As a girl, Mother was a great reader. She would go to the glass-fronted book cabinet in the cigar-scented study and feel behind the rows for the good stuff father had hidden there, such as Madame Bovary: every system can be gamed.
She would also spend a lot of time in the school library. However, one day, she entered to find big gaps in the shelves: without warning, all the Jewish and socialist writers had been removed. The new government was cleansing the librosphere of ideological pollution: nothing was to seduce impressionable minds away from socially-agreed norms. This was, after all, the clean and progressive East Prussia of the 1930s.
Half a lifetime later, a classical student was in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, researching an incident in the Peloponnesian War. The index occupied a room on its own, full of massive volumes with pasted-in entries giving descriptions and locations of the millions of items. You felt you had arrived as a scholar, just lifting one of these, thumping it on the lectern and turning the crowded pages. Now, where was a map of the ancient harbour at Lesbos? Ah, here, coded with a Greek φ. He filled in the order slip, but was told he would have to wait for the senior librarian to come back from lunch. The time came, and my friend was taken to another room. There was the large brown envelope; the librarian snipped the corner and slid out the contents – “Lesbos: twelve unretouched photographs of lesbian love.” So that’s what the phi was for. Still, it was a publication, so it was stored, and could be consulted on request. That was liberalism in action.
Today, while Crown copyright libraries continue to grow like Topsy, ordinary public libraries are closing and selling off or throwing away their stock - but we have the Internet, accessible at all times. It is so great that more than ever, we need a librarian to guide us through its virtual stacks. But there is no leather-bound index; instead, we have search engines, chiefly Google.
Now, there is no need to destroy information: the trusted guide can bury it like a needle in a near-infinite haystack. In our world that is so very unlike “1984” (or so we are told) the hidden persuaders could – perhaps do - operate by deliberately bringing us envelopes that we didn’t quite ask for.
Twelve months ago, the former editor-in-chief of “Psychology Today” Dr Robert Epstein described a series of experiments in which people were significantly influenced in their political decisions on the basis of surreptitious manipulation of Internet search results. (1) Even with candidates well-known to the sample groups, voting could be swayed by “20% or more.” In a follow-up article last February he says, “we now estimate that Hannon’s old friends [i.e. Google] have the power to drive between 2.6 and 10.4 million votes to Clinton on election day with no one knowing that this is occurring and without leaving a paper trail.” (2) Yesterday, Pamela Geller wrote a piece relaying and developing Julian Assange’s allegation that one way or another, Google is working on behalf of one of the Presidential candidates and against the other. (3)
At this point I must emphasise that I am not American and not only cannot vote for either Trump or Clinton, but should be extremely perplexed if I could.
The point is, every system can be gamed. There is no need to burn material if you can hide it in some rarely-visited and unsignposted corner of the Web; there is no need to disappear dissidents if you can shut off their means of communication (imagine if Milo Yiannopoulos had no other outlet than Twitter); for every person moved by attending one of Trump’s mountebank presentations, there must be thousands making up their minds from their private, yet thoroughly-monitored and interactively-tweaked Internet searches.
The socialists have it all wrong. Great power comes not from owning the means of production but, as Rockefeller showed, from controlling its distribution. Social media and search engines are part of the modern Fourth Estate, the gatekeepers and guides of public information. If they cannot be impartial, democracy faces an existential threat from its persuaders.
Remember what happened when Athens listened to Demosthenes.
UPDATE (27 August 2016): Heads have rolled -
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/entire-facebook-trending-news-team-fired-following-breitbart-coverage/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+breitbart+%28Breitbart+News%29
(1) http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/E4512.full
(2) https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts
(3) http://pamelageller.com/2016/08/julian-assange-google-works-with-hillary-clinton.html/
_______________________________________________________________
This post appeared previously on Talkmarkets:
http://www.talkmarkets.com/contributor/rolfnorfolk/blog/gaming-democracy?post=103515
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
A painter on a painting: ‘Girl with a Kitten’ by Lucian Freud
Artist Catherine Beaumont looks at Lucian Freud's 1947 "Girl With A Kitten":
‘Girl with a Kitten’ by Lucian Freud, is to me as an artist, a very fascinating painting. It is a portrait of the artist’s first wife, Kitty Garman, who was the daughter of famous sculptor Jacob Epstein. Freud painted her in 1947, a year before their tempestuous marriage. The painter’s future wife is cloaked under the anonymous title, ‘Girl with a Kitten’, highlighting that this is a double portrait, equally of the ‘girl’ and of the young kitten who is clasped strangely by the neck.
The enigmatic pair are painted in muted, ashen colours, a myriad of dove greys and soft blues, set against the dark swathes of Garman’s mahogany hair, which seem frayed and static from the intensity of the painter’s gaze. The colours are a precursor of Freud’s later impasto flesh tones that would become so acclaimed, yet in this painting they appear restrained like the tight grip of the sitter on the kitten’s neck.
What so thrills me about this painting, as an artist and as a curious human being, is how impenetrable this portrait is. Freud structures the portrait with a three quarter profile of his future wife, with her gaze averted, making her inaccessible, yet he places the kitten staring directly out of the centre of the canvas. With such a direct gaze, it makes me feel that the kitten is more than just a passive addition to the painting, but an emblem of Kitty Garman herself. However, this is surprising as it is so unlike Freud to use symbols in his work, claiming that his ideal in art is to appear ‘in his work no more than God in nature’. But why is the kitten’s gaze so direct and unblinking? Why does it stare with such intensity at the viewer? To me it seems that the kitten plays with the sitter’s name, linking ‘kitten’ with ‘Kitty’, giving the anonymous ‘girl’ an identity and pairing their feline eyes and heart shaped faces.
If this is so, it would make me feel that it tells us more about Garman and Freud’s relationship. In the painting, the girl seems absent, with a look of almost horror in her eyes. She is distant from her grip on the kitten, which makes me wonder if this grasp reflects not herself but the artist’s grip on her, his ‘Kitty’, as her future husband. The look of tension in her eyes makes me think of ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning – “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall”… I feel that Garman becomes a possession of the artist, as in the Duke’s ruthless collection, to be collected with many other women that he would love and paint. In this piece, it seems to me that it captures Garman’s dawning realisation of her partner’s turbulent nature, suspending perfectly this line - ‘Then all smiles stopped together’…
On the other hand, on closer inspection you can see that Garman’s eyes are painted in startling hazel green, whereas the kitten’s eyes are a lucid pale blue, which more closely resemble Freud’s eyes.
Perhaps then, the captured kitten is not Kitty Garman at all, but represents how Freud felt trapped and suffocated by this serious, pre-marital relationship.
 |
Image: Tate - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/T/T12/T12617_10.jpg |
‘Girl with a Kitten’ by Lucian Freud, is to me as an artist, a very fascinating painting. It is a portrait of the artist’s first wife, Kitty Garman, who was the daughter of famous sculptor Jacob Epstein. Freud painted her in 1947, a year before their tempestuous marriage. The painter’s future wife is cloaked under the anonymous title, ‘Girl with a Kitten’, highlighting that this is a double portrait, equally of the ‘girl’ and of the young kitten who is clasped strangely by the neck.
