On Friday I was listening to Roxy Music's "A song for Europe" and I have been thinking about it since then.
When I did the music post on Bryan Ferry I deliberately left out "A song for Europe" because I thought it would be misunderstood; those who voted to remain in the EU would have seized on it saying "look what we are losing."
But the song is not about that. It is a work of 'romance' probably inspired by Marcel Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu"
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/À_la_recherche_du_temps_perdu
The song dates from 1973 and now, 45 years later, that youthful romantic nostalgia sounds more like regret. We have a Proustian lyric delivered with the world weary cynicism of Jacques Brel. That is what it sounds like to me now. The French lyric in the song is a more or less direct translation of Ferry's English lyrics at the beginning. For some reason that French lyric has a greater emotional impact on me than the English. I don't know why, perhaps it is because the politicians have done what they always do, turned a dream into a nightmare - "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos"
"Pas d'aujourd'hui pour nous
Pour nous il n'y a rien
A partager
Sauf le passé"
I don't know what Ferry's position is on the EU but he probably thinks it wiser to remain silent but on his web site he has this to say about his greatest artistic influence -
“I was fortunate to be taught by Richard Hamilton in 1964, my first year at the Fine Art Department of Newcastle University, and from then on Richard was a great inspiration, both as an artist, and as a personality. Frighteningly intellectual, he seemed to validate my romantic leanings towards American culture, and he revealed how poetic and mysterious the modern world could be.
"As a teacher he taught by example, and his restless enquiring spirit I have tried to emulate in my own work as a musician."
.....the pop art legend Richard Hamilton... calls Bryan Ferry ‘his greatest creation’.
http://bryanferry.com/richard-hamilton/
Monday, October 22, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Friday, October 19, 2018
FRIDAY MUSIC: Mediaeval Medley, by JD
I was looking for some medieval music I had heard on Radio3 but couldn't find it on the R3 pages; but I collected some other pieces for your delight.
The oldest one here is from the 12th century and a few of them sound surprisingly modern. They are also evidence of the truth of the Latin phrase 'vita brevis, ars longa' which is translated from an aphorism by the Greek physician Hippocrates: - life is short but art is eternal!
The oldest one here is from the 12th century and a few of them sound surprisingly modern. They are also evidence of the truth of the Latin phrase 'vita brevis, ars longa' which is translated from an aphorism by the Greek physician Hippocrates: - life is short but art is eternal!
Sunday, October 14, 2018
1066: still free, or still conquered?
As the Battle of Hastings is re-enacted on-site today, I wonder, not for the first time, whether we have had a thousand years of national independence after the slaughter of Senlac, or instead have remained a conquered people ever since.
Like the joke about the prehistoric axe museum exhibit that had several changes of handle and head to counter rust and rot, but was said still to be the same axe, the people who run this country seem to me to have a sort of enduring colonial attitude to the rest of us. I think of a titled landowner, selling off his inherited land to developers for money - for what? Business owners that sell out their famous names to foreign and multinational concerns; a number of Prime Ministers from Macmillan on, surreptitiously giving up our sovereignty and the democratic habits that took four centuries and more to establish.
Is Britain more plagued by aristocratic and plutocratic traitors than other European nations? If so, is it because they see themselves as not quite British, more transnational, cheerfully looting the locals? How else can we explain the behaviour of our politicians, civil servants, industrialists, journalists and professional handlers of law and money in the great European controversy of the last decades?
In the meantime, let's go back to 1066...
On Stamford Bridge (republished from 22 May 2012)
We stood on a little jetty at the end of a private garden. The caged fowl beside the public footpath were silent. Shaded by branches, midges circled above the eddying stream. Static caravans lay haphazardly on the other bank, like cast runes.
Near here, said the leaflet, stood the original Saxon bridge, where a Viking warrior held off Harold’s army, buying time for his countrymen to scramble into position on the rise behind us. Some say he slew up to 40 Englishmen, a Biblical number.
Was he a swordsman, like the name and sign on the local inn? Or was he a giant berserker, whirling a great two-handed war-axe, both weapon and shield?
And how was he killed? Legend has it that someone got into a half barrel and floated underneath the bridge, thrusting a spear up between the planks. One can imagine the Norseman jerking onto tiptoe and dropping his blade, others jumping forward to hack him down.
Battle-memory is sharp. Back home, survivors would relate his story, acting out the planted feet, each mighty movement, the raging face. His fame would live.
As would his family. A young son might become a king’s ward, then an honoured house-carl; a daughter would have suitors for the hero’s blood in her veins, and as was iron custom, his widow’s neighbour would plough her field before his own.
Almost a thousand years have passed, and all has changed. In 1066, there was no village here; now, there are buildings of brick and stone, metalled roads, other vegetation and a different climate. Even the river will have altered, in its shape and the composition and depth of its silt.
And so has the cosmos. The glittering bridge over which his soul would pass to the Hall of the Slain (Norway was then only part-Christianized), is now an arm of the Milky Way, around which the Earth, part of a solar system unimagined in his day, has since moved trillions of miles in its quarter-billion-year orbit. More of the outer reaches of the ever-expanding Universe are now receding faster than light, so that the glint of long-extinct stars, quasars and galaxies can never reach us. All that is, is moving away from what is observed to what is recorded, then to speculation, myth and oblivion. Yet his brave deed is still remembered.
So, why is he anonymous? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him simply as a Norwegian, and the early 13th century Norse account omits him entirely. No bard inscribed him on eternity’s roll. Yet we still know the name of Horatius Cocles, who held back the Etruscans while the bridge into Rome was demolished, 1,500 years ago. Perhaps this Viking is an invention by one who understood narrative, and how stories of vast conflict need intensifying moments of delay, and an interlude at the personal scale before returning to the broader historical vista. Besides, the heart always soars at the contemplation of those who scorn certain death.
He may have been real, nevertheless. The Chronicle’s reference is matter-of-fact, and makes his action merely a rearguard defence after the death of Hardraada. But was he really here, by this shallow, narrow, island-divided branch of the Derwent?
Or, as some say, did the battle occur a mile further downstream, at what is now Scoreby, a Roman settlement straddling a wider stretch of river spanned by a bridge? That would seem a more likely place for Hardraada and Harold Godwinson’s rebellious brother Tostig to wait complacently in the warm September sunshine for further hostages and supplies from York, following their victory at Fulford five days earlier. Their forces were resting on both sides of the water, and their body armour, presumed no longer necessary, lay 15 miles away with their ships, at Riccall.
It was in this condition that the English King surprised them, having marched 185 miles from London in only four days. The occupiers on the west bank were quickly slaughtered, the remainder of the army assembling their overlapping “board-wall” and, perhaps retreating to the 100-foot rise at High Catton, resisting the attack for hours, before fragmenting and being routed. King Harald’s throat was pierced by an arrow, as (according to tradition) King Harold’s eye would be, nineteen days later; Tostig also perished, along with the overwhelming majority of the invaders.
Stamford is overshadowed by Hastings, but it was one of those hinges on which history turns. What might have happened, had the Norwegians won? Would Hardraada have gambled for the whole country, fighting William of Normandy? Had Tostig planned to be the King’s vassal, or to divide the land diagonally into Danelaw for Hardraada and some sort of Anglund for himself? Would that have lasted? Or would England have faced a series of episodes of civil strife and invasion worse even than the merciless elite-decapitation and folk-oppression of the Normans?
Had the Scandinavians succeeded, what would our language, law, custom and culture be today? Impossible to imagine.
So, reflecting on a man who might never have been, a place where something may not have happened, and a landscape which scarcely resembles that of a millennium ago, we took our souvenir earthenware mug with its horned-helmeted axeman and our misleading printed guide, and joined the queue at the lights to cross a bridge that probably had nothing to do with events that made us what we are today.
Like the joke about the prehistoric axe museum exhibit that had several changes of handle and head to counter rust and rot, but was said still to be the same axe, the people who run this country seem to me to have a sort of enduring colonial attitude to the rest of us. I think of a titled landowner, selling off his inherited land to developers for money - for what? Business owners that sell out their famous names to foreign and multinational concerns; a number of Prime Ministers from Macmillan on, surreptitiously giving up our sovereignty and the democratic habits that took four centuries and more to establish.
Is Britain more plagued by aristocratic and plutocratic traitors than other European nations? If so, is it because they see themselves as not quite British, more transnational, cheerfully looting the locals? How else can we explain the behaviour of our politicians, civil servants, industrialists, journalists and professional handlers of law and money in the great European controversy of the last decades?
In the meantime, let's go back to 1066...
On Stamford Bridge (republished from 22 May 2012)
We stood on a little jetty at the end of a private garden. The caged fowl beside the public footpath were silent. Shaded by branches, midges circled above the eddying stream. Static caravans lay haphazardly on the other bank, like cast runes.
Near here, said the leaflet, stood the original Saxon bridge, where a Viking warrior held off Harold’s army, buying time for his countrymen to scramble into position on the rise behind us. Some say he slew up to 40 Englishmen, a Biblical number.
And how was he killed? Legend has it that someone got into a half barrel and floated underneath the bridge, thrusting a spear up between the planks. One can imagine the Norseman jerking onto tiptoe and dropping his blade, others jumping forward to hack him down.
Battle-memory is sharp. Back home, survivors would relate his story, acting out the planted feet, each mighty movement, the raging face. His fame would live.
As would his family. A young son might become a king’s ward, then an honoured house-carl; a daughter would have suitors for the hero’s blood in her veins, and as was iron custom, his widow’s neighbour would plough her field before his own.
Almost a thousand years have passed, and all has changed. In 1066, there was no village here; now, there are buildings of brick and stone, metalled roads, other vegetation and a different climate. Even the river will have altered, in its shape and the composition and depth of its silt.
And so has the cosmos. The glittering bridge over which his soul would pass to the Hall of the Slain (Norway was then only part-Christianized), is now an arm of the Milky Way, around which the Earth, part of a solar system unimagined in his day, has since moved trillions of miles in its quarter-billion-year orbit. More of the outer reaches of the ever-expanding Universe are now receding faster than light, so that the glint of long-extinct stars, quasars and galaxies can never reach us. All that is, is moving away from what is observed to what is recorded, then to speculation, myth and oblivion. Yet his brave deed is still remembered.
So, why is he anonymous? The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes him simply as a Norwegian, and the early 13th century Norse account omits him entirely. No bard inscribed him on eternity’s roll. Yet we still know the name of Horatius Cocles, who held back the Etruscans while the bridge into Rome was demolished, 1,500 years ago. Perhaps this Viking is an invention by one who understood narrative, and how stories of vast conflict need intensifying moments of delay, and an interlude at the personal scale before returning to the broader historical vista. Besides, the heart always soars at the contemplation of those who scorn certain death.
