Lockdown Music, by JD

I thought you might like these three musical 'house arrest' comments:







I have also noticed a new exercise fad - people, usually wearing makeshift masks, suddenly realise they are close to a human and will veer sideways or even jump sideways in horror to maintain their '(anti)social distancing.' It could be a new Olympic sport or even better, a new dance craze: "antisocial distancing dancing!"

I can also offer this link I found via a commenter at ConservativeWoman -

https://lockdownsceptics.org

You will have seenby now that 'Professor' Neil Ferguson has resigned; he obviously thought his own lockdown rules only applied to the little people (most of whom are ignoring them anyway in my experience and observations.) Here is Martin Armstrong's blog on the subject-
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/corruption/ferguson-resigns-after-getting-caught-secreting-sex-meetings-with-a-married-woman-while-he-has-destroyed-the-world-economy/

There was a trendy phrase a few years ago - 'omnishambles.' That is now standard practice everywhere and everywhen.

To quote Spike Milligan again "the best way to respond to official stupidity is with...... stupidity!!" so laughter is indeed the best medicine :)

Kashmiri separatism and Chinese imperialist expansionism

Birmingham MP Jess Phillips Facebooks her support for self-determination in Kashmir:

'I have long worked with the Kashmiri community to promote human rights and self determination for the people of Kashmir, and will be meeting with the leader of the Labour Party to discuss these issues next week.'

My response: 

There are risks in partitioning India.

Human rights, certainly. 

But have you considered that encouraging political separation may also encourage Chinese expansionism? 

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

China already claims Aksai Chin as its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksai_Chin

And what human rights will the people of Jammu and Kashmir have then? Think of the Uighurs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-50511063
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Previous BOM posts on China's need and desire to expand southwards:

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2008/03/chinas-need-to-expand-territory-latest.html

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2008/04/and-after-tibet.html

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2010/01/china-tibet-arunachal-pradesh-giant.html
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... Another MP pogo-sticking in a minefield.

Joe Brown and vertigo, by Wiggia

I have always suffered to a degree from vertigo. My earliest recollection of that stomach churning fear was as a child on a family outing visiting Beachy Head. As with all kids we rushed to the edge to see what all the fuss was about and on reaching that edge and looking over a strange feeling came over me, aided by a slight breeze that in my mind threatened to tip me over; I retreated post haste. That stayed with me all through my life.

I have if you like, a selective form of vertigo: planes, helicopters, gliders have absolutely no effect. It is the sheer drop that does it: a ladder can only be climbed so far, and glass floors on tall buildings are a no-no - a trip to Florence years back and the climb to the top of the Duomo was fine until I emerged on that small rotunda at the top and saw the roof falling away in front of me. Those are the areas that instil that stomach-churning.

Over the years I have improved. Restoration projects with houses have helped: ladders can now be climbed with a new-found confidence, scaffolding holds no terrors at two stories; but the rest remains. What triggered such a mental state I have no idea, perhaps it was that visit to Beachy Head, I can think of nothing else at that time of my life that would have induced that fear.

All the above brings me to someone who if the vertigo had not existed I probably would not have taken much interest in. The announcement of the death of Joe Brown the climber this week at the age of 89 was one of those ‘I had no idea he was still alive ‘ moments, so far removed from my life was his, yet in many ways my interest in this pioneer of rock climbing and later mountaineering was brought about by my vertigo. Pictures of “The Human Fly” as he was known gave me a sense of wonder that anyone could actually do what he did, he was the first besides the conquerors of Everest and almost the last to gain wider public acknowledgement for what was to most an obscure pastime.

Everest was of course much boosted in the public eye by the conquest being announced on the coronation of Elizabeth 11 and will always be associated with that event.

In many ways Joe Brown was, to quote a more modern phrase, an original working class hero, a Manchester boy raised by his mother a cleaner in a Manchester slum area after his father at sea with the Merchant Navy was injured and died of a gangrenous wound. He shared the house with six siblings. An adventurous child by nature who didn’t like team sports or school either, he walked in the Peak District and that is where the climbing started, ascending a sheer 60 foot slope with the aid of his mother's clothes line.

His climbs in the ‘50s were what brought him to prominence in the public eye. Many were first-time climbs and the craze started with him at the forefront of the movement outdoors.

