"Well
my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play “
I ache in the places where I used to play “
"Yes, and here's to the few
Who forgive what you do
And the fewer who don't even care "
Who forgive what you do
And the fewer who don't even care "
As we enter the last three weeks of the Welsh Assembly Elections and begin the period of the Referendum Campaign I would like to up date an early piece from my blog. This “confession” was issued in November and I would like to amend it and add to it
The
strangest thing I have noticed is how poor we are at understanding
individual Psychology. Many but not all can not see how they are
really frightened little children wanting to be liked, how each vote
they gain, or approval they experience some how makes them
feel whole. others fails to understand the collective and often
becomes harsh, uncaring and arrogant. Them there are those who
lost a faith and found a faith. I mean those who raised in a
particular religious all their life seek an alternative faith but
never quite get there.
But
enough of that ...in 2005 I stepped down as leader of the Wales Green
party. I was burnt out, a frantic election cycle , the
battering of the anti wind farm brigade, and a gentleman
from a former Intelligence background and now Green Activist
spreading rumours and seeking to discredit me. The Welsh Party was
much smaller it probably had only 300 members. We had contested 10
seats in the general election, contested over 35 seats in the Swansea
Council elections of 2004 and built a solid party in Swansea of over
150 members. Within a couple of years the same naval figure
had managed to shrink the party dramatically, and in the general,
election that followed he managed to gain the lowest Green Vote in
Swansea West ever recorded.
I
ceased political activity and developed a company training
counsellors. That fell apart and left with large debts, a declining
economy, and the growing realisation of my fundamental unhappiness
and I sort to bury my head in the sand. I spent and spent, the funds
dried up and finally I had an affair. This crisis occurred long after
my role as a Green politician...yet if you read a certain account of
my bankruptcy case you would imagine it had occurred at the same
time.
I
even saw a post about me being “ a self
confessed adulterer” how simplistic it sounds, how different
it actually was. The implications and result of my bankruptcy have
been repeatedly resurrected by anyone who wishes to dismiss any
argument that I have raised. All I did was to keep on paying my bills
that I needed to pay to maintain everyday life The large
institutions, the credit card companies missed out and I was labelled
a fraudster. I am almost tempted to create a Psychological Syndrome.
I will call it the Shrewsbury/Bartolotti projection. Its a
process by which all that is wrong , all that is hated, all
that is missing in someone's life is absorbed into the
motivations and meanings of another's life. Julia Kristeva
called it abjection.. It can be described as “There looms, within
abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed
against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or
inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the
thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated.
It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desires, which, nevertheless,
does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside;
sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful—a
certainty of which it is proud holds on to it. But simultaneously,
just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an
elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. Unflaggingly, like an
inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the
one haunted by it literally beside himself “ Victor Hugo described
it as
“No
Beast is there without glimmer of infinity, No eye so vile
nor abject that brushes not Against lightning from on high,
now tender, now fierce. Victor Hugo, "La Legende des siecles
What
is indeed surprising is how so many people who seek to transform
society, who try to understand why people do the wrong things at the
wrong time find it impossible to resist beating their opponents with
perceived insight into their psyche. To believe in rehabilitation but
not for those they disagree with is a sad perception and
outlook. . The ad
hominem argument is used with the precision of
a Cruise missile. Please search the net you will find plenty of
arguments using this cluster bombing approach,
I
tried a short period in Plaid Cymru . I have always
believed in an Independent Wales and I was battling with an
uncharacteristic bitterness was told that they were a Green party and
yet while I found some excellent Ecosocialists there , I
also heard things that made my self recoil, I
heard defence of the badger cull, the expansion of
aviation, the support for Nuclear power and the narrow hypocrisy of
the Chapel mentality. I left very quickly for much of the time
within Plaid I had been urged to condemn the Greens, to issue a
press release but I never felt happy to do that. I saw in
my mind the faces of those who had supported me, campaigned with me
and built the Green Party, people like John Matthews, Miranda LaVey,
Owain Clerk amongst others. There is only one Green party, there are
many pallid copies but the Green analysis is the only one
that is valid , that thinks beyond the short term.
I retuned to
the Green Party in Autumn 2013. I was determined to be an
ordinary member but once more I began to be involved. I
became the agent in Neath for the General election of 2015 and was
the agent in the Uplands by election in November 2014. I became the Election Agent for the Neath Port Talbot Green party and
was elected onto SOC in January of 2016. I find myself in this
campaign once more doing the Election Agent role.
I
have survived these years of turmoil because of two events. At my
lowest moment when I least expected it I found someone who
has been with me ever since and so I have never been cynical of love.
The other reasons are three figures of Philosophy, Neitzche Heidegger
and Sartre . One day the day I was declared bankrupt I
watched three documentaries about them. You can find them above this
paragraph.
Its
good to be campaigning for the the Green party its is larger, more
commuted, contesting all the seats in Wales, those I struggled with
in my first incarnation have gone and all is to play for. I empathise
with those who lead the party over the next six months, the
candidates and wish them well. I am however very glad that I cannot
join you in any of those roles. I am delighted in fact but my faith,
trust and support is there for you all. The Leadership of Alice
Hooker Stroud and Hannah Pudner is formidable. We have the best lead
candidate we have ever had in South West Wales and in Neath. Lisa
Rapado is working class, Welsh speaking and a first rate campaigner .
But enough of my reflections. I will end with this quote by Oscar
Wilde who observed "Every Saint has a past, every sinner a
future and Neitzche commented that our morality is
simply our wounds. How true they both are..........
Has
this been a confession, an explanation ? I dont know but I
will concluded with Dylan's quote form the Ballad
of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest.
Well,
the moral of the story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
You don't half talk some pseudo-intellectual and self-pitying fucking bollocks!
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