Keyboard worrier

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.

Sunday, November 08, 2020

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: Bog Off! by Wiggia

Monty Don has thrown his cap in the ring regarding climate change, I have to be honest before I go on, I don’t like MD he depresses me and I haven’t watched Gardeners World for years, not just because of him and his Crufts show that seems to be the basis for every shot and his fake trademark garden wear, no different from many others but I find it wearing, but also because so many of these outdoor types of program have become vehicles for the activists in the climate change movement, so I declare there is bias in what I write, though he was a different presenter when he did his Italian Garden series which was excellent and at the beginning of his TV career, which begs the question, why the difference?

Gardening programs have changed anyway from the days of Geoffrey Smith, who I thought was the best of all and their programs set in gardens all could relate to, this on the other hand……

In the next episode we will show you how to become self sufficient: first buy five acres of...

And MD has now decided no one should buy cheap flowers from garden centres or anywhere else if the pots contain peat in the compost. He accuses garden centres of 'actively choosing to do harm' by selling compost made from peat. Oh please, they are trying to earn a living like everyone else. He is another at an age where he can afford to say what he likes with little chance of any backlash that will harm him, though backlash there certainly was.

The article is here - where else other than the Grauniad, every eco-loon's safe space:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/mar/17/gardens

Now I admit that the use unremittingly of peat over the years has reduced our reserves to bugger all and that is wrong, but as with all basics in all industry that was never a factor when peat was first starting to be used. What you are looking at is a reliable structure for plant growth, one that can be easily altered by the type of shredder it is put through for different uses and with the addition of fertilisers to this inert product you can manufacture exactly what is required for any given use.

No other compost comes close at this moment in time. Where it is wasted is the rubbish supermarket peat composts that resemble those cheap tea leaves you used to be able to get that looked like floor sweepings and often with the minimum of fertiliser added so the plants need feeding after six weeks or so, that is a waste of a good product.

I had a job some years back where the client wanted rhododendrons that require ericaceous soil. The garden did not have a suitable soil but the client insisted. In a perfect world you would decline, but few can afford to say no and large amounts of Levingtons compost that is no longer available were brought in. Levingtons sadly no longer exists as a stand alone company.

Many would say what I did in the light of today's knowledge was wrong, yet gardens have been created, (and they are a false landscape) for millennia using outside techniques and materials; stone is used from all over the country, most of the wood used in gardens is not indigenous and the plants themselves are a mirror of the world and not native.

The go-to word is sustainability and it has merit in many areas peat being one, yet the bulk of peat used in this country comes from abroad. Blaming the Irish and northern peat extractors for impoverishing the countryside is a little late, they have been burning the stuff for centuries in the same areas; jumping up and down now on a climate change ticket will not change that.

The surveys done on peat bogs world wide show a marked difference in the replacement time for the removed peat. This detailed analysis shows that the differences between the formation of peat bogs, and the climate they evolve in makes a huge difference, the tropical bogs are formed very much faster, and some other more recent surveys have shown that in some areas peat can be extracted if there are controls in place without affecting the biodiversity, which itself has been proven to change over time anyway.

http://www.fao.org/3/x5872e/x5872e05.htm

The claim that “Peat: 90,000 years to form but can be gone in 50” is for the vast majority of peat bogs a downright lie as can be seen in the link above.

As with all these cries to shut something down the hypocrisy has no boundaries. MD has been on this hobby horse of his for awhile, which is fine, yet how many plants in the thousands planted in his BBC sponsored or taxpayer sponsored garden were not grown in peat? He may well show the believers how you can make your own, I do now for some uses as the range available has been much reduced, but who in their suburban garden is going to do all that? Virtually no one.

It took decades to formulate peat based composts for use in horticulture, they are not going to be replaced overnight and this RHS article explains why and the shortcomings of alternatives.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/gardening-in-a-changing-world/peat-use-in-gardens/peat-alternatives

The truth is the alternatives have up to now been mainly rubbish. No trade grower is going to go that route until the problems with alternatives are solved: bark based composts have a tendency to leach nutrients from plants and soil and are a stopgap solution; going back to John Innes composts has many problems as well - most available today are poor quality. Again, the weight factor comes in among other problems, the poor quality can be laid at the feet of the few firms who now dominate the market, what the grower really wants is an alternative to peat that is close in performance across the board, at this moment in time it does not exist.

