Ukraine: work till you drop

Ukraine is facing a crisis of pensioner poverty says Darya Marchak, deputy head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy.

She expects the country’s head count to fall by a third - from 38 million in 2022 to 25 million by 2050. The demographic imbalance means that in future a Ukrainian will have to work and save until ‘he physically cannot provide for himself.’

The dwindling population is not just because of war casualties - President Zelensky recently said they numbered only 31,000, though others have estimated much higher. Following the Soviet collapse in 1991 economic crises and labour migration had already slashed the population numbers from c. 52 million, and reduced the fertility rate to 1.4 per woman prior to the Russian invasion. Since then some six million have fled Ukraine (a fifth of those to Russia), taking their money and breeding potential with them.

Ignoring Zelensky’s plea for social security assistance, the US’s multibillion dollar military aid package passed in April stipulated that none of the money was to be used to pay pensions.

Is it Russia the Americans want to crush, or resource-rich Ukraine?

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Time, by JD

Henry Van Dyke knew when he wrote 'time is not' (or alternatively 'time is eternity')

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

 The Symphony of Time

Featured in the video are, in order of appearance-

• Dean Radin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin
• Robert Lanza, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lanza
• Maurizio Benazzo, who produced this video http://mauriziobenazzo.com/
• and in glorious monochrome the legendary Alan Watts, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Watts
• Michio Kaku, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku
• Brian Cox, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_%28physicist%29

... and a transcipt of the video -

"Our experience of time is an illusion; there is no clock out there in the world.
No Clock, keeping time!
No Clock, out there in the world!
Space and time are tools of our understanding.
Time is just a concept, an illusion, a construct of the mind.
The concept of the time, creates what we call the self.
What is the I without time?
The only reason for time to exist is so everything does not happen at once.
Your mind has the capacity to put this together and add to what's going on.
Time is like a super glue keeping our story in order while we navigate the world around us.
While we navigate the world around us!
Science says that's space and time are these whole external objects.
What we need to do is readjust the way of thinking.
The concept of time creates what we call the self, what is the I without time?
The concept of time, creates what we call the self, what is the I without time?
For all human beings time is a matter of extraordinary importance and perhaps this is one of the principle ways in which we differ from animals.
Time drives every second of our lives in ways we can scarcely imagine.
Is one of the greatest mysteries in all of nature!
It's time that makes us uniquely human and it's knitted into the fabric of our being.
Time is also intimate. It comes from within.
From the journey of the Sun to the atomic clocks, we can accurately track the passing of time.
But what is time?
Did time have a beginning or has it always been. This is truly the unknown!
What time is it?
It's not even straight forward as you might think.
What time is it?
It's a problem that's confounded us to these day.
Our perception of time can change, time can speed up, time can slow down.
Time is just a concept, an illusion, a construct of the mind.
The concept of time,  creates what we call the self, what is the I without time?
The concept of the time, creates what we call the self, what is the I without time?
Time is like a super glue keeping our story in order while we navigate the world around us.
While we navigate the world around us!"

------------------------------------------------------------

Above is the scientific view of time and this next part is the poetic view of time.

Shakespeare knew, of course. He had Harry Hotspur say with his dying breath-
“But thought’s the slave of life, and life’s time’s fool,
And time that takes survey of all the world
Must have a stop.”

 …..and the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell (1621 - 1678)

“But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lie
Vast deserts of eternity.”

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."

- [T. S. Eliot, in the Four Quartets]

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven — A time to give birth, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to tear down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing.

A time to search, and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together; A time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace.

- [Ecclesiastes 3:1-8]

” Ah fill the cup – what boots it to repeat
How time is slipping underneath our feet
Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday
Why fret about them if today be sweet!”

- Omar Khayyam (via EdwardFitzgerald) 
--------------------------------------------

If you are finding it all a bit confusing, here is an alternative explanation of the mystery of time  by 'Professor' Terence Milligan - 

and who is to say this alternative is any more or less plausible than the 'scientific' one!

"Time is
Too Slow for those who Wait,
Too Swift for those who Fear,
Too Long for those who Grieve,
Too Short for those who Rejoice;
But for those who Love,
Time is not."

- Henry Van Dyke (1852 - 1933)

------------------------

This story is sort of related and also shows how thinking about the mystery of time can make scientists become unhinged!...

