Trump Wins! Liberalism is dead, long live Liberalism!!

Trump Wins!     Liberalism is dead, long live Liberalism!!

There are some surprises in this election result as the needle passes the point of no return for Clinton and Trump is declared winner. Firstly that he won Michigan and other democratic states while the whip states also fell. Liberals are in shock, both because of the swing surprise and because of the far right monologue Trump drove in his campaign

Why Trump ?

Several reasons for this as a surprise: pollsters are wrong in methodology and sample selection.  In fact you can see that a low turn out amongst non white voters is proibably the  major swing pusher. They turned out for Obama twice, yet 59% of whites in the  US voted for Mitt Romney, the previous 'far right' candidate. This white majority is also reflected through the electoral systems in Congress. 

Secondly the most important factor was that Trump is a non establishment figure. He is no self made man, having inherited his wealth and position, but he is a self made president. His campaign, by his own words,  was indeed a movement. This is in contrast to  a stage managed establishment candidate like Bush 2 or Romney. In that he was free to speak his mind, and to bend political correctness to build popularity. 

Unlike the Bush dynasty, he does not see America as an Imperial power interfering with the world to its own ends with military force. He is also not 'economically correct' - he is prepared to tackle the hipocrisy of China and Mexico. US jobs going to a socialist bank rolled mega nation on the one hand, and to slave labour on the other. He is then touting protectionism, which has been off the Neo Conservative agenda for three decades. It is popular with voters, and a stone in the eye for the laisez faire academics who don't have to live with the consequences of the rush to socialist bank rolled China. Protectionism worked in the early post war for all the world's major economies, and indeed continued as far as the last Bush presidency with US steel being protected while it 'modernised', 20 years after Ravenscraig in Scotland was shut by effectively, Thatcher.

Clinton Fail?

Shit sticks: unlike the virtually unknown Obamas, the Clintons have lots of flies around them which just nip away at public confidence in them, and rightly so. They have become an establishment dynasty. They have appeal to middle class liberals, but not amongst the working class any more. 

Why is this so? 

Firstly they "ain't no sisters and brothers" ie they are white, middle class liberals. So that emotional appeal was lost to ethnic minorities. Working folk do not really relate to their political agenda, and in fact the 'disruption' caused by Trumps wild-west, economically incorrect and agressive personal attacking style meant that she by in large could not present a strong economic case. 

Trump was not chained to the Republican economic orthodoxy in what he could say. He could dumb down politics and make economics basal , but he could show an agenda which was quite unlike the previous Republican one in many ways. Protectionism as I say, also major federal investment in infrastructure. A smaller, cheaper, less adventurous military. He will still bring in tax cuts as a stimulus, but also he is prepared to call in dollars spent internationally to being spent in the US. Most of all he knows that the model where America designs and China manufactures, is broken and the US needs manufacturing jobs. 

Republicans have driven a two faced agenda when Mexico is considered. Their financial and power broking supporters in the southern, border states are apparently happy to live with the illegals and grey-area immigrants who keep their wage costs very low and allow for in particular agriculture, food processing and oil fields to be more profitable than they would be if they relied purely on domestic labour. Also the Rentier economy is reliant on population growth to fuel the real estate market leverage, a major wealth escalator and "value" generator now in all western economies. White Americans are having too few kids, too late due to of course, the economic pressures they face. 

Trumpanomics

Trumponomics then dares to defy the laissez-faire hipocrisies which the republican establishment have sat upon for two decades. That is both the illegal immigration from Mexico, and the Chinese sentral bank funding of their  economy . He calls the elephants in the living room. 

He stands against the free-marketers who turn a blind eye to the Chinese keeping their currency low. The chinese while fuelling their economy by printing money which is socialism, yet we in the west must not have socialism, we must compete. He calls the bluff of Republicans who tacitly accept that the southern border immigration is to be ignored, and brushed under the carpet. Border control and green cards are tickled with small change in relation to the defence and space programme budgets. 

Donald Trump is not a self made man, it can be argued that in fact he hasn't grown his inherited empire in any notable way. He has had failures, Trump Airlines, Trump University and controversy dating back to his young days in opposing access to rented property for minorities in NY. However he is an educated and experienced businessman and a deal maker. He is used to negotiating from a position of strength, and now he has become the most powerful single person in the world.

Voters knew also then that Trump will break the economic status quo and challenge the concept that the US is inevitably becoming a tertiary service economy with a large national debt. The elite rich will hate him for this, because they are very much tied up in real estate for housing, and the buy-to-rent nouveau-riche especially in the border states, will not thank him for this shift in economic focus. Yet it had to happen, the way America was going was towards. As the finance crisis of 2008 and resulting depression showed, the USA cannot live from a house of cards economy based on real estate, and banks can never again be bailed out for building such a flimsy means of generating growth.

Trump's Double Communication on Race, Religion and Xenophobia?

Has Donald played the small minded racists at their own game and won? He is a strange character, who has previously aligned himself with a lot of socially liberal ideas, and been a friend of the Clintons and other uber-liberals. He is infamously accused of saying " If I were to run, (as president), I'd run as a Republican. They're the Dumbest Group. They beleive anything on Fox News" - a quote the his campaign and the Republican party have been hell bent on denying and removing from the internet over the last two months. 

Really since society organised itself, and probably when we were still smallk tribes, leaders have been able to exploit our natural, biological xenophobia to all ends when it relates to power. To isolate from other societies and define themselves by their leaders' vision. To discriminate against others and not treat them fairly, even if there is laws to protect national citizens. Of course nost of all, to go to war and kill other people you have never met before, who have families, wives, mothers, sons, fathers. Xenophobia is a primeval fear and the most powerful motivator for action in humans is fear. We will withdraw or attack based on fear, before we will ask questions, negotiate and cooperate. 

Trump has appealed to the white racist voter and those voters who have indeed seen their livelihoods under pressure from Mexican immigration. Competition for jobs and housing where there are jobs. He has been able to use the middle eastern crisis to his ends, which are as with Bush 2's intentions, a far less interventionist USA.   He stopped exposing religious bigotry and racism many weeks ago, because he knew he had got the rednecks out of their chairs to vote. Many were disaffected before.

Has Trump given a free reign to racism in the USA? Does he legitimise racial and religious bigotry? Well yes his campaign has that, but the man is racially liberal, and he has a valid point about middle eastern refugees, petty as it is, just a couple of terrorists and you may get either a new 9-11 or a shooting to equal an average weekly assualt rifle- in school outing. Trump the winner will leave his racist voters behind. Racism is a phenomenom which he has used and abused. 

Liberalism is Dead, Long Live Liberalism!

The other status quo which could not continue and which has drained the educated voter as much as the less savvy, is that we cannot go on with Congress being one colour and the presidency another. The best thing to come out of this is that now it is just Republican policy in governance over the next couple of years at least. 

It is the same with Brexit, the public have swung to the right in belief it is all better for them, but in fact the realities are going to be different. The outcomes are not positive. Trumpanomics are disruptive too. This threatens to cause a great deal of instability and uncertainty before a new era starts, and that new era may or may not be more promising and beneficial than the one we are in now. In no way will Trump get a 45% tariff on Chinese goods, but he can at least threaten it and that can make the disruption work to gain concessions and move China towards playing a fairer game.

A red house and red congress is a gift to liberalism.  The Clintons had become establishment, they had become distant.  They appealed to younger educated liberals, who are in the minority. In fact the liberal mocement all over the world has become an establishment for minorities. Ethnic groups, LGBT, the handicapped. All the weak and oppressed, but not the core of who created the labour movements which put the Democrats in power. Their perception at least, is that they have been left behind by a political elite who present a new orthodoxy of not just tolerance, but it can be said, shoving minority rights down every one elses throats without doing anything for them as middle of the road voters.

Republican Economic Waterloo

It has been argued that a power elite of owners in the USA decided in the late 60s that inflation and liberalism would destroy their profits in manufacturing, so they took the conscious move to shift their massive investment power to building the real estate market as the underpinning factor in expanding their wealth  -at least, while also boosting the economy while manufacturing fell away. 

Now Trump understands that the free market has been duped by the promise of "Go to China" where investment from printed money flows as if indeed, there is no tommorrow. Growth outstrips domestic demand, the currecny is kept low, some materials and goods markets are surreptitiously manipulated. 

With the "Great Wall of Mexico" on the cards,  Trump is actually lining up for a battle with those self same real estate driven Republicans who want a 'cheating' free market with goods from China for their retail empires, and a more or less free supply to labour and housing market from Mexico. Also yes, he will reverse Obama Care, but he is likely to go after a much better deal with Big Pharma and the Health Care conglomerates and force harder state negotiations on medicare, while injecting competition into the market. He has hinted at this two times at least when mentioning what he will replace the affordable heatlh care act with. 

Liberalism Must Collapse And then Rally Itself

The trouble is then that the labout movement had suceeded in projecting liberal concepts into legislature for so long, that people both took them for granted and also saw the Democrats as part of the distant Federal machine. It was no longer a people's movement. It was a governmental vehicle for minorities and a good few fringe issues

 When they formulated the affordable-health-care act then, the Democrats had a whole right wing establisment against them, and many non voting and healthy tax payers were secptical. It should have been the jewel in the crown of the Obama adminsitration, but it is both too early in its life time to really have common appeal or recognition, while also it has created inflationary pressures which they should have forseen. 

Liberals the world over are on the back foot, with the "neo-neo-conservatives" in Russia, the UK and the US, reverting back to nationalism to secure economic power for the minority. Will though, Trumpanomics and Brexit not be glorious, popular successes?  They are only popular because of the malaise the new world order of international super wealthy have imposed via the market crash of 2008. In effect we are trying to cure the down sides of capitalism, with on the one hand more capitalism in tax cuts, while on the other nationalism and protectionism.

The combination of protectionism, isolationism and lower income for government is however quite likely to be a recipe for disaster as far as many individuals are concerned. The free markerters have fought for freedom of movement of capital, goods & materials, and to some extent labour as their golden principles of supply and demand., yet Trumpanomics and Brexit has a simplistic appealk to the working man.

