The Wisdom of Solomon

Really? That long since last blog? My bad.

Today I decided to take a bus ride.... for no other reason to get out of the house, and get a bag of chips. I am sticking to that story.
I thought I would take something to occupy me on my short journey, so I had a quick look on the bookshelf (very lazy reader me), and picked out a little one that would fit into my pocket, and picked up 'The Wisdom of Solomon', introduced by Adrian Plass.
I have read through it before, and thought it fit the bill nicely, as wisdom is something one can never get enough of..... (bearing in mind also that "those who increase knowledge, also increase sorrow".... oh dear.

One of the snippets that really does excuse my poor blogging regularity :

Be not rash with your mouth
nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God
for God is in Heaven, and you upon Earth
therefore let your words be few

Basically, I think that means, 'if you got nowt to say, say nowt'. like it.

So, my journey is quite short to the chippy, on the bus and back, and it meant I had a bit of a wait (eating said chips), in the bus depot, to catch the return bus home.

Lots of teenage humans dotting around at this time of night (7PM), and they all seem to be 'on the prowl', wandering, hanging around...... just like I used to do when I was that age of course.

In the chippy, a bunch of young lads in the queue before me, surprisingly, were asking each other who is gonna be watching Question Time tonight..... "What's Question Time?" says the gawkiest, while the others look at each other and nod and snigger......

Now, if you live in the UK you could not help but know that tonight the Question Time being spoken about was the BBC panel show, with audience questions, that had, in its own 'wisdom' (or lack of it, depending on your own point of view), invited the leader of the BNP (right wing fascist UK political party), onto the show, because, they (the BBC), now said they had to, as the BNP was now considered, in their eyes, a legitimate political organisation, after winning 2 seats earlier in the year in the European Elections.

What was surprising about the discussion by the chippy lads was that they were at all interested in what is really a politics show, and it resonated a little oddly in this working class small ex pit town why they would be showing such an interest.


So I watched the show, and also the 2 BBC shows afterwards, This Week, and then a re-run of Panorama, 'Undercover - Hate on the Doorstep'

I would really recommend if you can watching that Panorama special, where 2 undercover British Asian reporters spent 8 weeks living on a housing estate in Britain (Bristol actually), with hidden cameras on their person, recording the abuse and hate that they suffered at the hands on mainly young (as young as 9 or 10 years old), and teenage racists. It is really disturbing, but really did serve as an antidote to much of the rubbish that came out of the Question Time show (mainly from the mouth of 1 man, no prizes in guessing who he is).

The very BBC can be so great at programming, and then, so absolutely shit at something else.

Remember them refusing to show the Gaza Appeal earlier in the year? The same bosses who defended that decision were at it again defending the decision to invite a racist political party almost an hour of free airtime (and goodness knows how much else publicity that went alongside this absurd decision).

There are those, many I am hearing, saying that in this country we have the right of free speech, and everyone has the right to air their views, but that is just so hypocritical and downright shameful for the BBC to come that line when they would deny a humanitarian appeal and defend a racist organisation, and allow them time to promote their vile propaganda, it really wants to make me spit.

In the show afterwards it was commented that the BNP leader had been shown up just for what he was, and what his party stood for, and in some ways this was true. He had no answer to many of the criticisms hurled at him, and I am sure plainly lied about some things. No doubt about that whatsoever.

So now the thin 'veneer' as it is being called, of acceptable fascism is being brought into the political mainstream. This is bullshit. This must not stand. It is the Emperors New Clothes.
Or wolf in sheeps clothing. There is no such thing as acceptable fascism, and the more this man and his party are taken seriously, the more they are exposed to people who may just hear what they want to hear, and actually think they have some valid points. And so they grow in number.
Just like a certain mustachioed Charlie Chaplin lookalike Austrian little git and his horde did back in Nazi Germany in the 30's.

It baffles me does politics. I have no faith in any of it, there are the good and the great politicians, but on the whole they just don't swing it for me. Where does it end?

I am reminded of wisdom and wise words, like these ones by The German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller

They Came

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.


There was more, much more that I learned from the Wisdom of Solomon Book, but that will wait til tomorrow. That will be the bit that goes "A Time for Everything'.....