politics

PC 512 Does it Matter?

~ postcardscribblesblog ~ Leave a comment

Talk about choosing a title for some weekly scribbles with the opportunity to range far and wide! Maybe I should simply focus on personal issues like, for instance: ‘Do you insist on the loo seat being left down?’ OK! Immediately we are divided between those of you who call the ‘water closet’ the loo and those who call it the toilet! Or you might be confused and use the term ‘lavatory’ which, if I was being pedantic, is ‘a fixed basin with running water’ but can be used to refer to the whole room with a toilet (aka loo) and basin. We had a lunch party last week and the loo seat and lid were left up, left down, just the lid up ….. despite us having one of those soft closure lids! (Note 1) I hope our guests smiled when they saw that we buy our loo paper from ‘Who Gives a Crap’!

Doesn’t matter, does it, what you call it? And sitting down with friends for lunch, it doesn’t matter whether you call the piece of material to protect your clothes a napkin or a serviette, does it? Providing it’s material not paper!

It doesn’t matter how you perform a yoga posture – we are all different mentally and physically and no one should make any judgments. It simply does not matter – until the ego taps you on the shoulder and asks why you haven’t…..! And if you believe that the practice of yoga, hot or not, could be ego-free, try it yourself. You might even encounter a group ego!

Recently there have been television crime dramas based in Bristol and Belfast, hot on the tails of one about Brighton’s police force and how they cope with the mayhem that others see as ‘having a night out’! The latest Belfast series covers migration in Northern Ireland, overlaying the still-simmering religious divide.

It reminded me of the current ‘stand-off’ between Northern Ireland’s Orange Order (Note 2) and the people of Drumcree. As Max Hastings, writing in The Times, says: ‘The Orange Order wants to demonstrate its claimed legal entitlement to stage a sectarian march through an overwhelmingly nationalist housing estate in Drumcree.’ It mattered in 1857 when a government report stated: ‘The Orange system celebrates its festivals …. which lead to violence, outrage, religious animosities, hatred between classes and, too often, bloodshed and loss of life.’ Nothing seems to have changed in over a century and to those of us who live in Great Britain it’s anachronistic in the extreme. Surely time to abandon such wilful provocations as the Drumcree march and realise how much this would matter for the greater good?

Last month one of my postcards was titled ‘Communication’ and this month we have had another example of poor communication …… and it matters. The British Museum in London is exhibiting the Bayeux tapestry for the first time since it left these shores for France in 1080 …. and the 70m long display has attracted thousands of people wishing to view it. The exhibition has presumably been years in the planning, but no one seemed to anticipate the potential number of visitors. Long queues developed, not helped by people staying too long in front of the exhibit – clearly not allowed or imagined! They could have installed a moving walkway which would have helped.

But the lack of communication was obvious when early this month they had to close the exhibit to the public as they were hosting some corporate event. These things don’t happen overnight ….. so why didn’t they block out entrance to the public months ago? Some people travelled a long distance only to be told they would get a refund of the ticket – but no recognition that the British Museum’s poor organisation and communication had led to other nugatory travel and hotel expenses. Reminded me of the Hotel Fasano in Rio de Janeiro. There had been no warning that, during our short stay, the roof-top swimming pool would be closed for a corporate event. We the poor public are second best to corporate money. But timely communication would have helped.

I did come across a new item some months ago and thought ‘good for you’. Having been through the difficulties and agony of divorce, I was interested in the story about a woman whose second divorce cost both her and her husband £80k. It prompted her to start offering divorcing couples a cheaper option than the adversarial one that lines the pockets of solicitors and lawyers. She had clearance from SRA, but lawyers with a vested interest in the current system complained and she was up before a judge for offering unqualified advice; she could have gone to prison! Financial reductions in the state-funded Legal Aid budget have reduced the number of cases it can support from 180,000 to 10,000. The judge recognised there had to be a better way for Joe & Jill Public to access affordable legal advice and suggested she continue. A victory for common sense.