Mountaineering was the preserve of the more wealthy and his invitation to join the team to climb Kanchenjunga was, as he said later, like winning the lottery. Although he could climb and be safe in the mountains his alpine side was very restricted, yet on May the 25th 1955 he and George Band made it for the first time to the top - he did not stand on the very top out of respect for the local elders, who said the Gods would be angry if they stood at the very top.

I remember well the televised climb in ‘67 of the Old Man of Hoy, a stack in the Orkneys; 15 million watched him climb. He made several other documentaries of his climbs. Asked by many to join other Himalayan expeditions, in 1956 he did climb the hitherto unconquered Muztagh Tower in the Karakorum; this was considered to be a remarkable feat ranking with Kanchenjunga, but he preferred a more varied life with climbing and did not follow up.

Never one to hog the limelight, he started a climbing school and eventually settled down to a climbing shop in Snowdonia. He genuinely loved his climbing for the climbing alone, he did not like the publicity of his OBE and wished it had been slipped to him in a brown paper envelope, and his climbing was summed up by his quote “I climb for the pleasure of climbing, You don’t need to plant a flag”.

https://rockandice.com/climbing-news/joe-brown-british-climbing-colossus-dead-at-89/

I know nothing of climbing other than my fascination as to how they could actually do what they do, but without my vertigo I would never have given it a second glance, so I do have something to thank it for.

FRIDAY MUSIC: The Moody Blues, by JD

In these troubled times of fear and pan[dem]ic it sometimes feels that the post war dream is over and "the only thing to look forward to is the past!" (That phrase borrowed from the theme song of the TV series 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads' https://www.flashlyrics.com/lyrics/highly-likely/whatever-happened-to-you-64)

And in my nostalgic look back to the days when life made more sense, I have rediscovered the Moody Blues, a very influential band from Birmingham. The original line up included singer/guitarist Denny Laine who featured on their only No.1 hit record 'Go Now.'

When Laine left the group in 1966 the others changed their musical direction with the addition of Justin Hayward and began to record their own material; not difficult when they now had five songwriters in the line up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moody_Blues

The first three videos here feature Denny Laine and thereafter it is MB mark 2 and features some of the songs for which they are best known. (I have deliberately excluded 'Nights in White Satin' as it is a bit too mawkish for my liking. No doubt others might disagree.)

I should add that in the late sixties I saw them in concert and they were excellent live performers.
“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.“ - Plato

Never miss the opportunities afforded by a decent disaster, by Wiggia

I can’t remember where I last saw that headline but it is something that is apt in the current climate when one item dominates the news and the thinking. We seem to have had a prolonged period of first Brexit and now Coronavirus that has afforded an ample smokescreen for less attractive additions to our daily lives being given official approval or extra authority in law as well as those items that are buried at the bottom of page 47 in the national press.

An item to which I will refer briefly before passing on, is one that has been buried and sanitized: the refusal to release the findings of the government's grooming gangs review. The mealy-mouthed answer of a few days ago can be seen here https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300239; I say mealy-mouthed because at no stage has a common factor among these criminals been officially stated in public, i.e. their ostensible religious affiliation (Islam). It is no good being assertive and virtuous unless you are prepared to name an important feature of many of the groups that the review focused on, because it hampers the next step, which is for influential figures from their community to speak out against an evil that has a long cultural, though not religiously sanctioned history - see for example this article by Shaista Gohir in the Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/apr/25/middle-east-child-abuse-pederasty. Lumping in all other types of child abuse is simply an attempt to water down the whole point of the review itself.

It is difficult to believe that six years on from the Jay report on the Rotherham grooming scandal that laid bare the truth about who what and why, that the current government have seen fit to use the phrase “not in the public interest” as regards releasing the full inquiry, as shameful and cowardly as any whitewash to date. We all have our views on this and the cover up for the sake of community cohesion, or rather one community, carries on. The government's reply stating that 'Child sexual abusers come from all walks of life, and from many different age groups, communities, ethnicities and faiths' is an obfuscation of the truth, using the broad brush of child sexual abuse of all kinds across the whole of the UK to gloss over the main perpetrators in this particular category. Yes, all child abuse is criminal, but the Jay report was about one very particular aspect of that, yet no doubt as on so many occasions with similar issues that they see as ‘sensitive’, all will remain buried, until the next time.

Elsewhere the Coronavirus has proved a blessing for the displaced front page utterings of the eco brigade. Just as much of the latter's findings and predictions were being exposed as nonsense - not a single prophecy has come true in twenty years - the virus has quelled the retorts and the eco loons have re-jigged their approach, using the current lockdown as a model we should base life on after the virus.