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2012/03/one-time-zone-for-the-world

The De Niro Verdict

Actor Robert De Niro has done his country a favour by making explicit what the New York trial of Donald Trump was really about, and it wasn’t dodgy accounting:

I love this city. I love this city. I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy, not only the city, but the country, and eventually he could destroy the world… I don’t mean to scare you. No, no, wait, maybe I do mean to scare you. If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections, forget about it. That’s over, that’s done. If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave. He will never leave. You know that. He will never leave.

Trump isn’t running for mayor in New York, but so what. As for destroying the world, we have just learned that the current President has authorised Ukraine to fire missiles into Russian sovereign territory, building on Kiev’s partial destruction of Russia’s strategic early warning system in Krasnodar Krai a week ago. This echoes Lord Cameron’s ‘fire away’ call on 3 May and a similar Franco-German one a couple of days ago.

Take that planned summer holiday now, before these people get us all killed.

De Niro was a prominent diner at the Golden Globes in 2020, where Ricky Gervaise told the luvvies:

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

Maybe De Niro was noisily eating some crisps at this point, for he clearly missed that lesson.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (Republican) swiftly issued a statement on the Trump verdict, accusing the District Attorney, the trial judge and his family of politically motivated bias.

The issues are now much bigger than what to do about the preening, blustering Golden Oaf. The focus is on the danger to social cohesion when the institutions of society cease to be clearly impartial, and the electorate is to be swayed by ignorant and hysterical public entertainers.

FRIDAY MUSIC: More music from Galicia, by JD

Mercedes Peón - Marés Vivas (O Mar de Portozás), Adoro Galiza

If you are wondering what they are doing climbing over the rocks on the coast of Galicia, they are harvesting Gooseneck Barnacles. They are known as Percebes when they are served in restaurants and they are delicious as well as being very expensive.

"Europeans call the barnacles percebes, and in Spain and Portugal, they fetch a pretty penny. Combined with a lack of economic opportunities, this lures fishermen in Galicia, Spain, to Costa de la Muerte—the Coast of Death. As the name suggests, multiple sea-battered men have died among rough waves and strong tides while prying these prized morsels from beneath the water line."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/gooseneck-barnacles

Malvela - "O Pirimpimpín"

"Labregos" - Carlos Valcárcel & Fuxan os Ventos

Fuxan os Ventos - 'Muller' (con Mercedes Peón)

Fuxan Os Ventos O meu amor e mariñeiro

Susana Seivane - Gaitera Celta

-------------------------------------------------

See also Luar Na Lubre

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2016/09/friday-night-is-music-night-galicia.html

WEEKENDER: The Strange World of Wine Buying, by Wiggia

It’s that time of the year again, en primeur is upon us in the strange world of wine.

Recent facts about over-production, changes in drinking habits and a wider world supply base of wine have finally come together and brought to a shuddering halt the ever rising price for top of the range wines, as in some countries vineyards are being grubbed up sold off and vignerons getting out of the business altogether. This has been in the offing for some years. A change in the drinking habits particularly of the young has meant that certain areas started to grub up vineyards some time ago; the sherry region in Spain started the process a while back when the bulk sherry market collapsed, it resulted in the bigger outfits changing over to producing still wine.

How long that will be sustainable is anyone's guess with an already overloaded market. The grubbing up of vineyards has affected many countries not just France, Australia and the USA: South America and others are also going this route with governments paying owners to leave the land fallow or plant other crops.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlsson/2024/04/25/troubled-times-for-wine-in-2023-global-production-and-consumption-shrinking/?sh=4cff81a72d25

This is no different to other agricultural products that are affected by changing markets, weather and the pound in your pocket, but somehow wine is viewed differently by the cognoscenti, though even they are now being influenced, at the moment in a good way, by falling prices in the strange world of ‘en primeur’.

Wiki gives as good a definition of en primeur as anyone:

“En primeur or "wine futures", is a method of purchasing wines early while the wine is still in the barrel. This offers the customer the opportunity to invest before the wine is bottled. Payment is made at an early stage, a year or 18 months prior to the official release of a vintage. “

The above is of course a complete scam. Who pays in advance for a product that is not even in bottle let alone ready to drink? The trade of course: growers, negotiants and sellers make much of the system as a way of getting , if you are lucky, hard to acquire wines, and those desirable small output ‘luxury’ wines for drinking when mature. Burgundy tops the list and ticks all the boxes in that respect.