I did try one of the alternatives this year for the first time in ages and it was half decent even if very claggy, so still not there.

What MD is doing, as so many in their comfortable sinecures like his, is to want a change immediately that would not benefit the growers and would cost many jobs if his diktat was followed. Comparing our peat bogs with the Amazon rainforest is ludicrous, it has the same effect as shutting down all our coal fired power stations, as we close one the rest of world builds ten. Forget climate change: it will happen as it has repeatedly over the millennia: signs of tundra and tropics abound on our little island from long before peat bogs were raided or coal was burnt.

Am I a Luddite? Not at all, but there has to be some pragmatism on the way forward. Today all we get is soundbites from those in a position to make them, never any concern for jobs lost or the inevitable rise in prices or the loss of products, but they will feel warm and cosy in their funded bubbles or in their private jets going to world-wide forums where they can spout more of the same; there is a saying about coming to court with clean hands, and none of them do.

This recent statement from the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) lets the mask slip somewhat. So much of the drive from the climate change agenda groups has disguised the underlying thrust of what they want, it is not just to ameliorate items they believe are harmful to our planet but to significantly change our way of life, an evening-up of aspirations, a deliberate dampening of demand, a way of life with little to enhance it, to re-set - yes, they use the phrase at the end - our way of earning a living, though naturally this is one area they have no alternative answer to.

https://easac.eu/media-room/press-releases/details/resistance-and-challenges-to-green-deals-should-not-be-underestimated/

We are already seeing moves by governments to go with the green agenda despite those who would actually vote for such a future being extremely few; it is not being done on our behalf, and nothing they set out will change the way the planet behaves, nothing ever has.

As I have said before, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but something is going on when so many nations are going down the same path. Nothing is for the people whatever leaders' protestations when challenged (which itself is a rare event); when people like Soros and Gates have the ability to affect political direction in so many countries we have a problem.

So I say to Monty Don, however much you believe in your objectives, it will only affect the little people - so Bog Off!

Friday, November 06, 2020

FRIDAY MUSIC: Britblues, by JD

Still looking over my shoulder and not quite drowning in nostalgia but looking to see how it came about that British teenagers fell in love with American 'blues' and 'rhythm and blues' music and how British groups adopted the style and successfully re-introduced it to the USA.

In the post war period traditional jazz became one of the popular music styles of the time and among the well known names, via radio and TV, were Chris Barber and Humphrey Lyttelton. Jazz, imported from the USA, had its roots in blues and ragtime; blues being the music of the African Americans and ragtime was so called for its 'ragged' rhythms. Both Barber and Lyttelton would include blues style music in their repertoire. In 1955 Chris Barber and his guitar player Lonnie Donegan had a hit with 'Harmonic Blues' and in 1956 Lyttelton had success with 'Bad Penny Blues' which was transformed about ten years later by Paul McCartney into 'Lady Madonna' But the main impetus came, I think, from Lonnie Donegan who would lead a skiffle group during the intervals of Barber's shows, and sing Leadbelly songs. Most of the British 'beat' groups would cite Donegan as an influence on their own development.

So I have been digging into my own collection of records as well as digging into my memories of a mis-spent youth visiting the local jazz and beat clubs. Nostalgia is wonderful and thanks to the 'time machine' known as YouTube we can re-live our youth, although dancing as in the old days is not so easy now!


















Sunday, November 01, 2020

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: The Coachbuilders, by Wiggia

A random post from JD about a rather special car... brought about this piece.

When most people buy a car there is no doubt that the aesthetics are as important as the practicality. Even with today’s computer-generated automobiles that have very generic shapes because of the demands of aerodynamics, some still manage to stand out from the crowd and sales are boosted by that look. In the early days it was no different, except that there were fewer constraints on design and cost was less of an issue; hence these amazing vehicles.

A Daimler Double Six 50 Sport Corsica Drophead Coupe 1931 with originally a body by Thrupp and Maberley but later altered by Martin Walter and then again after an accident by the firm of Corsica; and very nice too.

The car here won the Concours at the world famous Concours event at Peeble Beach in California in 2006 which for motor-heads is a drool day as so many exotic and rare automobiles are on show at what many people believe to be the premier show of its kind anywhere.