He may have been real, nevertheless. The Chronicle’s reference is matter-of-fact, and makes his action merely a rearguard defence after the death of Hardraada. But was he really here, by this shallow, narrow, island-divided branch of the Derwent?
Or, as some say, did the battle occur a mile further downstream, at what is now Scoreby, a Roman settlement straddling a wider stretch of river spanned by a bridge? That would seem a more likely place for Hardraada and Harold Godwinson’s rebellious brother Tostig to wait complacently in the warm September sunshine for further hostages and supplies from York, following their victory at Fulford five days earlier. Their forces were resting on both sides of the water, and their body armour, presumed no longer necessary, lay 15 miles away with their ships, at Riccall.
It was in this condition that the English King surprised them, having marched 185 miles from London in only four days. The occupiers on the west bank were quickly slaughtered, the remainder of the army assembling their overlapping “board-wall” and, perhaps retreating to the 100-foot rise at High Catton, resisting the attack for hours, before fragmenting and being routed. King Harald’s throat was pierced by an arrow, as (according to tradition) King Harold’s eye would be, nineteen days later; Tostig also perished, along with the overwhelming majority of the invaders.
Stamford is overshadowed by Hastings, but it was one of those hinges on which history turns. What might have happened, had the Norwegians won? Would Hardraada have gambled for the whole country, fighting William of Normandy? Had Tostig planned to be the King’s vassal, or to divide the land diagonally into Danelaw for Hardraada and some sort of Anglund for himself? Would that have lasted? Or would England have faced a series of episodes of civil strife and invasion worse even than the merciless elite-decapitation and folk-oppression of the Normans?
Had the Scandinavians succeeded, what would our language, law, custom and culture be today? Impossible to imagine.
So, reflecting on a man who might never have been, a place where something may not have happened, and a landscape which scarcely resembles that of a millennium ago, we took our souvenir earthenware mug with its horned-helmeted axeman and our misleading printed guide, and joined the queue at the lights to cross a bridge that probably had nothing to do with events that made us what we are today.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Weekend Wonders: Viruses
A popular introduction to viruses:
Computer animation of a bacteriophage T4 virus attacking an E. Coli cell:
How the bacteriophage T4 virus puts itself together inside its host:
30 minutes from T4's initial attack to exploding the host and spreading multiple new copies of itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterobacteria_phage_T4#Infection_process
How? Every second, there are more chemical reactions inside one cell in your body than you could count aloud in your entire lifetime.
https://www.quora.com/On-average-how-many-chemical-reactions-happen-in-the-body-in-one-second
Computer animation of a bacteriophage T4 virus attacking an E. Coli cell:
How the bacteriophage T4 virus puts itself together inside its host:
30 minutes from T4's initial attack to exploding the host and spreading multiple new copies of itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterobacteria_phage_T4#Infection_process
How? Every second, there are more chemical reactions inside one cell in your body than you could count aloud in your entire lifetime.
https://www.quora.com/On-average-how-many-chemical-reactions-happen-in-the-body-in-one-second
Friday, October 12, 2018
FRIDAY MUSIC: Annie Haslam, by JD
According to Wiki, Annie Haslam answered an advert in 'Melody Maker' and auditioned for the band Renaissance and in 1971 she became the lead singer of the second incarnation (or rebirth if you like) of this 'folk rock' band. (folk rock? crossover? progressive rock? - hard to tell, all sorts of names have been attached to them and other bands but the music is the only thing that matters, labels are for the cloth-eared.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(band)
Forty-seven years on they are still touring and her fabulous five octave voice sounds as good as it ever did!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(band)
Forty-seven years on they are still touring and her fabulous five octave voice sounds as good as it ever did!
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
A Foreign Field, by Wiggia
We've just returned from a road trip to the south of France. As in Britain, things are changing.
In the last few years my holidays abroad have been restricted in scope mainly for medical reasons, meaning the same or similar regions have been visited more often. In the past I rarely re-visited destinations as I always wanted to see “what else was out there” but that is now behind me. What that restriction has done though is to let me see an alteration in attitudes from the general population you would not get from a one-off visit. I can assure you I do not go looking for any of this as a holiday is just that, but simply meeting people gives an insight into their thinking and as here in the UK, there has undoubtedly been a shift away from the status quo, and not just from the low paid but across the board. No, I didn’t conduct a survey; the numbers were small but rather like those who work in the NHS who a few years ago would neither speak ill of it or malign it in any way, all has changed. My French is limited so the nuances of what was said may have been misinterpreted but I don’t think I was far out in my assumptions.
What little television I saw was restricted to the news and the inevitable and endless discussion programs on French TV , as the latest Brexit cock-up (or deliberate move, who knows any more) from our own PM was headline news. The ramifications were discussed by numerous talking heads from the press and institutions; as here, almost all are pro-EU and the sneering condescending tone was very to the fore in all these affairs. Only one I saw understood the nonsense going on in our country and he was the London-based correspondent of one of the TV companies who could understand the dilemma our political elite had created. As I say, the subtleties eluded me but the gist was obvious and as here, the commentators displayed an "us and them attitude", with them always right.
Several people I met asked about Brexit and some admitted they wished France would leave. They are fed up with self-serving politicians as well as the rest of Europe. The hotel owner where we stayed summed it up: “The last President we had that cared for the people and the country was De Gaulle!” Not much different from here, then.
But that was all a small part of a successful trip. Doing another at my age as the sole driver is maybe too much now: what was a walk in the park thirty years ago is no longer easy, even with vastly superior road networks - Rotterdam for instance must have more multi-lane highways, bridges, tunnels and junctions than the whole of the UK in one town; how far we have fallen behind with infrastructure.
On the other hand some things don’t change. I have never got my head round why so many French hotels have bathrooms from the 19th century. If they worked one could forgive, but they don’t and are clapped out and often broken or leak or have poor lighting and /or have toilets that don’t fit in the space provided so you have to sit on them sideways. Sometimes you yearn for a Premier Inn.
Other things are changing in France with the near-demise of Les Routiers: the good cheap fare available almost everywhere on all the old A roads is disappearing with them. You can still eat well in France - and certainly better than anywhere outside London - yet little by little establishments are closing. It is all relative of course, as some cities in the UK struggle to provide almost any worthwhile eateries, but the change is happening.
Along with the food the wine has become more expensive. The days of the merely 50-100% mark-up on restaurant wine lists has all but vanished: the lists look much like those at home now, at the three-times-and-more area. The falling exchange value of the pound distorts to a degree but the fact remains.
This will be almost certainly my last road trip. Having to do all the driving, advancing years have all taken their toll, I just find it too tiring and stressful for something that would have been a breeze a few years back. If I make a mistake on the roads over there now I dwell on it; before, I would have just got on with it. We all make mistakes when driving on the right (despite the constant reminders from the other front seat !), not many but one can be enough. There also are a lot more strange road layouts being used, none more striking than those on our way back to the ferry in Holland, many of which exceed anything we have at home. Rotterdam's road network matches its port: enormous, dwarfing anything in the UK.
We had a satnav roadworks moment on the way to the port. We couldn't take the standard route, owing to multiple road closures for road works, but the satnav would keep directing us back to the same spot. In moments like that it is best to turn the thing off, head in the general direction that you believe is correct and turn it on again well past the closures. Then, of course, it starts afresh.
It was on one of these detours that we entered a glasshouse and shipping area for the growers. I used to buy from several Dutch firms when I was working, though I had never visited before. As with the rest of Rotterdam, the giant scale of the enterprise is a sight for the eyes. There are some big glasshouses in Lincolnshire and the new one off in Thanet is huge, but they would not even form an annex to the ones here: on Google Earth they can be seen covering endless acres of ground, with distribution centres next door like the ones that the big supermarkets have.
Back in the South the trip went well for us. We got the second summer with temperatures up to 33℃ and outdoor dining was the norm. The grape harvest was starting or finishing, depending on the grape, and the roads were clogged with small tractors lugging their loads of grapes back to the winery - always a comforting sight as a prelude to the delights to come.
Some vineyards are picking weeks earlier this year because of the weather and this has been a trend for some time. The rise in temperatures could be good news for more northern vineyards including those in Britain - as long as there is some land left after TM has concreted over everything to accommodate the never-ending flood of new arrivals to this country.
"Revenons à nos moutons.": it was very noticeable just how much Mt Ventoux dominates the landscape in this part of France. Wherever you go the summit peeks through gaps with its weather station, often with a trail of cloud created by the constant high winds; a horrible, desolate place and after seeing and paying respects at Tom Simpson's memorial a couple of years back I had no desire to repeat the exercise.
I had to restrict my vineyard visits because it would not have been a holiday. As the wife says, standing in damp caves lost its appeal a long time ago: they are all the same and the story they tell doesn’t change either. Much as I like visiting the wineries she has a point, so a planned and selective choice was made that was acceptable to the other half and all was well.
On the subject of buying direct from the wineries: you have to know your stuff. Unless it is a wine that is unobtainable in the UK you will be paying more for it than you would at home - though this was confounded by the wineries we visited in the Alsace, where it was cheaper; all very odd.
If I had my way, visiting supermarkets would be off the agenda of any holiday, but needs must, and we had to service the the front seat passenger's continual need for hydration, so our only large scale visit was for water, small bottles and lots of them ! We went to the retail parc outside of Avignon to an Auchan that needed one of those tourist trains to get around it. I have never seen such an enormous retail outlet and in fact didn’t see a large proportion of it as it was simply too far to walk to find out what was at the other end (probably Nirvana.) Exiting the place was an adventure as a sudden appearance of the Mistral made getting back to the car a 45-degree-lean experience with hair to match.
Of all the villages we visited - and there are plenty - one or two stood out. Gordes is spectacular, climbing up a steep hill overlooking a plain, but is chock full of tourists. Nearby Rousillon is better but not much. For me, others took the prize: Gigondas, a wine village, is gorgeous, has good eateries, lots of excellent wine outlets from all the major producers and fabulous views from the church at the top; the medieval village of Seguret, down the road from Gigondas, is a bit of a hike in but worth it. The list is endless. We also greatly enjoyed Entrechaux; and a peaceful gem near Sault, Monieux, that also has a very good indoor and outdoor restaurant: Les Lavandes, one of the discoveries of the trip.
