The World as I see it.

I had a really bad week this week and the only thing that saved me was positive thinking. Words are very good at explaining things but never exact at conveying the essence of the real thing – not even close. Having an issue play on your mind – night and day – can be a killer. You can’t sleep, you can’t smile, you can’t eat, you can’t play, you can’t read, you can’t listen, you can’t relax, you can’t have fun in fact you cant do all the things that you normally do with ease. But you have to live. You have to go on living as if it was business as usual. After all, there you are and over there is the war zone. You still have a job, a roof over your head, an assurance of 3 square [meals] a day, a girlfriend/wife/whatever, full use of 4 limbs, fully functioning organs while others are out there - dying. After that thought, I just knew that even going on about this is pathetic. At times like this I wished I could switch to happiness at the snap of a finger. If only. As everyone who has gone through one of those episodes, the feeling sticks around like an irritating shadow.

At work recently, I went to hell. It came to my knowledge that I was in the thick of some shit.  I will face the music next week. Do I let the anxiety overwhelm me or do I contain it? If so, how so? The thought alone was getting to me. It was beginning to have an impact on my work - over promising, under delivering, demotivated – the lot. The work was just not flowing as it used to. I was not as sharp as I used to be. Also, someone at work was really getting the upper hand in all this.  I just had to swallow it all. I had the option to make a big deal out of it, like getting other people involved, but decided against it and stuck it out. It will get very messy if I choose that route. Give me a few days I said, – and I will be back to normal. In the heat of the moment, I needed help. Men are not supposed to cry remember? Talking to work colleagues was out of the question – I am well past 18. I had to dig deep. A good read never fails me. The only problem was finding “a good read”. Even on good days I wander into bookshops browsing for a good read. This time – I needed it. At times you find yourself wanting a lift-up like a crack addict looking for a quick fix. I gave into my temptation and spent all yesterday evening in the self-help section of my favourite bookshop – Foyle’s at Tottenham Court Road.  I have, to date, read my share of self-help books and even though I should not knock them, some of them are just written for Orwellian proles, Epsilon semi-morons and Huxleian Deltas [those opposed to the philosophy of TH Huxley] blind to the back of their brains. Even in the depths of my sorrows, I refuse to be one. I never touch them these days. The only one I recommend is “Self-Help” by Samuel Smiles. Compared to what they churn out these days, this is the business. Anyone used to the “this or that for dummies” or “how to do this or that in 30 days” should be warned – this is not the usual dimwit dummy waffle. For them it will be like progressing from reading Roald Dahl to James Joyce or like progressing from Stephen Law to Immanuel Kant. Enough said.

Anyway I needed this fix, and I needed to stay fixed. In the end I walked out of the bookshop after looking at a few titles. I managed to convince myself that I didn’t really need a book, I needed to feel good. As I was walking home I started thinking. The first thing that came to my mind was to picture the performance I would put on on the day. The second was to meditate. Meditation as far as I am concerned is just to have time alone locked in deep controlled thoughts. I was deep enough as it was so that did not appeal to me. I started writing this and “Bingo” – I felt better. Every bad thought was just leaving my system like a balloon letting go of trapped gas. It was unbelievable.  I actually saw myself dealing with the situation. Just then, my speech, my excuses, my pitch came rolling down like waters and confidence like a mighty stream.

To switch from anxiety and anger to real calmness and happiness just like that is something that, if only I would master, I would definitely rule the world. I remember when I was younger when I used to be locked in a state of seething anger for days. Now I just write. It was not positive thinking in the end but just plain writing – positive writing [but then again, you need to think to write!!]. If in the next few weeks I do not get my P45, then look forward to reading much more.

I am a good judge of character – that much I know. I am no mother Teresa, Mohandas Gandhi or Dalai Lama myself, but that will not stop me judging other people. I have met so many people and - life willing - I will meet even more. Of the lot I have met so far, the happy people are generally good and the bad – miserable.

Now how do I define happy? By happy, I mean people who are not sad. I mean people who are just happy and positive – no strings attached.  I mean those people, who no matter what they might be going through in private – like the rest of us - they don’t moan about it. And how do I define sad? By sad I mean those people who on the other hand moan about everything.  They are selfish, negative and it takes the world to put a smile on their faces. They are not usually happy with their lot in life and bear grudges against those they consider to be unfairly better off.  As I said, sad.

