Going for an early morning walk in London, passing an Estate agent. Oh lordy. £1.25m for a tiny one bed flat in Bloomsbury and it's not even freehold. That's 3x the price of my entire 4 bed detached freehold house. The rents in London are also eye watering.
It must make living in London very hard and stressful. Having a smoke and chat with a lovely chap Jim. Poor fellow, living on the streets. Really? We're supposed to be a wealthy country but then GDP is distorted with rents, debt revenue etc rather than productive work.
If this is the best our society can do, then it's clearly not working. Capitalism has some merits but it's a pointless system if it leaves people behind. The focus must always be the many not the few.
A system which has £1.25m tiny flats, the homeless and people upto their eyeballs in debt whilst some live it large is a system designed by crooks and idiots. It is not sustainable. Unless our purpose is individual greed which is a sad way to live as a society.
Bizarrely, a friend told me I was a one nation Tory. Well, I'm old Labour. The distinction between this is very small and I have no issue being fellow travellers. I am however far from the neoliberal world of Blair and Thatcher. For me, society isn't a slogan.
Found a lovely cafe ... real spit and sawdust sort of place, big smiles and a friendly crowd. 6am, a cup of brickies brew and ... oh ... I can't resist and it is so rare - a bacon sarnie. Some parts of London are forever London. Bliss.
I used to get the same feeling smoking shisha, playing backgammon, drinking ludicrously strong coffee in a cafe in a bazaar in Cairo ... it's the people and the simple things that make life grand.
I rarely talk about Taoism, it's not something I can describe to others but there are those moments of undescribable clarity, an essence of just being and I find it in the most simplest of things. That probably doesn't make sense but then each has their own path.
