child seats for goodness sake. If the child is too big for the child seat it’s big enough to walk.

It’s a wonder I don’t burst a blood vessel every time I go food shopping.