Come The Revolution

The Daily Mail has been running a series by Richard Kay on ‘vulture capitalists’, i.e. the hedge fund managers who have run out of twisty things to do in futures and options and have turned to buying up real businesses, hoping to continue making stellar profits. The social consequences may hasten the Revolution.

Years ago as an IFA I attended a presentation that explained we were passing peak pensioner prosperity: hordes of companies were closing ‘final salary’ pension schemes and loading the risk onto private individuals through alternative, ‘defined contribution’ arrangements. Ordinary people are now facing a standard of life in retirement that depends on the vagaries of the stock market (so very volatile in recent decades) and annuities (now crippled by ultra-low interest rates as the country’s debts pile up so that we cannot afford to raise bond yields again.)

 

Like the worm Ouroboros, capitalism has begun to eat itself. Once, a business would increase its profits by attracting more customers through offering a quality product. Also, employers enlightened by Christian values would experiment with better pay and conditions for their workers (I know that other religions urge similar ethics but we are discussing this country as it was, historically.) 

However, in the 1980s, business management began to preach a new doctrine, that of maximising shareholder value. How to achieve this profit maximisation? By externalising costs – de-risking pension schemes (and grabbing the fund surplus, if any) and downsizing the labour force (to be supported by the public purse); by arbitraging labour and materials costs through globalisation; and even by trying to short-change the customer (think of the cheapening of ingredients in Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut; what happens when you take quality away from a product that sells on quality ? Who cares? This year’s dividend and this year’s executive bonus are all that matter.)

 

A touchstone for this bottom-line, presbyopic madness is the case of Southern Cross Healthcare, a chain of care homes that saw a management buyout and then a sell-off to an American fund that set up a sell-and-leaseback scheme requiring upwards-only annual rent reviews. This converted the prospective future income stream to immediate capital, and by the time that – inevitably – the concern collapsed financially, the foreign speculators were away, free and clear, leaving the dependent elderly to face the consequences; like Conrad’s Lord Jim jumping ship to leave his passengers heading for the rocks.

 

This model cannot go on forever. As the rich get richer and the rest poorer, domestic demand and the taxation yield on work are doomed to decline, and the welfare state will need increasing debt financing until it gives out under the strain. Readers will have seen stories about how the elite are conscious of where this is going, and have begun preparing boltholes in faraway places such as New Zealand (though perhaps they will fall foul of the old Pacific tradition of cannibalism – poetic justice, if so.)

 

It’s not only insane greed that threatens society. For the doctrinaire revolutionary, the suffering of the disadvantaged represents an asset. When John DeLorean set up his car factory in Northern Ireland, thinking locals would be grateful for the chance of employment, he was visited by representatives of the IRA who explained that they wanted it to fail in order to intensify support for their subversive cause. Similarly, in 1965 Labour’s Minister for Education and Science Tony Crosland (educated privately at Highgate School and then Trinity College, Oxford) swore to close every last grammar school  - he was not the only figure on the Left who wanted to block working-class advancement so as to keep hot the fires of resentment.

 

This takes us right back to Lenin and his 1902 pamphlet, ‘What Is to Be Done?’ As a recent essay about resurgent support for Leninism explains, social democrats wanted ‘to reduce working hours, improve working conditions, and raise wages’ whereas Lenin wanted the workers to revolt, not to be bought off with trades-union-negotiated concessions. Revolution looks for opportunities in chaos, as with the end of the Great War that cursed Russia with a Communist government and powered similar dangerous movements in countries from Austria to Australia.

 

I was struck by a recently-rescreened episode of the ‘Hairy Bikers’ TV cookery series, in which the motorcyclists visited Russia. A man they met there said he would go back to Communism if he could; people said they used to feel 'supported’ with health treatment, education, housing and so on. We read of the real, horrible tyranny and oppression in Russia and China, but not so much about the millions of peasants whose standard of living improved, and who supported the grisly autocrats.

 

For now, the British people have been distracted by Covid and their perceived salvation by jab (complications yet to come ?) plus the conversion of the Magic Money Tree that PM May said didn’t exist, into a Niagara of cash. The same narrative is now playing in the USA, even as audiences flock to see the Oscar-winning movie ‘Nomadland’ with its story of multitudes made ‘houseless’, ground by the upper and lower millstones of low pay and soaring rent. Here in the UK, 3.4 million people have never had a paid job; residential owner-occupation by 16-24-year-olds dropped from 25% to 10% in the twenty years after 1996; increasing numbers of young people (aged 15 – 34) are living with their parents.

 

The fuel load under the trees is increasing, and awaits a spark.

China's smokin' !

https://signal.supchina.com/chinas-cigarette-smoking-epidemic/

Now that 'Bazooka Joe' Biden is reopening the debate about where the Covid virus came from, perhaps we can wave that pointing finger around a bit more.