Well yes, those small output sites that fit the description have for years been able to name their price and en primeur has become the only way of getting your hands on a few bottles of the supposed elixir. I have to confess, in the past I also fell for this scam and did so with the knowledge that hopefully the increase in prices over time would benefit my bank balance as well as having some luvly stuff (with luck) to sup in my dotage.

Didn’t quite work out like that. Despite having some excellent vintages and the best Chateau wines that I could afford they didn’t really fulfill the investment side. There is an index published monthly of wine movements, yes really, like the Footsie, so you can track the increases or decline in value of your stock in bond.

Cases in bond do not have the charge of taxes against them. You only pay that on taking the wine out of bond; but although they are kept in optimum conditions you do have to pay for the storage and over time that also adds to the cost per bottle or case.

The origins of en primeur can be read here…….

https://www.winespectator.com/articles/the-origins-of-en-primeur-14777

If you read the above you will understand the origins and why it was installed. Sadly all that went by the way side after the ‘82 vintage which despite every year being the 'vintage of the decade', ‘82 was probably the vintage of the century, usual disclaimers.

Many purchased the wines in large quantities and several notable wine lovers or greedy bastards depending on how you view them, made a killing some years later - I’m looking at you Andrew Lloyd Webber as a prime example - selling off their excess purchases for several millions of profit at auction.

The Châteaux having seen their wines selling at much inflated prices upped their own initial prices under the old adage of ‘we will have some of that’ and for a couple of decades that is what happened at every annual announcement of the new vintage. Even poor vintages gained which is puzzling to anyone outside of the world of wine.

During this period the Châteaux in their eagerness to maximise profits even came up with a further wheeze by releasing the new wine in tranches; depending how the first tranche sold they would adjust the price of the second and even third tranche upwards - trebles all round!

So I decided to keep a few choice bottles at home and sell the rest. What with losses and gains I just about ended even, but there is another side to the whole process few ever mention.

Experts (!) will tell you that and admit maturity in wine is informed guesswork. When the wine is bottled by the producer it is for him the finished article, but these experts will try and define what is a likely date for the wine to be at optimum drinking, its 'drinking window.'

Some will mature faster and some take a lot longer, in some cases almost a lifetime. It becomes a lottery. The same experts do tastings at intervals during the wine's life to see how it is progressing, many wine lovers do the same and each failure to open a ‘ready to drink bottle’ means what is left in your case has had the price jacked up. This procedure can often take several bottles which makes en primeur even more expensive and to be frank a pointless exercise, other than proving you have more money than sense.

It is not unusual to read of a wine that has an age of twenty years being still not ready and needing five to ten more, though of course they still do not know, it is still an educated guess.

There was a time when experts were thin on the ground, but not these days. I well remember the first Masters of Wine:it was a real accolade for people to attain, many at the time I could name and all of them could fit into a phone box. Now there are, at last count, 416 worldwide, along with assistants and ever larger numbers of wine critics and experts such as sommeliers, writers and just plain wine lovers; the field is saturated with opinion, what to believe?

The same experts base their findings on cask samples, wine that has not been bottled and often not in the final blend on a points system invented by the American critic Robert Parker. This assumes a perfect wine to be worth 100 points out of a 100, but for a start the scoring begins at 50 and why has never been explained to my satisfaction.

Plus of course all the wine samples tasted come from known sources, they are tested in the cellars of the producer, and reputation is everything in the rarefied world of cru classe wines, so inevitably marks will be based on reputation as well as what is in the glass.

You can add to that no taster could explain from a sample if it was tasted blind what the difference was between a 97 and 98 point wine, it really isn’t feasible but has become part of wine folklore.

I had a personal example of a wine that was given to me by a happy client many years ago. On completion of the job he asked me about my wine collection - he knew nothing. When I presented him with a not insubstantial bill he said he had a gift for me as he was pleased with the outcome.

To my amazement he presented me with a case of Chateau Lafite. Bloody hell I thought, even in the eighties this was not cheap.

