Month: February 2012

The former Socialist countries: popular misconceptions

On: By: Tony Papard

Berlin, Capital of the GDR (click on photos to enlarge them)

We all know these countries were far from perfect, and that a bureaucratic clique of opportunists, careerists and corrupt politicians creamed off the best for themselves, and enjoyed many perks. The mother of a Hungarian friend of mine has confirmed she joined the Party just to further her career and help her family. This was the great flaw in the one-Party system or one-Party dominated coalitions which existed in these countries. The only way to further your career was to join one of these Parties, which then became corrupted.

However the basis of Socialism was laid in most of these countries, including good health and education, good public transport systems, full employment, security in old age, low rents, subsidized essentials, etc.

Some of the criticisms leveled against them are, I feel, unjustified. The lack of cars on the roads for example. Surely this is a good thing? Cars cause pollution and greenhouse gases, and the Socialist countries had excellent, cheap public transport systems. I choose not to have a motor vehicle in London for the same reason – we have good public transport here. In fact Hoxha’s Albania had a great idea – banning all cars with certain exceptions. The EU has considered it, I believe, for inner cities where there is congestion, lack of parking space and good public transport.

Then there are the relatively low wages in the former Socialist countries compared to the capitalist world. The difference between East and West Germany being typical comparisons. This is totally unjustified. Socialist countries had managed economies where prices could be fixed. There was no need for high wages since inflation hardly existed, that is a product of capitalism and too much money chasing too few goods/services due to living on credit, interest charges, high rents and other unearned income. Basically printing money and so devaluing it in the process. Prices for essentials in the Socialist countries were controlled and subsidized, and there were many renumerations in other forms: free health care, free education, low rents, cheap public transport, a guaranteed job for everyone, guaranteed pensions, etc.

Fountain representing 15 Soviet republics,

Exhibition of Economic Achievements, Moscow, USSR

Freedom of travel abroad is one of the most common criticisms of Socialist countries, but it was not true of many of them. Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, even the Soviet Union allowed citizens to visit the West. Even in East Germany pensioners were allowed to visit the West, and others with the necessary visas.

However East Germany, and especially East Berlin, had unique problems. Firstly, West Germany poached its citizens by guaranteeing them West German citizenship. No other citizens of European Socialist countries had this right. Secondly, due to the way Germany was divided into spheres of influence and zones by the Allies of WWII, families were split by these divisions. This did not apply to most citizens in the other Socialist countries. Thirdly, the GDR (East Germany) was able to receive West German TV and adverts for products only available in the State Intershops with hard currency (though this wasn’t difficult to obtain as many GDR citizens had relatives in the West). However it encouraged a jealous ‘grass is greener’ mentality. Fourthly, in Berlin particularly, the open border before 1961 led to various scams which were ruining the GDR economy. East Berliners living in subsidized flats, buying subsidized food, etc. were getting high paid jobs in West Berlin, presumably paying taxes to the West Berlin authorities. Meanwhile West Berliners were raiding GDR shops of subsidized foodstuffs. The Wall was therefore an economic necessity in such a divided city with two opposing social/economic systems. However mining this border and shooting people trying to cross it illegaly was unnecessary and ultimately counter-productive. All that was needed was a policy of allowing visits to the West on payment of a hefty returnable deposit when they came back, and for an export tax on GDR goods bought by West Berliners/West Germans going home.  The returnable deposits for GDR citizens visiting the West could have easily been raised by public contributions, and used over and over again to fund visits to the West by different people.

Then there is the more genuine criticism of lack of freedom of expression, and not having free elections as we know them in the West. This was certainly true in many Socialist countries where the State-owned media was strictly censored and controlled. Incarceration in prisons, gulags and even mental institutions awaited many dissidents. Much of this was due to the corruption in high places, and the mistaken idea that a one-Party State or one-Party led coalition State would allow inner-party democracy thru democratic centralism, and that the masses would actively participate in this process, leading eventually to the evaporation of class contradictions, the withering away of the State itself, ushering in the self-governing society of Communism proper.

This was hopelessly optimistic as the masses never joined the ruling Parties in sufficient numbers, or if they did, never became fully active in them to weed out the opportunists and careerists and defeat them. Consequently apathy set in. The Party or Coalition approved list of candidates in elections only allowed approval or rejection, and to reject the list you had to go into a booth thus revealing your political views. The ballots should, of course, have been completely secret.

However, the candidates were chosen rather as with the U.S. primaries in pre-election meetings by the ruling political parties. So you had to be a member in order to take part in this process. Once the candidates had been chosen, the electorate was just asked to accept or reject the list. This was less than satisfactory for the reasons described above, and there is no reason why rival candidates and rival political parties could not have given the electors a real choice, and the chance to vote out a corrupt or inefficient government. This could have been done under a Socialist Constitution so that various Socialist models could be tried out, but capitalism could not be restored without getting a massive vote in favor of abandoning the Socialist Constitution and replacing it with something else.

Gorky Park, Moscow, 1960s

There were, after all, many Socialist models. The USSR had massive State-owned monopolies, often rather inefficient. The GDR had publicly owned companies competing in the market place, like Carl Zeiss of Jena. It also had State-owned shops and enterprises, and privately owned shops. The Yugoslav federation had a true Socialist market place with many worker and consumer cooperatives all competing, and it felt very much like a Western country despite the one-Party dictatorship.

Another criticism is how gloomy and depressing places like East Berlin looked. This was often deliberate Western propaganda. There were many modern buildings in the GDR and other Socialist capitals, and other cities. The bright, modern  Alexanderplatz complex in East Berlin for example. The modern Centrum department stores thruout the GDR. The fairgrounds Treptow Park (East Berlin), Gorky Park (Moscow), etc. It was not all gloom and doom. There were homegrown rock bands, etc. The Western press, however, preferred to show pictures of shabbily dressed people looking miserable, and of dilapidated buildings and streets which you can find in any old city. In actual fact the people of places like the GDR and Yugoslavia, for instance, were very well dressed indeed.

So lots of lies were spread in the Cold War by and about both sides. However not all was bad about even the distorted Socialism which existed in the Soviet bloc. Ask some of those former citizens now unemployed and facing an uncertain old age with no guaranteed pension and the excellent public services of Socialism. No wonder many have nostalgia for the GDR and other Socialist countries.

Even in Albania, that former Stalinist country, I’ve heard people say how much nicer Tirana the capital was when it wasn’t clogged with private cars.

I can’t bear to re-visit Berlin or Moscow and see how capitalism has pulled down so many Socialist buildings and erected gaudy Western-style adverts, etc. I don’t wish to see McDonalds in Red Square or Marx-Engels Platz. The pictures on the Internet are more than I can take. I did pay a short return visit to Croatia on a Mediterranean cruise. I couldn’t resist asking a waitress in a bar with prices marked up in some new local currency what was wrong with the Yugoslav dinar. Also the new flags of most of these countries just don’t look right to me, old Red that I am. The Socialist emblems embazoned on them now missing. Symbolic, of course, of a lost culture and heritage which, nevertheless, will at some stage in the future be revived in a better, more democratic format, learning from the errors of the past.