I find that happy people are in general – good. They see the positive side to everything. They smile more, they laugh more, they say the nicest things, “considering”. They help you when they can without expecting much in return. They forgive and forget more. They attract more people towards themselves because we humans are attracted to this positive quality. I just cannot help myself, but I just love such people. In fact I worship them. On the flip side, they expose themselves to up-to-no-goods to take advantage of their good nature. In a funny way, being taken advantage of is an indication of one’s good nature. Some might think of it as being naïve or stupid, but, I still believe there is an element of pessimisms, negativity even wickedness in always being too cautious. One has to – sometimes - expose one self to the elements before one can conclude with good evidence if one is a genuine favour-seeker or a sad parasite. I have exposed myself to a fair share of “elements” and with very interesting experiences to tell. Recently, I was approached at London Victoria station by a man who claimed to be have lost his wallet and needed £15.00 to get to Gatwick.  I gave it to him without much thought. Luckily for this man, there was no way I could verify the authenticity of his story and I had £15.00 to spare.  I told two friends about it knowing fully well what they would have done had they been in my shoes. One thought it was naïve of me to give away £15.00 just like that, while the other thought I will be rewarded in heaven. To be honest, after writing this, I hope to forget the incident forever. Be this man genuine or not, be me naive or not, it is so insignificant – as insignificant as they come. I have bigger problems to worry about than the authenticity of every Tom Dick and Harry I encounter. And I am happy to carry one like this.

However, there are people who – although they might seem very happy and positive on the outside – are not good. For this bunch of people, their happiness has a smack of pride, affluence, arrogance and comeuppance. Pride, arrogance, exuberance and affluence are not necessarily bad qualities. In fact, I don’t mind being seen to exhibit these qualities but coated with approachability, sincerity, fairness and humility. The sad people I refer to get their happiness from pride and this pride is rooted in the fact that they have something that puts them – in some way - above the Toms, Dicks and Harrys of this world. In effect they see themselves as better than and/or superior to the average Joes. Don’t get me wrong, I am a realist. I am not one of those who preach and expect equality in returns in all human endeavours. I am aware of the basic fact that some always put in more than others. For those that put in more effort, may they be blessed with huge rewards. I for one strive for and always will strive for huge rewards. He who has worked hard and elevated himself to higher economic and social circles cannot be faulted. The people I have problems with are those you see everyday having “made it” in whatever their field develop this attitude of superiority and arrogance. Majority of the people I have met who fall into this category always exaggerate their importance. Always inflate their egos at every opportunity. I always wonder to myself, why - if their stories are true – are they not happier human beings? Why feel the need to say something bad about someone else especially someone less successful?  I wonder how these “little” people bother them so much. I was once talking to a security guard friend of mine and another friend commented on the calibre of friends I keep. How sad for one to chose friends just by job title.  The fact that such a thought even occurred to someone is scary and these are the type of people I am talking about here.  I remember talking a certain friend about an acquaintance who now runs his own business. I will not say that this acquaintance was a friend but I was still very proud of him. This female, being one of the sad types, told me about her friends running their own businesses and earning millions. She even went on to tell me about her own business. Until then I was interested until a realised she had what at best I will call a website of no consequence. Full of big words and big projects with no single live project in the bag. It was just sitting there in cyber-space gathering cyber dust!! Why would she – considering her situation - even feel like putting my acquaintance down? That is the thing I don’t get. I can tell the types by their moves especially when you meet for the first time. They always seem defensive. What gives it away for me is the very firm hand shake, the distance, the fake smile, the body language. I just think they take this professional code of conduct a bit too far. I don’t mind females being wary of me at first, at least they have reason to, but when it’s a man, I feel it says something about the man. I remember again a girl I used to work with. Very ambitious and driven and always looking inch-perfect morning, day and night. She had the looks but was single – for some reason.  I always joked with her saying the man that ends up as her husband will be the luckiest. Then one day, I realised she never talked to our security staff at the time. These security guys were always nice to everybody. I didn’t think anyone would find anything unpleasant about them so I asked this girl why she never spoke to them. She then shocked me by saying she didn’t want to encourage them, “Besides” she said, “I can’t be talking to them”. It is funny, but this is a true story. I am sure everyone reading this is either like this woman and knows a person like her. Also, I think I am just too sensitive in the sense that such incidents always fire me up. People are really messed up. I have been told before that worrying about issues like these will leave me burnt out before my time – I agree.

