Author: stone2013

It’s the perfect moment when you finally realise that absolutely nothing seems that important anymore. First you have ambitions and perhaps some of these you will achieve, but often its really the struggle to get there that’s the fun part of brings satisfaction, but then once you get there, your looking to the next mountain to climb.

So what happens if one day you suddenly think, what’s the point in striving because there is ultimately nothing except finding another challenge at the end?

Well, I suppose that after you lived long enough it’s going to happen. Having written and recorded about 400 different songs and musical works, the rot seems to be setting in somewhat. I still enjoy creating stuff and playing it too but gone are the days when I had sufficient of an obsession to come home from work and spend hours recording stuff. Granted it’s a much quicker process now as in days of old tape required much more planning re overdubs, and managing tape hiss and just good old fashioned getting it right, which becomes a lot easier with practice of course. Listening to old demos from 25 years ago can also be a bit of a shock. A sense of the familiar laced with dread.

I still have not managed to get my own rather quirky stuff into a live environment that often but a few tunes have made it into regular live incarnations though they are very rather different from the first quintessence on tape or CD.  I am still very ambivalent about my voice although I have been singing live for the past 7 years or so regularly.

Rather than writing this at the moment I should be getting on with my next project which I have sketched out a brief musical outline for, but I seem to be finding jolly good reasons not to get started.  I have always got bored quickly, often so that my concentration goes just about at the point where I should be putting the final polish on something.  I remember my school reports saying something a long the lines of could do better or tends to daydream or is easily distracted and yes that seems to still be the case. I don’t think fundamentally our persona changes that much really. Sometimes when things come too easily to us to start with we give up when challenged I suppose.
I did have copies of my school reports lurking somewhere but I can’t find them now frustratingly as I think that they might be fun to revisit.
I am writing this the morning after doing a spot at the Arundel Festival, which was great fun to do and did not require too much effort. Arundel is somewhere that I remember from trips out as a child and it’s funny to be going back there now. We regularly gig in that area so it’s very familiar now.  I enjoyed the drive down through the countryside equally as much as playing the gig too. Just the right amount of sunshine and not too much traffic either.

I seem to be afflicted with a dose of too much introspection at the moment.I am trying to work out a plan here on the off chance that I am still extant in a couple of years.

The one thing in life that is certain is that nothing stays the same and the more one try’s to hold to the good things the more stuff slips through your fingers. Forward is the only way to go if you can.

Everyday I am surprised by how little I really know about people.

On the net with so many peoples real identities often masked or obscured it makes you wonder what lies behind the nature of some of the more vociferous postings. I find particularly amusing the degree of certainty in some peoples convictions as though they have a total understanding of the world. To them it would appear everything is simple, and it is only those that hold other views who are sadly misguided on matters of politics, religion, or any moral issues. O how blessed to be so sure of everything and that you are right, it must be a wondrous state to exist in, and other mere mortals like myself can only wonder at their awesome powers and infallibility. If there is dissent they have only to repeat themselves or shout louder.

Strangely away from the world of the net and the LCD screens this approach does not seem to work in quite the same way. Such things are of course a mystery to simple folk like me.

It is also interesting how those same knowledgeable folk can know immediately that ones own direct experience of the world is invalid where as everything that they may utter should be taken as truth. At times of frustration they will quote from appropriate sources with great erudition when their “Truth” is disputed.

Still I am a neophyte having only been on this earth 56 years and having of course in that time learnt nothing and been mistaken about everything that I have experienced which I have of course misinterpreted.

Pity me, where will I find guidance 😉

Often when I am feeling a bit off, I tend to think along certain lines. the what if creeps in, the whole thing about if I had turned left instead of right, taken this job or that, not got fired and so forth.

Yep, it would seem that I am complete out of touch and yet all my crusty and ancient mates seem to think they same way as me with regard to most subjects. So many people seem to think that everything is a race to be won or lost and that just over the horizon there is the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. I think they may have been misinformed. That sort of thinking may cause you to miss an awful lot of the good lot of the good stuff along the way.

For me everything is a perpetual effort to do what I do just a little bit better and it takes more and more effort just to move forward an inch or so. But not bothering is really not an option at all and still on the worst days is a real effort to do anything with a backdrop of depression that it would be easy sink back into again. The reality is we do what we do, and then like the song says “you go back Jack, do it again, wheel turning round & round” because the alternative doesn’t bare thinking about.

I do feel like an alien creature stranded in a strange land with odd unfathomable customs half the time,more and more I realise its not the place that’s changed its me. Like many others I have spent a fair portion of my adult life being told what to do and when to do it, but when those certainty’s and patterns dissolve what are we left with?

I am feeling really old right now.

Well guess what, they have been pretty unpopular with me for quite  a while so not much change there.