Festival, Alexanderplatz, Berlin – Capital of the GDR, 1973

 

 

Alien cultures

On: By: Tony Papard

This is a very sensitive subject, almost taboo, to write about. So I’ll start with the less controversial aspects. The whole subject is caused historically by colonization and in more recent times by mass migration, and in both cases by the new influx of population refusing to respect the indigenous people, their culture, their language, and refusing to adapt to their rules and way of life and respect these.

Historically the most obvious and extreme cases of alien cultures completely swamping and destroying, not only the indigenous culture of the country, but most of its people came with the brutal colonization of places like Australasia and both North and South America. In these places the local indigenous population, i.e. various tribes of Native Americans, Aborigines and Maoris, were all but exterminated and European culture was imposed.

Africa and parts of Asia also suffered from colonization, the Indian sub-continent (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.) came under the British Crown for years, and South Africa had Dutch (Afrikaans) and English culture imposed upon it. Other parts of Africa and Asia also suffered, though many have now gained full independence and shaken off much of the imposed culture.

I include in this category of colonization all but wiping out the local indigenous culture and sometimes the population (or expelling them) the Malvinas (Falkland Islands), Gibraltar, Hong Kong, etc. Even though the local population may now support the current cultural heritage this is largely because it was imposed for so long, and the locals are either descendants of colonists or have become swamped by their culture to the extent of forgetting their own.

We then come to the more sensitive, because it is more relevant to the present day, subject of mass migration. First let’s look at migration on a smaller scale. My father and many of his relations emigrated from Cyprus to the UK. None of them assimilated fully into the local culture of Britain. None of them learned the language properly, instead sticking with Greek-Cypriot friends, newspapers, nowadays satellite television, and culture generally. Even relatives who have lived here 50 years or more find English difficult because they so rarely speak it. The only exception is children brought up here who are usually fully bilingual, and some of whom have married outside the Greek-Cypriot community.

The other side of the coin is British emigration to places like Spain, where they often make no attempt to integrate or even learn Spanish. It is completely unacceptable for British people to live in Spain in their own communities, not speaking the local lingo, and demanding full English breakfasts at local eating establishments rather than trying out local cuisine at least occasionally.

At the same time the inability in many areas of our big cities to find take-away establishments or even butchers which are not ‘hal-al’ is also unacceptable. Why should indigenous, non-Muslim British people be forced to eat hal-al meat products when we have spent years trying to introduce more humane methods, like stunning, into our slaughter-houses? The wearing of the head-to-toe Burka should also be banned in public places. What they do in their mosques and private meeting-places, homes, etc. is entirely up to them. But in public places we cannot tolerate the kind of clothing which could conceal bombs and suicide packs, and which also prevents identification for less serious crimes via CCTV.

In the 1950s there was mass immigration, sponsored and encouraged by the British government of the day, from the West Indies. Later Enoch Powell, in an infamous speech widely condemned at the time, warned about ‘rivers of blood’ on our streets if this was not controlled. Unfortunately his prophecy, condemned as ‘racist’ at the time, has proved to be all too true. Not, it has to be said, largely the blood of indigenous British people (though they have also been affected as victims), but mainly black-on-black violence centered on drug and gang culture along with knife and gun crime. The almost complete withdrawal at the same time of policemen ‘on the beat’ has led to complete anarchy in some areas of our big cities, to no-go areas on some estates, and to mainly black teenagers and young people being murdered in gang-related violence every year, almost every month. This is all totally unacceptable and must be stamped out.

Jamaica, where a lot of the black population have their ethnic roots, is one of the most violent societies on the planet. The gangsta-rap music which comes from there glorifies violence, homophobia, murder, etc. It then influences not only young blacks listening to it, but also many young whites. We should not tolerate this kind of alien culture, nor the gangs, gun and knife crime which comes with it and is encouraged by this kind of ‘music’ (I use the word very loosely).

One thing which should be done I believe is to de-criminalize drugs. Much of the gang culture is centered on the supply of illegal drugs, and like prostitution which should also be completely de-criminalized with legal, licensed brothels, the illegality leads to gang culture and violence.

Armed police need to be put on the streets to deal with this armed gang warfare, to break up the gangs and teach the gang members true respect for other people, for the indigenous culture of Britain, and for each other.  By this I most definitely do not mean sticking a knife in anybody who ‘disses’ you or who strays into the ‘territory’ of another gang.

This gang warfare among our young people, largely black (though politicians who dare say this are then penalized for speaking the truth), has gotten out of hand. If the police won’t or can’t deal with it, then the army, currently murdering people and causing total anarchy in places like Afghanistan, should be brought home and put on the streets in our big cities to break up these gangs and teach them respect for the community, initially in military-style boot camps if necessary, and later by putting them into community service. In fact compulsory community service should be introduced for ALL teenagers of all ethnic backgrounds, including indigenous British, and of both sexes. Two or three years serving the community at large would teach them respect and do everybody the world of good.

Then there is the problem of Muslim extremists, some of whom wish to establish a babaric Islamic Republic in Britain under Sharia law. This would include horrible deaths by stoning, decapitation, etc. for adultery, homosexuality, and other things they don’t like. This is also totally unacceptable and such extremists should be immediately expelled from the country or incarcerated, on uninhabited island prison camps if our prisons can’t take them.

There are also smaller groups of immigrant populations which cause violence, usually among their own ethnic community. Such as the Chinese Tongs and Turkish gang culture, revolving around protection rackets, etc.

The answer to all of these problems with immigrant populations who refuse to respect our indigenous culture is three-fold. One, more police on the beat, armed if necessary. Two, the requirement for every immigrant to undergo citizenship classes and tests – any that do not comply by, say, speaking the language fully after say 5 years should be expelled. Three, as stated above compulsory community service for all young people to teach them respect for society.

I don’t regard any of the above as ‘racist’. I accept black people and those of other races if they accept and respect European culture. I don’t even regard myself as a British citizen, but rather as a citizen of the European Union. I don’t object to any ethnic community maintaining their own culture and traditions so long as it doesn’t impinge on the freedom of those outside their ethnic community or lead to violence on our streets. In other words, keep all the multicultural things intact but just use a bit of common sense and don’t allow ‘multiculturalism’ to mean we have to allow black teenage gangs to kill each other on the streets because it is ‘part of their culture’, or tolerate Muslim extremists who demand all infidels be executed and Sharia law introduced into Britain.

