Pig hails deal to sell MPs' sperm to China

"UK and China agree £45m pig semen export deal" (Guardian, 4 December 2013)

The Palace of Westminster echoed to the sound of popping champagne corks yesterday, as the nation's top people celebrated an historic trade agreement with China. Addressing a meeting composed of members of both Houses, the Empress of Blandings announced a multimillion pound scheme to improve the human stock of the PRC by the export of highly-prized British sperm.

It all began when Chinese police officers came to the UK on the trail of international Triad connections. "They said they were looking for criminals," said the Empress, "and we told them to find their own, as we had spent centuries bulding up our collection. When the misunderstanding had been cleared up, they became interested in our ruling class.

"At first they couldn't believe that it was possible to combine a political career with multiple outside interests, from handfuls of directorships to consultancies, journalism, novel-writing and taxpayer-funded travel. In their world, those who neglect public duties in favour of private projects are, sooner or later, shot.

"We had to explain to them that we don't execute psychopaths here, we put them in charge. How else could we have got China hooked on opium just to earn silver to pay for our Lapsang Souchong? That's when they realised that their efforts to create an orderly society had led them to a national shortage of world-conquering shitweasels.

"Fortunately, they also noted the hyper-priapic nature of many of you, evidenced not only by extramarital affairs but -" [a legal adviser whispered urgently into the Empress' floppy ear. "Really? The ancient Greeks didn't see any harm in it."] Anyhow, all that top-quality jizz that has previously gone to waste can now be put to profitable use.

"Plastic collecting boxes will be fitted to the backs of all red and green benches - front-benchers will go on diplomatic missions to the Far East, as usual - and donors will be credited with half the sale proceeds. We expect a great improvement in attendance as a result, and with luck, Parliament will be self-financing by the end of the decade."

The Empress graciously acknowledged the standing ovation and returned to her country estate, leaving the assembled representatives to their troughs.

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Pig jizz and politicians

Prime Minster's deal to flog pig semen to China is good material for jokes - like those made today on Radio 4's airhead News Quiz - but think what it really means: when the genetic material is in Chinese pigs, there'll be less need for our exports of high-quality pig meat.

When Britain sold out a significant portion of Birmingham's car manufacturing to China, the program was structurally similar: teams of Chinese went round the giant factory, trying to get into every office to grab blueprints and any other paperwork that would fast-track their own industrial knowhow. The managers at Longbridge had to station men outside to prevent the loss of informational material that wasn't part of the deal.

Soon, we'll look back and realise that intellectual property rights was an even bigger issue than the imbalance of manufactured goods.

We may even come to realise that many important people knew that all along, but we live in a globalised world and they won't necessarily hang around for us to question them. DNA = Did Not Attend.

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A question

Which of our own politicians might have benefited from 27 years on Robben Island?

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N Korea has huge rare earth deposits

Rare Earth Investing News tells us that North Korea has the world's largest deposits of rare earth elements (REE).

SRE Minerals, a private equity firm exploring a rare earths project in North Korea, in conjunction with the Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation, a North Korean entity, has announced the formation of a joint venture to advance rare earth deposits at Jongju, located 150 km northwest of the capital Pyongyang.

According to the press release, HDR Salva’s initial assessment indicates a potential 6 billion tonnes, including 216.2 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides comprising light rare earth elements such as lanthanum, cerium and praseodymium. Around 2.6 percent of the TREO would be heavy rare earth elements, or roughly 5.45 million tonnes.

“The Jongju target would appear to be the world’s largest known REE occurrence,” said Dr. Louis Schurmann.

Rare Earth Investing News reported in 2012 on the mineral potential of North Korea, which by some estimates is worth $6 trillion including a large number of rare earth metals. However trade with the reclusive, adversarial north Asian nation has been restricted to all nations but China, which does not currently adhere to the US and United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

So much for sanctions then. I wonder who the North Korean authorities have in mind for the unpleasant job of extracting the rare earths? From Wikipedia :-

Mining, refining, and recycling of rare earths have serious environmental consequences if not properly managed. A particular hazard is mildly radioactive slurry tailings resulting from the common occurrence of thorium and uranium in rare earth element ores. Additionally, toxic acids are required during the refining process.

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In praise of Nelson Mandela

For some time to come, Nelson Mandela will be buried under a mountain of bullshit from people who didn't give a damn about him or wished him dead. I note how fast Bushes Senior and Junior have been to add their voices to the professional keening.

But I remember his comment when, at the height of their ephemeral fame, the Spice Girls chose to be pictured with him: " This is the most important thing that has ever happened to me."

He was not a false God to himself, and that tells me that he was a great man.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Pontian music

Some music is like "the call of the wild" and Pontic music does that for me. The above performance at the Athens Olympics gives a hint of it, and its inclusion in the ceremony underscores the long, unforgiving memory of the Greeks.

The Pontian Greeks, an ancient diaspora, are not like those from mainland Greece and there are still problems of their assimilation into the latter after the Turkish massacres and expulsions of 1922. More recently, some 5,000 have come to Paphos in western Cyprus and local internet comment boards evidence cultural friction there also.

There are or were communities in the lands circling the Black Sea, "south Pontians" from northern Turkey but also "north Pontians" (now often Russian-speaking) from the Crimea, southern Russia, Georgia.  I think you can hear the tragedy of exile in the singers' tones.

At its heart, Pontian music always has the three-stringed Pontic Lyre and the uneven rhythm of "tik" dancing. Dark and dangerous.

If you like it and wish to immerse yourself, there is Radio e-Pontos.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Book-burning in postwar Britain

Zere goes "Ze Art of Englisch"... !

"Textbooks are dying out in classrooms because teachers see them as 'regimented and old-fashioned', Elizabeth Truss said yesterday.

"The Education Minister said rampant ideology in schools that teaching should be 'unstructured and free-flow' meant just one in ten ten-year-olds are issued with them now."

- Andrew Levy, Daily Mail, today.

There are three reasons why teachers have abandoned textbooks and now labour till all hours of the night to lay the track on which their train will run the next day:

1. Revolutionaries. As I have said before, at the large comprehensive where I used to teach the head of English told me that the last act of the previous incumbent was to put all the English coursebooks into a skip in the playground and set fire to them, thus ensuring that the wicked old way of teaching from that sort of book would be gone for ever. This was in the mid-70s, and when I told this to others I found out that the same thing had happened in at least two other schools, at about the same time. I will bet my pension that, like the man who campaigned for the end of corporal punishment, the people who did this did not stay in the classroom, or possibly even in teaching.

2. Constant curricular change. How is it possible to write a textbook when the course content alters frequently? Every education secretary jerks the tiller in a different direction: grammar exercises, no grammar exercises, phonics, no phonics, Shakespeare, no Shakespeare.

3. Ofsted. Inspectors and advisers - some of whom may have been like those in (1) above, or taught or sponsored by them - not only don't want to see textbooks, they even frown on worksheets. We are expecting an inspection soon and we are told that our lessons will be classed as failing if they are text-based rather than activity-based.

Teacher is a fool. Education is a stupid job for clever people - you have to be clever to do it, you have to be stupid to take it on. Only periodic deep economic recessions and the institutional ageism in the British workplace keep the "profession" supplied, sucking in young idealists and middle-aged bankrupts and keeping them so busy that they fail to escape again.

And goodness know how much (colour, laser) photocopiers cost annually, compared with the wear-and-tear cost of replacing texts in the old days - the days when, as in modern-day China, South Korea etc children were set work to do and did it.

Still, we now get better, technicolour paper airplanes and higher-quality scrap in the recycling bins.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.