Topicality – Rinkli Funstaz

Aug142023 by James Murphy1 Comment

Ageing and Bereavement : thoughts for a Beginner’s Guide.

In 1983, a friend of mine died. It was sudden and unexpected. I rang others to tell them. In that moment of conversation I knew which of them had loved him and by exactly how much. That, at least, was my conviction at the time. And indeed still. It is just about the saddest of all truths that if you sit by the riverbank long enough the bodies of your chums will float past. You have to work at your hating for you will never get as bitter as you would like. An old enemy dies and notionally floats past - you feel nothing very much; but if a friend dies you feel stabbed. I have long since parted company with those who insist that ageing brings insight, maturity, contentment…

Jun262023 by James MurphyNo Comments

In Memoriam : Stanley Clinton Davis, European Commissioner 1984-1988

Topicality

Stanley was endlessly jovial, stopping to talk to everyone. A fusspot staffer, one would try to hurry him through any such casual encounters but rarely made progress. He had almost an excess of the common touch, loved to chat and loved to laugh. For him, all were welcome, political friends and obvious opponents alike. This was a sense of emotional hospitality that never wavered, even in the presence of those whom his staff thought were blethering twits. Labour to the core and thus hardly a friend of Mrs T., Stanley kept a miner’s lamp prominently on his desk; he was also fiercely anti-racist and the merest mention of the apartheid state brought out the tiger in him - any chance that came his way he would kick it as hard…

Apr152023 by James Murphy1 Comment

JFK

Topicality, Uncategorized

Though I was a small boy back then, the day of Jack Kennedy’s death remains so vivid, raw like an arthritic pain. The news bulletin interrupted regular viewing and the original flash was that the President had been shot in Texas but not killed. Only later were we told of his death and a silence fell over the family, the street, life itself. People put their hands over their mouths as the BBC newscasters - whose names I can still recall - dealt the final blow. Many years later, like millions I finally saw the full Zapruder footage and winced at that pornography of violence when the bullet explodes in the skull. I then realised just how sanitised had been the original broadcast version of those events. Probably just…

Feb192023 by James MurphyNo Comments

Ageing shall not weary us – Really? Time for age-realism in the interests of the many.

Topicality

It is your job, say, to name trends across the cultural, political and commercial sectors. Your clients have a boundless appetite for insights about the future, a future they very much want to reach before their competitors or their regulators or their voters. The task - distributed across reports, presentations, emails - is to bring the paying punter onto that inside track. Does it make any difference if you, inadvertently or otherwise, identify yourself as a forecaster with the age of 25? Or 45? Or 65? Do ageing and cumulated experience make you any better at the job? Well, let’s think. If you are well past the first blush, does anyone ever ask you how many recessions you have correctly predicted over your career? Mangling Leonard Cohen, does such a…

Dec312022 by James Murphy1 Comment

Pelé and I.

Topicality

When I was a very young schoolboy, I was once taken to Hampden Park in Glasgow. The football pretext was an evening Friendly between Brazil and Scotland. At the time, victory for England in the World Cup was still but a twinkle in Bobby Moore’s left bootlace. My attending adult was if memory serves - and it may not - my hometown doctor; I went to the same school and had the same teachers as his two youngest sons. We sat in the packed Stand. We had a terrific view. The match itself was uneventful. I have deliberately not checked the details, not wanting to fudge my memory. However, I do believe that the outcome was a 1-1 draw, with someone called Servilho scoring for Brazil and (I think) Steve…

Jan82022 by James Murphy1 Comment

“Why should the poor be flattered”?

Topicality

If I am 65 years old, in what age-shaped ways do I approach markets - and indeed life itself - differently from others (at whatever life stage)? Am I frustrated at how invisible people like myself seem in TV commercials (except the ones for life insurance and funeral finance)? Do I ever feel that some shops are just not for the likes of me? In other words, can I sense a form of oblique discrimination in the air, unmistakeable under the muzak? Am I ever embarrassed at the please-pay-here moment when I catch my grey/bald reflection as I hand over for tilling/bagging an Italian DVD thriller involving medieval nuns or four bottles of discount fragrance or a very fancy pair of purple trainers for people with plantar fasciitis? Do…

Dec32021 by James Murphy2 Comments

Ageing and Social Care : Principles of Play (1)

Topicality

Somewhere in her political diaries, Barbara Castle recounts a conversation she has in the 1970s with the Labour Party’s Director of Research. The venue is the platform of Labour Conference in Blackpool and their very private discussion centres on the cumulative impact on public spending that would be result of accepting so many delegate resolutions - all demanding ever more outlay on good causes. With silent headshakes, they both agree that the demands, taken in total and with each being perfectly worthy, are unsustainable. The implication at work is that there was just no moral or intellectual space in which to regulate and prioritise state spending. A destructive over-reach (for wannabe radicals) was consequently inevitable. Now, let’s hereby affirm that the level of tax raised in a country like the…

Aug312021 by James MurphyNo Comments

Go Home, You Greys! …or the coming struggle for fun-space.

Topicality

Once upon a time, the Boomer would fantasize about the forthcoming Third Age - all that free time, stashed savings and retirement revenues, pent-up demand for extraordinary experience. (more…)

May42021 by James MurphyNo Comments

Ageing in Africa : it would be a fine thing.

Topicality

Just recently, UN News told the world that a large number of communities across Africa (and indeed elsewhere) were “facing catastrophic levels of acute hunger”. In real-time fact, some 34 million people were starving. By the Spring of 2021, the FAO was categorizing some 34 African states as requiring “external assistance for food”. The reason behind such dire straits was multiple : armed violence provoking mass movement of refugees, troubled harvests, volatility of staple prices, floods and locusts, droughts - the mix of human agency and bad luck cursing already malnourished economies and severely limited welfare-ism. Meanwhile, even before coronavirus struck, official figures (such as there are) were confirming a sad truth : millions of Africans are not going to see out their fifties. Life expectancy in, say, the Central…

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 …