Failing to tackle all these problems, or being scared to implement policies like ‘stop and search’ for all teenagers and young people, inevitably leads to ghettoization of our inner cities as the white indigenous populaton move out, and also fuels the racist policies of parties like the BNP.  In short, failure to tackle these problems now could well lead to complete anarchy and then a backlash of  fascism in Britain.

 

 

Changing priorities and interests

On: By: Tony Papard

I will soon be 67. I realize at this stage of my life that my priorities and interests have changed due to a number of factors. One being just growing older and all that comes with that process, another is boredom with some of my old interests like playing records/watching music DVDs, and yet another is responsibilities I have now as a carer for my mother (aged 97) which I never had in the past.

At one time, in my teens and twenties, I was very active in the peace movement. Later I became active in the Communist Party, and to a lesser extent at various times in the Labour Party – at least I used go to to meetings. Now I am content to write blogs, letters, sign petitions but that’s about as far as my political activity goes. Not least because the peace movement hasn’t organized a big anti-nuclear weapons protest in London for a very long while, and the ‘Stop The War’ demos about Afghanistan really don’t interest me and haven’t done since two million people marched thru London in 2003 to stop the upcoming war in Iraq and were ignored by the government of the day. I do donate and sign petitions, write to my MP, etc. about the replacement for the Trident nuclear missile system, Britain’s only remaining nuclear weapons system. This seems to me a very relevant issue in view of the current economic situation, public spending cuts, and the £100 billion this replacement of an obscene, illegal and military useless status symbol is likely to cost.

As I grow older and approach my three score years and ten I naturally start thinking of perhaps losing my faculties, getting disabling infirmities and also realize that at my advanced age I could have little time left on Earth, or could like my mother live another 30 years or so. Therefore I have started thinking of who will look after me if I get incapable of looking after myself, will I need to move into a Care Home, etc.

I also take an increased interest in the question of the afterlife, though it has been a subject I’ve been interested in for a very long while. Since not only meeting my partner back in 1970 who was a believer in such things, but also since Soviet scientists and others started revealing evidence that there is much more to living organisms than their physical bodies.

Apart from my age and therefore naturally being inquisitive about what, if anything, lies beyond this life on Earth, the Internet has opened up so many opportunities to investigate such things. I receive a weekly Afterlife Report by email which has links to all sorts of websites and YouTube clips, but just going to Google and typing in any subject connected with materialism, quantum physics, Spirituality, the paranormal, etc. will bring up a never-ending mine of uncensored information.

As to my Socialist beliefs, I still firmly cling on to these though they have been greatly modified thru the decades as I learnt from experience what worked, what only partly worked, what is likely to work in future, and what clearly didn’t work or was disastrous. I also had to face the reality after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern/Central European Socialist states, along with Communist parties in the West, that Socialism had received a very serious set-back and was now not on the political agenda for a very  long time indeed.

The fact is that, apart from small far-left groups/parties, there is no political organization in Britain committed to a Socialist agenda. The Labour Party scrapped its commitment to public ownership under Clause IV years ago and became ‘New Labour’ and this previous commitment, albeit on paper, has not been reinstated. The old British Communist Party no longer exists and its place has been taken by various tiny factions, all squabbling with each other and the various Trotskyist and other Socialist groups. The one I felt closest to politically, the CPGB (PCC) seems not to want new members, possibly because it is, as others have said, a front organization for MI5/MI6 agents who want a pulse/barometer for what those on the far left are thinking – hence their paper (the Weekly Worker) and their monthly aggregates having a very open policy by allowing non-members to publish articles and letters and attend these meetings.

So my reality check tells me that, although a new Socialist model is needed to replace the failing capitalist system, there is at yet little sign of it appearing in Britain at least. There is a virtual certaintly that if such a model or rather models are proposed, there is little prospect of them being put into practice in my lifetime. By the way, I would choose a form of Market Socialism with competing cooperatives and smaller publicly owned enterprises rather than wholescale bureaucratic and often inefficient nationalization. Something along the lines of the economic system operating in former Yugoslavia, but with a pluralistic political system allowing rival candidates/parties in free elections under a Socialist Constitution so that various Socialist models could be experimented with and, most important, that Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution’ could be made simple and non-violent so that corrupt governments could easily be replaced.

Now as to Spirituality and the afterlife, my increased interest is not solely due to my advanced age and more people I know passing to spirit. This process has, after all, been a part of my life since a child. At school and college a girl in my class died in 1958 of Asian flu, and my best friend, Michael, died in a road accident on my 15th birthday. Grandparents and relatives died, as did my life-partner back in 1991. Pets died, and two at least have made their presence known since then. My father died in 1998.

As soon as my life-partner passed to Spirit he made his presence known not just to me, but to my mother and virtually all his friends here on Earth. There could be no mistake about this, and his communications with me continue. My grandmother has communicated startling evidence of her survival, as has my father, and two of my pet cats. My life-partner, George, not only told me exactly where things were hidden in my flat, not only answers questions I ask him but sends me little jokes and things to make me laugh. The first was just as I came out of the town hall after registering his death and he showed me something which brought a smile to my face, reminiscent of a script he had once written. The latest was the other day when I was considering confessing something I did years ago, and he promptly knocked a postcard off the wall beside me which was advertising a film with ‘Confession’ in the title. Too many of these incidents have occurred for them all to be mere coincidence.

Moreover many scientists, inventors, medical doctors, etc. who have seriously investigated the afterlife evidence have become convinced that it is real. These include Edison, Marconi, Alfred Russell Wallace (who independently proposed evolution/natural selection before Charles Darwin), Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, John Logie Baird, Dr Peter Fenwick, Dr Ron Moody – this list is endless. Only those like Stephen Hawking and biologist Richard Dawkins who have not investigated this evidence because they have closed minds are able to dispute it.

One person who claims to have investigated it, but only the evidence which suits her pre-conceived beliefs, is Dr Susan Blackmore, constantly wheeled out on TV documentaries about near-death experiences to say they are all either hallucinations or just ‘anecdotal’ when things are seen, heard and reported by those at the time clinically dead which can later be verfied. How on Earth can all these be just anecdotal when there are so many reports by doctors, nurses, relatives and others confirming that the patient in a brain-dead state accurately saw and heard what was going on? Mass lying by so many people with no motive? Blind people who saw for the first time and accurately described things, a man who accurately reported that the crying child next door had a broken arm, a mother who saw that her husband had not put the children to bed at 10.30 pm at night, patients who accurately reported on conversations in the operating room and what unusual instruments were used, even of a surgeon in the operating theater doing unusual exercises. This cannot be all ‘anecdotal’ much less ‘hallucinations’.

Dr Susan Blackmore should talk to people like Dr Peter Fenwick who has studied many near-death cases, before she dismisses all such cases as ‘anecdotal’ or ‘hallucinations’, but she won’t because, like Hawking and Dawkins, she doesn’t want her personal beliefs shattered.