We have then both in the UK and the USA a four year period for which right wing politics can take us to a point where we know whether or not these great shifts in political landscape are going to work. These are two great experiments, but in fact by in large we have been there before. They created the type of poverty and dissatisfaction which spurned the labour movements, and the type of institutionalised intoleranse which gave birth to modern civil rights. Liberalism died today. Long live Liberalism.

Mr Robot - Breaking Badly in Season 2

    If you have followed season one of Sam Esmail's tour de force 'Mr.Robot' then you may as well just stop there and forget about series two. Perhaps wait until someone out there in internet land Mashes or hashes together a version which is watchable and satisfactory to the initial premise and story line strategy. The script tumbles into chaos. The actors look tired and bored and irritated, like they have been asking on set for three months 'where are we going with this? "

Season two begins well enough with the development of a new third main line in the story where we meet the shady would be amatuer psychological genius with his mini crime empire, Ray. More on that soon, but the series goes into strategy melt down mid way and becomes a confusing mess of presumably self indulgent scene-bites. All the way we live with the pretence that there is a bigger plot, a major new world order, when in fact all that is delivered is inconclusive chaos. It didn't help that I was watching it late at night, because I got the feeling I had nodded off and missed some vital narrative or conversation between the main super propents. I have my own conspiracy theory.

Firstly though, I would have to say that the first series was mind blowing in both script, character protrayal and cinematography. The acting was captivating and had elements of intense stage monlogue, and improvisation of tense inter character dialogue. Introducing Rami Malek , a fellow ethnic Egyptian to Esmail, the pair were able to weave both a jamais vu experience of the life  of a nerd with mild autism, and a sympathetic relation to him as the central character bound in moral dilemas through each episode and as a continual tension. Elliot is both a hero and anti hero, Hamlet and King Lear.  There really is no bad acting in the entirity of both seasons. The director has pulled performances which are worthy of the highest accolades of the feature film industry, let alone Net TV as a medium. With synchronised release for each episode on a global basis, the grip of the series unfolfing was maintained for at least series one, and internet millenials and old data dogs alike were captivated and engaged in a huge amount of discussion on line as the series rolled out.

Filmed much in the style of Kubriks ambient light, "f0.95' the perpectives and stage direction chosen are a wonderful celebration of that director's 1970 quantum leap into a new, bold camera angles, lighting, trolley work, zoom effects yet with a less intrusive, camera aware impression than say Orson Welles' experiments of two decades prior.  The darkness, a real modern film noire, does become a little tiresome because by the middle of S2, the majority of scenes are at night or in dimly lit rooms and under passes.

The first series totally blew the methylated socks off Breaking Bad for all the above reasons, plus that the premise was more of our time, on the pulse of post democratic times in a roughly immediately contemporary chronology. Capitalism has become condensed to E Corp in America and the mysterious Chinese quasi governmental corporate with their hidden alter ego, The Dark Army. However in a kind of familiar yet completely different way, the later series deteriotes into a self indulgent, pretentious pile of short intense or long slow scenes, which delivery a poor entertainment value despite trying to be oh-so-clever in commenting on society, capital and power in today's America. It has too, broken badly.

Why do this to us, the eager follower? A series which had a plot developing which could satisfy and enthrall a sixteen year old or a 55 year old IT boss. A joy on the eye without being just carbon copy of Kubrick, in fact just amazing to see the new film media being used with such gravity, also as if the bespectacled genius was reborn though Esmail's craft. All the characters were magnetic and at the same time, mostly dispicable. Weaving in magical realism with the hallucinations of Elliots deceased father, the sitcom episode,  and some of the way the the character Angela is developed as a kind of etheral metaphor for the dilema of metropolitan existence for young adults today. Yet it all gets thrown in the trash, script, character development, engagement with their dilemas and most of all plot.

The plot had so many ways to go. The characters had so much of their past to build and their present existential predicament to explore in comprehensible ways. Elliots father, we got about 80% of the way there with his 'motivation' from his former life. The Angela / Darlene connection. The real motivations of Dark Army and their leader. At the end it is just a mess which can only present to us that power is never absolute but always corrupts absolutely. The plot could have followed more on the Ray route as a foil and fortuitous cul de sac or scapegoat for F Society to get off the hook and live again, or gave gotten away with it all with impunity. The reverse of this, the real world violence of Ray's crew could have lead Elliot to engaging the FBI to catch both them and surrender F Society. Some more satisfactory total destruction of western and Chinese society? Some other, benevolent or ambivalent force from some secret national security or illuminati based policing which saves us all from anarchy.

I have a conspiracy theory about this though, the mess, the pretence. Or two. Firstly I propose that Esmail signed up for two series only and wanted to conclude the story line and create a short masterpiece in terms of the usual longevity of good TV series.  He maybe  just didnt get the time to close the plot to dear viewers relief and gratification. Or perhaps half way through, they demanded an option for a third series and Esmail had to come up with an inconclusion instead, toute suite. I think that is the most likely route chosen, and the cash came with it while the opportunities in Holllywood were yet to fall into his lap. What goes well as cult viewing by millions on Netflix, does not necessarily translate into popularity a the cinema box office. Although I would like a film version, 3 hours with a solid conclusive scene.

To some extent the final four episodes or so feel like they are from the 'cutting room floor' ,   a mash up of scenes. Here I play to the latter of my consipircy theories. The whole thing was played in with a 'closure event' in S2/E12, but the backers bayed for more and Esmail was presented with a short order to hack out the strands of story which could lead to a concrete conclusion or enough conjecture on the table so as to leave the cynics saying S3 would be ' so predictable'. Perhaps though Esmail wanted to be unpredictable, in avoiding either the big crashing end like fight club or the planet of the Apes, now a cliche or the more subtle ending where either the reality of imprisonment by the good guys, the FBI, closes the scenes or Elliot and gang disperse into anonymity after a final hack to cover their tracks.  Breaking bad ran a series or maybe even two too long, and ended with a ridiculous almost Tarrantinoen gun fire ending, disappointing many fans who expected something chemical.

To be frank, I haven't either bothered to google rumours of S3. I just found it all boring in the end, the vagueness, the constant allusion to power being all that matters, not reality, just perceptions around existence of characters who are to be dominated or rebelled against. The very last thread of evidence in my conspiracy theory on S3 being thrust upon Esmail, is that they lay a very heavy handed, dubbed dialogue only telephone call to the end ( not revealed if you have not yet seen) which leaves us with the supposed tantalus of a new series, S3, S4....... The trouble is I would like to see a remake of S2, not an excuse for re-editing in what ever was taken out. Too many story possibilities are closed or become worn out. If they do an S3 and god help us S4, then the only way I am watching it is Robotically.

Change - Delta Inertia Momentum I Society and Economics

We see this repeating itself, or rather manifesting itself in different ways but from the same source.

Conserativism - resistance to change, inertia, or pure feet in the mud.

It isn't just the right wing by any means, although through the ages the powerful minorities of different societies, dynasties and empires have tried the hardest to stand in the face of change.

On the left we have seen republics and democracies ignore the rumblings of the massea. We have seen the unions trying to ebb the inevitable tide of competition and effectivisation.

Now we see that government for capitalism, by capitalism reaching the end of it's tether at the top of the cliff of change. They have abandoned -we need more capitalism- and in its place reached out for the nantionalist card. This is the same path we have seen before, with monster ego's and an immoral minority of hyper vocal supporters ready to bully the meek, and attack the outsider. Never with positive outcomes when they gain power, and prove to be a juggernaut against all vunerable members of society, making each element progressively the new enemy.

Capitalism in its' post industrial, real estate driven form in the west is coming to an end, as the average worker now experiences their standard of living being eroded, and they face a lower mateiral standard of living than their parents generation, and even a lower waulity of life and longevity.

Austerity was the cure which won't have worked, two electoral governments and more not being able to bring back better times.

The momentum is building, but as mentioned above, it could lead to a nationalist and protectionist future as the oligarchs manipulate the public in order to hold onto power.

Do Low Interest Rates Give Capitalists a Huge Subsidy?

We have historically low and sustained Interest rates, which are branded as the cure for the malaise of the high inflation in both the 70s and thw 80s. Yet is this situation actually a subsidy to capital, which drives ,assive hoasuing inflation and the erosion of standard of loivong for ordinary and even above average salaried workers?

Does the current low interest rates from central banks even cover the cost of managing and printing money? Let alone co tributing to the exchequor or things like national and private pension funds?

Low interest seems to shift the burden away from home owners in comparison to the high rates of the 1970s and the late 80s. However the reverse is true- house buyers are burdened with inflation levered way beyond wage rises in the post industrial, new white collar service slavery. Yes there are bigger capital gains in the metropolitan areas, but of course not for the first time buyer who is becoming ever older and shifting up the two income salary scale, with many workers facing exclusion from the general property market. Also people moving up the ladder for that baby room or suburb with better schools, face intense competition from everyone in the same, now middle aged ex yuppie boat.

The belief that housing is your be personal investment hand in hand with low interest rates and relaxed control over gearing to salary, fuels a cut throat market in most of the western metropolii.

On top of the competion between own-home owners of course, capital has shifted its focus from investing for ROI in industry, to real estate and the financial and banking structures which support this great house of cards. Also micro capitalists who have personal equity or high income, can cash in on the three times geared gains to be had in property while also covering much of their annual costs by renting property out.

Essentially this is all bad for the economy. It creates more jobs in centralised financial services and consumer services in the major metropoles to the expense of provincial cities and rural areas. As with all capitalist economies, this leads to more trickle up to both capital and to the monster finance capitals of NY, Singapore, London etc. and less trickle down- a larger proportion of total money is locked into housing capital circles and is no longer creating jobs.

Low interest rates sound really good for manufacturing industry in theory. They can invest in machine tooling and premises cheaply, and should face lower wage demands over time. However there are major issues because on the one hand we have glibalisation and freedom to disinvest in the old economies, while on the other we have competition from the monster of property.

Taking globalisation first. This has meant indeed that companies can operate and grow on a multinational basis, like Apple. It also means that they can find the lowest denominator cost base, regardless if that has the chinese ideology dicatatorship and market manipuøation behind it. Jobs in design and marketing also move inexorably to the new economies as  highly educated middle classes develope there, available at a fraction of the wages in the old west. The new eastern countries also become the main growth markets, attracting larger spends on marketing while the old west cuts back on sales forces and imports global advertising. We are left in the old west with some R&D, the super corporate structures, logistics and the financial diligence and profit optimisation accounting departments in the metropoles.

