Sunday Sipping: A Matter of Taste, by Wiggia

I haven’t commented on here very often in the last three years, for a variety of reasons, one being health. A brief summary follows, I have written in detail about my experiences within the NHS organisation, the good the bad and the ugly-plus an extra ingredient I won/t elaborate on again just about covers it.

Three years ago I collapsed and woke up six weeks later having undergone two brain operations within 24 hours and a serious bowel operation a week later. Fortunately I was sedated during my time at Addenbrokes Hospital in Cambridge so knew nothing about what had happened and the subsequent procedures. I was then transferred back to the Norfolk and Norwich where I eventually started to recover, after catching Covid and contracting a bowel infection that was supposed to finish me, a change of doctor (long story) and a change in medication and treatment.

The reason I mention all this was that what happened to me and what happens to other people if brain surgery is involved: one suffers a change or loss, temporary or otherwise of faculties, memory, smell, taste.

At the time wine was not on the list of things I should be worrying about, far from it. Various tests and exercises brought about improvements in memory function, at first even my birthday was beyond recall and constant illusions muddied the progress, seeing the four horsemen of the apocalypse at the bottom of one’s bed as I did earlier is not to be recommended when you are trying to be positive!

After rehab home at last and the question of food that I could eat and the thorny question of what I could drink came to the forefront. The food was relatively easy: no spicy items, very little green stuff and a lot of trial and error was involved.

Now to the drinking. I was told no problem with wine in strict moderation, so I started to sample and the fun started.

At first red wine caused problems so was cut out completely, later to be reintroduced a little at a time, so white wine was my staple, again in moderation.

All my long held preconceptions went out of the window. Some had no smell, some had no taste, those that did have one or both had changed completely from my inbuilt conception as to what they should taste or smell like. In many cases the taste or smell was amplified way beyond that which my memory could remember, particularly fruity reds such as certain Rhone varieties with matching sometimes glorious over-the-top aromas.

As for my extensive Riesling collection many, but not all of the trocken/dry wines became dull and lifeless and it became a case of suck it and see.

Two things came out of this for me.

Firstly there was a period of seeing where all this was going, i.e. would my tastes get back to something like the previous normal? They did with most foods, and did settle with wine, but not as before, so after much consideration I made the decision to sell all that which was obviously out of kilter with my new tastes. So out went what was left of my Bordeaux - I had previously offloaded nearly all my stored ‘en primeur’ of the region anyway, Chianti tasted like battery acid and Barolo was not far behind. The list is too long to expand on here but you get the picture. In whites many became just dull; for Riesling spätlese seems to be the sweet spot, no pun intended, and buttery Chardonnays over the leaner versions; acidity over other components is now a no-go area, though not totally.

The second part is interesting in that it assumes there is a right and wrong appreciation of wine virtues/values, but if I had been born with the appreciation of wine I have now my outlook and taste would be totally different from that which has guided me for the last fifty years. No longer can I say that such and such lacks x because now it doesn’t. Is it a dilemma? No, it is simply another’s view of the same product; in some ways I have been lucky to have two bites of the same cherry.

This is no different to the way the brain interprets sound and vision. Illusions cause the brain to come to different conclusions. It all brings the tasting both amateur and professional into focus, it matters not a jot what someone else says about a wine food music etc, it is what gives you pleasure at any given moment.

To finish a short story, my oldest fiend died of dementia recently in Adelaide, Australia. We had known each since we were five years old so a long relationship. In ‘95 my wife and I managed to get three months of holiday during the winter and went on a world wide trip including six weeks plus in Australia and stayed with my friend for three weeks+ in Adelaide.

He was not into wine other than drinking it! but we stayed in the Barrosa for some days and visited some forty wineries in the Barossa and sub regions…

Back home the following Christmas a case of wine arrived from my friend from Aus. He knew little of wine but a friend of of his did so it was selected by the friend on his behalf. It seemed a good idea at the time if this was to be made an annual event, so a sum was agreed which I sent him and some suggestions for the case; wines unavailable here in the UK, would be included.

