Lenkiewicz is ignored by the 'art establishment' because his work is figurative and as such is unfashionable and not "cutting edge" or "challenging" or whatever Artspeak is currently in vogue.
Based in Plymouth, he never courted the London art establishment, and became respected solely on his own terms - through hard work, skill, and his unique vision.
Lenkiewicz could well be ignored also because he liked to paint beautiful young ladies and he often put himself in the picture.
If Lenkiewicz is known at all it will be for his association with a Plymouth tramp by the name of Edward McKenzie, known as 'Diogenes'. After McKenzie's death, and with his prior agreement, Lenkiewicz took posession of the 'vacated premises' as McKenzie had referred to his corpse and had the body embalmed. It was then kept in the studio (in a drawer according to rumour.)
The City Council were somewhat agitated by this but Lenkiewicz reminded them that they had two Egyptian mummies in the City museum asking "Is it because mine is new?"
He also painted other tramps as well as others on the margins of society and, until the year before his death, he would provide a free Christmas dinner for the homeless.
You are a teenage girl in a British Muslim family. You go to school, and after that it’s homework and helping your Mum with her duties. Your family keep you safe because they know what boys will do with nubile girls given half a chance, and that would ruin you and dishonour the family.
Or you could run away and f*ck a hero!
Think carefully - hey, where are you going! Wait!
And so, on 17 February 2015, Shamima Begum and two of her school pals went to Syria to have husbands allotted to them, whom they would serve as the jihadis fought for what they saw as their noble religious cause; and who used this excuse to indulge in horrible violence and cruelty.
Aged only 15, Shamima went through a form of marriage with a Dutch convert to Islam, 23-year-old Yago Riedijk, who was later captured and as of last November was in a Kurdish detention centre, facing a six-year jail term for terrorism if and when he returns to the Netherlands. They had three children together, all of whom died in infancy.
It’s the tip of the iceberg. According to JAN Trust, in the 12 months to July 2015, 43 women and girls were seduced into leaving the UK for the Syrian warzone.
Now, we discover, Canada has been implicated in this people-processing. A man called Mohammed Al Rasheed, based in Turkey, was helping people like Shamima transit from the UK to ISIS in Syria but also passing their details to Canadian Intelligence. According to George Galloway, the just-published book that reveals this says that the then British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, was told of this by Shamima’s lawyer five years ago but sat on the information.
The Government argued that under the British Nationality Act 1981 the children of foreign immigrants (Shamima’s parents came from Bangladesh) have less protection against such a deprivation but that Shamima would not thereby be made stateless (which would go against the UNHCR Convention of 1954.) The UK’s Home Office expert Dr Hoque referred to Bangladesh’s Citizenship Act, 1951:
This says that “a person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of Bangladesh by descent if his father or mother is a citizen of Bangladesh at the time of her birth”. It goes on to say that dual nationality is not permitted, so someone with another citizenship “ceases to be a citizen of Bangladesh” — but that proviso only applies to people over 21.
Dr Hoque said:
Until the age of 21, therefore, a Bangladeshi citizen continues to remain a citizen alongside being a foreign citizen.
The Guardian newspaper is inclined to present Shamima as a victim of trafficking; Spiked’s Editor Tom Slater and writer Rakib Ehsan take the view that she was willing and aware of what she was doing.
Peter Hitchens reminds us that Shamima would have been rather more naive when she left the UK at age 15 and that it is ‘cruel’ to leave her stateless and abandoned; rather, we should bring her to the UK to face justice. Speaking on GB News, he emphasised the importance of holding to law and institutions, especially in cases where feelings run high; we can’t give in to the mob.
Summer is nearly over: autumn arrives on the 22nd. Following on from last week's bright and breezy summer music a wistful but beautifully melancholic musical farewell to the sun. Maybe summer next year will be more joyous.
Here's a bonus track; Summer Wine by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood -
We have all seen those pavement artists on their knees with boxes and boxes of chalk beavering away to produce reproductions of famous paintings. And we throw a few coppers into their hats in appreciation of their efforts and as a thank you for brightening up our day.
But this is a piece of pavement art with a difference....
The image comprises 3,604 cups of café con leche each cup with a different amount of milk in the coffee thus providing the variations in colour to produce the illusion of the Mona Lisa.
OK it was a publicity stunt for a coffee maker in Chinchiná, Colombia but no less spectacular for that.
Donald Trump has been denigrated and called an idiot by those who want him removed from the face of the Earth, but he called this correctly along with much else.