On the second point, manufacturing industry also competes with the property market and its financial circus. It actually competes for skilled workers, because more young people study or train and indeed re-train to work in the higher paid jobs around money flow into property, and the higher skilled working class become self employed handworkers serving the housing market. Of course manufacturing industry competes also for investment in order to grow and increase quality and productivity. Now we see though that very few companies with significant indigenous manufatcuring feature in the top 100 listings on old-west stock exchanges. Instead these are dominated by banks and financial institutions, consumer services and often privatised public utilities.

Many big product brand companies, like Apple, do very little manufacturing domestically. Worse than new industries setting up in the east though, or old industrues becoming unprofitable in the west and moving,  is that many profitable manufatcuring and primary extraxction companies give up in their western countries because profitability is even higher in low cost countries and there is no disincentive to disinvestment. ROI based on say a 20-30% gross margin and 5-10% profitability is no longer attractive enough for investors, nor accountants in multinationals. As i point out above, it is not just that costs are cheaper, but also that markets are growing faster in the east. It is a perfect storm for capital to move out of manufacturing in the west.

A higher proportion of western incomes now goes on housing than for a very long time in history. We to go back to times of poverty and social unrest to see so much of our wages going on putting a roof over our heads, bought or rented. Even in the 1970s period of high interest rates, we in the west used a lower proportuon of our income on hosuing.   This means we have less discretionary spend, use less in services and products, or have far higher high interest consumer debt, or have burnt equity and capital gains in our property to fund consumer spending. Many of my generation are facing eventually retiring still in significant debt on both housing and consumer debt. This is due to us maintaining the expectation of the materialist, middle class life style our parents enjoyed and that we expected to actually improve with our higher level of education.

In fact I propose that it is the university educated, western middle class who have come our relatively worst from low interest rates and our own growth in numbers and accompaning devaluation of degree skills. We have a lower standard of living now, and possibly quality of life over all by 2030 than our parents, the baby boomer generation who grew upo in boomijng economies, affordable housing, unionised industries and free education. The hand worker who is prepared to run their own business has perhaps seen the greatest relative growth in material life style, as they feed off the obsession with home improvement and personal ROI there in. The semi and unskilled working classes have seen a large scale return to pre-war working conditions, with little or no job security, unstable working hours and hence income.

Change is always going to happen, but we have seen the neo-conservative financial orientates power base resist the real need for change to which the 2008 "correction" was the symptom. Instead of allowing disease to teach the animal a lesson, they demanded corporate champagne socialism- bail outs to preserve the status quo: an unsustainable, property driven house of cards in the west. Higher interest rates are quite possibly no cure what so ever for the current wstern malaise, but they would choke the incessant, dangerous growth in housing and channel more investment into savings, bonds and quite possibly render ROI from manufatcuring more attractive to investors. What about inflation? Surely it always accompaniea higher interest rates?.

We have conquered retail price inflation in the west through more productive agriculture, super efficient logistics and the liberalisation of retail real estate meaning a saturation of outlets. Wage-rises are driven more by housing inflation now than any other personal costs or ambitions. We have replaced one demon of visible inflation, with another which the establisment has been able to dress up as a comfortable situation for average employees, when in fact the house of cards is anything but a sustainable position.

The finance crisis has in effect not really been cured, and the elements that created it in the first place are still looming in the private economy. Economic Growth in the west is rather pitiful, yet growth in capital wealth via real estate is at levels similar and locally even higher than pre 2008. We have a leverage effect as discussed before, where these modest gains in income and the relentless metropolitisation of careers feeds the ' three times' amplifier for capital gains from sale,  and what can be extracted from rentals. This is percieved as a safer and preferable investment by in large,  than that in manufacuring or other secondary value-multiplying industry.  With so many technocratic and judicial jobs in the public -governmental sector also metropolising, it means there are perhaps two sources of susbisdy to real estate- indirect champagne socialism and low central bank interest rates.

Personal Economy - Running Your Household Money in Profit

I am a seasoned home economist. Some years ago I put a really accurate P & L spreadsheet together, in fact it was 1999, and this has basically been my tool for managing personal and home finances ever since. I say managing, it is really about analysing and the shocks you get are what creates management! Some years later I also developed a cash-flow spreadsheet, down to two week cycles to try and understand why I was out of pocket some months and empty for ready cash until the next e-pay-cheque.

Two Key Concepts to Watch

Before I go further I would say there are two main findings I have to share with you dear reader.  FIRSTLY that it is the seemingly small things which eat your budget down to the bone. Secondly, cash flow is really vital to understand and get on top of. These are in fact not unrelated topics. Life's little extras, luxuries, indulgencies and in particular monthly subscriptions and memberships lead often to negative cash flow and the need for credit to pay for even shopping, but especially things like holidays and car repairs.

Use a Spreadsheet or if Hipster,  Old Fashioned Balance Ledger Book

You will only really effectively manage your monthly budgets by having a spreadsheet - more on that later, but look at any Profit and Loss or product management spreadsheet. In effect your monthly outgoings and income are a balance sheet of your operating profit or financial health if you like. A terminally sick patient goes progressively into operating debt, exposes themselves there in by too much risk. We exclude here any capital gains or losses which are generally covered for in the mortgage for your house. Another capital loss is though cars and they depreciate faster than shit stinks, but that is another topic in itself. We take here that you manage your car loan and resale value, your mortgage and your boat, pension, college fund etce by simple monthly payments included in your operational spreadsheet and turn over.

I would preach as I practice that we include food on our 'cost of goods' because it averages out over time in the actual costs we see in our bank statements, and we set a budget for it, Food is of course a necessity, and it is difficult to sort out drinkies if they are shopped at the same time.  . Here food and drink accounts for 30-35% of our net income because it is so expensive. I recommend using your old bank statements or cut and pasting pdfs or online bank balance sheets onto excel as an "actual" dipstick each month, and over time you will get used to both knowing your "run rate" costs of living and budgeting for them so for example, food does not get extravagant.

Cash Flow is King, Well Almost King

Cash flow is both simple and complex to understand and get a handle on when you look at your finances. Money comes in, but if more goes out before you have it in again you go empty and need to use your overdraught or credit card to span the gap. It is like a wave out in the ocean, with peaks where you have seemingly a lot of ready cash, and troughs where the cash is near empty, or you actually creep into debt. Low troughs of negative cash of course, then spread over to the next peak, sucking your next crest of income. You are bankrupt when all you have is trough despite your income, the bottom is too low to cover by the next income. However as with many, many businesses you need not be profitable in the long run, but still survive on a cash flow which is positive. This is not a very balanced approach, but many business use their suppliers to fund their business simply by getting customers to pay earlier than they pay suppliers by several weeks. Usually they like to syncronise maximum income from customers to CASH in bank with maximum outgoings like monthly pay, and then have cash left over a few weeks before they eventually pay suppliers. Very often they can enjoy free credit from suppliers who are a bit lax on penalty or interest cost, or negotiate long payment terms like running month 60, which means they get upto 90 days circa credit if they buy at the first day of a new month.

Breath out!  You and I use credit cards or the hateful payday loans if we experience that we need to pay for things just before we get paid ourselves. We more often have a negative cash flow from unforseen costs arising at the "wrong time" or we have been spend thrift and used too much money in the cycle. We can be locked in this for years, all the time because of a simple shift of a week or two which imbalances our cash flow. What we need is a higher wave at some point so we can roll over the deeper troughs. We need some 'working capital' or extra liquidable cash on hand, and we need to get our cost payments the right side of the peak - in the time ahead of it, not just before. Credit cards can help with this, but only if we know that in fact, we are making a profit in the mid to long term (6 months to 2 years say) ie our net income will exceed ALL our costs over that time by at least 5%- a semi healthy state of affairs for a corporate.

We can get credit cards which offer running month plus 14 days, ie they consolidate the calendar month's useage and bill you right at the start of the new month, allowing 14 days to pay, usually without interest if you settle 100%. However there is the risk that you are doing this on the 'never never' as the old Scots' saying goes, it is just covering up for you having too many outgoings relative to your income. Credit costs and with emergencies like car repairs or dental treatment, suddenly you can find yourself with a minimum payment, mostly composed of interest, of say €100 euros or dollars.

Home Grown Gross Margin

Now we come to part two of the important stuff - nibblers and gross margin. A profit and loss balance sheet for operational management accounting or product management, places income (sales) at the top, followed by cost of sales, cost of production and so on, what they choose to allocate to deduct from this top line operationally, (depending on nation, state, size and type of company). Most often though, there is a simple calculation of health half way down the sheet, and this is sales income minus cost of goods (to make) and this is known as gross margin. If the company did nothing else but sell things they made straight from the end of the production line, no marketing or distribution costs, then this would in a hypothetical world be their profit. They have this left over to invest, pay tax avoidance accountants, have a party at christmas for the staff.

For you Cost of Goods in the cost of living - all your essential costs. For you and I these often seem fixed costs, mortgage, car loan and so on, but also variable costs like food and electricity ( gas , wood etc) A warm house, well fed, roof firmly over your head. Your family income per month must cover these, otherwise you will drown in debt or get repossessed. Also back to cash-flow, ideally you want to build a wave of cash or ready release savings which is two to three times the size of these costs, such that you can weather a large drop in income.

We have a degree of seasonality in terms of essentials- winter costs more for some in fuel for example, or we get most utility bills in January-February.

We also of course have other costs, often many small, some "essential" like say commuting costs, and after we take these away from our Gross Margin, by calender month  - include then christmas or festive spends and so on - We get a handle then that we are either in profit, covering all our forseen (from our history and planning ahead well) costs, or not breaking even. We see what the bottom line is, and for us it is most important month to month, but with forsight so we can put money into that cash flow wave before the costs crash it down to a trough.

