Eileen Ivers is an Irish/American violinist. Born in New York she began playing fiddle/violin at the age of nine and over the years has progressed from traditional Irish fiddle playing to being perfectly at home in virtually every genre of music. As an example see the video below in which she is more than a match for the great American jazz violinist Regina Carter and the classical player Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg. (By the way, she also plays the banjo, and why not!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Ivers
On her website, The New York Times describe her as "the Jimi Hendrix of the violin.
A ridiculous comparison. She is a virtuoso on violin, Hendrix was flash and mediocre even by rock's low standards.
http://www.eileenivers.com/about
*** FUTURE POSTS WILL ALSO APPEAR AT 'NOW AND NEXT' : https://rolfnorfolk.substack.com
Friday, November 15, 2019
Saturday, November 09, 2019
BREXIT: The Political Declaration - Fifty Shades Of Yea
The post below has also been published on The Conservative Woman:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-eus-written-a-bloc-buster-but-will-boris-rip-it-up/
________________________________________
The Political Declaration contains divorce terms so amicable that the opposing parties ought to get a room. Yet if the General Election forecasts are correct, the next Conservative government should have a majority that will let Boris Johnson radically revise the WA/PD or scrap them altogether. Will he do it?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-eus-written-a-bloc-buster-but-will-boris-rip-it-up/
________________________________________
The Political Declaration contains divorce terms so amicable that the opposing parties ought to get a room. Yet if the General Election forecasts are correct, the next Conservative government should have a majority that will let Boris Johnson radically revise the WA/PD or scrap them altogether. Will he do it?
Should he
do it?
The
hubristic European Union is already gloating that
May’s Withdrawal Agreement hasn’t been modified, merely clarified. I haven’t yet studied the documentation, so I can’t say – but then, how many
MPs and spads have done so? How many, rather, are like Douglas Hurd at
Maastricht, who jested (and was it a jest?) ‘Now we’ve signed it – we had
better read it’? Still, they’ve had two years to go through what was 599 pages and is now only 541 – not much longer than an airport bonkbuster; and it’s their job, after all.
The Political Declaration, on the
other hand, is merely 26 pages in both the original and revised versions; the length of a short story. Even the layman can read that, and what
a story it is!
This sketch of the future
relationship between the divorcees is half lawyer and half lover. In the first
version the word ‘ambitious’ appears seven times, ‘close’ sixteen, ‘to the
extent possible’ (and similar phrases) thirteen, and ‘align/ment’ four. One feels
the bonds being tied already. So masterful… and so yielding!
And the atmospherics are not much
changed in the revision. Yes, the Irish backstop has been taken out – including
the twice-used commanding phrase ‘on a permanent footing’ (how did that get
past May’s negotiators?), but disputes are still to go to the EU’s Court of
Justice for a ‘binding ruling’ (tighter, please!)
Here’s
an odd detail: the original spoke of ‘administrative cooperation in customs’
but left out VAT. Not insignificant: we sent £3.1 billion (pre-rebate) to theEU last year, which is like winning the 10
biggest-ever jackpots on the Euromillions, twice over, annually. Oops, or not?
As for the UK-fisheries-strangling
‘level playing field’, here’s the new (longer) paragraph – even if, like me,
you’re not legally trained, how many carefully ambiguous – and entangling -
phrases can you find in it?
‘Given the Union and the United Kingdom's geographic
proximity and economic interdependence, the future relationship must ensure
open and fair competition, encompassing robust commitments to ensure a level
playing field. The precise nature of commitments should be commensurate with
the scope and depth of the future relationship and the economic connectedness
of the Parties. These commitments should prevent distortions of trade and
unfair competitive advantages. To that end, the Parties should uphold the common
high standards applicable in the Union and the United Kingdom at the end of the
transition period in the areas of state aid, competition, social and employment
standards, environment, climate change, and relevant tax matters. The Parties
should in particular maintain a robust and comprehensive framework for
competition and state aid control that prevents undue distortion of trade and
competition; commit to the principles of good governance in the area of
taxation and to the curbing of harmful tax practices; and maintain
environmental, social and employment standards at the current high levels
provided by the existing common standards. In so doing, they should rely on
appropriate and relevant Union and international standards, and include
appropriate mechanisms to ensure effective implementation domestically,
enforcement and dispute settlement. The future relationship should also promote
adherence to and effective implementation of relevant internationally agreed
principles and rules in these domains, including the Paris Agreement.’
Back to
Johnson’s revise/scrap option. Can he do it?
Fair
stands the wind for Boris: Corbyn's Labour Party has culled smoothie
crypto-Marxist Blairites - who unlike him have actually held power and foisted
real constitutional damage on us - but also repelled Old Labour by openly
espousing a Marxism that would have Cassandra crying in the streets.
Accordingly, Electoral Calculus predicts (as at 9 November) a 96-seat Conservative
majority. This is not counting the pact offered by The Brexit Party (and
favoured by TCW readers) that could split the working-class Labour vote in many
key seats.
So far,
Johnson rejects Farage's offer, but the risk he is taking is that enough
traditional Conservative voters will understand and reject the
hurriedly-made-over May deal to split their vote, too. Should they be convinced
that Corbyn has no chance whatever, then anything could happen in the polling
booths.
If
Johnson wants a 1997-scale landslide, then like Blair he should shun
presumption and over-engineer his campaign. There is still time: unless I'm
mistaken, a new Parliament might pass a fresh Meaningful Vote in favour of an
ironclad real deal on the slipway, instead of launching a paper boat into a
stormy sea with BJ's huff-and-puff in its sails.
In short,
the choice on 12 December is not between Citizen Smith and the Blond Bombshell;
it's between Bullish Boris and Blowhard Boris. If he doesn't deliver Brexit, it
won't be because he didn't have the chance. And then we shall know him.
Friday, November 08, 2019
FRIDAY MUSIC: Amos Lee, by JD
You may not be familiar with the name Amos Lee but he is an extremely talented young singer/songwriter and fully deserves a place in our mini hall of musical fame here at Broad Oak Magazine. You will understand why when you listen to the selection included here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Lee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Lee
Thursday, November 07, 2019
Walking protohumans started in Europe?
According to research published in Nature, the first bipedal ancestor of modern humans may have come from southern Europe. Dubbed Danuvius Guggenmosi, the remains were found in Bavaria and date from c. 11.5 million years ago.
Only a few weeks before this discovery, another research team speculated that a 10-million-year-old pelvis belonging to another species called Rudapithecus Hungaricus may have enabled it to walk upright, too.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03418-2
Before now, says the Daily Mail's report, the earliest evidence of two-legged hominids came from Kenya - the 6 million-year-old remains of Orrorin Tugenensis - and some fossilised footprints on the island of Crete.
"The discovery of Danuvius may shatter the prevailing notion of how bipedalism evolved: that perhaps 6 million years ago in East Africa a chimpanzee-like ancestor started to walk on two legs after environmental changes created open landscapes and savannahs where forests once dominated."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-7658067/Prehistoric-ape-Germany-pioneer-two-legged-walking.html
So rather than coming from Africa, it's possible that some of humanity's ancestors may have gone there before re-migrating northwards.
______________________________
Cross-posted on The Polynesian Times: https://polynesiantimes.blogspot.com/2019/11/walking-protohumans-started-in-europe.html
Only a few weeks before this discovery, another research team speculated that a 10-million-year-old pelvis belonging to another species called Rudapithecus Hungaricus may have enabled it to walk upright, too.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03418-2
Before now, says the Daily Mail's report, the earliest evidence of two-legged hominids came from Kenya - the 6 million-year-old remains of Orrorin Tugenensis - and some fossilised footprints on the island of Crete.
