COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Back to Mono 3, by JD

…some more B&W pictures, this time with a few stanzas of poetry for each picture.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune,

It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and ’twas—the Grape!

And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel

And robb’d me of my Robe of Honour—well,

I often wonder what the Vintners buy

One half so precious as the Goods they sell.

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;

Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke:

Care no more to clothe and eat;

To thee the reed is as the oak:

The sceptre, learning, physic, must

All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning-flash,

Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;

Fear not slander, censure rash;

Thou hast finished joy and moan;

All lovers young, all lovers must

Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!

Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

Ghost unlaid forbear thee!

Nothing ill come near thee!

Quiet consummation have;

And renownèd be thy grave!

Another stick-up from Microsoft !

From my Substack column - why not join for FREE updates?

________________________________________________

For a long time, Bill Gates’s outfit was fixing things that weren’t broke. Then it moved to breaking things that were fixed.

Now it’s doing it again, demanding money that I can’t easily afford since my energy bills have just more than doubled.

We’re all used to frequent compulsory ‘updates’ that interrupt your work, slowing the computer. A few years ago MS announced they ‘would no longer support’ the edition of Windows I was using and I had to go get a new laptop with the latest sparkly version of his software. At least the HP notebook was a pretty teal colour.

Waal, a few days ago I tried opening a Word document. ‘Updating Office’…ooh! … ‘Error.’ Seems it’s something to do with needing Windows 11 and please check your machine to see if it’s powerful enough to download. Oh and there was a reference to my existing Office licence being part of a bulk buy and its replacement is going to cost £80 a year, if I’ve got that right. Until then, no Word, no Excel - not even for access to documents I previously created.

But, haha, I can still open them, because I haven’t yet scrapped/donated the old computer; the one that starts up much faster, opens documents way faster and doesn’t shove black oblongs onto the screen with notifications that I didn’t ask for.

The corporations are making you purchase everything twice and three times. In music, vinyl to CD to a Cloud subscription system that may, who knows, suddenly terminate. In motoring, petrol to diesel then omigod not polluting diesel then madly expensive rare-earth electric. When they’re not ‘upgrading’ they’re keeping profits rising by making the product worse - remember the confectioners’ plan to produce Toblerone bars with fewer ‘teeth’ or replace the raisins in Cadbury’s Fuit and Nut with cheaper sultanas?

I think we reached ‘peak quality’ some while ago. When the market is saturated all that’s left is to heist the customers.

This is why I buy physical books (mostly) and DVDs - so cheap these days, hardly more than the postage. No batteries, no abrupt termination of service; can share, swap, resell, gift. Private property! The foundation of liberal democracy!

Bill, you’ve got all the money a man could ever want; why the hell didn’t you just go fishing, have a beer with your buddies, spend more time with your wife and children?

It’s a madness, this power thing. Include me out. Leave my stuff alone.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Shigeru Umebayashi, by JD

Shigeru Umebayashi (born February 19, 1951 in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka) is a Japanese composer. He is best known for his film scores.

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

UKROMANIA: The Texican War of 2072

From my Substack column - why not join for FREE updates?

This is set in a parallel universe; you can draw some parallels…

Seen in retrospect, the war was inevitable.

It was a long time coming. Back in 2041 the United States had fallen apart under the pressure of globalism, the FIRE economy and the over-concentration of wealth while public squalor grew. Out of the flames arose a new American Federation comprising most of the States and with a fresh Constitution, the nation’s third - as Jefferson had rightly said, the dead have no power over the living.

Most of the States, but not all. The ancient Mexican possessions had developed a different identity as their populations swelled with migration from the south. A group of territories including Colorado, New Mexico, Baja California and Arizona declared independence. Recognising that they were weak individually, over a period of years each joined the Latin American Union (LAU), flying its flag, a circlet of stars on a red ground, alongside its own.

Joining the LAU also meant becoming members of the Central American Treaty Organisation (CATO), sponsored by China and ostensibly formed to resist imperialist aggression. The creeping acquisition of non-aligned States had gone on despite Mexico’s assurances to the contrary, and made the government in Washington nervous. Accordingly, CATO had wisely desisted, at that stage, from stationing nuclear missiles in these areas.

One former US State with old Mexican links had remained neutral: Texas.

