Friday, July 29, 2016

Friday Night Is Music Night: A Meditation On Time

JD introduces a trio on time  -  two unusual tranches sandwiching a cool slice of Booker T:








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Thursday, July 28, 2016

Local sludge for local people

One fine day in 1973 found me driving through the centre of town in the works JCB towing a trailer load of fresh sewage sludge. I was heading for the local allotment. Not my job but the driver was off sick and I fancied the trip. Or perhaps I was making up for inadvertently driving the Allen Scythe through a rose bed. That wasn’t my job either, but I was young and interested in everything.

The other day, an old work colleague and I were walking through Dovedale asking ourselves when our bit of environmental science went wrong. We both came to the conclusion that the rot set in after local government reorganisation in 1974.

One should not see that trailer load of sewage sludge through rose-tinted spectacles, but for a short time I was working at the local sewage works and I enjoyed it. Effectively we were all working for the Borough Engineer and via him for local people. We knew why we were there, why we did what we did and for whom. By modern standards it may not have been an efficient arrangement but after 1974 a sense of working for people slowly evolved into a sense of working for a salary.

It did not happen quickly but bit by bit small offices, laboratories, depots and workshops were closed and merged into bigger units. Headquarters became bigger, more stratified, more remote and inward looking. The range of work became much wider and the technology much more sophisticated, but in 1973 we did what was thought necessary and if it wasn’t necessary we didn’t do it. That changed too.

Over the following decades regional bureaucracies spawned by 1974 became entangled with national bureaucracies or became national bureaucracies themselves. Later they became entangled with international bureaucracies. From what I saw, doing real work for real people became sidelined in a sense highlighted by that load of sewage sludge.

A degree of local transparency was lost in 1974. As bureaucracies grew they became less visible and less transparent. That is a key word here – transparent. By merely avoiding scandal or political disfavour they could settle down and wallow around forever behind their internal processes. So they did and still do.

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Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Better off mad



Better Mad with the rest of the World than Wise alone. So say politicians. If all are so, one is no worse off than the rest, whereas solitary wisdom passes for folly. So important is it to sail with the stream. The greatest wisdom often consists in ignorance, or the pretence of it. One has to live with others, and others are mostly ignorant. "To live entirely alone one must be very like a god or quite like a wild beast," but I would turn the aphorism by saying: Better be wise with the many than a fool all alone. There be some too who seek to be original by seeking chimeras.

Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Perhaps we are better off mad with the rest of the world, but it would be reassuring to have the option. Is democracy supposed to sort that out?

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Saturday, July 23, 2016

Support your local curmudgeon

...for they were either politicians or reporters, which, of course, comes to the same thing.
Ford Madox Ford – The Good Soldier (1915)

Almost every morning I use the  iPad to run a quick check on news headlines. I used to rely on Ceefax for my daily fix but those days are gone forever. I don’t usually read past the headlines apart from an occasional yen to get some detail, but an outline is usually enough.

I also find myself skipping from headline to comments and if there are no comments I move on. In other words, I’m hardly ever interested in what the average journalist has to say about a story. Only if the story is written by a tough-minded curmudgeon am I likely to read it and there aren’t many of those around, especially in the mainstream media.

Which finally leads to the point of this post, because in my experience there is something important about unyielding scepticism. We are stuck with a major social dilemma where mainstream opinion has to be – well mainstream. Otherwise it could not fulfil its social function, its need to suck up to the establishment and foster political correctness. Fear shapes behaviour, which is why the news is mostly alarmist. Doom and gloom rules the newsroom. Always has.

As a species we are not particularly intelligent and accept the most absurd garbage if it is socially acceptable to do so. A sharply critical outlook is required to detect the garbage but here’s the rub. Detecting garbage ought to be a positive and respected social skill, a welcome addition to the tools of social discourse. Unfortunately it isn’t, because it can’t be, because socially cohesive consensus would flounder if critical analysis were to be valued as a welcome corrective to the garbage and to the establishment viewpoint.

Support your local curmudgeon.

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Friday, July 22, 2016

Friday Night Is Music Night: Hear My Song

JD presents another five singer-songwriters...