The enigmatic pair are painted in muted, ashen colours, a myriad of dove greys and soft blues, set against the dark swathes of Garman’s mahogany hair, which seem frayed and static from the intensity of the painter’s gaze. The colours are a precursor of Freud’s later impasto flesh tones that would become so acclaimed, yet in this painting they appear restrained like the tight grip of the sitter on the kitten’s neck.
What so thrills me about this painting, as an artist and as a curious human being, is how impenetrable this portrait is. Freud structures the portrait with a three quarter profile of his future wife, with her gaze averted, making her inaccessible, yet he places the kitten staring directly out of the centre of the canvas. With such a direct gaze, it makes me feel that the kitten is more than just a passive addition to the painting, but an emblem of Kitty Garman herself. However, this is surprising as it is so unlike Freud to use symbols in his work, claiming that his ideal in art is to appear ‘in his work no more than God in nature’. But why is the kitten’s gaze so direct and unblinking? Why does it stare with such intensity at the viewer? To me it seems that the kitten plays with the sitter’s name, linking ‘kitten’ with ‘Kitty’, giving the anonymous ‘girl’ an identity and pairing their feline eyes and heart shaped faces.
If this is so, it would make me feel that it tells us more about Garman and Freud’s relationship. In the painting, the girl seems absent, with a look of almost horror in her eyes. She is distant from her grip on the kitten, which makes me wonder if this grasp reflects not herself but the artist’s grip on her, his ‘Kitty’, as her future husband. The look of tension in her eyes makes me think of ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning – “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall”… I feel that Garman becomes a possession of the artist, as in the Duke’s ruthless collection, to be collected with many other women that he would love and paint. In this piece, it seems to me that it captures Garman’s dawning realisation of her partner’s turbulent nature, suspending perfectly this line - ‘Then all smiles stopped together’…
On the other hand, on closer inspection you can see that Garman’s eyes are painted in startling hazel green, whereas the kitten’s eyes are a lucid pale blue, which more closely resemble Freud’s eyes.
 |
| Source image for second detail: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/freud-man-with-a-thistle-self-portrait-t00422 |
Monday, August 15, 2016
Stark Naked
It’s the minor characters that haunt me, in fiction as well as in real life. On history charges, carrying the important and the celebrated, the camera of our attention pans with it, and for the rest, who remembers or cares?
In Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies”, one of the Bright Young Things, Lady Agatha, is made to drive a racing car, drunk and without a clue how to do it. The race ends, she has disappeared but her pals continue on their jolly; she is found later by someone else, incoherent, and taken to a nursing-home. Eventually the in-crowd come to see her, bringing (of course) plenty to drink. What fun! That night, her mind begins to whirl again and her temperature soars. Later in the story, we hear as a by-the-way of her funeral.
Again, in the same writer’s “Decline and Fall”, at the school’s sports day the useless teacher Prendergast gets drunk and starts a foot race with a military pistol, shooting young Lord Tangent in the heel. The boy asks “Am I going to die?” through a mouthful of cake given to pacify him; only much later do we find out, in passing, that infection set in and he did.
Some ten years ago, I was working with young NEETS and we had a weekly computer training session in a suite at Edgbaston cricket ground, guided by a man from a local college. One week, he told us he had just been given notice of his redundancy. As the group left, I looked back at his face, trying to find something to say, but the group was going and I had to turn to them; the moment passed. Next week, he was very late, in fact, didn’t come at all. Turned out he’d been found lifeless at his home, apparently having failed to take his diabetes medication. If only I’d found a way to ask him for a drink without sounding patronising. My colleagues tried to reassure me, but I knew what his face had said and that there had been a moment. I failed.
1964: a 29-year-old Ken Kesey gets a gang together on an old school bus and goes on a drug-fuelled road trip. On the way, they pick up a 27-year-old with a young daughter, whom she leaves with a friend so she can join the raucous adventure. She has a complete mental breakdown, is naked on the bus for days and eventually abandoned by the Merry Pranksters, who phone her boyfriend to fly in from San Francisco and pick her up. I often wondered what happened to this minor character – after all, some people are Lead Roles and others, well… - but thanks to the Internet, now I know. A site dedicated to Cathryn Casamo is here: (1)
She was lovely, she was charming, she had this great laugh… another pick-up for the daring boys of the Sixties. So long Marianne, goodbye Ruby Tuesday and so on. She did live, into her fifties and a deliberately nothing burial at sea off Marin County; a footnote. Some may say, she made her own choices. But Kesey himself felt he should answer for his irresponsibility, in a book published not long before his death called “The Further Inquiry.” (2)
Leaders have to stand in the rye and catch their followers, like Holden Caulfield.
“Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world,” says the Talmud. (3)
Next time. Please.
_______________________________________________
(1) http://www.cathryncasamo.com/index.html
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/09/books/what-a-long-strange-trip-it-was.html?pagewanted=all
(3) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talmud
In Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies”, one of the Bright Young Things, Lady Agatha, is made to drive a racing car, drunk and without a clue how to do it. The race ends, she has disappeared but her pals continue on their jolly; she is found later by someone else, incoherent, and taken to a nursing-home. Eventually the in-crowd come to see her, bringing (of course) plenty to drink. What fun! That night, her mind begins to whirl again and her temperature soars. Later in the story, we hear as a by-the-way of her funeral.
Again, in the same writer’s “Decline and Fall”, at the school’s sports day the useless teacher Prendergast gets drunk and starts a foot race with a military pistol, shooting young Lord Tangent in the heel. The boy asks “Am I going to die?” through a mouthful of cake given to pacify him; only much later do we find out, in passing, that infection set in and he did.
Some ten years ago, I was working with young NEETS and we had a weekly computer training session in a suite at Edgbaston cricket ground, guided by a man from a local college. One week, he told us he had just been given notice of his redundancy. As the group left, I looked back at his face, trying to find something to say, but the group was going and I had to turn to them; the moment passed. Next week, he was very late, in fact, didn’t come at all. Turned out he’d been found lifeless at his home, apparently having failed to take his diabetes medication. If only I’d found a way to ask him for a drink without sounding patronising. My colleagues tried to reassure me, but I knew what his face had said and that there had been a moment. I failed.
1964: a 29-year-old Ken Kesey gets a gang together on an old school bus and goes on a drug-fuelled road trip. On the way, they pick up a 27-year-old with a young daughter, whom she leaves with a friend so she can join the raucous adventure. She has a complete mental breakdown, is naked on the bus for days and eventually abandoned by the Merry Pranksters, who phone her boyfriend to fly in from San Francisco and pick her up. I often wondered what happened to this minor character – after all, some people are Lead Roles and others, well… - but thanks to the Internet, now I know. A site dedicated to Cathryn Casamo is here: (1)
She was lovely, she was charming, she had this great laugh… another pick-up for the daring boys of the Sixties. So long Marianne, goodbye Ruby Tuesday and so on. She did live, into her fifties and a deliberately nothing burial at sea off Marin County; a footnote. Some may say, she made her own choices. But Kesey himself felt he should answer for his irresponsibility, in a book published not long before his death called “The Further Inquiry.” (2)
Leaders have to stand in the rye and catch their followers, like Holden Caulfield.
“Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world,” says the Talmud. (3)
Next time. Please.