Potentially, Texas had vital military and economic significance. Its northern border was only some 500 miles from the AF’s Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. In the south, its western edge was a mere 100 miles or so from Monterrey and its eastern shores were in a position to control naval activity and maritime trade in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico.

Texas had a challenge to maintain order, what with the notorious corruption of its post-independence political establishment, the power of the oligarchs and the tensions beween its Hispanic and Anglophone communities. The government in Austin tried to maintain a balance between its two great neighbours, despite financial blandishments from both sides, but it was only a matter of time before somebody shook its tree.

For the hawks of Mexico City, the prize was too great to resist; it was the key to unravelling the American Federation. They coveted the immense natural and energy resources of the AF. Also, they disliked President Jackson, now in his sixteenth year of office. The President had disciplined the super-bandits that had been eating the country alive and he was popular with his voters, despite being portrayed abroad as an evil tyrant. He was proving himself a tough old bird.

It was time to pluck his feathers.

Mexico’s foreign intelligence agency, the CNI, decided on a policy of ‘overextending and unbalancing’ the Jackson regime, initially without direct military confrontation.

Canada was to be useful, having fault lines that could be exploited. There was the simmering separatism of Quebec, so mischievously played by France’s President de Gaulle on his visit in 1967; the enduring links between the Francophone populace there and their relations in New England; the activism of First Nation peoples of both countries, whose ancestral lands in many cases straddled the border; even some Georgist factions, descendants of the royalists who had been forced to flee revolutionary America three centuries before.

Accordingly, various Canadian provinces broke out in conflicts that spilled over into the northern AF; distractions that were difficult and expensive for the latter to settle, that soured relations with Ottawa and further served to confirm Jackson’s international profile as a warlike imperialist and oppressor of dissidents.

The hour seemed right to ignite the Lone Star State. In 2063 the President of Texas, urged by the LAU/CATO to submit to them, had opted instead for a closer-but-fraternal relationship with the American Federation, and a seemingly spontaneous wave of demonstrations broke out in Austin; perhaps not unconnected with Mexico’s CNI, whose Head had been spotted in the city at the time - there were even bizarre reports of snipers who shot not at one side but both.

The revolution in the following year replaced the President with another who not only agreed to join the LAU but set out to make Spanish the official language across the whole country (five years later in 2069, the Texan government passed a law to make Spanish compulsory in schools, universities and many other areas, including official departments, electoral procedures and political campaigning.)

This clove the nation in two. The predominantly English-speaking areas in the north understood that they would be victimised; the AF’s President Jackson annexed a portion of the territory and helped the citizens declare independence in a referendum. The new Texan President immediately sent large forces to besiege the Anglophone separatists and the shelling of Dallas began. A trilateral commission sought to resolve the conflict through regionalisation, but the ‘Austin agreements’ were never fully implemented.

After five years in office the President of Texas was himself deposed, partly because he was seen as grossly corrupt; his successor, President Zapata, came in on a platform of cleansing corruption and seeking to make peace, things he had promoted in his previous career as a television satirist. He soon became a cat’s-paw of the oligarchs who still effectively ran the Lone Star State; the oppression of the Anglophones continued and intensified. The Texan Army not only fought the northern militias but in towns where they gained a foothold they set up snipers to shoot civilians going about their daily business.

Jackson had started to champion the interests of former US citizens who now found themselves domiciled in post-collapse satellite states, often experiencing discrimination as English-speaking minority communities. A survey conducted in the AF - it’s not clear whose initiative this was - put Texas as the top place where Americans felt their former compatriots to be persecuted. The narrative suggested that part of Jackson’s role was to take action on behalf of ex-Americans.

After eight years of unarguably severe provocation, Jackson did what most of his voters thought right and much of the rest of the Western world saw as inexcusably wrong: he invaded Texas to combat the Lone Star forces.

This was a godsend for the LAU, who continued to stand off but provided enormous help in the form of money and arms, military training and advice. Jackson had fallen into their trap: Texas would be his Vietnam.

The personable and vigorous Zapata used his PR and entertainment skills to promote the image of the Austin government as victims. The Latin internet burst out in Lone Star flags, pro-American sites were censored, Zapata was invited to address foreign national assemblies and even open a session of the Mexican Stock Exchange to signal his willingness for Texas to be opened up to LAU capital.