Anyway, believe it or not, we all are either one or the other to a varying degree. It will not be fair for me to define myself here because I am both judge and jury but I know I am not as bad as some of the people I have described. My point is if people feel they are good, then they should not worry about others. They should not assume the worst in others or always say the worst things about others. I feel deep inside they harbour insecurity and evil that is simply and plainly scary. There is only one exception in my books to wishing another person ill – it is love. It will be very stupid to expect a jilted person to wish the best to a love interest.  It should be discouraged at all costs but it is almost above man to be positive in such situations. It’s like expecting the bereaved not to cry or like expecting the wounded not to feel pain. I have heard funny stories about crimes of passion and the likes. Every single one of them I can understand and will excuse them here after all some have said – and I agree – loving and hating are the same thing. In love you do the best things and in hate you do the worst. Another topic all together but some get my drift.

To me, a true sign of good in people is happiness and the best wishes to all men. How hard is that?

Since her tragic death, I have refused to believe that there was any “funny business” involved. Up till now, I have not been able to put together enough evidence to tip the balance. Also, in cases of this magnitude I feel we all need to put suspicion and gut feeling aside and let the evidence do the talking. Many a man has stood accused of high crimes, jailed, sentenced to death – even lynched – just because some story had some sort of credibility. I never felt compelled to doubt the official story so I didn’t. But now I am not so sure and my reasons for being a doubting Thomas – I am sharing with you.

Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss announced on April the 24^th that she is stepping down, come June, as coroner for the inquests into the death of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed. That struck me as strange especially after finding out her reasons for doing so…

“These inquests now require a jury, and I do not have the degree of experience of jury cases that I feel is necessary and appropriate for presiding over inquests of this level of public interest.”

Words, words and more words. Lawyers and Politicians are known to be very good at using language. This woman has actually used careful language to conceal her real reasons and sold us these lines. Many will fall for it – not me! What on earth does she mean - Degree of experience, Jury Cases, Necessary and Appropriate, Level of Public Interest? What more experience does she need? This is a woman who called was to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1955, appointed Registrar at the Principal Registry of the family Division in 1970, became the fourth female High Court Judge in 1979, became the first woman appointed as a Justice of the Court of Appeal in 1988, became the first female President of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice in 1999 and the highest ranking female judge in UK until Brenda Hale became the first female Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in January 2004!!

The summarized CV above doesn’t conjure up images of someone lacking “Jury experience” that is “necessary and appropriate” to me. Neither should it do so to anybody else for that matter, even in the slightest – I would have thought. Lack of experience or not, this woman doesn’t strike me as one who will back down from something as minor as jury experience in the line of duty. If that was the case her CV would not be full of all those firsts [1^st woman appointments]. Common sense tells me that this is the type of case one jumps at to makes one’s name. The average ambitious person would jump at this case of a lifetime. I think this case is much bigger [Her vs. The Establishment] than any case she had come across in her entire career. Also we all know that there is only one way this case can go – tragic accident – no matter the evidence presented! That, my friend is what [it seems] she is afraid of and decided to jump ship. Is it not scary to even think of finding the establishment guilty of murder!! The stakes are as high as they get in this case and looking at it properly, if it goes the other way it will shake this nation to its very roots. In fact, if it goes the other way it will be the greatest demonstration of the independence of British Justice in the history of this nation. I will be following every bit of it with baited breath.

Her carefully-chosen words left me agreeing 100% with George Orwell, in his essay – Politics and the English Language – where he quite correctly stated that…

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”

I must admit, I had my suspicions from day one. Imagine Diana, a blue-blood Caucasian female, a perfect-fit, a top-breed, a lady hand-picked [by the establishment] to be the queen of England, marrying Mohammed Al Fayed’s son? This is the same al fayed, a non-white, a foreigner, an immigrant made good, a well known enemy of state since the 80’s, a Muslim, an Egyptian, – these facts alone have swayed millions. Yes, like millions of others, I had my suspicions but as a civilized gent, I waited for evidence. In what is turning out to be a long-winded face-saving exercise in damage limitation and spin, by resigning, Lady Butler-Sloss not just tipped the scales, she broke them. I am now convinced there is some funny business involved.