So far Covid deaths worldwide (as attributed, and that's a moot) total c. 3.5 million; but tobacco-related deaths in China alone are running at a million annually and set to double that by 2030.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/over-a-million-people-die-in-china-every-year-due-to-smoking-report-121052601195_1.html

I recall reading years ago that BAT saw great prospects for growth in China, which now has over 300 million smokers. A medical website confirms this:

"Paul Adams, the director responsible for BAT's business in the Asia Pacific region, reported, “China is … by far the largest and most profitable opportunity … " https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598483/

You may remember that at one point the tobacco companies started targeting women, beginning in Germany with a brand called Kim (thanks, BAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(cigarette)); currently in China the vast majority of smokers are men but I'll bet Ken Clarke's pals are working on breaking their cultural resistance to female smoking and when they do it'll be trebles all round for execs and shareholders - though China is resisting: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/28/4/409

Who has brought disaster on whom?

Doctor who?

When is the last time you got a house call from your doctor?

If you’re old enough, you’ve seen it on TV – e.g. Peak Practice (Dr Jack: ‘I’ll just pop over the moor and see how Mrs Bassenthwaite’s headache is doing’) or even Dr Finlay’s Casebook (Dr F: ‘And while I’m here I may as well take a look at your cat.’)

Now, not only does the GP not come to you, it’s getting hard to contact the GP for an appointment.

A couple of days ago, a doctor advised my wife (via telephone, of course) to have this and that checked. So she called the group practice, and a recorded message said that there were no appointments left for that day and – well, that was that.

So she went online and found the practice website. There was a long rigmarole (mustn’t scream, mustn’t throw laptop) of registering, plus password and memorable check-word. Finally, she was shepherded through to a page promisingly called Patient Access. This asked what the patient wanted, and the enquiry box wouldn’t recognise the various messages she typed in; but there was also a list below of available services, which if you were incautious you might request – but which were private and mostly fee-charging. How does an NHS GP practice lead to this? How many patients, some elderly, some perhaps not good readers or speaking English as a second language, might walk into this spider’s web?

All we wanted was an appointment with the GP or practice nurse! You can phone/email your dentist (at least, we can – in fact, just got a same-day morning slot today!*) – but not your doctor?

Okay, frustration threshold crossed, time for ‘action directe’; she went next morning in person to the Centre. After standing in line behind someone with a complicated query, she got to the front and was told ‘you can’t come in to book an appointment, you have to do it online.’ (Because Covid? There were only a few people in the waiting room and she was wearing a mask.) Oh, and what if you don’t have a smartphone or a working computer?

There are, of course, no email addresses to reach the practice manager, admin staff or individual doctors.

Back to Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and internet grief. Somehow the practice site led us onto a different link, Engage Consult aka engage.gp, and by dint of not answering most of the questions and ignoring hints to call 999 or 111 we got to the point where we could ask for a call-back; which came by text the following day, with an appointment - for 10 days hence.

Why all this complication and delay? Even now, the average GP has fewer than 2,100 patients https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/workload/number-of-registered-patients-per-gp-rises-to-almost-2100/ , as compared with MPs who have on average 73,000-plus constituents, though admittedly the latter manage by ignoring many of us altogether. Also, where MPs are paid c. £82,000 plus expenses, the average GP in England and Wales earns £98,000 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9356701/NHS-GP-earning-700-000-year-one-hundreds-earning-Prime-Minister.html ; I make that £1.12 per constituent p.a. versus £47 p.a. per patient.

Is it, perhaps, something to do with the way that doctors, like police and politicians, have gone from a bottom-up model of working, to top-down? Modern GP work is a business (it always was, but more consciously so now) and patients are profit centres who can be made more productive by having mass screenings and vaccinations rolled out to them, like the aorta scan (part of a large program) they made me have some years ago. For this kind of thing, you get contacted by letter, email, telephone; you get assigned provisional dates and venues; you get reminders.

‘Contact your personal physician’ – really, that’s so last century. It’s not personal any more; not ‘your doctor.’

_______________

* i.e. last Friday

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Ras Prince Monolulu, by JD

'I gotta horse !'

The death of racehorse trainer and legendary gambler Barney Curley last week reminded me that racing has always been peopled by larger than life characters like him (as well as others of a more dubious provenance.)
https://www.attheraces.com/news/2021/May/23/famed-gambler-and-former-trainer-barney-curley-dies-at-the-age-of-81

Curley's death marks one more sad step towards the uniformity of blandness that is one of the curses of modern life.

British racecourses are one of the few areas where the upper class and the working class meet on more or less equal terms. The middle class could never come to terms with racing and in fact The Guardian would not cover it until quite recently.

It wasn't always like that and one of the most famous and colourful characters was the man shown on the extreme right of this photograph who styled himself Ras Prince Monolulu. His real name was Peter Carl Mackay (1881-1965) and rather than being a chief of the Falasha tribe of Abyssinia as he claimed to be, he came from the Caribbean island of St Croix.

His father and brothers were horse breeders and trainers on St Croix and that is undoubtedly how he knew how to spot a winner in the racing world.

He made a living as a racing tipster and on racecourses up and down the country he would stand with a clutch of small brown envelopes in his hand and talk endlessly to attract punters.

I gotta horse
I gotta horse
God made the bees
The bees make honey
The soldiers do the dirty work
The bookies take all the money.

He became famous after tipping the horse Spion Kop to win the 1920 Derby, which came in at the long odds of 100-6, and from which he personally made some £8,500 (a huge amount of money at the time) and also gifts from grateful punters who had followed his advice.