"The discovery of Danuvius may shatter the prevailing notion of how bipedalism evolved: that perhaps 6 million years ago in East Africa a chimpanzee-like ancestor started to walk on two legs after environmental changes created open landscapes and savannahs where forests once dominated."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-7658067/Prehistoric-ape-Germany-pioneer-two-legged-walking.html
So rather than coming from Africa, it's possible that some of humanity's ancestors may have gone there before re-migrating northwards.
______________________________
Cross-posted on The Polynesian Times: https://polynesiantimes.blogspot.com/2019/11/walking-protohumans-started-in-europe.html
Wednesday, November 06, 2019
Remainers softening? A straw in the wind
Two years ago, the world-famous broadcaster David Attenborough was comparing opposition to the EU to spitting in each other's faces, and 'criticised the decision to put leaving the European Union to a referendum because people had not been given “the facts"'.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-attenborough-brexiteers-spit-europeans-eu-leave-uk-bbc-michael-gove-experts-a7967591.html
More recently, without publicly declaring himself a Remainer or Leaver (and that in itself indicates consciousness of enduring public division), he has said:
“I think that the irritation of the ways in which the European community has interfered with people’s lives on silly levels or silly issues has irritated a lot of people who don’t actually understand what the advantages and the disadvantages are.” ...
“They’re just fed up with somebody over there who doesn’t speak their language, telling him how much money they’ve got to charge for tomatoes or something silly.”
Asked if he was more of a Brexiteer than a Remainer, Sir David said he believed “there had to be a change, one way or another”.
https://www.itv.com/news/2019-08-21/sir-david-attenborough-people-are-fed-up-with-european-union/
It's interesting that he understands that there may indeed be disadvantages in our EU membership, and that the EU attempts to micromanage in a counterproductive way.
I read this as a sign that at least part of the Establishment is becoming aware that the Referendum result was not merely a flash in the pan and that there is much settled feeling against the European project.
Granted, in the quotation above the speaker seems to say - as so many Remainers said, immediately after the vote and persistently from then on, that such people 'don't actually understand' the issues (though I really don't see much clear, logic- and fact-based argument for the advantages, from Remainers).
But I sense a shift. And I think the traffic is more this way than that.
This post also appears on All About Brexit: https://allaboutbrexit.blogspot.com/2019/11/remainers-softening-straw-in-wind.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-attenborough-brexiteers-spit-europeans-eu-leave-uk-bbc-michael-gove-experts-a7967591.html
More recently, without publicly declaring himself a Remainer or Leaver (and that in itself indicates consciousness of enduring public division), he has said:
“I think that the irritation of the ways in which the European community has interfered with people’s lives on silly levels or silly issues has irritated a lot of people who don’t actually understand what the advantages and the disadvantages are.” ...
“They’re just fed up with somebody over there who doesn’t speak their language, telling him how much money they’ve got to charge for tomatoes or something silly.”
Asked if he was more of a Brexiteer than a Remainer, Sir David said he believed “there had to be a change, one way or another”.
https://www.itv.com/news/2019-08-21/sir-david-attenborough-people-are-fed-up-with-european-union/
It's interesting that he understands that there may indeed be disadvantages in our EU membership, and that the EU attempts to micromanage in a counterproductive way.
I read this as a sign that at least part of the Establishment is becoming aware that the Referendum result was not merely a flash in the pan and that there is much settled feeling against the European project.
Granted, in the quotation above the speaker seems to say - as so many Remainers said, immediately after the vote and persistently from then on, that such people 'don't actually understand' the issues (though I really don't see much clear, logic- and fact-based argument for the advantages, from Remainers).
But I sense a shift. And I think the traffic is more this way than that.
This post also appears on All About Brexit: https://allaboutbrexit.blogspot.com/2019/11/remainers-softening-straw-in-wind.html
Tuesday, November 05, 2019
All About Brexit: new blog under construction
I think it's becoming clear that Brexit is going to be a long-drawn-out process, even after (or rather, because of) the "deal" that PM Johnson seems set to push through Parliament and the EU.
There's plenty of detailed academic-type discussion available online, but I think there is a gap in the market for a more simple, user-friendly vade mecum. So I am working on a blog that will provide information, links to documents and websites etc and act as a plain guide to the issues and history.
I would like to show both sides of the argument, but I wonder whether, like me, you have found it difficult to find sources that make the case for Remain anything like as thoroughly as the many proponents of Leave? So although - on the whole - I think we should leave the EU, it would be helpful to have links to logical and factual arguments from Remainers.
Your suggestions are warmly welcomed - can be an O/T comment on any post here or on the new blog, All About Brexit: https://allaboutbrexit.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
There's plenty of detailed academic-type discussion available online, but I think there is a gap in the market for a more simple, user-friendly vade mecum. So I am working on a blog that will provide information, links to documents and websites etc and act as a plain guide to the issues and history.
I would like to show both sides of the argument, but I wonder whether, like me, you have found it difficult to find sources that make the case for Remain anything like as thoroughly as the many proponents of Leave? So although - on the whole - I think we should leave the EU, it would be helpful to have links to logical and factual arguments from Remainers.
Your suggestions are warmly welcomed - can be an O/T comment on any post here or on the new blog, All About Brexit: https://allaboutbrexit.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
Saturday, November 02, 2019
Eco Loonery Addendum, by Wiggiatlarge
Shortly after my post on Eco Loonery was posted, two of the most cynical statements were issued by the government. Two aims can be gleaned from these measures and neither is for the benefit of the country, only for themselves.
Firstly they announced a halt to fracking amid fears of earthquakes. The fact no earthquakes have emanated from fracking sites world wide gives credibility to Jeremy Corbyn's statement, of all people. This is an election stunt. Why we should sit on 400 years of coal and shale gas but buy expensive Russian gas is a complete mystery. We are evermore going down the road of expensive and unreliable energy with wind and sun as the main suppliers.
I can only assume with no real evidence of earthquakes, just unfounded fears, that votes in the area with an election in the offing are more important than future independent energy supplies. Why are we not investing in clean coal and gas and preferring to buy in supplies as we are with gas and nuclear power from France? We are at the mercy of pricing over which we have no control. Madness.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50267454
The second item is even more daft. It would appear that Extinction Rebellion's desire to have "citizens' assemblies" to dictate or advise on eco policies has been given the green light, by the same government! 30,000 people will be asked at random if they wish to participate and then people will be selected to put forward their views.
Thirty thousand would seem like a large number but is a very small segment of the population at large.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50264797
The obvious and deliberate flaw in this is that you can bet no one who is not a climate change believer will be selected. So the likelihood is that those on the assembly platform will be almost certainly rabid eco loons as they will all be pushing to be selected, whereas others will not bother and the so called denier faction will be filtered out. We will then have XR actually pushing their agenda through a supposedly democratic means which of course it won't be.
You would think a government responsible for treating the country with contempt for three and a half years and rising would start to see the light but no, reverting to type and ignoring the people and giving in to minorities whatever the issue is now de riguer it seems.
Can we do anything ? Well voting them all out would be a start, but it will not happen. We seem to have an elite that is determined to ruin this country in so many ways, and they are succeeding.