In any case the belief in survival does not rest with just near-death experiences, with physical phenomena at seances, with evidence by mental mediums, etc. It is the sum total of all evidence from these and many other areas including Instrumental TransCommunications, ghost phenomena, direct evidence of survival transmitted to friends and relatives by the deceased, and the latest discoveries of scientists and in particular quantum physicists which, together, amount to overwhelming evidence that Mind and Brain are separate and that the personality survives physical death. Indeed Quantum Physics proves a conscious observer is necessary before matter itself can exist, another piece of evidence conveniently ignored by materialist scientists. How can the brain, which is composed of matter, be the source of consciousness if matter cannot exist in the first place without a conscious observer? This fact alone proves consciousness is non-material.

New scientific theories explain all this, such as Ron Pearson’s ‘Big Breed Theory’ incorporating the notion of the ‘intelligent ether’ or ‘i-ther’, but are rejected by many scientists not only because it goes against their mistaken materialist theories, but because it would turn the scientific community certainly since Albert Einstein on its head, and also, of course, because of this they would lose all their research grants.

So until the new theories become acceptable, and this is bound to happen in due course, probably sooner rather than later because the old scientific theories clearly are incorrect, then scientists with open minds are unable to publish in many scientific journals and have to resort to YouTube and other Internet outlets to voice their views. Their research into survival, etc. is restricted by lack of funds, but organizations like the Institute of Noetic Sciences launched by Dr Ed Mitchell (Ex-astronaut and NASA scientist) and headed by Dean Radin are doing excellent work on so-called paranormal research, as are many other organizations.

So yes, my priorities and interests have changed over the decades. The computer and the Internet are invaluable tools, not just to research survival and the parnormal, but to play music, correspond with friends and all sorts of other things, some as trivial as playing games without packs of cards, board games or even other live players.

As regards more serious matters, yes I hope for Socialism and peace on Earth, but I also realize these cannot come about till humankind is spiritually advanced enough to enable this to happen. So long as we are pre-occupied with materialism, acquiring more and more gadgets, wealth and status symbols here on Earth and less concerned with fellow human beings less fortunate than ourselves, or with what awaits us after this Earth life, then things are unlikely to change much.

However many of us believe, and have been told, that a major shift in the world’s paradigms is now due to take place. Due to the new discoveries in many areas (and the intervention of Spirit) it will be seen that the evidence for survival is real, and also that this material world and Universe we see around is just a dream, a ‘virtual reality’ created by Mind. These facts will have to be recognized by all but the most obstinately burying their heads in the sand.

First survival must be widely accepted, and old materialist ideas that death means oblivion discarded. Also the old religious ideas of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ must be finally consigned to the dustbin. We must then realize that the law of ’cause and effect’ applies, also known as ‘karma’. That in our post-transition (death) life-review we will have to feel the effects on others of all our actions in life, and that we will have to repay our karmic debts as well as reaping our karmic rewards. Then, and I suspect only then, will humankind change for the better and will some form of Socialism and peace under a world federation be established on this troubled planet.

Then, and only then, will Earth be invited to join the Interplanetary community of advanced civilizations which have been closely observing us for centuries, and have kept an even closer watch since the invention of the atomic bomb. Yes UFOs are real and are alien craft observing us, and this has now been admitted by many governments and by more than one NASA astronaut.  It has been confirmed by Dr Ed Mitchell that the Roswell UFO crash happened, and that there is ongoing contact by the U.S. government with the aliens who pilot these craft. They are not, however, ready to welcome us into their Interplanetary community until we sort our own problems out here on Earth and they are assured we are not going to destroy our civilization and planet with the new technologies we have discovered.

She left her cold feet behind!

On: By: Tony Papard

I saw an amazing video on the Internet yesterday. It consisted of an interview and clips from his presentations, with slides, by the late Tom Harris who died in October 2010.

He attended many physical seances, many where his mother was the medium. This was between 1946 and 1954. Before than he’d attended seances by Helen Duncan, the physical medium jailed under the Witchcraft Act for revealing that British Navy ships had been sunk before the Admiralty had even told relatives. She brought dead sailors from these ships into the seance room – proof enough that she was genuine. She died from injuries caused by police shining flashlights on her during a seance in 1956. Ectoplasm is very sensitive to light and touching it or exposing it to light can be fatal to the medium. Again, proof she was genuine was the tragic way she died from ectoplasm burns.

Tom Harris showed some amazing pictures of seances and ectoplasm, some of which, by permission of the spirits, was captured and analyzed.

In one picture a seance trumpet (megaphone made usually of cardboard, used to enhance voices of spirits speaking by Direct Voice or via the medium’s own vocal chords) is seen held aloft by ectoplasm emanating from the medium. No way could this black-and-white photo be faked.

Other photos showed spirits materialized in ectoplasm, including Tom’s Aunt Ag.

The photos were taken by two methods. Long exposures in dim red light – these suffer from the spirits moving during the exposure. For instance, Aunt Ag moving her head from side to side creating a double image. The other method was infra-red photography, taken in a completely dark seance room. These are much clearer, in fact very sharp. The spirit of Aunt Ag looks as real as any human in the picture.

Tom explained why so many of the spirits had their heads, and bodies, covered in a white sheet-like garment. He said this was only the case when infra-red photographs were being taken, as it conserved the energy which produced the materializations. Infra-red devices affect this energy, which is why they have rarely been allowed in seance rooms. The faces of the spirits were visible in these infra-red photos, and the one of Aunt Ag appeared in local and other newspapers at the time.

One amazing story tells how these materializations are just created from ectoplasm to prove life-after-death. They don’t represent how the spirits really exist in the afterlife. For instance, Aunt Ag and some others appeared as rather elderly women, but if they choose to take humanoid form in the afterlife most spirits revert to how they looked in their prime – their 20s or 30s. Of course spirits have no natural form since they are pure spirit or energy. So sometimes, if seen, they are as mists or spheres. They take humanoid form because they are used to it and comfortable with it, and also so we can recognize them. Especially in physical seances in dim red light, or of course for the benefit of new arrivals in the Spirit world when our friends and relatives come to meet us. Would you want to be met by a formless spirit, a mist or a sphere claiming to be your relative?

There was one truly amazing story told by Tom about this old lady in Spirit who always had cold feet in life. At this particular seance visitors were present, and the spirit lady invited one of them to feel her feet. Indeed they were stone cold, as in life. Her spirit hands, though, were warm and felt very human.

At a later seance this old lady appeared again, and Tom asked if her feet were still cold. ‘Not today’ she said. ‘Why’s that?’ asked Tom. ‘I didn’t bring my feet today’ replied the spirit lady. This seance was in red light, so Tom, with her permission, lifted up the spirit lady’s garment and indeed she had no legs or feet. He could see his human father sitting in the seance room through the space where the spirit lady’s legs should have been. Yet she moved around the seance room with ease, proving that these materializations from ectoplasm are only representations of how the spirit looked on Earth so we can recognize them.