The Fulcrum Effect

Small drops in income have a large effect on the bottom line because the additional costs companies have in covering a manufacturing, sales and distribution network are fixed, and take time to reduce in line with sudden reduction in turn over, or the price they can demand in the market.  This is actually far worse for home economics because we usually DON'T drop any costs when we drop income. When we loose a job, yes we drop commuting costs as a 'cost of sales' equivalent, but very little else.

Also though there are far more subtle effects of the big fulcrum of falling income. A small drop in income can then grossly affect our cash flow, because it tips it into negative. That 5% "profit" we made or near break even situation we were in, suddenly leads to negative cash flow and more interest costs and perhaps a seeping level of debt which is going to drag us down over time. Remember those happy wave crests being reduced down to a low, negative, heaving swell of negative cash flow?

A bad fulcrum effect from down sizing job, maternity/paternity leave, period of unemployment etc can mean we run negative cash flow so long, that we not only have a sizeable monthly mimimum credit payement but also we run flat out of credit, and on this lower family income, have no access to more, or cannot make any more minimum payment thresholds. It gets down to a few gritty dollars a month.

Nibblers

Now I am getting nearer to the crux of the matter. What we have to pay for out of our 'gross margin' is for everything nice in our coseted western lives. Going out, holidays, clothes and usually for most of us, monthly consumer credit payments. We also have a lot of other stuff we get involved with or think we just "must have" on a monthly basis. Gymn memberships, magazine subscriptions, home cable / satellite entertainment, health supplements, home delivered food or wine.

Here is the point. Any single cost on its own looks small, laughable compared to the "benefit" we will get from it. The enjoyment, the life enrichment, the fitness, the relaxation. However go back and look at your Gross Margin (GM). For a pair of yuppies, DINKYs, then often they will have a pretty large gross margin. Many though have as high or higher a gearing to credit and house loans as people on the bottom of the salary scale due to urban housing costs. Some yuppies are designer nightmares, holidayholics and shopping mad. They spend a very high proportion of their gross margin on the trinkets and conspicous appearance nights out that mid to high earning yuppies make. So they have a monster good GM often, but have a terrible spendthrift attitude to cash-flow.

 At the other end we have people on low income who have little GM, and every other non essential cost eats away at it until they are on the most basic food possible and going to their parents to eat in the week up to pay day.

Avoiding any spreadsheet screenshots, but to give illustration:  A family income is €$£2000 after tax per month, and they have a steady mortgage payment of 600, and food outgoings of 600 and energy bills of 200, and commuting costs of 200. That means they have a gorss margin of only 400 dollars. That is their discretionary spend. Suddenly a his an hers gymn memebership of 75 bucks eats up almost 20%, a fith of what they have to spend. Magazines, megabroadband and net flix take that to 35%. Going out, well you know that is a must for folk without kids...how much per month? Another 50% points ?Visa payments are then what is left over, covering the minimum payment demanded very often as you can start to see. As with calories and the waistline, it is the extras we 'must' have that eat away ar our real ability to get ontop of debt and ride out any storm.

Every 50 spondoolics is then a major chunk of your discretionary income.

The majority of educated workers who give a damn about reading this type of blog, have pretty reasonable gross margin in their households. Some yes live in metropolitan areas and have either stretched themselves to get a mortgage, hoping capital gains in property value will save them from two or three years of negative cash flow. Many of us do take on way too much risk, accepting a leverage to income via mortgage any business would shy away from as very unconservatibve and crazy risky. However many of us enjoy promotion, or inheritance and so on too. But once again though, are you actually able to cover all your costs and get a gross margin even to pay for food and commuting from your housing costs?

Short Term Austertity in the face of Rank Consumerism

Back to nibblers for the most of us who have not stretched ourselves on huge mortgage leverage. We have all these nibblers and worse, we like to treat ourselves to things as soon as we are in a new job, or get a payrise, or worse, buy a new, bigger, house. We immediately put our selves in cash flow danger. Subsrcriptions, hire purchase and credit cards delay payment to get that cash off us, and it is still early cash tos to speak in the bigger picture of healthy cash flow.

Healthy cash flow, with that big ocean roller of a wave of positivity, takes months to build given we have an average gross margin. It means that we have in effect saved cash aside to let the wave build up in height. Small businesses often aim to have three months turn over (sales income) banked after several years in operation, because then they can either weather a storm, or use their credit rating to expand. It is recommended by many personal economy 'coaches'- I would like to see their bank balances, the majority of US citizens have less than a thousand dollars in savings. A more realistic goal is to have three months of your essential costs, because that is about the time you may need to get a new job, or organise longer term credit to cover for some accidental damage or ill health. Your credit limit should be reserved in fact, over time, for such emergencies and never used to pathc over a persistent negative cash flow ( as I know to my discomfort!)

Marginal Gains 

This is by no means a new concept in business or home economics, and probably not in the world of sport where it has been a recent buzzword following team Sky's huge british success in cycling. With money it means good old Aberdonian penny-pinching. Purchasing pros like myself should be very concerned about penny pinching in, but more often than not we have sales and project managers wanting to 'bring forward' income and delivery early, thus making the cost higher. This is the same as treating yourself before you save up a bit of that nice, big wave.

It takes top leadership to permeate a company with this concept, such as Martin O'Leary did with Ryan Air. He was perfectly serious when he asked Boeing if they could make a plane a few hundred of thousand of dollars cheaper by not installing cabin windows. It was a small gain, but if you make many small gains in your fixed or variable costs then you suddenly have a healthier bottom line. They have become the most profitable airline in Europe, and brought down the cost of tickets at the same time. No one else had this philosophy of every small thing counting in reducing costs or charging the customer a litte extra for those little extras.

Every little bit accrued from marginal gains though must go right to the bottome line. So if the first plane wihtout windows would be an expensive prototype, drop it! Next possible cost which can be reduced with no real internal effort. Next vendor who can be squeezed down. Next route which only makes 7% instead of 9% profit is dropped.

So for every nibbler you can get rid of in the 'early' phase of a new cash-flow scenario, the better. It is about postponing pleasure. Also as I mentioned above, it is about putting credit reduction in a san essential costs, at a far higher level than your minimum payments.

Another marginal game which pays off over time, is to move away from interest only mortgage as soon as you can, and opay even a small amount of capital per month. In this way you make a greater pay back when you sell the property, or avoid negative equity putting you in much higher debt perhaps if you are both licky to have paid off a lot and unlucky to experience negative equity when you must sell up.

Quantum Gains

On the opposite end of the scale there are quantum gains. These come about by rethinking your life and costs, income balance.  Firstly, a very big cost which is exposed to inflation and gives you a poorer quality of life is commuting. Longer, higher. You can then solve this only really by moving yourselves or moving your job. This can mean being a home working, self employed consultant for your current employer, knowing you are more disposable but saving enough to have a mega good cash flow for new business shoe leather time. It can mean moving to a city centre neighbourhood which is affordable yet being gentrfied by the hipsters and the NYPD. It can mean moving closer to faster, cheaper transport routes on the other side of the suburbs. Or like us, fuck the city, houses in rural areas are so much cheaper than we can work in refuse and kindergartens and afford a better home and nice lifestyle.

Quantum gains in income can be from promotion for example, but you should not consider capital gains as quantum income gains unless you invest them wisely and get a steady ROI on the go. If however you decide to downsize in property or location, then yes, that capital can be released as a supplemetn to income, or pay for a larger deposti on a house.

Going self employed is these days for the average worker, the best way of getting a hike in income, while of course it takes time and savings to be able to do so. You need a good wave of cash for the household while also investment money for equipment and possibly staff and premises.

One thing some hipsters and ageing yuppies with kids get trapped in though is down sizing their working hours or top line income, without significantly reducing their urban lifestyle costs. Usually this is funded in fact by credit, and often by that seeping form I talk so much about above. Little by little the credit bills rise and the total amount reaches as much as you can or should borrow for sustaining the unsustainable life style you have.

Pre Tax Income Equivalency to Scare You

Here is another way of looking at luxuries or small nibbling costs. We nearly all have an annual salary quoted pre tax. On average in the western world we pay about a third of our income in central and local authority taxes. Now think of that left over Gross Margin money again: a fifty dollar expense is actually seventy five dollars top line quoted income, and 900 dollaroos per year. Take two such expenses plus say a magazine subscription and you are spending 2000 dollars of your top line income on fluff.

 Also think of this when new costs are in the picture- commuting included. A new job on the other side of town pays better, but costs are an additional  600 dollars pcm. That is the same as 900 dollars income, which is that you really should be earning $10,800 extra gross income per year to cover this cost. Could you rather have worked ovetime in those extra hours you commute, or taken an extra part time job in a local shop, bar or warehouse ?

Summary
It is always down to making a better bottom line though through marginal gains for the majority of people in work, and building a positive cash flow scenario which is robust, while having reserve consumer credit for unforseen emergencies, not to tide you over to the next paycheque, be that $2000 or $20,000
Big gains in life are for those who dare do something about it, but anyway after a gain is made, we can soon revert to being spendtrhift and spoiling ourselves with purcashes funded on the never-never, or first month free marketing lures. We cut our cloth to match our suit - that image we want to show the world, or feel we deserve.

 We need to take a couple of months of personal austerity in ordinary times, with normal income and base costs load in order to come out ontop of our cash cycle. Cut out those nibllers , don't treat ourselves to anything special, cancel those subscriptions. Be tough when the sun is shining, in order to build that wave up so we crash over the troughs and don't get drowned in them .

Jfk- Conspiring Against The Conspirationists ?

Oliver Stone spliced together pseudo facts, conjecture and pure dramatic license when he created JFK, which is almost as much a work of fiction as is his earlier master piece, Apocalypse Now.  A good  conspiration's theory makes for good drama after all, but picking away at the innaccuracies and speculations doesn't mean that there wasn't an organised, secret plot expedited in a coordinated way.

Stone could use the Garrison protagonist as a vehicle for expression of belief in the conspiratuion theory, but it was probably very unfair to present so many pseudo factas and half truthes which were later open to ridicule, thus p,aying into the hands of the 'single gunman' neo conservatives and myopic sceptics.

Several investigative committees and criminal evidence experts have concluded so far that a single sniper position is completely possible explanation for the shots which killed John.F.Kennedy. This does not though exclude other possibilities for him being the last link in  a chain of command,  as those who would like to put the issue to bed would like us to think. Pretending the whole thing is just a bore now, we are tiresome liberals chasing the end of a dark rainbow.