This worked well for years but recently as the dementia took hold he started to make mistakes and the last case before I stopped the exercise showed why. Virtually the whole sum allocated was spent on one bottle, I had to make good the shortfall.

The bottle as below:

Out of curiosity I looked up to see if this was available in the UK, and B&B have it at around £350 a bottle. I would never pay that for any wine, though in the past I pushed the boat out before wine prices hit the stratosphere.

Was it any good? A lot of hype surrounds it. In my current phase of appreciation the nose was phenomenal, a glorious sniffer; in the mouth for me it was a tier class Bordeaux so probably not the best person to judge that aspect now, or maybe I am?

And yes, it is a screw top.

Anyway a glass was raised to my old friend.

And a glass was raised to my consultant who explained it all to me.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Tim Buckley, by JD

"Very few people have any idea of Tim Buckley other than as Jeff Buckley's father, or maybe as a folkie from the late sixties. Those labels hardly begin to scratch the surface of his musical genius, as uncommercial as it may have been at the time. But few who have looked at his full career can deny that he had a talent like few others, and a voice that, I believe, is still unmatched.

"Tim Buckley (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an American singer/songwriter. He began his career based in folk rock, but subsequently experimented with genres such as psychedelia, jazz, the avant-garde, and funk paired with his unique five-octave vocal range.

"Buckley died at the age of 28 from a heroin and morphine overdose. He left behind one biological son, Jeff, who himself was a highly regarded singer who died young, as well as an adopted son, Taylor."

https://audiography.livejournal.com/531395.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Buckley

Tim Buckley - Song to the Siren

Tim Buckley • “Happy Time/Sing A Song For You” • 1968 [Reelin' In The Years Archive]

Tim Buckley - Dolphins - Whistle Test (May '74)

Tim Buckley - Wings

Tim Buckley - Once I Was

Yes or no? PMQs 21st May 2025

Overture

Seemingly, the PM aims to make PMQs into a tired, pointless country dance. It’s all about managing appearances, which is easy when almost everything is scripted and minor characters are never allowed supplementary questions to smash through his meringue answers.

Even with the greater latitude afforded to the Leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch rarely scores, either. Last week she did, claiming that unemployment had risen ten per cent since Starmer took over. This galvanised the Government into a response and, since Sir Keir was not sufficiently on top of his brief to shoot her down straight away, it was left to Jake Richards (Lab, Rother Valley) to raise it straight after the session as a Point Of Order. Here is his POO, delivered with something of our Leader’s boorish snarl:

“That figure is completely and utterly incorrect. It is no wonder that George Osborne, the former Conservative Chancellor, has said that she has no economic plan if she cannot even get basic statistics right. Will the Leader of the Opposition return to the House and correct the record?”

The Speaker set him down gently: “You have corrected the record in your opinion. We will leave it there for now.”

Act One

This week, the PM began with a couple of sad items – is being a ‘mood hoover’ his technique to dull blades before they clash? – and went on to boast of his ‘deals’. One of these last was with the EU and included an astounding giveaway, extending for another twelve years the Union’s fishing rights under the Brexit withdrawal agreement that were due to expire in June 2026.

When Edward Heath allowed Continental ships the liberty to fish right up to our shoreline as part of our 1973 entry into the EEC, it was because of blithering incompetence, and so his government blew PR smoke all over it.

This PM has no such excuse, if that’s the word we seek. The despair so many of us feel is because we cannot always tell whether the Starmer Government knows what it is doing or not, and which is worse. In this case, it is the former.

Does the PM actually ‘have it in’ for fishermen and farmers? If so, would that be because those food producers are not ‘working people’ as defined by Sir Keir? They work longer than most and often earn less, but they are not wage slaves – is that the problem?

Starmer’s other ‘deals’ were with the US and India, and they too hardly bear critical examination. If you sent the PM out to get fish and chips, what on earth might he come back with?