In another seance someone was allowed to feel the spirit’s pulse. Now it is unlikely that even spirits taking humanoid form have a pulse or internal organs in the Spirit world. They simply take on the outward humanoid appearance for ease of recognition, and because they are comfortable with this condition at least until they feel ready to dispense with this humanoid form.

Similarly with the voices re-created in seance rooms. Spirits don’t speak as we do, they communicate by telepathy, thus overcoming all language barriers. However, for the benefit of sitters in seance rooms, they often try to re-create their Earth voices using either the medium’s vocal chords or a voice box composed of ectoplasm. This has varying degrees of success. It often takes a lot of practice to re-create something similar to the voice they had during their Earth life. Some first-time communicators, like my partner in spirit who came to me during a physical seance, are able to manage barely more than a whisper, and do not sound like they did in life.

Other, more experienced spirit communicators manage to re-create virtually the same voice they had on Earth. However all these ectoplasmic re-creations of how they looked and sounded on Earth are just that – re-creations so we can recognize them and realize they are still alive in another dimension. In reality they are spirits with no natural physical form, they don’t speak with vocal chords but use telepathy, and if they do choose to take on human form then all infirmities they had in life, including those of old age, are eliminated. Except when they appear to us with these infirmities restored for purposes of recognition.

Another Internet video I saw yesterday reminded us of how the early pioneers of radio and television nearly all investigated the evidence for Spirit communication and found it to be real. Indeed some experimented with devices for communicating with the Spirit world, and were convinced, as I am, that such devices will be perfected in the future. These inventors include Edison, Marconi, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes and John Logie-Baird. Since they worked with electronics and invisible waves to create radio, television and other electronic devices such as the precursor of the cathode ray tube, their mind-set left them open to the idea of communicating by similar waves with the invisible (to us) world of Spirit.

Devices have indeed been made to communicate with the Spirit world, such as the Spiricom, but unfortunately this only worked when its inventor, who was also a medium, was present. However experiments continue with  ITC – Instrumental TransCommunication, with some remarkable results. Voices and even pictures, as well as printed material, are being received from the Spirit world. All this research will surely lead one day to an inter-dimensional video link which will allow two-way communication with the Spirit world and dispense with the need for human mediums (mental or physical ones), ectoplasm, darkened seance rooms, etc.

Just pick up the inter-dimensional video phone and speak to granny who died 30 years go, looking like a 30 year old woman. What the bill will be from the phone company, of course, I leave to your imagination!

Old forgotten songs

On: By: Tony Papard

There are many songs, you could call them folklore I guess, which are all but forgotten. Some were put on disk years ago but most have been lost or consigned to very old, obscure songbooks. Such as the various ‘Songs from Aldermaston’ sung on the long marches between the nuclear bomb base and London.

There are also old songs which circulated, some on tiny 78s I believe, before the Second World War which have been lost or forgotten. Many of these would now be considered politically incorrect for various reasons, but they are historical artefacts like the peace movement songs mentioned above, which are also very dated. Some of the peace movement songs, like ‘Family of Man’ and ‘Go Limp’  would also nowadays be considered politically incorrect. The first because of its sexist language, and the second because it’s about a daughter being warned by her mother not to go on a CND march as she might lose her virginity. She does, and gets pregnant by a bearded marcher because she remembers her briefing for sit-down demos when the police arrest you and uses it when seduced: ‘Go perfectly limp and be carried away’.

There are also, of course, the many old jingles used in the early TV adverts, long before the boring and confusing ones nowadays for comparison sites and others on the Internet. These are part of our past culture and I remember loads of them for products like Germolene, Hoover, Murraymints, Double Diamond, Esso, Windolene, Mazda light bulbs, Typhoo tea, etc., etc.

I’ve now, with the help of my mobile/cell phone, put 36 of the peace songs on YouTube:: http://www.youtube.com/user/antonyjohn?feature=watch. Scroll down to next pages and look for CND songs. I’m no singer, the voice is shaky at times and I had no musical accompaniment, but I felt it important these songs should not be lost forever as few people remember them nowadays. They helped many tired feet on the long marches, and raised spirits when we sat down blockading nuclear bases or London streets waiting to be arrested. Sadly shouting of ugly slogans on demos replaced these songs, and the jazz bands, guitars and other musical instruments which used to be on all the marches.

There are also many Socialist and progressive songs, but many of these are preserved on records or CDs. However I’ve also recorded some of these with my mobile/cell phone – obvious ones like The Red Flag, The Internationale, Bandiera Rossa (the Red Flag of Italy), but also more obscure ones like England Arise!, Harry Was A Bolshie (about Harold Pollitt, the Stalinist ex-leader of the British Communist Party), Red Fly The Banners-O, etc.

I haven’t yet consigned the old advertising jingles to mp4 files on my PC, but will probably do so as they too are part of a culture being forgotten of the early days of commercial television.

There are also the old music hall songs, though these too are preserved on recordings to a large extent. Some are probably not, so I may do mp4s of some of the more obscure ones like ‘One Sunday Over The Lea’ (my boyfriend did it to me… he did it once, he did it twice, then he had the cheek to say it weren’t nice) about a girl getting pregnant over by the River Lea in East London. This and other old songs were revived by the late Dockyard Doris who did music hall in drag along with others like the late Phil Starr in a pub in Hackney.

There are also the alternative versions, usually very vulgar, of popular songs of the day. Such as ‘Lady of Spain’, ‘Catch a Falling Star’, the Popeye cartoon song ‘I’m Popeye The Sailorman’ which we taught each other in the school playground. Michael Holliday’s ‘Catch a Falling Star’ came out at the time of the first Soviet sputnik which astounded the world and shocked the USA, spurring the Space Race and worries about nuclear bombs put into orbit. We changed the lyrics to: ‘Catch a falling Sputnik, put it in a matchbox, send it to the USA’. What Popeye the sailor did in a caravan and a frying-pan I’ll leave to your imagination for the moment, as also what we wanted to do with the lady of Spain.

All part of our past culture and consigned to history, but perhaps some of it at least should be preserved in some format before those that remember it are also consigned to history.

 

Gipsy lifestyle? (With added geography lesson!)

On: By: Tony Papard

I sometimes wonder what it must be like to live in one area all your life, keeping in touch with schoolfriends and seeing all the changes gradually taking place. Like my friend Maureen who’s lived in Battersea all her life, she’s about my age and is now about to move to Eastbourne to be near one of her sons and his family.