Writers critcal to the film and Garrrison, as well as those conluding at the end of official or public hearings, have tried to unpick all of the small, strange and seemingly coincidental strands of human involvement and physical evidence and reduce them to being irrelevant. Even witness testimony is presented as laying the contrary to rest.  For example the mysterious umbrella man incident is seemingly exåplained away and laid to rest as purely coincidence.

The "umbrella man" is a case in point, with at least two authors citing both his later witness testimony under cross examination,  the symobolic significance from the Chamberlain appeasement fiasco and then they go on to try a hat-trick of killing off intellectual discource by clainming an assailant using a sniper sight would not require signalling. Any one who has been involved in sniper operations or even target shooting will tell you that there is a second man, with a wider field of view scope, who is guiding the sniper during longer range shots in order that they can zero in or the target or cease firing once the enemy is felled, thus not creating unnecessary barrell flashes which reveal their position to other enemy soldiers.

Oswald would in this theory have known the position of the umbrella man, and looked for his signals as to open the window, raise rifle, rough sight to the forthcoming killing zone, and then use his telescopic sight for just the few seconds he would need for his first probably fatal shot, being able to check with the signaller as he lowered his sight to reload. Also the umbrella man would be signalling to accomplices or watchers at a slighly further distance who knew they could dissolve away without ever being traced to being near the scene.

However in any croime there are three elements. Motive, method and opportunity. Here we have two crimes, the actually shooting by one or more gun-men, acting alone or with accomplices unidentified, and also the conspiracy to murder and conceal any such organised illegality. MMO for both sides of the crime are of course estsblishable, and in the coming years the death-bed testimonies and paid to talk sources may reveal more about who was involverd in each of the three phases- preparation, insertion-assasination and cover up. The multi shooter theory would also need some form of signalling which would later be fully disputable in court, where as a radio signal or even hand gesture could be recorded or noted and used as stronger circumstantial evidence.

The umbrella man was real and was overlooked by in large by the FBI during the initial investigation throughout the 1960s. He was later called to testify many years later and cited the kennedy Snr / chamberlain misjudgement and other republicans taunting the Kennedys with this reference to the failed english gentlemanly diplomacy towards Hitler. How would this person, now deceased, be willing to use this cover story iin court to hide his real role on the fateful day?  We will probably never know and nothing very conclusive has been established in terms of the frame by frame chain of events from the key film evidence and whether or not the umbrella is making any intelligible signals.

 Much of the speculation could have been either settled or alternatively fuelled during a trial of the assassin during which their testimony would have revealed more than we know at this point in time. . In the whole perspective of this case, the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald is so suspicious as to never truly settle the account.

What is the precendent for national security agencies acting in politically motivated conspiracies to extremr violence? Well you only have to look back to the Gulf War and the complete missuse of tentative evidence of "WOMADS" to conclude that the conservative political elite can and will utilise the security services to achieve their politcal-economic ends through violence.

How many more cold war events are purely in the realms of the secret, being carried out covertly and sanctioned by persons now deceased?  Where do military, organisational and poltiical loyalties stretch when a generation first pensions omfortably amd then fades away? We the public, cannot really know.

One the one side of the debate is the seemingly overwhelming body of openess. We have across most western democracies, freedom-of-information acts. We have a strong tradition for journalistic investigation. Then we have the whole issue of kiss-and-tell exposees fuelled by vanity and of course money. Surely these alone should negate the slightest chance that there was an organisational conspiracy ?

On the other hand there is the motivation for the assassination. A bright new democratic super star in the ultimate positon of power, set to potentially move te USA to being a non interventionist in both the post Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs Cuba, and SE Asia. Billions of dollars of military spending going to the industrial political complex, a massive crypto socialist subsidy to a protected industry which stood on the brink of the cold war otherwise becoming a limited spend on mutually-assured-destruction via ICBMs and other systems to deliver nuclear warheads. Conventional war was more mechanically diverse, and labour-mechanically intensive with a wider sector of industry able to supply conventional weaponry and in particular airborne transport platforms.

As Stone points out in the film, the Mafia hated Kennedy because of losing Havana for ever to communism, the military hawks hated him, the Republicans naturally didn't want such a charasmatic president leading them into a social democratic future. Even Lyndon B. Johnston was partisan to Kennedy. Then there is the Krusjtjov motivation post Missile crisis, with the link to Oswald.

Is there an alternative style of conspiracy theory,  to most of those presented? The various angles taken by Garisson, and the other authors and of course Oliver Stone are those which presume that the so called book-repository-turkey-shoot was orchestrated by several snipers, aided and abetted by mysterious figures in black or fur coats who disappeared from the crime scene never to be identified by the state police or the FBI. These theories also presume that there was a large, organised premeditation in the whole affaire, which has been covered up, the final loose end being the terimination of Oswald. What overall form could an alternative take and how could it be more feasible in practice and in remaining unresolved?

You have to start at the end and work backwards. Why did FBI investigators in the land-of-the free draw a virtual blank on actual hard evidence and witness testimony which would fully contradict the lone gun-man contention? Organisational conspiracies all have their weakest linkes, their whistle blowers and paid for snitches, their exposure to the course of law and public scutiny. But what if the organisatioin behind the assassination was so closed and so used to covering its tracks that it managed to achieve this? Firstly this then rules out any political party or organisation which has individuals with discretion and a societal conscious. So that leaves only the Mafia, the Soviets and the CIA with possibly the internal NSA being the exception being more accountable to law and politics in the US.

Surely now though, there would be enough documentation released from freedom of information acts and the falling of the iron curtain to pay-to-play politics. Also how many mafia bosses would be interested in avoiding jail by brokering a deal on the kennedy killing in the aggressive anti Mafia late 60s and 70s? What ageing CIA official or agent would be so cash strapped from successive divorces as to decide to cash in their blue chips of knowledge about the conspiracy?

Now we are getting warm. The alternative theory is characterised by a much narrower channel of influence in stark contrast to the pyramidal structure many have been looking for, with Oswald as the final link. The operational 'silo' is tall and thin. A decision was taken, the pinacle route of mimimal involvement chosen and the command given. This is most likely to reflect a single 'supply chain' down to the point of recruiting, or merely encouraging Oswald to follow the methodology he did. 

This vertical organisational silo would be typically single organisation, but nothing rules out a chain of command which crosses organisations. KGB to Mafia, Mafia to CIA, CIA to Mafia or secret political influences operating across two of these. However the likelihood is that a single organisation could contain the secrets better up to the point of Oswald, with him either being indeed the single shooter or the Patsy who just happened to get at least one shot into the President amongst other snipers securing the goal.

Would any group of people or chain of command be ideologically stubborn, committed and evil as to hide the secret for so long? The question is then how many nodes were there between order and Oswald/accomplices? Crossing organisations both potentially exposes the secret and circumstantial indicators and movements around the events to more people, while also actually allowing for the opposite. In other words each party has a particular self interest in keeping it from the chains in their own organisation, and by crossing over the lines of command, the thread of evidence if it was exposed is both limited and neutralisable. This is a term we will return to.

Each chain of command has access to one crucial thing and that is knowledge. One side has knowledge of the Opportunity while the other controls the Method. The motivation is either shared or becomes a transaction- a trading of values. This is then of course true within a single organisation and is a characteristic today of how terrorist cells are commanded such that the chain of command remains short yet distant and any connecting nodes largely neutralisable or defendable.

So as an example we can consider that Oswald is the key assailant in what today we recognise as a terrorist cell. He is chosen by his handlers, the peripheral node, who do not know his missioning only his required skill set. He is chosen to be either likely to succeed because of his marksman skills, or to be a very good scape goat (patsy) with the scenario being multiple snipers. He perhaps has accomplices as in the 'umbrella man' or even there is a second possibility for another sniper somewhere else on the route which was not exercised of course. He is chosen as ideologically opposed to Kennedy and groomed psychologically for this role, being a cold assassin.

The opportunity at the Dallas book repositry, is planned in detail by people who are nodes higher up in the chain of command, and he is only given this missioning at the appropriate time and when it is attained that he is psychologically primed and stable for the attack. On the day, like a modern terrorist cell or a cold war spy assassin, he acts alone for his particular deployment / inesertion point, route and access to sniper position. He may or may not then have  had some form of concurrent or subsequent sniper back up, and signalling. As a single node himself, with personal knowledge of only his few handlers under assumed idenities. he can reveal little. He most probably doesn't know of any other snipers in the multi shootist scenario. He is set up to be captured, by his perfect vantage point also being difficult to escape from undetected.

If captured then he realises that he actually knows little about his handlers and psychologically he is primed as the self made anti hero, acting alone as his story. He has perhaps been offered large sums of money or some deal (texas had then and still has the Death Penalty for capital offences)  or given some story that the Soviets will over-run the USA and free him. When none of this transpires he realises he is alone, a patsy, and just maybe as his psychological priming wears off and he may begin to think about playing ego games and disclosing his handlers and accomplices, he is gunned down himself. Neutralised by an end node himself, who knew nothing more than he was put up to it.

The nodes further up the line then are either very motivated to never reveal the conspiracy, or are neutralised underway. Neutralisation meas of course, killing them, but involves first passifying them such that they do not try to run or give evidence or otherwise document evidence such that others may find it after their untimely demise as the old film line  goes.  The fewer the number of nodes, the fewer need neutralising and so the easier it is to not create more trails of evidence in destroying lines of enquiry before they are even discovered.

Another way of looking at the whole notion of it being organised is to think of the concept of 'wishful thinking' and 'my enemy is your enemy, even if we are on the face of it, enemies'. Here then a very small poltically motivated 'star chamber' could discuss means of eliminating President Kennedy. The notion would be taken as hypothetical and deniable for actual intent. Then the next link to middle med who identify the Opportunity.  Then via them or another route, contact with the handlers is made, and then Oswald is chosen as the crux of the matter.