For all oenophiles Chateau Neuf de Pape is a must. It is full of outlets from all the famous producers, has some decent eateries and a castle, worth a visit but crowded and lacking the charm of the numerous other villages. For scenery the Dentilles de Montmirail are breathtakingly beautiful; the road out of Beaumes- de-Venise will lead to several options, all good, and the gorges of the river Nesque are impressive, no Tarn or Ardeche but still worth the journey through them.
The charm and pull of this area is that so much is within easy reach: no need for half day drives, there is something worthwhile visiting in all directions. If there is a downside it is (as everywhere these days) the big tourist attractions that just keep getting more crowded. Avignon itself seems to have turned the main thoroughfare into one giant outside restaurant and groups led by board-carrying guides are bumping into one another everywhere. We gave the place a miss last time we were in the vicinity because of not being able to park and hordes swarming over everything, but felt we should make the effort this trip so went early; not early enough, as the car park under the top end of the thoroughfare has low ceilings and the heat build up was tremendous even at that time. Emerging into daylight I needed a respirator or something, God knows what it must be like at midday. So Avignon got a cursory surveillance and after a coffee we left the hordes to it.
The other place that was a miss to me despite everyone giving the place glowing reports was L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue, I have never heard a bad word said about the place and indeed some parts are very pretty: it is known as the Venice of Provence - a bit over the top but the river runs straight through the middle of the place and is attractive where they have taken advantage of the waterside. But the main east-west road runs right through the town as well and is very busy, the place is full of mainly crappy brocante /flea markets and antique shops and heaves with people most of whom seem to be wanting to cross the awful road. This may well have been a desirable destination some years back but now ?
So the time came to move on. To break the journey for the old fella we booked three nights in Kientzheim to the west of Colmar in the Alsace, another place we have previously visited and enjoyed. This is Rhineland and has been German, French and back again several times over the centuries and going by the names and script used you could be forgiven for thinking it was German again but it isn’t.
Our chosen village and hotel were almost a suburb of the better known Kayserberg, which was good because most tourists went there and left our destination alone. Our hotel was chosen because it had a renowned restaurant and it didn’t disappoint: no decorated plates here, real food and probably the best foie gras I have ever tasted. The hotel owned its own vineyard so the wine list was interesting in that only their wines appeared on it, a new first for me; it hardly mattered as despite reservations they were good. And the room was huge, immaculate, comfortable and had a matching bathroom - so the French can provide decent ablutions.
There were only a couple of days to spend in the Alsace. Having been there more than once before, we didn't waste time as we knew where we going for a change. A day in Colmar was justified: a lovely city, great restaurants, bars, shops and a superb indoor market with a cafe that always seems to have interesting people in there - why this should be I have no idea but the oddballs, travellers etc all seem to congregate there. We ended up speaking to a young bright American girl travelling alone in Europe, not for the first time she told us, but more cautious as to where she goes now. The late News of the World motto “all human life is here” would have applied exactly to this cafe, with customers ranging from hookers to street cleaners and suited business men and more, all in this rather cramped corner; the coffee is good too!
Outside, the street market is, like so many in France, food-orientated, with stalls selling produce from small farms - small producers of charcuterie, cheeses, great blocks of nougat, jams and honeys from artisans and more. I have always felt that if these places disappear from the likes of France, Italy and Spain the West will go with them.
On the second day I did manage to squeeze in two wineries as I wanted some bottles of Pinot Gris (known elsewhere as Pinot Grigio.) It is one of the delights in white wine and reaches great heights here It should never be confused with your supermarket Pinot Grigio, yet despite its quality it is not easy to come by in the UK so my excuse for a couple of detours was approved, just ! The two wineries visited were Domaines Schlumberger and Trimbach; nothing very French in those names. I got what I wanted and that was the end of my wine-buying and after a look round the defence walls of Kientzheim and a while watching the grape harvest come in it was time for a quick nap and our last dinner in the Alsace.
On a technical note, the big increase in the use of mechanical grape-picking machines was very noticeable. There was push-back against their use in the beginning but given the flat lands and the vast vineyards that cover those areas there must be a huge time saving and of course cost saving as well. For the better vineyards and the steeper slopes they are not practical and hand-picking will always (?) be the norm in those vineyards. Fascinating machines though, and straddling the vines with their stilts they look as though they have come from the film set of War of the Worlds.
I was not looking forward to the final big drive up the Hague as the traffic gets denser the nearer you get to the port, and it did indeed get very busy a long way out. Also with about 60-70 miles to go it started to rain, the first real clouds we had seen on this trip and a chance to clear a by now dirty piece of glass with the aid of the screen wash. As at the beginning of this story the sat nav worked overtime when we finally got to the Hague, as you never go direct to anywhere and the constant "turn left, take the next exit" went on for what seemed like hours before we were reached our final stopover: a sort of Premier Inn but it was central, not far, in a straight line from the port and our final diversion the following morning.
One final ablutions story of note: the Dutch hotel had a total loss (plugless) basin in the bathroom. Simply what is the point? They are useless as a basin and the water goes straight down the plughole (or a long slot at the back of the basin in this case.) But they do have a sense of humour: on the mirror above the basin was a sticker claiming their eco credentials about saving water…
Our ferry home was at 14.00 giving me time to fulfil a promise I made some considerable time ago to visit the grave of my uncle, my father's brother, who was killed in the Hague in September ‘44 and is buried there.To my knowledge none of us has visited this foreign field since the late forties and having researched his war record I felt that that if possible a visit would be appropriate. (I had planned it for two years ago but the trip was abandoned when I was taken into hospital a week or so before.)
He was one of a rare breed, a fighter pilot who survived at least until ‘44, serving in 3 Squadron flying Hurricane Mk IICs at the beginning of the war, being posted to the Middle East and becoming a specialist in ground attack, then returning to lead 3 Squadron, flying Hawker Tempests out of a grass field in Kent near Lydd.
The reports that I garnered for that fateful day vary. It is not unusual to have slightly conflicting versions under war conditions but in essence they were on a seek and destroy mission looking for the mobile V1 and V2 sites that were hidden along that part of the Dutch coast after the D day landings. They spotted what is believed to be a ramp going up for a V2 and he led the attack. Sadly the resultant explosion took him and his aircraft with it and very nearly his wingman, and that was that.
It has to be mentioned that aircrew losses during that invasion period were horrendous: the Squadron lost three Leaders including my uncle in four months. It was not a good time.
We found the cemetery after another round-the-houses trip that lasted 35 minutes rather than the ten depicted on the map. The cemetery is a civil one with just a small section divided off and cared for by the CWGC: immaculate as usual and just the seventy souls buried there, mostly RAF aircrew. As usual when reading the inscriptions, the age of these boys hits you: pilots of 20 years old - it does not seem possible but it is and this is what war takes from us, the cream of a generation.
Like many others who have visited war graves, thinking about what they fought for and current times I wondered what the hell the current crop of politicians of all colours in most Western nations is playing at. Was it all in vain? At moments like this you cannot help but feel it is going that way and nothing will stop it. What of course is never admitted or discussed is that without us and the Allies and the appalling loss of life there would be no Europe to squabble over. Still we paid our respects and left. It was a fitting end to a successful holiday.
Of course the trip to the ferry had a twist in the tail as the direct route was closed and so were several adjoining roads, meaning that after the satnav sent us round and back to the original no through road I had to shut it off and go in the general direction of the port and then start it again, where it found a new route, that was that then; well, no, as it directed us to the truck entrance which is over a mile away from the car entrance. We were not alone: other cars arrived and circled, not knowing where to go next as there was no signposting to the other entrance. We did make it after stopping in a garage and asking (thank God the majority of Dutch speak good English), and we found the correct entrance.
It appears that a large number of drivers had the same problem: one said he believed he had toured the Hague in full as his satnav insisted he went completely in the wrong direction. Really the ferry company must be aware of the problem and a few well-placed signs at the lorry end where everyone is seemingly directed would solve the problem; and perhaps the reliance on satellite navigation should be tempered, and decent maps carried as well - the big road map was no use in this situation.
There followed an uneventful ferry crossing to Harwich and then onto country lanes (which would be motorways in any other country) from the port and home in the dark to a nice cup of tea. The emptying of the car laden with cases of wine and bags of clothes needing washing would wait till morning; too tired for all that, late at night.
In the last few years my holidays abroad have been restricted in scope mainly for medical reasons, meaning the same or similar regions have been visited more often. In the past I rarely re-visited destinations as I always wanted to see “what else was out there” but that is now behind me. What that restriction has done though is to let me see an alteration in attitudes from the general population you would not get from a one-off visit. I can assure you I do not go looking for any of this as a holiday is just that, but simply meeting people gives an insight into their thinking and as here in the UK, there has undoubtedly been a shift away from the status quo, and not just from the low paid but across the board. No, I didn’t conduct a survey; the numbers were small but rather like those who work in the NHS who a few years ago would neither speak ill of it or malign it in any way, all has changed. My French is limited so the nuances of what was said may have been misinterpreted but I don’t think I was far out in my assumptions.
What little television I saw was restricted to the news and the inevitable and endless discussion programs on French TV , as the latest Brexit cock-up (or deliberate move, who knows any more) from our own PM was headline news. The ramifications were discussed by numerous talking heads from the press and institutions; as here, almost all are pro-EU and the sneering condescending tone was very to the fore in all these affairs. Only one I saw understood the nonsense going on in our country and he was the London-based correspondent of one of the TV companies who could understand the dilemma our political elite had created. As I say, the subtleties eluded me but the gist was obvious and as here, the commentators displayed an "us and them attitude", with them always right.
Several people I met asked about Brexit and some admitted they wished France would leave. They are fed up with self-serving politicians as well as the rest of Europe. The hotel owner where we stayed summed it up: “The last President we had that cared for the people and the country was De Gaulle!” Not much different from here, then.
But that was all a small part of a successful trip. Doing another at my age as the sole driver is maybe too much now: what was a walk in the park thirty years ago is no longer easy, even with vastly superior road networks - Rotterdam for instance must have more multi-lane highways, bridges, tunnels and junctions than the whole of the UK in one town; how far we have fallen behind with infrastructure.
On the other hand some things don’t change. I have never got my head round why so many French hotels have bathrooms from the 19th century. If they worked one could forgive, but they don’t and are clapped out and often broken or leak or have poor lighting and /or have toilets that don’t fit in the space provided so you have to sit on them sideways. Sometimes you yearn for a Premier Inn.
Other things are changing in France with the near-demise of Les Routiers: the good cheap fare available almost everywhere on all the old A roads is disappearing with them. You can still eat well in France - and certainly better than anywhere outside London - yet little by little establishments are closing. It is all relative of course, as some cities in the UK struggle to provide almost any worthwhile eateries, but the change is happening.