_______________________________________________
(1) http://www.cathryncasamo.com/index.html
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/09/books/what-a-long-strange-trip-it-was.html?pagewanted=all
(3) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talmud
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Future culture: the Starknado phenomenon
Maenads are worse than sharks...
Starknado!
A worldwide smash-hit film series that began with the
legendary “Starknado”.
Winkipedia summarises it thus:
“Starknado” is a 2017
made-for-television disaster film about a waterspout that lifts a group of
female skinny-dippers out of the ocean and deposits them in Los Angeles. Hormonal
and enraged, the women embark on a terrifying rampage through the streets of
South Central LA, butchering gangbangers and creeps of every description until,
screaming that they literally haven’t got a thing to wear, they storm through a
shopping mall and into a series of high-end clothing outlets. They successfully
effect their escape because none of the surviving witnesses can remember what
their faces look like.
Aside from sequels and spin-offs, the film spawned many imitations,
notably the Drawers series, of which
the latest is “Drawers 4: The Revenge” (2022). Billions have been made from
associated merchandising and computer games.
A noteworthy social response has been the massive increase
in men applying to enter monasteries.
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Reading 2 weeks of the Daily Mail, so you don't have to
Back off a fortnight's hols last weekend, and a pile of newspapers kept for us at the agent's. We keep the crosswords and I thought I'd see which stories still looked worth reading. Here's my digest:
Psychoanalysis that aims to gets results fast:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3726372/The-3-000-psycho-detox-s-life-track-Sienna-Miller.html ... the Guardian tried it, too - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/15/why-tried-hoffman-process-psychoanalysis
A pill that might cure asthma:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3726307/Could-end-inhaler-Game-changing-pill-asthma-cut-lung-inflammation-80-cent.html
Can't find the DM link just now, but it's where I found the following item. Labour voters were even more definitely for "Leave" than Conservatives:
https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/most-labour-mps-represent-a-constituency-that-voted-leave-36f13210f5c6#.dhxdy8n3m
Can you know when you're lucky? -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3721459/Family-scoop-60m-EuroMillions-jackpot-lucky-call-mum-Florida.html - which reminds me of a very old news item about a man who shook a Royal's hand, reckoned it was his lucky day and did the football pools - only one line, though he was entitled to several - writing above it "winning line" - which it was, "big-time". The company was understandably suspicious and investigated, but it was genuine.
Trump, the Mafia and his vengefulness:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3716125/How-Trump-Mob-offer-not-refuse-killing-building-skyscraper-Donald-s-shrewdest-investment-MAFIA.html - having said that, the Clintons have previously been described by "a Beltway insider" as "retributive" and there are some very nasty rumours about what happens if you cross them. Here's one recent one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3726250/Enemies-Hillary-Bill-say-27-year-old-murder-victim-Seth-Rich-suspected-leaking-DNC-emails-belongs-Clinton-Death-List-people-ties-couple-died-time.html
The 5p "nudge" succeeded hugely in reducing unnecessary plastic bag use:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3715469/YOUR-plastic-bag-victory-Shoppers-home-SIX-BILLION-FEWER-environmentally-damaging-carriers-year-5p-charge-helps-cut-use-85.html
How the introduction of easy credit via cards 50 years ago tempted and stuffed the British consumer:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3715504/The-day-thrift-died-launch-credit-card-50-years-ago-hailed-moment-social-liberation-ushered-wanton-consumerism-instant-gratification-left-millions-saddled-debt.html
And one non-DM story off the internet that I didn't expect - Icelandic horses walk differently (and now we know why):
http://icelandreview.com/news/2016/08/10/origin-smooth-icelandic-gait-discovered - possibly related to the Vikings: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/science/horses-gaits-ambling-vikings.html?_r=0
Psychoanalysis that aims to gets results fast:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3726372/The-3-000-psycho-detox-s-life-track-Sienna-Miller.html ... the Guardian tried it, too - https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/15/why-tried-hoffman-process-psychoanalysis
A pill that might cure asthma:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3726307/Could-end-inhaler-Game-changing-pill-asthma-cut-lung-inflammation-80-cent.html
Can't find the DM link just now, but it's where I found the following item. Labour voters were even more definitely for "Leave" than Conservatives:
https://medium.com/@chrishanretty/most-labour-mps-represent-a-constituency-that-voted-leave-36f13210f5c6#.dhxdy8n3m
Can you know when you're lucky? -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3721459/Family-scoop-60m-EuroMillions-jackpot-lucky-call-mum-Florida.html - which reminds me of a very old news item about a man who shook a Royal's hand, reckoned it was his lucky day and did the football pools - only one line, though he was entitled to several - writing above it "winning line" - which it was, "big-time". The company was understandably suspicious and investigated, but it was genuine.
Trump, the Mafia and his vengefulness:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3716125/How-Trump-Mob-offer-not-refuse-killing-building-skyscraper-Donald-s-shrewdest-investment-MAFIA.html - having said that, the Clintons have previously been described by "a Beltway insider" as "retributive" and there are some very nasty rumours about what happens if you cross them. Here's one recent one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3726250/Enemies-Hillary-Bill-say-27-year-old-murder-victim-Seth-Rich-suspected-leaking-DNC-emails-belongs-Clinton-Death-List-people-ties-couple-died-time.html
The 5p "nudge" succeeded hugely in reducing unnecessary plastic bag use:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3715469/YOUR-plastic-bag-victory-Shoppers-home-SIX-BILLION-FEWER-environmentally-damaging-carriers-year-5p-charge-helps-cut-use-85.html
How the introduction of easy credit via cards 50 years ago tempted and stuffed the British consumer:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3715504/The-day-thrift-died-launch-credit-card-50-years-ago-hailed-moment-social-liberation-ushered-wanton-consumerism-instant-gratification-left-millions-saddled-debt.html
And one non-DM story off the internet that I didn't expect - Icelandic horses walk differently (and now we know why):
http://icelandreview.com/news/2016/08/10/origin-smooth-icelandic-gait-discovered - possibly related to the Vikings: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/11/science/horses-gaits-ambling-vikings.html?_r=0
Friday, August 12, 2016
Friday Night Is Music Night: Sol Gabetta
JD:
I gave up watching The Last Night of the Proms many years ago. Too boring and predictable, orchestra and audience just going through the motions in a parody of a sacred ritual.
The first night on the other hand is always worth watching and this year, as usual, it featured something new and interesting.
Sol Gabetta is a young cellist born in Cordoba, Argentina and now living in Basel, Switzerland. I had never heard of her before but after a splendid performance of Elgar's cello concerto and an unusual and excellent encore I went looking for more of her work.
This is part of what I found covering a wide spectrum of music, all of it wonderful -
This was her encore at The Proms. The Beeb version has poor sound quality (unusual for the Beeb) so this is a different recording but still excellent -
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
I gave up watching The Last Night of the Proms many years ago. Too boring and predictable, orchestra and audience just going through the motions in a parody of a sacred ritual.
The first night on the other hand is always worth watching and this year, as usual, it featured something new and interesting.
Sol Gabetta is a young cellist born in Cordoba, Argentina and now living in Basel, Switzerland. I had never heard of her before but after a splendid performance of Elgar's cello concerto and an unusual and excellent encore I went looking for more of her work.
