Pasty Paradise - The Joie of Findin' T'Last Un!

Hasty on the pasty

It is kudos to the last pasty that caused this scene. © Devon Live

My attempt at a Devonshire accent in the title, most likely falls flat, even my Brummie birth accent cultivated in Walsall, barely gets a try.

This is one of those stories that should have ended up as a quip on Twitter or Threads, but it makes for interesting reading just because it is impossible to decide whether to laugh or cry.

It could well feature in the Odd World section of any village rag, but Bideford in North Devon, England with a population of about 15,000 or so, finds notoriety in the actions of one truculent freewheeling pensioner.

The said pensioner had rolled up to a bakery on his mobility scooter only to find that someone had paid for and made off with the last pasty. Devon, which borders Cornwall to the east, is part of the Cornish peninsula and why, I do love a rich and meaty Cornish pasty, and for that love much can happen if you are beaten to the last pasty. [Devon Live: Watch as Devon pensioner runs down man for 'buying last pasty']

A nasty for the pasty

So, waving cane and revving his mobility scooter, as if mounted on horseback and lance in hand like the cavalry of old, the pensioner ran down the man with the last pasty. The clatter and crash left pasty-man on the ground behind a shop sign ‘Kudos’.

I am undecided as to whom should receive the kudos; however, the bigger question is where did the last pasty end up? Other formalities regarding the fracas and the law notwithstanding, the morale of the tale is you are an endangered species if you are aiming for the last pasty.

It is like crossing a busy road, look right, look left, look behind you, and look all around you and far enough to be sure that with prognostication, premonition, and gut instinct and no regard for your hunger, that an old-age pensioner is not nearby ready to break your legs with a mobility scooter. That last pasty might be the last thing you do.

Having no fear of missing out

Powering down and resetting goals

I get distracted, something like losing a sense of direction or some focus, it is unsettling and upsetting, but I know it is momentary, it would pass. I have learnt not to try and force things because it only yields frustration, the kind that dogs you with the feeling that certain things you could have done did not get done, all in the wake of procrastination.

Yet, in these times where there is no social activity apart from that which you create in another form of distraction to give your mind that time to rest and recalibrate to matters better absorbing, you might also get some sleep. Like I have written before, this s no time to be driven or set inordinately ambitious goals because of the availability of time, it is a better time for a complete power down and reset.

The world is going nowhere

I think like this because the world is also at a standstill, even in Formula 1 racing, if you took a pitstop, somewhere behind the leader, you probably do not expect to come out ahead, only better equipped to catch up. There is no fear of missing out [FOMO], the world is not running away.

I am learning new things, both for my career and in self-development, all at an easy pace, using the leverage of my curiosity to get beyond the immediate and exploring further to obtain enlightenment.

It goes without saying that the greatest distraction that affects me the most is the desire to somewhere with someone, in the eagerness and expectations, we harbour, we know it would be soon. I can live with that because hope is a good thing, it keeps you looking forward and looking up, who I care for will soon be in my embrace, it is a comforting and peaceful thought.

Opinion: Phew! That Election Nightmare is Over

It’s over already

There will be a lot of analysis as to why Mitt Romney despite the supposed odds that had become political Shibboleth for the past 18 months lost the US presidential elections.

The mantra that combined jobs, healthcare, taxes, socialism, misogyny, homophobia, immigration and racism into a compelling conservative narrative was so shrill the world literally stopped to see what will happen as the 7^th of November 2012 dawned on us.

I just wanted the whole thing to be over long ago as I watched cherry-pickers of Mitt Romney’s vaunted business qualities wilfully ignore the realities and the truth of what a Romney presidency would bring to the world.

Scary, it was

There might just be a third of a billion Americans but whoever becomes the president is literally de facto leader of the world, his ideas, opinions, utterances, actions and much else can determine the global outlook of the world in such unintended ways, it is scary.

The day after George W. Bush was elected by reason of that Supreme Court judgement, I said to my friends, this man will take us to war, I just did not know who with. If I had a blog then, it would have been documented, but there we are.

