FRIDAY MUSIC: Mellifluous Melly, by JD

Many years ago I saw George Melly with John Chilton's Feetwarmers. One of the most entertaining and enjoyable shows I've seen. Melly was a showman through and through with his immaculately tailored eccentric elegance and his outrageous humour. They don't make 'em like that any more, sad to say.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Melly

(The final video here is from the TV show 'This Is Your Life'- unfortunately the last ten minutes or so are missing.)

Capitalism or Socialism: a false dichotomy? Open thread

"So much of our history since the mid nineteenth century has been about the people with money and power doing their best to push socialism into extremes so as to make themselves the only possible choice."

Right or wrong?

Defenestrate the trollop!

A new book has been widely reported. It lists 600 English words that are in danger of falling out of common usage.

I think I have found a use for two of them already; the British Cabinet, the 1922 Committee, the Labour Party, the House of Commons and the electorate at large may find them most apt at the moment:

"Defenestrate the trollop!"

Placards under construction now.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6388837/Gadzook-Writer-says-600-endangered-words-including-conk.html

Imperialism never died, by James Higham

With all the wonderful political capital afforded by the "Russian menace" in America and "the U.S. menace" America, let alone China, it's as well to remember that imperialism never died - it's been going on in the modern era since at least the 1700s.

The French in the New World of America, the Spanish, the French sniffing around Australia and beaten to it by the British in 1788, the Dutch there also on the other coast a century earlier, the Chinese ten years ago in Africa - it's going on the whole time, as the Germans can attest.

In my time in Russia, the British were "known" over there for using the British Council for its purposes and I was caught up in the wash in 2008 when the BC was expelled from Vladivostock.  

And so it goes on and on.  Exxon in Sakhalin is another example.

This one below is from the heart of "the enemy", the European Council on Foreign Relations and I'd say it's par for the course:

https://www.ecfr.eu/amp-article/commentary_russias_hired_guns_in_africa

The murder of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic in July 2018 raised new concerns about Russia’s presence in Africa. Because the reporters were investigating the activities of Russian private military contractors (PMCs), there has been widespread speculation that they were killed at the behest of a Russian state determined to expand its presence on the continent. This explanation is plausible: after years of irrelevance in resource-rich but politically unstable central Africa, the Kremlin has heavily relied on PMCs – a cost-effective and efficient tool for hybrid confrontation – in making its return to the region.

Putin publicly supported the creation of mercenary groups in 2012 but, officially, they remain illegal in Russia. Although the Kremlin refuses to acknowledge their existence, PMCs have become an essential tool of Russian foreign policy. This has been apparent in both the Ukraine conflict and the Syrian civil war. By employing irregular armed groups, Moscow has gained the luxury of plausible deniability: the ability to simultaneous be and not be party to a conflict, thereby escaping public accountability for casualties of war. The Kremlin’s response to the decimation of a Wagner Group unit in Syria in early 2018 provides a good example of this.

I could equally write of the US and NATO in the Ukraine through their puppet Poroshenko - let's be evenhanded here. And now we have the spectre of the EU Army:

It rather undermines talk of the nationalism versus patriotism which Macron went on about on the 11th at the Arc de Triomphe, surrounded by flags and the military.  It's not my intention to get into party politics in this post, only to point out that nationalism and imperialism has never died and all the EU is is a new artificial nation, not unlike Belgium, its headquarters.

Sackerson sends these two links which delve into this matter of the Merkel Army:

13.11.18 - https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/merkel-europa-111.html

03.06.18 - https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/merkel-eu-interventionsarmee-101.html

Sackers' further comments:

Or does [Frau Merkel] mean merely to start it off as that until the EU is a full nation and can indeed boast its own national armed forces?

Alerted to it by John Vasc's 02:02hrs comment on Raedwald

(Global Cooling X) (Global Warming X) (Climate Change X) Climate Variability, by JD

A new report from the Met Office states that "The hottest day of each year in the most recent decade was on average 1.4F (0.8C) warmer than each year's hottest days in the period 1961-1990."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6344601/Climate-change-sees-nights-temperatures-dont-drop-68F-before.html

My immediate thought was "Why 1961-1990?" Why not 1861-1890? Or even 1061-1090? An interesting choice of comparative dates because oldies like me remember the 1960s. That was when I escaped from school and entered the grown up world of work. The weather has always been a favourite topic of conversation in this country but in the 60s it was especially so because, then as now, there was a big scare story about the changing climate. In those days it was all about the start of a new 'ice age' rather than global warming. The very long and severe winter of 62/63 seemed to confirm those fears. I remember it well because that was the winter I was learning to drive. In a Mini, which was not ideal when there are huge snowdrifts on either side of the roads!