Firstly they announced a halt to fracking amid fears of earthquakes. The fact no earthquakes have emanated from fracking sites world wide gives credibility to Jeremy Corbyn's statement, of all people. This is an election stunt. Why we should sit on 400 years of coal and shale gas but buy expensive Russian gas is a complete mystery. We are evermore going down the road of expensive and unreliable energy with wind and sun as the main suppliers.
I can only assume with no real evidence of earthquakes, just unfounded fears, that votes in the area with an election in the offing are more important than future independent energy supplies. Why are we not investing in clean coal and gas and preferring to buy in supplies as we are with gas and nuclear power from France? We are at the mercy of pricing over which we have no control. Madness.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50267454
The second item is even more daft. It would appear that Extinction Rebellion's desire to have "citizens' assemblies" to dictate or advise on eco policies has been given the green light, by the same government! 30,000 people will be asked at random if they wish to participate and then people will be selected to put forward their views.
Thirty thousand would seem like a large number but is a very small segment of the population at large.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50264797
The obvious and deliberate flaw in this is that you can bet no one who is not a climate change believer will be selected. So the likelihood is that those on the assembly platform will be almost certainly rabid eco loons as they will all be pushing to be selected, whereas others will not bother and the so called denier faction will be filtered out. We will then have XR actually pushing their agenda through a supposedly democratic means which of course it won't be.
You would think a government responsible for treating the country with contempt for three and a half years and rising would start to see the light but no, reverting to type and ignoring the people and giving in to minorities whatever the issue is now de riguer it seems.
Can we do anything ? Well voting them all out would be a start, but it will not happen. We seem to have an elite that is determined to ruin this country in so many ways, and they are succeeding.
More Eco Loonery, by Wiggiatlarge
At this moment in time it seems that every Brexit report, ad nauseam, is matched by another launch of "save the world for the children" or alternatively another green measure, some think tank backed by government (our) money has come up with to further ensure more penury for the little people in the not too distant future, usually following some new report of a climate model that spells out doom for all, yet no climate model has been correct on anything.
Naturally all these schemes come with the approval badge from those who either gain from it financially or find comfort in doing the ‘right’ thing regardless of consequences they will never have to endure.
I notice that any ‘good’ news on the sustainable front is given priority in the news. A report that for the first time sustainable energy provided more than 50% of the total needs omitted to tell that the quarter they were referring to was the three months of a very hot summer and the longest days when demand was at its lowest; of course when those still overcast drab and very cold winter days come come along and the sustainables only provide zilch there is no headline, only the threat of power cuts, which neatly brings me to the next nonsense in the eco world.
The 2050 target for zero emissions cannot possibly be reached with our current infrastructure. The National Grid report here talks of the need for 85 gigawatts needed by 2050 as against 60 now. In the light that they can’t get a single new nuclear plant built in twenty years, that can never be achieved with a combination of running down coal-fired power stations and replacing them with the weather-reliant wind and solar systems. And none of the figures show any allowance for the expanding (forever) population: official figures say that the next ten years will bring in 3 million extra, enough for another 3 Birminghams alone, never mind the endless illegal migrants that are reckoned to be anything from 1 to 10 million according to which report you want to believe.
These are basic facts. Silly claims that smart meters will make an eight gigabyte saving are pie in the sky: there is no proof for that assumption and it is just another push to get control of your energy so they can decide what you get and what you pay, never believe anything else on that front. Smart meters give the power companies the ability to decide what you can have at a given time and ramp up the price during peak periods, like the motor car in whatever form that takes it will be priced to dampen demand and use, they will have no choice because of the lack of the right type of infrastructure.
This quote from a government minister on smart meters….
‘Eventually, residents would be able to choose real-time tariffs, to switch on appliances when energy is cheapest' - i.e. you can use your kettle and save money if you put it on at 1 o'clock in the morning, plus he gives a veiled threat to those who have not complied and sought to have smart meters fitted…..
‘Lord Duncan admitted there had been "hiccups along the road", but there were potentially "big incentives" for people to agree to a smart meter being fitted. He added that those who stuck with "relic meters" risked "very high" maintenance costs.’ There are so far no advantages in smart meters for the consumer, all the advantages are for the supplier and the veiled threat is just that. What high maintenance costs? Or are they going to charge us an exorbitant rate for meter reading as you have failed to toe the government line?
Still we will all be able to travel by train when we are priced off the road….
The contrasting views on future needs were highlighted in a Times business report on the aviation industry, in which it was stated that world-wide the number of aircraft expected to be in operation by 2050 will have doubled to around 44,000 - interesting in the light of what we are told re travelling by air, could it be just us being stopped from flying as it appears no one else will be ! And certainly not those celebs who happily pose with the likes of XR (Extinction Rebellion) protestors to boost their green credentials while at the same time totally ignoring the same advice regards themselves. (The Guardian forecasts 48,000!)
Naturally the population explosion world-wide is left out of any energy plans, yet how can that be? Every extra person on the planet will require feeding and will have have an energy requirement. Both needs are now being strangled at source by the green lobby yet they believe this is good for us, the same people who claim we are at fault as a prime industrial nation for the ‘horrors’ of climate change - which we aren’t - also benefited and are where they are in the pecking order because of the industrial revolution started in this country.
An interesting short video on where the population is going from the beginning of man on this earth or at least from when significant numbers had established:
Unless another form of propulsion is advanced as with hydrogen to become practical the EV (electric vehicle) will become the status quo, and I don’t oppose that; but with all the pressure from the green lobby groups and the energy companies who see the long term future and another fuel bonanza it cannot be done. The costings for the infrastructure involved are enormous - one estimate showed around 180 billion for the charging infrastructure - and we already lag far behind many other western nations in that respect.
The retail price of EVs is simply not on. Very little R&R is required to produce ICE (internal combustion engine) cars, yet despite manufacturers' claims of huge investment, electric motors have been around longer than the combustion engine, and still a recent report gave a figure of around £800-900 for an electric motor to power an average EV. Electric motors require no expensive gearbox and very few engine ancillaries, only the battery is expensive and the price there has plummeted as they become main line; so why the ridiculous cost? To which we know the answer: as with all 'new' technology the initial launch period is where manufacturers make their money, as with e.g. mobile phones and cameras.
No one yet has given a solution to the recycling of the enormous amount of batteries that will start to end their useful life in the near future; not just car batteries but the already surging popularity of cordless, battery-powered tools and appliances. Anyone looking at the battery collection points in supermarkets sees overflowing containers of just the small batteries used in items like phones etc. The thought of car batteries being on that scale makes the mind boggle on that scale and as I've said, apart from mouthings in some quarters no evidence of a solution has appeared.
One of the more interesting and ludicrous aspects of all this Greta Hamburger attack on everyone to 'save the planet' has been people calling out the hypocrisy spouted by resource-wasteful celebs who then back track to the position that although they carry on doing what they do, they have warned the rest of us. A typical statement came from Lewis Hamilton of all people, who will no doubt claim that the ridicule heaped on him is because he is black or at least half black. This is what he said.
"It's not easy as we're travelling the world and our carbon footprint is higher than the average homeowner who lives in one city," said Hamilton. "That doesn't mean you should be afraid to speak out for positive change."
Hamilton used his Instagram feed last week to say he felt "like giving up on everything", that the world was "messed up" and to ask people to follow his example in taking up a plant-based diet to help the environment.”
So in his case eating beans makes his air travel and driving cars that guzzle fuel perfectly OK. "Bizarre" doesn’t cover it. 'Give up on everything' - we shall see, that is one of those statements like, “I will leave the country if we exit the EU”: it never happens, and he is far from alone. Most of the XR leaders have been found to be a long way from following their own diktat, but it was forever thus.
