Patriot Realm

" I have many vices but thankfully gambling is not one of them."

I wrote this as a comment on the blog a while ago and I was alerted to the fact that this was, in actual fact a strange thing to say.

I had to step back and consider this statement. A comment, made in haste, suddenly put under the microscope of public opinion.

The keywords of course are vice and gambling.

So, what is a vice and what is a gamble?

When, on 20^th April 1653, Oliver Cromwell blasted the Rump Parliament in Britain, he gave a speech that could well be delivered in Parliaments around the world today. His passionate words were those of a man who had had a gutful of the lying, self-serving people who were betraying their country to get a slice of a very corrupt and tainted pie.

When I re-read this speech this morning, I could not help but think that it is time for a global cleanout of the cesspits we call Parliament and how our Politicians are overfed vultures feeding on the Carcass of the People they were elected to protect and represent.

When I was a kid ( and I don't mean baby goat, I mean a small child of the human variety) my mother was some kind of demi-god. She was the person who ensured that my bed was snug and warm, clothed in crisply washed sheets that smelled of sunshine because they had been hung on the clothesline and swung in the breeze on a lazy summer's day. 

I remember when I was a kid and she tucked me in at night, often so tight that I was cradled in a tight jacket of sorts and she would kiss me on my cheek and whisper " sleep tight , don't let the bed bugs bite " and the light chord would be pulled and I would wonder what a bed bug was and why it might bite me. 

But the sandman would come and before I knew it, I would wake up, stretch and wander out to the smell of hot porridge and warm milk, sweetened with honey. 

Much is written these days about wise men. About foolish men. Dangerous men. Men who stir the pot for self-gratification or for brownie points on their Santa list. Men who do or did brave things and bucked the system in order to do what is right.

These men will come and go and history will gnaw at their bones like pieces of meat to be devoured and rendered back unto ashes with only the history books to remember their legacy - faithfully recorded or severely edited, depending upon the political and societal climate of the day. 

So who are the men that we can look up to in times of darkness and despair? 

As I wrote in a previous article, when I was at school the British Empire was coloured red on the map of the world, demonstrating the truth of the saying that the sun never set on the Empire.  This is now long gone,and one can well ask why.

The reason for its global colonisation was the class system in England, which developed out of the feudal system of landlord and serf in the Middle Ages into the class system, at about the time of the Industrial Revolution.  There were the upper, middle and lower classes, distinguishable by their accents.  The upper class included the aristocrats, landed gentry and people of wealth and influence; the middle class included shopkeepers, lawyers, book-keepers and the like; the lower class included the workers and the indigent.  Non-whites were considered inferior to the white race and were barred from the country.