Let’s now take a closer look at the event [the death of Diana] as it has been officially presented to us and the history of the investigation into the event. I am principally looking for things that do not add up so as to assure firstly myself, and subsequently anybody reading this, that all my suspicions are not lifted from thin air.

The Mercedes-Benz S 280 in which Diana, Dodi, their driver – Henri Paul, and body guard – Trevor Rees-Jones were traveling in when they left the Hotel Ritz in Place Vendome- Paris on that faithful day [31^st August 1997], crashed as it entered the underpass below the Place de L’Alma. They were being followed at high speed by 9 French photographers. Their car collided head-on with the 13^th pillar in the tunnel. Immediately after the crash, Diana was reported to have been conscious and was murmuring some words. Dodi and Henri Paul died at the scene. Trevor Rees-Jones was conscious. Diana was trapped in the mangles of the car and would remain there for almost an hour before she was cut free and taken to Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital a little after 02:00 hours. By 04:00 hours she was pronounced dead due to extensive internal injuries.

A few facts that I feel don’t add up.

1. After the event, their was no official inquest into her death till 2004 – seven years after.
2. In 1999, the French investigation concluded that their car had come in contact with another vehicle – a white Fiat Uno. The driver and the vehicle have not been found till this day.
3. In the Sunday times of 29 January 2006, it was claimed – and this was later confirmed – that there were British secret service agents in Paris on the night of her death.
4. Two American eye witnesses of the crash were never interviewed or mentioned in Scotland Yard’s official report.
5. Lady Butler-Sloss is not the first coroner to abandon the inquest into Diana’s death, Michael Burgess before her, did the same claiming the workload being “heavy and constant”.
6. 1^st coroner – workload “heavy and constant”
7. 2^nd coroner – “Lack of Jury experience”
8. 3^rd coroner – Lord Justice Scott Baker - we just have to wait and see.

In conclusion, I used to think an inquest was an investigation in to an event. If this is not some pre-determined inquest, why would two adequately qualified Judges Jump ship? I conclude it speaks volumes as far as this inquest is concerned.

Was she or wasn’t she killed? As I said earlier – I will be watching with baited breath.

“A 93-year-old former vicar and train enthusiast has become the oldest person in the world to               gain a PhD.”

I find him interesting because I used to think one is “past it” academically by 25 considering that almost all geniuses come out with their best works before hitting 30. I am over 30 and having been flirting with the idea of doing something in the field of mathematics for a while now, what the famous English mathematician – G.H Hardy – has to say in his wonderful book on the aesthetics of mathematics – A Mathematicians Apology – does very little by way of encouragement. Chapter 4 begins with…

I had better say something here about this question of age, since it is particularly important for

mathematicians. No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more

than any other art or science is a young man’s game. To take a simple illustration at a comparatively

humble level, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics.

Trying hard to find something positive in this article I realized that this former vicar is a bit of a book worm.

                Reverend Edgar Dowse, who does not own a computer and dictated his thesis, already has six other degrees.

Six other degrees?

At least this man puts his brains to very good use.

Alarm bells started ringing as soon as the headline hit me, “No sleep means no new brain cells”.

Missing out on sleep may cause the brain to stop producing new cells, a study has suggested.

The work on rats, by a team from Princeton University found a lack of sleep affected the hippocampus, a brain region involved in forming memories.

The research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science showed a stress hormone causes the effect.

A UK expert said it would be interesting to see if too little rather than no sleep had the same consequence.