It could be that all the above is not worth worrying about anyway, just the demographic part. It might well be the case that those third world countries that are expanding at these alarming rates will simply decant to the west in numbers that are never sustainable and we all go back to third world living, something else there seems to be scant concern about in the minds of those who govern us.
Mad Max, anyone?
Thursday, October 31, 2019
(cusp of) FRIDAY MUSIC: Samhain (Halloween) by JD
Our modern Halloween festival is really an American invention which takes the Christian festival of All Saints Day (or All Hallows) and takes its more ghoulish appearance from Mexico's festival Dia de los Muertos which is a three day festival and sometimes more than three days, depending on local traditions (and exuberance).
Halloween is often mistakenly thought to have its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain. This is not true because the Celtic tribes of these islands, of Hibernia and Caledonia, left no written records. The only written records come from the Romans 2000 years ago and they are not exactly reliable or unbiased.
Some people have claimed that Samhain was actually a Celtic god. In fact there is no convincing evidence to support this. It seems likely that this is a misinterpretation of Celtic paganism by those of a theist persuasion. And the word 'pagan' is itself also the subject of wild speculation.
The word comes from the Latin 'paganus' which was used to describe country dwellers; then, as now, city dwellers regarded those in the countyside as ignorant yokels. The Roman influence in the UK has been long lasting.
Samhain was absorbed first by the Romans into their Feralia, a festival of the dead, and also with their harvest festival in honour of Pomona. This merged Roman festival was itself incorporated by the Christians and rebranded as All Saints Day, leaving the night before to become all hallows eve, hallows e'en, thus Halloween. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain
It was a standard practice of many early religions, especially the Christian church, to take local customs and places of power and co-opt them into their own belief system. This was probably one of the earliest known examples of the "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy that (unfortunately) is so commercially successful today.
You can forget about any of those 19th century inventions of Druidry or Paganism or witchcraft, all of which claim to be a direct lineage from the past but are, in reality, based more on the Romantic movements of recent European history.
Samhain has survived in the oral traditions and the music of the Celtic tribes.
Halloween is often mistakenly thought to have its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain. This is not true because the Celtic tribes of these islands, of Hibernia and Caledonia, left no written records. The only written records come from the Romans 2000 years ago and they are not exactly reliable or unbiased.
Some people have claimed that Samhain was actually a Celtic god. In fact there is no convincing evidence to support this. It seems likely that this is a misinterpretation of Celtic paganism by those of a theist persuasion. And the word 'pagan' is itself also the subject of wild speculation.
The word comes from the Latin 'paganus' which was used to describe country dwellers; then, as now, city dwellers regarded those in the countyside as ignorant yokels. The Roman influence in the UK has been long lasting.
Samhain was absorbed first by the Romans into their Feralia, a festival of the dead, and also with their harvest festival in honour of Pomona. This merged Roman festival was itself incorporated by the Christians and rebranded as All Saints Day, leaving the night before to become all hallows eve, hallows e'en, thus Halloween. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain
It was a standard practice of many early religions, especially the Christian church, to take local customs and places of power and co-opt them into their own belief system. This was probably one of the earliest known examples of the "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy that (unfortunately) is so commercially successful today.
You can forget about any of those 19th century inventions of Druidry or Paganism or witchcraft, all of which claim to be a direct lineage from the past but are, in reality, based more on the Romantic movements of recent European history.
Samhain has survived in the oral traditions and the music of the Celtic tribes.
Monday, October 28, 2019
Why We Should Have A Second Referendum
The article below has since been published almost verbatim on The Conservative Woman under the title "Deal or No Deal – let the people decide."
I wish to argue for a second, binding referendum to choose between the final draft Withdrawal Agreement, and leaving the EU without one. I hope this case will be brought to court and succeed.
I wish to argue for a second, binding referendum to choose between the final draft Withdrawal Agreement, and leaving the EU without one. I hope this case will be brought to court and succeed.
There must
be no option to remain. The decision to leave the European Union has been
comprehensively confirmed:
- · The 2016 Referendum, in which a record number of citizens participated, was preceded by oral and (in the Government’s pamphlet) written assurances that the result would be binding. The majority was for leaving, by 52% to 48%.
- · In the 2017 General Election 579 Conservative and Labour MPs gained their seats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_election on manifestoes that committed them to exiting the EU.
- · Parliament then passed the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 on the Third Reading (17 January 2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Withdrawal)_Act_2018#House_of_Commons_Report_Stage_and_Third_Reading .
- · An attempt in the Lords to pass an amendment allowing a second in/out Referendum was decisively defeated on 30 April 2018 https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/953298/brexit-news-eu-uk-house-of-lords-second-referendum-final-deal-defeat-lib-dem-theresa-may .
Yet that is only the first part; the second is to address the
terms of withdrawal.
In the “Miller I” case of January 2017, the Supreme Court
ruled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_Secretary_of_State_for_Exiting_the_European_Union#Judgment_2 that unlike with other international agreements,
the Government could not withdraw from the Lisbon Treaty without reference to
Parliament, because constitutional issues were involved. Leaving entailed the
loss of certain EU member citizen rights, and ECA 1972 had not expressly
conferred a power on the Secretary of State to alter them. Hence the right to a
“Meaningful Vote.”
But this raises the question of whether Parliament itself is
fit to make that choice without reference to the people, whose interests they
supposedly represent. The 2018 Withdrawal Act was passed 324:295 (52% to 48%,
again!), but if the division had been according to the number of constituencies
in which the majority voted Leave in the Referendum, the Ayes would have been
406; and if all Conservative and Labour MPs had honoured their manifesto
commitments, the Ayes would have risen to at least 579 (or 89%).
Why these discrepancies?
- · First, Parliamentary parties juggle issues for electoral advantage. Currently https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50194685 the SNP and Libdems want an extension to the Article 50 negotiations, an amendment to the Fixed Term Parliament Act to allow a mid-term General Election to be authorised by simple majority, and an early GE date, in order to unseat Johnson as PM and "remove the risk of a devastating no-deal Brexit," so leaving us with no alternatives; and Labour opposes an early election outright “unless a no-deal Brexit is taken off the table.” The PM thinks a GE will give him a secure mandate; the Opposition parties think they may gain instead, but use Johnson’s desire for an election as a lever to close down options on an issue of the most profound importance.
- · Second, politically there is internal division and philosophical confusion. In part this arises from the nature of the EU itself, which seems to stand for international cooperation and free trade, yet at the same time is a protectionist trading bloc, and yet through enlargement has undermined pay levels and security of employment for its Western European workforces. Hugh Gaitskell explored the ambiguities for Labour back in 1962 https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1999/1/1/05f2996b-000b-4576-8b42-8069033a16f9/publishable_en.pdf .
- · Third, individual MPs and Lords may have personal interests that could be affected by Brexit – investments, business dealings, possible future employment and preferment etc – even, under certain circumstances, EU staff pensions https://fullfact.org/online/EU-staff-pensions-criticism/ . Rudd and Letwin are already making money https://order-order.com/2019/10/25/bank-america-pays-remainers-rudd-letwin-10000/ on the talk circuit.
- · Fourth, there are foreign powers who have long taken an interest. For example, the US Democratic Party is siding with Ireland against a hard border https://euobserver.com/foreign/144688 , thus combining America’s CIA-backed policy of ramming us into Europe https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/27/the-european-union-always-was-a-cia-project-as-brexiteers-discov/ with their old green-Chicago-River paddiwhackery https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9935908/River-turns-green-for-St-Patricks-Day.html .