In this type of scenario building we can imagine that either Soviets, Republican Ideologists or Mafia Dons sit in the star chamber, and either build a steep, narrow  silo for the hit, or if they choose to use a verticle route in another organisation.  Here we also stop thinking about organisations as defined by stature or family ties, but rather we can also think of relationships not strictly defined by 'employer'. Thus there may have been a Republican Ideologist who had inroads to the CIA and chose a node there, who then had a good node in the Mafia who could handle Oswald. Or for that matter the Soviets being the handlers of Oswald, with a double agent in the CIA directing them.

The chain is maybe even weaker, with people and actions being suggested rather than actually ordered. The chain may be longer, with as many as six nodes all impeccably reliable or immenently neutralisable.  The one most compelling thread of evidence is that Oswald was silenced by someone who would remain silent or not be privvy to more than the 'sparing the first lady testimony' cover story. Over and above this a chain may very easily have been able to neutralise all around Oswald and any accomplices on the day, as long as they were not traced by the state police or the FBI as connected to the scene or Oswald. Disappearing  the people who disappeared. Then you are maybe down to just two nodes -the star chamber and the middle man 'fixer'. These were in outset presumed loyal and committed enough never to talk about what chain of events they set in motion.

One man up in a window of an anonymous warehouse building, with a mail order rifle, killing another man who has is in a large open top car travelling at city traffic speeds with little or no obstructing vehicles in the line of sight. One man who knew the route alone and who entered the seemingly insignificant building alone, un perturbed and gained access to a very good shot, which he had premeditated as fully possible from a simple visit to the area in the days before the cavalcade. One man who could have failed but for his will to succeed and his keen skills with a sniper weapon. One explanation, completely plausible.

Silencing may also be achieved by other means. Firstly, by the notion of avoiding self incrimination where an actor in the chain of command did not fully understand the consequences of their actions, but did understand the implications of the end result. Secondly there is simply money, back then a million dollars was a serious amount. Enough to start a new life with no traces of the one you left. Thirdly there is fear, and fourthly there is the case that the CIA or Russians were able to use hypnosis and brain washing techniques to both motivate Oswald  and to silence his handlers and possible on site accomplices.

Only that other explanations are also completely plausible. If you stop thinking of three layers of counter arguement as being decisive and start to pick at the last two then you may find that many points not 'evidence limb stubs' that in fact they could be open for new theories or as we may soon find out, corroborate or be corrobrated by new evidence and testimony brought to light. Why say this ? There are just a few too many threads which are untied from the bullet balistics of a single point of sniping, the probablility of Oswald actually being able to fire off so many shots wihtout a coordinated warning or singalling system, how his access and vantage point remained undiscovered, to the babooska woman and the now deceased Umbrella Man. It will take just one death bed testmony or secret service document to start the whole circus rolling again.

The Hipster Eclipse part II - Birth in a Million Sunrises

How does a fashion and whole life style genre gain a critical mass and go on to become so iconic as Punk was in the late 70s, hippie before that and now of course the urban woodsman look and artisan lifestyle of the modern-day  Hipster?

Every such 'movement' , being more than an off the peg fashion choice and more a total lifestyle statement, has its roots long before they emerge and then they have their protagonists who propell the sect into the limelight. The hippies can trace their roots back to the free spirits of the post war motorcylce escapists who became part of the beat generation, and then the hipsters of the 1950s who were spawned of the late 40s beats into the 1950s and early 60s.

In my last essay I blogged about the root to Hipsterdom but here I wanted to inject a little more theory into the evolution of the biggest fashion movement this last two decades,  since white boys started wearing puffa jackets, baseball trainers and squinty oversized baseball caps. Also I wanted to think through out loud the economics of Hipsterdom and earlier incarnations of the heavier lifestyle fashions which have arisen post war.

Innovators and Early Adopters

In consumer studies (and I would say studies rather than theory, this is more empirical than philosophical) marketing academics talk about three phases important to a product category. These phases relate to the chronological graph of growth in a categories volume or value over time. The innovators come first, followed by the closely associated group  of lead consumers, the early adopters and then the next group which are either called the 'early majority' or broken down a little more as the second standard deviation when considering the burned out graph historically.
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Usually this graph is referrred to as the Product Life Cycle but when considering a whole genre ecompassing many fashion items, styles and products then it is kind of a primary trend graph from which other product life cycles can trace their ascendency.

A fashion or lifestyle genre is very much aligned with this because it is all about conspicuous consumption. Even if you were like me, part of a quite underground movement - me an eighties indie fan -  you are making a very visible statement to your peers if not society at large, and in choosing to shy away from the 'plastic public' you are making a similar decision as the Chelsea set shopping in exclusive designer boutiques on the King's Road.

As I wrote in the first "Hipster Eclipse" these roots are echos down the decades, and I propose that they all trace back to the post war Beat generation in the late 40s and early 50s.



Soldiers, aviators and those in homeland defence factories, were spat out at the other end of the war in the USA to a country which offered the clean cut and educated a lot, but which was rapidly becoming more overtly socially conservative as would be seen in the reaction against the racial rights movements and in McCarthyism in the subsequent decades. Some of the great warriors and industry workers were left disilussioned with having to fit in as a cog in a greater machine, and got a taste of different culture, artisan food and drink when compared to their mass produced rations and the very ugly machinery of war.

Some of these characters took to Harley Davidson and Indian motorcylces, or railway hoboing and became the drifters who would eventually let their hair and beards grow, thus becoming the first North American bohemian prototype for the hell's angels, the hippies and then today of course, the Hipsters. Others became artisans, working on something niche like fixing old motor bikes or wood turning, smoking meats and fish and so on, to live an individualistic lifestyle and deal with customers in small numbers they could relate to directly.

Individualism and its self statement through lifestyle and dress sense, can be linked to those who are the innovators and those who are nearest to them or those who are most receptive and indeed neophilic - seeking the new, the exciting, the unique. Even a very small core of very visible innovators can influence these neophiles via media or metropolitan districts which attract the educated artisans, misfits and drop outs of the day. At this point of transfer it has become a fashion - people no longer are just trying out new things and maybe forming new connections and exhcanges of ideas. The early adopters are following more than they are leading.

However in turn the early adopters spread the word and image and the often young, fashion conscious consumer wants in on the act. There is an obvious critical mass. The 'beautiful people' are doing it. It has also become safe enough to dare just that little to go into it, and available enough through chain stores or by the proliferation og specialist outlets such as the Carnaby Street roll out in the 1960s. The threshold to mass consumption is physically and psychologically lower, and it snow-balls out perhaps reaching an exponential phase in adoption numbers or value of sales.

So who are these innovators in the Hipster movement, and who are the beautiful people who were so keen to adopt a hick back woods beard and braces look?

The Beautiful and Often Gay People of Innovation and Style Leadership

I think that you can see that in the 1960s various threads of fashion were first adorned literally by the beautiful people - the models and pop stars of the time, and this became the cliche of the glam rock 70s and then the product placement 80s.

 Hipster is far more underground though and I think personally you can trace the biggest echo in its fashion root to the 1980s gay scene, and eventual 1990s style "gurus" epitomised by " Red or Dead". In the eighties there was a sudden gay reaction against the plastic and pretentious club fashions of the time into crew cuts, cheque shirts, 'docs' (boots) and head to toe faded denim. It was both dated and very ironic because it was pretty much like the so much maligned skin head fashion of the late 70s. It became all the rage too with lesbians who could have a boyish, tough look while communicating surreptitiously to other lesbians without perhaps the public noticing. The whole look took off amongst mid to late 80s students, being affordable, highly functional and quite cool, only to be then later regurgitated in the 1990s as oh-so-knowingly ironic and high priced designer trash clothes.

Talking of trash,  In fact though you can see from going back to the 1970s that hipster is a carbon copy with some gilt edges of the 1970s post hippy redneck woodsman look. With wild sideburns and quiffed short back and sides, this made a side show in the 1980s as the post punk "Pyscho Billy" genre. Full beards remained firmly for old, fat real ale drinking farts and the young men of the Apelachians.

I would like to have the time and budget to find the modern day proto hipsters, who I would say belonged to the gay community and developed the look as early as the late 90s. I dare say that they were the innovators and a large part of the early adopters. I think you can see that Hipster as a gay movement in outset by the fact that the fashion is very, very male dominated.

Somewhat ironic that the male Hipster look has become very iconographic for the modern, alpha male with soft edges that women may desire. This is in large because many male models came out with the big beard look maybe five or six years ago, and it has a staying power.

Why Hipster is More Hip Than Fashion in General 

At this point in the product life cycle something a little odd happens. This is because, a bit like going the whole hog as a punk in 1977, the hipster look, appendages and lifestyle takes more committment than just going into a chain store when they decide to roll out the look via clothes and accessories.

Hipster has a far higher threshold to participation. Firstly there is all that beard growing and trimming the old hedge into the Achaen columner beard, more down than out so to speak. Then there are artisan tattoos, one of those guilt edges which mark the modern Hipster as in the cognicenti and not just in a rusty pick up from the sticks. Ink is for life, and says something about you.

For the new rich set, despite Hipster fashion swaggering down the odd cat walk, it just does not capture the right communication for them. The children of the Reagan era born into wealth and corporate opportunity are looking for conservatism and exclusivity, not being called a douchebag walking down Fifth Avenue or on the beach in the Hamptons.



Then there is also all the "Hipster douchebag" slagging which started as soon as the internet meme media got hold of it. Prior to this, a bit like our anti-plastic-league 1980s indiedom, insults hurled across a street from a gang of squares or bitchy comments passed on the "pixettes" by highheeled working class tarts in a down town bar, were taken as confirmation and that we were doing the right thing! Being shouted at by some dick means that there is often safety in numbers so there are hipster communities springing up on the cheap side of towm, and in cheap towns like Detroit, where an otherwise economically unviable lifestyle and logistically difficult set of tastes can form a nuclear core with enough critical mass to humm yet not explode.

The Hipster Economy

Following on from this last point, the whole artisan and rather twee consumer attitudes of the Hipster means that they congregate around districts and towns where there is a high availability of things like craft beers, period leather and tweeds,  and slow food.


Being aritsan in nature this sets a large barrier to further explosion of the Hipster lifestyle as an industrial fashion. Artisan does not scale well. Yes you can buy new, premium priced designer Hipster clothes and paraphenalia, but the core of followers are still the modern disilllusioned.