Gram Parsons, "In My Hour Of Darkness":


Gene Clark:


Tim Hardin:


Tim Buckley:


Tim Buckley:



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Monday, July 18, 2016

The Reunification Of Britain & The Struggle Against Empires

"As the UK straps itself back together post-Referendum, deeper issues come to the surface" - latest article on Talkmarkets, here:

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/news/the-reunification-of-britain--the-struggle-against-empires?post=100591


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A kingdom within a kingdom



Most who have written on the emotions, the manner of human life, seem to have dealt not with natural things which follow the general laws of nature, but with things which are outside the sphere of nature: they seem to have conceived man in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. For they believe that man disturbs rather than follows the course of nature, and that he has absolute power in his actions, and is not determined in them by anything else than himself. They attribute the cause of human weakness and inconstancy not to the ordinary power of nature, but to some defect or other in human nature, wherefore they deplore, ridicule despise, or, what is most common of all,  abuse it: and he that can carp in the most eloquent or acute manner at the weakness of the human mind is beheld by his fellows as almost divine.

Baruch Spinoza – Ethics (1677)

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Friday, July 15, 2016

Friday Night Is Music Night: Singer-songwriters

JD has some singer songwriters for you:

 During those far off days of the 1960s there emerged the cult of the singer-songwriter. Some became famous while others wrote songs for other people and remained in the background. Not all of them were good but some of them were very good indeed and remain a lasting influence on musicians, even today. Here is some of that exceptional talent singing their own songs-

Harry Nilsson made this song famous, but here is the the man who wrote it - Fred Neil: 



Steve Goodman:



Tim Buckley:



One of the seminal groups of the sixties were The Byrds. Of the three original members, Jim McGuinn with those famous granny glasses and the distinctive sound of his 12 string Rickenbacker seemed to draw most of the attention and Crosby was just a superfluous appendage but Gene Clark was undoubtedly their heart and soul; he wrote most of their songs:



Fred Neil again with one of his most beautiful songs:



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Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Smart beer



Sounds like an updated way of rediscovering bland. Or it that too cynical?

Could we eventually brew politics this way, or would that be too democratic?

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Sunday, July 10, 2016

UK In Chaos Post-EU Referendum

Latest article on TalkMarkets, here:

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/news/uk-in-chaos-post-eu-referendum?post=99728


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Friday, July 08, 2016

Friday Night Is Music Night: Saxophony

JD on the sax:

Invented by Adolphe Sax in 1840 the saxophone was never really accepted in classical music circles but was taken up enthusiastically by the jazz fraternity as explained here by Wikipedia -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxophone#In_jazz_and_popular_music

Here are a few star performers showing how the versatility of the sax makes it suitable for so many styles of music-

 Stan Getz:



Boots Randolph:



Johnny Almond:



Moon Hooch are a sort of punk/funky version of John Coltrane or even Roland Kirk!



Woody Herman recorded at Canegie Hall Center New York City November20,.1976 ( The 40th Anniversary) featuring his star soloists- Jimmy Giuffre,Stan Getz,Al Cohn and Zoot Sims:




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Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Exploding Pianos



An interesting story about exploding pianos, flour and the value of those pianos in an age of instant entertainment.

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Monday, July 04, 2016

Brexit: These Are The Times That Try Men’s Souls

New Fourth of July article on the British Constitutional Crisis of 2016, in TalkMarkets:

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/brexit-these-are-the-times-that-try-mens-souls?post=99141


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Saturday, July 02, 2016

Economics and migration

"In Britain new migrants from the EU contribute more to the exchequer than they take out." - The Economist, today.

In my latest piece on TalkMarkets, I ask some questions about that assertion. Can anyone help with facts?


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Friday, July 01, 2016

Friday Night Is Music Night: Smooth Soothe

JD pours oil on troubled waters:

After the sound and the fury of the Brexit vote it is time to wind down into tranquility with some peaceful contemplative music-




Ljerka - Li Žilavec is a mezzo-soprano from Croatia and has a beautifully pure voice, here singing "Do not dry the ocean of my love." The photo is of Paramahansa Yogananda who wrote the words and music.



...and Snatam Kuar with a musical interpretation of the words of Francis of Assisi:




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Monday, June 27, 2016

EU: IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT US!

***(Snowflake warning: may contain more than 20 words, also some facts. Worse still, contains no swearing. Find a safe space to calm.)*** 

 Farage is poor at publicity stunts - his recent Cap'n Bird's-Eye sail down the Thames was pirate-raided by a well-heeled tax exile (and an expensively-shod woman). Of course, the media can "help" him be poor at that, and the level of collusion between them and Cap'n Bob (plus Cameron by cellphone) has yet to be coldly dissected.

 Besides, what difference does it make? Before, during and after the vote nearly everyone on social media appears to have been howling with their hands over their ears.

 But here's a rationality test - for anyone who can receive as well as transmit, how about actually listening to the points made by the same "cheeky chappy" in the EU Parliament a few days ago - the EU failed to listen all the way back to 1999.