There was sadly a catch: he had gone to a very well known established wine merchant's in the city and told them what he wanted to buy, not knowing anything. They managed to sell him a case of one of the worst vintages by Lafite probably since the war:1972, one of several during that period that were below par, described by one of the few people I ever took notice of in wine,(the late Michael Broadbent, the taster for Christies auctions who had probably tasted more top class Bordeaux than anyone alive at the time) as ‘drinkable.’

You can gather by all this that I am more than cynical when an expert tells me this is another vintage of the decade, but people are taken in by this annual blurb and lay out not inconsiderable sums to get on the fine wine ladder, but not for a large part of the production it seems. Good.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tejedor, by JD

Tejedor is a folk music group from Avilés, Asturias, Spain, consisting originally of three siblings (José Manuel, Javier and Eva Tejedor). Eva left the band in 2010, being replaced by Silvia Quesada on vocals. Tejedor's members play traditional Asturian styles of music using traditional instruments such as bagpipes, flutes, accordions and guitars.

In 1995, the three siblings began a new stage in their musical career, after more than a decade fully dedicated to the traditional music of Asturias and after having won more than twenty awards in both national and international competitions, Tejedor began to compose their own repertoire.

Their first album, Texedores De Suaños, was produced by Phil Cunningham and features musicians like Michael McGoldrick, Duncan Chisholm, James McKintosh and Kepa Junkera.

http://tejedorweb.blogspot.com/p/bio.html

"Xota la Punta" - Tejedor

Chalaneru

Tejedor: Andolina

Tejedor + invitados - La Danza. Lorient, Grand Theatre 2012

"Seique Non" - TEJEDOR

START THE WEEK: More Pointless and Unaccountable Local and not so Local Authorities, by Wiggia

As with all other bad news these days, there is a daily drip feed of governmental nonsense fed to the masses. Birmingham council, now bankrupt through their own mishandling and inadequacy have issued a statement on how they intend to go forward; naturally there is no mention of anyone or group being held responsible for the financial disaster that has befallen on Birmingham, as is the pattern in all government layers no one is ever responsible for anything.

Commissioners, intervention and improvement

In September 2023 the council issued 2 Section 114 notices as part of the plans to meet the council’s financial liabilities relating to equal pay claims and an in-year financial gap within its budget.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities appointed commissioners to exercise certain functions of the council as required and begin the improvement journey for Birmingham City Council.

We need to find over £250 million worth of savings over the next 12 months and there will be considerable changes as a result for residents.

Challenging decisions lie ahead, we need to get our finances back on track to a healthy position and implement a programme of improvement – a reset must start now, beginning with the 2024/25 budget.

An improvement journey has begun on the path to become a financially sustainable and well-run council.

Ah, an ‘improvement journey’ a new phrase from the inadequates who cannot run a bath never-mind a local authority; still, a change from ‘lessons will be learned.’

Meanwhile a new twist to our local (Norwich, UK) Northern Distributor Road saga. It has taken ten years to get this far; in China the whole road would have been completed in a month, yet still the bats seem to be winning over people, the new estates north of the road are getting outline planning and thousands of people will event.ually if this road is not completed. be using two small village routes to connect to the A47 It is madness and as usual the costs have skyrocketed. Also it gives time for the Greens and the eco zealots to find other ways of delaying the project and ruining inhabitants' lives while favouring a few bats that will move as they did when we lived in Suffolk under another scheme that they tried to stop using the bat plan. It is already a watered down project but will still give respite to the rat runs of which there are only three.

Planners and highways need to co operate on these projects rather than pretend they do. The time lag before any action is taken is measured in decades in this country and all parties blame each other. It was always thus.

https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/24292060.norwich-western-link-report-critical-council-bat-surveys/

We have a new Police & Crime Commissioner - you know. the position that pays a £100k + a year for someone who we don’t want, don’t need. don’t know but is foisted on us. This time along with national politics the vote swung to Labour and a woman named Susan Taylor won. Her CV was so short it needed a magnifying glass to find. Evidently she was a local councillor, not in the area which allows her to stand.