It is often said we get the politicians we deserve. Recent events have proved that to be true, and the video below shows a classic example of a script reader clinging to the narrative, let them eat cake…
This seems to have been a week of stupid promises, as potential leaders officials, think tanks, ministers and businessmen offer silly solutions to the energy crisis as a way of being seen to be doing something, It should be said that as they are responsible for the majority of the mess we are in after decades of denying practical ways forward, preferring be in awe to the great green god, they should come up with solutions, but all I see is back of a fag packet knee-jerk reaction to problem of their own collective making.
Perhaps as they get energy allowances they are not that bothered about what happens to the plebs, but they should be careful, in times past this sort of situation resulted in heads on pikes across Westminster Bridge; not likely to happen in what has become a largely apathetic nation, but who knows?
Onward, such a hopeful name, a government think tank, has suggested a halving of stamp duty to those who would install a heat pump. You can tell this was made up over a couple of Mojitos on the terrace at Westminster as none of the obvious downsides are mentioned.
The rebate is an incentive to those being’ hesitant about adopting new technologies’; no, people are declining the fitting of heat pumps because without a suitably insulated property and underfloor heating the are an expensive mistake.
Naturally net zero and its addicts trump any sensible proposals. As a former environment secretary said ‘Liz Truss ought to know the devastating consequences of failing to reach net zero.’Do these bubble dwellers ever stop to think that if we actually reach net zero, we won't, that it will not make one jot of difference in the scheme of things other than reduce our standard of living?
James Kirkup writes a scathing article in the Spectator about Liz Truss' and Rishi Sunak's dismissal of solar farms. There is nothing wrong with solar power, apart from the fact that no sun no power and the much vaunted storage ‘that will save our nation’ is still a far distant fairy story; and how much will we ever be able to store for those long dark winter months when the sun doesn’t shine?
Kirkup goes into great detail about how cheap solar power is. It really isn’t: as I have said before, no renewables are cheap if you have to have a parallel source of energy on stand by for those dark windless days. Until renewables can stand alone, why don’t we invest in an energy source that works and gives us independence, or is that too simple?
Before the crisis, I received an email from a major energy supplier that claimed that all their energy was from renewables. They are not alone, several companies say the same. It is a blatant lie: no energy company can possibly have a choice in the source of their energy, they simply use a Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin certificate REGO to enable them to say such twaddle.
It enables companies to claim they are 100% green when they actually only need to have 30% in the mix. Wherever they claim to get their energy from, in fact all companies get it from the national grid which cannot stream different sources of energy. These companies take people for fools and get away with it.
From the above link…
‘Both Ecotricity and Good Energy source enough renewable electricity to match their customers’ usage though this tends to mean that their costs are higher and as a result their tariffs are more expensive.‘
So Kirkup's claim that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels falls at the first hurdle as the green consumer actually pays more and gets the same energy as everyone else
The energy companies have themselves come up with a plan to ‘help’ the public. Keith Anderson, boss of Scottish Power, wants to help by setting up a government-backed (i.e. taxpayer funded) deficit fund running to £100 billion. Other companies are backing him and you can see why as the self-serving plan is popular: it effectively underwrites their businesses takes away risk of bad debts and takes away any windfall tax extensions.
It involves freezing the cap at £2000 for two years then covering the gap between the cap and the wholesale price of gas with the deficit fund. The repayment would be spread over ten to fifteen years with a mix of energy bills and taxation.
I am sure there is a better way of ‘helping’ those struggling with bills than this and it doesn’t involve giving ‘insurance’ to energy companies; again, the public are being taken for stupid.
Meanwhile Rishi Sunak, hoping to become PM, has issued this statement about how the Covid period was mishandled:
“This is the problem… If you empower all these independent people, you’re screwed… We shouldn’t have empowered the scientists in the way we did.”
He concludes that had we not done so, and had we acknowledged trade-offs from the beginning
“... we could be in a very different place… it could have been shorter. Different. Quicker. There were often times the officials would do a “pre-meeting”, decide what they wanted to push through, then ram it through in the main meeting with the PM/ministers.”
This process wasn’t helped when, on occasion, ministers would go into the key Covid meeting and be handed a set of 100 papers by officials, with no chance of being able to digest them before a decision was taken....
“Mr Sunak recalled the moment when Prof Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London presented their Report 9, which claimed Covid casualties could reach 500,000 if no action was taken but would be reduced to 20,000 with a lockdown.”
As wriggle-free statements go it is quite good, but what it actually says they blindly took the path laid out for them by ‘experts.’ Not only have experts prospered on their misleading of the nation, but those who govern us just sat on their arses and signed anything put in front of them without any scrutiny. Now he wants us to believe it was none of their fault.