And, of course, it matters when you buy a bunch of fresh Basil and two days later it looks like the flopped ears of a hare. Last week I thought there must be a better way of keeping it fresh. The solution is to place it in a container with a little water, and a plastic bag over the top, essentially creating a little moist greenhouse. The last leaf was as fresh as the first.

And in the wider context of life, nothing really matters, however much we agonise about this and that.

Richard 9th October 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 I hadn’t intended to mention this, but I scribbled about loo paper in August 2015 (PC 47) and followed that postcard with one about ‘The Loo’, with the famous Mr Crapper, in November that year (PC 54). I could email these to you as they are time-expired on WordPress.

Note 2 After King William of Orange (King William III) who invaded and secured Ireland for the Protestant crown by defeating the Catholic King James II in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

PC 511 …… and on ……

~ postcardscribblesblog ~ Leave a comment

To use possibly an inappropriate expression, we seem to have got our knickers in a twist with the State and society’s attitude towards trans individuals.

On 16th April 2025 the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of ‘sex’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in equality law refers strictly to biological sex. It said that holding a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) does not change a person’s legal sex of the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. In clarification, the judges ruled that interpreting the law to mean anything other than biological sex would make the Equality Act ‘unworkable and incoherent’ and stressed that service providers can continue to maintain separate or single-sex spaces based on biological sex.

The Scottish government had argued that transgender people with a GRC are entitled to sex-based protections, while the lobby ‘For Women Scotland’ claimed they only apply to people who are born female. At the centre of the debate was Sandie Peggie, a senior NHS nurse who, in 2023, objected to a transgender doctor, Beth Upton, using a female changing room at the A&E department in Victoria Hospital Kirkcaldy. Upton was biologically male but identified as female.

Arguments about biological sex and how to accommodate trans people have rumbled on for years but it’s worth remembering that only 0.5% of the population of England and Wales identify as a gender different from their birth sex. (Note 1) Even so, various government departments and organisations are dragging their feet over the implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling that sex is based on biological sex; surely, they have a responsibility to implement the law, whether they agree with it or not? Sandie Peggie, in taking her union, the Royal College of Nursing, to an employment tribunal, says: ‘The union should be working for their female staff and ensuring spaces for biological women, who should have separate changing areas, but the Trans lobby had blinded the nursing union’.

Shades of how Stonewall pushed its Diversity Champions Programme, a paid initiative that advises employers on LGBTQ+ inclusion. Critics argued that the programme pushes a disputed ideology prioritizing gender identity over biological sex and provides incorrect interpretations of the UK Equality Act regarding single-sex spaces. Nice huh! So much for the biased lobbyist!

I suspect we all like a good gossip, reading tittle-tattle about Mr Jones or Mrs Smith. I belonged to a number of Officers’ Messes in my twenty-year Army career and every one of them provided the whole range of British newspapers, from ‘the broadsheets’, The Times, Telegraph and Guardian, through The Express and Daily Mail to the ‘red-tops’, The Sun, The Mirror and The Sketch (published from1909 to 1971), the latter three focusing on celebrity gossip, sports and sensational stories rather than serious news.

Of course, we all argued that we had to read the red tops, or glance at the photographs, in order to keep abreast of what our soldiers were reading; ah! the snobbery of privilege, education and class. And of course, The Sun was still publishing its daily Page 3 photograph of semi-naked Samatha or Linda or …… (Note 2). You may remember my postcards about my active service in Northern Ireland 1973/74 and 1975/76 (PCs 196, 197 & 198 September/October 2020). During the first tour the Public Relations Officer managed to secure a visit of Miss UK and later from Miss World. In 1975 Wilnelia Merced, aged 18 and recently crowned Miss World, spent three days with us, giving a much-needed morale boost.

As an outsider, news of our own Royal family and other European royals can sometimes read like a soap opera. For instance, the recent death of King Harald V of Norway gave the media the opportunity to remind everyone that the new King’s stepson has been convicted of rape but is appealing, while his sister’s second husband Durek Verrett is a shaman who believes he’s come from another planet!