This has more meaning as someone who nodded off in the middle of a serious meeting at work recently. The thing is for years now I have been an insomniac and that means that I cannot for years remember the morning I woke up fresh and full of energy. As a result, during the day at work when normal people are buzzing with mental and physical energy, I feel so weak and tired and see myself nodding off whenever I have nothing to do. As from 7pm onwards each day, I get this surge of adrenalin that goes on till very late resulting in my inability to fall asleep in good time. I did mention here that one of my New Year revolutions is to go to bed early everyday yet that has been extremely difficult. I do go to bed early but falling asleep is another thing. I normally eventually nod-off around 2-3 am having actually being lying in bed around 9-10 pm. And considering I have to get up at 6am for work the next day – 4 hours sleep tops leaves me gagging for more sleep. Even at weekends I wake up around 8am after going to bed generally later [3-4am].

Any ideas will be highly cherished.

1. I bumped into an old friend on my way to work. He looked much older and very unkempt. To make things worse, he was with the wife whom I equally know. They must have been early-morning shopping as they had loads of Sainsbury’s bags about them. Considering we are of the same age and used to “kick it” at the same places, I was a tad uncomfortable. He had grey hair! It is not very often that I feel young but this guy made me feel unrealistically young. Naturally we tried to talk as we did in the “good old days” but I was struggling to find common ground.  This morning all I could think of was Tony Blair’s last conference speech as party leader. I was wondering if I would be able to watch it during my lunch break and if I would be able to blog about it later. That was definitely not a suitable topic to talk about. Luckily he was a family man and he said that takes up all his time. To that I said I was still looking for that “special one”. We exchanged our good byes at my stop and that was it.
2. When I got off the bus, I popped into WH Smith’s at
   Waterloo to get a bottle of water. There were loads of people in the shop and I was stuck in the queue. Behind me was this couple – all loved up. They kept talking about “how nice” last night was [don’t ask me – I haven’t got a clue to what exactly they could have been referring to!] and kissed every five minutes in between talks. Not only could I hear them talking, I could also hear the hmmms and ahhhhhhs as they kissed. I felt so sick. I am not normally against public display of affection but this was just too much. I was thinking of work – as everybody should at that time in the morning on a week day - and there those two were kissing with ignorant and arrogant abandon. As I was getting even angrier it just hit me – was I jealous that they are in love and I am not? Just then I blanked them out of my existence and headed off to work.
3. At canary wharf, I pumped into yet another friend. He is now a head hunted. “Jay Dee, Longest time!” he said. “What do you do now?” he asked. “I am in Housing Development” I said. “Have you done any management?”  “Do I open a book on you?” To that I asked it meant and he told me that if I was any good at my job, chances are that file already existed on me. He said he would investigate and if not he would open a file on me. He gave me his card and that was away on his way.

 Interesting – don’t you think?

I have not been blogging for a while now and it makes me feel awful. A lot is going on in the world and I am not expressing my opinions. How egocentric is sounds when I talk like that but for some reason that is how I honestly feel. Of course if you do not agree you can always post comments.

I remarked recently that due to certain time restrictions, I don’t have enough hours in the day to blog. This weekend will be different though. All those pent up opinions will be vented with double vengeance.

I cannot wait for Saturday.

Yesterday, I got home after what I will call “not the best of days” and settled down with a drink and food to watch the day’s news on the BBC. Funny how recently, I do not get to enjoy the simple pleasures like watching the day’s news due to time restrictions - to wake up strong fresh and mentally focused I find it helpful to be tucked in at a certain hour. Anyway, just yesterday’s news alone made me feel like blogging for the rest of the week. I say the rest of the week because I like doing justice to my topics and there is no way, considering my opinions on things, I can blog on more than one topic a day. Recently, I have been avoiding blogging [as you might have noticed]because there are heavy weight topics [Terrorism, Extremism, Integration, Immigration, etc] out there needing heavy weight treatment - why agree or disagree with something when you can easily write a whole essay out of it. Just look at what was on 10 O’clock news last night. Apart from a departure date for Tony Blair making all the headlines, terrorism in Turkey, Iraq and Afghanistan, what caught my eye strangely was George the online robot. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5303126.stm . I have never been a fan of Artificial Intelligence as I have always seen it as computer game technology and nothing more. But watching George last night revealed a horror only a few have been able to see. Talk about looking but not seeing, listening but not hearing, touching but not feeling, and so on.

God willing, I will expand on Artificial Intelligence!

With the world going to hell, loved ones dropping like flies, and many more problems not worth mentioning, I see myself repeatedly asking what the hell is going on. I must be getting old because I never used to feel like this. In fact, such useless thoughts never used to cross my mind.