What the show also highlights is the preponderance of coach-built cars that the rich and famous sponsored in the pre war years. Almost every prestige car, and there were a lot of them pre war, had coach-built versions on the road; the standard models were simply not enough for many people who had the money to create something different, and some indeed ended up improving on the original factory designs.

As I related to JD I have a very close old friend whose father worked for Park Ward, known mainly for their coach-built Rolls Royces. This was after the war when this type of business was struggling for obvious reasons but the same man showed us kids how to coach line a car body freehand, something that today is a lost art.

Park Ward themselves merged with another coach builder H J Mulliner in 1961 and all was owned by Rolls Royce Motors anyway, which in 1971 became Rolls Royce Motors Ltd.

Captain Cuthbert W. Foster, heir to the Birds Custard fortune, commissioned Park Ward to build a body on a rare (one of only six) Bugatti Royale - a design not dissimilar to a Rolls Royce he had Park Ward build earlier for him. Sunsequently acquired by the reclusive Schlumpf brothers, it is now  in the museum in Molsheim, France, a place no self-respecting car buff should miss, where it sits alongside Ettore Bugatti's personal Royale known as the coupe Napoleon.

The Bird's-Eye Bugatti !

Other French cars that received the coach-builders loving touch included many Delage and Delahaye  and Talbot top-of-the tree automobiles pre-war. The Delahaye below is a 135 convertible by lesser known coach builders Franay but what a wonderful job they did with this model:

The list for inclusion in this short piece would fill a library book so I have attempted to give just a representation across the board; those who know about these things will scream 'why was so and so not included?' But the reason is simply space.

Another Delahaye below is the 1949 175 Saoutchik Roadster. Saoutchik was originally a cabinet maker and moved from the Ukraine to Paris in 1900; he then spent the next fifty years involved in designing some of the most desirable cars on earth.

'Saoutchik was commissioned to produce the spectacular work-of-art by flamboyant English collector, Sir John Gaul. The design was based on the first post-war Delahaye chassis from a 175 S Roadster (chassis number 815023) producing 165 bhp from an engine much larger than the pre-war Delahayes ran – a 4,455 cc naturally aspirated overhead valve inline six cylinder engine with four-speed electro-mechanically actuated Cotal Preselector gearbox, Dubonnet coil spring front suspension, De Dion rear axle with semi-elliptic springs, and four-wheel hydraulic finned alloy drum brakes. The wheelbase was a whopping 116 inches.'

Saoutchik could be said to have been the leader of the French car designers/ coach builders in the Art Deco period.

This particular Delahaye was once voted the most beautiful car in the world; difficult to argue with that.

Pourtout were the firm responsible for this magnificent Delage:

Delage D8 120S Aero Coupe 1937

In the UK, apart from the above mentioned we had Barker, Hooper James Young, Gurney Nutting and many more specialist coach builders mainly working with Bentley and Rolls Royce chassis.

This beautiful and restrained version of a Rolls Royce Phantom 11 Continental Sport Coupe 1933 is by Hooper & Co.


The Italians have a very diverse body of coach builders. Many have been involved with versions of cars like Ferrari Alfa Romeo and Maserati as well as saloons. It is very difficult to select a few as there are so many; my favourite Alfa I have shown before, so a link will do for that one:
https://www.citedelautomobile.com/en/collections/alfa-romeo-type-8c-2-31

Alfa probably had more coach built versions of their cars during the pre- and immediate post-war period than anyone else so just one or two here will have to suffice: Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Touring Berlinetta 1939 by Carrozzeria...

... and a more modern Alfa:

There were many different versions of Alfa’s TZ. Many were racing-only versions as well as the road models. This one by Zagato, a TZ3 Stradale, is not strictly an Alfa, one of nine built in 2010 as a celebration of the anniversary of the TZ. The first of these was a one-off built for a German enthusiast with an Alfa 4.2 V8 engine from the Alfa 8C but the others all had Dodge Viper engines of 8.4 litres in V 10 configuration pumping out 640hp-  a modern coach-builder's classic.

Elsewhere Ferrari has had many one-offs built on their chassis. The Drogo-bodied Ferrari here is extremely rare and is built on a Cooper Climax grand prix chassis from 1957; really, the description in the text is best.