As for his vaunted “fastest economic growth in the G7”, if we take in the world and his wife, GDP will go through the roof, and at the same time we will be bust.

The first question was from Lewis Cocking (Con), who asked when Starmer would “stop all illegal immigration”. This received the customary bureaucratic boilerplate: past Tory failures / government introducing legislation / Opposition voting against (skipping over the valid reasons). It was a very weak attack anyway – illegal immigration is only a fraction of the overall influx, and if the ‘youth worker visa’ system takes off, the traffickers may find a way to document their customers appropriately.

Next was Labour’s Sarah Owen, highlighting the plight of pensioners forced by inflation to use up their savings. Yet even the mightiest oak will bend in a strong wind, and the PM said: “We want to ensure that more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments as we go forward.” Everything depended on the economic improvements he foresaw.

Then came the main feature: a spat between Starmer and Badenoch on inflation, the causes of which are complex, not least ‘events, dear boy’. Kemi bore the usual tirade with equanimity but though she has the hide of a rhinoceros, she lacks its horn. She failed to puncture Starmer with her demand for a yes-or-no on whether he was planning a U-turn on the Winter Fuel Allowance; but then, he had just given his more nuanced response to Sarah Owen.

Interval

During these exchanges, the Speaker had to intervene to chide the Government benches for their noisy mockery, both Whips and “Boyzone at the back”. Such is the arrogant self-confidence of overwhelming power. A propos, post-PMQs, in a Point Of Order raised by Kirsty Blackman (SNP), Speaker Hoyle had to deliver a rocket to DWP and Treasury officials who were failing to respond in a timely fashion to her constituent.

Wera Hobhouse (Lib Dem) told of China’s refusal to admit her into Hong Kong, because of her stance on human rights as she suspected. The PM deplored banning people “for simply expressing their views”. He also assured John McDonnell (Ind) that he would continue to press the Egyptian Government for the release of long-imprisoned British-Egyptian human rights campaigner Alaa Abd el-Fattah.

However, Sir Keir’s sympathies were more limited towards Lucy Connolly, who is part way through a 31-month sentence for an intemperate tweet that she had deleted within a few hours. He told Rupert Lowe (Ind) that he celebrated the independence of British courts and was “strongly in favour” of free speech (a tradition of which he boasted to US President Trump) but was “against incitement to violence”. Some might say the jury is out in that case, in the ‘court of public opinion’.

Act Two

After ‘PM v LOTO’, Louise Jones (Labour) soothed Starmer’s unruffled feathers with a gift question on breakfast clubs and other measures to give children a better start in life.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey asked yet again, somewhat pointlessly, about the Winter Fuel Allowance, but more penetratingly about changes to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The constituent’s case Davey quoted meant potentially an income cut of £12,000 a year. To the latter, Sir Keir gave his off-the-peg generalised response about necessary support, plus help to get work. Later, Labour’s Andy MacNae raised the same issue, specifically in relation to stressful multiple PIP reassessments; again, the PM spoke of the need to reform the system.

Jim Allister (TUV, North Antrim) highlighted another unresolved problem – that of Northern Ireland and its post-Brexit trading status with the EU, whereby British Steel could sell to the US free of tariffs, but not to NI. The PM acknowledged that it was a work in progress.

Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem) reiterated the issue of family farm IHT. To skeptical noises, Starmer asserted the “very limited impact of the inheritance tax, only on farmers at a very high level”.

Dr Neil Hudson (Con) tried a portmanteau question on winter fuel payments, pensioner poverty, the “jobs tax”, family farm IHT and fishing rights. This was a mistake, as Sir Keir often gives vague answers even to focused queries; his reply was about our high growth (unanalysed) and trade deals (ditto).

Similarly, Lee Anderson (Reform) wanted to know exactly how many of Starmer’s 24,000 deportees were illegals who arrived by boat or were smuggled in by lorries. Sir Keir’s response to the “simple question” was to boast of the numbers and to criticise the Opposition for not supporting his Immigration Bill (again, without saying what their reasons may have been).