You could argue that Hipsters are basically cheap skates, finding a fashion affordable by the charity shop availability of the themes of clothes, cameras, typewriters and so on. It is true to say that many Hipsters find their lifestyle choices and lower middle class status has marginalised them economically compared to the mainstream of corporate american, and even the skilled blue collar worker.

In fact for women coming to the movement, a blog worthy in its own right, it offers an alternative route to fulfillment than just being as pretty as you can and hoping to marry a corporate executive or trust fund playboy. Where are women in Hipsterism ? Yeah, a lot less visible but a powerful force no doubt. Do they follow, are they the modern housewife second job ? Or are they many of the new SME leaders ?

The Hipsters are/were middle class kids who just see the whole corporate America thing for the cubicle slave debt factory it has become. They see house prices in their middle class subburbs as being unattainable and the yuppie life style of the 80s aspirational as  now being for the few from far wealthier families who can get those wages or share portfolios to fund a Porsche and Ralph Lauren lifestyle which once any hard working graduate could achieve in the 80s. Like Hippy, Hipster is very much turn on, tune in drop out.

Economically then for many it is about being niche and loving it, and about finding the cheap areas which are just safe enough from gang violence to be habitable. It is also about seeking non traditional, artisan and entreprenerial lifestyles or careers within comunity work and social enterprises where you can get a job turning up in a cheque shirt without having shaved for six years.

The Hipster Economy self protects then to an extent. It is still a niche market and while growth may be high, potential is limited, thus Anheuser Busch may scout for new beer recipies, but wont be going into the market. It is kind of self exclusive then, the barrier to entry for corporate is its small and undefinable future size,  and the barrier to mass consumption is the lack of scalability of artisan based products and service businesses.

I think that in fact the Hipster economy could become the new mantra for middle class kids who see that meritocracy has all but evapourated in corporate careers, and wages have been stagnant and eroded in the SME sector of squaredom. The opporunity for young intelligent, energetic people with no ivy league and country club connections is to reduce their living costs and use some of their income either to become artisan entrepreneurs or to consumer and be consumed by these new bread of Hipster spawned SME.

Hipster- Eclipsed by Its Own Success

Here we come to close the circle on what my thread of discussion is and why I have entitled this blog "The Hipster Eclipse". No longer can you say 'beardy weirdy", the genie is out of the bottle and the verdict is cool amongst many folk ready to be influenced, while the squares of other worn out fashions and lifestyles can shout 'douchebag' all they want.

So if hipster does overcome the cries of  " douchebag " and go mainstream big time, then it will not implode but simply evolve around the mass marketed image to become something new, or rather old - perhaps quoting from punk or clean shaving beatnik days. However its legacy in the artisan SME economy may eclipse the size of the movement and become the luanch pad for the new 'belle epoque' for the artistic, the educated, the disillusioned and the young entrepreneur.

The Hipster Eclipse

The hipster fashion, neigh, movement was a very long time in icubation and now is likely to be at its asthmus, ready to implode after this total self eclipse.

If you avoid the whole facial hair thing and make it a cross gender consideration, then the modern naughties and tens (2000s and 2010s) are part of a very long, slow rebirth of the 1950s hipster, beatnik and protohippie style. It began in the 1980s when students and young folk were looking to react against both the whole terylene and sequin 1970s pop kitch and the spandex and heavy eyeliner, main stream eighties. You just have to look at some of the bands of the time who were alternative aka indie, to see how the oxfam (charity) shop dress code and short back and side haircuts or wilder, anti eighties coiffures. Just pick up any NME or history of underground pop in the 80s and you will see the whole underground, post punk anti style epitomised by The Smiths and Dexy's Midnight Runners.

The greatest thing about the 80s for us who were teenagers and young adults then, was the underground culture. In fact Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were amongst the must own vinyl albums of the decade, they seemed to be both perfectly ancient and completely timeless at the same time. Unlike maybe the beatnik period of the 1950s with their polonecks and Monk records in smoky basements, the 80s underground was way more diverse, feeding off many musical and style genres. Parodying some, as in the pyscho-billy movement. Hanging onto others like the punkier gothic style who all listened to the damned as well as Bauhaus and The Cure. The "pixettes" with their lovely vintage mini dresses bought from Starry Starry Night and other retro second hand boutiques. The ubiquitous  1950s rocker style bike jacket, which accompanied all from goth, through the smiths and into main stream with Bros. Doctor Martins affordable, street wise shoes and boots, hijacked from the needs of the ageing working class for comfrotable work shoes.  The the huge plethora of indie scene followers, like myself, wearing cheap but really high quality clothes from charity shops, once the fine coutoire of the well to do, and re-dyed army surplus combat trousers or jackets. 

Beards were out in the 1980s, it was seen as just old hat, hippy shit, when we had access to the first really good Gillette double blade with glide strip and wet-dry electric shaves. A clean shaved chin was a good thing for pulling one of those sexy wee pixetes, who didnt want stubble rash to belie her last nights indescressions and casual petting. One thing that was in, courtesay of Morrissey, was side burns, which were a kind of tip of the cap to the 1950s and at the same time bohemia and the English tradition of the lamb chop. Long before Mr. Darcy on TV, the brace of peripheral squirrels was popular in many different walks, trimmed or bushy, and I adorned a variety of them, although never a full sized Lemmy Chops set it has to be said.

The other great thing though about the whole scene and fashions,  was that apart from some of the day's indie stars signing for the likes of EMI, the whole stramash or visual and oral cacophany was never commercialised beyond being underground. In fact apart from music and bars and shoe shops suddenly having three shelves of the doc martin range, none of it became either main stream or artisan commercial. It was a kind of anti business style consumption as much as it was anti top-of-the-pops and anti Thatcher or Reagan. To marketers in fashion it was really a kind of unwanted mould. The fashion industry was for the 'plastics' and the 'designer nightmares'. This spilled over of course into grunge, but by then designers were more prepared to cash in on what a few years before , they saw as style detritus.

One are which did all get very twee was the whole retro thing, with vintage cloth shops becoming just about as expensive as designer boutiques into the 1990s, and some iconic nineteen fiftees consumer items like cameras, shoes, belts, leather jackets becoming highly sought after and basically highly over priced items of desire by the self appointed post grunge cognicenti.

Retro in the 1990s was still at the fringe, but it had become high margin low volume post indie 80s Carnaby Street tosh for the same type of mentality who were the credit card 'designer nightmares' of the young plastic public of the 80s. This mentality meant spending a lot on clothes, buying something of obvious 'build quality' and hoping you could string it together as style, often amongst the gay community in New York,  London, Brighton and the Scottish Central belt, and many other metropolitan areas. Designer hot shops like " Red or Dead" rode the back of this, churning out vastly overpriced kitsch which you could easily take out of a dusty wardrobe in Islington and don on a Detroit super hipster today. Cheque shirts, retro jeans, a kind of manual worker look for the fashion editor or stylist of the 90s.

Facial hair made a big come back, after the demise of the much loved 1980s 'designer stubble' which george michael sported in it must be said a very manly and iconic fashion, which appealed to me with my youthful apple cheeked complexion at the time as a 18 year old. The goatee and the porno donut, although both were just known as goatees made a huge comeback maybe unconsciously or maybe by some style leaders quoting beatniks and fifties hipsters via the brush strokes of Gillette.

From all this you get the sense don't you that the modern day hipster was gestating away from the womb of the underground 1980s, which was a mix of all different kinds of shit mainly bought at Oxfam and small, dusty record ships run by ageing rock fans with thinning long hair like uber shredded wheat over their domes.  Many a twee wee fuck back then would have some retro possessions - an old turntable and 1960s amp, An aquired Beatles collection of \original vinyl (found in dad's shed) , a communist block 35mm compact camera or maybe an old Leica if you had been to a 'soggy biscuit' school and had a trust fund. The cheqeured 'lumberjack' shirt and the scruffy, flung together look wandered as I said from indie over to the ubiquitous grunge look, ripped jeans from Bros. following too. There were plenty of references and then there was the whole rejecting the main stream.

Indie teeners an me felt that grunge stole our thunder to some extent, and was too narrow a genre to actually be taken seriously, and it all became too mainstream, too marketed at too exponential a rate, leading to the untimely and grusomme demise of its dark prince and anti hero, Kurt Cobain.  I remember then some really twee fuckers into the early 1990s when indie was being in some parts commercialised while in others killed off, who turned to the whole retro designer thing, seeking out style ques from the 1950s and before. They were anti marketing yet consumerist and although they were now proto yuppies, they smirked at me now wearing a suit and being a nine to five square in my first jobs in business.

Well the mainstream of the mid to late ninetees and into the  naughties deterioted into just a great mish mash of styleless fashion orgasms in all direction and then quickly became very conservative. The off the peg Oasis manufactured indierock or reborn mod look seemed to take up where grunge left off. There after there were just various styles competing to be fashion amongst youth, and the only one which stood out for its rediculousness was the black rapper on white youth look.

Where were the middle class youth in the aftermath of sagging and squint base ball caps and 'yo bitch' chat?

They were ready to get Hip, and I would say that it most likely started with some older 30 something gays with  burned out careers looking for something original, something which oused difference yet was a style and protrayed quality and personalisation. Queu ink too, which also was a real 90s youth thing. Gone those all too hideable surfer inspired maori wavey rings on the upper arms, in were arm long and neck line crossing works of art, as well as bad copies of your kids over your back.

Hipster became very identifiable, and very male dominated. A bit like punk, women are notably second fiddle to the lead of the vertical hanging garden of gingery face-fungus. In fact the hipster look is just as instantly identifiable as the moheikan of 1977, if just of course a little more male. Females can kind of wear goofy sun glasses and androgenous work clothes, or just fling on charity shop ensembles and hang out with male hipsters it seems to be on board. How is oral sex with all that fuzz FFS? WTF?  Maybe women want a new male icon, tough but caring, independent but approachable, after the years of rap culture portraying them as Hoe's with Booty. Perhaps hipster is actually far more inclusive than all the ' pop fashions' since grunge, I dont really know.  Maybe beard extremism is like bra burning was in the 1970s, a phoenix for the inner man which brings him closer to his woman.