 The other point I'd make is that there may soon be no EU to go back to, and that won't be just because of the UK (we flatter ourselves). For example we'll be lucky if the Greek Left doesn't get their country to flee to Russia to save it from the prolonged cruelty of their treatment at the EU's hands. Maybe that's why Putin is being so restrained in what he says, and why unlike Obama he kept his nose out of our business.

 Italy is going to get interesting too, and we should remember (as after our vote, how can we forget?) that opposition to the grandiose project comes from the Left as well as the Right. Look for example at Democrazia Verde - both sovereignist AND "green".

Hear a punchily-delivered but fact-filled argument from Italian economic journalist Paolo Barnard:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYzlcfhJn1Q 

 - better than most of what we've heard from either side in the UK.

 [Btw I see Soros made another billion out of the Referendum from his betting - while simultaneously publicly saying we should Remain. He delighted in telling us it would be bad for us:

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-latest-george-soros-wins-big-prediction-black-friday-a7102481.html 

- but Paolo Barnard's latest article begs to differ (Google translation)...

"And note: after Black Monday in 1987, in two years everything was in place as before . 

"Just to inform. 

"And ah! Brexit gave a slap than 3,900 billion dollars a multi-billion dollar portfolio of the world. Not bad."

 http://paolobarnard.info/intervento_mostra_go.php?id=1531 ]

 The word that rang like a bell in Farage's speechlet below was "hubris." But also listen to what he says after that about cooperation and trade.

It's not the end of the world.

P.S. The Parliamentary Labour Party hates Corbyn like a wedgie - but Craig Murray thinks the Blairites are trying to get rid of him before the Chilcot Report is published:

 https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/still-iraq-war-stupid/

Well, if you got this far you can't be a snowflake, you must be a hailstone.

So - here's Nigel:

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Saturday, June 25, 2016

Next, electoral reform

Some are trying to get up a petition to invalidate the 2016 EU Referendum and set minimum thresholds of 75% voter turnout and 60% of votes cast.

This would have invalidated the original (EC) 1975 Referendum, where only 67.23% of eligible voters took part. If the proposed principle is to hold, we should already have been out of the EC/EU for over 40 years.

Requiring that level of turnout would also have invalidated the last 5 General Elections:


But there is one vote that we might reconsider: the 2011 Alternative Vote Referendum. The turnout in this was 42.2%, the lowest in national votes by a long way. The media campaign leading up to it was heavily biased and the two largest political parties solidly against AV.

Let's look at the implications for parties and MPs.

52% of EU Referendum voters have just chosen "Leave" but the BBC says:

- 80% of the ruling Conservative Cabinet are "Remain"
- Of those MPs who declared their position (537 out of 650), 71% (379) are "Remain"

As with the EU, the democratic deficit is structural: in the last two General Elections, two-thirds of MPs got their seats on the basis of a minority of votes cast. The way we elect our Members of Parliament is so skewed that no-one should be surprised at how badly Westminster is disconnected from the people.

There is no point in freeing ourselves from EU control if Parliament remains unreformed. If we're going to re-run a referendum, let it be the one on AV.

More here:

http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/voting-reform-av-first-past-post.html


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Friday, June 24, 2016

Friday Night Is Music Night - Macaronic Musical Styles

JD writes:

Music 'fans' can be somewhat tribal in their loyalties and often react badly when one of their 'heroes' tries something new - Bob Dylan being jeered and booed at the Newport Folk Festival when he used an electric guitar is the most obvious example of it.

Musicians, on the other hand, will listen to all kinds of music and love good music wherever it comes from. Willie Nelson in the fourth video here explains it well.

And when different genres meet the results are sometimes alarming and sometimes charming but there are no boundaries in music.

Pavarotti meets the Godfather of Soul-

Jimmy Page collides with Chopin
 

Two sisters-
 

a Highwayman meets a crooner
 

Menuhin and Grapelli

Hope you enjoy these, selected from countless examples.


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ESSAY COMPETITION

You are a speechwriter for Prime Minister David Cameron. Write a TV broadcast to the nation in which you explain that the EU referendum vote was so close that you can't justify disconnecting from the EU.

You will remind the viewers that referendums are merely advisory and that the PM has a duty to represent not the wishes of the people, but their best long-term interests.

You will reassure them that they are not losing their national identity, but weaving it into the great fabric of a united Europe.

References to cricket and warm beer are optional, to ladies cycling to Evensong inadvisable, and kittens strictly forbidden.


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Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Forty years on

Haven't the time to watch the whole thing today, but the clip I've seen of Peter Shore is most impressive. In comparison our modern politicians on both sides seem so lightweight, such charlatans and rabble-rousers.



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