I don't know how much time the climate 'experts' spend in their offices and how much time they spend out on field trips to look at or for evidence of their theories. In my own working life I have spent at least half of my time out of doors either on construction sites or in fabrication yards building oil rigs. So to flesh out the bare bones of the story in the above video I shall relate a few tales of what I have experienced regarding climate and/or nature as it is in reality. Anecdotal and in no way 'scientific' but their will be thousands who could tell similar stories.

It wasn't just my working life where I spent time out of doors. Unlike today, back in the 'bad' old days much of childhood was spent playing outside and family holidays were also outdoor affairs, weather permitting. So to start off, a 'climate change' tale from a childhood holiday in Eyemouth. There was a line marked along one of the sea front houses showing the water level during flooding in 1953. I remember my father pointing it out and showing the description written on the plaque alongside. The line was above my head as I stood next to it and I just could not comprehend, among other things, how the sea could flood or how a high tide could be so high. High tides and storms are a regular hazard for towns and villages on either side of the North Sea going as far back as 1881.
Global warming? Climate change? No such thing in those days, it was nature giving a demonstration of its awesome power.

My first venture working overseas found me in Dubai. To say that the climate there came as a shock is an understatement! Not just the heat but the humidity, over 90% in the evenings. But you sort of get used to it after a while and gradually settle into a routine which consists of eternal sunshine during the day and a steam room in the evenings. One day the sunshine became rather less bright and gradually the sky darkened and turned brown as a swarm of locusts surrounded everything. There must have been millions of them flying through on their way to who knows where. My office at that time was one of the portakabins in the fabrication yard and it sounded as though we were in a hailstorm as these insects banged their heads on the roof and walls. Some even found their way inside and crawled around in their confusion seeking an exit. They were effectively giant brown grasshoppers about four inches long. Eventually the swarm (plague?) passed and they all disappeared including the ones inside our office who seemed to 'know' how to rejoin the main body as if linked by invisble threads. They did not all depart because more than a few had flown into the generators and fried themselves. Their bodies were quickly scooped up and eaten by the locals working in the yard! If it's good enough for John the baptist.......

It was years later that I discovered the Arabic word for locust is daba or dibi (hence the names Dubai and Abu Dhabi) so the swarm or plague has obviously been a regular feature for centuries. That event was not really climate related but it does demonstrate the wonders of the natural world and how little we really know about seasonal rhythms.

Perhaps the most spectacular demonstration of nature's power is lightning. I have been struck by lightning four times! Not directly of course or I would not be writing this. I have flown into Bilbao airport twice and on both occasions the plane was hit by lightning just as it was landing, maybe 100 feet or so above the runway. This is apparently a regular occurrence at Bilbao airport. Nothing untoward happened, the energy in the strike was discharged safely to earth. On another occasion I was travelling from home to London when the plane was hit by lightning but this time we were about half an hour into the flight and at cruising altitude. There was a sort of 'whoosh' sound and then the interior of the cabin quickly became warmer before slowly returning to normal. The Captain then came on the PA to explain what had happened and very laconically said in his very distinct Scots brogue "ach, nae bother" or words to that effect! An aircraft is basically a Faraday cage and the electrical energy is dispersed around the fuselage before being discharged back into the clouds at the tail or some other exit point. It is known that a commercial aircraft will be struck by lightning at least once per year and are designed to cope with it.

The fourth event was one Sunday at the racecourse in Madrid. There was a sudden downpour and very heavy it was along with a thunderstorm. And then an almighty crack of thunder in a brightly illuminated sky which meant we were directly underneath. All the lights went out, all the beer pumps stopped, all the coffee machines likewise. All electrical circuitry was blown. Except the TV screens of the Tote! They obviously had a UPS system installed, a clever box of tricks which immediately switches to a battery if the supply is interrupted.

And so for the first time I had first hand, empirical evidence of what our climate can do to us. We may think we can control nature and we can to a certain extent but we cannot counter the sheer magnitude of the energy of something like that or anything else nature can do.