A businessman who became governor whose father was still alive that there would have been reason for him to come out of the shadow of his father, it does not to take much to realise something radical will happen.

Disaster!

The trigger was the Al Qaeda attack on the World Trade Centre and the course of world history was changed forever, two wars, economic policies that lowered taxes and cheapened access to money – the whole edifice of false hopes collapsed ruinously as he was seeing off the last few months of his 8-year rule and the world has in no way recovered from the crisis as we close the fifth year of economic turmoil.

We all know that the lower taxes idea does not really create jobs nor grow the economy, not in the Reagan times nor in the Bush II times and this was the crux of Romney’s grand economic recovery scheme, but I am no economist just an observer of the realities as the world suffered them.

False dawns

Romney as a Bain Capital executive in the clearest truth did create wealth but never created jobs, he was at best a corporate raider who both well, piled on debt and sold it off to other mugs who thought the fat organisation had been made so lean and efficient but at what real cost to every single component of the business; especially the people and the communities?

However, the irony of this presidential escapade is in the kind of money that was sunk into the campaigns to the point that it was looking like a black hole casino that would no doubt have fattened the organisations that pushed the advertisements of terminological inexactitudes – to be blunt, lies to an electorate that probably just got fed up with it all as fact checkers worked overtime trying to keep up with the next rotten untruth, half-truth, bending of the truth or complete absence of the truth – it almost made the Devil feel outwitted at his game.

I should expect the networks that ran the advertisements to declare eye-watering profits and walk away with vulgar bonuses, this was a bumper year that they will be looking to make this a formula for each election cycle an assured source of atrocious income.

Run a company like this

Again, let us look at the presumably amazing business machinery that Mitt Romney brought into his campaign for the US Presidency.

If this were a company, it would be a case of the CEO being known to have a clear vision, mission and set of values for the company that changed with the sentiment of the market that none of the company shareholders could determine what purpose the company was for.

Each time, it seemed there was the promise of great returns and shareholders ploughed even more of their money into the company just as others saw that the products were going to a niche market and alarm bells were ringing questioning the viability of the enterprise.

Bust!

Where there should have been clear indicators of profit warnings, the investors were so locked into what had become a Ponzi scheme; they could not cut their losses and run.

For all that was invested, made, sold and accounted for, at well over $1 billion and management experience that made the niche market swoon at the genius of the Chief Executive, the company went bust.

Yes, for all the acumen that Mitt Romney brought to this business, he failed to get a sustainable market for his product, one that did not have enduring quality but was constantly recalled because of flaws and what we might uncharitably refer to as flip-flops.

Alas! No fault

The honest truth was that Mitt Romney was not able, not ready and not reliable enough to take the reins of America and consequently the world in leadership, direction and purpose – if anything, that was the economic solution for America that Mitt Romney had; truncated before it compounded the liabilities we are still contending with.

Sadly, because the quest for office was not like running a company, Mitt Romney rather than be charged with false accounting and running the company to ruin with all investors losing their money, he will return to the comparative comfort of being another footnote in history that will only come up when parallels are required for healthcare reform, hosting the Olympics or running the most expensive campaign that came to naught.

The best outcome

Without doubt from where I could observe things from, Mitt Romney had no business trying to be president and I am so glad that after the campaign revealed the character and substance of the man, not enough Americans were persuaded to hand him the keys to the White House – even though someone suggested a tweet I posted was the dumbest he had read with regards to that election night – whether prescience or just foreboding, I think wars are ending and the prospect of engaging Iran in a war might well have been kicked out of touch.

We need a world of accommodations on the pain of everything within our means, Mitt Romney never showed the foreign policy nous that would have kept the uneasy peace and détente and for that too I am glad that those who could decide stuck with what they already knew with the hope that change for the better is still possible.

Editorial: The morning after the world ended

A rugged earth

And so the earth is reborn as morning broke very much like the first morning, you wonder what happened to the scientifically predicted end of the world that seems to have passed without event.

