The Most Important Book I've Read This Year

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Let me set the scene for you. It's Sunday afternoon and surprisingly the sun is shining. It's pleasant out there...but I'm inside the house blinds shut.

I should be cutting the grass for the final time before we move out (probably)...but that can wait until Tuesday.I'm inside.

Wife/daughter are out. Next weekend wife and I will be doing a final blitz of the stuff barring the barest of essentials to be packed before the move. The world is my oyster....and I'm inside.....reading.

Not since American Psycho have I read a book that I just had to complete. As a reader it's a rare feeling when a book grips you to that extent. Where almost everything else just has to stop.

As I chatted about yesterday Robert Tressell's novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists grips from the first chapter because though it was written in 1911 the message seems astonishingly relevant in the Jackboot Britain that has stealthily been created in recent months. I won't detail what happens in the rest of the novel. I wouldn't spoil things for you. But it shows a vision of a Britain that already exists post Brexit and will only get worse.

For whoever in Britain has been supposed to have "taken control" post Brexit it won't be ordinary people, that's for certain.

And let us be clear here the "Philanthropists" of the title are firstly the people who accept lower standards in their lives for fear of the consequences of rebellion ,that I understand and have acted this way in the past. However there are also those ordinary people who vote Conservative in the UK or Trump in the US  believing that they are natural right wing voters and yet these are the very people who will probably be badly affected by the consequences of their action.

It's not perfect. A bit of editing would have helped. And it's vision of socialism seems quaint now when people such as in Wales have voted for Labour to control towns, cities etc and have been disappointed to have found them as arrogant as Conservatives. It was one of the reasons that I decided to join Plaid Cymru.

However its importance in this age of Jackboot Britain cannot be over emphasised. It describes a Britain where the ordinary are at the mercy of those with money, where the media is biased to the right wing and nothing, absolutely nothing is beyond the needs of avarice.

Good people voted for Brexit and were misled. This novel shows the consequences of a town that rich men rule.

This novel's time has come again. Read it before you find it conveniently unavailable.

The next book to read is Jack O'Judgement by Edgar Wallace. Something tells me I'm not going to be as enthusiastic about this one.

Until the next time.

The Ragged Trousered Prophets Of Jackboot Britain

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well didn't read on Thursday. Was a bit stressed out by the house move situation. Three separate issues seem to have converged on us at the same time. Those that say this is one of the most traumatic times of your lives are right. However things at the end of that day seem to have resolved themselves...thankfully.

What this all means is that I didn't exactly start reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressel until yesterday. Perhaps this was meant to be. Because on that morning the news greeted me of widespread conservative gains throughout Britain in the local elections, what has turned out to be the supporting act for the general election. I've spoken about this election before and will only mention a few things about it before I go on. But clearly what it shows is the Conservatives will win an overall majority and the synchronised march of jackboot Britain will continue.

I do need to mention a few things about the local election. Plaid Cymru have made gains. It is perhaps at a slow pace, but clearly more and more people are realising that in Wales they are the party Labour used to be. Labour knows this, especially now as inroads have been made into places that they've never had success before......such as Bridgend.

Bridgend is at no overall control at time of writing. Labour having lost its majority. Regular readers will know that along with Arsenal football club and D H Lawrence Bridgend Labour Council are one of the regular villains of this blog. They deserve it having run the borough with arrogant incompetence. What will be interesting is to see exactly what type of government takes over and whether they'll still be involved. We'll have to wait and see.

Anyway back to Jackboot Britain and to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. there am I yesterday afternoon starting to read this novel and I'm stunned. For although this was written in 1911 the similarities with the Britain of today are striking.

I won't go into detail of the plot. I would never spoil it for another reader. But Chapter one is a perfect case in point. To set the scene it's lunchtime and workmen are discussing various issues.

Firstly a government "fiscal policy" is mentioned. Some of these workmen vote Conservative, despite the damage the party does to them because they believe that they are the only party with an economic plan. This rings true today. It doesn't matter that the plan gives more to the rich and punishes the poor. It's a plan and it's put out as the only one that makes any sense. As I've said before with regard to people I know who are in debt but don't show it. Image is everything.....until reality bites.

Then comes the fact that the majority of these men are not interested in politics. This is the case now. People are not interested in the subject that will dominate their lives. "Don't be interested in politics,politics is dull, come here and watch Britains Got The X Factor Voice Dancing Instead. Oh and the decline in your living standards? That's the fault of the foreigners".

