Mad Dogs and Englishmen, by Wiggia

The extremes of temperature, because they are so rare in this country, bring out the weird, the eccentric and the downright baffling.

We have all seen the wonderful world of the clothing innovator who manages to convey a sense of the sea in winter trudging the aisles of the local supermarket in full fisherman's regalia, sou'wester and all, and the inventive shorts, hats, sandals and socks - no British white male would wear sandals without socks such as those louche Europeans of questionable stock do, or effete actors. Some years back in Africa a tourist appeared for dinner wearing shorts, an open neck white shirt and a Tweed jacket; only a Brit could have carried it off in 90 degree heat.

Of course this hot weather is a positive boon for the tattooed, all manner of sleeveless, legless and worse garments appear, allowing the inked areas to show in all their awfulness, and the pink people come out - they have no choice of course having burnt themselves the first time they laid in the sun and now can’t bear to have anything on the skin apart from calamine lotion.

On the road open top cars with blonde sunglassed drivers are everywhere trying to give the impression they always drive around like this; a sort of Promenade des Anglais in Peckham. In a normal year you could be forgiven for thinking no one buys convertibles, but we are wrong, it is simply that in a normal year, nine out of ten, no one drives them: they remain tucked up for this very occasion.

Camper vans and caravans abound, seemingly reproducing en route as there are so many of them making a bee line for the same field somewhere on the coast. Today either of these is not enough, many have bicycles, motorbikes attached as well, canoes on the roof and for real oneupmanship you have all that and a small car on a trailer behind, or a yacht or powerboat, in all taking up about sixty foot of our small roads.

I am biased: I have never seen the attraction past the formative years when it was a cheap way to see the world of spending huge sums to sit in a field with others of the same persuasion. There was a motor home show last weekend on the showground near us; not content with looking at the latest models they all came in their motor homes for the weekend and sat in a field - the conversation must have been riveting - and then all went home !

I have a cousin who owns a motor home: his wife puts photos up on Facebook of him having a cup of tea by a pond or feeding ducks or sitting in a deckchair with an inane grin and a glass of wine - does anyone care ?

How do I know? Well I joined Facebook under pressure for a local community page but after three months being asked to be friends with people I had no interest in and having rows with “community members I deleted my account. Facebook has a strange pull for those who like to post gurning photos of themselves and family members all telling each other how wonderful they are, but I digress.

The Met Office is in full flow with yellow and amber warnings, localised flooding, power cuts and travel disruption all included in these warnings, I have been keeping a record of these over the last four weeks and we have had eight; all have disappeared as the moment of doom approaches, or moved to a later time and then deleted. Result, absolutely nothing: clear blue sky and skorchio all the way. Not a single drop since the heat started in June, yet still they persist with the warnings; like a stopped clock, one will eventually be right.

As a finale to all this last, with the windows and doors open the sound, loud, of a man's voice wafted in from the direction of the park alongside our garden. They have now and again a local band that uses the hall and at first I thought that it was them, an aspiring rapper perhaps, but there was little in the way of music to accompany this voice. Where the hell was it coming from? My curiosity got the better of me and as I approached the boundary hedge I could see a few figures the other side and the voice got louder. It was only when I put my head through a hole in the hedge that  the truth dawned: it was the fitness class. They had debunked from the center because of the heat inside and had come over to this side of the field as my tree boundary provides shade. The voice of course was the instructor using his amplifier for his instructions and the accompanying musical beat.

At that moment I should have retreated but the large contingent of ladies of varying ages and shapes were in their tights, shorts, leotards about to spring into action or were supposed to. It has to be said I was getting a rear view of all this and in different circumstances could have been accused of voyeurism or worse, so I slowly retreated to the safety of my garden with the rear view of multiple ladies' bottoms contorting in the heat. The last words I heard from the instructor were "One, two, three, four, you can do it!" - they probably could.

FRIDAY MUSIC: John Martyn, by JD

Music from John Martyn (1948 - 2009) with some help from a few friends.

"In a world that lacks compassion, John Martyn and his music, is a breath of fresh air. John was an incurable romantic who sang from his heart; no other artist sang with such commitment and emotion. People have fallen in and out of love listening to the most enduring and magical songs of deep sensitivity that have been sung over his forty year plus career. A truly progressive artist John never stayed with a tried and trusted sound, preferring to explore, experiment and break new ground. His trade mark melodies and lyrics are in a class of their own and his voice which is steeped in pleasure and pain, joy and fear and love and hate, expresses emotion like no other and can reduce even the strongest of men to tears."
http://www.johnmartyn.com/biography/

Seismic changes in the Conservative Party

Britain is witnessing the birth of a new political party, according to commentators on the Internet.

Insiders working in the remote Tunbridge Wells region of the UK say Brexit will eventually split the Conservative Party in two, though it will take about 10 years.

Used to understanding changes in Parliament on timescales of decades, the international team of commentators have seen amazing changes in the Tory party in the past few years, where the “natural party of Government” is cracking open, quite literally underneath their feet.

Hot, molten fury from deep within the membership is trickling to the surface and creating the split.

Underground eruptions are still continuing and, ultimately, the free-trading but patriotic elements of Conservatism will fall away and a new political party will form.