As an aside, it was interesting to see who had survived from that golden age; amazingly, quite a few but of the better-known names most are Italian: Bertone, Castagna, Fantuzzi, Guigiaro-Ital Design (who should be forever damned as having anything to do with the redesign of the awful Marina and its reincarnation as the ITAL, no doubt a decision they still regret and indeed it doesn’t exist in their list of works on their Wiki page - shame), Pourtout in France, Pininfarina, Touring, and Zagato... but then design has always been a big part of Italian production of anything.

https://www.coachbuild.com/2/index.php/encyclopedia/coachbuilders-models/item/drogo-ferrari-250-p4-thomassima-ii-1967

This below is a Ferrari! Bodied by Ghia in 1952, the 212 Inter Coupe is really is a one-off, sold in ‘53 to the President of Argentina, one Juan Domingo Peron; I am sure his wife Evita would have loved it but she was dead by then.

In the USA before the war, they were spoiled for choice of material to work on: Duesenbergs, Packards and others were world-class automobiles. Many like Packard were leaders in new technology, which is difficult to believe seeing the post-war cars that were based on lumbering V8s and basic suspension.

This is the only surviving example of three built by Murphy &Co of Pasedena California: a Packard 343 from 1927. I would have this one for the colours alone - they are original Packard colours; note the matching central hinged doors.

Now the Cord, a brand named after the owner one Errett Lobban Cord, an automotive entrepreneur who produced this luxury car at the Auburn Automobile Company in Indiana, who were known for innovation as for example producing the first American car with front wheel drive and hidden headlamps; they also had a form of electro-mechanical gear shifting.

All Cords had a very distinctive front end as seen here; the ribbed exhaust was a feature used in Duesenbergs and Mercedes in Europe.


Though innovative, Cord suffered from reliability problems; the initial enthusiasm cooled, the dealer base shrank and the company was sold. E L Cord moved on to Nevada where he made millions in real estate.

With Duesenberg you're spoilt for choice, so many are good and what wonderful cars they were.

Rollston Duesenberg SJ Arlington Torpedo Sedan 'Twenty Grand' 1933

'Rollston's most famous car was the 1933 Duesenberg Model SJ Arlington Torpedo Sedan "Twenty Grand.

'Designed by Gordon Buehrig, the Twenty Grand was built as a show car for the 1933-34 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, and the finished car's price tag was $20,000, an astronomical amount at the time.'

Another Duesenberg will not go amiss here - a Murphy Duesenberg Model J Convertible Coupe: 

Murphy was considered to be the best of the Duesenberg coach builders and you can see why: when this 1929 model was announced it halted trading on the NY stock exchange, another over-$20,000 car that was only for the few (in today's money over $1 million.)

Back in Europe others were challenging Rolls Royce for recognition as the ultimate luxury car. The two that got nearest were Hispano Suiza and Isotta Fraschini.

Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A from 1927

Hispano Suiza K6 Cabriolet by Brandone; a lovely car, just oozes class

As I said earlier you could go on and on with these magnificent vehicles of a bygone age, but is it bygone? Not really; although the ravages of war meant an end to most of what you see here, it revived later and is making more headway today; in the USA it could rightly be said the early hot-rodders were the coach builders of their time, and of the future as many have morphed into companies that custom build for customers and very successfully too.

Back in Europe firms like Mercedes are branching out with their versions of ‘dream’ cars. This stunning concept car is due to appear soon (or not, as the world ditches big automobiles in favour of mobility scooters); a nod to the past, it is a big step up for Mercedes who have not exactly rocked the boat design-wise for years.

I include another Alfa, I lied earlier! Before the company disappeared into a state-owned rust bucket it was still pushing the frontiers of design. This car had an amazing drag coefficient of 0.19, not beaten I believe in any road-going car since.

Bertone Alfa Romeo B.A.T. 7 1954  “Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica”

And this with a young Jeremy Clarkson driving the BAT:

Packard were at the top of the luxury car market in the thirties with V12 engines, hydraulic brakes, independent front suspension and small-production customised coach-built bodies for discerning and wealthy customers. They became the car of choice for the Hollywood stars and influential politicians. This video gives Packard's history, and if you want to skip that part from 15.00 on there are some stunning auto mobiles to view:

And the very last Packard concept car and the end of the Packard line in 1956: the Predictor. This car had push-button adjustable suspension (Packard had introduced adjustable suspension that could be changed from within the cabin before); an early ‘39 form of overdrive, the Econo-shift; and were among the first to use plastics in body detail.