Here in the UK, just as the Royal Family were getting used to, or rather reluctantly accepting, that the Duke & Duchess of Sussex had returned to the UK, true to form, Harry & Meghan made headlines when they announced after two days that the drive to their children’s new school was too long and they would choose one closer to their home. Didn’t they factor this in when they made their choice in the first place? Early this week the headline screamed that photographers were ‘extraordinarily reckless’ trying to snap one of their children at their school.

And after Prince Harry’s rather ill-advised book ‘Spare’, another storm briefly blew through, with the publication of Earl Sencer’s book ‘Swan Song: Diana My Sister.’ It’ll be thirty years next August since Diana was killed in her car in Paris and Spencer wants to rake over the coals, to him still hot while for most of us it’s history. He’s made arguably outrageous claims about a conversation he had with the then Prince of Wales when Diana’s death was announced. There was a dignified silence from the current Prince of Wales, but the Palace felt obliged to issue a statement – ‘…. the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’ Am I alone in being unable to remember who said what last week, let alone 30 years ago?

AN Wilson’s review of Spencer’s book in the Sunday Times is worth reading.  He writes about the difficult dynamics in the royal family and how we the public respect our monarchy, but don’t love them, whereas Diana had an incomparable public appeal. We loved her, were enchanted by her! ‘It cannot have been easy to be her public companion.’

Indeed!

Richard 2nd October 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribles.co.uk

Note 1 The figures are open to interpretation! Some 48,000 identified as trans men and the same number as trans women. ‘Non-binary’ made up 30,000. However, some 118,000 individuals wrote ‘no’ to the question that asked if they identified differently from their birth sex – without choosing any specific identity!

Note 2 The Sun stopped publishing topless models on its Page 3 in January 2015, ending a 45-year tradition.

PC 510 And so we go on!

~ postcardscribblesblog ~ Leave a comment

At some point earlier this week I looked at my ‘notes for future PCs’ and thought there was so much to comment on I wasn’t quite sure where to start. So I thought I’d go to The Hope Café in the off chance I would bump into Sami and Lisa, or one of them, and conversation might help. Sure enough on Tuesday afternoon I found them both, sitting quietly at their favourite table and, armed with a double espresso, went over and interrupted them.

“Hey! Richard, how are you?” asked Lisa; “haven’t seen you since your fortnight in Portugal”

“God, that seems ages ago now; actually, over three weeks but it was a good time and now back into our Hove routines, the weather still lovely and warm. Hope it’s not a harbinger of a hard winter as some doomsayers are suggesting!”

“I hope not too; El Niño, this autumn and into next year, has a history of extremes. Incidentally, I follow Camilla Long’s column in The Sunday Times and couldn’t believe last Sunday’s. It covered the fact that an Iman, Hafiz Ashrafi, had been given an ‘interfaith’ award by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the USA. Clearly no one did much research about his views as the award was withdrawn days later when it was discovered that he had, inter alia, praised Bin Laden!

“Actually, that’s awful, Lisa. Seems rather symptomatic of everyone turning a blind eye to unsavoury issues, just for the sake of the PR.”

“But what incensed Camilla Long, and me when I read her article, was that Sarah Mullally had welcomed him, together with his wife, who was wearing a full niqab and his daughter, wearing a facemask. Mullally was an outspoken feminist and had said she would speak out against misogyny, although ‘when misogyny physically turned up at Lambeth Palace, she said nothing.’ The accompanying Times’ photograph was extraordinary.”

“Not sure where I stand”, interjects Sami. “A complex issue for sure but seeing someone wearing the burqa on the streets of Britain is very odd. We pussyfoot around the issue, most of my friends hate the fact that women are made to wear such a medieval form of dress when they are outside.”

“I hadn’t read the article, Lisa, but I’ll find it online. I must admit whenever I see someone wearing a burqa, I feel extremely sad for the individual underneath, and feel it has no place in British society. I do know that several European countries have banned its wearing, France for instance, since 2011, and Portugal last month brought in its own ‘burqa regulations’. I think Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, summed it up quite well: “In our view, anyone who comes to Italy to build a future here must learn our language, understand our culture and respect our rules.” Same for us; this hideous form of dress, and everything that is physically and mentally attached to it, must be banned here too. As a nation we believe in the equality of both the sexes and opportunity and mustn’t use our tolerant nature to justify acceptance of this form of clothing.”