Our family have never stayed in one place for long. Well not until I moved to Battersea, by accident, in 1973 – been here ever since. In my present flat for about 28 years now, and yes in Battersea for about 39 years. Yet I’m lost South of the River Thames – it is still largely alien territory for me. I know much of North London like the back of my hand.

On average, despite my 28 years in the same apartment, I’ve lived in homes for just  over 5 years each. That’s 13 homes in my nearly 67 years, all north of the River Thames except the last three. Two in West Hampstead, two in Wood Green, two in Welwyn Garden City, one in Hampstead, one in Stoke Newington, two in Camden Town and now three in Battersea. My mother, now 97, has an average of about 5 years each for her homes since birth as well, despite living in her present flat for the past 11 years.

At least my mother had good excuses in the old days as her father was a policeman and every time he was moved to another police station they had to move to another house. Then she was in service at various places, all live-in jobs, and during the War my father kept moving to avoid the draft. After the War she had to move again when she separated from my father and we went to live in my grandparents’ house, till we got a council flat.

The trouble with moving around so much, very common in cities, is you lose touch with friends. My mother and I know virtually nobody in Battersea who you could call close friends – just neighbors and acquaintances from various clubs we go to in the area. Our family is spread far and wide, only two households are in the London area – northwest London (Wembley and Harrow, which are NOT in a county called Middlesex, that was abolished decades ago!) Others are spread all over the country and the world as far apart as Canada and Australia, and of course Cyprus if you count my father’s side of the family. My brother and his wife are in Yorkshire.

Why is South London so alien to me and my mother despite us both living here for quite a while now – in my case well over half my life? Well there’s nothing much South of the River, it’s mainly residential. Southeast London is almost totally alien territory to us as we hardly ever have any reason to venture there. Went to East (or was it West?) Dulwich once for a gig and a friend told me she lived in Nottingham, which seemed a long way to commute as she worked in the Plaza cinema near Piccadilly Circus. When I questioned her about this she said it was a place called Mottingham somewhere in the mysterious depths of Southeast London. Visited her there once or twice – pretty awful place. Even the bus drivers wouldn’t venture into her estate at one time, so we had to walk from Orpington station I believe. Of course a lot of these Southeast London suburbs like to pretend they’re in Kent but of course they’re not, and haven’t been for decades. Battersea was once in Surrey, but we don’t put that on envelopes nowadays. Everyone has postcodes nowadays, so including old county names (or existing ones) in addresses is superfluous and often hopelessly out of date. Do I still address letters to Bournemouth, Hants because it was once in that county? So why should Bromley claim to still be in Kent?

I know fairly well a strip about a mile wide from Putney to Bermondsey (Elephant) south of the River. We live in this strip about 10 minutes walk from the River. There’s rarely any reason to travel further south. At least till they gave me an allotment in Earlsfield, an area which is still pretty alien to me. I rarely get up there and would give the plot up if it wasn’t for two friends helping me maintain it. Too far away in a direction I have no need to travel for any other reason.

All the places I worked were north of the River, and so are most places I go to for recreation, hospital appointments, etc. or just south of it. Born in the Middlesex Hospital and under them for years (now sadly demolished but it was just off Oxford Street).  I’m now under St Thomas’s and Guy’s, both just south of the River, St Thomas’s actually on the banks. My mother has a 6 monthy eye check-up at St George’s, Tooting – again quite alien territory for us.

The local paper holds little interest as we are not the slightest concerned with what happens in foreign places like Balham, Tooting, Roehampton, etc.  I’m more interested in the local papers for Camden/Hampstead where I still go swimming in the Summer at Hampstead Mixed Pond, and where I go sometimes to the Jazz Cafe or the Odeon cinema. I also go to Wood Green to meet up with a friend who lives in Tottenham nearly every week. I don’t meet any friends in Battersea or anywhere South of the River unless you count a lunch club and drama group about 5 minutes walk from the River where we go twice a week.

My working and social life has always been spent mostly north of the River, at least when I’m not at home. That’s where the West End is, most of the offices, and all the parks and open spaces I know and like best, except for Battersea Park, right on the River again.

Moving around so much meant I had no friends my own age in my late teens since I lost touch with schoolfriends and neighbors’ kids. Since then I’ve rarely lived anywhere long enough to make friends, and those I do have or did have are spread all over London and the Southeast. The one exception, perhaps, was a couple of gay pubs in Battersea – The Cricketers and The Buzz Bar where I went sometimes. The Buzz Bar had quite a community with quizzes and bingo, etc. every night and also they did meals. I did a disco there with a friend, and we put on some gigs there. Alas that is now long gone. A group of us went to a couple of pubs a little further afield in Wandsworth for a weekly quiz, but that too has fallen by the wayside.

As to the areas I know best it would be the whole of Central London (all north of the River), Camden and Hampstead, Wood Green area, Tottenham and most places in between like Islington (where I worked for years), Finsbury Park, Hornsey, etc.

Places I don’t know well at all include virtually all London south of the River Thames apart from this strip I mentioned above about a mile or so from the River, and the railway line to East Croydon  as it only takes 10 minutes and I used to travel it regularly to visit friends on the South Coast. Also to Fairfield Hall and places around Croydon (a London suburb incidentally, not a Surrey town as the locals like to pretend). I’m not familiar with much of West and East London either once you get beyond Shepherd’s Bush to the West and Mile End to the East. All I know is those in the outer Western suburbs like to pretend they’re still in the non-existent county of Middlesex, and those in the outer Eastern suburbs like Romford, Ilford and Dagenham like to pretend they’re in Essex. Nor, incidentally, is Barnet any longer in Hertfordshire to the north. All these are suburbs of Greater London and in London boroughs.

Landing up in alien territory was due to a friend of a friend offering us accommodation in his ground floor Battersea flat, but we never intended to stay there indefinitely. My partner and I put our names on the council waiting list hoping to get a flat in Camden where my father and mother both lived at the time, in separate flats. We had no connexions at all with Battersea or Wandsworth or anywhere south of the River, but Wandsworth council said since we applied in that boro’ we were stuck there for the rest of our lives, unless we could get a mutual exchange. This seemed ridiculous especially as the Greater London Coucil then existed and had council homes as well. We were offered some very run down flats north of the River at one point, but they were terrible places the locals had all rejected.

Well I’ve got used to Battersea now and so long as I don’t have to venture further south very often I’m okay with it – couldn’t bear the thought of moving again, and if I did it would have to be to a much smaller flat due to council rules, since my partner has now died.  That would mean getting rid of a lot of furniture and other stuff.

However my leisure time outside my home is still often spent north of the River, that great dividing line which splits London in two. Fulham may have a SW postcode, but it is north of the River so counts as North London, same with Victoria, Kensington and Chelsea. It is the River which divides London as the railway tracks divided Welwyn Garden City and many other places, and as walls and barriers divided Berlin, Nicosia, Belfast, Jerusalem, etc.