The physicist David Bohm calculated that there is "more energy in one cubic centimetre of space than is contained in all the matter of the known universe." https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/204523.Wholeness_and_the_Implicate_Order
The implication of that concept is virtually impossible to fully understand and yet, it seems to me that the climate scientists are confident that they understand and can deal with anything, given time. Reminds me of the mad scientists in the third part of Gulliver's Travels.

I have saved the 'best' till last mainly because it was my most recent experience. While I was working in Chile on a power station project there was an earthquake. This happened late one evening and I knew what it was as I had been reading that morning about the earthquake design requirements for the building. My apartment block began to sway from side to side, at first slowly but then with increased frequency until I could see the chairs on the balcony dancing and the chandelier in the living room was swinging violently and was actually hitting the ceiling. And then it subsided and all returned to normal. Was it alarming? Well at one point I thought "perhaps I ought to panic?" But I didn't because, as I say, I had been reading about earthquakes that morning. The following day on site one of the locals explained to me that they would get two types of quake; one in which the earth moved laterally and one where the earth would move violently up and down. The first was alarming but did not often cause any damage, the second type on the other hand was the one that destroyed buildings. So what we had that night was an 'oscillate earthquake' I think that is the correct term. According to the TV news it had lasted 90 seconds and seismometers in Buenos Aires had picked it up, in fact it had been felt by people in Buenos Aires which is on the other side of the continent. My apartment overlooked Valparaiso Bay on the Pacific.

After that event I know that terra firma is nowhere near as firm as we like to believe! I think the climate scientists ought to get out more and stop relying on books and theories and computer forecasts. The truth is that the 'experts' do not know anything about our climate, or at the very least their understanding is minimal.

The main 'cheerleaders' for man-made climate change are concentrated in metropolitan areas or other large cities. Something which will never occur to them is that a city tends to generate its own climate, it exists in its own micro-climate. This can be easily demonstrated by travelling a short distance to a rural area and the difference in temperature will be significantly lower away from the the city. It would take another post to explain the details as well as my own observations of the phenomenon so this will give a few brief ideas-
https://equipobonsai.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/environment-and-architecture-hassan-fathy/

There have been two events in history which, if they happened again, would invalidate all of the computer models which suggest that somehow mankind is altering the climate:

It is known that there was a major volcanic eruption in 1257 (the actual date is unclear,) Evidence from core samples, from examination of tree rings and from written records and chronicles at the time all point to a huge cloud of ash in the atmosphere surrounding the earth such that there was a 'year without sun' or possibly more than one year. The effects on food production can only be imagined, but it certainly was not beneficial. "When large scale volcanic eruptions inject aerosols into the atmosphere, they can form stratospheric veils, which reduce the amount of light reaching the surface. That reduces the temperatures on much of the Earth and can cause problems in agriculture including famine." I have seen reports that our climate scientists have suggested erecting in space something similar to shield the earth from the sun. They are mad but they do not know they are mad!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1257_Samalas_eruption

In 1859 there was a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun, a solar flare in other words. What that did was to release a burst of electromagnetic energy which swept over the earth causing damage to the newly installed electric telegraph systems in Europe and the US. If such an event happened today the consequence for our heavy reliance on electricity for just about everything would be catastrophic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

One man who studies solar activity from which he prepares weather forecasts is Piers Corbyn, brother of Jeremy Corbyn. This is what he writes about the effects (or more accurately the non effect) of CO2 on our atmosphere and our climate:

"The world is not warming and has not been doing so for 18 years. Even under fraudulent UN-MetO-NOAA manipulated data the world is not warming. ALL the alarmist predictions of CO2 warmism have failed.

"See http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews14No11.pdf and links in Article about BBC-MetO charlatan John Hammond's Science Denialist claims, in WeatherAction blog http://bit.ly/1xKYPrJ (sec3)

"FACT  Changing CO2 has no effect. EVEN the Models used by the Met Office and UN's Climate Committee (the IPCC) show CO2 levels have no effect on the Jet Stream or extremes which come from the Wild Jet stream changes which they fail to predict.  It is meteorological fact that the recent very wild weather extremes and contrasts follow from wild Jet Stream behavior. THAT Wild Jet Stream (Mini-Ice-Age) behavior was and is regularly predicted by Piers Corbyn's Solar-Lunar approach and is nothing to do with CO2. See http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews14No06.pdf & Piers' video http://bit.ly/QS0k34
The claim that these extremes are driven by CO2 /man made Climate Change is a lie for which there is no evidence or scientific paper which demonstrates a link in the real world."
http://weatheraction.com/

And so, in spite of the anecdotal and expert (real experts) evidence, the climate scientists and the politicians continue to believe in the false god of 'climate change' and press ahead with their mad schemes which will 'fix' a non-existent problem. Such hubris!