Along with the food the wine has become more expensive. The days of the merely 50-100% mark-up on restaurant wine lists has all but vanished: the lists look much like those at home now, at the three-times-and-more area. The falling exchange value of the pound distorts to a degree but the fact remains.
This will be almost certainly my last road trip. Having to do all the driving, advancing years have all taken their toll, I just find it too tiring and stressful for something that would have been a breeze a few years back. If I make a mistake on the roads over there now I dwell on it; before, I would have just got on with it. We all make mistakes when driving on the right (despite the constant reminders from the other front seat !), not many but one can be enough. There also are a lot more strange road layouts being used, none more striking than those on our way back to the ferry in Holland, many of which exceed anything we have at home. Rotterdam's road network matches its port: enormous, dwarfing anything in the UK.
We had a satnav roadworks moment on the way to the port. We couldn't take the standard route, owing to multiple road closures for road works, but the satnav would keep directing us back to the same spot. In moments like that it is best to turn the thing off, head in the general direction that you believe is correct and turn it on again well past the closures. Then, of course, it starts afresh.
It was on one of these detours that we entered a glasshouse and shipping area for the growers. I used to buy from several Dutch firms when I was working, though I had never visited before. As with the rest of Rotterdam, the giant scale of the enterprise is a sight for the eyes. There are some big glasshouses in Lincolnshire and the new one off in Thanet is huge, but they would not even form an annex to the ones here: on Google Earth they can be seen covering endless acres of ground, with distribution centres next door like the ones that the big supermarkets have.
Back in the South the trip went well for us. We got the second summer with temperatures up to 33℃ and outdoor dining was the norm. The grape harvest was starting or finishing, depending on the grape, and the roads were clogged with small tractors lugging their loads of grapes back to the winery - always a comforting sight as a prelude to the delights to come.
Some vineyards are picking weeks earlier this year because of the weather and this has been a trend for some time. The rise in temperatures could be good news for more northern vineyards including those in Britain - as long as there is some land left after TM has concreted over everything to accommodate the never-ending flood of new arrivals to this country.
"Revenons à nos moutons.": it was very noticeable just how much Mt Ventoux dominates the landscape in this part of France. Wherever you go the summit peeks through gaps with its weather station, often with a trail of cloud created by the constant high winds; a horrible, desolate place and after seeing and paying respects at Tom Simpson's memorial a couple of years back I had no desire to repeat the exercise.
I had to restrict my vineyard visits because it would not have been a holiday. As the wife says, standing in damp caves lost its appeal a long time ago: they are all the same and the story they tell doesn’t change either. Much as I like visiting the wineries she has a point, so a planned and selective choice was made that was acceptable to the other half and all was well.
On the subject of buying direct from the wineries: you have to know your stuff. Unless it is a wine that is unobtainable in the UK you will be paying more for it than you would at home - though this was confounded by the wineries we visited in the Alsace, where it was cheaper; all very odd.
If I had my way, visiting supermarkets would be off the agenda of any holiday, but needs must, and we had to service the the front seat passenger's continual need for hydration, so our only large scale visit was for water, small bottles and lots of them ! We went to the retail parc outside of Avignon to an Auchan that needed one of those tourist trains to get around it. I have never seen such an enormous retail outlet and in fact didn’t see a large proportion of it as it was simply too far to walk to find out what was at the other end (probably Nirvana.) Exiting the place was an adventure as a sudden appearance of the Mistral made getting back to the car a 45-degree-lean experience with hair to match.
 |
| Gigondas |
Of all the villages we visited - and there are plenty - one or two stood out. Gordes is spectacular, climbing up a steep hill overlooking a plain, but is chock full of tourists. Nearby Rousillon is better but not much. For me, others took the prize: Gigondas, a wine village, is gorgeous, has good eateries, lots of excellent wine outlets from all the major producers and fabulous views from the church at the top; the medieval village of Seguret, down the road from Gigondas, is a bit of a hike in but worth it. The list is endless. We also greatly enjoyed Entrechaux; and a peaceful gem near Sault, Monieux, that also has a very good indoor and outdoor restaurant: Les Lavandes, one of the discoveries of the trip.
 |
| Les Lavandes Restaurant, Monieux |
For all oenophiles Chateau Neuf de Pape is a must. It is full of outlets from all the famous producers, has some decent eateries and a castle, worth a visit but crowded and lacking the charm of the numerous other villages. For scenery the Dentilles de Montmirail are breathtakingly beautiful; the road out of Beaumes- de-Venise will lead to several options, all good, and the gorges of the river Nesque are impressive, no Tarn or Ardeche but still worth the journey through them.
 |
| A village in the Dentilles |
The other place that was a miss to me despite everyone giving the place glowing reports was L’isle-sur-la-Sorgue, I have never heard a bad word said about the place and indeed some parts are very pretty: it is known as the Venice of Provence - a bit over the top but the river runs straight through the middle of the place and is attractive where they have taken advantage of the waterside. But the main east-west road runs right through the town as well and is very busy, the place is full of mainly crappy brocante /flea markets and antique shops and heaves with people most of whom seem to be wanting to cross the awful road. This may well have been a desirable destination some years back but now ?
So the time came to move on. To break the journey for the old fella we booked three nights in Kientzheim to the west of Colmar in the Alsace, another place we have previously visited and enjoyed. This is Rhineland and has been German, French and back again several times over the centuries and going by the names and script used you could be forgiven for thinking it was German again but it isn’t.
 | ||
A canal in Colmar
|
There were only a couple of days to spend in the Alsace. Having been there more than once before, we didn't waste time as we knew where we going for a change. A day in Colmar was justified: a lovely city, great restaurants, bars, shops and a superb indoor market with a cafe that always seems to have interesting people in there - why this should be I have no idea but the oddballs, travellers etc all seem to congregate there. We ended up speaking to a young bright American girl travelling alone in Europe, not for the first time she told us, but more cautious as to where she goes now. The late News of the World motto “all human life is here” would have applied exactly to this cafe, with customers ranging from hookers to street cleaners and suited business men and more, all in this rather cramped corner; the coffee is good too!
Outside, the street market is, like so many in France, food-orientated, with stalls selling produce from small farms - small producers of charcuterie, cheeses, great blocks of nougat, jams and honeys from artisans and more. I have always felt that if these places disappear from the likes of France, Italy and Spain the West will go with them.
On the second day I did manage to squeeze in two wineries as I wanted some bottles of Pinot Gris (known elsewhere as Pinot Grigio.) It is one of the delights in white wine and reaches great heights here It should never be confused with your supermarket Pinot Grigio, yet despite its quality it is not easy to come by in the UK so my excuse for a couple of detours was approved, just ! The two wineries visited were Domaines Schlumberger and Trimbach; nothing very French in those names. I got what I wanted and that was the end of my wine-buying and after a look round the defence walls of Kientzheim and a while watching the grape harvest come in it was time for a quick nap and our last dinner in the Alsace.
On a technical note, the big increase in the use of mechanical grape-picking machines was very noticeable. There was push-back against their use in the beginning but given the flat lands and the vast vineyards that cover those areas there must be a huge time saving and of course cost saving as well. For the better vineyards and the steeper slopes they are not practical and hand-picking will always (?) be the norm in those vineyards. Fascinating machines though, and straddling the vines with their stilts they look as though they have come from the film set of War of the Worlds.
I was not looking forward to the final big drive up the Hague as the traffic gets denser the nearer you get to the port, and it did indeed get very busy a long way out. Also with about 60-70 miles to go it started to rain, the first real clouds we had seen on this trip and a chance to clear a by now dirty piece of glass with the aid of the screen wash. As at the beginning of this story the sat nav worked overtime when we finally got to the Hague, as you never go direct to anywhere and the constant "turn left, take the next exit" went on for what seemed like hours before we were reached our final stopover: a sort of Premier Inn but it was central, not far, in a straight line from the port and our final diversion the following morning.
One final ablutions story of note: the Dutch hotel had a total loss (plugless) basin in the bathroom. Simply what is the point? They are useless as a basin and the water goes straight down the plughole (or a long slot at the back of the basin in this case.) But they do have a sense of humour: on the mirror above the basin was a sticker claiming their eco credentials about saving water…
Our ferry home was at 14.00 giving me time to fulfil a promise I made some considerable time ago to visit the grave of my uncle, my father's brother, who was killed in the Hague in September ‘44 and is buried there.To my knowledge none of us has visited this foreign field since the late forties and having researched his war record I felt that that if possible a visit would be appropriate. (I had planned it for two years ago but the trip was abandoned when I was taken into hospital a week or so before.)
 |
| Westduin Cemetery, The Hague, Netherlands |
He was one of a rare breed, a fighter pilot who survived at least until ‘44, serving in 3 Squadron flying Hurricane Mk IICs at the beginning of the war, being posted to the Middle East and becoming a specialist in ground attack, then returning to lead 3 Squadron, flying Hawker Tempests out of a grass field in Kent near Lydd.
The reports that I garnered for that fateful day vary. It is not unusual to have slightly conflicting versions under war conditions but in essence they were on a seek and destroy mission looking for the mobile V1 and V2 sites that were hidden along that part of the Dutch coast after the D day landings. They spotted what is believed to be a ramp going up for a V2 and he led the attack. Sadly the resultant explosion took him and his aircraft with it and very nearly his wingman, and that was that.
It has to be mentioned that aircrew losses during that invasion period were horrendous: the Squadron lost three Leaders including my uncle in four months. It was not a good time.
We found the cemetery after another round-the-houses trip that lasted 35 minutes rather than the ten depicted on the map. The cemetery is a civil one with just a small section divided off and cared for by the CWGC: immaculate as usual and just the seventy souls buried there, mostly RAF aircrew. As usual when reading the inscriptions, the age of these boys hits you: pilots of 20 years old - it does not seem possible but it is and this is what war takes from us, the cream of a generation.
Like many others who have visited war graves, thinking about what they fought for and current times I wondered what the hell the current crop of politicians of all colours in most Western nations is playing at. Was it all in vain? At moments like this you cannot help but feel it is going that way and nothing will stop it. What of course is never admitted or discussed is that without us and the Allies and the appalling loss of life there would be no Europe to squabble over. Still we paid our respects and left. It was a fitting end to a successful holiday.
Of course the trip to the ferry had a twist in the tail as the direct route was closed and so were several adjoining roads, meaning that after the satnav sent us round and back to the original no through road I had to shut it off and go in the general direction of the port and then start it again, where it found a new route, that was that then; well, no, as it directed us to the truck entrance which is over a mile away from the car entrance. We were not alone: other cars arrived and circled, not knowing where to go next as there was no signposting to the other entrance. We did make it after stopping in a garage and asking (thank God the majority of Dutch speak good English), and we found the correct entrance.