I am convinced of my advancing age for 3 recurring reasons.

First, loved ones are dropping like flies. I will not go into details but I have lost a few. [Most likely - so have you!] Looking at it differently, it might just be because I see things differently as a grown up. I must have been losing loved ones from day dot but I guess when I was younger, I didn’t really give a toss. On average, the typical one you lost then was old compared to you anyway so other old people cried over the loss and not you. Now the ones one is losing are ones one remembered not to be that old in those days, but now they are “of age”. If they [the "not so old", long time ago] have advanced in age over the years, it then must mean that I have also. [I really didn't need that bit of deduction to prove something that simple].

Second, my interests have switched from my childhood love of Mathematics and Natural Sciences to the Social Sciences - Economics, Political History and Philosophy. When I was younger, I hated reading pages of text with no pictures. I preferred reading the sciences because they always had diagrams to help explain whatever they were talking about or mathematics because it always felt like unravelling a puzzle. I preferred trying to understand mathematical logic, notations and symbols to reading or writing seemingly unending text. At the moment, interest in mathematics and sciences has not completely died, just waned somewhat. I am finding it increasingly harder to apply mathematics or science to everyday life except in very specific areas. Besides, my interest in this field cannot completely die considering I teach A level mathematics privately. The reason for this waning interest in mathematics and the sciences is because apart from the very few students I teach, I can only talk mathematics with a minority of friends. Also, I hardly meet new people who enjoy mathematics enough to talk about it casually and to be honest, I don’t blame them. How sexy can real or complex analysis be as a topic of casual discussion or ordinary or partial deferential equations be? You can only be talking about such topics if you are in the field of mathematics, which sadly I am not. One way of finding such people is over the internet. The problem here is that those I have managed to find so far all seem to be geeks whose mathematical knowledge far outshines mine. Philosophy, Economics and Political History on the other hand is more applicable to everyday life. When talking about the current crisis in the Middle East, a bit of history of the region and of the main players [Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine etc] in the region places one in good stead to sieve out riff from raff. Besides it helps one put information from the usually “biased” media into objective perspective. Economics helps one understand everyday issues like the recent Bank of England’s decision to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.75% [3^rd August 2006], the impact and implications of a free and open Europe, Globalisation, Black Wednesday [16^th September 1992]- when the UK was forced to withdraw the pound from the ERM following huge loses from currency speculators, Black Monday [19^th October 1987] - when one trillion dollars invested in the stock market evaporated as the Dow Jones plunged 508 points, or almost 22.6 percent of its total value, The East Asian Currency Crisis [July 1997] - amongst many other things.  Philosophy comes into it’s own on a daily basis. In light of recent events, it is not out of place to ask if God or Gods [Buddha, Allah, Jehovah and etc] really exist. I find this question particularly interesting considering the ease at which the world seems to be slipping into anarchy and the so-called “Gods” just observe and never act. Divine Intervention beyond all reasonable doubts will shut all doubting Thomases up - myself included.  I concluded long time ago that human beings are just like animals and that killing is part of their living process. However, no matter the evidence, all the religious people I know have perfect explanations for all our current troubles but never agree with me that their deity is simply all-observing and never-acting like an impotent wimp. Do we really still need Religion? We need something but not religion surely. We need a self-help/self-improvement faith based on simple common sense that does not oppress, deny or repress other people’s means to the same “good life” and nothing like the dogmatic rules common to all religions. Most conflicts in the world today have something to do with religion and yet we believe it is the best thing to happen to us. Apart from Race, Religion is up there as the main source of global tension. Something so obviously destructive still we seem not to be able to do away with it. I remember reading a little but powerful book by the very famous [in Nigeria] Taiwo Solarin called “A message to young Nigerians“. There he quite rightly pointed out a flaw in a popular saying in Nigeria that “Life without Religion is like tea without sugar“. The flaw being that the Chinese that gave tea to the world almost never drank tea with sugar! Majority of things today are believed with little application of objectivity or logic and that applies to all religions I have seen so far. I was pointing out to a friend how I cannot practice Judaism because I am not Jewish. Jews believe that they are the chosen people, that they have a covenant with God. Well if they are indeed chosen people what about me - a black African? Everybody accepts that slavery as experienced by Africans, of which peoples I am a member, was wrong. Man’s inhumanity to man is what Robert Burns called it and we all agree. I am not Jewish so I am not a chosen one. It will only make sense for me to adopt a religion as blatantly exclusive as Judaism if and only if I was Jewish. Since I am not, thanks but not thanks.  Being Black and slavery aside, why would God choose any one race over another if indeed he created them all? That smacks of racism, racialism, favouritism and partialism all rolled up in one. If such a God does really exist, then I will turn my back on him. I must acknowledge here that Jews never impose their religion on anybody else but themselves, unlike the Christians and Moslems. that is fair enough to me and as a result, I have utmost respect for them. As a personal experience, I am yet to meet a people cleverer than the Jews. Having said that what strikes me as strange is that the Jews of which race, Jesus Christ was a member, do not accept Jesus as the son of God! All non-Jewish Christians all over the world seem to accept this but the very Jews that gave us Christ do not. And funny enough it has always been the non-Jewish Christians that have engaged in active spreading of Christianity till today. That tells me all I need to know about Christianity. What about Islam? I am not writing this to criticize faiths I do not agree with, just point out some bizarre facts. I was shocked to realize that the offensive cartoon images published in Denmark lead to fatalities in countries as far away as Nigeria! If that is not religion gone wild then I must dance to a different tune. Also, is Islam to blame for the crisis in the Middle East? Everybody surely has an opinion on this even though I believe not many will have the balls to express themselves. I blame the current western imperialism and history proves me right. But if you think Islam is wrong, so are all other faiths. In principle they are all the same - have the same format, promise life after death, fill the same voids in us spiritually and so on.  Islam is getting a lot of stick these days and even I sympathise with Moslems. As far as I can see, the US-led coalition forces and Israel adopt an extreme approach against their enemies and criticize them [Islamic Fundamentalists] for being extremist. Also everybody seems to have a Philosophy of life be it faith-led or atheist like myself. I am better defined as an existentialist as defined by the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre - for those that care to know.