“I think I got it” says Sami, ruefully. Lisa smiles; maybe she’s already thinking of writing an article about it for The Argus. Sami continues: “You know my parents were Anglo-Indians and when you British partitioned British India into India and Pakistan we had nowhere to go and ended up here?”

“Sorry Sami! Bit before my time!”

“Exactly. A little like the present-day situation with Israel and Palestine, which you helped create with the Balfour Declaration of 1947. We can’t rewrite history in the light of what has transpired since then; we have to make the most of it, for both the Jewish population and the Palestinian nation. Genuinely I think here in Britain we support the idea of a two-state solution but get incensed when Israel ignores the illegality of building settlements in areas of the Palestinian West Bank. I was pleased when the current Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband and himself a British Jew, announced in the House of Commons that the UK would officially recognise that illegality and impose targeted sanctions and trade bans on those Israeli settlements.”

“And then there were howls of protests from Jewish groups here in the UK, sort of ‘How could you?’. They can’t have it both ways! I imagine you’ve watched the Netflix series Fauda?” (Note 1)

“We have loved the first four series”, says Lisa “and read about the problems the producers had in trying to create a fifth series which covered the 7th October 2023 attacks on Southern Israel by Hamas. Wasn’t one of the show’s previous series’ producers, Matan Meir, blown up in a booby-trapped tunnel and killed?”

“Yes, I think so. I certainly read that the sister of Lior Raz, one of the show’s creators and the actor who plays the main lead ‘Doron’, and her children managed to stay protected in their house’s bomb shelter while Hamas fighters roamed around outside. It all gets a bit personal in a nation of 10 million! We have watched this latest series and it’s very good but, having read the warnings about upsetting scenes in the middle episodes, didn’t watch it after 9 o’clock; too emotional to guarantee a dreamless sleep!”

“We must watch it, although I am aware that Palestinians see it as anti-Arab and a racist tool of Israeli propaganda. Think I read that ‘it reduces a political conflict over land and rights into a simple narrative of counterterrorism versus blood-thirsty terrorists!’”

“I love talking to you two but now I need to run; thanks for your thoughts and enjoy Fauda!”

Richard 25th September 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Two days ago, Wednesday (23rd) marked the northern hemisphere’s autumnal equinox ie the sun at midday was directly over the equator and the length of our day and night are roughly equal.

Note 1 Fauda translates to mean ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’. It’s an Israeli show following a unit of Mizrahi Jews who go undercover among their Palestinian neighbours to root out terrorist plots. Mizrahi Jews are indistinguishable from Arabs and speak both Hebrew and Arabic.

PC 500 Half a Century!

~ postcardscribblesblog ~ 2 Comments

Back in 2014 I never ever dreamt that, twelve years later, I would write ‘PC 500 Half a Century!’ Yet here we are, having scribbled about this and that, finding the weekly 1000-word challenge part of the routine of my life. Where did twelve years go and what happened during that time? (I have added some of my photographs from our travels; their position is not connected to the script!)

Eagle on the Yukon River, Alaska 2015

          There are global events that I have no control over, but their significance often affects the decisions of our government and therefore eventually my life. Living in western Europe gives me a view on world events that I wouldn’t necessarily have if I lived, for instance, in Brazil or in New Zealand. I am not saying there’s a bias, but a European war is more concerning for this continent than for South America.

          These twelve years started with Russia’s modern annexation of The Crimea. In England we remember The Crimea as the land fought over between 1853-1856, one of Victoria’s Wars. Then it was Russia against an alliance of The Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Sardinia (!); it ended with Russia’s defeat. Who hasn’t heard Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘The Charge of The Light Brigade’, describing 670 cavalry men’s charge against some Russian guns? Only 195 men remained mounted and survived unharmed.

