The Unorthodox Website Blog

David Beckham with and without hair

In the Bible is the story of how Samson’s long flowing locks were cut off by Delilah, and he then lost all his strength.

Seeing David Beckham on TV news the other day talking about getting his 100th cap for playing on the England side, I couldn’t help but notice how absolutely awful he looked with his head shaved. All those beautiful golden locks, which once made him so attractive, have long since gone, but his latest, brutal shaved head look means he has lost nearly all his attraction as far as I’m concerned. I feel sorry for Victoria, but perhaps ‘Goldenballs’ has other hidden assets to compensate!

It’s not just David Beckham of course, loads of men follow this absolutely ridiculous fashion. In fact I can’t find a barber nowadays who knows anything other than how to shave your head, or give you a #1 or #2 (which meant a piss or a shit in my days!) Ask for a short back-and-sides or, Heaven Forbid, a ‘Tony Curtis’ and they just look at you blankly, then cut it all wrong.

Yesterday, Easter Monday, I returned to the Aldermaston factory of genocide along with thousands of other peace campaigners on CND’s 50th anniversary protest and commemoration of the first Aldermaston March in 1958.

Looking out of the coach windows as we came off the M4 motorway and went thru the picturesque Berkshire countryside, via the pretty villages of Aldermaston Wharf and Aldermaston village itself, suddenly, on the other side of the coach, was that huge, ugly double wire fence with its jumble of buildings where men and women planned to torture, burn alive, vaporize, kill and maim millions of ordinary little babies, children, animals and innocent men and women, and cause cancers and deformities in millions of others for generations to come. This was our Auschwitz, paid for by OUR taxes, and this obscenity was STILL there, in the beautiful, tranquil Berkshire countryside 20 years after I’d last protested there with my life-partner beside me, George Miller, now passed over to a better place.

Once there were at least five divided countries – Germany, Vietnam, Korea, Cyprus, Ireland. Now that Vietnam has been reunited under Socialism and Germany under capitalism, that just leaves the other three.

Republic of Cyprus    TRNC (N. Cyprus)

In Cyprus, where my father came from, the travel restrictions between the Greek-Cypriot South (Republic of Cyprus) and the Turkish-Cypriot North (Turkish Republic of North Cyprus) have been greatly eased in recent years. The new Greek-Cypriot President is keen on making a new effort aimed at reuniting the troubled island, since the UN-sponsored plan for reunification was accepted by the Turkish-Cypriots but rejected by the Greek-Cypriots in a referendum a few years ago.

Republic of Ireland

In Ireland too there has been much progress, not in the form of reunification, but the Anglo-Irish Agreement has finally brought a devolved government composed of both nationalist republicans and loyalists to the 6 counties.

I seem to have been surrounded by these most of my life, which is no doubt why I can see myself becoming one as I grow older. An oddity who clings to the music/values of the distant past, who sticks out like a sore thumb because of my old-fashioned hairstyle, etc., and who is liable to rant like a raving loony in public places.

This brings me to my first British Eccentric, Screamin’ Lord Sutch, or David Sutch, founder of the Monster Raving Loony Party. How he brightened up our boring elections, and indeed the rock’n'roll scene. I never knew him personally, though once attended a party where he was also a guest. When my partner was arrested once, David was also at the police station, having been arrested for one of his publicity stunts, and was very friendly and chatty to all the others who’d been arrested that day.

We have far too much ‘choice’ in Britain today. I’m fed up with having to constantly make crazy, nonsensical ‘decisions’ such as whether I want my gas from an electric company, my electric from a gas company, and my phone/internet service from a multitude of different companies. I am pressurized by salespersons with intrusive and unsolicited phone calls and knocks on my door, and told that it will be ‘cheaper’ if I switch suppliers or service providers. This is the ‘free market’ gone stark raving bonkers!

Maggie Thatcher is primarily to blame for kicking off the crazy process known as ‘privatization’, and other Prime Ministers and governments have continued the policies ever since.

I tell these salespeople that I don’t want to have to make these decisions and that all these utility companies should be re-nationalized. Everything worked much better anyway when the various gas, electricity and water boards, all nationalized, specialized in each of these areas and supplied these utilities, and when the Post Office handled all telephone services as well as the mail, telegrams, telex, etc.

This is basically the subject of a brave BBC 2 series which started tonite, the first program concentrating on the problems in Bradford, centered around a dying working-man’s club. It came across almost as a party political broadcast for the BNP.

Tomorrow they are screening the second program in the series ‘Rivers of Blood’, a quote from the prophetic speech by the late Enoch Powell.

There was much talk in the program of the betrayal of the working-class by Tony Blair and New Labor, as well as about the problem of immigration, now from Eastern/Central Europe as well as from the Indian sub-continent, Africa, China and the West Indies.

The collapse of the Trade Union movement has caused a lot of the problems and racial tensions. This dates back to the Thatcher era, and her full frontal assault on the Trade Unions.

I thought I’d take a trip way down Memory Lane to my very earliest ones, which are so long ago they are somewhat hazy. The very earliest are just hazy snapshots in my memory bank. We are talking about the first ten years of my life, the late 1940s and early 1950s.

My very first memory, very hazy indeed, is of waking up in some hospital ante-room. This is not surprising, as I was constantly hospitalized from birth till I was 24 for various operations, many due to deformities probably caused by a World War II bomb blowing out all the windows in the hospital where my mother gave birth. Apparently she was in danger of losing the baby altogether, and I was born with a club foot, hare lip and a cleft palate.

Another early memory is of being in my dad’s car and seeing thick snow outside the window.