Well I am none of the above. I am myself & try to be true to myself. I am this way because I believe that to allow one's self to be labelled is to immediately feel the need to disagree with something that a person from the other side has said & that is just plain stupid.
What I am though is a person who is deeply troubled by the state of the world & also the appalling state of Britain.
I have over the last few years been set on a course of environmentally responsible living in an attempt to do something to try & make a difference to the effect I have on the planet & also to pass on that mentality to others. If you would like to see what I mean by that then please have a look at my channel on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/user/howshawthebrave?feature=mhsn
Although it would be nice to just plod on & do what I do, I just can't. I feel so strongly about the world that we are leaving for our children that I simply have to blog about it to try & get whoever reads my blog thinking outside the box.
The defining moment for me has been the riots of August 2011 & the effect that it has had on people from different sections of society. It has shown up a few interesting things that may otherwise have gone unnoticed by many people.
Firstly it has shed light on the appallingly arrogant attitude of the police towards certain sections of the community, in this case Black people, which no matter how you try to dress it up was most certainly the catalyst for the explosion of anger which spread across the country.
Secondly it highlighted for me just how incredibly swiftly the propaganda machine kicks in to sway public opinion in the direction of the government & corporatocracy's favour. All I can say about that is thank goodness for Twitter because that tide is gradually turning in favour of truth rather than state controlled fiction.
The most chilling thing that has come to light as a result of the riots is the gradually emerging truth about the lack of integrity of our government & our judiciary. It has made it abundantly clear that there is no justice. The much talked about, double standards issues regarding the failure to prosecute MP's who betrayed us all from their positions of trust by fiddling enormous amounts of money in expenses & then to go on & jail a drunk for sixteen months who stole a box of donuts & also jailing Facebook fantasists for four years who foolishly set up an events page for a riot.
Take a look at this newspaper clip to see the nauseatingly arrogant double standards of our so called leaders.
Something very sad also emerged from the ugly mess of the riots & subsequent 'looting'. It was the type of looting. Nobody was doing it through desperation for food (apart from the drunk guy), the looting was simply extreme consumerism.
I say that it's sad because it gave the government a very easy ride when it came to analysing the riots, simply calling it an outburst of criminality & allowing the government to dodge the blame for civil unrest in a country that had been simmering just under boiling point for some time.
It was a sickening example of how we have all fallen for consumerism. We have been marketed to from the cradle to the grave for more than a century. We have been owned by the corporations for the last thirty years at least.
I had been expecting some kind of civil unrest but I think that I rather naively expected it to be directed at the people who the rioters felt were responsible for their plight. I also think that the government expected something & thought that all their birthdays had come at once when it just turned out to be a largely black youth led tantrum. They have been given a golden opportunity to come down hard on these people in order to set an example of what people are likely to face as a punishment in a real rebellion.
So what am I saying here? Am I just having a moan or is there something that we can do to change things? I believe that we can change things but that change begins with us.