This is part of what I found covering a wide spectrum of music, all of it wonderful -
This was her encore at The Proms. The Beeb version has poor sound quality (unusual for the Beeb) so this is a different recording but still excellent -
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
"Reasonable adjustment" for smokers
There are many smokers who strongly and quite understandably resent their exclusion from society by stupid blanket bans. Here is a current post airing some of those feelings:
https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/three-comments-on-facebook/#comment-131908
I gave up cigarettes nearly 40 years ago, but I don't see why they should be chosen as the one minor vice to be stamped out. This is not Puritan England. If we don't try to accommodate differences, we will be perpetually at one another's throats.
So I comment on the above piece in this way:
Targeted change is what we need.
In schools, there is an expectation that schools will make "reasonable adjustment" for special needs children, to promote inclusion. Special needs children aren't expected to stand outside the school building in the cold and wet.
Yet as you say, in other contexts the approach is draconian.
I would suggest that the way forward is to campaign for "reasonable adjustment". If airport smoking lounges are dingy goldfish bowls, get the airport to improve the furnishings. If pubs can offer a separate and nicely-appointed smoker's room, why not?
Besides, if the government succeeds in its obvious plan to legalise cannabis and find another way to raise tax that soaks the lower orders and makes vast, low-taxed profits for beardy businessmen, there will have to be somewhere for stoners to go, too.
"Reasonable adjustment": the war is won by language.
https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/three-comments-on-facebook/#comment-131908
I gave up cigarettes nearly 40 years ago, but I don't see why they should be chosen as the one minor vice to be stamped out. This is not Puritan England. If we don't try to accommodate differences, we will be perpetually at one another's throats.
So I comment on the above piece in this way:
Targeted change is what we need.
In schools, there is an expectation that schools will make "reasonable adjustment" for special needs children, to promote inclusion. Special needs children aren't expected to stand outside the school building in the cold and wet.
Yet as you say, in other contexts the approach is draconian.
I would suggest that the way forward is to campaign for "reasonable adjustment". If airport smoking lounges are dingy goldfish bowls, get the airport to improve the furnishings. If pubs can offer a separate and nicely-appointed smoker's room, why not?
Besides, if the government succeeds in its obvious plan to legalise cannabis and find another way to raise tax that soaks the lower orders and makes vast, low-taxed profits for beardy businessmen, there will have to be somewhere for stoners to go, too.
"Reasonable adjustment": the war is won by language.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Squaring The Love Triangle
Imposing a way of life can have terrible consequences. This story has a universal feel to it, about the dangers of trying to dam natural drives:
I well remember an aboriginal couple who were married "Christian way in church". The woman was not aware that the union was a fixed one - not as in the tribe, where the people can become divorced by mutual consent.
The marriage irked her so much that she decided to break it up and take to herself another man of the tribe. Her method was simple and ingenious.
She became the friend of another native man I knew and, unknown to him, used him as a means of arousing her husband to such a jealous madness that he crept upon the man, who he thought was his wife's lover, and killed him with a spear.
I found it all out too late, and even then I could not stop the self-satisfied smile on the real killer's face, as her husband went to jail whilst she returned to her true lover.
From "Life among the aborigines" by W E Harney, Robert Hale, 1957 (pp. 31-32)
This post appeared first on The Polynesian Times.
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I well remember an aboriginal couple who were married "Christian way in church". The woman was not aware that the union was a fixed one - not as in the tribe, where the people can become divorced by mutual consent.
The marriage irked her so much that she decided to break it up and take to herself another man of the tribe. Her method was simple and ingenious.
She became the friend of another native man I knew and, unknown to him, used him as a means of arousing her husband to such a jealous madness that he crept upon the man, who he thought was his wife's lover, and killed him with a spear.
I found it all out too late, and even then I could not stop the self-satisfied smile on the real killer's face, as her husband went to jail whilst she returned to her true lover.
From "Life among the aborigines" by W E Harney, Robert Hale, 1957 (pp. 31-32)
This post appeared first on The Polynesian Times.
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Sunday, August 07, 2016
Sunday Serenade: Betjeman/Hawthorne on The Way We Were
A lovely find from JD:
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There is something going on
Four times now, I have posted a piece on a certain, increasingly notorious, Trump-supporting, gay free-speech campaigner who has recently been banned by Tw*tt*r.
Although successfully published on Broad Oak each time, it seems to have been consistently blocked from the feeds that are connected to the new bloglist for Martin Scriblerius (see right-hand side). Other pieces published both before and after, have appeared on the feed - I shall look with interest to see how soon this one does. If it does.
Could this be covert action by Google?
For the latest version of the putatively "offending" post (published 06:47 this morning and still not appearing on the MS list opposite), please see here:
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/a-penny-for-milos-thoughts.html
Please let me know if you have seen any other kind of link to it. Otherwise, I shall continue to suspect that this is secret suppression.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Although successfully published on Broad Oak each time, it seems to have been consistently blocked from the feeds that are connected to the new bloglist for Martin Scriblerius (see right-hand side). Other pieces published both before and after, have appeared on the feed - I shall look with interest to see how soon this one does. If it does.
Could this be covert action by Google?
For the latest version of the putatively "offending" post (published 06:47 this morning and still not appearing on the MS list opposite), please see here:
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/a-penny-for-milos-thoughts.html
Please let me know if you have seen any other kind of link to it. Otherwise, I shall continue to suspect that this is secret suppression.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
A Penny for Milo's thoughts
... You won't find them in the Guardian piece by feminist LAURIE PENNY, who snapshots alt-right free-speecher MILO YIANNOPOULOS but photobombs it herself.
Gays make the best women. In full Lily Savage fig, Paul O'Grady once met the über-macho Charlton Heston at a Hollywood party and asked if he'd got anything to eat. "I've got a hot dog in my pocket," grinned the hero of Ben-Hur, who kissed Savage's hand and went off in search of his wife. The incident cracked Robin Williams, who said that as a right-wing Republican the great actor "would have run a mile" if he'd realised "Lily" had a hot dog, too.[1]
There are advantages for a man, if he is a sexual southpaw. He does not feel compelled to agree with a woman as part of a program to get laid. Kipling knew the penalty for contradicting the fair sex[2], but to some that is no loss. I knew a very cultured and entertaining gay teacher who handled manipulative teenage girls beautifully: "There's no point in looking like that at me, dear," he would say, "I'm spell-proof."
And so we get to the second decade of the twenty-first century, in which homosexuality is mainstream; Conservative parties on both sides of the Atlantic find it convenient to co-opt gays as cover for their other, more illiberal agenda; universities have become censors of free debate; feminists have no-platformed their modern pioneer, Germaine Greer; and in some cases, journalism has become emojournalism, almost entirely devoid of fact and argument, so sure is it that you must agree with fashionable opinion.
Like all monocultures, "political correctness" is systemically vulnerable. Enter Milo Yiannopoulos, a preening British gay and defiantly Republican-supporting PC-baiter. Here he is at Rutgers University, New Jersey - and his act is very entertaining:
My father once worked with a union representative who, he said, would pour oil on troubled waters - and then set fire to it. This is Milo's technique, too, interspersing his opening remarks with inflammatory one-liners to provoke target social-justice groups, who cannot help but erupt noisily as he sips water and flashes blue eyes at us from under his brow like the sky-hued lids of a play-signalling red-shanked douc monkey.