Another attempt to make peace, in April 2072, was stymied when the British Prime Minister flew into Austin to tell Zapata that it would not be accepted by… those that mattered, even though continuation of the conflict was seriously hurting vital trade between the AF and northern members of the LAU.

The pro-Texan propaganda became so one-sided that even a distinguished journalist merely asking for open discussion felt forced to salt his article with condemnations of Jackson: ‘a sinister tyrant’, ‘regards dissent as treason’, ‘the invasion (w)as barbaric, lawless and stupid’, Jackson’s ‘idiotic crime, which has done limitless damage to the peace and security of that country for decades to come and perhaps forever.’

The rest of this old and tragic tale, you know.

WEEKENDER: Hits the Ground Running? by Wiggia

                                                           

This is the new Health Secretary, I have never cared about what someone looks like or their ’charisma’; my only concern is that they do the job they are paid for. In the case of the new Health Secretary I already have doubts, not because of the above photo but simply because she has no knowledge of the NHS and is a ‘friend' of the PM; that alone suggests nepotism and lack of merit in getting the job. If I am proved wrong, then good.

Most of us know what is wrong with the NHS; we have to put up with its shortcomings on an almost daily basis.

Sadly as is the case with all newly appointed officials that want to appear to hit the ground running, though in this case that conjures images I won't go into, n announcement is made re GPs and appointments:                                                                                                                                                                              

The woman is deluded if she thinks making such a statement will make the slightest difference to our everyday experiences.

And within minutes of the announcement representatives of GPs were saying it is impossible to implement the pledge. Today in the Times a GP makes a claim that GPs are tired with workload they are having to support; perhaps she should put her head round the door of our surgery and see if she can find more than two GPs on the premises, out of eight, on any working day. Methinks they do protest to much.

But it gives an example of what any health secretary is up against: radical reform is needed but won't come from statements such as the one above.

This is no different to the announcement by the then health secretary under Cameron who declared we would all have choice over the GPs and surgeries we can go to, the result of which was an actual decline in all choices. Still, the revolving door of opportunity keeps these people from ever having to account for their proclamations.

The intention as with this one is to buy time, to be seen to be doing something, when the truth is that only a radical change in the GP set up will change anything.

As we pay them with our taxes there should be a revision of their contract. We don’t pay them to choose to work one day a week for the same salary as many now are, and the students who are currently studying and stating they have no intention of working more than three days should be told that they work five days a week for say ten years in the NHS, as again the taxpayer has paid for their tuition and demand a Quid pro quo in return.

At this moment in time we pay and receive a third world service at best in return; in a sane world that should not be allowed to continue.

I don’t even have to go into the reasons why the statement is just that, words. If you can’t even get someone to answer the phone at the surgery how are you going to enforce your ‘rights’? Time for someone serious to take charge of the NHS and all who sail in her.

At the same time Rosie Cooper MP for West Lancashire has stood down from being the MP for that constituency at the age of 72, to take the lucrative position as the Chair of Mersey Trust at a time in life most have retired. This woman has only become an MP after five attempts with three different parties? And despite some political alliances with health matters has never run anything of substance.

Her reason for changing careers is said to be because of death threats, but it took this offer a couple of years and much ‘soul searching’ to jump ship. It seems the revolving door is still revolving. Is this really the best they could come up with? Nothing changes, especially within the NHS or the political establishment.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Fauré's Requiem

 Well it has been a strange couple of weeks and the funeral and interment were spectacular, if a little 'over the top': I thought Monday's procession/parade was too long and the Queen's coffin got lost from view in that multitude of service personnel. Camera angles may have had a lot to do with that, I don't know.

So to round off this part of history here is Faure's Requiem in full. It is by far the best in my opinion because it has a positive 'feel' to it. I see it as a musical affirmation of transcendence rather than an ending of a life.

=================================================

Gabriel Fauré (1845 - 1924) composed his Requiem in D minor, Op. 48, between 1887 and 1890. His reasons for composing the work are unclear, but do not appear to have had anything to do with the death of his parents in the mid-1880s. He composed the work in the late 1880s and revised it in the 1890s, finishing it in 1900.

Fauré wrote of the work, "Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

The piece premiered in its first version in 1888 in La Madeleine in Paris for a funeral Mass.