Any article on coach builders cannot ignore the custom car concept that started in the USA in the Thirties. A very good history of the whole custom car movement and why is here:
 https://www.customcarchronicle.com/custom-history/history-of-the-early-custom-car/

It is a movement that is as active today as then and deserves a piece on its own but I will just include some examples.

The difference between coach building in a general sense and customising is that the coach builder designs and creates a body on an existing chassis, whereas a customiser alters an existing body. There are nuances to it but that is basically the difference though the skills are the same. The custom car has also branched out into hot rods and a whole new world in the use of paint finishes.

As explained in the link many of the custom car ‘tricks’ came from the early factory concept cars.

I have taken just one photo from the link because it was such an important car in the custom car movement.                                                                                                                                            


                                                                                                                                                      

This is a typical! customised hot rod version of probably the most popular of all cars that came from the custom car movement: a 1927 model T Ford Coupe.


                                                                                                                                                               

Few of these custom cars are what we would call practical, but that is not really the point of them.

At the other end of the custom car spectrum are the cut-and-shut versions of everyday saloons, though by the time the body shops have finished with them it is hard to tell what the original car was apart from the badge.

Several sub-divisions came from the custom car genre: the hot rods, even drag racing cars, lowriders that emanated from Los Angeles in the mid-Forties, highrisers that came from the South, monster trucks and several others including those with ‘trick’ adjustable suspension.

What is interesting in all this time in which coach building/ custom cars have looked for new avenues of expression is how the custom car today in many aspects reflects those wonderful designs by the likes of Delahaye all those years ago; back to the future indeed. The Cadillac below is an example, not the best, but decent enough to show that nothing is new in the world of design whether it is cars or clothes or whatever.

A Cadillac, I would imagine a Fifties model beneath the distinctive paint job

Custom car paint jobs can be incredible. It is an art form on its own; the use of flaking metal and other techniques in their multi-layered finishes is a large part of the custom car and renovation final presentation.

As with the old hand-painted and beautifully-finished coach jobs of the past it is just a modern extension of that art and is an integral part to all coach building in whatever form.


Another I am going to guess at - a late-Forties Mercury?

And to finish, the Batmobile from the original Sixties TV series.

The car was based on Ford’s luxury sub-division Lincoln concept car, the Futura, that was purchased by legendary custom car builder George Barris who created the Batmobile around it. The Futura itself was built by the Ghia firm in Turin Italy in 1954 at the enormous cost of over $2 million dollars in today's money and appeared in the film 'It Started with a Kiss' starring Debbie Reynolds.

Barris purchased the car for a nominal $1 and it languished in his workshop for some years. It was completed for the TV series in just three weeks and retained by Barris who leased it to the makers of TV series.

The car had problems during the filming and numerous changes were made including replacing the engine as the original overheated.

In 2012 Barris put the car up for sale and the following year at auction it fetched $4.2 million dollars.

Some more interesting facts here:
http://1966batmobile.com/

A real-life Batmobile was the Phantom Corsair, a concept car designed by Rust Heinz of H J Heinz family and Maurice Schwartz of the Bohman and Schwartz coach building company of Pasadena, California.

Apart from the futuristic aerodynamic shape it had electronic interior and exterior push-button door openers and various electronic indicator lights on the dashboard, the first of its kind in that area.

It was based on a Cord chassis with front wheel drive and the electrically-operated four-speed pre-selector gearbox plus fully independent suspension and adjustable shock absorbers; the engine was a Lycoming V8.

The passenger layout was unusual with four across the front and two in the rear; the rear layout was compromised by drinks cabinets! Heinz was killed in a car accident and the car never made production as planned, so the prototype is the only one that ran.

And to finish, a Bugatti TYPE 57SC Aerolithe, painstakingly and at tremendous cost restored to its former glory as seen here in this Youtube video. No problem getting your money back on one of these as alongside its stable-mate the Royale they are the most expensive cars in the world should one ever come up for sale.

The Elecktron panels used for the bodywork made it extremely difficult to build as it cannot be welded owing to combustion at low temperatures so the riveting seen on the body work is not there for effect as often thought - though it does have an effect - but it was the only way to join the panels.