The consequences of Brentry and Brexit are usually couched
in economic terms. Even Wilson bribed us in 1975 with the promise of “FOOD and
MONEY and JOBS" http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm
(we then got more expensive food, less money and fewer jobs) while not telling
us that in time we were to be absorbed into a sprawling new country. If the
debate were to centre itself on democratic principles, our Remain politicians
would be embarrassed at their own exposure, like Adam and Eve after eating from
the Tree of Knowledge.
For it is clear that the electoral system is dangerously
flawed. Democracy depends on the acquiescence of the losers. The winners do not
win convincingly – no party has held power on the basis of a majority of votes
cast nationally, since 1931 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_elections_overview#1929%E2%80%931951
; in the 2005 GE only 220 MPs won an absolute majority in their various
constituencies and in 2010, only 217. Conscious of the exclusion problem,
Parliament debated electoral reform in 1931, but failed to agree because the
Commons wanted AV and Lords preferred PR. In the 2011 Referendum both major
parties opposed the Alternative Vote because they felt it would cut into their
portions of the cake, and let the LibDems starve amid plenty.
So, Parliamentary seats do not accurately reflect voter preferences,
and MPs and Lords feel free to ignore them anyhow. Brexit and the choice of
ratification or rejection of the terms cannot safely be left to this Parliament,
nor can a General Election with all its complexities properly resolve the matter.
We have already accepted the principle that this is no
ordinary issue but a great Constitutional one. Even our entry into the EEC had
to be validated post facto by a referendum, though the result was skewed by
political pressure on Fleet Street at a time when there were fewer alternative
sources of information and analysis. If Gina Miller won her case because our
rights were involved, then we should also remember that joining the EEC not
only conferred rights, it took them away, and what we lost thereby in
democratic terms is far more than what we gained. Implicitly our leaders had
agreed to a progressively huge loss of power – not only the British State’s
over its own affairs, but of the British citizenship’s over its rulers.
And we now know for certain that Heath lied. He knew from
1970 on that the project was for a superstate https://campaignforanindependentbritain.org.uk/britain-europe-bruges-group/
. How many in Parliament knew this? We certainly didn’t – Con O’Neill’s
briefing was kept secret for 30 years. It could be argued that lacking
Parliament’s and the people’s informed consent, we have never validly been a
member nation of “Europe.”
As far as my own rights are concerned, I say that HMG no more
has the power to strip me of my British citizenship and make me a citizen of
the EU, than it has the right to make me a Russian or Kazakhstani without my
consent.
And because there are aspects of the current draft WA/PD
that bind my Government’s hands on many important and enduring sovereign
matters such as foreign policy https://www.brugesgroup.com/blog/the-revised-withdrawal-agreement-and-political-declaration-a-briefing-note
, it will not be valid unless I and a majority of my fellow citizens agree.
There must be a Meaningful Vote; a People’s Vote; a New,
Confirmatory, Second Referendum – on Deal or No Deal.
Friday, October 25, 2019
FRIDAY MUSIC: Capercaillie, by JD
With all the wonderful music currently available I seem to have overlooked, so far, the wonderful Capercaillie one of the best of the traditional Scottish folk bands. Hailing from Argyll, the band was founded in 1984 by Donald Shaw and led by the voice of Karen Matheson, a voice which is as clear and pure as the waters from a highland spring.
They performs traditional Gaelic and contemporary English songs. The group adapts traditional Gaelic music and traditional lyrics with modern production techniques and instruments such as electric guitar and bass guitar, although in recent years they have returned to a more traditional style and their repertoire includes music of the Celtic diaspora from Cape Breton to Galicia.
The final two videos here are from a broadcast of Radio Galega on Galician TV. The "Skye Waulking Song", is used in the Edexcel Music GCSE Specification from 2009 onwards. The song is in the world music section, and is used as a representation of traditional folk music combined with rock music.
https://www.capercaillie.co.uk/the-band/
They performs traditional Gaelic and contemporary English songs. The group adapts traditional Gaelic music and traditional lyrics with modern production techniques and instruments such as electric guitar and bass guitar, although in recent years they have returned to a more traditional style and their repertoire includes music of the Celtic diaspora from Cape Breton to Galicia.
The final two videos here are from a broadcast of Radio Galega on Galician TV. The "Skye Waulking Song", is used in the Edexcel Music GCSE Specification from 2009 onwards. The song is in the world music section, and is used as a representation of traditional folk music combined with rock music.
https://www.capercaillie.co.uk/the-band/
Thursday, October 24, 2019
Brocodile: New post on The Conservative Woman
Yesterday's post here has been published on TCW, with some side-glances and some of my more inflammatory stuff sensibly edited out to spare the public and guilty parties.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/never-smile-at-a-brocodile/
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Never Smile At A Brocodile
A version of this has been published on The Conservative Woman - edits are highlighted in green.
Well, they’ve voted for the WA (and PD) at the Second Reading, though not for the accelerated timetable https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/oct/22/brexit-boris-johnson-deal-leave-eu-live-news?page=with:block-5daf4c148f08142786c4ffcd - they need to make sure the egg is fully addled before stamping the lion mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Marketing_Board on it.
Well, they’ve voted for the WA (and PD) at the Second Reading, though not for the accelerated timetable https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/oct/22/brexit-boris-johnson-deal-leave-eu-live-news?page=with:block-5daf4c148f08142786c4ffcd - they need to make sure the egg is fully addled before stamping the lion mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Marketing_Board on it.
Some call this BRINO (Brexit In Name Only), calling
to mind a horned but myopic and generally placid herbivore. No, it’s a
Brocodile: a sly and lethally patient raptor, waiting for a bumbling gnu
new Prime Minister to blunder into its wide, toothy smile. Old and crafty, it strikes
with saurian speed at a negotiator’s vulnerability, and Boris is just a guy who
can’t say no https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A18kYnP4Pec
, which is why his domestic and our public affairs are in a terrible fix. (Yet De
Gaulle could say “Non,” which is fifty per cent longer.)
At this point, the waterhole metaphor breaks
down, for it’s not BoJo’s neck that will be twisted off in the EU’s death-roll.
He spoke airily of dying in a ditch rather than delay Brexit; now we do have
that delay, and absent a miracle we shall certainly not have Brexit. But
ABdeP Johnson will be all right – perhaps he’ll take his little black book of
contacts to an investment bank, like ACL Blair.
No, it is we who shall pay the price. In
cash, in EU disenfranchisement, in the semi-detachment of Northern Ireland, in ceding
control over fishing, taxation, business subsidies and other areas. In financial
ruin, if the Eurozone collapses while we are still co-guarantor for the EIB’s
debts; finally, perhaps, in blood and wreckage, if the EU’s ambitions for Empire
and command of UK forces tempt them into fatal overreach.
Our leaders were never going to outwit the EU’s,
who resemble the kind of lawyer who could write your will and surreptitiously
make himself the sole beneficiary. The incompetent amateurism of HMG’s half-hearted
efforts to free us are matched only by the Heath government’s in the process of
joining.
Nor does our Government have much to fear
from the Opposition, who are only determined that whichever way Pussy goes
through the catflap she should still be stuck in the house. With all their
procedural tricks, they are not an Opposition but a Subversion. Yet it’s not HMG
that they are subverting: really both sides are after the same result – one is playing
for time to complete their sabotage, the other is signing surrender terms while
trumpeting victory.