It might have been better to send this for a written reply and then castigate officials if they failed to be specific. All it did this time was give the PM the opportunity to note Nigel Farage’s absence from the Chamber.

A deadlier yes-or-no question might have been the one that ex-MP George Galloway suggests (see from 2:00 on), as to whether Starmer has ever met any of the three young men accused of setting fire to his current and former properties; but nobody would have the nerve. Besides, rumour has it that the whole affair has been overblown; by whom, and why, is not clear.

On an ostensibly unrelated matter, Winston Churchill is said to have been the last red-headed Prime Minister (though grey when in office).

US Education: a sandcastle at high tide, by 'Paddington'

Sackerson referred me to the following article, The intractable problem of finding a job with a university degree | Churchmouse Campanologist , discussing the relatively high rate of unemployment among university graduates.

I will preface my comments with a statement of my belief, which is that education is as important to the health of individuals and society as is exercise.

This lamentable situation should have been predicted, as it was inevitable.

Some of the pressures to increase percentages in higher eduation included:

By the 1980's, the 'good' jobs were being eaten up by automation (around 80% of the drain), and outsourcing. Small family businesses were driven out by the large corporations, often aided by political corruption.

College presidents were delighted by the prospect of moving up in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. They could then grow their power and status, usually by expanding adminstrative, staff, but rarely faculty. At latest report, Harvard University has more non-teaching employees than undergraduate students.

The finance industry saw the potential for getting their hooks into a large part of generations of students, and had their pet politicians write laws which protected their 'investment', even through bankruptcy.

Politicians were shown studies that indicated that college graduates had higher incomes, meaning more tax revenues, and committed fewer violent crimes. That made them desirable and controllable.

Parents were conditioned to believe that the only road to upward social mobility for their children was education. In the US, prior to the crash of 2008, this meant any degree in any subject.

And so we in the US moved from 15-30% going to higher education to 60%, with a stated goal of 85% or more. To assume that we could maintain the same standards as before is to deny the reality that there is such a thing as scholastic aptitude, a fiction maintained by many extreme liberals, and professors in colleges of education. The richer 'knew' that their children were better, and so didn't worry, until colleges actually looked at test scores, and many found out that they weren't. That was the beginning of the slide to mediocrity, not DEI programs.

Private universities still had the luxury of selective admission, until the costs rose too much, so didn't have to worry too much. The public ones, however, came under increasing political pressure from both the left and right to simultaneously increase graduation rates and competencies of those graduates. As anyone with knowledge of Statistics will tell you, this is, of course, impossible. The result has been an explosion of 'useless' degrees, and a dimunition of the quality of others, except those, such as Engineering and Accounting, who have professional licensure exams after graduation.

For a snapshot of reality, one has only to look at Math scores. Most US universities require a Math course to graduate. The lowest such is often called College Algebra, and is approximately at the level of the O-level of the 1970's. Only 15% of high school leavers have enough mastery to enter such a course, which translates to about 25% of students entering higher education.

I spent my career in a more-or-less open admission university, and dealt a great deal with this issue. The overall graduation rate for much of that time was about 35% in 6 years. The 25% who were able to take a Math course at the university level graduated in 6 years or less at a rate of about 70%. Those who did not took remedial coursework, and graduated at a 23% rate. To make that clear, the Math-competent students graduated at 3 times the rate of the others, regardless of their field of study.

The common response, when I presented this data to administrators, most of whom had zero Math background, was to 'teach slower', or 'teach better'. Never mind that I was unable to find anywhere on Earth that does better, nor that my colleagues had the highest teaching evaluations in the university, on average.

It is why I drink, and retired as soon as I could, only to watch all that I helped build collapse in ruin as bad decisions were compounded.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Kathryn Tickell, by JD

You may not know her name but I think you might enjoy her music.