Nevertheless his presentation is worth watching in full, for he does get to a serious central point: you should be able to say anything in a liberal institution of learning, and you should listen to others so that at least you know what you are disagreeing with.
Where he is mischievous is that he treats his audience as a practical demonstration of what is wrong with universities. He isn't trying to convert the downscreamers: he is winding them up so that others, especially we who are not there, can see what modern America is up against. He has literally cleared the room of the most intransigent before pitching liberalism to those already half-sold on his message.
But then, irony is a core element of his show, which he calls The Dangerous Faggot Tour. As a gay, he uses PC against itself, saying that he is "off the reservation" and his opponents can't easily pigeonhole him with their habitual personal slanders. To the right-thinkers of the left, the best punch is always below the belt; but Milo is too nimble for them, and they are so used to fighting dirty that they haven't got a second shot in their repertoire. They simply stand and splutter.
Which brings us to Laurie Penny, professional feminist and writer for both The Guardian and The New Statesman. You would think that as a fellow Brit, Penny could handle Milo's paradox and nuance; but not a bit of it. "I've always refused to debate Milo in public. Not because I'm frightened I’ll lose, but because I know I’ll lose, because I care and he doesn't—and that means he’s already won."[3]
How easily does that "caring" become an appeal to gang up on an outsider; some women readers may remember what is was like at school, living in the Non-Acceptance World. Penny's refusal is not defeatist, then - it's simply unscrupulous: "You're my friend, you'll hate him too, won't you?"
One of the most valuable exercises we had to do at school was précis - reducing a passage of prose to perhaps a third of its original length to reveal the central structure. I did this a while back for Russell Brand's revolutionary manifesto, cutting about 92%[4]; so I tried the same for Penny. Her Guardian article runs to 1,865 words[5] and here is my first attempt:
Milo Yiannopoulos offered me a ride to the Republican national convention. Privately he is charming but what he says publicly is harmful. I hate him and everything he stands for. He abuses women and minorities but when I attack him he laughs and remains friendly.
Milo has just been suspended from Twitter. He is delighted because this will increase his fame.
Donald Trump has just been confirmed as the presidential nominee. He is a psychopath. Milo supports him and calls him “Daddy”.
The VIP room is full of unpleasant right-wing people who are celebrating gay Republicans. I surprise another of Milo’s invitees by agreeing that gay men should be able to adopt children.
Milo gave a successful speech that decent people will deplore.
Milo does not believe his own utterances, but his followers do. They are dangerous. They feel threatened by Muslims and immigrants. They are speaking for many fearful and ignorant Americans. Donald Trump is merely a mouthpiece. There is much hatred in the country and this will end badly.
Suiting that newspaper's house style, her piece is full of self-regard and hip jargon. Even the précis cannot eradicate the passive-aggressive, self-righteous egotism, but how far can one go? Can one summarise the argument of someone who refuses to argue?
Condensing her writing is like dehydrating water. Essentially, she seems to be saying this:
I hate everything Milo stands for, but I won't tell you what it is.
He gave a successful speech, but I won't tell you what he said - or even supply a link.
He does not believe what he says, but I will not say how I know that.
His supporters feel threatened by Muslims and immigrants. I need not explain why this is wrong, or why they might feel like that.
My tender feelings trumped my duty as a journalist to stay in the room and report on the whole meeting. My friends felt the same way, so that's all right.
Hate is a bad thing if I encounter it at a political convention. This is consistent with my hating Milo, despite his charm and friendliness towards me.
He is a bad man. They are bad men. America is a bad place.
Infuriated by her inability to out-reason Yiannopoulos, Penny resorts to emotional appeal. It is all about her and her Care Bear heart, and if you do not fall into line with her autocratic limbic rule you are, well, damned.
This is the end stage of the New Journalism of the 1960s. The ground was broken in writing that was experiential, impressionistic and essentially narcissistic. The Age of Reason was swept away in a new Children's Crusade against the old order. Now we have arrived at the Age of Unreason, where (for example, during the Brexit referendum - for some, still ongoing) the mere expression of feeling is sufficient to justify oneself and call others to arms. Audience members on BBC's Question Time can say they are "disgusted" at a speaker's stance, and think that will do.
Democracy is founded on a centuries-old assumption of rationality, but like the worm Ourobouros, it is eating itself. Welcome to the feast, but leave early.
____________________________________
[1] "Open the Cage, Murphy", by Paul O'Grady, Penguin Books, 2015 [pp. 350-1 in 2016 Corgi edition]
[2] "The Female Of The Species" [1911]:
She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
[3] https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.7xz5volh9. This admission is omitted from the Guardian version.
[4] http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.at/2014/05/kaking-sense-of-russell-brands.html
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/26/my-night-out-in-cleveland-with-the-worst-men-on-the-internet?CMP=twt_gu
_______________________________________
A note on publication:
The above article, without the sub-headline, was first posted at 08:08 UK time on Friday 5 August, with the title "The Guardian: Content is free - of facts".
Although I was writing from Vienna via blogspot.co.at rather than blogspot.co.uk, it appeared on the blog as normal.
What wasn't normal was its failure to register on the Martin Scriblerus bloglist (right-hand sidebar), certainly not for the next 2 1/2 hours or so before we went out for the day. Yet a later piece by "JD", scheduled for 5 p.m. the same evening, did register.
I edited the above post to reschedule it for 19:40 the same day. Again, published fine but no show on the blogroll. By 4 a.m. the next day, it still hadn't appeared.
I began to suspect that like Twitter, but rather more subtly, Google was working to deny Milo "the oxygen of publicity" - by reducing access via blog subscription. So at 04:21 on Saturday I rescheduled/republished, substituting the name of John Wilkes (the scurrilous pamphleteer and libertarian) for Milo's. If anyone saw this via the blogroll, please let me know - I didn't.
This time, I am reinstituting Milo's name, but publishing as a new piece (copying and pasting the html from the old) - the only other changes are the new title/sub-heading, and this note about publication.
Let us see what happens.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Gays make the best women. In full Lily Savage fig, Paul O'Grady once met the über-macho Charlton Heston at a Hollywood party and asked if he'd got anything to eat. "I've got a hot dog in my pocket," grinned the hero of Ben-Hur, who kissed Savage's hand and went off in search of his wife. The incident cracked Robin Williams, who said that as a right-wing Republican the great actor "would have run a mile" if he'd realised "Lily" had a hot dog, too.[1]
There are advantages for a man, if he is a sexual southpaw. He does not feel compelled to agree with a woman as part of a program to get laid. Kipling knew the penalty for contradicting the fair sex[2], but to some that is no loss. I knew a very cultured and entertaining gay teacher who handled manipulative teenage girls beautifully: "There's no point in looking like that at me, dear," he would say, "I'm spell-proof."
And so we get to the second decade of the twenty-first century, in which homosexuality is mainstream; Conservative parties on both sides of the Atlantic find it convenient to co-opt gays as cover for their other, more illiberal agenda; universities have become censors of free debate; feminists have no-platformed their modern pioneer, Germaine Greer; and in some cases, journalism has become emojournalism, almost entirely devoid of fact and argument, so sure is it that you must agree with fashionable opinion.
Like all monocultures, "political correctness" is systemically vulnerable. Enter Milo Yiannopoulos, a preening British gay and defiantly Republican-supporting PC-baiter. Here he is at Rutgers University, New Jersey - and his act is very entertaining:
My father once worked with a union representative who, he said, would pour oil on troubled waters - and then set fire to it. This is Milo's technique, too, interspersing his opening remarks with inflammatory one-liners to provoke target social-justice groups, who cannot help but erupt noisily as he sips water and flashes blue eyes at us from under his brow like the sky-hued lids of a play-signalling red-shanked douc monkey.
Nevertheless his presentation is worth watching in full, for he does get to a serious central point: you should be able to say anything in a liberal institution of learning, and you should listen to others so that at least you know what you are disagreeing with.
Where he is mischievous is that he treats his audience as a practical demonstration of what is wrong with universities. He isn't trying to convert the downscreamers: he is winding them up so that others, especially we who are not there, can see what modern America is up against. He has literally cleared the room of the most intransigent before pitching liberalism to those already half-sold on his message.
But then, irony is a core element of his show, which he calls The Dangerous Faggot Tour. As a gay, he uses PC against itself, saying that he is "off the reservation" and his opponents can't easily pigeonhole him with their habitual personal slanders. To the right-thinkers of the left, the best punch is always below the belt; but Milo is too nimble for them, and they are so used to fighting dirty that they haven't got a second shot in their repertoire. They simply stand and splutter.
Which brings us to Laurie Penny, professional feminist and writer for both The Guardian and The New Statesman. You would think that as a fellow Brit, Penny could handle Milo's paradox and nuance; but not a bit of it. "I've always refused to debate Milo in public. Not because I'm frightened I’ll lose, but because I know I’ll lose, because I care and he doesn't—and that means he’s already won."[3]
How easily does that "caring" become an appeal to gang up on an outsider; some women readers may remember what is was like at school, living in the Non-Acceptance World. Penny's refusal is not defeatist, then - it's simply unscrupulous: "You're my friend, you'll hate him too, won't you?"
One of the most valuable exercises we had to do at school was précis - reducing a passage of prose to perhaps a third of its original length to reveal the central structure. I did this a while back for Russell Brand's revolutionary manifesto, cutting about 92%[4]; so I tried the same for Penny. Her Guardian article runs to 1,865 words[5] and here is my first attempt:
Milo Yiannopoulos offered me a ride to the Republican national convention. Privately he is charming but what he says publicly is harmful. I hate him and everything he stands for. He abuses women and minorities but when I attack him he laughs and remains friendly.
Milo has just been suspended from Twitter. He is delighted because this will increase his fame.
Donald Trump has just been confirmed as the presidential nominee. He is a psychopath. Milo supports him and calls him “Daddy”.
The VIP room is full of unpleasant right-wing people who are celebrating gay Republicans. I surprise another of Milo’s invitees by agreeing that gay men should be able to adopt children.
Milo gave a successful speech that decent people will deplore.
Milo does not believe his own utterances, but his followers do. They are dangerous. They feel threatened by Muslims and immigrants. They are speaking for many fearful and ignorant Americans. Donald Trump is merely a mouthpiece. There is much hatred in the country and this will end badly.
Suiting that newspaper's house style, her piece is full of self-regard and hip jargon. Even the précis cannot eradicate the passive-aggressive, self-righteous egotism, but how far can one go? Can one summarise the argument of someone who refuses to argue?
Condensing her writing is like dehydrating water. Essentially, she seems to be saying this:
I hate everything Milo stands for, but I won't tell you what it is.
He gave a successful speech, but I won't tell you what he said - or even supply a link.
He does not believe what he says, but I will not say how I know that.
His supporters feel threatened by Muslims and immigrants. I need not explain why this is wrong, or why they might feel like that.
My tender feelings trumped my duty as a journalist to stay in the room and report on the whole meeting. My friends felt the same way, so that's all right.
Hate is a bad thing if I encounter it at a political convention. This is consistent with my hating Milo, despite his charm and friendliness towards me.
He is a bad man. They are bad men. America is a bad place.
Infuriated by her inability to out-reason Yiannopoulos, Penny resorts to emotional appeal. It is all about her and her Care Bear heart, and if you do not fall into line with her autocratic limbic rule you are, well, damned.
This is the end stage of the New Journalism of the 1960s. The ground was broken in writing that was experiential, impressionistic and essentially narcissistic. The Age of Reason was swept away in a new Children's Crusade against the old order. Now we have arrived at the Age of Unreason, where (for example, during the Brexit referendum - for some, still ongoing) the mere expression of feeling is sufficient to justify oneself and call others to arms. Audience members on BBC's Question Time can say they are "disgusted" at a speaker's stance, and think that will do.
Democracy is founded on a centuries-old assumption of rationality, but like the worm Ourobouros, it is eating itself. Welcome to the feast, but leave early.
____________________________________
[1] "Open the Cage, Murphy", by Paul O'Grady, Penguin Books, 2015 [pp. 350-1 in 2016 Corgi edition]
[2] "The Female Of The Species" [1911]:
She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
[3] https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.7xz5volh9. This admission is omitted from the Guardian version.
[4] http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.at/2014/05/kaking-sense-of-russell-brands.html
[5] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/26/my-night-out-in-cleveland-with-the-worst-men-on-the-internet?CMP=twt_gu
_______________________________________
A note on publication:
The above article, without the sub-headline, was first posted at 08:08 UK time on Friday 5 August, with the title "The Guardian: Content is free - of facts".
Although I was writing from Vienna via blogspot.co.at rather than blogspot.co.uk, it appeared on the blog as normal.
What wasn't normal was its failure to register on the Martin Scriblerus bloglist (right-hand sidebar), certainly not for the next 2 1/2 hours or so before we went out for the day. Yet a later piece by "JD", scheduled for 5 p.m. the same evening, did register.
I edited the above post to reschedule it for 19:40 the same day. Again, published fine but no show on the blogroll. By 4 a.m. the next day, it still hadn't appeared.
I began to suspect that like Twitter, but rather more subtly, Google was working to deny Milo "the oxygen of publicity" - by reducing access via blog subscription. So at 04:21 on Saturday I rescheduled/republished, substituting the name of John Wilkes (the scurrilous pamphleteer and libertarian) for Milo's. If anyone saw this via the blogroll, please let me know - I didn't.
This time, I am reinstituting Milo's name, but publishing as a new piece (copying and pasting the html from the old) - the only other changes are the new title/sub-heading, and this note about publication.
Let us see what happens.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Friday, August 05, 2016
Friday Night Is Music Night: Folkish
JD assembles some more of what he calls "folk (style?)" music -
The (largely Celtic mix) Waterboys' "Room To Roam":
Ronnie Lane (of the Faces/The Small Faces):
Chicagoan Tom Paxton, with possibly his most famous song:
The Scottish singer-songwriter, Edie Reader:
From 1971, East Of Eden's disco-livener,"Jig-a-Jig" (if you can remember the Seventies, you were there):
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
The (largely Celtic mix) Waterboys' "Room To Roam":
Ronnie Lane (of the Faces/The Small Faces):
Chicagoan Tom Paxton, with possibly his most famous song:
The Scottish singer-songwriter, Edie Reader:
From 1971, East Of Eden's disco-livener,"Jig-a-Jig" (if you can remember the Seventies, you were there):
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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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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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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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?
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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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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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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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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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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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
An apology
Some weeks ago, looking at the Mail on Sunday, I wondered what had happened to editor Paul Dacre - its Referendum coverage was on full Project Fear.
Fool me, the editor of the MoS is Geordie Greig - sorry, Mr Dacre. According to Private Eye the two deeply dislike one another. Today the MoS charges full tilt at Brexit - something like the first dozen pages! - using the dreadful murder of Jo Cox by a madman as its battering ram.
The name may be a clue. Mr Greig is, as Polly Vernon's 2005 Guardian article about him stresses, "very kind and supportive and Scottish." There are some among Scottish nationalists who desire not only their liberty, but anything that may be to the detriment of their southern neighbours. Even it it means remaining in the EU, which will by degrees leach away what is left of Scottish freedom. [Dacre's paper campaigned for Scotland to stay in the UK.]
The vote looks to be very close. Will the outcome of the most important political decision in forty years be swayed by an emotional spasm heavily triggered by a Sunday paper and its editor's personal animosities?
Only Peter Hitchens talks any sense on the subject today.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Fool me, the editor of the MoS is Geordie Greig - sorry, Mr Dacre. According to Private Eye the two deeply dislike one another. Today the MoS charges full tilt at Brexit - something like the first dozen pages! - using the dreadful murder of Jo Cox by a madman as its battering ram.
The name may be a clue. Mr Greig is, as Polly Vernon's 2005 Guardian article about him stresses, "very kind and supportive and Scottish." There are some among Scottish nationalists who desire not only their liberty, but anything that may be to the detriment of their southern neighbours. Even it it means remaining in the EU, which will by degrees leach away what is left of Scottish freedom. [Dacre's paper campaigned for Scotland to stay in the UK.]
The vote looks to be very close. Will the outcome of the most important political decision in forty years be swayed by an emotional spasm heavily triggered by a Sunday paper and its editor's personal animosities?
Only Peter Hitchens talks any sense on the subject today.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Referendum: 3 for 3?
The Establishment's general strategy is to offer you an opportunity and then do their damnedest to make sure you don't take it.
2011 - Labour and Conservative parties unite to oppose the LibDems' push for the Alternative Vote, which if introduced would have meant that all MPs would have to be validated at a General Election by at least half of the votes cast in their constituency. As it is, in the last two GEs two-thirds of MPs got their seats in Parliament on the basis of a minority vote.
2014 - Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties unite to oppose Scottish independence. [Oddly, freedom-loving Scots seem both to oppose Brexit and to desire for themselves some strange version of independence that is - how? - consistent with membership of Monnet's "ever-closer union".]
2016 - Labour and Liberal parties, together with the Conservatives ex John Major's "bastards", unite to oppose British exit from the EU supranational government.
I keep saying it (and recently I have been seeing others saying something similar), we are seeing the construction of a new Habsburg empire. It suits politicians and businesspeople at a high level...
... plus much of the Fourth Estate (some for idealistic alle-menschen-werden-brueder aspirations) that is prepared to wear their livery. [I'll never forget how Jon Snow allowed Alastair Campbell to march in and take over his news programme.]
They wine, dine and recline with each other. They will intermarry until they begin to look different from the rest of us; perhaps not the Habsburg chin, but the opaque blue eyes of a Blair?
Yet the new European empire is ruinously undermined from the start, because the multinational corporations are even bigger. The status quo is rolling downhill out of control, without brakes or steering. There is no keeping things as they are; the question is whether anyone will try to get a grip.
If - and it's very iffy - this Referendum decides for Leave, and if - and it's very iffy - Parliament then decides to approve the decision, we will have taken only the first step in a long march.
The alternative is to watch matters progress to the point where the much of the world's social and economic system simply breaks down altogether and the wealthy Modern Mayans discover that even their own existence depended on a functioning society.
Seeing much of the writing and comments on social media, I'm not in favour of direct democracy - many people look as though they're not fit to be allowed out on their own, let alone vote - but if the national government of the day goes too far then under the present system the people can collectively vote them out. The EU structure above is an oligarch's dream and represents a final rolling-back of 200 years of widening enfranchisement.
Two centuries ago, most people in Britain couldn't vote, but they could riot. In bad times, they broke windows in Whitehall; in good, they unhitched the Prime Minister's horses and pulled his coach themselves.
Now, exhaustively spied upon and with super-powerful police and military to corral them, the people may commit only such disorder as the Establishment thinks fit to permit in order to justify oppressing them even more severely afterwards.
This vote matters, and it could be the last one that does.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
2011 - Labour and Conservative parties unite to oppose the LibDems' push for the Alternative Vote, which if introduced would have meant that all MPs would have to be validated at a General Election by at least half of the votes cast in their constituency. As it is, in the last two GEs two-thirds of MPs got their seats in Parliament on the basis of a minority vote.
2014 - Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties unite to oppose Scottish independence. [Oddly, freedom-loving Scots seem both to oppose Brexit and to desire for themselves some strange version of independence that is - how? - consistent with membership of Monnet's "ever-closer union".]
2016 - Labour and Liberal parties, together with the Conservatives ex John Major's "bastards", unite to oppose British exit from the EU supranational government.
 |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_Union#/media/File:Political_System_of_the_European_Union.svg |
I keep saying it (and recently I have been seeing others saying something similar), we are seeing the construction of a new Habsburg empire. It suits politicians and businesspeople at a high level...
... plus much of the Fourth Estate (some for idealistic alle-menschen-werden-brueder aspirations) that is prepared to wear their livery. [I'll never forget how Jon Snow allowed Alastair Campbell to march in and take over his news programme.]
They wine, dine and recline with each other. They will intermarry until they begin to look different from the rest of us; perhaps not the Habsburg chin, but the opaque blue eyes of a Blair?
Yet the new European empire is ruinously undermined from the start, because the multinational corporations are even bigger. The status quo is rolling downhill out of control, without brakes or steering. There is no keeping things as they are; the question is whether anyone will try to get a grip.
If - and it's very iffy - this Referendum decides for Leave, and if - and it's very iffy - Parliament then decides to approve the decision, we will have taken only the first step in a long march.
The alternative is to watch matters progress to the point where the much of the world's social and economic system simply breaks down altogether and the wealthy Modern Mayans discover that even their own existence depended on a functioning society.
Seeing much of the writing and comments on social media, I'm not in favour of direct democracy - many people look as though they're not fit to be allowed out on their own, let alone vote - but if the national government of the day goes too far then under the present system the people can collectively vote them out. The EU structure above is an oligarch's dream and represents a final rolling-back of 200 years of widening enfranchisement.
Two centuries ago, most people in Britain couldn't vote, but they could riot. In bad times, they broke windows in Whitehall; in good, they unhitched the Prime Minister's horses and pulled his coach themselves.