‘Anyone who is a member of staff of a local council that falls wholly or partly within the police area in which the election is to be held - including anyone employed in an organisation that is under the control of a local council in the police area for which the election is to be held. ‘

So not local then, and apart from being a member of a road safety group, no real job and nothing that could be vaguely aligned with police or crime.With an office costing £1 million a year it will be yet another burden for the tax payer with no justification for its existence.

The turnout was 21% and she got under half of that, so less than 10% of the electorate voted for this pointless position.It is the same nationwide; why do they persist in keeping it going, why?

Up north something that many said would happen, not politicians of course, has happened: a Trojan horse Islamist disguised, badly, as a Green candidate won a council seat.If this had been a product presented as a Green candidate they would be charged with misrepresentation; and are the Greens that desperate to get onto councils.Maybe they are as this shows……..

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-3182303/Video-Green-Party-councillor-shouts-Allahu-Akbar-elected.html

Still they have plenty of backup: the fragrant Melissa Poulton, described by a Conservative MP as a bloke in a wig, I couldn’t possibly comment, but the Greens do seem to attract a larger share of the ‘unusual’ than the other parties… the leader of the Greens Caroline ‘several homes’Lucas is the MP for Brighton, yet the bins are not emptied and travellers set up camp on seafront green spaces with full permission.

Our local Green candidate reminds me of a certain Alfred E Neumann of MAD magazine fame…

Perhaps it is all getting too much for me and I read t0o much into it all, if not we are all doomed, doomed I tell ya!

I often along with many others wonder why we put up with the pathetic overpaid and under qualified public servants - in France for instance a liberal spraying of public offices with merde does not go amiss. This story of jobsworths from Cambridge County Council is self explanatory: an annual flower display giving a lot of pleasure to the inhabitants of Chatteris, not the most glamorous towns, has had this year's flower display reduced by the council on health and safety grounds. The last paragraph from the council spokesman is one of the most condescending utterances put out in the public sphere. The spokesman should instead of the now defunct award winning hanging baskets be replaced by the same spokesperson hung by his own proverbials.

A Cambridgeshire County Council spokesperson said: "It's great seeing the creative ways that communities across the county make use of streetlights with festive displays.

"As streetlights are directly connected to the local power grid, to ensure everyone's safety any group wishing to display items from a streetlight needs to get in touch with the council so we can make sure essential independent safety training is completed for everyone's wellbeing.

"We look forward to hearing from Chatteris in Bloom."

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5k38lje2yo

Another local council affair has been branded as ‘vexatious’ by the council involved. I have no knowledge of the niceties but much is self evident and an auditor upheld 27 0f the complainant's 32 complaints. As so often with local councillors, not unlike more senior politicians, when the going gets tough they look for reasons to silence or ignore the complainant. This you can read here…

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/weasenham-whinger-david-fairchild-says-he-won-t-be-silenced-by-parish-council-s-new-vexatious-complaints-policy/ar-BB1lYCqY

and make your own mind up if he has a point or is just a meddler with time on his hands.

Having crossed swords with a local councillor a few years ago over a speed camera issue on our then rat run village street, I can appreciate the frustration when one sees nothing being done, in my/our case after the money had been provided and the action approved, and ridiculous replies follow unanswered questions.

I was accused of pestering the said councillor over the matter despite only sending two. yes two emails over an eighteen month period. When I suggested that if he considered being pestered at that level as being too much for him he might be better employed elsewhere an answer was not forthcoming.

After I moved, the speed cameras were installed ten years later , but on a long village street they installed them over a short stretch each side of a pinch point, and they have no legal right to even fine anyone however fast they are driving, so the whole episode was a total waste of £60k that could have been used more productively elsewhere.

When it was pointed out the error of the placement they replied (not to me) that the village had after a long period of demanding something was done ’got what they wanted’ and the matter was closed.

You really couldn’t make it up, why do we have these incompetents in any form allowed to make decisions on anything?

George Carlin was right when he said they can’t blame me for voting for a wrong un, as I don’t vote. I have joined that ever growing club.

PS the councillor I had a spat with has retired and his place has been taken by a woman who has never had a proper job and now her husband is now a councillor despite the fact he has never worked and has ‘health problems.’ What could possibly go wrong!

It is good to know that at the top things are different, our elected members are on top of issues that affect us all and can be relied on to put in their views on these matters on our behalf, or not as the case might be…

From X: 

  - Just about sums up our political class.