"..but man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep."

- WS, Measure For Measure

It’s Free, by Wiggia

A short everyday story: last year after Christmas the long-serving Christmas tree had passed into the distinctly tatty phase and bits were dropping off. Time for it go to that place in the sky that is occupied by retired Christmas trees. The wife says we will have to get another one for next year and I said with luck we will not be here.

Of course, we are still here. The local independent garden centre has a loyalty card - who hasn't? - and I mainly use it when I buy compost, they do a good range and you get a further discount and I use a lot of the stuff here in my far too large garden and dozens of giant pots accumulated over time.

The GC sent a mail out saying they were holding a special open evening for card holders, today 4 till 8, and as with all garden centres they are doing a special meal at a very good price, plus you get a free mince pie when you go in ! The evening has 25% off all Christmas decs so the wife cottons on and a date in the diary is marked.



Not having been to this bun fight I said we go at four, get what we want and get out, mission accomplished. They do by the way have a excellent section for Christmas decs etc, as good as I have seen anywhere, so off we go.

As we arrive there are cars blocking the entrance and the road trying to get in plus the usual numpty who having got just inside the gate is looking for an empty space there and then and to hell with the traffic tailing down the road. I nearly turned round and went home, but the wife insists we go in so we do; there is not a parking space anywhere at four ! But they have a retail village round the back with its own car park so I make for that and lo and behold we are in luck: it still had a few spaces empty.

Back into the garden centre, where at the entrance to the main building is this enormous queue. Again I want to go home but as we have come this far in we go, me under duress. The queue is on one side and we went straight past and in. Once inside the reason for the queue was obvious: it was for the free mince pie. There were two people giving out the mince pies on the showing of your loyalty card and there were two platters piled to the sky with the crusty objects. Everywhere you went people were eating bloody mince pies, it is amazing what the offer of something free, even as mundane as a mince pie, does to the general public psyche. Mayhem!

The place was packed and before the wife got sidetracked inspecting gnomes and furry animals for the tree. I suggested we get the tree and the lights plus any "essentials " and get out. Reluctantly she agreed as she was already edging down the colour co-ordinated aisles of Christmas decs.

You will need a trolley for the tree I was told, but there is no way you can manoeuvre a trolley through this madness, so I got an assistant, got the tree and took it to the exit and left it there till we returned with the "extras". A basket was needed and the lights went in and a garland she wanted.
"Can we go now as the tills have not started to get busy?" "While I am here," she said, "we might as well have a look for a few baubles for the tree as I want to replace some old ones." Old ones are replaced on a yearly basis so they are not really old, but she gets great pleasure from the decorating and I succumb.

By now every spare inch of space is taken up by seemingly endless hordes of people eating mince pies, huge waves of small and excited children get under your feet and they drop mince pies or part of them everywhere; older people meet old friends and block the aisles as they chat without the slightest suspicion that the aisles are blocked by their complete disregard of what is going on round them. And still they come. Without seeing it creep up behind me I am nearly rammed by a mobility scooter - how the hell did he get this far? The basket on the front is empty but I detect traces of mince pie down his front. You would think that they would all be laden with Christmas decs, but no, today garden centres are for coffee buns and meals, plus of course mince pies, so they just amble about all getting in each other's way.

I put my soft foot down and suggest she has got what was "essential" and I suggest we leave before it gets really busy. Reluctantly she agrees and I make a short cut through the plant area thus avoiding the pie-eating throng. We reach the tills, I pick up my awaiting tree and glory be there is a till that is empty. "That was lucky," I say and the assistant says "It is, in another half hour as last year the queues are into the main retail area." "We could have stayed a bit longer," says the wife; one look was my answer.

We paid, saving over £55 with my accumulated card points plus the 25%.  I go and get the car and bring it back to load up. We exit easily and pass the entrance that is now blocking the road for a hundred yards. "Thank Christ for that," I say. "But we could have stayed a bit longer." I did not reply and drove home rather like the Sixt adverts, a bit smug, but also rather sad: for in my haste I did not get my mince pie as was my right - after all, they were free.

Weekend Wonders: Metamorphosis