          In 2014 Russia annexed The Crimea, siting all sorts of historic reasons why its people wanted to be part of Russia; Europe took no action. Eight years later an emboldened Russia invaded Ukraine and that war continues. Whatever its outcome, its use of drone technology is changing the way conflicts are conducted.

The Salt Lake, the Atacama Desert, Chile 2023

           In 2021, after twenty years in Afghanistan trying to bring peace and stability, the United States and its Nato Allies withdrew, having failed. The departure was quite chaotic, reminiscent of the American pull out of its unsuccessful war in Vietnam. So much blood spilt, only to see Afghanistan regress to the C7th ideas of the Taliban. Not having learned its lesson, America embarked on yet another war, this one with Iran, in February this year; most commentators suggest this was ill-thought through and the likely outcome of any peace settlement disappointing. The European focus on the Ukrainian and Iranian conflicts masks news of the other disastrous conflict in Africa, that of the civil war in Sudan.

For two years after the start of my PCs, Africa suffered its first Ebola Epidemic. The second is happening now! And who can forget the global pandemic of Covid 19 that lasted from 2020 for three years. In the UK there were over 25 million cases which resulted in 232,000 deaths. The worst day was on 19th January 2021 when 1490 individuals died. Globally it’s estimated that some 18-35 million people died. No rhyme or reason why someone who caught the virus died – age and health no determinator, but there was a suggestion that some ethnic groups were more susceptible than others.

The island of Vis, Croatia 2024

Two other global changes mark these twelve years. Firstly since 2023 there has been an exponential rise in the integration of Artificial Information technologies in virtually every aspect of life, transforming global industries, labour markets and technology policy. This is comparable with the introduction of the mobile telephone or the shift to digital technology or the introduction of television.

Secondly, the election of Donald Trump to President of the USA in 2024 has been marked by geopolitical shifts in diplomacy, in alliances, in international trade and in the political landscape. Whether you like him or not, his erratic policies and mood swings have created greater uncertainty and instability.

Here in the United Kingdom the 2016 referendum on our European Union membership resulted in 52% of the population voting to leave. The consequences of that fateful decision reverberate in every aspect of our lives today. The Prime Minister David Cameron resigned, and five other politicians have since tried to lead the country, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, the latter replaced as I write by Andy Burnham. Eight in 12 years! Another referendum in Scotland, in 2014, put the case for independence on hold! But in the same year same-sex marriage became legal in England and Wales; Brighton celebrated!

Lake Tekapo, South Island, New Zealand 2025

The circle of life continues. In 2016 ‘births’, my third grandson Theo was born in December, ‘marriages’, ours in August and ‘deaths’, that of Celina’s father Carlos in the January. In the following year my nephew Hugh’s first child Dougie was born, on 17th February, the same day as Celina’s brother’s second son Joaquim. I miss Bill Pender and Ray Morrell, both good friends for decades, who are no longer here. And as a nation we said goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II.

As we age it’s inevitable our bodies react to internal and external factors but trying to live an active life and eating well helps. For instance, last year I completed 4000 hot yoga classes since I started in 2009, despite having to have a prolapsed disc operated on in 2017!

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2012 – to date

Celina and I have travelled, and not only to Brazil on our annual visits to her home city Rio de Janeiro! In 2015 we went west, up into Alaska, following in the footsteps of great grandfather George Nation. At the end of 2019 we were on the north coast of South Island, New Zealand, on Farewell Spit, the sandbar on which the Queen Bee, a barque from England, sank. Amongst the passengers was Eve Fosbery, aged 17, who would become my great grandmother. We then went out into the Marlborough Sounds, to Frenchman’s Pass, where the survivors came ashore two days later. We’ve had two other trips to New Zealand and Australia, loved Singapore, and spent a few days in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Celina’s brother and family moved to Estoril in Portugal in 2016, giving us opportunities to visit on an annual basis.

But in twelve years I have failed miserably to get to grips with the Portuguese language.

The Monument to the Discoveries, Lisbon, Portugal. 2016 to date

My postcards continue …….. PC 501 in draft!

Richard 17th July 2026

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk