Keyboard worrier

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Martin Armstrong and the Great Reset

 I have always found Martin Armstrong's comments interesting, especially his analogies with classical Rome, but his all-knowing computer Socrates reminds me of Joanna Southcott's mysterious box.
https://londonist.com/2016/10/in-search-of-joanna-southcott-s-box

Having said that, is it not strange that in this surreal period when we have immediately succumbed to our leaders' demands for complete control, the innocent-eyed Canadian PM Justin Trudeau should start to refer enthusiastically to the Great Reset that until recently was a hobby-horse subject for conspiracy theorists?

https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-trudeau-has-eyes-set-on-a-great-reset-for-canada

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/what-if-biden-wins/

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/politics/just-hold-on/

Paul Joseph Watson interviews James Delingpole on The Great Reset:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugRnjpXEwTo&feature=youtu.be

The pieces are being set strategically on the chessboard:

'Triple crown' UK civil servant Mark Sedwill headed for NATO?

Hillary for the United Nations?

Monday, November 16, 2020

Nothing is moron-proof

1950s Australia: there was a 

'publicity stunt with a strong-man performer, Wilfred Briton, who was actually Polish. I had seen this immensely broad-chested, chunky little pocket-sized Hercules at the Kingston Empire. His feats of strength were trult amazing. When Mr Briton came to Australia, [the impresario] decide that he needed some special public feat of strength from Mr Briton to bring people into the theatre. He arranged for him to pull a double-decker Melbourne bus up Elizabeth Street with his teeth.

'The press turned up in force, and Wilfred duly made the attempt, which he was confident he could perform, even though the bus was to be pulled uphill.. The powerful muscles of his short, thick neck stood out like twisted steel cables as, to his surprise, he had to strain himself to the limit to move the big bus. However, by nearly killing himself, he did succeed in towing the double-decker a few feet up Elizabeth Street before he had to give up, with most of his teeth loosened by the effort. It was only then that the driver admitted laconically, 'I didn't trust yer, mate, on the hill, so I had me brakes on.' '

From Michael Bentine's autobiography 'The Reluctant Jester', p. 239

Sunday, November 15, 2020

WIGGIA'S WINES: Christmas 2020 Selection

Lockdown 2 takes us into Advent, so why not browse and pre-order now? Wiggia offers his annual survey and recommendations:


In many ways such a strange, to put it mildly, year has made a Christmas list for supermarket and independent wine retailers at a similar level easier than in the past but for the wrong reasons.

The impact of the virus on retail trading has meant that little has changed on the shelves of the ‘big players’ with probably the exception of Majestic whose new management are changing their lists as we speak.

With M&S cutting back their range it means that there is not quite the choice as in previous years and even the newcomers Lidl and Aldi have not expanded their ranges but consolidated.

REDS

If there is one stand out supermarket red wine this year it is the Chilean giant Concho y Toro’s subsidiary Cono Sur’s organic Pinot Noir available at Sainsbury’s for £9.50 and less when on offer, Cono Sur has been turned over to producing Pinot Noir wines only and this latest addition is in my opinion better than their previous flagship (supermarket) 20 Barrels.

It was said that good PN was impossible to make cheaply; wrong, they are getting there, which must be worrying for the French who can at the moment almost charge what they like for sometimes indifferent red Burgundy.

But we will start with Champagne/sparkling wines, not an area I indulge in that much so I am fussy as to what I buy as the price often exceeds expectations.

The best supermarket own label Champagne for me was Waitrose  Blanc de Noirs Brut NV: smooth, nice fruit, small bubbles and good value at £23.99. There is a whole raft of English sparklers now, all good, just choose your price band and select almost anything from Ridgeview, Hush Heath, Hattingley Valley Rose, Gusborne Blanc de Blanc, Nyetimber classic cuvee, to be honest Waitrose when it comes to English sparklers have so much more than anyone else there is little point in going elsewhere. For a Prosecco Ocado’s Abbazia Fiorino prosecco @ £9.99 was easily the best in that class; there is a bit of a Prosecco glut and many are really not that good though the price might be.

And again for the second year Bird in Hand sparkling Pinot Noir, again at Waitrose @£13.99 but often on offer.

In the red corner apart from the star above, there are other Pinot Noirs coming on stream that deserve attention without breaking the bank as so much Burgundy tries to do.

Germany is surprisingly the third biggest grower of PN but has suffered from thin wines in those northern climes. All has changed with the new climate now being enjoyed and some cracking Spatburgunders PN are arriving here, most are with wine merchants so the list is smaller for the market I am describing but Walt Pinot Noir from Booths at £10.50 is a steal; Waitrose have a decent cheap Romanian PN Sorcova at an amazing £7.79 - don’t be put off by the country of origin, those eastern European states are beginning to produce ever more decent bargain basement wines.

I find it difficult to suggest very much from Tesco these days as they have gone all big brand and own label, but in fairness Tesco's own label Finest Otago PN from NZ £13.00 is very decent and not many of the cheaper NZ PNs are that good a value, you have to spend to get what they are capable of providing.

Majestic do a very good PN from Oregon in the states, Erath 2017 at £19.99 plus an Australian Stonier 2017 from the cool climate Mornington Peninsula.

Bordeaux as usual always finds a place at the Christmas table and for good reason: Cabernet Sauvignon still makes probably the best all round wine for having with food and Christmas is all about good nosh.

Luckily it is not all in the Chateau Lafite price band, there are thousands of providers in Bordeaux and across the globe of this grape variety, the problem is that few of the worthwhile ones reach supermarkets.

Majestic has a few: Ch Caronne-ste Gemme from a good vintage 2015 at £14.99 is a good bet, Ch Bertrand-Braneyre from another good vintage 2009 at £15.99 is a sound buy, and another good cheapy from the very good 2016 vintage at £10.99 La Fleur Godard.

Lidl have a generic St Emilion Grand Cru at £10.99 which is well worth a punt, but for a better selection if you want to stay with Bordeaux you have to go to independents or The Wine Society, well worth joining if you drink a fair amount of wine as they have much bigger and better ranges in this sector.

I am not going to give a never ending list simply because it becomes tedious, this is a representative selection in all the categories that I have sampled or drunk.

There are some very good buys in the Spanish wines, Rioja we all know and I could a dozen easily that would fit the bill but just three here in different price brackets: Contino Reserva at Waitrose and Sainsbury’s at £25.00 is reliable top quality Rioja, Majestic have an even better wine in my opinion in Vina Ardanza Rioja Reserva ‘seleccion especiale’ 2010 La Rioja Alta only made in good years this at £24.99 is not cheap but worth every penny; Beronia is a very reliable winery owned by Gonzalez Byass of sherry fame and their reserva at £15. 00 won't let you down. Outside of Rioja there is a very nice refreshing and cheap Monastrell Palacio £7.99 at Waitrose and from Catalonia Roqueta Lafou El Sender Terra Alta £11.99 is a blend of mainly Garnacha/Grenache and a late find.

Australia is frustrating, all the supermarkets stock virtually the same big brand names, there is so much more from that country and it is a shame it is dominated by these well known names: some are good in their own right but more variety is badly needed, if you see McGuigan short list wines they are worth winkling out and are often on offer and grey label Wolf Blass as well, Waitrose have a cracker Bird in Hand wineries Shiraz £13.99.

South America supplies Malbec from Argentina in large quantities and many different wineries, and is now broadening the styles it produces away from the rather heavy earlier versions, the Santa Julia Malbec/Cabernet Franc blend at around £8.50 is still a good buy and available widely, Catena make many Malbecs yet their intro Malbec 13.49 is ultra reliable and often on offer, any of the Vinalba Malbecs are worth buying, again reliable and widely available and often on offer.

Rhone wines are now popular but again most supermarkets have either a range that doesn’t do justice to the region or they all have the same brands, Guigal’s Cotes de Rhone has long been a go to for the region around 12.50 , Waitrose have Chateau Maris Les Planels from the Languedoc region at 17.99, a big wine, spicy and a good substitute for the Rhone.

Italy is another country that has not been sending its better wines here at supermarket level, though a few shine through, Barolo is not a wine that comes cheap and if it does you know it, yet this bucks the trend, Lidl have a Barolo DOCG that is more than drinkable 11.99, normally even £30-40 bottles can be very disappointing.

At Waitrose there is a Sicilian ‘Le Sabbie dell’Etna rosso a nice deep coloured wine from an area that is increasingly being seen, worthwhile buy at 12.99, they also sell a decent Chianti, Piccini Valiano 6.38 Gran Selezione 19.99, also from Sicily is Nero Oro Riserva 2017 at Majestic another big and bold wine and £9.99 makes it good value.

WHITES

Strangely a bit easier though not so many, at least there are some with quality at decent prices generally available.

There are now thanks to NZ turning the whole country it seems to growing Sauvignon Blanc hundreds to choose from, though not all come from there.

Majestic have a cracking Sancerre ‘Sur le Fort 2018 16.99, remember the prices at Majestic rely on you to buy six bottles mixed or otherwise.

Waitrose have several goodies but Greystone SB 15.99 just edged it on the ones I have tried.

Chardonnay has two styles now, the new leaner more dry in style and the older buttery ones, to me many of the newer style are a step too far but not all.

For lovers of white Bordeaux the Co Op are selling Clos Floridene Graves Blanc for 19 pounds.

A rare treat from the Napa Valley in the United States is this Stags Leap ‘Hands of Time’ Chardonnay, more of the new school drier version but very good at 19.99 at Majestic,  also from Majestic a stalwart Saint Clair Pioneer Block Chardonnay 2017 15.99 and finally from Waitrose, Audrey Wilkinson Winemakers Selection Chardonnay 14.99 and great value for the quality.

Majestic in their revamp have a lot of fair priced French Burgundies and other Chardonnays but they are too new for me to have sampled.

Other grapes abound but few are worth the effort or at least those finding their way to the supermarket shelves, of the rest these stood out for me.

Among all the dross under the Pinot Grigio label I found a decent one, at Waitrose, Forte Alto PG Vignetti Delle Dolomiti Trentino 9.79, Masseria Pietrosa Verdeca from Morrisons suggested last year still stands up as good rarer grape wine,  from Waitrose a Rondolino Vernaccia  di San Gimignano by Teruzzi & Puthod is a fair example of the grape a slight natural spritz gives it an edge.

A bargain Gavi DOCG at 6.69 from Lidl was as good as many higher priced ones though I have never unlike others got very excited about the grape.

Alberino from Spain has made it into the top trendy whites to buy, for me it is to near to SB but the quality is now very good so if you like SB this is a slight change in style. Of the few tasted Majestic’s own label Definition Alberino 2019 Rias Baixas is one of the few own labels I would recommend a good example of the grape at 9.99, they also have a Winemakers Series Godello at the same price which is worth trying.

If you are looking for a Riesling then you have a problem, it is still not popular enough for the big players to stock anything worthwhile, you still have to go to specialist merchants to find the real thing, with one exception: Majestic have an Aussie Riesling that is worth your attention, Petaluma ‘Hanlin Hill’ 2016 from the Clare Valley where the best of Australian Rieslings come from, not cheap at 22.99 but worth it.

M&S have a nice Classics Pinot Gris from the very good co operative Cave de Turckheim at a tenner, another grape that is difficult to find decent examples of in supermarkets, rich slightly oily taste which is typical.

ROSE / PINK

Rosé or pink wines sales have gone through the roof in the last couple of years. I never could see the point of them but I have been forced to change my mind and we are long past the likes of Mateus Rosé, good versions abound away from the ‘home’ of Rosé Provence, from that ‘home’ Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Cotes de Provence Rosé at 8.75 is a very good buy,  Majestic have an amazing value Argentinian Alamos Rosé 6.99, they also have Pasqua 11 Minutes Rosé from Italy  12.99, a lighter style from England is Camel Valley Pinot Noir Rosé at Waitrose for 13,99; all are ones I have tried and recommend, there are now dozens more to choose from and one thing strikes you straight away about the Rosé on offer - that is the amazingly high standard across the board; why this should be against red and white wines I don’t know other than the fact it is made out of a smaller range of grape varieties but even that is changing.

FORTIFIED WINES

Fortified wines in truth do not vary in what is on the shelves very much year to year, only with port the vintages change yet that is really only at the higher price points, so this year for what the supermarkets offer it is not a lot different to last year, taking into consideration that I have put a ceiling on the price of all wines on here at £25 as above the range in those same supermarkets apart from Waitrose and also Majestic is very limited anyway.

The  best Fino sherries include two own label and in the case of Morrisons Fino the cheapest available at 4.85, only the collapse in the bulk sherry market makes this price possible, take advantage while you can, and Waitrose blue label Fino at 7.65 is still a good buy; the truth is for sherry only Waitrose of the big sellers have a decent range apart from that one bottle from Morrisons, if you want decent sherry and don’t buy from independents you might as well get it all from Wairose so all the following come from that source.

For Manzanilla their own blue label at 7.65 is reliable, Solear from Barbadillo 10.99, Hidalgo’s La Gitana a perennial favourite 11.99,  Alegria in half bottles at 5.49 is very aromatic.

A further Fino: Gonzales Byass Delicado Fino 14.49.

Oloroso and Amontillado sherries, from Lustau a treat with Oloroso Almacenista Pata de Gallina 17.99, Gonzales Byass On the QT Edition Barrel 1E 51 Amontillado 19.99 expensive but worth it, after all it is Christmas, their Blueprint Amontillado 7.65 is also decent.

Majestic are just starting to stock some sherries again and Pedro’s Almacenista Selection Amontillado 11.99 is another I would buy.

Port is still a bargain considering the quality of the product. For tawny any of those by Graham at 10/20/30 years are great buys, the 30 year old one is above my ceiling but if you want to push the boat out why not. Graham's Malvedos Vintage port at £28 is also over LIMIT but usually on offer at less on the run up to Christmas so look out for it, all those are generally available, Sandeman Late Bottled Vintage Port a nice rich flavoured port 17.99 from Waitrose. I have never purchased wine from Amazon but I know someone who does occasionally and the white port he purchased from there, by Ferriera Don Antonia Reserve White at 22.70 was an exotic indulgence.

___________________________________________________

What is obvious is exactly what I predicted years ago has happened: the big supermarkets having cornered the market in wine sales have changed course and instead of competing with one another with ever changing ranges as they used to, they now are applying the typical supermarket buying power and we have seen a uniform big-brands and own-labels takeover of the shelves. Only Waitrose and Booths in the North stand out as having wine lists worth bothering with now. The slide started when Sainsbury’s and then Tesco dumped their very good online wine direct outlets and it has been downhill ever since. 

The upside is online sales: more and more of the independents are putting together very good wine lists for online sales; should I live that long, next year I will include some including the Wine Society, as it has been not a joyful task this year ferreting out decent wines from the big players; Tesco more than any others has really stuck two fingers up at the customers it attracted when they had a very good range to buy, but it was predicted.

Early, but a merry Christmas to all!

Saturday, November 14, 2020

Chopped hogs and yuppie dudes, by JD

After Wiggia's excellent post about coachbuilt cars my mind started drifting to customised motorcycles and the bikes used in the film "Easy Rider." It is something that has niggled me for a long time. 

The film was supposedly a hippie update of the Marlon Brando film The Wild One but the characters in Easy Rider were, for me, too absurd to be believable. For a start, they were clearly rich middle-class 'kids' pretending to be rebels, what used to be known as weekend hippies. Fonda's leather jacket looked exceedingly expensive and how many self respecting rebels are going to wear a crash helmet?

But the bikes. To have a bike like that in 1969 (the year of the film's release) you would have to build it yourself because they were not exactly mainstream, you would never see anything like that at your local motorcycle dealer. And if you didn't build it yourself you would have to pay somebody a lot of money to build one. Fonda and Hopper in their characters and in reality were not 'blue collar' workers, the sort of people who get their hands dirty. The hippies of the sixties grew up to be the yuppies of the eighties! (Tom Wolfe: “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening")

Anyway I had a look to see who built the bikes and lo and behold - 'In bits and pieces, the story behind the Easy Rider choppers began to emerge publicly, and identified two African-American bike builders: Clifford 'Soney' Vaughs, who designed the bikes, and Ben Hardy, a prominent chopper-builder in Los Angeles, who worked on their construction.'

https://www.npr.org/2014/10/11/354875096/behind-the-motorcycles-in-easy-rider-a-long-obscured-story?t=1603712364830

Oh the irony, Clifford Vaughs and Ben Hardy both African-Americans and members of a mixed race m/c club called The Chosen Few in Southern California. The two links in the story, to The Chosen Few and to The Vintagent, are dead-ends but I found this in wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen_Few_Motorcycle_Club

- and I found more of the story on a Harley Davidson forum:

'Proper credit finally began to shine on both Ben Hardy and Clifford Vaughs early in the 21st century. In 2006 Discovery Channel's History of the Chopper included a well documented piece on Ben Hardy's influence on the custom chopper movement, including a clip from a 1980s interview with Hardy, and a lengthy piece from Sugar Bear, a current top builder who is also African-American and has a shop not far from Hardy's old place. There was also the Black Chrome exhibition at the California African American Museum, which included both Hardy and Vaughs and their contributions. Their names now get mentioned more, including in the Profiles in History auction description of the remaining Captain America chopper for $1.35 million, which mentioned both of them in their press release. The bike was described as "designed and built by two African-American chopper builders, Cliff Vaughs and Ben Hardy, following design cues provided by Peter Fonda himself." '

https://www.hdforums.com/how-tos/slideshows/10-facts-about-the-builders-of-the-easy-rider-choppers-472037#9-vaughs-gains-credit

So there is a whole hidden back story behind the film. Here is a video from the Discovery Channel which tells more of the history of the bikes and their builders (Cliff Vaughs died in 2016 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Vaughs):

Friday, November 13, 2020

FRIDAY MUSIC: Britblues 2, by JD

Into the 1960s and the British 'blues boom' was firmly established and the musicianship improved after a chaotic and ragged start with the less talented dropping out of view.

Thereafter the blues boom seemed to revolve around John Mayall whose band The Bluesbreakers probably employed virtually every emerging 'superstar' at one time or another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_John_Mayall_band_members









Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Presidential race - firm going, new course records, stewards' enquiry continues... by JD

I have been reading Brendan O'Neill on Spiked:

Biden got 74 million votes, the highest popular vote in history. But Trump got nearly 70 million votes which makes his vote the second highest. So that means this election had a record turn out and the American people have become more engaged (or even enraged) by politics than ever before.

Even more significant, O'Neill says that Trump got 7 million more votes than he did in 2016. That particular statistic deserves serious consideration. Trump's base, the 'blue collar' clearly still believe that he speaks on their behalf in a way that the political class do not. Four years ago I wrote here that 'I don't like Trump and I don't trust him but... when the honeymoon period is over and the promised jobs for the rust belt States are slow to appear...'

In fact the jobs have appeared and, as the journalist Andrew Sullivan has written:

"One of the more revealing results from the polls this year came in the answers to the core question made famous by Reagan: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” In previous campaigns to re-elect the president, Reagan was re-elected in a landslide with only 44 percent saying they were better off, George W. Bush won with 47 percent and Obama succeeded with 45 percent. For Trump, a mighty 56 percent said they were better off now than when he took office."

It is also revealing to see who voted for Trump; Sullivan writes:

"Trump measurably increased his black, Latino, gay and Asian support. 12 percent of blacks — and 18 percent of black men — backed someone whom the left has identified as a “white supremacist”, and 32 percent of Latinos voted for the man who put immigrant children in cages, giving Trump Florida and Texas. 31 percent of Asians and 28 percent of the gay, lesbian and transgender population also went for Trump. The gay vote for Trump may have doubled! We’ll see if this pans out. But it’s an astonishing rebuke of identity politics and its crude assumptions about how unique individuals vote.

"This was far from the Biden landslide I had been dreaming about a few weeks back. It was rather the moment that the American people surgically removed an unhinged leader and re-endorsed the gist of his politics. It was the moment that Trump’s core message was seared into one of our major political parties for the foreseeable future, and realigned American politics."

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/trump-is-gone-trumpism-just-arrived-886

The print media and TV broadcasters around the world have declared Biden to be the new President elect but Trump is not going to concede and intends to challenge the validity of postal ballots in, I think, four States. Covid19 has been the excuse used for so many people being encouraged to cast their votes by mail.

According to CNBC, 69 million votes were cast one week before election date...
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/27/2020-elections-nearly-67-million-votes-cast-in-trump-biden-race-.html
If that is correct it amounts to approximately 50% of all votes cast although The Guardian has the figure at 93 million and the NYT says 101 million early votes. That last figure is very hard to believe as it represents 72% of all votes cast. Really? Were the polling stations unusually quiet this year?

All of this is just speculative because, as I understand the US system, it is the Electoral College who will announce the winner on December 14th, five weeks from today. Biden's win will not be official until then. In the next five weeks Trump will pursue his case on the validity or otherwise of postal ballots through the courts. It seems unlikely that he will succeed but win or lose, the US seems to be broken beyond repair and what happens next is in the lap of the gods.

And a furher thought on the postal ballots. This video from Joe Biden is rather strange and disturbing: In what context did he say this and when and why?*


*(Ed.: I think he fell over his tongue, not for the first time.)

Monday, November 09, 2020

Still awaiting a result, actually

A (UK) Birmingham University-based commentary deplores Trump and the Deplorables, and goodness knows there are plenty of points to argue with about the incumbent, e.g. on environmental protection, employment protections, healthcare, pensions... But there is also the fact that Trump has attempted in some ways to level the economic playing field that has been tilted for decades against the American working (they would say, middle) class.

I comment, for what it's worth:

We've seen a four-year battle of polemic vs systemic: personal abuse, distortion, fact suppression, media partisanship and the co-option of many foolish civilians on social media as amateur political cartoon-spreaders... versus an attempt by a non-professional politician to address the systemic looting of America's working class by its own elites, using emerging market workforces as third-parties.

I see the Democrats as akin to British Labour: false friends of the lower classes. For their part, the Republicans are openly money-mad and scornful of the Deplorables, saying they don't deserve to have pensions and so on (my American brother keeps me up to date on this); Trump is a freak that both sides didn't want.

Let's see what Biden, after 47 years in politics, does to challenge the vampires. My bet is, nothing; and Business As Usual can only end in the collapse of the American economy as the welfare needs grow completely out of the reach of the diminishing tax base of an impoverished proletariat.

But America still has an excellent ratio of arable land to population; the UK will fall further, sooner and harder.


Here is ACL Blair on 2 May 1997, welcomed as a hero to do away with the venal and corrupt Tories, boosted and feted by the media. It took many years for us to be told that the adoring 'public' here were all selected Labour Party workers. And then... 



'Counted, weighed and found wanting' - Belshazzar's Feast

For now, let due constitutional processes and the law determine matters, so that the American people, maddened by years of propaganda, do not tear each other to pieces.