Now, exhaustively spied upon and with super-powerful police and military to corral them, the people may commit only such disorder as the Establishment thinks fit to permit in order to justify oppressing them even more severely afterwards.
This vote matters, and it could be the last one that does.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Friday Night Is Music Night - Tango
JD presents a selection of tango... in we go!
This is an excerpt from the film "Tango" by the Spanish film director, Carlos Saura. The whole film is a visual and musical delight and well worth seeing:
"Gotan is, as you will have guessed, just tango with the last syllable placed at the front of the word. It is a style of 'argot' in the Boca district of Buenos Aires.
"I first came across it years ago when I was listening to a girl yakking away over the dinner table and she kept saying Tabogo and the penny dropped eventually when I realised she was talking about Bogota!"
- More to come in the weeks ahead.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
This is an excerpt from the film "Tango" by the Spanish film director, Carlos Saura. The whole film is a visual and musical delight and well worth seeing:
"Gotan is, as you will have guessed, just tango with the last syllable placed at the front of the word. It is a style of 'argot' in the Boca district of Buenos Aires.
"I first came across it years ago when I was listening to a girl yakking away over the dinner table and she kept saying Tabogo and the penny dropped eventually when I realised she was talking about Bogota!"
- More to come in the weeks ahead.
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
They are different
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Rich Boy (1926)
There is much that one could say about this quote. Few of us would turn down the chance to be rich if there were no insuperable caveats, but few of us would use it well. The rich are still different today and there are more of them, but not only the rich. Celebrities are different too, and as far as one can tell they are often different in much the same way because they think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are.
It is something we do to people via money or status, including political status. The problem affects both left and right political classes in that they think they know what is best for us. Those who don't tend to be corrupt in one way or another, apart from a modest few who actually try to leave political life in a better state than they found it.
In Wikipedia there is an interesting quote from Matthew Bruccoli about Fitzgerald's story.
"'The Rich Boy' is a key document for understanding Fitzgerald's much-discussed and much-misunderstood attitudes toward the rich. He was not an envious admirer of the rich, who believed they possessed a special quality. In 1938 he observed: 'That was always my experience—a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton...I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.' He knew the lives of the rich had great possibilities, but he recognized that they mostly failed to use those possibilities fully. He also perceived that money corrupts the will to excellence. Believing that work is the only dignity, he condemned the self-indulgent rich for wasting their freedom."
There is much that one could say about this quote. Few of us would turn down the chance to be rich if there were no insuperable caveats, but few of us would use it well. The rich are still different today and there are more of them, but not only the rich. Celebrities are different too, and as far as one can tell they are often different in much the same way because they think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are.
It is something we do to people via money or status, including political status. The problem affects both left and right political classes in that they think they know what is best for us. Those who don't tend to be corrupt in one way or another, apart from a modest few who actually try to leave political life in a better state than they found it.
In Wikipedia there is an interesting quote from Matthew Bruccoli about Fitzgerald's story.
"'The Rich Boy' is a key document for understanding Fitzgerald's much-discussed and much-misunderstood attitudes toward the rich. He was not an envious admirer of the rich, who believed they possessed a special quality. In 1938 he observed: 'That was always my experience—a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy's school; a poor boy in a rich man's club at Princeton...I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.' He knew the lives of the rich had great possibilities, but he recognized that they mostly failed to use those possibilities fully. He also perceived that money corrupts the will to excellence. Believing that work is the only dignity, he condemned the self-indulgent rich for wasting their freedom."
Money corrupts the will to excellence, but not money alone. When the political classes become too secure in their status, their generous salary and allowances, their opportunities to mix with the rich and powerful, then they too seem to ape the self-indulgent rich. They too waste the freedom they have been given to make the world a better place. The will to excellence is easily corrupted.
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Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Each Man's Thumbscrew
Find out each Man's Thumbscrew. ’Tis the art of setting their wills in action. It needs more skill than resolution. You must know where to get at any one. Every volition has a special motive which varies according to taste. All men are idolaters, some of fame, others of self-interest, most of pleasure. Skill consists in knowing these idols in order to bring them into play.
Knowing any man's mainspring of motive you have as it were the key to his will. Have resort to primary motors, which are not always the highest but more often the lowest part of his nature: there are more dispositions badly organised than well. First guess a man's ruling passion, appeal to it by a word, set it in motion by temptation, and you will infallibly give checkmate to his freedom of will.
Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)
Does Cameron keep his hand in his pocket these days? I must check.
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A Turner sunset
...he resembled a Turner sunset, and attracted both admiration and attention.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - This Side Of Paradise (1920)
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Sunday, June 12, 2016
Sunday Serenade - Folk music
JD is back, after his little local IT difficulty....
Before I was rudely interrupted I was compiling a miscellany of English folk music which may not please the puritans but I like them plus a few more I can't find just yet.
Richard Thompson:
Wilson Family:
Florence Welch singing Shakespeare's sonnet 29:
Perhaps not a recognised 'folk singer' as such but... Florence Welch - What the Water Gave Me:
And now for some folkoric dancing(?) - Three man morris:
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Before I was rudely interrupted I was compiling a miscellany of English folk music which may not please the puritans but I like them plus a few more I can't find just yet.
Richard Thompson:
Wilson Family:
Florence Welch singing Shakespeare's sonnet 29:
Perhaps not a recognised 'folk singer' as such but... Florence Welch - What the Water Gave Me:
And now for some folkoric dancing(?) - Three man morris:
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Thursday, June 09, 2016
The chocolate Referendum
It has become apparent that the Referendum voters do not know what they are voting for. To correct this defect, the EU has commissioned an updated edition of Fry's famous "Five Boys" chocolate bar:
It is only right that the citizens should associate the mouthwatering delight of an iconic luxury consumer item with the sweet five Presidents of the EU who, like Fry's, are there to serve and please them.
Coming soon: bucking the trend of Wagon Wheels and Cadbury's Creme Eggs, the EU plans to make its product even larger (but don't tell anyone yet, it's "under wraps"!)...
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
It is only right that the citizens should associate the mouthwatering delight of an iconic luxury consumer item with the sweet five Presidents of the EU who, like Fry's, are there to serve and please them.
Coming soon: bucking the trend of Wagon Wheels and Cadbury's Creme Eggs, the EU plans to make its product even larger (but don't tell anyone yet, it's "under wraps"!)...
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Wednesday, June 08, 2016
Duck luck
A mallard duckling tries to scale a waterfall on the river Dove this morning. Its mother was pecking around on top apparently unconcerned. Could explain why she only had one duckling left.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Friday, June 03, 2016
Friday Night Is Music Night - there is a fault
Owing to a technical problem, JD is unable to share his latest selection. He suggests a test card placeholder, and so here is the first British tuning signal image, from 1934:
... plus a BBC interlude film:
... and a relic interesting from several points of view. I suppose I should put in a trigger warning about old colonial attitudes, but I hope the visitor to this page can look beyond emotional back-readings to the original intent and the value of historical records:
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
 |
| This and more, here: http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/testcard/bbc_tune.html |
... plus a BBC interlude film:
... and a relic interesting from several points of view. I suppose I should put in a trigger warning about old colonial attitudes, but I hope the visitor to this page can look beyond emotional back-readings to the original intent and the value of historical records:
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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