Why was Ferguson even invited to give his opinion? His track record in modelling was there for all to see. You, Rishi, along with others were a minister at the time but you failed to raise any alarms or resign in protest; nor did anyone else for that matter, so it’s bit late now.
Boris has no exit plan so has gone on holiday and laid low until he sees a further opportunity to gloss over his multiple failures and visits Ukraine again, promising them almost anything and telling the people back home they will have to ‘suck it up’ re energy prices as the Ukraine is more important than your granny dying of hyperthermia this winter.
Strange words from a Prime Minister whose prime concern should be his nation, his borders, and most importantly the safeguarding of his people, but when you are seeking a life beyond Westminster and a legacy all that goes out of the window.
Of course, Boris doesn’t pay any energy bills and as long as he stays an MP he can claim on expenses, while a growing number of people at the bottom of the pile will not be able to turn on the heating.
His and previous governments have pandered to the green lobby and become evermore reliant on importing energy to cover the shortfalls when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun stays in, rather than build our own infrastructure and be secure, and now he wants us to suffer to save Ukraine.
These come from the late 50s or early 60s, from a more innocent and more optimistic time. And this was reflected in the music, bright and breezy. The guitar sound that set the tone for most of this music was invented by Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Dale
I have added a few other popular guitar based hits as, at that time, guitarists were starting to be recognised as stars in their own right and the music is still an influence to this day.
When I moved to the US in 1978, teaching was a fairly well-respected union job that could keep someone solidly in the middle class. The pay was not huge compared with union truck drivers and auto workers, but school districts had a pay scale which rose with additional education, and seniority pay bumps every 1-3 years for the first 20 years or more, on top of cost of living adjustments. Pension and health insurance were totally paid by the school districts. Overall, the pay package was more generous in many places than I received as an Assistant Professor at a state university.
Then came the Reagan Revolution of the 1980's . A large percentage of the population became convinced that government, unions, pensions and taxes were all terrible things, which could be replaced and improved by the private sector. The conviction that 'private is better' extended to education, even though standardized measures such as the ACT show that public schools outperform private ones. Once one factors out special education, which most private schools do not do, the per-pupil cost is even comparable.
This hatred of government and taxes led many communities to fail school levies, meaning layoffs and benefit cuts, larger classes, and cuts in offerings, except for the all-important athletics.
These financial issues coincided with studies showing that the average results of the US education system were at best mediocre in world rankings.
This led to a great many self-proclaimed 'experts' to offer their solutions.
Those people included Bill Gates, with his conviction that we could replace teachers with AI. The past couple of years, including the lockdown period, have shown how important the human interaction is to learning and that he is dead wrong.
Other 'solutions' included requiring ever-higher largely useless qualifications for teachers, costing them a great deal of time and money, and making Colleges of Education further inflate their sense of importance.
2001 brought the delightfully-named No Child Left Behind act, yet another attempt to 'fix' education. Rather than adopting the European model of testing mastery at various levels, the act went the route of egalitarianism. Each state was allowed to set its own standards, with the utterly insane mandate that every single student, regardless of ability or disability, would demonstrate 'proficiency' by 2012. In one extreme case in Florida, a blind, wheelchair-bound, non-verbal and brain-damaged student was ordered by a court to have to take the tests.
While these awful tests did nothing to improve student performance, they could be used to punish teachers, who were 'obviously' the problem. This in turn led to teachers in some cities to game the system by teaching the specific answers to questions, telling students the answers, or erasing and correcting wrong answers.
Interestingly, when some quasi-private charter schools tried to improve student performance by a combination of bonuses for teachers and firing 'under-performing' ones, it also failed. It is almost as if bad student performance is not primarily attributable to the teachers.
Now add more pressure.
In the past few years, we have seen the rise of the helicopter parents (hovering over their children), the lawnmower parents (who mow down all obstacles in the path of their children), and the jackhammer parents (who smash their way through everything). Teachers are criticized by parents and GOP politicians for discussing sex, slavery, or actual history. Some have been physically threatened.
Not surprisingly, many are leaving the profession in droves, especially those in the STEM areas, who can make much more money in insurance analysis and other technical jobs.
And what is the solution proposed by Republican politicians in Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin and elsewhere? Require no college degree or other qualifications, under the argument that anyone admitted to college must know enough to teach every subject in K-12 education, even ones which they themselves have never taken. There are, after all, education consultants who specialize in training teachers to follow scripts to teach classes.