Kathryn Tickell is a folk musician who plays The Northumbrian smallpipes as well as playing the violin/fiddle. I am not sure how well known she is beyond Northumbria and Tyneside but she is highly regarded among her peers in the world of folk music. She has been invited to play at the BBC's Folk Proms and has shared the stage with the great Richard Thompson as can be seen in two of the videos below.

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

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

https://www.kathryntickell.com/biography

The Kathryn Tickell Band at the Proms: Early Morning Air, Tullochgorum, Music For a New Crossing

Kathryn Tickell & The Darkening | One Night in Moaña | Seirm 2024 | BBC ALBA

Alistair Anderson, Richard Thompson & Kathryn Tickell

The Shee feat. Kathryn Tickell & Shona Mooney Perform Fiddle Duet / Sheepolska & more

Kathryn Tickell - 'Air Moving'

Fighting for survival - PMQs 14th May 2025

This week’s PMQs has more in it than can be covered here, because we take one key issue as our starting point to address the complex crisis facing Britain…

After last week’s stunning results for Reform in the local elections, the Prime Minister made a speech promising a significant reduction in net immigration. It failed to satisfy migration sceptics.

It upset the Left even more, whose ears pricked up at the dog-whistle phrase ‘island of strangers.’ They would not have started barking so furiously if they had remembered the Government’s agreement to grant work visas to an unlimited number of Indians (exempted from National Insurance Contributions for three years) and plans to allow in young (18-30) people carrying European passports (whatever their country of birth might be.)

They might also have recalled the Sentencing Council’s recommendation that the usual penalty for illegal immigration be reduced to nine months’ imprisonment, which is below the threshold for automatic deportation. It is interesting that although the Council is required to be impartial, seven of its eight judicial members were appointed (subject to the sitting Lord Chancellor’s agreement) by a Lord Chief Justice (Sir Ian Burnett) who was formerly a Liberal Democrat MP (see section 4 here.) Perhaps more than a pinch of compassion is baked into that cake.

So despite Sir Keir’s recent statement the general direction of travel on this issue seems clear.

Nevertheless in PMQs Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts challenged Starmer, saying his Monday speech contradicted his previous support for ‘migrants’ and free movement. ‘Is there any belief he holds that survives a week in Downing Street?’ she asked. Sir Keir’s reply - ‘Yes, the belief that she talks rubbish’ - was so brutal that it caused a stir on his own side as well as the Opposition’s.

He completed his response with dream-talk - ‘I want to lead a country where we pull together and walk into the future as neighbours and as communities, not as strangers’ - that left us not so much soothed as confused. How was this to be achieved?

The challenges of immigration are not simple. As Douglas Murray has said, ‘if you import the world’s people, you also import the world’s problems.’ The current dangerous confrontation between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is an example, though there is a third, giant country that has an interest: China, which for long has had its eyes on a neighbouring territory, Aksai Chin, plus part of Kashmir itself.

Again, the conflict between Israel and Gaza has resulted in public unrest in this country and influenced the election of several ‘independent’ Muslim MPs who repeatedly raise related questions in Parliament. Reportedly, half of Britain’s Jews have been considering emigration because they feel the authorities have not been grasping the Islamist nettle firmly.

There is a specific difficulty with the latter religion, because taken literally and to extremes it threatens to destroy our separation between Church and State. Theocratic rule - we have had this before, with Christianity - unites believers without reference to territorial limits, and the joys and terrors of the afterlife make any sacrifice or atrocity here well worth while. The easygoing liberal democracy we have enjoyed until recently is, historically speaking, a temporary sunlit clearing in an ancient monster-infested forest.

Fortunately most Muslims in the UK live by their faith’s general rules for daily living without a close reading of all its texts. Nevertheless there are unequivocal statements in those sources that are a kind of underbrush awaiting a firebrand to begin a conflagration. When society is under severe stress - persecution, war, economic breakdown - wild millennial movements can begin, as Norman Cohn illustrated nearly seventy years ago. This is why Ayaan Hirsa Ali argues the need for a Reformation in Islam to temper its absolutism and make it compatible with pluralist Western society.

