Letters to my sons.

Dear Son,

I have just bought a copy of a “Love don’t let me go” so we can have a dance around the kitchen tomorrow morning before nursery.

I can’t wait!

Dear Son,

Nottinghill Carnival is upon us yet again. Before I met your mother I had never been as I didn’t see the attraction. Watching people in costumes dance past whilst being crushed by the crowds seemed like a bad idea. I still think the same thing but since 2001 I have taken part and been one of the people behind a float, dancing past.

We play Chocolate Mas with Pure Lime and for the last couple of years have been on the committee that organises the whole event. Not that either myself or your mother would take credit, that belongs to the people who have worked hard over the years. Pure Lime is now the biggest group in Nottinghill Carnival and we get a lot of jealous people because of our success. We also have certain people trying to copy us as well.

Pure Lime’s Chocolate Mas is based on Jouvert celebrations in Trinidad. The differences are small: for Jouvert the start time is the early hours of the morning. My favourite Jouvert Band, Mudders International, start around 3am. For Nottinghill we start around 11am. You covered in mud, paint and grease at Jouvert in Trinidad, Pure Lime use chocolate instead. Chocolate was chosen because finding mud that could be added to hot water and smeared on a body was impossible to find. Also you can have more fun with chocolate than you can with mud.

You are still far too young to take part in carnival although you followed a float around the streets of Trinidad while still in the womb, I have the pictures of your mother to prove it – at the Mas Camp and then on Tragrete Road.

I suppose the moral of the story is this: taking part is usually more fun than watching.

Dear Son,

an Italian magazine has published a photograph of Diana Princess of Wales unconscious in the back of the car that crashed in an underpass in Paris.

The driver of the car, Henri Paul, had drunk alcohol and taken anti-depressant tablets as well. He was in no fit state to drive and was speeding when the car crashed. Diana’s body guard, Trevor Rees-Jones survived the crash – he was the only one wearing a seat belt.

Diana’s car was being chased by press photographers because certain people in this world liked looking at pictures of her. When it was announced that she had died and the circumstances of that death, people physically attached journalists and newspaper photographers because they blamed these people for her death.

The last thing I remember on the TV before I went to bed the night she died was an advert for the Sunday Mirror. They were advertising the “Diana-Dodi Love Album”, an exclusive set of long lens pictures of Diana with Dodi Fayed frolicking in the Med.

The Sunday Mirror and all the other newspapers that printed pictures of Diana only did so because it helped them sell more copies. The market for Diana pictures was created by the very people attacked the photographers and the journalists in the first place. Because their appetite for Diana photographs could not be satisfied she was hounded to her death.

The very people who provided the financing (papers would sell an extra 100,000 copies by putting a picture of Diana on the front) for the paparazzi then complain when the beast they created acts in a way that they didn’t approve. The mock outrage that many of the British papers are expressing today is just plain and simple rubbish. If they thought they could shift a few more copies of their newspaper by including this photo they would do.

Not long before she died, Diana gave an interview in which she said she wanted to be known as the “Queen of Hearts”. She was derided by the press for this right up until the moment she died when suddenly this became her new name along with almost sainthood. The filthy press were quick to malign the women when it suited them and canonise her when it suited them more.

The press though only prints the stories that the public will accept, by and large. There are exceptions but they are few and far between.

BBC NEWS | UK | Boycott ‘vile’ Diana photo call

Dear Son,

today an ultra-conservative group within the Catholic church called for the film of Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” to be a given adult rating because:

Any adult can distinguish reality from fiction. But you cannot expect a child to make proper judgements.

From a group that claims the Bible is the truth, when in fact it is fiction. And since when did the Catholic church want to protect children? Since they were caught protecting child molesters and made to pay. And they don’t like paying out money! This is the same institution that sold out millions of Europeans to the Nazi party leading to millions of deaths. Before that they started the whole Islam/Christian hatred and war which still rages today.

The hopeless informed man then goes on to state:

Although the story is absurd and at times somewhat humorous, it produces a hateful image of the institution and it is well known that hateful images like this produce feelings of hatred in those who lack a critical sense.

A bit like frightening children with stories of hell and victimising lesbian and gay men. These people would rather see millions of people die from AIDS then teach sex education and condom use.

A quick look at the crimes of the Catholic church (and the whole of religion for that matter) over the centuries would reveal that the people who need shutting up and keeping away from both children and adults are the preachers of religion.

Dear Son,

today (8th October 2005) was your baptism. Your mother is a Catholic and one of the things I (had to) agree(d) to when I married her was that any children would be brought up Catholic.

Relationships are built on compromise and although I’m a devout atheist – I don’t go to Church every single Sunday – I agreed with your mother that you should be baptised. I, myself, haven’t been baptised and I don’t think I ever will be. In the Caudle side of the family infant baptism is not something that happens. Your Grand father on my side was a Methodist Minister and although he baptised babies he didn’t believe in it. He (and grand mother Caudle) thought that becoming a Christian was only something that could be done as an adult and that baptism would then mean something. This is a view that Uncle Phil and I also hold. Your Caudle cousins have not been baptised.

Having said that the Catholic Church has Confirmation, which happens at an age when you will know your own mind. For your mother, having you baptised was important – a good enough reason for this atheist not to stand in the way.