What I do know though is that where as in the 1980s we revelled in our secret underground culture, and had a shoe string of a budget for clothes and haircuts, the modern hipster is very, very conspicious consumption. In fact it is about to disappear up its own ass, a total self eclipse as the central 'first two' standard deviations decide that Hipster is the new black and throw out their multibladed, overpriced razors. Hipster is a highly commercial movement, it spawns businesses selling basically overpriced stuff at high margins- yeasty beers which give you the runs, single source arabica coffee which taste very like nespresso, lumberjack shirts, turtle neck jumpers and other Millet store 1982 back shelf stuff, hand sewn at a hundred quid a shot and you still look like a kind of dustman who used to chop wood for a living before the chainsaw was invented. Style never goes out of fashion, it just gets mass marketed for a while and a whole load of non cognicenti start cladding themselves out like them, and hence the cognicenti GTFO.

If it were not for the late Steve Jobs penchant for black polonecks, I would have bet that the next thing the cognicenti would get into would be the beret wearing, Mailer reading, Ginsberg reciting,  slow chain smoking beatnik down in their jazz basements, in the shadows with their joints, illegal absinth, and epiphredine or what ecver the fuck they sped on. Hipster has no defence position. It is conspicous, it is talked about, it is not underground. Most of all for the average male 19 to 45 year old it is darn comfortable and pretty low risk to get into, especially if enough people are into it. Hipster, both hello new trivial follower  and farewell old compatriot.

Life Bugs and the need to find Some Stress Hacks

As you go through life there comes a good deal of maturity - that is to say that you make better decisions and enjoy life based on rational learning experiences over many years, through trial and error where learning from mistakes and through the luck of close shaves or the misfortunes in life from injury, love scorned and berievement.

However a parallel process in many adults is that you pick up more bugs along the way, which means that you feel stressed more often. Pyschological challenges and personality issues from childhood are often blown aside in the rush through early adulthood when we expose ourselves to many challenges and go through our young sphere with little responsibility for others and our own concentration on the pursuit of education, career and economic rewards. This headonistic period is of course these days being ever extended with the average age of committing to a mortgage in the UK now a staggering 37 years old...we are changing careers more often and seem to have an equally consumerist attitude to partners and friends. At the end of this road for most of us around the average level of sub clinical insanity which is the human condition after all, we meet with mundanity of the job, and the committments, responsibilities and joys of families. Suddenly the load we feel on our shoulders increases and the demands placed on us in terms of stability, attention, level headedness, financial responsibility and selflessness suddenly exposes our weaker sides.

We tackle stress or rather the loading often with a worse perspective in that we have been bachelors/bachelorettes or D.i.n.k.y.s. far too long. Our maturity has centred around how to suceed at work, or at least get by, and how to thereafter enrich our own selves or just hedonistically entertain ourselves in a great string of consumerist mind orgasms. Mortgage and the patter of tiny feet bring this all to a hault, but we have gone much longer and also we are the first generation who have not only moved often far away from our parents, but become so old that grand parents are too frail to be a working part of the extended family care unit if you like. Light baby sitting on occaisional visits.

This disconnection to the chain of parent skill learning and to-hand support means that we are especially challenged as parents. Often too we expose ourselves to pregnancies and births with the backdrop of unsound relationships. with some people actually having more children in order to try and make up for a failing love between them. Demands to run two careers in the one household now place larger strains  on time and common interests. We cant go back to the majority of women being housewives, so we need to understand each others position in the work-life equation and how important to the old ego each respective career is.

Now, into your early or mid forties is my friend, the time to grasp the thistle of your chain of bugs and your childhood issues, insecurities, neurosies and mental ailments which have come to home to roost. Maturity runs deep, but our ability to tackle stress can run away with itself and we have to stop and not be complacent, awaiting that further maturing process will help us to grow out of it. I have not looked at the stats, but I dare say that the average age of 'nervous breakdowns' is either getting older, or fragmenting into two peaks - one in early life with the stresses of education, and early career, while the other being in middle age when trying to square the circle of work, domestic finances, ambition, family, a love life and play.

The reason these bugs and underlying neuroses will not get better with more years, is that they are intwined with biological processes. We become shorter tempered for example, if over time we allow our temper to run free. Our biological 'hackles' are  up quicker and quicker so to speak. This happens subconsciously for temper and on a wider basis, stress. Our coritsol response triggers at a lower threshold, we enter a viscious cycle where we are more often in a flight or fight biological status and our experience of stress and ability to cope with life's challenges deteriotes.

One approach to how we consider how to define stress, actually helps alleviate stress. That is to not define the external stimulus, the situation, as stressful or being on overload, but in describing stress as something internal. We can consider positive stress, but for the purpose of this essay, we would talk about challenges which people set about tackling in an aroused manner. Stress is rather to my mind, the negative outfall of not having early screen tackling techniques. We let stress build and do not master being able to cope with stimulus and situations, Indeed the feelings and 'fight or flight' bio-status when we are exposed to our own internal stress responses. Stress then is an unwanted, internal outcome of having a loading upon our perceptions and interactions out in the world,.

This approach then, considers stress as an internal set of factors. composed of a biological element and a cognitive element. ie a hormonal, visceral response and a though related response. The two are inexorably linked. We can never break this link completely, because some of this is intrinsically important to our survival reactions hence they are called 'Fight or Flight'. However much of the system gets loaded up with small bugs over time. We find a job stressful. We get sacked. We get dumped by our partner. A parent dies. We are socially not accepted in a new group. The larger loadings build up and these larger negative events it is believed, especially childhood trauma or exposure to forms of abuse and bullying, then colour our the experience in challenging situations. We are more likely to have a biological stress response which is disproportionate to the more minor type of 'stimulus'. These then become a series of further bugs which collectively can then have an effect upon us. Infact I would say of course that a proportion of those suffering the severe effects of stress, including adrenal gland burn out at the extreme end, have only been exposed to series of small bugs through life and no majore traumatic events.

We must realise that we just aren't going to get better., For me it started in a professional capacity, considering assertive behaviour patterns in the workplace. Later I became increasingly short tempered in my private life, and was really more or less forced into going to anger-management if I was to continue in a family home. More recently a different perspective again from the workplace in management education on stress within individuals. I have had real benefit from the anger management, and also learned very much from the two courses, the latter being ongoing.

The main common thread between all these three courses, with the latter two being somewhat closer in language at least, is that you have to break the cycle of having a bio-emotional response to everything  In assertiveness we want to have the personal tools and the team appreciation that we behave objectively and we speak to each other as adults. We stop our agressive behaviour by being aware that this can be to others at a far lower threshold than we would consider our approach is. We stop others aggressive or domineering behaviour by taking them to common perspective discussion. Playing a little chess, we have a short gambit followed by a game where we force the proponent to talk and act on level terms. It comes naturally to many people, but some go either way ....being agressive, overbearing and placing unreasonable demands from a position of authority or simply being a coworker bully, or being too inclusive, too passive, too democratic and worrying about keeping everyone on board before making decisions and requesting actions or feedback.

Anger management and stress management are far more closely related and focus almost exclusively on the internal processes of the individual. Arresting detriomental bio-emotional responses in their tracks by various techniques and employing PMA - positive mental attitude to ourselves and situations. We learn to see ourselves from an external perspective and understand that our processes are running too wild in either outcome, anger or stress.

Many physicians consider that there is a source of stress, that the stimulus is the main cause of our response, Given a large stimulus which can be removed - the workplace, a difficult partner  for example - then they are likely to try and solve the situation by removing the person from source of stress. Sick leave, or 'go an live at your mums for a while'. However in doing this they may completely oversee the fact that the stress response was disporportionate and above average. It gets them out of their surgery. The situation resolves itself because the absence leads to a discussion at a later time when the patient has had time to think. However the trick is missed that this was a person in dire need of decoupling their stress response from everyday situations as much as having acute need for stress relief.

Luckily there is an entire armoury of cognitive techniques for reducing stress, many of which have been found in everyday human life and culture for several milennia. Prayer as a form of meditiation and PMA, the church and holy texts as a source of solace and therapy, our extended families in the past being around us and able to help us cope. Nowadays the modern lifestyle we find ourselves in -the secular, disjointed family non collective culture,  longer working hours, a high divorce rate, children planned later in life, and so on - means that we need new techniques to practice on our own.  These are well documented and can be found in many source books. courses and on line. These are cognitive and therapeutic approaches and they include (not exhaustively):  The ABC/D stop model, the assertive behaviour model, self body language, meditation, PMA courses. lightening therapy.

Returning to a point about the biological-cognitive nature of stress. Cognition is a huge area of science and current research. In the stress response much of cognition is unduly influenced by the sub and peri-concsious and these processes are flawed in many of us. Further more to make matters worse, we are very used to internalising and rationalising our behaviour. We then actually start to believe that negative automatic thought patterns emulating from the feelings of being stressed, are correct and fit in with our own summation of the situation and even our own view upon our life regulations if you like. Breakign then the cycle can contribute to people becoming more positive and fulfilled individuals in society.
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Summary

The author proposes that stress be considered as an internal response to challenges placed upon us. It is composed of biological and psychological components and becomes often negative when these two become grasped in a viscious circle, exacerbating each other and reducing the threshold we experience stress at, while also potentially increasing the stress response disproportionately to the challenges we meet in everyday life or exceptional situations like berievement or being made redundant.

Over time we then can develope an ever worsening ability to cope with challenges and problems in life, and we do not mature out of this, rather the opposite. The demands of the modern western lifestyle or 'human condition' impose greater strains on our coping ability, while at the same time the traditional support mechanisms of family and religious wisdom are falling away, while health care systems are more stressed and more expensive.

We need to realise the case that the biological and emotional cycle is detrmimental and much of it works on the subconscious, while we have an unfortunate innate tendency to conclude that the resulting negative thoughts are correct and appropriate for us.

Luckily there is an armoury of self help techniques which can considerably reduce the level of stress we encounter in response to life's rich pageant. Attending a course is to be recommended by the author, especially when the content includes a mix of cognitive and indirect therapeutic techniques such as posture and body language, meditation and sublimation.