No, it is we who are the enemy. How long and
at what cost did we fight to cage an overmighty Crown within Parliament; and
how much longer was the battle for universal suffrage, even now less than a
century old https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/case-study-the-right-to-vote/the-right-to-vote/birmingham-and-the-equal-franchise/1928-equal-franchise-act/
? We are John Major’s “bastards”, we, who opted to Leave, with our stubby
pencils.
Yet so powerful are our combined votes, our
Horton’s Who voices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hears_a_Who!
, that they, too, must be muted. First Past The Post and the Boundary
Commission result in a House of Commons where only some 220 MPs secure a
majority of votes cast in their constituencies. In 1931 the HoC was for the Alternative
Vote, but the Lords wanted PR, and the matter fell https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1931/jun/02/representation-of-the-people-no-2-bill
; 80 years later we reopened the issue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum
but by then it suited both major parties to keep things as they are, whereby
psephologists and their databanks can calculate how to sway the swing voter in
the swing seat.
But that’s not enough. Democracy depends on
informed consent, and Power wants it to be managed consent instead. Enter mass
communication technology (from newspapers to radio, TV and beyond) and mass psychology;
and the counter-evolution of the masses’ awareness of power relations. Over the
last few years, growing numbers of us have become sceptical about mainstream news,
feeling that our perceptions are being moulded by selection and suppression of
facts, and spin.
The new social media have allowed a hundred flowers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
to bloom, briefly - some of them hermetic and rank, but that’s democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
; now policed in the West, and suppressed in China in their tightly-controlled Internet.
After the flowers, weeds: online disinformation campaigns have sprung up – the paid
political trolls, the 77th Brigade https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains-information-warfare-military
and so on.
Moreover, in our modern atomised society,
where we drive to the supermarket in closed cars rather than rub shoulders in
the classic forum, offline we have limited direct experience of what our
fellows are thinking. So the dead tree Press have an opportunity to shape public
opinion by the way they report the results of opinion polls.
For example, The Sun said “Brits tell MPs to
vote for Boris Johnson’s agreement” https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/brexit/10165122/brits-back-boris-johnsons-brexit-deal/ based on a YouGov poll https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/10/18/two-thirds-leave-voters-say-parliament-should-acce
which also revealed - further down – that only 17% of the general population
thought it was a good deal, as opposed to 23% who considered it a bad one!
Or how about the Daily Mail, which did a
savage handbrake turn on Brexit when Geordie “independence for Scotland, but
not for the UK” Greig took over the editorship? It commissioned a Survation
poll and concluded https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7589705/Daily-Mail-poll-reveals-Britain-wants-MPs-stop-delay-Boris-Johnson.html
that half the nation backs Boris’ deal. Yet if you drill into the poll https://t.co/kiRyQXmIJA
and look at Tables 59 and 60, you’ll see that more people “strongly opposed”
the deal than “strongly supported” it (and only two-thirds of respondents
answered that question anyway).
This is a complex issue, one where facts do
matter and as Thoreau said https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/opinion/l-one-man-s-majority-654087.html
, “Any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one.” I
wonder what results we'd have got if respondents were restricted to those who
did more than read the Daily Mail or watch BBC News, and instead looked at the
online commenters' analyses of the pros and cons of the full deal.
It’s Them v. Us, I’m afraid. It was deeply
ironic to watch ex-PM Mrs May castigating the Opposition in Parliament https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1192892/Theresa-may-speech-brexit-vote-today
for failing to honour the statutes they helped enact - withdrawal from the EU,
and the triggering of Article 50.
Did they mean it? she asked. Well, did she,
when she then came to the Commons three times with her Withdrawal Agreement? Or
her successor, who has returned with much the same, plus lipstick? Or those who
now call for another Referendum, with a choice of a rotten deal or Remain - the
latter being the one thing that was definitively ruled out in 2016?
Yes, we are being pushed into the jaws of the
Brocodile. And I’m not smiling.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Guido's Chinese Whispers
I have combined and edited two recent posts to make one that I am submitting to The Conservative Woman. Here is what I have said:
“News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else
is advertising,” as Randolph Hearst said. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/77244-news-is-something-somebody-doesn-t-want-printed-all-else-is
Over the last few years, growing numbers of us have become sceptical about the
mainstream media, feeling that our perceptions are being managed by selection
and suppression of facts, and spin.
So we season our understanding with a variety of alternative
sources, many online. One such is Paul Staines, aka “Guido Fawkes,” who gives
us a stream of Westminster gossip and up-to-date news. Some of us appreciate
his support for Brexit, all the more valued since the Daily Mail did a savage
handbrake turn when Geordie Greig took over the editorship.
But a couple of Guido’s recent posts have got me worried.
I’m hoping it’s just owing to the pressure of constant publication, rather than
consciously adopting the Government’s line on Johnson’s “deal.”
****************
On 18th October, he bannered a piece with “Snap
Poll: Public Want The Deal Passing” https://order-order.com/2019/10/18/snap-poll-public-want-deal-passing/
, subtitling it “Two thirds of Leave voters say Parliament should vote to
accept the new Brexit deal.”
His source was a YouGov poll whose headline is very
similar https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/10/18/two-thirds-leave-voters-say-parliament-should-acce
, but whose detail is troubling. Yes, 67% of Leave voters say they want Brexit
done; but YouGov’s third table shows they feel they don’t really know enough.
31% think it is a good deal, 11% think it is bad, and 58% are neutral or
undecided. This is a complex issue, one where facts do matter and as Thoreau
said https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/opinion/l-one-man-s-majority-654087.html
, “Any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one.” The
general public is even more conflicted: 17% say the deal is good, 23% say bad –
and since the 2016 Referendum involved everyone, not just Leavers, perhaps that
should have been the headline. In Guido’s case, his headline and the subheading
are at odds – the public is not the same as its Leaver element.
Does this matter? Yes, it does. You can influence people by
telling them that most of their fellows think a certain way – isn’t that one of
the reasons to own a newspaper? Or to infiltrate the BBC?
******************
Cut to 21st October: Guido tells us “Brexit Party
Supporters Back The Deal” https://order-order.com/2019/10/21/brexit-party-supporters-back-deal/
and crows "Despite Nigel’s continuing opposition for opposition’s sake, it
seems his usually loyal followers are abandoning him in favour of Boris’s new
deal. Last man in the bunker…”
The facts? Out of 1,025 polled among the general public by
Survation https://t.co/kiRyQXmIJA , a
total of 15 (fifteen) Brexiteers “strongly approved” Boris’ deal. (Click on the
link to see the whole thing – Guido’s stats are drawn from Sheet 3, Table 60.)
I am a
little concerned that the survey was conducted on behalf of the Daily Mail –
I’m sure that Survation will have done a professional job, but I wonder what
the brief was; it covers a lot of ground, rather too much in my opinion.
Table 60
analyses responses to Question 26, which reads, "From what you have seen
or heard about the government's Brexit deal, to what extent do you support or
oppose the deal?"
Already we
wonder what the respondents know – what are their sources of information, and
how has it been presented? “Garbage in, garbage out,” as the techies say.
Moreover,
the replies in this table are merely a subset of the total respondents - only
674 out of 1,025 - so the margin of error is greater. Even then, not all in
that subset replied to all parts: the "current voting intention" line
(line #1641, Columns Q-W) adds up to only 601 people, and only 596 people said
how they voted in the 2016 Referendum (Columns H and I). We’re now down to a
sample of less than 60% of people polled.
