Back to mono again…but this time in painting not photography. My exceedingly excellent tutor said to use a single colour only plus white to help learn about tonal values. She is a really good teacher.
Herewith the results of my efforts: top one is in oils and the bottom one is acrylic both using burnt sienna plus titanium white (the EU banned flake white in the weird belief that artists might mistake it for toothpaste.)
The headline quotes 1 in 4 as willing to pay more for sustainable packaging; that is, 1 in 4 said they might be willing to pay more whilst 3 out of 4 don't want to pay more or can’t afford any more price increases on anything, but that isn’t mentioned, they don’t matter as they don’t support the narrative.
As with so much today corporations are following the agenda for all things climate change, for that is what this is actually about, it has nothing to do with saving precious resources. What all these aims have in common is more expense for the consumer, at a time when inflation is at its highest in thirty odd-years, earnings are falling in real terms and basics in particular energy are not only becoming a very expensive necessity but will naturally mean the general public will cut back as they have already started to do on various items.
Sometimes I wonder what planet these people and organisations are on. During a period of financial stress for the many they faff about adding costs to items that may well be off the agenda all together in the next year; what is the advantage for them in that?
Already in the magazine a piece on Philip Schofield, yes him, whose own wine brand (wine brands are the new celebrity cause célèbre, all must have one) is going to promote for the same reasons cardboard packaging i.e. bottles. No quibble with that but its sustainability advantage over glass is doubtful; will it also be cheaper? No comment on that point - with glass techniques producing thinner and much lighter bottles the advantage is not that obvious.
I have to admit I can’t stand Philip Schofield, my problem, a modern day version of the obsequious Uriah Heep, but plenty do like him as his endless appearances prove.
It seems that along with diversity managers, sustainability managers are now onboard most big firms. It seems sometimes as though the private sector is mirroring the public sector in creating jobs for the boys. If sustainability is something they deem necessary why not use one the agencies who specialise in the subject? No, can’t do that, they need the name of their own sustainability manager on the letter heading to prove how worthy they are, so another layer of management is created that we all pay for one way or another.
Sustainability is just another arm of the climate change industry, and it is an industry. Oil producing firms are changing to sustainable forms of energy not because they are particularly of the belief that they are polluting the planet but because having their arm forced by green led governments simply means they switch to an alternative way of producing profit that allows them to stay in business.
Companies like Shell have moved into a range of businesses that enable them to use their huge resources and carry on making money. The fact that the man in the street has had to dig ever deeper just to stay afloat is not their or the green lobby's concern and so it is with the extension into sustainable products.
This quote from a Conde Naste article is taken out of context but you can tell from it which way the wind is blowing:
‘with the promise that the current climate crisis can be turned into a business opportunity through innovation, engineering and eco-modernisation. If many of these schemes come to pass they will be lucky to have anyone left to afford their ‘business opportunities.’
Conspiracy theories aside there can be no doubt now that the green lobby has infiltrated the government hierarchy and workings of state, not just here but throughout much of the western world.
Another part of the same document:
‘Last year, poor social and environmental performance caused the CEO of the world’s largest mining company to resign; the stock of three chemical giants plummeted; and corporations were called to the carpet for poor emissions offset programs. This shows that climate action is no joke among the public, and the stakes are only going to get higher.’
The truth is the public would likely know nothing about it, What happened was a leak on the performance and the threat from woke banks and institutions threatening the funding of further projects unless they comply, so the part about the public apart from the green blob is disingenuous.
They don’t want you to travel, yet apart from a few asides will not come out with that fact outright and we see the creeping agenda: EVs that few can afford, the subsidy to the same EVs being withdrawn and the edge they have in running costs now evaporating with other ways of taxing.
It can’t be a coincidence that world wide we are seeing airports in chaos and ferry ports blocked. All the excuses have only a modicum of truth, as the fact that people would want to get away after two years of lockdown was obvious, yet here we are with everyone conveniently blaming everyone else.
The utter disconnect between what they wish for and what is possible, and it isn’t with current technology, is highlighted here; as he says at the end, we are being led by political science:
Not only do they not want you to drive, they don’t want you to fly or travel unless it is by public transport. It will be made as difficult as possible in the short term by the mandating of vaccine passports; even if we in the UK are slow to this others will lead and all will follow. Only private jets as already will be exempt for the elite and the rich, anyone who thinks this will not happen is kidding themselves. The lying and scaremongering will continue unabated as it has been shown to work.
Schipol Amsterdam airport has just announced it will restrict the number of flights by ten per cent; interesting, as it is in the last phase of building a terminal to increase passenger numbers. So where did this bad business decision come from? It comes of course from the Dutch government who own the majority of the airport's holdings, the same government who are wanting to stop 50% of Dutch farming.
Were the Dutch public when they voted for this lot aware what was in store for them? If they were then on their collective heads be it, but I doubt that any political party would be shouting these policies from the rooftops, it will if at all be buried in the small print.