It appears that a large number of drivers had the same problem: one said he believed he had toured the Hague in full as his satnav insisted he went completely in the wrong direction. Really the ferry company must be aware of the problem and a few well-placed signs at the lorry end where everyone is seemingly directed would solve the problem; and perhaps the reliance on satellite navigation should be tempered, and decent maps carried as well - the big road map was no use in this situation.
There followed an uneventful ferry crossing to Harwich and then onto country lanes (which would be motorways in any other country) from the port and home in the dark to a nice cup of tea. The emptying of the car laden with cases of wine and bags of clothes needing washing would wait till morning; too tired for all that, late at night.
Sunday, October 07, 2018
EU: Conservative cattle farmers and Labour's blind band of brothers
 |
| http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/crane/50.htm |
- Macmillan (1960/61) decides to join the EEC, sets Heath on to explore the constitutional issues.
- Heath goes in (wef 1.1.73), lying about the implications for national sovereignty.
- Cameron calls the second referendum to shut up what he mistakenly believes to be a small sect of "fruitcakes and loons", then runs away when it all goes wrong.
- May spends more than two years apparently quite deliberately time-wasting, then goes behind her Brexit secretary's back to make a plan which if anything is worse than the status quo.
I can't understand why some Remainers paint Brexit as a "far-right" project, especially since some of the most vocal critics of the EU have been on the Left.
Both Brexit and Remain are cross-party stances, each having two legs:
- Some on the Right want the EU because for them it means money and power, position and pension, and it pleases the directors of large businesses who can arbitrage workforce pay and conditions.
- Some on the Left see the EU as a socialist brotherhood, blindly ignoring what the EU has meant for the PIIGS; and for us, with our UK/EU £67 billion trade deficit. (There was only one year of our membership when we didn't have a deficit; funnily enough, the year of the first Referendum - 1975.) Over forty years of this bleeding has left much of British industry and the British workforce prostrate, and Labour's Peter Shore drew attention to it very early on, in his contribution to the Oxford Union's 1975 debate.
- Conversely, some on the Right campaign for Brexit, presenting the alternative to the EU as global free trade, which if it means even cheaper imports of food stands fair to kill what's left of our farming and fishing etc while pleasing the Institute of Directors. My guess is that under this plan the national accounts would improve for a while, then crash as the numbers of the unemployed and underpaid grew and their claims on the Welfare State took on crisis proportions; that, and/or major civil unrest.
- Then there are those on the Left who see (in my view correctly) the key narrative of British history as the people versus the Power, so that we now have in effect a republic disguised as a monarchy. It is a very imperfect republic and does not work for the interests of all, but there are many restraints on the executive, not least trial by jury (which is under attack by the Power even in this country) and the presumption of innocence. In legislation too, the Power has often attempted to free itself from Parliamentary supervision by the introduction of "Henry the Eighth" clauses that grant Ministers and organisations the right to make additional rules extempore.
There are some signs of a clearer-eyed opposition to EU-cum-globalism.
Seeing the neoliberal approach to Brexit as represented by Messrs Farage and Rees-Mogg, plus the semi-chaos of UKIP post-Farage, the original founder of UKIP has set up a Left alternative: Professor Alan Sked's Clean Brexit: http://cleanbrexit.com/
Similarly, Professor Philip Whyman has set out ideas for reclaiming national control and rebuilding the sort of industrial economy that can offer better than "Just About Managing" (bravely struggling) for the people:
http://www.civitas.org.uk/publications/the-left-case-for-brexit/ (free download).
Good luck to them; that is to say, to us.
Saturday, October 06, 2018
Friday, October 05, 2018
FRIDAY MUSIC: Masters of War, by JD
Following on from last week's music post -
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/09/friday-music-salad-days-by-jd.html
- America changed after those 'Salad Days'
The wave after wave of immigrants from 'the old world' brought with them their own culture and way of life to 'the new world'.
The immigrants and settlers were almost exclusively Christian; the Italians and the Irish brought their Catholicism, the Germans and Nordic peoples brought with them their own versions of Protestantism. They wished to make a fresh start, to build their own 'American Dream' and they did, based on their own traditions in the old world; of family, community and Christianity.
The 'Founding Fathers' of the new nation, on the other hand, were not Christians, they were Deists. They believed in a God but did not believe there was any sort of divine intervention in the world, and they did not accept the divinity of Jesus, rather like Islam which includes Isa ibn Maryam in the Koran as just another prophet in a long line of prophets. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Deism
Their core values were those of the French Revolution, of the 'Enlightenment' Their dream was the dream of reason and we know how that turned out. http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-cream-of-reason-revisited-by-jd.html
And as a consequence the American Revolution followed the same path as the French Revolution but much more slowly. As Goya noted, "No one is innocent once he has seen what I have seen. I witnessed how the noblest ideals of freedom and progress were transformed into lances, sabres, and bayonets. Arson, looting and rape, all supposed to bring a New Order, in reality only exchanged the garrotte for the gallows." - Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
The Founding Fathers of the USA believed in violence as a way of life. They believed in Naqoyqatsi which is a Hopi word (more correctly written naqö̀yqatsi) meaning "life as war". Naqoyqatsi is also translated as "civilized violence" and "a life of killing each other."
“I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.” - President Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p.297
https://consortiumnews.com/2011/06/11/teddy-roosevelts-bloodlust/
The USA has been at war with somebody or other for almost its entire existence and there is no sign yet of any end to it.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-years-since-1776.html
And here is an example of the aforementioned Naqoyqatsi:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/
"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it." - Red Cloud
"What treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they have kept? Not one." - Sitting Bull
There are no sacred buildings or monuments in the USA, the Founding Fathers did not believe in such things. There are no sacred places in the USA because the Founding Fathers and their successors were unable to discover such locations; they did not believe in divine inspiration. There are sacred lands for sure in the USA but known only to the indigenous peoples.
"America is pregnant with promises and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable."
- Emerlist Davjack
http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/09/friday-music-salad-days-by-jd.html
- America changed after those 'Salad Days'
The wave after wave of immigrants from 'the old world' brought with them their own culture and way of life to 'the new world'.
The immigrants and settlers were almost exclusively Christian; the Italians and the Irish brought their Catholicism, the Germans and Nordic peoples brought with them their own versions of Protestantism. They wished to make a fresh start, to build their own 'American Dream' and they did, based on their own traditions in the old world; of family, community and Christianity.
The 'Founding Fathers' of the new nation, on the other hand, were not Christians, they were Deists. They believed in a God but did not believe there was any sort of divine intervention in the world, and they did not accept the divinity of Jesus, rather like Islam which includes Isa ibn Maryam in the Koran as just another prophet in a long line of prophets. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Deism
Their core values were those of the French Revolution, of the 'Enlightenment' Their dream was the dream of reason and we know how that turned out. http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-cream-of-reason-revisited-by-jd.html
And as a consequence the American Revolution followed the same path as the French Revolution but much more slowly. As Goya noted, "No one is innocent once he has seen what I have seen. I witnessed how the noblest ideals of freedom and progress were transformed into lances, sabres, and bayonets. Arson, looting and rape, all supposed to bring a New Order, in reality only exchanged the garrotte for the gallows." - Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
The Founding Fathers of the USA believed in violence as a way of life. They believed in Naqoyqatsi which is a Hopi word (more correctly written naqö̀yqatsi) meaning "life as war". Naqoyqatsi is also translated as "civilized violence" and "a life of killing each other."
“I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.” - President Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, p.297
https://consortiumnews.com/2011/06/11/teddy-roosevelts-bloodlust/
The USA has been at war with somebody or other for almost its entire existence and there is no sign yet of any end to it.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-222-239-years-since-1776.html
And here is an example of the aforementioned Naqoyqatsi:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ulysses-grant-launched-illegal-war-plains-indians-180960787/
"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it." - Red Cloud
"What treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they have kept? Not one." - Sitting Bull
There are no sacred buildings or monuments in the USA, the Founding Fathers did not believe in such things. There are no sacred places in the USA because the Founding Fathers and their successors were unable to discover such locations; they did not believe in divine inspiration. There are sacred lands for sure in the USA but known only to the indigenous peoples.
"America is pregnant with promises and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable."
- Emerlist Davjack
Wednesday, October 03, 2018
Quote of the Day and a Quiz
"It is common, especially in big companies, to have an organisation staffed by ostensibly experienced and qualified people who are well paid, but simply decline to do their jobs. Instead, they busy themselves with other activities, often under the direction of a manager who never properly understood what they should be doing in the first place. It’s what happens when an organisation’s processes become divorced from the goals they are supposed to achieve, and managers are rewarded solely for following the process regardless of outcomes."
- Tim Newman, 03.10.2018
Before clicking on the link below, say:
- What field of work /organisation is under consideration here
- Where else the above comment might justifiably be applied
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/8291/
- Tim Newman, 03.10.2018
Before clicking on the link below, say:
- What field of work /organisation is under consideration here
- Where else the above comment might justifiably be applied
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/8291/
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Weekend Wonders: the Tardigrade
 |
| http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150313-the-toughest-animals-on-earth |
Friday, September 28, 2018
FRIDAY MUSIC: Salad Days, by JD
Before he made the "Star Wars" series of films, the director George Lucas made a few low budget films. One of them turned out to be the best film he ever made - "American Graffiti" and in 1995, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The film is set in 1962 and is to a certain extent autobiographical in that it reflects Lucas' own teenage years in Modesto, California. The story line is in reality incosequential because the film is a study of the cruising and rock and roll cultures popular among the post–World War II baby boom generation. The film is a series of vignettes, telling the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures over a single night, that night being the last day of summer. The following day would see one of the principal characters leaving town to start college. The series of vignettes is set against a soundtrack of 41 popular songs of the period with the voice of radio DJ, Wolfman Jack, hovering in the background. Each of the songs reflects the story line as it unfolds which gives an operatic quality to the film, a teenage opera in fact.
It is 45 years since the film was released and I remember it well; looking at the clips it dawned on me that 1962 was a pivotal year. It was the end of an age of innocence and optimism, it was when the 'American Dream' died.
In 1963 JFK was murdered and then the country sank into the quagmire of Vietnam. Everything changed, nothing would ever be the same again.
Lucas was aware of the change of mood because the film ends with stills of the four main characters and captions telling of their subsequent fates.
But the music, ah the music. It was innocent, it was optimistic but above all it was singalong melodic and beautifully nostalgic for an oldie like me!