Not all immigrants are Muslims, but Pew Research has forecast that by 2050 that religion’s followers may constitute up to 17 per cent of the British population. Without a determined national policy to inculcate support for impartial institutions the Labour drive for devolution may result in a proliferation of political, even clannish fiefdoms like those in London and Scotland; ones that may eventually cease to rely on the Labour Party.

Speaking of the latter, marxism is, of course, another uncompromising religion, replacing Heaven with a millennial vision of a stateless society once all opposition has been ruthlessly eliminated. It may have sprung from a sympathy for the suffering of the poor, but it has mutated into the pursuit of a single aim: not human happiness but social equality, whatever the cost. It is said that when Chairman Mao was told nuclear war would annihilate a third of humanity he replied, ‘Good, then there will be no more classes.’ Modern British socialism has added-in apocalyptic environmentalism so that we now have a Prime Minister who used to be, and maybe still is, a ‘red-green.’ We are overdue a Reformation of the Left.

There is another, ideology-free consideration: our country is over-populated. Already we import forty per cent of our food (by monetary value, I think; the dietary value may be greater.) The problem will increase: net migration is more than compensating for our declining birth rate, while farmland is being converted to housing, infrastructure, ‘green’ energy and wildlife set-asides. There may come a time in our unstable world, as happened during the Second World War, when the threat of food shortages raises its head. Even postwar we once kept a strategic food stockpile, but it was scrapped thirty years ago; not that it would have sustained us for long in any case. The British political class does not plan far ahead but reality makes no concessions to lack of preparation.

However, if we choose not to let our population shrink, then we must have a way to sustain it, which will be principally by boosting production to increase import substitution, and by foreign trade. We are in competition with countries whose land and labour are cheaper, or whose massive domestic market and economies of scale allow them to trade surpluses that undercut us. To stand a chance, we have to rebuild high-value engineering capacity, not just cling on to a couple of ageing steelworks. Our energy policy has to abandon its hippie Garden of Eden dreams and use every available fossil fuel resource to keep us going while we develop other, cleaner forms of cheap and reliable power. We cannot wait for Reform to oust the Energy Secretary in 2029, assuming that it can; we are fighting for our economic survival now.

Emergency funding may be needed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has damaged the economy and we cannot allow the Treasury to hamstring us. If Richard J Murphy and Steve Keen are correct in advocating Modern Monetary Theory, public debt is not the problem; it is private debt that hobbles the economy. Keen has some credibility: he is one of only twenty (his estimate) professional economists (out of 20,000 worldwide) to have predicted the Great Financial Crisis.

Will Starmer listen? Does he have the nerve for a radical Cabinet reshuffle? Does he have the wit to abandon the Grand Plan that he got Gordon Brown to design for him?One fears his arrogance and ideological rigidity will be his political undoing.

But he may do for us first before he goes.

From Wolves of Westminster

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Unthanks, by JD

Can't believe I haven't featured the Unthank sisters before now and I had forgotten how good they are. Their father George Unthank is also a folk singer with a quartet called the Keelers; worth investigating further I think. The sisters use 'folk' and traditional music as a starting point for their musical explorations which leads them in all sorts of interesting directions.

"Concise descriptions of The Unthanks range variously from “music that asks you to consider everything you know and un-think it”, to “a take on tradition that flips so effortlessly between jazz, classical, ambient and post-rock, it makes any attempt to put a label on them a waste of time”.

https://www.the-unthanks.com/

The Unthanks – Mount The Air (Folk Awards 2016)

The Unthanks - Magpie - Later... with Jools Holland - BBC

The Unthanks perform The Testimony of Patience Kershaw

The Unthanks - The Bay Of Fundy (Official Video)

River River by The Unthanks

The Unthanks - King of Rome (2012 Folk Music Awards)
(King of Rome was written by Dave Sudbury of Derby. Here is the link for the story of Charlie Hudson and his famous pigeon.
http://www.derbyphotos.co.uk/features....)

Unique and unbelievably excellent, I'm sure you will agree.