More here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10415877

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuaTs45fq4

FRIDAY MUSIC: Ibeyi, by JD

More Afro-Cuban music, this time from a younger generation. Twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz record together under the name Ibeyi which is the word for twins in the Yoruba language of West Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibeyi

Where older artists had been more 'showbiz' and entertainers, these two sisters have gone deeper into the roots of their music to produce a more soulful, spiritual sound mixed with a touch of modern 'electronica' and they have beautiful voices. So here is a varied selection of their music and the final video features their mother, Venezuelan singer Maya Dagnino, with a song about their late father, Miguel "Angá" Díaz who was part of the Buena Vista Social Club.

JD: The fake wisdom of the elite

Responding to yesterday's post about doomster-prepper billionaires, JD says:

On 6th June 1968 (fifty years ago) John Lennon sat in a press conference at the National Theatre in London to talk about a new play based on his book "In His Own Write" As is the way of these things the conversation drifted into other topics. This is what Lennon had to say about the Government, all Governments:



Looking at the world of 2018, it appears that governments have become ever more remote from the citizenry who all, if only subliminally, agree that our leaders are even more insane than they were fifty years ago. Voters around the world have been rejecting the established political parties and have turned to alternatives. I am reminded of Chesterton's aphorism “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”  and that choice is also what our political 'leaders' have given us. We no longer believe in them and are casting around searching for something, anything which is not "more of the same."

It is not just politicians who are insane, our technological 'wizards' are also insane: "Men like Thiel (Paypal founder) or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have invested millions in immortality projects; meanwhile Yudkowsky, the MIRI theorist, thinks anyone who doesn’t sign their children up for cryogenic freezing is a “lousy parent.” In that quest for an immortal soul, two things stand in the way: death and a revolt of the underclass. AI threatens to combine both—semiotically and, just perhaps, literally."
http://www.documentjournal.com/2018/04/the-existential-paranoia-fueling-elon-musks-fear-of-ai/

I have already made some observations on that subject in the second part of this post - https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/tv-from-sublime-to-ridiculous-by-jd.html
You have continued the theme in your recent post about the pessimism of the 'elite' They are not pessimistic, they are insane or, at the very least, they are lacking in imagination (something which also applies to the aforementioned 'techie geniuses', they have no practical expertise in or experience of anything) http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-pessimism-of-elite.html

John Cleese was right when he said in a lecture recently “If I can persuade you this evening to abandon this hope, you will find yourself a lot more relaxed, you'll worry less and laugh more.  I promise you that.”
http://consciousnessunbound.blogspot.com/2018/04/hilarious-hopelessness-wisdom-of-john.html

The pessimism of the elite

http://miriadna.com/preview/postapocalyptic-art-by-rolf-bertz

"When the hedge funders asked me the best way to maintain authority over their security forces after “the event,” I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now. They should be engaging with their security staffs as if they were members of their own family. And the more they can expand this ethos of inclusivity to the rest of their business practices, supply chain management, sustainability efforts, and wealth distribution, the less chance there will be of an “event” in the first place. All this technological wizardry could be applied toward less romantic but entirely more collective interests right now.

"They were amused by my optimism, but they didn’t really buy it. They were not interested in how to avoid a calamity; they’re convinced we are too far gone. For all their wealth and power, they don’t believe they can affect the future. They are simply accepting the darkest of all scenarios and then bringing whatever money and technology they can employ to insulate themselves — especially if they can’t get a seat on the rocket to Mars."

https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1

These people are successful in a particular context. In a different one, maybe not.

Why China Will Never Rule The World

For a different take on China it is worth reading Troy Parfitt’s book - Why China Will Never Rule The World: Travels in the Two Chinas . This is not a book about facts and figures and neither is it a hymn to Chinese economic success. As the blurb tells us, the book is mostly travelogue told from an outsider's perspective, albeit an outsider who lived in Taiwan for ten years and who speaks Mandarin.

Three quotes may give a flavour of the writer’s standpoint. 

China is a nation of much fakery; there’s fake sushi, fake steak, fake gravy, fake music, fake goods, fake pharmaceuticals, fake news, fake weather reports, fake education, fake rights, fake laws, fake courts, fake judges, a fake congress, a fake constitution….

Unambiguous but not unconsidered. Parfitt thinks there are profound influences behind the fakery – a deep-rooted preference for appearances over reality. The second quote concerns a China Central Television (CCTV) show the writer watched from one of his hotel rooms.

That night on CCTV, a panel of Chinese scientists was explaining how the Americans had never landed on the moon. Not only were the lunar missions faked, they said, but the Apollo program itself was largely a matter of science fiction. The shadows were all wrong. Where were the craters? And just look at that ridiculous flag – not moving even with solar winds. Their tone was both mocking and disdainful, as if even having to explain why this was the biggest fraud of all time insulted their very intelligence.

CCTV is the main state broadcaster in China. The third quote is taken from a conversation with a taxi driver.

“Food in China is packed with shit – shit that will make you sick and kill you. I have a daughter, you know. I’m worried about what she eats. But what am I supposed to do? Complain? Yeah, right. The government would say, ‘Well, that’s very interesting, sir. Why don’t we take a walk and talk about it? Please, tell us whatever it is that’s on your mind.’ And then they’d shoot me in the back of the neck. Bang! And that would be the end of that.”

Obviously an entire country cannot be dismissed on the basis of a single taxi driver's complaints, however chilling they are. However there are many more examples highlighting what Parfitt sees as endemic weaknesses in Chinese culture. For example he sees Confucianism as a significant cultural problem with its emphasis on obedience and harmony.

The book is easy to read and although Parfitt can come across as someone who simply does not like China and the Chinese, he tells us quite clearly why that is. In so doing he provides an interesting and accessible cultural alternative to the usual facts, figures and technology.