After you had been anointed with oil, had water on your head then the sign of the cross made on your forehead we all came back to the house. You and me watched some of the England game together. You sat on my knee and watched the TV. At half time as Lineker, Handson and Shearer discussed how England played and what they should do next; you joined in with your own analysis before crying for some food. In the 10 minutes that you talked you made a lot of sense although you never – along with the other pundits – predicted that Beckham would be sent off.

England ran out 1-0 winners and with results in different groups England are now guaranteed a place at the world cup in Germany in 2006. Hopefully England can beat Poland and top the group. If England is to do well in the World Cup they need to improve big time. Don’t forget son you can always choose the Soca Warriors if you not happy with England ☺

So today you were Baptised into the Catholic Church and had an England footballing baptism. You missed the Northern Ireland game because you were sleeping. You would have had nightmares if you’d seen it.

Dear Son,

I have never been a fan of political correctness. Dreamt up by a bunch of white middle class liberals it has caused more harm than good.

They tell us that all whites are racists. When it is pointed out that they are white and therefore racist they make up all sorts of excuses why they are not white! I was told by one white man that he wasn’t white – no! He was in fact a Catholic living in Northern Ireland and an oppressed minority, therefore he couldn’t be a racist.

I asked him to think of the following scenario:

In a certain area black men walking alone are being attacked by a group of white men. One night a black man misses his bus home and can’t get a cab so he walks home. On the way home he spots a group of white men coming towards him. Of course he doesn’t feel afraid because he can spot from around 500 meters that the men are in fact Catholics who live in Northern Ireland and are on holiday. Therefore they can not be racist so he has nothing to fear.

Rubbish of course.

I was once told by a white women that all whites were racist but she wasn’t because she was in fact Romany. She wasn’t Romany at all but chose to live a lifestyle similar to Romany people. Social Services classed her and her family as Romany but this was a lifestyle choice of her own. But because Social Services classed her as Romany – she was Romany, part of an oppressed minority and therefore could not be racist.

Well son sometimes I use your mothers Lady Velvet shampoo which is especially formulated for black woman’s hair. I make a lifestyle choice to use a black woman’s shampoo so applying the logic above – I am a black woman. Not only that, I am attracted to women, which make me a lesbian and with the problem with my calves, I’m disabled. So as a black disabled lesbian woman I can not be sexist, racist or homophobic.

Which is rubbish of course.

It can be argued that both ethnic Indians and Pakistanis in the UK are oppressed minorities. There are sections of each group that hate the other and regularly fight each other. These are racist attacks because the people attacked are attacked for no other reason than their ethnicity. But according to political correctness this doesn’t happen.

If we believe the PC rubbish then as a white man I hate the black woman I am married to. The love I have for your mother is infinitely wide and twice as high and four times as deep. On this basis alone I know they are liars.

But these white middle class liberals don’t have many non-white friends and usually feel uncomfortable in the presence of non-whites. Instead of seeing a therapist and confronting their own demons, they demonise every white person but include an exception for them selves and their ilk.

Demonising people based on the colour of their skin is racism.

The Politically Correct movement is inherently racist.

Dear Son,

last night it was the MOBO awards – music of black origin.

This title is a load of rubbish for many reasons.

Firstly human being as we know them started life in Africa and those people were black. Therefore everything we know from fire to the Hubble Space Telescope is of a black origin.

Secondly they ignored the largest population of black people in the world – African’s – until 2005. They don’t seem to have a category for anything black that comes out of South America and they completely ignore the whole of the Caribbean except for Jamaica. Jamaica has given the world reggae but little else. Trinidad and Tobago has given the world Steel Pan, Calypso and given London the Nottinghill Carnival.

You would think that Jamaicans invented carnival and brought it to London with the Windrush. Calypso came on the Windrush with Lord Kitchner, possibly the worlds greatest calypsonian. But he was born, bred and became successful in Trinidad before coming to the UK. That aside when record shops are trying to sell carnival music over the Nottinghill Carnival season they stuff an area full of Jamaican CD’s and deck the area in Jamaica flags. The Canboulay rioters spin slowly in their graves.

But back to the MOBO’s and their other great crime – sucking up to American music. Obviously they have to keep their sponsors happy and to do that they have to have a high profile, so big American stars are invited and get their arses licked. The whole of English culture, including the input from foreign shores, is prostituted to the corporate agenda of the music business. Just like the fast food industry, they want to homogenise music so that everywhere you go you hear the same old over hyped crap. Anything original or different and unable to provide big enough returns to keep the music execs in nose candy is ignored or killed. I once watched a German music program and witnessed some German rap music. In between the German words could be heard the words “bitch” and “hoe”. How long before there is no corner of the world untouched by the culture and beliefs of the USA? There are places where children can get a carbonated soft drink with plant extracts but can’t get clean water. The MOBO’s are part and parcel of this process.

If you are having an awards ceremony that recognises only black music and therefore mainly black artists; are these same artists then excluded from awards that don’t discriminate based on ethnic origin? The MOBO people will claim that they champion “urban” music and not black music but this falls down on two counts : why have the world “black” in the title and why then do they ignore Pan? Steel Pan is urban music, especially in Trinidad and through out the UK as well.

But what do they mean by “urban”? Mega rich, big car and house? I’m confused son, maybe I’m too old to understand.