Time to Reflect
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Tue 4 Oct 2016 00:12
As I write this, snug in the noisy and rolling saloon of Vega, Hurricane Mathew continues to wag his tail across us with torrential rain and winds up to 40kts. It could have been worse - in Grenada and the ABC Islands they had heavier rain and 50kts of wind. It will be much worse in Jamaica and Haiti where the wind may reach 150kts, the strongest storm for some years. As if the people of Haiti haven’t suffered enough.
On the bulkhead opposite me is our barometer, currently reading 1008 millibars which is closer to “change" than “fair”. The lowest point in Hurricane Mathew at the moment is 976 millibars which gets you down to “rain” on our barometer. You have to get below 960 millibars before you even reach the edge of “stormy”. As I recall, the highest reading we have ever had was in the vicinity of Senegal and Gambia at 1021 millibars and where it was the hottest dry heat I have experienced outside the Sinai Desert. You have to get above 1040 millibars to even approach "very dry" on the barometer! We do cross reference the barometer against pressure charts and there is usually a remarkable degree of alignment. A few days ago the barometer fell by 4 millibars in an eight hour period exactly as forecast. This means that for us the barometer over the last five years has slowly oscillated between about 1010 millibars and 1021 millibars - a very small sector between “change” and “fair”. Before cross referencing it against published pressure data I had thought that maybe a drop of lubrication was required in the mechanism. All I can say is that either the French have an exaggerated sense of melodrama (it is a Plastimo albeit brass barometer) or our forbears had a much more diverse experience of weather.
Whilst in Curaçao we visited a museum set up in the World Heritage part of town by a Dutch entrepreneur to illustrate the importance of Africa in the development of world art and culture. There were exhibits from Iran and what was Mesopotamia with artefacts from the dawn of civilisation, as we are taught in the west, but also from Africa over a similar time period. The point is, I think, that while mankind migrated out of Africa and around the world, civilisations, art and culture also developed in Africa and should be recognised. Not to recognise this means that you fail to see African peoples on the same cultural level as those, say, in Europe. Even worse you might perceive them as something less than human which is what of course helped to sustain the slave trade. A big part of the museum exhibition was about the slave trade and showed instruments of torture and restraint together with contemporary drawings, writings, other artefacts and so-on. Ever since leaving Europe the historical backdrop to our travels has been the slave trade. It led to the genocide that wiped out the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. It led to the displacement of over 4 million people from Africa to the Caribbean that has cultural, tribal, family and social ramifications to this day. The barbarity was beyond anything I can convey here or contemplate for long even in a sanitised museum or exhibition.
What shocked me about the Curaçao museum is how relevant it is today. In the USA blacks were being lynched only 60 years ago. Today the police just shoot them. However, my point is not about black people per se, it is about the perception of difference and what this can lead to. The Holocaust for example. This is why concerns about immigrants are so dangerous because sympathy and understanding are displaced by fear and intolerance. It is one of the many reasons I am so angry about our decision to leave the EU and why the politics of England at the moment are so dangerous. Perceptions of difference lead to elitism, segregation and discrimination. As far as I can tell from over here there is going to be no consultation on the terms of leaving the EU, no parliamentary oversight, no parliamentary final decision. The Tories have their mandate from the British people and our adversarial politics will ensure that the weakness of the Labour party will be fully taken advantage of. Now we have the Teresa May - aspirational elitist personified - proposal for the expansion of the Grammar School system. Actually you have to admire this as a policy of austerity - why waste money giving the great majority of the population a decent education when all our low skilled, low wage economy requires is people who can at least read and write? Spend the resources on the aspirational elite who will run our institutions and man our professions and then import the scientists and professionals we otherwise need without the expense of educating them. Just think about this. We are seriously proposing to write off the great majority of our 11 year olds based upon one single elitist test.
Now, I have reservations about Jeremy Corbyn as an individual and leader but when he gets up and sets out a policy manifesto on behalf of the Labour Party that involves radical steps and investment to improve the lives of the majority of people in the UK he is derided by the press and institutions run by people that have a very strong vested interest in this not happening. And the poor disgruntled, marginalised electorate that wants us out of the EU doffs its forelock and votes for a government that is guaranteed to keep this same electorate in its place and introduce more elitism, division and inequality. Policies such as grammar schools are just one aspect of this. This seems to be endemic in the English culture and has been ingrained for generation after generation and why Bristol should be so ashamed of its slave trading past. The danger of this attitude is that it leads to difference, intolerance, prejudice, isolationism. Our educational, political and legal structures are based upon a Roman model that embraced elitism, prejudice, intolerance (and slavery) two thousand years ago. They are manifestly failing the majority of the British people at the moment whilst supporting the elites. We need consensus and tolerance, not elitism, segregation and adversarial ways. Sadly and worryingly the downtrodden majority would not recognise progressive social politics if it slapped them around the head like a wet codfish. The elites know full well what it is all about and is why their hands are so firmly on the steering wheel to prevent any such course.
Nothing to do with our barometer I’m afraid, but being in a hurricane does give one time to reflect.