This article titled “The Conservatives are much more unpopular than they realise” was written by Sunny Hundal, for theguardian.com on Saturday 27th April 2013 11.00 UTC

Much of modern politics is based on a series of confidence tricks. After Thursday’s “better than expected” (by 0.2 percentage points) growth figures, the mood around Westminster has changed. George Osborne claims the economy is “healing” and Tory MPs feel more convinced that, with a triple-dip recession avoided, the economy is on its way up. Only 0.4 percentage points the other way and it would have been a disaster. But Conservatives shouldn’t be so self-assured because, outside the Westminster bubble, they are much more unpopular than they realise or accept.

A few weeks ago, on the eve of the budget, a flurry of polls showed Labour had drawn level with the Conservatives on economic competence, and voters were losing faith in the chancellor. In another poll, people were more likely to reject an argument on the economy if Osborne advocated it.

This kind of unpopularity is extraordinary for a chancellor who has been in the job for less than three years. Most leftwingers think they know why (“they’re Tories”), but it’s curious that even conventional Westminster wisdom says Labour should be doing better on economic matters.

But there is no historical precedent for this; in fact Labour should be languishing way behind in the polls.

The key reason is that they were in power during the biggest economic crash of the past 80 years. Voters always blame the party in power for not preventing such big crashes, and take years to forget. The Conservatives were in power when Britain crashed out of the ERM in 1992, and it took the calamity of 2007 for them to be seen as better at managing the economy – a full 15 years later.

So why have people forgiven Labour so quickly? This question is more perplexing, as Labour has made two unpopular accusations against George Osborne since 2010: first that cuts to spending are too hard and too fast, and hit the poor hardest; secondly that austerity is hurting our economic growth and leading to stagnation. Neither of those arguments were popular for Labour to make.

Osborne has argued since 2009 that cuts need to be made to public spending to reduce Britain’s debts. Voters have not liked the cuts but a majority have always accepted their need. In fact more voters have consistently blamed Labour for the cuts than the coalition government. Voters have also mostly preferred more austerity over extra spending on growth. Similarly, on UK’s economic stagnation, most voters blame the previous Labour government, the Eurozone, banks or even higher oil prices for our mess.

If Labour are making arguments that voters don’t agree with, why aren’t more rejecting the party? Maybe the Tories are just feeling midterm blues? But this explanation does not make much sense either: Labour’s reputation for managing the economy increased after they were elected in 1997, and stayed high even during the midterm.

In other words, Labour has pushed ahead with unpopular (if true) arguments in the face of a very hostile media press. Plus, voters very clearly remember they were in charge when the economy crashed in 2007. And yet the Conservative record on economic competence is just barely ahead of Labour. It’s astounding that Labour aren’t languishing in obscurity in the polls.

This suggests to me that the issue here isn’t just the economy but something wider. The speed at which the Conservatives have become so unpopular says less about the cuts they’ve implemented and more about their overall brand. This is the practical impact of the failure of Cameron’s detoxification process, which died in the face of a weak leader unable to take on his own backbenchers. Westminster wisdom downplays Tory unpopularity to mask a hostility so deep that, as Ed Miliband cuttingly said at PMQs a few weeks ago, we were united when Osborne is booed at the Paralympics. It’s only a matter of time before the latest confidence trick also falls apart.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Today has not been the best day for me, I have feeling quite low and also suffering from some ongoing aches and pains related to a problem that started over a year ago. I have been thinking back over what I have done with most of my adult life and trying to reconcile the fact that I did miss the boat in many ways.

With Mrs T’s passing, its a bit like a sign post as many people seem to have very selective memory’s of that period, and its made me take a bit of wander down memory lane. The Brixton riots being a particularly vivid memory for me for example. Time seems to have flashed by, I seem to have been on this forum for ever too.

Some people gained and some lost a lot.
I suspect that there could well have been a better way to make change happen. To describe some sections of society as the enemy is hardly the way to have anything other than a divided Britain and the same style of rhetoric is in use today. So enough with the scapegoating its really not helpful.

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Well here we are then, still in a complete state of confusion and waiting for some good news, but the weathers still shit, the governments shit and I am feeling a bit shit myself. OK the reasons for optimism to balance it, well I am still alive, actually that’s about it really. Everything is bad news and we are fed a constant diet of inaccurate and distorted news, and there even seems to be what can only be interpreted as government sponsored hate campaigns against those who are most vulnerable in our society. The more you inquire the worst it gets and yet more duplicity is revealed. OK tell me I am paranoid I dare you.

Yet here in Battersea I am surrounded by the most blatant conspicuous consumption, recently a new restaurant has announced its open and distributed its gilt edged menu through my front door (my hovel being cheek by jowl with some of the most expensive property in London) and the menu has no prices in it, Presumably if you have to ask….

Apart from that, well its business as usual.
Wrote a song a couple of days ago, which can be heard here >

http://www.reverbnation.com/dianastone/song/16675904-pretty-gilded-cage