Sustainability has already been voiced by no other than the clothing industry which now has advocates of so called sustainable materials at much higher prices as the way forward despite years of the Primarks of this world dominating the industry. This philosophy is being applied to everything, in a recession of which we are on the edge, a lowering of living standards, and with wage stagnation over the last ten years. Simply, few will be able to afford this new way forward; in a growth economy there may be some justification for it in some areas, but that is not the case and won't be for years with the debt that has been forced on us.
Yet none of this will make the slightest bit of difference as outside the western woke world no one is listening. The climate change argument has no traction in places like China and India so we are impoverishing ourselves for nothing.
(President Trump warning in 2018 against overedependence on Russian energy supplies)
- Not laughing now, are they?
And finally, for those who believe that Britain should be turned into a version of Jurassic Park we have smug ‘conservationist’ Chris Packham at odds with smug SNP windbag Ian Blackford over Sea Eagles carrying his lambs away. My wish would be for the Sea Eagles to up their game and carry both of them away.
Blackford said this awhile back:
“Blackford’s calls come less than three years after a non-native mink killed his three-year-old ducks — named Mrs McGregor, Mrs Campbell, Mrs Morrison and Mrs McFarlane“
The price that’s paid for all this re-wilding and moves to sustainability have a price that is worth paying - until, that is, it affects you.
We will all be scavenging soon if this lunacy is allowed to carry on.
I first became aware of Darrell Scott when he appeared on the BBC's Transatlantic Sessions many years ago. Last weekend he popped up again on SKY Arts as one of the members of Robert Plant's Band of Joy in an hour long concert recorded in Nashville and very good it was too! I believe the whole thing is on YouTube somewhere.
Anyway, Scott is an exceptionally fine musician and songwriter of American folk music loosely categorised as Americana or Roots music.
Now that the contest for the Conservative leadership has been whittled down to two candidates, we should look at what qualities might make a good leader.
Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
Erstwhile Chancellor Rishi Sunak humblebrags that his greatest weakness is working hard. Potentially that could be a problem, if as PM he allows himself to get over-involved in minutiae to the detriment of ‘helicopter overview.’
With Liz Truss we have the problem of deciding whether she is stupid or lazy; or even both. For example, in the runup to the invasion of Ukraine she walked into a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and told him ‘that the UK would never recognize Moscow’s sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov [Russian!] regions.’ It was hardly her first gaffe, but this one was huge: if you are going to confront a potential enemy, you absolutely must get your facts right. Lavrov accused her afterwards of being ‘unprepared.’
Truss has tried to ‘channel’ Margaret Thatcher, e.g. by the tank photo-op, and her choice of clothing for this leadership debate, thereby inviting damaging comparison, as Edwina Currie pointed out. At the least, this self-undermining image policy argues an inability to foresee presentational pitfalls, in a profession that relies so heavily on appearances.
Ability to dominate others
When General Montgomery first met Winston Churchill, the latter offered him alcohol. Monty replied, ‘I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, and I’m one hundred per cent fit.’ Churchill leaned forward and said, ‘I drink, and I smoke, and I’m two hundred per cent fit!’ Smiling at the memory decades later, Monty told the interviewer, ‘I thought then, we’ve got our man,’ i.e. someone with the aggression to lead the country to victory.
I may be wrong, but although Truss is ambitious, she doesn’t seem to have Thatcher’s intimidating diligence, force of personality and social skills, all necessary to bring the (still mostly male) serpents around the Cabinet table to order. I can imagine her as PM being briefed against, early and often.
Sunak is certainly clever - he used to be an investment analyst for Goldman Sachs (aka the ‘vampire squid.’) Like Gordon Brown, perhaps, he may come up with strategies, schemes and flowcharts - but can he lead? Like Truss, I think he’s a bit of a stiff, a natural big-corporation tie-wearer who chimes wrong when he tries casual as in the debate:
When Sven-Göran Eriksson chose David Beckham in 2001 to lead England in the World Cup, he said (and I wish I could find the quote) that Beckham had a winner’s state of mind that he could instinctively communicate to the rest of the team. That was borne out by England’s 5-1 victory against Germany in the qualifying rounds.
Beckham has often been guyed as apparently slow-minded or semi-inarticulate, but some people put one off by seeming too glib or ‘too clever by half.’
Does either Sunak or Truss pass the Beckham test?
Long-term vision
It’s been a long time since British politics has had a statesman at the helm. We stumble from one crisis to another; even Margaret Thatcher, voted in to ‘sort out the unions’, needed to cast about for a wider econo-political strategy and had to be guided into monetarism by Sir Keith Joseph.
In a way it can be an advantage not to have any beliefs. One of the reasons for Johnson’s entry to Number Ten is that his eyes had been fixed on personal greatness since childhood, irrespective of any moral or political principles. Rackety and sloppy, he was allowed to take over because he could see which way the political tide was turning, even while PM Theresa May was trying to hold it back, Canute-like.
Johnson’s egregious sense of entitlement, noted at Eton, is to many an attractive quality, even though perhaps it shouldn’t be. He has always felt that the rules needn’t apply to him; he is in a way a modern, a posh version of Neal Cassady. He is irrepressible - his resignation statement (7 July) and Parliamentary speech during the subsequent confidence debate (18 July) were amazingly bullish. Nothing will keep him down; goodness knows what further personal triumphs are ahead of him.