Faure Requiem Op.48

Gabriel Fauré (Composer), Robert Shaw (Conductor), Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (Orchestra), Judith Blegen (Soprano), James Morris (Baritone)

1. Introït et Kyrie (D minor) 0:00

2. Offertoire (B minor) 6:24

3. Sanctus (E-flat major) 14:36

4. Pie Jesu (B-flat major) 18:07

5. Agnus Dei et Lux Aeterna (F major) 21:48

6. Libera Me (D minor) 27:55

7. In Paradisum (D major) 32:16

Only disaster can save us !

President Biden’s melodramatic speech in Philadelphia was an amped-up reprise of Hillary Clinton’s in Reno back in 2016: a combination of bogeyman politics with a promise to do something for the people.

It’s hard to tear our gaze away from the dirty tricks both sides are playing now, but really it’s the plans for the country’s reconstruction we should be considering. The question is, do they go far enough, or are they merely intended to get the Democratic Party safely through this November’s mid-term elections?

For example, there’s the Student Loan Relief scheme announced on 24 August. The $10k-$20k for qualifying applicants will be some help, yet not really solve the problem of the big debts and high interest charges. At an estimated cost to the taxpayers of half a trillion dollars (or even double that) it’s a very expensive token gesture. (It may also be technically illegal, if Biden has really declared the end of the pandemic.)

A more significant move would be to rescind the 2005 law - which Biden himself supported - that made it impossible for students to cancel their debt by declaring bankruptcy; that would make banks much more careful in assessing whether the chosen academic course was likely to boost the graduate’s earnings sufficiently to justify the lender’s risk.

Then there’s the ‘we beat Big Pharma!’ crowing over reducing the cost of prescription drugs, which on closer inspection won’t take effect before 2025, applies to a limited number of medications and won’t seriously impact that industry’s profits.

The recently released Biden-⁠Harris Economic Blueprint has much more in it and it remains to be seen how much of that is also subject to the death of a thousand provisos. The New York Post called it ‘58 pages of malarkey’ and ‘ financially illiterate’ and Fortune said it was ‘a love letter to the unions’; well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

At Philadelphia Biden boasted ‘the largest economic recovery package since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’, yet the comparison is more like a contrast. One doesn’t feel there’s a real challenge to what Bernie Sanders has termed America’s oligarchs. Maybe it’s because the Democrats just don’t sense they are strong enough.

In 1933 the nation was in a five-star disaster; goodness knows how many Americans died of starvation, disease exacerbated by malnutrition, deaths of despair. Some who didn’t know what things were really like in Russia were beginning to think Communism looked a better option. In came FDR and warned in his inaugural address that if necessary he would use ‘broad Executive power’ to deal with the emergency. Among many other measures, he swiftly allowed some banks to fail and regulated others, in particular passing the ‘Glass-Steagall’ Act to keep depositors’ money separate from speculative investment banking.

In 1999, President Clinton - a Democrat - declared that the Act was ‘no longer appropriate’ and signed off its repeal, a step that some see as a major contributory factor in the Global Financial Crisis a few years afterward.

When, a decade later, another Democrat - President Obama - came to power, many people, myself included, had great hope that he would use the crisis and the deep support of the people to cleanse the Augean stables of high finance; but no.

I still can’t work out whether these two suffered a failure of nerve or were simply colluding with enormously powerful forces, ones that have kept down the workers and sucked up the economic growth of decades for themselves, and are even now buying up farmland and residential property wholesale so that they will control the nation’s food and turn its people into perma-renters.

The young are burdened with inescapable college debts, cannot afford to buy a house and have children, cannot support a family on one income… the cheerful, stand-on-your-own-two-feet Fred and Wilma Flintstone lifestyle is receding beyond their grasp. The growing demographic imbalance may make mass worker-age immigration necessary even as it magnifies the scale of America’s systemic difficulties.

The dysfunctional economy is in some ways as bad as back in 1933, but disguised by ‘magic money’ and terrifying levels of debt, otherwise surely something really big would have to be done now.

‘Getting’ Trump and the MAGA louts will only tackle the symptoms. The longer effective treatment is deferred, the greater will be the crisis. Better, perhaps, to desist from party politicking and admit that major catastrophe is upon us.