And Guido’s
news about Brexiteers is not only cherry-picking statistics out of this reduced
sample, but combining them to give a misleading impression of homogeneity of
feeling. The 15 who say they intend to vote TBP next time and who "strongly
supported" Boris' deal (Line 1641, Column T) are added to 36 who only
"somewhat supported" it, to make a combined total of 51 people - then
reported as "67% of Brexit Party supporters."
Step back:
1,025 people took part in the poll; of whom only 87 intend to vote TBP; of whom
only 15 are strongly in favour of the deal. I say, if you really want to know
what TBP supporters feel about Boris’ deal, do a more focused poll. 5,248,533
people voted for TBP in the 2019 European Parliament elections – there’s plenty
of material there!
Using much
the same approach, Guido tells us that 70% of Leave voters and 90% of Tories
also back Johnson’s WA Mark 2. Is this a safe basis? I'm not inclined to think
so.
In fact of
ALL those who responded to question 26 and also indicated their voting
intentions in the next General Election, only 137 "strongly
supported" the proposed deal, and a further mere 158 "somewhat
supported" it. Even adding them together - sheep with cows (Little Boy
Blue, you're falling down on the job) - you get 295 people out of a total
survey population of 1,025. 295 very variably informed people with probably
very differently nuanced stances on their support for "deal".
I wonder
what results we'd have got if respondents were restricted to those who did more
than read the Daily Mail or watch BBC News, and also looked at the detailed
analyses of the pros and cons of the full deal.
********************
We need
informed consent, not managed consent; so we need commentators who view sources
critically and present their findings judiciously. “If you can keep your head
when all around you…”
For we’re
not getting the straight gen from our leaders, are we?
It would
have been comical, had it not been almost tragic, to watch ex-PM Mrs May
castigating the Opposition in Parliament https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1192892/Theresa-may-speech-brexit-vote-today
for failing to honour the statutes they helped enact - withdrawal from the EU,
and the triggering of Article 50.
Did they
mean it? she asked. Well, did she, when she then came to the Commons three
times with a ball-and-chain Withdrawal Agreement? Or her successor, who has
returned with much the same (lipstick on a crocodile, I call it)? Or those who
now call for another Referendum, with a choice of a rotten deal or Remain - the
latter being the one thing that was definitively ruled out in 2016?
Guido, we
need people like you to be our compass, or we shall be lost on a sea of
misinformation.
Monday, October 21, 2019
Guido Fawkes - "TBP supporters back Boris' deal" - REALLY?
Parliamentary gossip broker Paul Staines aka "Guido Fawkes" confidently transmits this news:
... commenting:
Survation's Tweet makes it clear that their results indicate 51% still wish to leave the EU, versus 45% wishing to remain and 5% unsure.
More usefully, Survation give a link to the full results [https://t.co/kiRyQXmIJA] and it is worth seeing what underpins this apparently overwhelming endorsement for the new Prime Minister's deal.
The context is a worry. The first page of the spreadsheet (see the second and third tabs at the foot for Contents and Tables) show that the survey was conducted on behalf of the Daily Mail, a newspaper that has radically changed its stance on Brexit since Geordie Greig took over the editorship from Paul Dacre. Greig's preference is for Remain, but also for Scottish independence, a stance I find illogical - you either believe in national sovereignty or you don't.
Also, I'm not quite sure who set the questions, and why they did it that way. The answers you get are conditioned by the way you ask the questions.
At any rate, "Guido Fawkes" is picking his sample results from Table 60, which you can check for yourself on the third page as linked above.
Table 60 analyses responses to Question 26, which reads:
"From what you have seen or heard about the government's Brexit deal, to what extent do you support or oppose the deal?"
Already we wonder what the respondent knows - who has provided that information, and how has it been presented?
Moreover, the respondents are merely a subset of the total respondents - only 674 out of 1,025 - so the margin of error is greater. Even then, not all in that subset replied to all parts: the "current voting intention" line (line #1641, Columns Q-W) adds up to only 601 people, and only 596 people said how they voted in the 2016 Referendum (Columns H and I).
And, of course, this news item is not only cherry-picking statistics out of this smaller sample, but combining them to give a misleading impression of homogeneity of feeling. For example, of those who told the pollster they intended to vote for the Brexit Party next time, only 15 people "strongly supported" Boris' deal, as opposed to 36 who "somewhat supported" it. That's a dodgily combined total of 51 people - reported as "67% of Brexit Party supporters." If you want to know what TBP supporters feel about the deal, go and poll them. 5,248,533 people voted for TBP in the 2019 European Parliament elections - that's more than 100,000 times that 51-person sample!
The same kind of game is played with "Leave voters" (those who voted Leave in 2016) and "Tories" (those telling the pollster that's who they will vote for in the next GE - they'd never lie, would they?).
Safe and reliable? I'm not inclined to think so.
In fact of ALL those who responded to question 26 and also indicated their voting intentions in the next General Election, only 137 "strongly supported" the proposed deal, and a further mere 158 "somewhat supported" it. Even adding them together - sheep with cows (Little Boy Blue, you're falling down on the job) - you get 295 people out of a total survey population of 1,025. 295 very variably informed people with probably very differently nuanced stances on their support for "deal".
I wonder what results we'd have got if respondents were restricted to those who did more than read the Daily Mail or watch BBC News, and instead looked at the online commenters' analyses of the pros and cons of the full deal.
It would have been comical, had it not been almost tragic, to watch ex-PM Mrs May castigating the Opposition in Parliament for failing to honour the statutes they helped enact - withdrawal from the EU, and the triggering of Article 50.
Did they mean it? Well, did she, when she then came to the Commons three times with a ball-and-chain Withdrawal Agreement? Or her successor, who has returned with much the same (lipstick on a crocodile, I call it)? Or those who now call for another Referendum, with a choice of a rotten deal or Remain - the latter being the one thing that was definitively ruled out in 2016?
What is "Guido Fawkes" doing, cheerleading this farrago of misleading information?
... commenting:
"Despite Nigel’s continuing opposition for opposition’s sake, it seems his usually loyal followers are abandoning him in favour of Boris’s new deal. Last man in the bunker…
"A new Survation poll out this morning shows 67% of Brexit Party voters want the Commons to pass the deal, a little behind the 73% of leave voters and 90% of Conservative voters. In the country as a whole, the deal has 47% support versus 37% opposition. Theresa May could only dream of numbers like these…"
_______________________Survation's Tweet makes it clear that their results indicate 51% still wish to leave the EU, versus 45% wishing to remain and 5% unsure.
More usefully, Survation give a link to the full results [https://t.co/kiRyQXmIJA] and it is worth seeing what underpins this apparently overwhelming endorsement for the new Prime Minister's deal.
The context is a worry. The first page of the spreadsheet (see the second and third tabs at the foot for Contents and Tables) show that the survey was conducted on behalf of the Daily Mail, a newspaper that has radically changed its stance on Brexit since Geordie Greig took over the editorship from Paul Dacre. Greig's preference is for Remain, but also for Scottish independence, a stance I find illogical - you either believe in national sovereignty or you don't.
Also, I'm not quite sure who set the questions, and why they did it that way. The answers you get are conditioned by the way you ask the questions.
At any rate, "Guido Fawkes" is picking his sample results from Table 60, which you can check for yourself on the third page as linked above.
Table 60 analyses responses to Question 26, which reads:
"From what you have seen or heard about the government's Brexit deal, to what extent do you support or oppose the deal?"