And always the non stop yarns:

I know an outsider with four legs, one leg at each corner, this one will cross the winning post and the others will be arrested for loitering!

He wrote his memoirs in a book entitled "I Gotta Horse" but whether those memoirs are reliable or not is open to question since he did talk a lot and did contradict himself a lot; all part of his showmanship of course.

His death in 1965 added another myth to the story of his life. Jeffrey Bernard, another colourful character who wrote the Low Life column in the Spectator and also worked as a racing journalist, visited Monolulu in the Middlesex Hospital to interview him. Bernard had brought with him a box of 'Black Magic' chocolates and offered Monolulu a 'strawberry cream'. Monolulu subsequently choked to death on it and Bernard bade him farewell. He later declared that the story was untrue but it does add to the legend.

To add a personal note: this photo was taken by my father on his old Box Brownie and has the date June 1950 on the back. When I was old enough (i.e. still in my pram) I would go with my family to the races. And when I was a bit older I met Prince Monolulu and to a small boy he was a fascinating sight and sound. A very large black man with coloured ostrich feathers in his hair. 

I don't know if my father ever bought one of those mysterious small brown envelopes but I remember on occasions he would say "right, I'm playing with the bookie's money now" as he folded some notes and put them into his pocket. I blame my father and Prince Monolulu for my everlasting devotion to the semi-anarchical world of the turf.

To get some idea of his 'style' here he is with Groucho Marx on the US show 'You Bet Your Life' and for once Groucho is lost for words! (from 15:56 onwards )

He made a second appearance with Groucho Marx the following week and talked more about his life (from 3:55 onwards)

And more, this time from Wiggia -

This has several pages about Prince Monolulu and his life, a lot of his tales are the ones he told Groucho in the second clip above. They may or may not be true but if just half of them are loosely based on the truth then he certainly had a colourful life!

https://flashbak.com/ive-gotta-horse-the-life-of-the-glorious-prince-monolulu-411471/

WEEKENDER: Max Moseley, by Wiggia

MAX MOSLEY 1940-2021

 

It would be disingenuous of me to claim I knew the man; I didn’t, yet I first saw him briefly in East London in 1962 with his father Sir Oswald Mosley at the latter's last appearance at a rally in the East End.

The publicity that naturally surrounded such an event drew the usual anti-fascists of the time and inevitably trouble broke out and the meeting was abandoned. Max was seen fighting to protect his father from being attacked and that was the end of it; well, not quite, he was arrested and charged with threatening behaviour but was released without charge after claiming he was protecting his father. Soon after, Max got out of politics.

For young people like me at the time Mosley's Black Shirts belonged to a pre-war era so this meeting was a ‘novelty’ in many ways, one which drew a few of us to go and see what it was all about. The police knew that trouble was on hand and had cordoned off Mosley’s truck from which he would give a speech from the back of with a megaphone, if my memory serves me correctly.

But not long into his speech, after a delay the trouble started and the meeting was abandoned, after which we went home none the wiser and Oswald Mosley disappeared from the limelight to live in France.

That wasn't quite the end of his political association with his father. A last-ditch rally in the East End in Brick Lane in ‘65 saw Max again in his father's company: 

Photo: Daily Mail (see link below)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5479785/What-Max-Mosley-doing-vile-anti-Semitic-rally-1965.html

This is a picture I took at the time of the meeting in ‘62 taken on my trusty Rollieflex, of the thin blue line separating the factions at the meeting before it went off. Notice: no fat policemen, no midgets and no endless aids to controlling people.  

Max then went into law and studied as a barrister, qualifying in ‘64, specialising in patent and trademark law which was to become useful when he later took the reins at the helm of F1.

His family background is interesting to say the least and it is worth a read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley

My brief and very expensive encounter with motor racing ended in ‘66 and I sold up what was left after a series of disastrous mechanical failures. Among the items advertised for sale was 'selected Ford engine block'; these were not easy to come by and I had a few offers, one was from a Max Mosley who had started racing in clubman's class in a Lotus 7 - these were full race cars not the road versions and nearly all had Ford Cosworth engines.

He later graduated to F2 before deciding he was not going to make it as a driver and going into race car production with MARCH engineering and later into running the constructors' association of F1 and then to the top as President of FISA.

But my little story is of when he came down, from Northampton I believe, to look at the engine block. He didn’t buy it but it sold anyway. What was interesting about him was coming from the background he had and visiting me still living at home on a council estate in east London there was absolutely no side to him; after deciding not to buy the engine block we sat on a wall outside the estate and talked for what must have been about 45 minutes about motor racing: naturally, his thoughts about what he wanted to do which he wasn’t set on at that time, and inevitably his family and his father.

I mentioned the ‘62 meeting in Dalston were he was charged but released over assault and he just smiled. He said he saw little of his father now his parents were living in France, but not once did he malign his father in any way. My impression of him from that meeting was of someone with a lot of charm and a quick mind. We shook hands and he left; that was it, a small moment in life that left a very favourable impression, despite all that went before and later, that I always remembered.

And like so many other things it is difficult to believe all this happened nearly sixty years ago. Where has it all gone ?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dead Can Dance, by JD

Dead Can Dance is an Australian music duo from Melbourne. Currently composed of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the group formed in 1981 and relocated to London the following year. 

Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance's style as "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Can_Dance

They work for us... oh, yeah?

Last Friday, a number of areas in England saw new anti-virus restrictions https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57232728 . The guidance was published online, without a public announcement; the slide into ‘Simon says’ whimsicality is bound to happen when you only have to report to the House of Commons every six months. Parliament is failing to safeguard our liberty, and this shines a spotlight on MPs’ responsiveness to constituents.

A month has passed since I wrote to my MP asking her to put a question in the Debating Chamber, urging more frequent reviews of pandemic rules. Conscious that newspapers and politicians scorn those who write to them as being generally ill-educated and semi-lunatic, I added a touch of humour, scribbling on the back of the envelope, ‘This communication is also available in green felt tip.’ Even so, no reply; and we know that the law does not insist that there should be one http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8025255.stm .

It’s bad enough when your MP ignores you, but sometimes it’s worse when they don’t. Like Peter Hitchens, who worried about it in this week’s MoS https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2021/05/peter-hitchens-i-remember-inflation-wrecking-lives-and-i-can-see-it-coming-back.html , I have been concerned for a long time about the destruction of our savings by inflation.

The Con-LibDem coalition took over on 11 May 2010; Cameron’s PPS wrote to Cabinet Ministers that ‘The Prime Minister wants to ensure that the Government as a whole is giving the highest priority to addressing the cost of living’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2157018/Cameron-summits-quads-secrets-save-EU.html ;  yet on 19 July 2010 NS&I stopped issuing Index-Linked Savings Certificates (ILSC) for the first time since 1975. The latter were briefly made available again in May 2011 and the window re-closed in September.

So I emailed my then MP, asking him to raise the matter in Parliament. Instead, he promised to write to the Treasury and got a response from its Commercial Secretary Lord Sassoon that was a two-page tissue of irrelevancies. My question was about the duty to protect savers who shouldn’t have to gamble on the stock market to keep pace with price rises (note that today the FTSE is still bumping around the 7,000 mark it reached in 2000, and that it approximately halved twice in the intervening period – 2003 and 2009.) The noble Lord wittered on about inflation coming down, fuel duty increases being deferred, incentives to save via ISAs and pensions, the Money Advice Service etc. Apparently NS&I had to withdraw ILSC because there was so much demand (er, a message from the public there?) and in any case the scheme was to help government finance (not ours, it seems.)

I emailed my MP in March 2013 to register my dissatisfaction with that reply and to ask for an oral question at PMQs or Questions to Ministers, noting:

·         the British Government creditworthiness has been downgraded by Moody's,and

·         the pound has dropped, and

·         inflation looks set to rise further, especially for imports…

 

May I also draw your attention to two passages in Hansard from 1975 (esp. Michael Neubert MP http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1975/jul/10/savings-index-linked-schemes and Lords Lee and Jacques http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1975/nov/04/national-savings-schemes ) that make it perfectly clear that Government recognises the moral obligation to protect the value of savers' money?

The MP replied:

‘I tend not to do Oral questions. They don't have any real effect on government policy and it is a lottery as to whether you have the opportunity to ask one.’

So much for PMQs in general, then. Or is it relevant that the MP’s party (LibDem) was then sharing power with the Tories, and so a pointed question had the potential to embarrass one’s friends?

Still, he invited me to work with his researcher to frame a question. Having given the latter more information and background to explain why the issue mattered, I received a massive waffly draft question of 157 words offering maximal wriggle-room for the Minister. I can’t think an MP’s researcher is stupid, so I suppose he thought I was.

Quixotically, I persisted, and got a written answer from Sajid Javid MP (8 July 2013):

‘National Savings and Investments (NS&I) purpose is to provide cost-effective debt financing to the Government by issuing and selling retail savings and investment products to the public.

‘In meeting this objective NS&I follow a policy balancing the interests of their customers, the taxpayer and the stability of the wider financial services market. In line with this remit NS&I do not anticipate new sales of Index-Linked Savings Certificates this year.’

I submit to readers that the ‘balance’ here is like that between two thieves and their victim.

I asked a second question about the threat of bank bail-ins and the reply from Greg Clark MP made reference to the FSCS £85,00 insurance limit for depositors, without addressing the point that in the Cyprus bank crisis of 2012-13 the latter originally faced partial loss of even their insured deposits.

My MP was kind enough to explain it all to me:

‘What they are basically saying is that they don't want to issue any more index linked debt at the moment. They are also saying the 85K is safe.’

And I was kind enough to respond:

‘I understand that. Please don't think that you're the only grammar-school-educated boy in South Birmingham. I also have a degree in English from Oxford.’

With pushing, a further reply from him, with a request to give him the 1975 Hansard references (again):

‘I accept that there are issues about access from time to time. I will write to the minister about this. The table office are very picky about how questions are put to ministers and normally edit them.’

Poor, sensitive table office! On receipt of the links, he then said:

‘I will ask [my researcher] to put these points to the minister with the suggestion that a small number of index linked bonds should be made available with a limit as to how much any one person can hold.’

Why he took it upon himself to qualify with ‘small’ and ‘limit’, I don’t know. So grudging! Not that even this got an official response; if it was sent at all. So, after more than a year, I got… nowhere. *crickets singing*…

They work for us, do they? 