The film is set in 1962 and is to a certain extent autobiographical in that it reflects Lucas' own teenage years in Modesto, California. The story line is in reality incosequential because the film is a study of the cruising and rock and roll cultures popular among the post–World War II baby boom generation. The film is a series of vignettes, telling the story of a group of teenagers and their adventures over a single night, that night being the last day of summer. The following day would see one of the principal characters leaving town to start college. The series of vignettes is set against a soundtrack of 41 popular songs of the period with the voice of radio DJ, Wolfman Jack, hovering in the background. Each of the songs reflects the story line as it unfolds which gives an operatic quality to the film, a teenage opera in fact.
It is 45 years since the film was released and I remember it well; looking at the clips it dawned on me that 1962 was a pivotal year. It was the end of an age of innocence and optimism, it was when the 'American Dream' died.
In 1963 JFK was murdered and then the country sank into the quagmire of Vietnam. Everything changed, nothing would ever be the same again.
Lucas was aware of the change of mood because the film ends with stills of the four main characters and captions telling of their subsequent fates.
But the music, ah the music. It was innocent, it was optimistic but above all it was singalong melodic and beautifully nostalgic for an oldie like me!
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Killing Killing Eve
Killing Eve, an eight-part TV series made for BBC America, is successful and has been widely praised - even by Peter Hitchens*, who thereby persuaded me to have a look.
But I wonder if it is not obscene.
The 1959 Obscene Publications Act, later updated in the Broadcasting Act 1990 to include broadcast matter, makes the issue one of whether a publication is likely to "deprave and corrupt."
The test was explained - yet not fully clarified - in an 1868 case: "the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."
Note that it does not have to have this effect on everyone who accesses the material, merely those who are susceptible.
What concerns me is not only the extreme violence, though there is an incident in the first episode I would pay money to be able to forget entirely. It is the complete lack of empathy and even sadistic joy shown by the murderess, smilingly observing the suffering of her dying victims.
We are a simian species, and "monkey see, monkey do."
Film director Stanley Kubrick withdrew his 1971 film "A Clockwork Orange" from British cinemas in 1973 following a murder in Bletchley that seems to have had some connection. Kubrick denied art's power to influence behaviour: "people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures." But the question remains, can art influence someone who has that potential, to actualise it?
I have read - and perhaps my source, which I can't remember, was wrong - that one purpose of the ancient Games in Rome was to keep encouraging violent tendencies and lack of empathy in the Roman people so that they could continue to be the fearsomely cruel and warlike masters of the known world.
Even a libertarian is likely to draw the line at allowing freedoms that harm others. And if some susceptible person in my neighbourhood watches this kind of material and could be influenced to unleash his demon on me or mine, I have a legitimate interest in questioning the licensing of material likely to deprave.
In the UK case where Lewis Daynes murdered Breck Brednar, a boy he had groomed on the Internet, the boys had spent time playing violent video games online together, and Daynes was also said to have been "obsessed with videos of terrorist beheadings." Not all imagination leads to action, but don't many actions begin in imagination?
The first episode of Killing Eve is supposed to have been seen by over 5 million people in the UK so far (live or streamed afterwards). The wider the audience, the greater the chances that someone on the edge will see it and do - something.
Killing Eve is most skilfully acted and directed, with high production values. But if its effect is obscene, then the better it is made, the worse it offends.
___________________________
* "I didn't expect or even want to like the new BBC series Killing Eve, starring Jodie Comer, pictured, as a distractingly beautiful embodiment of pure evil.
"The trailers put me off. But the programme itself is an unexpected joy, looking and sounding witty, refusing to treat viewers as idiots, and, actually, a lot better than the overrated Bodyguard."
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6197645/PETER-HITCHENS-Norway-escape-PM-begging-Brussels.html
But I wonder if it is not obscene.
The 1959 Obscene Publications Act, later updated in the Broadcasting Act 1990 to include broadcast matter, makes the issue one of whether a publication is likely to "deprave and corrupt."
The test was explained - yet not fully clarified - in an 1868 case: "the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."
Note that it does not have to have this effect on everyone who accesses the material, merely those who are susceptible.
What concerns me is not only the extreme violence, though there is an incident in the first episode I would pay money to be able to forget entirely. It is the complete lack of empathy and even sadistic joy shown by the murderess, smilingly observing the suffering of her dying victims.
We are a simian species, and "monkey see, monkey do."
Film director Stanley Kubrick withdrew his 1971 film "A Clockwork Orange" from British cinemas in 1973 following a murder in Bletchley that seems to have had some connection. Kubrick denied art's power to influence behaviour: "people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures." But the question remains, can art influence someone who has that potential, to actualise it?
I have read - and perhaps my source, which I can't remember, was wrong - that one purpose of the ancient Games in Rome was to keep encouraging violent tendencies and lack of empathy in the Roman people so that they could continue to be the fearsomely cruel and warlike masters of the known world.
Even a libertarian is likely to draw the line at allowing freedoms that harm others. And if some susceptible person in my neighbourhood watches this kind of material and could be influenced to unleash his demon on me or mine, I have a legitimate interest in questioning the licensing of material likely to deprave.
In the UK case where Lewis Daynes murdered Breck Brednar, a boy he had groomed on the Internet, the boys had spent time playing violent video games online together, and Daynes was also said to have been "obsessed with videos of terrorist beheadings." Not all imagination leads to action, but don't many actions begin in imagination?
The first episode of Killing Eve is supposed to have been seen by over 5 million people in the UK so far (live or streamed afterwards). The wider the audience, the greater the chances that someone on the edge will see it and do - something.
Killing Eve is most skilfully acted and directed, with high production values. But if its effect is obscene, then the better it is made, the worse it offends.
___________________________
* "I didn't expect or even want to like the new BBC series Killing Eve, starring Jodie Comer, pictured, as a distractingly beautiful embodiment of pure evil.
"The trailers put me off. But the programme itself is an unexpected joy, looking and sounding witty, refusing to treat viewers as idiots, and, actually, a lot better than the overrated Bodyguard."
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6197645/PETER-HITCHENS-Norway-escape-PM-begging-Brussels.html
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Friday, September 21, 2018
FRIDAY MUSIC: Sam Amidon, by JD
The BBC Proms may be over but they continue to provide a rich source of music, sometimes in ways that were not quite intended. There was one prom given over to Jacob Collier who is apparently a rising star of the music world. But his hyperactive performance, running around the stage like an excitable toddler, trying to play every instrument in reach, was underwhelming to say the least. His attempt at playing a version of a song by the pop group The Police was even worse than the original; no mean achievement.
The redeeming feature of the night were his guest artists of whom Sam Amidon was outstanding. He is a folk singer in the American tradition but he draws on many influences to modify his style of folk music and give it an individual twist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Amidon
The redeeming feature of the night were his guest artists of whom Sam Amidon was outstanding. He is a folk singer in the American tradition but he draws on many influences to modify his style of folk music and give it an individual twist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Amidon
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Brexit and free trade: between the devil and the deep blue sea
The EU has forgotten its mission, and we haven't worked out ours.
The European Union began as a common market, gradually abolishing tariffs internally while agreeing on external tariffs, so economically it was about the Four Freedoms (goods and services, capital and labour) among its members and protectionism in their collective relations with the rest of the world.
This would work so long as the members were largely similar. When the European Economic Community was first formed in 1957, its members were the Benelux countries plus France, Germany and Italy: a contiguous grouping of modern industrial nations. They could realistically aim for freedom of movement without risking potentially destabilising levels of migration. Having said that, Southern Italy lagged behind in its economic development and there was a long history of migration from there to northern Italian cities and abroad to the USA; yet otherwise, there were not such stark inequalities as to threaten chaotic mass population flows.
But the EU and its antecedents were not merely or even principally about establishing a trading bloc, and as its membership grew so did the tensions between its disparate objectives. For example, the founders of the EU aimed to prevent another war in continental Europe, yet the EU has interfered in the now-divided Ukraine in a way that threatens a direct confrontation between major global military powers. Also, the ambition to steer the EU into becoming a single nation via (among other things) fiscal union led the EU to welcome Greece into the Eurozone despite disqualifications that Goldman Sachs helped the Greeks to disguise and the EU's leadership pretended not to see; with distressing consequences for the Greek nation. Again, though the underlying philosophy of the EU is socialist, the admission of countries with far lower systems of wages and prices opened the way for economic competition that depressed the wages and conditions of the working classes of the more advanced EU members - a process both warned about by the late Sir James Goldsmith in 1994 at the time of the GATT talks and also now admitted in a recent publication widely misreported as contradicting such claims:“Some evidence that migration reduces employment and raises unemployment of some groups (e.g. the young and less well-educated)… Some evidence that migration has reduced earnings growth for the lower-paid… Evidence that migration, especially lower-skilled, has reduced the prices of [i.e.wages earned in] personal services… Evidence that migration has raised house prices, more in areas where housebuilding is more restricted.”
Enlargement was not the initiative of the EU only; other nations had to decide whether it was in their interest to apply for membership. In this context it is worth noting that the British Prime Minister who decided that this was the future for the UK was not Harold Wilson or Ted Heath but Heath's former boss, Harold Macmillan, who had set Heath on to explore the constitutional implications of membership. Lord Kilmuir replied to Heath in December 1960 (see end of linked document) warning of the many difficulties involved.
By the way, it has been said that the British electorate were not told, later, in 1975, of the concomitant loss of sovereignty. Not so; but there was an orchestrated campaign to bury the bad news in verbiage and drown it in talk of "FOOD and MONEY and JOBS."
Yet the then PM decided to go ahead: "On 26 July 1961, Harold Macmillan, the UK prime minister, informally told the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, that his government had finally come to a decision to join the EEC as a full member. With respect to this hotly-debated issue, Macmillan wrote that: 'after weighing all the considerations we have reached the conclusion that the right course for us is to seek to enter into negotiations with the Six'."
In turn this threatened Ireland's existing economic arrangements with the UK: "In brief, Ireland exported agricultural products to the UK without restrictions and exported industrial products under a preferential arrangement; in turn, the UK had recourse to cheap agricultural goods and a market for its industrial goods. Of course, if such an agreement was to continue indefinitely, Ireland would have been economically protected, though at the same time, it would also still be in a position of acute, even reinforced, dependence. However, the prospect of losing these arrangements, first to EFTA and now to the EEC, had a remarkably sobering effect upon Irish policy-makers." In the event, Ireland and the UK joined at the same time in 1973, thus getting round the hard-border problem of its day.