Already we wonder what the respondent knows - who has provided that information, and how has it been presented?
Moreover, the respondents are merely a subset of the total respondents - only 674 out of 1,025 - so the margin of error is greater. Even then, not all in that subset replied to all parts: the "current voting intention" line (line #1641, Columns Q-W) adds up to only 601 people, and only 596 people said how they voted in the 2016 Referendum (Columns H and I).
And, of course, this news item is not only cherry-picking statistics out of this smaller sample, but combining them to give a misleading impression of homogeneity of feeling. For example, of those who told the pollster they intended to vote for the Brexit Party next time, only 15 people "strongly supported" Boris' deal, as opposed to 36 who "somewhat supported" it. That's a dodgily combined total of 51 people - reported as "67% of Brexit Party supporters." If you want to know what TBP supporters feel about the deal, go and poll them. 5,248,533 people voted for TBP in the 2019 European Parliament elections - that's more than 100,000 times that 51-person sample!
The same kind of game is played with "Leave voters" (those who voted Leave in 2016) and "Tories" (those telling the pollster that's who they will vote for in the next GE - they'd never lie, would they?).
Safe and reliable? I'm not inclined to think so.
In fact of ALL those who responded to question 26 and also indicated their voting intentions in the next General Election, only 137 "strongly supported" the proposed deal, and a further mere 158 "somewhat supported" it. Even adding them together - sheep with cows (Little Boy Blue, you're falling down on the job) - you get 295 people out of a total survey population of 1,025. 295 very variably informed people with probably very differently nuanced stances on their support for "deal".
I wonder what results we'd have got if respondents were restricted to those who did more than read the Daily Mail or watch BBC News, and instead looked at the online commenters' analyses of the pros and cons of the full deal.
It would have been comical, had it not been almost tragic, to watch ex-PM Mrs May castigating the Opposition in Parliament for failing to honour the statutes they helped enact - withdrawal from the EU, and the triggering of Article 50.
Did they mean it? Well, did she, when she then came to the Commons three times with a ball-and-chain Withdrawal Agreement? Or her successor, who has returned with much the same (lipstick on a crocodile, I call it)? Or those who now call for another Referendum, with a choice of a rotten deal or Remain - the latter being the one thing that was definitively ruled out in 2016?
What is "Guido Fawkes" doing, cheerleading this farrago of misleading information?
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Walkabout to Wave Hill
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067959/mediaviewer/rm1550407936 |
Our ramble begins with an internet writer's reference to an Australian comedy book from the Seventies, The Outcasts Of Foolgarah. Surfing the reviews, I came across a Depression-era larrikin Oz classic, Here's Luck, by journo and rake Lennie Lower, which is now making us laugh.
But Outcasts, by Frank Hardy, was far from the author's most significant work. His most notorious was one that got him in court for criminal libel - the last case of its kind in Victoria; but that's not where this journey leads us. The experiences of the Depression that gave Lower his comic material had radicalised Hardy, as they did so many others, prompting him to join the Communist Party and use his talents to fight the Establishment.
We have since learned what Communism did; but the instincts that it exploited - compassion for the poor, and vicarious indignation - are valid. In our secular age, they inform ecological panic and adolescent self-loathing, an opportunity for ostentatious do-gooders to secure bossy, well-upholstered sinecures for themselves.
In Australia, they take us to the aboriginals.
Twenty thousand years before Neanderthals recolonised an unpeopled Ice Age Britain, forty thousand before modern man supplanted them in Europe, even longer before humans saw the Americas, the first Australians came to their island continent. Early agriculture? The cities of China and Mesopotamia, Egypt and Mohenjo Daro, the stones of Wiltshire and Giza? Last week's news.
For them, time had no meaning, as is so with all of us, our past always fading into dream, driving us to build, write, record images; futile attempts to preserve our intangible selves in something that endures forever, though nothing will.
Where are their monuments? In their minds, and in their tongues. In their myths of creation and arrival, in the songman's store of rhymes that give life-saving directions for nomads in a pitiless land; an inconceivably long heirloom of songs, some maybe stretching back to the birth of language itself. Old to young, old to young, the chain continued, handing on words and skills that gave them their law and culture; the policeman and warrior, the getter of food and drink, the builder of shelters contained in their skins and carried within their hands and brains wherever they went.
Until the last link broke.
Dispossession, displacement, disrespect; opium via the Oriental trading in Port Darwin; alcohol everywhere, ruining the young as it did their counterparts in America, where sometimes crazy-drunk First Nation kids hang out of cars as they tear around settlement lands which they cannot sell or mortgage.
Instead of the remorseless pressure of daily survival, jobs: money, enough to get by and for some, to dream the modern dreams of easy intoxication. And since the young stopped listening to the old, the elders (some, at least) shut their lips. One by one, the guiding stars of the aboriginal are winking out of existence, taking their knowledge with them.
Materially, a little is done to compensate material wrongs, some in response to action by the victims themselves. Following a walkout in 1966 by mistreated Gurindji aboriginal workers at the vast Wave Hill cattle station, a small portion of their traditional lands were eventually restored to them, and the law has begun to address past injustices. Frank Hardy helped to publicise the issues in his book The Unlucky Australians, and a TV documentary followed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tWBmqZVSTg
What can make up for the vast, invisible vandalism of an ancient way of life? Like all humanity, the original Australians have always known war and crime, but what they carried in them was no less precious and far older than the historical relics over which we wonder and grieve in museums.
Still, many times older is the history of humanoids written into all our genes, itself dwarfed by the general relay of life that began billions of years ago. It is fleeting life that endures.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Dumbographics: Greta Thunberg and the young "femographic"
Sex Pistols manager Malcom Maclaren said, "You can make more money exploiting yourself than by exploiting other people."
He didn't add, "Except your kids and other youngsters." That can be left to politicians, and quangocrats like Greta Thunberg's milieu. Canadian investigative journalist Cory Morningstar has already deconstructed the moneymaking juggernaut that has poor Greta tied to it like the secondhand teddy on the front of a lorry, referring to "the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”".
And the social media owners are happy to manipulate our discussions to help the panic along. Here's an example from today's Facebook feed:
What I'd like you to notice is that when you click on "1 comment" you find that comments are filtered for "relevance". How kind.
Except that when you drill down further to see "All comments", here is what that one person said:
I don't know whether this subtle censorship is done by machine, or is handmade. But surely that comment is spot-on for relevance. China is the world's biggest CO2 emitter.
When public affairs are to be guided by a latter-day Shirley Temple fresh off her Good Ship Lollipop we should start lowering the lifeboats.
He didn't add, "Except your kids and other youngsters." That can be left to politicians, and quangocrats like Greta Thunberg's milieu. Canadian investigative journalist Cory Morningstar has already deconstructed the moneymaking juggernaut that has poor Greta tied to it like the secondhand teddy on the front of a lorry, referring to "the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”".
And the social media owners are happy to manipulate our discussions to help the panic along. Here's an example from today's Facebook feed:
What I'd like you to notice is that when you click on "1 comment" you find that comments are filtered for "relevance". How kind.
Except that when you drill down further to see "All comments", here is what that one person said:
I don't know whether this subtle censorship is done by machine, or is handmade. But surely that comment is spot-on for relevance. China is the world's biggest CO2 emitter.
When public affairs are to be guided by a latter-day Shirley Temple fresh off her Good Ship Lollipop we should start lowering the lifeboats.
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