Why we moved so much I’m not sure. Three places by the time I was 6, the last one because of my parents’ separation that year. Then we got offered a council flat nearby. My mother then got a mutual exchange to Welwyn Garden City, a place I hated (see separate blog a few weeks back.) I couldn’t stand it and got a job in London the following year, commuting for 6 years till I got fed up and moved back to London.

Initially stayed with my father in his Hampstead flat, but this upset my mother and grandmother, so I got a pokey room in Stoke Newington. Then moved in with first live-in partner in Camden High Street. After that went sour, my mother moved back to London (Camden Town) and I moved in with her, then my life-partner move in with us. This caused frictions and that’s how in 1973 we moved to our first Battersea flat, which wasn’t really fit for human habitation. No bath, only an outside toilet with no light. A friend rigged one up, but you got an electric shock every time you turned it on. We just put a rubber mat on the concrete floor to absorb the shock!

The whole flat needed rewiring and one day the light in the front room fizzed, sparks flew out of it and the lampshade caught light. The landlord wasn’t allowed to let the flat after we left till he had the whole place rewired.

We got a council flat on the 18th floor of a tower block just off Battersea Park Road because the then Labour council wanted single people and childless couples to move in to high rise blocks. Then the Conservative council started selling off council blocks and whole estates, and we were decamped to my present flat near Clapham Junction station in early 1984.

My mother, after living in three Camden flats, was persuaded by her sister to move back to Welwyn Garden City to be near her, which she did at the advanced age of 75. She lived in two sheltered housing schemes there, till my uncle rang and said she couldn’t manage by herself, her pension was uncollected and bills unpaid. Luckily I got her into a sheltered housing association scheme just 5 minutes’ walk from me in 2001. So I’m now able to pop in every day, take her out and we have our main meal together.

When on nice Summer days I ask where she’d like to go, if it’s not Battersea Park or somewhere else along by the River it’s one of the Royal Parks north of the River usually. That is unless we get the train to Brighton, just 45-50 minutes’ away. We make a yearly visit to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park each May, but it is a hell of a journey and then a long, long walk with her wheelchair. Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens and St James’s Park are just a bus ride away.

And Hampstead Mixed Bathing pond or the Serpentine in Hyde  Park are my two favorite places for swimming and sunbathing in London. I like natural water and hate open air or indoor swimming pools, which is all South London has to offer.

Oh yes, I go to a club in Ladbroke Grove several times a month, an offshoot organizes outings usually north of the River every two weeks or so. Another social group I belong two also meets North of the River monthly or more, as does an offshoot of that. On the rare occasions these groups go south of the River it is usually right on the banks, such as Kew Gardens. Really a mile or so south of the River and there’s not that much to see. Or is there? I don’t know, perhaps someone can tell me.

Channeling and Psychic Update

On: By: Tony Papard

George Miller, passed to Spirit 29.9.91

(forever marring Jerry Lee’s birthday)

When my life-partner passed to Spirit I almost immediately began getting messages from him by various methods, and not just me, but my mother and all his friends. He contacted all of us to tell us he was OK. One friend was lucky enough to see him materialize briefly, another heard his voice asking what he was doing in my kitchen. The friend was washing-up, something he never usually does.

Most, but not all, of my messages were spontaneous telepathic messages, two of which showed me where things were he had hidden away.

Over 20 years later I have now learnt to tune in to Spirit and regularly channel my life-partner and also my Spirit guide, Little Star. I learnt about Little Star, a Native American, one nite when the name came to me, and then I saw her face. This made me recall one day years ago in a Spiritualist church (I don’t often go as I’m not religious – there are now many atheists and agnostics who believe in the afterlife based on the evidence, but we prefer to call ourselves Survivalists) a woman in the congregation said she saw a Spirit woman behind me with long black hair. This must have been Little Star, but back then I didn’t have a clue who my Spirit guide was.

If I could channel every nite without any trouble I’d feel it was just my subconscious thoughts, but the vibes have to be right. Some days I just can’t tune in at all, other days it just flows.

Some months ago I got a long account of what happened after my partner passed over, how he was greeted with classical music on the Other Side, and what he’s been doing since. It was a two way conversation, as I was able to ask questions and get answers.

Last night we got from George (my life-partner, well afterlife-partner now I guess) and Little Star encouraging messages about the Diana project taking off in a big way very soon. This has also come via other sources to other people connected with the project, but as everything depends on human free will, we’ll just have to wait and see.

It does depend on someone who knew Diana in life coming out publicly and acknowledging it is her speaking thru her voice-channel. This has been done privately when a psychic Diana consulted in life about her astrological chart said she knew it was really Diana coming thru because she knew the actual time of her birth, and it was not the one printed at that time in all the biographies, etc. of her. I’m not into astrology myself, but apparently those horoscopes in the papers are useless; to be accurate, it seems, you have to know the exact time and place of birth. The trouble is if Diana was described as a ‘loose cannon’ while alive, she is no less so when channeling as an Earthbound Spirit. Determined to prove she was murdered in Paris and wanting an end to the Monarchy, most prominent people won’t touch the DianaSpeaks site with a bargepole. Maybe, and we hope, this is about to change.

Last year I went to two physical seances, the first I had ever attended. I had considerable difficulty getting to them as they are, for some unknown reason, held in the most inaccessible places in the middle of nowhere, virtually impossible for people without cars to get to and back from, so the second time I stayed overnite in a nearby hotel (and that involved a long taxi ride) to avoid having to rush away and missing my last train my ticket was valid for as I did at the previous seance. Don’t spirits look up railway timetables so we can catch our last trains home? Evidently not! They did at least make sure I caught the last hi-speed train to St Pancras rather than Waterloo East, but I had to pay an excess fare.

Anyway, at the second seance my life-partner came thru, but it was not nearly as evidential as messages I get from him by other means. This is because most physical seances are held in complete darkness, and also because the voices of the Spirits often bear no relation whatsoever to what they were in life, at least that was the case with the Spirit that spoke to me, which I’m assured was him. There was some evidence in the message itself (look back to August to see the relevant blog), but there was really no reason it should be a physical seance. If you can’t see a bloody thing and the voice is all wrong, what’s the bloody point of it? Apparently they can get the voice right with practice, but as my life-partner said is it worth all the effort on my part to get to these outlandish places and on his part to get immersed in that ‘horrible sticky stuff’ as he described the ectoplasm and try to recreate something like the voice he had on Earth. He never liked speaking in public anyway as he was very shy, so until physical seances can be held in red light so you can see the materializations as well as feel them, I have no inclination to go to any more.