And what's the newspaper some of these men are reading? It's The Obscurer. A Tory paper that bellows news from a Tory bias? Sounds familiar? After all Britain has now become a country where to disagree with the government party line you are called an enemy of the people or a saboteur deserving to be crushed. Britain was a country that was a proud democracy where people of non violent but different views to the government of the day were not treated as traitors. Let me make myself clear. On the basis of current British tabloid mentality I am a traitor. There I've said it.

Let's get back to "the foreigners". That's right it's mentioned here too in a book written in 1911. In this chapter a charcter says that they should be "driven into the bloody sea" for taking "the bread out of English people's mouths". Even then what you do is to create an enemy where the real enemy are the rich who seek to keep all their money whilst letting the rest of us live on a pittance. Nowadays it appears to be mainly the Poles who are subjected to this racism. It's a trick, and not the only one the Conservatives use either. Really the Tories must have been founder members of the Magic Circle.

Another issue is the increasing use of foodbanks in jackboot Britain because of poverty. An issue that Theresa May finds "complex". In the book a workman states that "Drink is the cause of the poverty". The impression is given that self restraint will stop poverty. I heard similar argument on TV being stated in that some of the people going to foodbanks had cigarettes and drink.

Again this is Tory trick, for although such people exist, the slight of hand is to imply that they are in the majority. Most are decent people who have fallen on hard times and find that the state would rather turn its back on them  or punish them further than help out.

And that is on Chapter One. I could have gone further but that would have spoilt things for you.  Let's just say that it gives us an idea of things to come in Jackboot Britain as well as what's currently happening. I've not finished it yet but it seems to be the most important book I'm going to read this year.

Until the next time.

Why Didn't I Like Treasure Island More?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, part of the literary bucket list of classics I should read before I die that my Kindle seems to be giving me (does it know something I don't?) can now be crossed off.

More than any of these books I've read recently though when finished I felt unenthused. Won't say neutral, because I did like the novel. Just not as much as I thought.

So there am I on completion thinking to myself "Why Didn't I Like Treasure Island more?" Mentally found myself  making a short list of reasons.

Here's it is:

That I knew too much about the book before reading it: Regular readers to this blog will know that I try to avoid film/TV adaptations of famous novels as much as possible to avoid the probability of the reading experience being spoilt. But the more famous the book the more chances there are of images in the popular consciousness, consequently there are less chances of you being able to be monk like in the isolation of them.

Of the recent classic books I've read Treasure Island was far and away the most famous. Who doesn't know about Long John Silver and that parrot, Jim Hawkins etc. It's also responsible for a lot of popular pirate clichés. Perhaps I just knew too much before I started reading it to have enjoyed it now?

That the book had just one strong character in Long John Silver and was damaged because of it: I've read bad books in my life where what pulled you through as a reader was the strength of one particular character. Soames Forsyth and Francis Urquhart in the novels of John Galsworthy and Michael Dobbs springs to mind. It didn't mean that I enjoyed the book, it just meant there was a reason why I continued to turn the page.

The trouble however was that when the strong character wasn't in a scene the book seemed dull in comparison. Although let me stress I don't think that this is a bad novel to me it was exactly what occurred in Treasure Island.

And linked to this reason comes the following:

That the "good guys" in Treasure Island are just dull/unbelievable: And so they are. Even Jim Hawkins, who is able at thirteen to do things that elders in his group are incapable of.

That people should just know their place: If we leave aside Jim Hawkins for a moment. It's noticeable that the "good guys" in Treasure Island are all in positions of authority (the captain.the squire and the doctor). The subliminal message here is that the lower orders should follow people of a higher strata than them. It's irritating to say the least.

All of the above are genuine reasons why I didn't like Treasure Island as much as I was expecting to. But one reason dominates above all else.

I read it too late: When starting to read this book I didn't know whether it was purely for children or "for all the family". Having read it I now know that it's the former. More specifically a book for boys between about ten and thirteen before girls come into the picture. It's on reflection noticeable that there's just one female character in the entire novel, Jim Hawkins' mother. And she's gone after a few chapters.

What more could a boy of that age want than adventure in the high seas and foreign climes without bothersome whiny women to stop you? Not only that but you prove yourself just as invaluable as the adults around you. It's very Boy's Own.

However I'm a very old man with very grey hair. I no longer have the enthusiasm of thirteen, just the fatigue of fifty three.

So the fault as to why I didn't like Treasure Island as much is not Stevenson's but mine. I was too old to truly enjoy it (a sentence I'll be saying a lot of as these years go on).

The next book from the great unread is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. Arguably the most important work of socialist fiction in English.

So definitely a book a fifty three year old man can read.

Until the next time.