Vote for war

Outside St Mary’s Church in Totnes stands a rough stone war memorial. At the foot of the cross are named over 100 men killed in the Great War, including three men from one family and two from another, in a town of fewer than 6,000 souls.

Who voted for the slaughter to begin? Nobody. The electorate comprised 5.2 million men (some 60% of all adult males, and no women at all), but they were not consulted. Instead, the order was given by King George V at a Privy Council meeting in Buckingham Palace attended by only two court officials and Lord Beauchamp. As historian AJP Taylor explained  https://global.oup.com/academic/product/english-history-1914-1945-9780192801401?cc=gb&lang=en& , this reflected ‘a general view that war was an act of state, if not of prerogative, with which ordinary citizens had little to do.’

By 1918, after nearly a million British servicemen had died (with another c. two million permanently disabled) https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1914-1945/war/ , it was thought that the people might be entitled to more of a voice. The Home Secretary introduced the Representation of the People Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_the_People_Act_1918#Background saying that the war

‘has made it, I think, impossible that ever again, at all events in the lifetime of the present generation, there should be a revival of the old class feeling which was responsible for so much, and, among other things, for the exclusion for a period, of so many of our population from the class of electors.’

Nevertheless, while the Act extended the vote to all men only some women qualified - about 40% of them. The rest had to wait until 1928 to be included. Universal adult suffrage in Britain has yet to celebrate its centenary.

Even modernised democracy didn’t stop the repeat use of the royal war-making prerogative in 1939; and it remains to this day the constitutional position for the United Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_parliamentary_approval_for_military_action . While we complain about minor infringements of our personal freedom, the government reserves the right to kill us (and the people of other nations) wholesale, so long as some pretext can be found that circumvents Nuremberg principles. ‘Gandalf’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9569815/You-looked-like-Gandalf-Tony-Blair-admits-lockdown-mullet-mistake.html bounced us into war with Iraq, and ‘Dodgy Dave’ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/on-this-day-dennis-skinner-thrown-out-of-the-commons-after-calling-cameron-dodgy-dave-263883/ only desisted from bombing Syria because he chose to ‘respect’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783 a Commons majority opposing it.

The US Constitution attempted to restrain the Executive with a specification that it should be Congress that declares a war. Despite the country being almost continuously involved in armed foreign conflicts since its foundation, that declaration has been made only eleven times, the last in 1942 https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-Development/War-Powers/ . The use of the notion of ‘authorisation’ has allowed this power, like so many others, to drift towards the Chief Executive, and in any case the next Big One may happen so suddenly that there will be no need for a call-up before a general incineration begins.

The US President’s nuclear football is ever at hand; Britain is now stocking up with more atomic weapons https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/03/18/britain-is-adding-nukes-for-the-first-time-since-the-cold-war ; the winds blow around the old granite cross. And we have the vote.

Dirty women (and men)

 'She's so deliciously low — so horribly dirty.'

Professor Henry Higgins, talking about the Cockney flower-seller Eliza Doolittle in Shaw's play "Pygmalion" (1913)

'What you thinking of, goin' with a bloody woman? You're gettin' soft. Don't you know that women smell and give you diseases?'

Gangster and homosexual Ronnie Kray, scolding his brother Reggie in 1957 for womanising when they had set up a successful nightclub in London's East End. Quoted in John Pearson's 'The Profession Of Violence' (1972, Collins revised edition 2015)

'Women simply are not clean - absolutely filthy, the whole lot of them. Englishwomen simply do not wash and scrub enough.'
Prolific lover Ian Fleming, interviewed for the Evening Standard in April 1960. Quoted in John Pearson's 'The life of Ian Fleming' (1966)

The real and fictional East End women will have had plenty of excuse for not attaining twenty-first century standards of hygiene. Even public baths came late to Britain - for example, the Moseley Road Baths in Birmingham were built in 1907 (the men's were divided into first and second class) and it would be a long time before most working-class people's houses had indoor lavatories, let alone baths and showers. Besides, Ronnie Kray's sexual orientation may have conditioned him into an instinctive dislike of female hormones.

What excuse Fleming's posher lovers had, I don't know. Or maybe, as with Ronnie, it was merely his perception, having spent his formative years at a boys-only public school, Eton College; it seems not to have put him off women, though he never spent the whole night with them when he was a single man. His creation James Bond is struck by the superior cleanliness in the USA (in, I think, 'Thunderball') when he sees the seat of the lavatory in his hotel room has a strip of paper across it confirming that it has been 'sanitised.'

How like the English, though, to look down their noses at their social inferiors and refer to them as 'the great unwashed,' as though it was the latter's choice to be shabby and unclean. George Orwell in 'The road to Wigan Pier' (1937) noted how hard it was for a miner to wash all over, where there were no pit-head baths:

'Probably a large majority of miners are completely black from the waist down for at least six days a week. It is almost impossible for them to wash all over in their own homes. Every drop of water has got to be heated up, and in a tiny living-room which contains, apart from the kitchen range and a quantity of furniture, a wife, some children, and probably a dog, there is simply not room to have a proper bath. Even with a basin one is bound to splash the furniture. Middle-class people are fond of saying that the miners would not wash themselves properly even if they could, but this is nonsense, as is shown by the fact that where pithead baths exist practically all the men use them.'