But Ireland's difficulties did not end there. She joined the Eurozone in 1999, prompting an influx of money that not only filled the pubs for Sunday lunches but also inflated the housing market; and the fallout from the property-related Global Financial Crisis less than a decade later broke her two biggest banks, despite the Irish Government's underwriting their losses. In the interests of monetary conservatism the European Central bank then required Eire to repay the €31 billion of failed emergency support, financing the operation with a huge loan from the ECB. The still-ongoing process of withdrawing such a large amount of money from circulation (over €10,000 per registered voter, ignoring the "money multiplier" effect) plus paying the interest, has crippled Ireland's economy with deflation.
In short, the inconsistent aims of the EU have led to difficulties that no-one would have wished; difficulties compounded by an organisational structure designed to foster "ever-closer union" at the cost of suppressing democratic feedback; a structure reminiscent of the 1871 Wilhelmine Constitution of Germany, as I said some time ago, and which similarly has the potential to provoke social unrest, and the defiance and possibly even secession of some member states.
Resistance to Britain's membership of the EU came from the patriots of the British Left as well as from those of the Right. Coldly glared at by Ted Heath, Peter Shore delivered a stirring pre-Referendum speech to the Oxford Union in 1975, speaking not only of the deliberate and unwarranted undermining of national confidence but also of our deteriorating trade and financial balance as a consequence of having joined. Whether or not the imbalance (e.g. in the coal and steel markets) was deliberately planned by the EU, as some allege, the accumulated losses plus the financial support we contributed to the Union have cost us dearly, not merely in money but in domestically-owned productive capacity.
Over 40 years ago, Peter Shore referred ironically to misconceptions of our "tottering about" the world stage, but it is now a moot point whether we can indeed stand on our own two feet any more. Much of our manufacturing, even of our infrastructure, is multinational- or foreign-owned, as Alex Brummer detailed five years ago in his book "Britain For Sale." We have lost so many levers of our economic power and it will be a major battle to recover them, to rebuild. Do we have the stomach for the fight?
Some in the pro-Brexit camp offer as an alternative to EU serfdom, the freedom to trade globally. Now if this means without any carefully-considered system of tariffs and mutually beneficial trade agreements, it could be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. We could, for example, import cheaper food from the Third World; but what would that mean for what is left of our farming and fishing industries?
When De Gaulle was President of France, he opposed Britain's entry into the EU partly because he saw us as a Trojan horse for American exports to Europe. This was the protectionist face of the EU and up to a point that is justifiable.
If tariffs are merely a wall, then they risk a trade war - and if President Trump overplays that hand that is what he may get from China. But what if agreements on tariffs and trade were not the free-for-all sought by GATT, but designed as a kind of braking and steering system? In a globalised economy there is so much risk of lurching about and crashing that something has to be done to slow the rate of change. If import duties are calibrated to give the domestic labour force a fighting chance, then there is the possibility of all of us raising our game; otherwise, all we face here is abject defeat.
We have an over-large population in the UK, one that we cannot adequately feed from our own land and shores, and one whose prospects of gainful employment is undermined by the Internet and robotics as much as by faraway foreign labour that is paid a tenth of our hourly rate. We need a national plan for increasing our ability to survive in a world that is becoming more chaotic and in which energy is becoming more expensive.
Getting free from the gear-grinding, self-wrecking machine of the EU is not the end of the story, but the very beginning.
_____________________________________
file:///C:/Users/Welcome/Downloads/901-686-1-PB%20(1).pdf
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/2355/5/CHAPTER3.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/740991/Final_EEA_report_to_go_to_WEB.PDF#page=115
file:///C:/Users/Welcome/Downloads/RP10-79%20(1).pdf
https://www.facebook.com/Lukemingflanagan/videos/2347861728575077/
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-selmayr-scandal-straight-and.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoO6146qM5g
http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm
https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/brexit/1975
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britain-Sale-British-Companies-Foreign/dp/1847940765
The European Union began as a common market, gradually abolishing tariffs internally while agreeing on external tariffs, so economically it was about the Four Freedoms (goods and services, capital and labour) among its members and protectionism in their collective relations with the rest of the world.
This would work so long as the members were largely similar. When the European Economic Community was first formed in 1957, its members were the Benelux countries plus France, Germany and Italy: a contiguous grouping of modern industrial nations. They could realistically aim for freedom of movement without risking potentially destabilising levels of migration. Having said that, Southern Italy lagged behind in its economic development and there was a long history of migration from there to northern Italian cities and abroad to the USA; yet otherwise, there were not such stark inequalities as to threaten chaotic mass population flows.
But the EU and its antecedents were not merely or even principally about establishing a trading bloc, and as its membership grew so did the tensions between its disparate objectives. For example, the founders of the EU aimed to prevent another war in continental Europe, yet the EU has interfered in the now-divided Ukraine in a way that threatens a direct confrontation between major global military powers. Also, the ambition to steer the EU into becoming a single nation via (among other things) fiscal union led the EU to welcome Greece into the Eurozone despite disqualifications that Goldman Sachs helped the Greeks to disguise and the EU's leadership pretended not to see; with distressing consequences for the Greek nation. Again, though the underlying philosophy of the EU is socialist, the admission of countries with far lower systems of wages and prices opened the way for economic competition that depressed the wages and conditions of the working classes of the more advanced EU members - a process both warned about by the late Sir James Goldsmith in 1994 at the time of the GATT talks and also now admitted in a recent publication widely misreported as contradicting such claims:“Some evidence that migration reduces employment and raises unemployment of some groups (e.g. the young and less well-educated)… Some evidence that migration has reduced earnings growth for the lower-paid… Evidence that migration, especially lower-skilled, has reduced the prices of [i.e.wages earned in] personal services… Evidence that migration has raised house prices, more in areas where housebuilding is more restricted.”
Enlargement was not the initiative of the EU only; other nations had to decide whether it was in their interest to apply for membership. In this context it is worth noting that the British Prime Minister who decided that this was the future for the UK was not Harold Wilson or Ted Heath but Heath's former boss, Harold Macmillan, who had set Heath on to explore the constitutional implications of membership. Lord Kilmuir replied to Heath in December 1960 (see end of linked document) warning of the many difficulties involved.
By the way, it has been said that the British electorate were not told, later, in 1975, of the concomitant loss of sovereignty. Not so; but there was an orchestrated campaign to bury the bad news in verbiage and drown it in talk of "FOOD and MONEY and JOBS."
Yet the then PM decided to go ahead: "On 26 July 1961, Harold Macmillan, the UK prime minister, informally told the Taoiseach, Seán Lemass, that his government had finally come to a decision to join the EEC as a full member. With respect to this hotly-debated issue, Macmillan wrote that: 'after weighing all the considerations we have reached the conclusion that the right course for us is to seek to enter into negotiations with the Six'."
In turn this threatened Ireland's existing economic arrangements with the UK: "In brief, Ireland exported agricultural products to the UK without restrictions and exported industrial products under a preferential arrangement; in turn, the UK had recourse to cheap agricultural goods and a market for its industrial goods. Of course, if such an agreement was to continue indefinitely, Ireland would have been economically protected, though at the same time, it would also still be in a position of acute, even reinforced, dependence. However, the prospect of losing these arrangements, first to EFTA and now to the EEC, had a remarkably sobering effect upon Irish policy-makers." In the event, Ireland and the UK joined at the same time in 1973, thus getting round the hard-border problem of its day.
But Ireland's difficulties did not end there. She joined the Eurozone in 1999, prompting an influx of money that not only filled the pubs for Sunday lunches but also inflated the housing market; and the fallout from the property-related Global Financial Crisis less than a decade later broke her two biggest banks, despite the Irish Government's underwriting their losses. In the interests of monetary conservatism the European Central bank then required Eire to repay the €31 billion of failed emergency support, financing the operation with a huge loan from the ECB. The still-ongoing process of withdrawing such a large amount of money from circulation (over €10,000 per registered voter, ignoring the "money multiplier" effect) plus paying the interest, has crippled Ireland's economy with deflation.
In short, the inconsistent aims of the EU have led to difficulties that no-one would have wished; difficulties compounded by an organisational structure designed to foster "ever-closer union" at the cost of suppressing democratic feedback; a structure reminiscent of the 1871 Wilhelmine Constitution of Germany, as I said some time ago, and which similarly has the potential to provoke social unrest, and the defiance and possibly even secession of some member states.
Resistance to Britain's membership of the EU came from the patriots of the British Left as well as from those of the Right. Coldly glared at by Ted Heath, Peter Shore delivered a stirring pre-Referendum speech to the Oxford Union in 1975, speaking not only of the deliberate and unwarranted undermining of national confidence but also of our deteriorating trade and financial balance as a consequence of having joined. Whether or not the imbalance (e.g. in the coal and steel markets) was deliberately planned by the EU, as some allege, the accumulated losses plus the financial support we contributed to the Union have cost us dearly, not merely in money but in domestically-owned productive capacity.
Over 40 years ago, Peter Shore referred ironically to misconceptions of our "tottering about" the world stage, but it is now a moot point whether we can indeed stand on our own two feet any more. Much of our manufacturing, even of our infrastructure, is multinational- or foreign-owned, as Alex Brummer detailed five years ago in his book "Britain For Sale." We have lost so many levers of our economic power and it will be a major battle to recover them, to rebuild. Do we have the stomach for the fight?
Some in the pro-Brexit camp offer as an alternative to EU serfdom, the freedom to trade globally. Now if this means without any carefully-considered system of tariffs and mutually beneficial trade agreements, it could be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. We could, for example, import cheaper food from the Third World; but what would that mean for what is left of our farming and fishing industries?
When De Gaulle was President of France, he opposed Britain's entry into the EU partly because he saw us as a Trojan horse for American exports to Europe. This was the protectionist face of the EU and up to a point that is justifiable.
If tariffs are merely a wall, then they risk a trade war - and if President Trump overplays that hand that is what he may get from China. But what if agreements on tariffs and trade were not the free-for-all sought by GATT, but designed as a kind of braking and steering system? In a globalised economy there is so much risk of lurching about and crashing that something has to be done to slow the rate of change. If import duties are calibrated to give the domestic labour force a fighting chance, then there is the possibility of all of us raising our game; otherwise, all we face here is abject defeat.
We have an over-large population in the UK, one that we cannot adequately feed from our own land and shores, and one whose prospects of gainful employment is undermined by the Internet and robotics as much as by faraway foreign labour that is paid a tenth of our hourly rate. We need a national plan for increasing our ability to survive in a world that is becoming more chaotic and in which energy is becoming more expensive.
Getting free from the gear-grinding, self-wrecking machine of the EU is not the end of the story, but the very beginning.