I was talking about this to a friend, and he said there’s no need to go to physical seances or even mediums who do clairaudience or clairvoyance, so-called mental mediums, though I had a remarkable message from my maternal grandmother via Colin Fry once in a packed Fairfield Halls. This friend said, apart from my channeling, if I had any doubts it was my life-partner he could move something in my flat. Certainly my cat has made its physical presence known by opening a cupboard door twice since she died and knocking my t-shirts to the floor, something she did many times in life. Another cat jumped on our bed from the wardrobe several times after he died and woke us up, a feat he often did when alive.

My dad made a picture fall from its frame after his funeral – a picture which had tremendous significance. I’d had pictures of Stalin and Lenin on my bedroom door, which my dad described as ‘murderers’ when he visited. I took them down long ago. My dad, however, still had his picture of EOKA-B terrorist George Grivas on his London mantelpiece, and it hung on the wall in his lounge when he moved to Cyprus. Only after he died, in the hour or so I was in his house, did he finally take his murderer down from his wall, and the added significance is that when he raved about ‘murderers’ I said it was a bit rich coming from him because of that picture on his mantelpiece.

A picture fell down the other day in my flat. It was one from George’s main collage. Now these do fall down from time to time, so I didn’t think anything of it when I saw it face-down on a cupboard, but when I went to stick it up again with some Bluetack I gasped in amazement. This was the sign I’d been waiting for, and it held so much symbolism I can’t even begin to explain it without great difficulty. Suffice to say no other picture, and there must be literally hundreds on my walls, could have the meaning this picture did, and it was also the way it fell. It held so much cryptic symbolism, which George was fond of, it must have taken weeks to plan. He’d promised when he moved something in my flat it would be very significant to me and hold some meaning, so not just any old thing.

The picture was of Dorothy Squires from one of her record sleeves. It had fallen face down over a plate with a picture of Jerry Lee Lewis, obscuring his picture. This was between two framed pictures, two of the last photos taken of my partner and me together just months before he died.

Now Dorothy Squires was one of his favorite singers, and Jerry Lee Lewis is my favorite singer. Not only had we had words about these singers in life, in fact the one about Dorothy Squires nearly broke us up at one time. After going to one of her concerts I said I didn’t enjoy it much (we went every year) and he said we had nothing much in common. We had to act fast to repair our relationship and work on our common interests.

Dorothy Squires was also the singer who told me it was OK to continue contacting my partner-in-spirit, which at that time was by letter. I’d asked in a letter to him the nite before if I should stop writing them so we could both move on, and next day I got the urge to pull one of his LPs out of the rack at random (I wasn’t familiar with his record collection as our musical tastes were totally different) and I pulled the album out of the sleeve without looking at the sleeve, the artist, title or the label, and just stuck the stylus down on a track somewhere in the middle. Immediately Dorothy Squires answered whether I should stop writing the letters with: ‘Love letters straight from your heart keep us so near while apart’.

So Dorothy Squires’ picture falling off the collage was very significant in itself, but the way it fell between two of the last pictures of us together on Earth, obscuring both her picture because it was face-down and Jerry Lee’s picture because it fell over his plate, pushing it to one side, symbolized that even the things which divided us in life could not come between us now. Moreover, as it was Dorothy Squires’ picture from one of her album sleeves, I should carry on channeling him, which I now do telepathically, writing his replies down and saving them as Drafts in my Windows Mail.

So I am convinced the channeling of George and Little Star is real, and that to the best of their ability they are guiding me and others, not just in the Diana project, but in all sorts of ways. I also confirm the telepathic messages by using George’s old dictionary, which is falling apart. By opening it at random and pointing at words or definitions, I write these down, and he then helps me to interpret or put them into chronological sentences which always confirm the telepathic messages I’ve received.

I can’t say whether messages I get from other, sometimes unknown sources are always accurate, but certainly the ones from George and Little Star are more likely to be as I have the strongest links with them, and channel in this room which is full of his energy because of his collage all around me. The room he spent a lot of time in. Also last year I put a wonderful picture he sent me after he died (well I found it after he died and had never seen it before) on this computer as my background, and I reproduce it above.  Since then his energy seems to be in this PC.

Of course Spirit are notoriously unreliable when it comes to future events and predictions, because of human free will. The future is not set in stone, if it were we would have no free will. Quantum physcists, incidentally, also talk about ‘waves of probability’ becoming reality or matter only when a conscious mind is added to the equation. There has to be a conscious observer for matter to even exist. Therefore consciousness, and our conscious selves, must be separate from matter and survive the death of the physical body. We are conscious beings of energy or spirit, and we collectively have created this reality around us, but there are many alternative realities existing side-by-side with this one. Quantum physics also postulates these alternative realities.

Just as there are ‘waves of probability’ regarding matter itself, so there are ‘waves of probability’ as regards to future events. Nothing can be determined until the conscious mind has decided, of its own free will, exactly what this future will be. However Spirit can tell us general trends, but they don’t always get the timing right as our free will can seriously delay or speed up things.

To end on a lighter note,  the friend who channels Diana said my interpretation via his dictionary was very blunt and he liked  the fact that I don’t mince my words. I replied that although I do tend to say what I mean George did so even more,  it was him choosing the words in his dictionary and it was him guiding me in the interpretation or expansion into comprehesive sentences of these the words and phrases he sent me.

I then said his mother was just as blunt as when he was a little boy in Glasgow they went to the cinema where an aunt worked as an usherette (remember them?)  As they were leaving the aunt asked George’s mother: ‘Did you like the film, Lizzie?’ His mother replied: ‘A damn sight better than I like you!’ as she dragged George away.

His mother died when George was only about 7 or 8, but as I went into the kitchen I felt they were laughing on the Other Side about me recalling this incident, probably even the aunt his mother disliked too. Immediately I heard in my head his mother speaking in a broad Glasgow accent: ”Oh she’s no here, she’s some other place. I couldnae stand living wi’ her for eternity!’

I laughed out loud at this, it was so typical of George and some of his relations, though of course I’d never met his mother. Although ‘some other place’ may suggest Hell, fire and brimstone, there is no such place, but there are, as I wrote in a recent blog, many ‘heavens’ and many minor ‘hells’ (the lower astral planes) because we gravitate to be with people who are like us spiritually.

So if this aunt was quite different to George’s mother with totally different belief systems, morals, etc. then she might well end up in another place, her own heaven or hell perhaps, who knows? All these are just virtual realities like our own here on Earth – temporary states of mind, for all matter and all realities are just states of mind, temporary realities to enable us to learn, progress and move on to better things.

But I do like that Glasgow wit! To be sure, being with some people for eternity would indeed be Hell, so we’d better not get together till we’ve all progressed to the same level. That’s logical isn’t it? Spirit is nothing if it isn’t logical. Logic and Love seem to rule, along with eternal Spiritual progress and development for those who desire it. Those who don’t just stay trapped indefinitely until they do feel they want to move on and progress to other, more inspiring and interesting realities.