   - http://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/prose/RoadToWiganPier/wiganpierpart_3.html

I knew an Englishwoman who went to marry a Cypriot after WWII and on the voyage there she met a Levantine man who explained, ' I do not wash. I perfume.' Today we have much better plumbing.

Bertrand Russell exploded the way that some romanticise the working class as a compensation - a cheaper one than alleviating their conditions - for their misfortune, in his essay 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed' (1937):

'If it were indeed the case that bad nourishment, little education, lack of air and sunshine, unhealthy housing conditions, and overwork produce better people than are produced by good nourishment, open air, adequate education and housing, and a reasonable amount of leisure, the whole case for economic reconstruction would collapse, and we could rejoice that such a large percentage of the population enjoys the conditions that make for virtue.'

   - https://criticathink.wordpress.com/2018/04/11/the-superior-virtue-of-the-oppressed-bertrand-russell/

There's still work to do.

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Cherry Pie Tree, by JD

This is a painting I have called The Cherry Pie Tree and is just sitting there on the easel shortly after I had finished it.

 When I took it to the Frame Shop Mick, the framer, looked at it and said "That looks like Flodden. Is it Flodden?" Indeed it is and he recognised the road/path and tree because he had spent a few weekends there helping with an archeological dig.

I was prompted to paint the tree when I saw a photograph on the blog "Cherie's Place" (below):

http://www.cheriesplace.me.uk/blog/index.php/2012/02/05/cheries-place-thought-for-the-week-144/

I told her via the comments that I was going to 'steal' it and paint it and when she saw the finished and framed picture she loved it so it is now hanging on her wall somewhere at home down south.

______________________________________________________________________________

Historical note: Flodden is the site of a famous battle between the English and Scots in 1513: (Ed.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Flodden

Cherry's tree photograph above was taken in 2009; below is another shot from 2018, plus JD's closeup of his finished painting (thanks to Cherry - http://www.cheriesplace.me.uk/blog/)

WEEKENDER: Are you queer? by Wiggia

Amazingly a word that was outlawed not that many years ago by the  LGBTXXXXX brigade a few years back is back in favour. At this rate 'faggot' and 'poofta' will be acceptable soon. such is the rate of change.

In real terms I don’t give a stuff what people get up to in their own homes. Why should I be concerned after all these years when no one ever complained about selfgendering and pronouns? I doubt the majority if confronted over the pronoun issue would have a clue what was being spoken about and that is how it should have remained.

Which all makes this announcement from ARUP  and the Westminster University aka the old Regent Street Polytechnic and now sadly a woke outpost, even more ridiculous.

The Regent Street Polytechnic was a grand old Victorian philanthropic organisation set up in 1837. Its mantra was: 

 “an institution where the Public, at little expense, may acquire practical knowledge of the various arts and branches of science connected with manufacturers, mining operations and rural economy. “

It was acquired by Quintin Hogg, the father of the late Lord Hailsham, who was very hands on with the institute, and was the first Polytechnic in London.

A previous article I wrote about the Poly and its central role in ensuring the 1908 Olympics went ahead has been lost though I do have a paper copy somewhere. Back to today: this once august institution seems to spend a lot of time now as a hot bed of lefty Marxist groups rather than anything constructive such as turning out people who are useful to society, but this latest announcement comes from the top and its alliance with ARUP, the architects designer planning consultant group. 

Does anyone really know what that headline means? In this time of diversity and inclusiveness any excuse is as good as another to change things that supposedly allow minorities to enjoy the fruits of life as do the rest of us; the only problem with that analogy is there is nothing to stop them now, and hasn’t been for decades. The ‘problem’ is a purely invented one.

It is worth reading the entire article: 

https://www.westminster.ac.uk/news/queering-of-public-spaces-will-make-them-more-inclusive-for-all-report-suggests

The announcement from ARUP follows the same theme.

But what does it actually say? The bulk of it is verbal diarrhoea, it says nothing, it just fills a page with gobbledegook. This passage is a classic: 

"They also said that inclusive design should contribute to the desistance of hate crime and promote the inclusion of marginalised and disempowered groups in public space. Professor Catterall and Dr Azzouz suggest attention to the scale and mass of buildings, lighting features, colours and facades and the addition of curvilinear aspects are amongst the design techniques that can help achieve this objective."

'Marginalised, disempowered, hate crime,' it is all in there - and apparently the size of buildings can make a difference! How, is not defined.

The ARUP version incorporates a review jointly produced by themselves and the Westminster University, here:

https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/queering-public-space

 
                                                                                                                                                                     What I do not understand is why, after telling us they have what have become ‘gayborhoods’ or queer enclaves, is there a necessity to have them spread out into the general areas. They have the ability to do that now, no one is stopping them, these days minorities rule, so what is the problem? 

For everyone else the constant bombardment with rainbow flags, crossings etc is wearing. Like all progressive movements there is a limit that when crossed creates a divide, which was not the original purpose.