_____________________________________
file:///C:/Users/Welcome/Downloads/901-686-1-PB%20(1).pdf
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/bitstream/2134/2355/5/CHAPTER3.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/740991/Final_EEA_report_to_go_to_WEB.PDF#page=115
file:///C:/Users/Welcome/Downloads/RP10-79%20(1).pdf
https://www.facebook.com/Lukemingflanagan/videos/2347861728575077/
https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-selmayr-scandal-straight-and.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoO6146qM5g
http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm
https://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/brexit/1975
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britain-Sale-British-Companies-Foreign/dp/1847940765
Sunday, September 16, 2018
BREXIT: The Left Has Forgotten Its Business
In response to an avowedly left-wing blogger on the tenth anniversary of the Lehman-led Crash:
I was with you all the way until you started on the because-Brexit riff.
Surely you are aware that Cameron promised a referendum because (a) he didn't think he'd have to make good on it, since he expected to lead another coalition government and (b) he thought it would finally expose and shut up a vocal minority of fruitcakes and loons in check shirts and corduroy trousers - below-stairs people.
He then spent millions of public money to urge Remain, and brought over that poseur Obama to add his thumb to the scales. And when Cameron saw the result, he left, because it looked too much like hard work and Etonians do not labour.
Since then Theresa May has played a blinder, busting a gut to make sure that anything like a meaningful Brexit doesn't happen.
Why?
Because the EU is a model village of globalism, which has kept down workers' wages and hugely benefited the traders and large businesses you so rightly criticise. Why do you think that practically everywhere in England and Wales except for the rich South-East had a clear majority for Leave? Frank Field made the class-economic issue clear in a clip still circulating on the Internet, before the vote. And the late Sir James Goldsmith forecast the potential for growing inequality and social unrest, way back in 1994 when the GATT talks were on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
And then there's the matter of democracy. The more you look at the EU the more you will see how it is part of a move towards global managerialism and the silencing of the ordinary person. The sneerocracy acts as though it thinks the commoners should never have been allowed a vote in the first place.
I simply do not understand why the Left - not the I'm-all-right-jack Blairites - has not run up its flag for democracy and the interests of the working class.
I was with you all the way until you started on the because-Brexit riff.
Surely you are aware that Cameron promised a referendum because (a) he didn't think he'd have to make good on it, since he expected to lead another coalition government and (b) he thought it would finally expose and shut up a vocal minority of fruitcakes and loons in check shirts and corduroy trousers - below-stairs people.
He then spent millions of public money to urge Remain, and brought over that poseur Obama to add his thumb to the scales. And when Cameron saw the result, he left, because it looked too much like hard work and Etonians do not labour.
Since then Theresa May has played a blinder, busting a gut to make sure that anything like a meaningful Brexit doesn't happen.
Why?
Because the EU is a model village of globalism, which has kept down workers' wages and hugely benefited the traders and large businesses you so rightly criticise. Why do you think that practically everywhere in England and Wales except for the rich South-East had a clear majority for Leave? Frank Field made the class-economic issue clear in a clip still circulating on the Internet, before the vote. And the late Sir James Goldsmith forecast the potential for growing inequality and social unrest, way back in 1994 when the GATT talks were on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
And then there's the matter of democracy. The more you look at the EU the more you will see how it is part of a move towards global managerialism and the silencing of the ordinary person. The sneerocracy acts as though it thinks the commoners should never have been allowed a vote in the first place.
I simply do not understand why the Left - not the I'm-all-right-jack Blairites - has not run up its flag for democracy and the interests of the working class.
Friday, September 14, 2018
FRIDAY MUSIC: The Ayoub Sisters, by JD
During a brief review which the Beeb showed of Proms in the Park, I saw the Ayoub Sisters performing on Glasgow Green playing 'Misirlou'. It was enough to make me find out more about them because they were excellent.
Sarah and Laura Ayoub were both born in Glasgow to Egyptian parents. They were classically trained, Sarah on cello and Laura on violin and Laura currently uses a 1810 J.Gagliano violin which is kindly loaned to her by Florian Leonhard, the London based violin maker and restorer. https://www.florianleonhard.com/instrument/violin-nicolo-gagliano/
They began their musical adventure as youngsters playing in a ceilidh band. Further information can be found here - https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2018/7/13/the-ayoub-sisters-egyptian-scottish-musical-duo-know-no-bounds
Sarah and Laura Ayoub were both born in Glasgow to Egyptian parents. They were classically trained, Sarah on cello and Laura on violin and Laura currently uses a 1810 J.Gagliano violin which is kindly loaned to her by Florian Leonhard, the London based violin maker and restorer. https://www.florianleonhard.com/instrument/violin-nicolo-gagliano/
They began their musical adventure as youngsters playing in a ceilidh band. Further information can be found here - https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/indepth/2018/7/13/the-ayoub-sisters-egyptian-scottish-musical-duo-know-no-bounds
Thursday, September 13, 2018
The Road To Damascus - Stopping Military Adventurism in Syria
Peter Hitchens is asking us to write to our MPs to avert war.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/09/please-write-to-your-mp-now-without-delay-war-terrible-war-may-be-on-the-way-again-.html
I have emailed mine, anyone else want to do the same?
Here is my effort, please feel free to copy/adapt if you think it of any use:
_______________________________________________
Would you be willing to ask a question at PMQs about false flag attacks in Syria?
I read recently that America was warning the Syrian Government that if there is another use of chemical weapons there then a military response will be launched.
Sample article: https://www.timesofisrael.com/assad-has-been-warned-against-chemical-weapons-use-in-idlib-us-says/
This has been interpreted by some as an encouragement to IS and other rebel forces to stage or fake one so as to give the US a pretext for an attack on Syrian government forces and installations, so effectively helping terrorists. It is alleged that this has happened before:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russia-claims-child-doused-liquid-12389365
A US Senator is now claiming that MI6 are involved in planning something like this for the near future.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/syria-chemical-weapons-virginia-senator-richard-black-uk-mi6-assad-russia-a8529681.html
Can you please seek a clear and unequivocal assurance from HMG that if a chemical weapons use happens or is alleged, the UK will send a team to obtain conclusive forensic proof of its use and the identity/affiliation of the perpetrators, before making any statement in support of further US intervention in Syria or offering any assistance from HM Armed Forces?
_________________________________________________________________________________
By coincidence, yesterday I came upon an extended illustrated BBC blogpiece by the documentary-maker Adam Curtis (essentially a plan of his programme):
The aggressive incompetence of the very divided UK intelligence community is certainly not limited to offloading a full pistol magazine into the face of a terrified Brazilian electrician. Reading Curtis, the scales fall from our eyes with the clatter of spent shells.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460
And now, as we see above, it is alleged that MI6 are helping lay the groundwork for another US air attack on Syria.
MI6 has form in this kind of caper - remember that two of their officers were found with a bunch of SAS men in Libya as the West started boiling the pot there:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/07/sas-mi6-released-libya-rebels
And then there is the long history of governments exploiting foreign factions and forces for short-term advantage and as often as not, long-term disaster. Think of the King of Leinster inviting the Normans (not "the Saxon foe across the water") into Wexford in 1169; the Germans smuggling 50 million gold marks plus Lenin into Russia to help foment revolution there, so German divisions could be transferred to the Western Front in WWI; the British encouragement of Islamic revivalism in the Middle East in the early 20th century, to push back against Communist influence; and so on and on.
A propos, like many others I used to think that the Allies hanged the German High Command at Nuremberg for their atrocities against Jews and others. No: it was for "Crimes against peace", as in:
i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
ii Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
Will we at some point try neoconservative hawks, or shamefacedly and posthumously pardon Nazis?
UPDATE (16.09.18):
Mr Hitchens has repeated his call in his MoS column today. I fear that the plan is to arrange the false-flag attack before Parliament reopens so as to prevent opposition to Western acts of war on Syria.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2018/09/please-write-to-your-mp-now-without-delay-war-terrible-war-may-be-on-the-way-again-.html
I have emailed mine, anyone else want to do the same?
Here is my effort, please feel free to copy/adapt if you think it of any use:
_______________________________________________
Would you be willing to ask a question at PMQs about false flag attacks in Syria?
I read recently that America was warning the Syrian Government that if there is another use of chemical weapons there then a military response will be launched.
Sample article: https://www.timesofisrael.com/assad-has-been-warned-against-chemical-weapons-use-in-idlib-us-says/
This has been interpreted by some as an encouragement to IS and other rebel forces to stage or fake one so as to give the US a pretext for an attack on Syrian government forces and installations, so effectively helping terrorists. It is alleged that this has happened before:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russia-claims-child-doused-liquid-12389365
A US Senator is now claiming that MI6 are involved in planning something like this for the near future.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/syria-chemical-weapons-virginia-senator-richard-black-uk-mi6-assad-russia-a8529681.html
Can you please seek a clear and unequivocal assurance from HMG that if a chemical weapons use happens or is alleged, the UK will send a team to obtain conclusive forensic proof of its use and the identity/affiliation of the perpetrators, before making any statement in support of further US intervention in Syria or offering any assistance from HM Armed Forces?
_________________________________________________________________________________
By coincidence, yesterday I came upon an extended illustrated BBC blogpiece by the documentary-maker Adam Curtis (essentially a plan of his programme):
The aggressive incompetence of the very divided UK intelligence community is certainly not limited to offloading a full pistol magazine into the face of a terrified Brazilian electrician. Reading Curtis, the scales fall from our eyes with the clatter of spent shells.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460
And now, as we see above, it is alleged that MI6 are helping lay the groundwork for another US air attack on Syria.
MI6 has form in this kind of caper - remember that two of their officers were found with a bunch of SAS men in Libya as the West started boiling the pot there:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/07/sas-mi6-released-libya-rebels
And then there is the long history of governments exploiting foreign factions and forces for short-term advantage and as often as not, long-term disaster. Think of the King of Leinster inviting the Normans (not "the Saxon foe across the water") into Wexford in 1169; the Germans smuggling 50 million gold marks plus Lenin into Russia to help foment revolution there, so German divisions could be transferred to the Western Front in WWI; the British encouragement of Islamic revivalism in the Middle East in the early 20th century, to push back against Communist influence; and so on and on.
A propos, like many others I used to think that the Allies hanged the German High Command at Nuremberg for their atrocities against Jews and others. No: it was for "Crimes against peace", as in:
i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
ii Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
Will we at some point try neoconservative hawks, or shamefacedly and posthumously pardon Nazis?
UPDATE (16.09.18):
Mr Hitchens has repeated his call in his MoS column today. I fear that the plan is to arrange the false-flag attack before Parliament reopens so as to prevent opposition to Western acts of war on Syria.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)