But what of our future?
The UK and the US have been systematically weakening themselves for what? forty years? while the East has been rising so rapidly at our expense and with the support of our multinational companies and globalist political class.
What will Sunak or Truss do to turn the tide? Do they want to?
'Liquid landscapes' created with ChaosPro fractal generator - http://www.chaospro.de/index.php The last update on the ChaosPro page is 2011 so I am not sure if the program is still downloadable.
These images were created using either Windows Vista or Windows XP but subsequent versions of Windows produce much less elaborate images. A clear case of Hutber's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutber%27s_law
The ferrets in a sack scramble to become the next PM hardly gives any of us confidence that the country will be in safe hands. In the real world we would discount two candidates straight away:
Sunak for having plotted his coup months before and made a promotion video to help his cause, not easy to accept after that - he is a team player, is it? - and Zahawi, promoted to chancellor by Boris despite being under investigation by the HMRC for tax irregularities. So much for parliamentary scrutiny on both counts.
Liz Truss puts herself forward as the one who will make Brexit work, despite having formerly being a Lib Dem and latterly a remainer. She is also the most wooden of all the candidates. I don’t really care about those aspects of an MP if they are any good, but there is something more than her wooden exterior that is wrong: do we believe her?
Jeremy Hunt, another who would have us back in the EU and has been described as Teresa May in trousers; another who says he is sorry about his mistakes as health secretary now that he is making a bid to become PM; don’t they all?
Penny Mordaunt: she is another who has never had a proper job; comes across well at the dispatch box and has nice hair! But she lies and has lied seemingly about everything and refuses to admit she said anything contrary despite it all being in Hansard or in the archives; like her bigging up of her ‘naval’ career, her close association with the WEF and Bill Gates. Bins her for me.
The only two who give some hope for the future if they stay on track are the two young women of ethnic origins. Both have shown quite a good grasp of things that are currently of concern to the public and both are not cowed by more senior figures who would dismiss them as being without experience, a line many have used since both have garnered a lot more support than was believed possible. Yet even they along with all the others are pro the eco lunacy - though Kemi has rowed back on that - and vaccines forever.
Yes they are an unknown quantity as far as the top job is concerned but experience and supposed knowledge of the workings of government did not do much for the last two incumbents May and Cameron who apart from in May's case lying about her Brexit aspirations or total lack of them achieved bugger all other than tying us into an expensive commitment on net zero. So what is to lose? No one will ever meet all our individual or the country's requirements and most in recent years have met none. We as a nation have been poorly served and that is being polite. So what is to lose with such a poor batch from whom to choose?
It was interesting in the comments underneath and elsewhere how many now indoctrinated with the oppressed black narrative started to slag her off, and almost funny, the inference being she is not black enough.
But she also said this, which is better than anything anyone else has come out with during this campaign, again not difficult as they restricted themselves to sound bites, we need more sound bites like we need more promises from Pritti Patel about how she is going to stop the dinghy people.
No idea if she is right for the job, whether she could, given the chance, get through the blancmange that confronts anyone stepping outside the lines of convention, but that sadly is where we are, up shit creek, and by the time this post goes up it will probably be the usual suspects in the running.
Meanwhile waiting to ‘pounce’ should the opportunity arise we have Captain Hindsight, leader of pride parades and his sidekick that towering intellect the ginger growler. None of it bodes well, and all of them are complicit in turning the HoC into a place of disrepute full of placemen, lightweights, seat warmers, expenses troughers, chancers and outright liars who believe this behaviour, see below, is perfectly acceptable because they can.
In my old age I like to believe I have seen it all with politics but today's leaders in the western world are symptomatic of its decline. Hardly one isn’t the product of incumbent parties simply choosing leaders to protect the status quo, or the result of the backing of vested interests; as with Macron, who wishes to succeed Merkel as the de facto leader of the EU and is there only because he profited from a system that can be manipulated to get him into and keep him in power. Not really much of a recommendation, is it?
By the time this goes up no doubt it will be whittled down to Truss and Sunak. I don’t care any more, if that is the best on offer so be it. even Boris in his last PMQs was at least funny when describing Capt Hindsight as a plastic bollard and that is about the strength of it: plastic bollard, ginger growler vs woodentop or rich totally remote man in skinny suit who makes awful promotional videos. Is it all this country can offer up.
Still I did see Billy Bunter aka Gerald Campion MP for Greyfriars lurking on the back benches so there is hope yet, yaroo!…there is obviously no tax on pies yet.
Keith Jarrett is a jazz pianist who also plays classical concerts as well as more mainstream popular music. The first Jarrett record I bought was not jazz but the music of the Estonian minimalist composer Arvo Pärt.
I have included the recording of Fratres with Gidon Kremer on violin and the contrast with the first video of an improvised blues is striking as well as illustrating the breadth of Jarrett's talent and musical explorations.
Sadly he has been unable to perform since suffering a stroke in February 2018. A second stroke, in May 2018, left him partially paralyzed and unable to play with his left hand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Jarrett
Image: Yahoo!