The earth itself has seen many destructions and renovations, the earth at the beginning in Genesis did pre-exist, but it was without form and void, the backstory told later on informs that it was the domain of Lucifer’s rule before he rebelled and in one instant all life was wiped off the earth for an indeterminate period of time.

The life-forms of that bygone age are what we see as fossils of dinosaurs and the measure of time is an eternity that stretches from millions into billions of years ago.

Flood for a new beginning

Creationism gives the context to a post-Adamite destruction of all life that breathes air with the floods of Noah who with his ark saved both his family and all species of breathing animals.

Another destruction is pending, the one that was to be preceded by a rapture, yesterday, a tribulation, a destruction and the creation of a new heaven and new earth.

What our dear scientist missed was the fact that he had no clue about that scheduling. The omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience of God can be explained in natural terms.

Hubs, wheels and spheres of time

The dimension of time in which God dwells is like the hub of a wheel that extends out to the circumference where we find ourselves in a sector of a greater and mightier purpose than we can fathom, but that is the concept of eternity, it has no beginning or end because it is at the centre of all things and we calibrate our three-dimensional sector of this in units of measurable time.

The analogy of the wheel is probably what we can fully understand because we can create movement when it is properly attached, the mind-blowing dimension to this is a wheel in the form of a perfect sphere, multidirectional and self-propelling – in that situation you cannot have a hub as you would for a wheel but astronomers would probably appreciate the contexts of gravity, centrifugal and centripetal forces and much more.

The folly of man

What our scientist tried to do was have a peek into a point on the surface of a hub of hubs of spheres of dimensions of time and pinpoint with accuracy an event that even Jesus Christ said neither He nor the angels knew apart from God the Father.

It is hard enough predicting the weather, the markets ebb and flow with forces that are almost indeterminate, we cannot predict our own demise or even with any certainty the course of our lives and yet somebody wants to predict the end of the world. Amuse me.

Once again, his dimensions were out of sorts, his measurements in earth-bound units of finite time and he expected to offer a perspective of eternal purpose – what folly – for that again, his credibility has been questioned and we should expect another excuse and the world will continue until that expected but unknown date.

Good morning, world.

Gabon: Mr. Bongo, your time is up

Breaking News: 17:56 Monday, 8th of June - It has been confirmed that the longest serving ruler in Africa who ruled Gabon for 42 years has died in a foreign hospital in Spain. May the hopes and aspirations of the Gabonese arise.

Is he dead or not?

In what is turning out to be like the Soviet era long drawn out dying throes of leaders like Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, we are suffering the same uncertainties regarding the leader of Gabon.

Since yesterday, the French press opined in quotes and offered the news that the 73-year old eternal incumbent leader of Gabon, El Hadj Omar BONGO Ondimba [1] had passed on [2] from immortality of absolute power to the mortality of succumbing to cancer. []

With Gabon being a former French colony, one would expect that any serious events about that country would be truthfully and verifiably reported by the French press.

However, the rump of what is left of the government in Gabon suggests that false information is being peddled and that Mr. Bongo is “alive and well”. Maybe, Mr. Bongo is alive, the aspect of well is seriously debatable.

The rape of Gabon

The poor people of Gabon who unfortunately have not had the express freedom and right to choose who leads them for the 42 years of this atrocious regime have now been on tenterhooks as turmoil within the government is trying to resolve who steps into the dynasty shoes of the dying king before they probably announce that the President died tomorrow when probably maggots have borne generations of descendants already.

However, one has not begun to touch the travesty of this longest serving ruler in Africa until one explores the circumstances around his eventual demise.

Gabon [3], is an oil-rich country which with the resources it has and the finances that have come into the country could have been a different place, but a majority of its population remains poor.

If a person has been in power for 42 years and the life expectancy of his country is just 53.11 years, there should be a court of justice somewhere on earth to indict the person with a crime against humanity.