Many from the gay community have spoken out about all this. Wokery on their behalf is not wanted, they are quite happy to continue with their lives as is. Those extroverts that seem to infest gay pride parades with their extreme agenda are a small part of the gay community. If 'queering places' means this is the next step I suggest they stay in gayborhoods.

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/arup-calls-for-queering-of-public-space

The AJ (Architects Journal) has a broader, more practical approach to the report, yet still talks as if there is a problem. Is there really a problem? The AJ refers to safe spaces in universities for minority groups and wants to incorporate this theme in outside areas; I ask why? Putting rainbow flags everywhere doesn’t automatically give a safe space, it indicates what that place represents and could give a reverse signal to anyone so inclined to want to make trouble; but aren’t we past  the days of the Naked Civil Servant? Isn’t all this a complete overkill to suit one minority, and do they really want it?

When I grew up in the East End of London many of our haunts were gay pubs. Why? Because they provided the best entertainment, nothing more nothing less. The customers that frequented these places went there mainly for the entertainment, there was never an ulterior motive. Now, gay pubs are for gays only; is that really progress? 

Has everyone become such wimps in life that they have to demand protection from everything, hurty words, demanding to be called this and wondering why they get the wrong answer? Isn’t it all getting totally out of hand. Can’t all minorities just get on with their lives like the rest of us without having to need a crutch for every perceived slight?

Oh, and I have probably just committed a hate crime.

On top of the above Sutton council in south London have just unveiled their first trans road crossing; this they believe will lead to more inclusivity? They already have a permanent rainbow crossing; if they carry on with all the genders it will be interesting to see the first time someone is knocked down on one of these crossing because the driver had not a clue what it was. There is the usual waffle from the councillors who you would have thought had more pressing items in the borough, though of course if you appoint a “lead member for Equalities” I suppose you have to give him something to do:

https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/18/london-uks-first-ever-transgender-flag-pedestrian-crossing-unveiled-14601161/

As with nearly all articles on subjects like this, you finish reading and say ’so what’ ? It is such infantile stuff. How anyone can take this seriously is amazing. I should say that, with days for almost everything, from causes to groups and individuals being created all the time, we must eventually run out of things to celebrate. Perhaps we can declare the whole year a bank holiday, or have we just had that, and all buildings to have mandatory flags, from trans groups to 'save Palestine' month, Black History month, clapping for the NHS, anti-slavery week, LGBQT  history month (see below, and do they really need a month?) and on and on.

(This is a mental hospital, by the way.)

In closing, I have to ask how can these random crossings be legal? We have zebra crossings which are the legal black-and-white ones; how many others are in the official traffic regulations?

And if they are to be made legal, can we have some decent ones? ...

Having taken all this in we need a rest, and naturally there is a rainbow answer to ease your aching mind:                                   

FRIDAY MUSIC: Peter Frampton, by JD

 A couple of weeks ago SKY Arts showed Eric Clapton's 'Crossroads' guitar festival from 2019 in Dallas, Texas. https://www.crossroadsguitarfestival.com/

The highlight, for me, was a friendly 'duel' between Clapton and Peter Frampton playing George Harrison's song While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I had forgotten how good a guitarist Frampton was and still is. 

He is now 71 and has been diagnosed with 'inclusion body myostitis' an autimmine disease which will eventually prevent him from playing the guitar so here is a selection of his music including the aforementioned 'duel' with Clapton which they both clearly enjoyed enormously; Frampton is one of the few performers who smiles on stage as if he really enjoyed his craft!

http://www.frampton.com/home/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Frampton

Coming soon, the 55 United States of America?

 

Following the Biden administration's proposal to turn Washington DC into another US state...

1. A number of counties in Oregon are exploring the possibility to join Idaho instead:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/05/19/Oregon-Idaho-Donald-Trump-Joe-Biden/3341621450876/

2. My brother comments:

"The only state that is free to do something similar is Texas. In the agreement which brought them into the Union, they can break up into up to 5 states. 

"The problem for the power hungry GOP in the state is at least twofold. Firstly, they would no longer be one of the biggest states, and secondly, the state is actually becoming more liberal in the areas near the big cities. [His son] thinks that this will accelerate with things like the recent power grid debacle."

... would that make Texas the 'Five Star State'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_divisionism

MIDWEEK MARVEL: Fractal art, by JD

 ... aka Mandelbrot (and similar) sets https://sk33lz.com/create/fractals/history-fractals

A few colourful digital designs created with ChaosPro fractal generator - http://www.chaospro.de/index.php Every image started like this: << pic 000 >>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set

START THE WEEK: Green, Broke and Cold - by Wiggia

                        or... TO 2030 AND BEYOND: THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

 

The nudge unit is going to have to work overtime on the Green Deal as more and more facts are released or found on the total impracticality of it, all the ridiculous costs involved and the restrictions that will by necessity be imposed on citizens to even begin to make it all work.

I had an example today of the other side of the argument. We have just had a new gas boiler installed in our new house; I spoke to the engineer and asked why, if gas boilers are to be banned from being fitted in new homes from 2025 and phased out in the early thirties, are the likes of British Gas advertising deals on new ‘efficient’ gas boilers.

He said: it is simply not going to happen. The new boilers in the pipeline will be made to be able to change to hydrogen when and if that occurs, otherwise gas boilers will simply carry on being used.