Third, I most certainly overreact to the slightest stimulus. Writing this essay proves that point. When I was younger, no matter how good or bad I felt about anything, I would never go as far as writing about it. Why am I writing about this then? To share with you what I feel? To show how correct I am in my take on things? To show off?  To impress? To vent my anxiety? To be honest it is all of the above and one more. Simply that I am getting old and I am reacting to it. Young people don’t give a toss about things - I am beginning to and all I can do is write about it. What else can I do?

In closing this essay, I have to admit to a great failing in me. I think too much.  I worry too much. I worry about the ones I have lost. I worry about the meaninglessness of life. I worry about the injustice in life. I worry about the imperfections in life. I worry that that I am not dedicating enough time to loved ones. I worry about the passage of time.  My interests swing like a pendulum that never comes to rest. I never was able to focus on one thing and one thing alone. I sing but do not swing. I have gone from wanting to be a Physicist to a Mathematician to an Economist to a Philosopher to a Politician to nothing at all. Because life has no real meaning to me outside my feelings I will try to be them all. In the final analysis, above all things, I still love life!

Front-page on Wednesday, 12^th July 2006, read…I BEDDED DIANA… [and it lasted 2.5 minutes].  The claim comes from caddish ex-ITN cameraman Sebastian Rich.

The romp is claimed to have happened in 1986, when he [seb] was drafted in to work with Diana after she and Charles agreed to be filmed for the famous ITV documentary - In Public, In Private.

I have nothing against this man, he is nothing but a cheap slut, in for a quick buck, after a quick ****. The problem as far as I’m concerned lies with The Sun for covering such vile news. The woman has been dead for almost 10 years now and every now and then a mojo sneaks out of the woodworks claiming to have slept with her. I blame the sun for trying to rubbish her image having been bankrolled by someone high up there. Why else will there cover such news? What does it matter if I slept with the woman? Her sweet and loving memory needs to rest in peace for screaming out loud and by publishing - with pictures a list of her ex-lovers is just lower than low.

If I were Harry or William, I would do all in my royal power to see that the Editor of the sun goes missing or breaks a leg or better still, loses his life - Mysteriously.