In power but not for the people

The President languishes in pain probably ameliorated with morphine in a Spanish hospital with the hope that the probability of his being “alive and well” is a miracle in the making – the Grand Despot of Africa in Zimbabwe is at least 10 years older and seemingly in rude health.

How, anyone could have been in power for 42 years and not been able to establish a first-class hospital along with necessary infrastructure of power, roads and transport as well as the resources of highly trained staff from first class educational institutions in his country escapes me.

This, in the end represents the failure and travesty of leadership in Africa, people who are in power but only for their own self-aggrandisement.

Rulers at home dying abroad

As these leaders have converted their leaderships into life monarchies the sadness of the story reads in a very unAfrican context. As I wrote in a comment I left on AfricanLoft when it was first announced that President Bongo had taken ill and was in hospital in Spain.

Kings in days of yore died in their own beds surrounded by their families and subjects outside the palace walls praying for the safe recovery of their monarchs.

The context being the best medical help was available to the monarch and at his beck and call in his own comfortable and familiar setting.

The irony for the African variation of kings who rule without the express and free consent of their people is that they do not have the best medical help available to them in their own countries all because they failed to serve the interest of their people due to the fact that they could use the resources of the country to jet out to any good hospital abroad at the slightest hint of discomfort.

In the end, they lay in exclusive wards with expensive beds surrounded by strange people and dying in foreign lands far away from where they have ruled with a rod of iron and had given their people no respite in freedom, justice, liberty or choice.

They may have ruled for an eternity, I was hardly 2 years old when Mr. Bongo assumed office, but all we would know of this leadership is squandered opportunities to make something great of what they had control of for all those decades.

Surely, there are others better

To suggest that there are not a thousand other Gabonese if given the opportunity who would not have made a better country of that place than Mr. Bongo is disingenuous at least and contemptible at worst.

This horrible hubris of eternal incumbency [4] unfortunately inflicts Africa badly like a plague as you have Santos in Angola for 30 years, Biya in Cameroon for 27 years, Nguesso in the Congo for 30 years, Mubarak in Egypt for 28 years, Bongo in Gabon for 42 years, Gaddafi in Libya for 40 years, Mswati III in Swaziland for 22 years, al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia for 22 years, Museveni in Uganda for 23 years and Mugabe in Zimbabwe for 29 years.

The unasked question is, which of these countries have been made better by any of these leaders? I would hate to read the CIA – The World Factbook [5] assessments of each country, but I provide the links for your perusal and judge for yourselves.

Their demise brings no respite

But as long regimes do, it would have bred a corrupt class of self-serving snouts in the trough, it is unlikely that the Gabonese would at the eventual demise of Mr. Bongo find true representative leadership that serves their interests.

However, this is an opportunity that should be seized upon by the good minds of Africa to sue for a clear free democratic representation of the Gabonese where the policies of those who seek office would clearly begin to reverse the entrenched patronage and corrupt establishment to deploy Gabonese resources to the general welfare and emancipation of the people.

The last thing Gabon needs is the son of this dying despot who happens to be the defence minister assuming power, unchallenged and without his father’s tenure having been scrutinised for its successes and failings.

Meanwhile, if Mr. Omar Bongo is dead, it is time to bury him and everything he represented that kept the people of Gabon from fully pursuing their happiness and freedom, if he is still being propped up, somebody should pull the plug and well, if he is still “alive and well”, he should return to the country and start to make amends for the failures highlighted.

But the most important message in all this stretched out dying throes is Mr. Bongo, your time is up, if not on earth, at least as the President of Gabon.

Sources

[1] BBC NEWS | Africa | Profile: Omar Bongo

[2] BBC NEWS | Africa | Gabon leader Bongo's death denied

[3] CIA - The World Factbook - Gabon

[4] FACTBOX: Africa's longest-serving leaders | Reuters

[5] CIA - The World Factbook – The links on the countries mentioned are to the CIA – The World Factbook and acknowledged as such.