Rinkli Funstaz

Mar252021 by James MurphyNo Comments

Living Dyingly (with apologies to C. Hitchens)

Philosophy

As a young schoolboy, many years ago, I began, perhaps not always very thoroughly, to read the Scottish broadsheet newspapers. Over time, I became aware of court proceedings as they were being reported, with special reference to big crime, sawn-off bank robberies, vicious gangsterism, serial killings - all the things so appreciated by young boys in the epoch. In that setting, I have a memory still of court cases involving the deaths of elderly and sick people, deaths accelerated by the intervention of family members - those who delivered overdoses or willfully withheld the medicine critical to the prolongation of the life concerned. Yes, we talk of what is now called Assisted Dying. (more…)

Feb42021 by James MurphyNo Comments

Can the European Union help us to age well now?

Topicality

From issue to major issue, many in the UK will still look to the institutions of the EU for counsel and leadership amid these twisted times. The sadness is therefore the greater that all the talent in the EC should produce this Green Paper on the subject of ageing - subtitled Fostering Solidarity and Responsibility Between Generations. For the piece is as trite as it is evasive. Mutatis mutandis and with little content that is really new, it could have been written in the late 20th century. Now one appreciates that the EC has limited powers of execution here and depends, whatever the virtues of its analysis, on the responsiveness and goodwill of Member States. But even then the grim absence of any political bite - the non-attack on the …

Jan162021 by James MurphyNo Comments

The Rinkli Funstaz Book of Lockdown 21

Scholarship

Re-printed in 2020 from its first showing in 1988, this stands proud as one of the richest reflections on living, ageing and dying one could possibly lift. It is beautifully composed by a thoroughbred prose professional. There is a problem… but more of this later. Dr. Cassidy’s name will be familiar to those who remember the viciousness of Pinochet’s secret police, let loose to indiscriminately maim and murder in the wake of that coup. Here we learn variously of her own struggles to succeed in medicine, in the hospice movement and - though she may not like the language - in her own faith. The essentializing question herein posed is : what does it mean to age properly? (more…)

Jan52021 by James MurphyNo Comments

A word for the couple in Room C19

Topicality

Years from now, a comprehensive history of the global coronavirus epidemic will still not have been written. It will be forever so. For the story is just too complex, engaging so many lives and livelihoods, inviting so much new medicine and science… that nobody will be able to pack everything into one book or TV documentary or whatever a podcast has become by 2030. We can be certain, however, that there will be those ready to throw a retrospective shawl over the virus years : it will indeed be argued that those years proved just how legitimized had become the dismissive contempt of broader society, most emphatically in the Western world, for elderly people. (more…)

Nov132020 by James Murphy1 Comment

Sitting on the rocking horse does not make it Pegasus

Scholarship, Topicality

First of all, it is morally inadmissible for anyone - whatever the politics or the agendas - to describe the Coronavirus crisis as “an opportunity”. After some 40,000 citizens have died in France alone, it is abusive to suggest that C-19 and all its consequences have somehow shown us a better way to live, to develop our civics, to organize human movement, to run our cities. One can but hope that Carlos Moreno has the decency to wince out loud whenever he re-reads his words on that subject here. C19 is not a social science laboratory; it has been a hell for millions. There are other problems. CM abominates the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the likes of Rassemblement National. Good for him. Yes, he elevates social diversity but, since he wants…

Nov72020 by James MurphyNo Comments

In the heat of the triple lock down

Philosophy

Well, the author has a lot of humanity to share. Good for him. But his book could certainly have done without the favourable references to Abraham Maslow (surely the most raggedy old hat in the milliner’s bargain-basement), Carl Jung, Woody Allen and Ashton Applewhite…. Ugh. With such an untutored eye, all the cultural simpering of the New Age is jumbled onto the page here here with an utterly predictable critique of the way we live in this century. Now that “the storms of youth and middle-age are behind us” (sic), we can apparently be free to complain about acquisitiveness, materialism, the consumerism that “has the power to distract us from such vital issues as ageing and death”. Older people are, meanwhile, so dissed in the media / advertising and youthful…

Nov72020 by James MurphyNo Comments

Let cities be cities…

Topicality

Sep162020 by James MurphyNo Comments

Age should not weary us.

Philosophy

Sep122020 by James Murphy1 Comment

Rodgers & Hammerstein : talented people but not economists!

Topicality

Jul32020 by James MurphyNo Comments

The Rinkli Funstaz Book of the Lockdown

Scholarship

All memoirs are essentially about ageing. It is a natural and therefore unavoidable sexagenarian instinct to lean in to the past - in search of explanation, amusement, forgiveness. However, almost no autobiography you have ever read is - let’s put it out there - persuasively reliable. Perhaps the knowing reader silently nods at every half-fumbled but very obvious evasion, all the Pollyanna Pollyfilla that covers the cracks of pain and disappointment, the casual casuistry that gets us all, specially the grey and the balding, through the remains of the day. Perhaps it’s also true that the mightier the celebrity of the author, the weaker the credibility all round. Who was it said that you must not touch your idols since the gilt is bound to be left on your fingers?…