Once again heat pumps were explained as being only useful in new efficient houses and with underfloor heating; it is simply not practical to upgrade older houses enough to make heat pumps viable - radiator sizes alone would have to be increased by 50% because the heat pumps work at a lower temperature.

We have spoken of all this before. The costs to change for the average householder are ridiculously expensive and I agree it is not going to happen and why would anyone sane change with all that expense to a system that is going to cost you a lot lot more to run? 

With more and more fact-based opposition to the Green Deal emerging from reliable sources, I cannot believe  that Boris is ploughing on with all this and the whole CC emissions carbon zero nonsense. There can never be carbon zero; they are just words, an unachievable goal for the eco loons who never explain how it can be achieved other than by impoverishing the population.

The video in the link below shows the rank stupidity of much of the ban everything argument. It starts with the news that seals are losing their young because of lack of ice and then shows a large broken away iceberg; this is enough for those who believe to shut down all things fossil fuelled.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gas-boilers-banned-sale-2033-003600419.html

The headline for this video is ‘Gas boilers should be banned’; it takes a big leap to connect dead seal pups and a broken-off large piece of ice with gas boilers.

And that is the part I do not get. The cyclical nature of weather of the millennia has resulted in cold areas becoming hot, hot areas returning to the ice age and everything in between. Not once have I heard an explanation for how all these events that happened long before Man could be because of us, and even now the ‘science’ has difficulty separating the two.

We have come a long way from the industrial revolution and those dark satanic mills; it is now history, the virtual slave labour of those days is gone, yet is replicated in countries that supply the minerals for the clean new world that is to be founded on battery power; the hypocrisy was never more evident, 'battery power means less of a carbon footprint', that myth is being unpicked on a weekly basis, yet even that is not enough, we now have reports that the eco fascists are not really satisfied with EVs as apparently their tyres give off far too much toxic dust and so do the brake pads. It really is never enough for these b******s, and why do they gain traction? No one votes for them and the background to nearly all of these organisations is always a lot more than just a quest for clean air: it is about changing the way we are governed and making us live how they consider we should.

Naturally none of this will cost them anything. They rarely work unless it is for the same organisations, they are an army of protesting eco mercenaries who have far too much time on their hands; governments listen to their tosh, but they are banging at an already open door - it can only be for the advantage of big business, it is certainly not for the general population, who will be paying for all this for decades.

In our local paper the Eastern Daily Press, there was this week what could be only be called a puff piece by a Swedish company building the latest windmill farm off the coast here. A Dr Catrin Ellis Jones from Vattenfall, a Swedish firm that is building 300 windmills of the coast near here, is asking the people of Norfolk how a multi-million pound fund should be spent in the area supporting our transition over the next three decades to low carbon living.

The company has appointed several ‘ambassadors’ to connect with the local population, ie propagandists.

Two things: first, no one has been asked if we want to go this route in the first place, for all the obvious reasons laid out multiple times; and secondly, where has this money come from? Certainly not from any philanthropic arm of Vattenfall; it almost certainly comes from the huge subsidies given to the wind farm industry - our money!

The UEA professor in sustainable energy chips in: ‘This is an exciting opportunity for all of us in the Norfolk community to say what we love about living here ( what has that got to do with windmills?) and start thinking about the energy and climate future we want for our area.’ What we want has already been decided by the powers that be and it’s more windmills. It sounds as though the old nudge unit has been wheeled out again; we have no say in any of this, it has all been decided that this is the way forward.

Once again in this long drawn out winter we have had more than a few days when energy from wind has been at abysmal levels. Only the interlockers keep the lights on; there is never any mention of this from the pushers of the green movement or anyone else, about this fact that when we need power on cold, dark and often windless days it is not going to come from windmills, yet in mid-summer with low demand and adequate wind the whole industry jumps up and makes headlines about how over 50% of our energy was supplied by the same sustainable? source - even that is not strictly true as they include imported nuclear power not our nuclear power.

It is very difficult, even if you wanted to believe in what is laid out for the future of this country in the climate change debate. This committee, headed up by the industry subsidised Lord Deben (aka Gummer of the beef roll incident), gives a road map of what is required to reach net zero, a figure that means very little but will cost billions over many years to even attempt to achieve.

https://www.theccc.org.uk/2019/02/21/uk-homes-unfit-for-the-challenges-of-climate-change-ccc-says/

The whole thing should be dumped. We are quite capable of improving living conditions without this nonsense and without adding to our enormous current debt. It could be of course that it will never happen as the money simply isn’t there on this scale; hobbling the country with energy costs is already hurting Germany which is building, yes it really is, new coal-fired power stations after the disaster of closing down all their nuclear ones. Does Boris actually believe he knows better than all the failed green energy schemes around the world? If he does, we have a big problem. 

Worldwide the West is suffering from leftie governments, and that includes our current one who would have us consume what they believe and want us to consume, whereas we buy what we want to consume. The only way they can change that is to ban or make what we consume too expensive and then replace it with an equally or more expensive poor substitute; that is happening now in many areas under the guise of health, climate change, and the altering of thought processes with duress as in so called hate crime or the pronoun wars; all cobblers but still making progress. 

None of this is good and yet 'bread and circuses' is winning at the moment.