Look at letters to the Times for instance, giving a personal reading of how the skies are so clear of vapour trails and the lack of noise, could this be a better way forward, no need for airport expansion, less travel for holidays, less pollutant, less carbon footprint, all the public need to do is stay as they are and do absolutely nothing at all and the world will turn into a form of Elysian fields where we all wander about saying how wonderful it is.

La lala lala...

There have been several letters in that vein, mostly from directors of vested interest groups or save the planet societies. Never once do they question in this utopia they wish to create, their utopia I add, how anything will be paid for, who will provide the food. Some have suggested our land should be returned to nature and our food imported, so obviously they do not apply their regime change to others !

Another suggested that with so few cars on the road perhaps there is a way we could keep it like that with a massive injection of cash into public transport, conveniently forgetting, even if this is what people wanted and they don’t, the huge debt being run up at this moment because of the measures to combat the virus, and they wish to add to it; coming from those who say we are impoverishing the grandchildren, this is almost funny.

Once we start to move towards normality expect a surge in ‘demands’ for measures like those proposed to be implemented. A compliant government as it is in these matters will undoubtedly give a bit more. As I have said before, minorities in all forms get a far larger share of the cake than everyone else these days.

Sample: "Coronavirus recovery plan 'must tackle climate change'" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52418624

As one of those who because of age are considered to be a hindrance, a thorn in the side of progressive thinkers, a bed blocker, a class of person who should have the vote removed because of bad voting practices, I am glad like many others I won't be around to see the resultant compliant populace impoverished by a tax take that keeps them down, an increasing Orwellian state that presides over ever more layers of our lives for  ‘our own good ‘, and at the forefront of all this will be the eco-centric, those who will put all ahead of their fellow man as it is the right thing, their right thing, to do.

I have to admit I never thought as a nation it would be us at the head of this ill-thought way forward, but we are. A malleable voting public who continually put in positions of power persons of dubious (to be kind) value, not just here but world wide will eventually get what they voted for and it will not be pretty. If they believe that green industries will provide the number of jobs that will be eradicated for good by these current events and policies plus the enormous added debt to the nations' already sky-high borrowing, they live in cloud cuckoo land; it will be some time before the damage done to the economy by lock down measures are fully revealed, if ever.

Utopia v Dystopia: many feel we are already in the latter, but as with all opinion it matters where you are coming from, and far too many are coming from a position that Utopia is reached by flicking a switch. It isn’t and never will be.

But is Utopia sustainable, though?

The article linked below is typical of that being churned out at the moment. Reading through it there is never a mention of where the wealth needed for all this change will come from, yet the necessity to achieve the aims mentioned involves whole industries being culled, travel becoming something only our parents did, unreliable energy being the norm,  and whole countries who rely on tourism to maintain their economy going to the wall. Wildlife will struggle to be protected with no tourist money to support it, agriculture will be limited to that which can be shipped - and yet being self-sufficient is a dirty word, go figure.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/29/airlines-oil-giants-government-economy

The coronavirus has a lot to answer for, and it's not just the virus.

Covid econo-apocalypso

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) weekly figures https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales have just been updated to Week 16 (ending 17 April) and they are not comforting.

  

While the numbers of Covid-related deaths in hospital (see Worldometer https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ ) slowed in that week (and declined in the following one) the ONS’ numbers for Week 16 jumped another 40 per cent: from 6,213 to 8,758.

The ONS is recording cases where Covid is mentioned on the death certificate, and these are not limited to deaths in hospital. Fatalities involving non-Covid respiratory diseases continue to follow the trend of the previous ten years, so it seems implausible that many of them have simply been misrecorded as coronavirus victims.

  

 Overall deaths also continue to soar. In the seven weeks graphed above, we have lost 100,954 people in all. The average for the equivalent period in the preceding decade was 71,916 (the seven worst weeks totalled 83,843).

The meme that Professor Ferguson has been too pessimistic in his modelling may be exploded: last weekend we passed the landmark of 20,000 Covid deaths https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52424413 , which was what Professor Ferguson had hoped might be the maximum if we implemented control measures.

Those measures rely on public cooperation, and my experience is that people have gone along with the official advice and instructions, and are doing so with goodwill. As we walked an elderly friend’s dog yesterday, passers-by stepped aside to maintain distance, or thanked us if we did so. What will save this country is the ‘social capital’ that lets us pull together and look after each other in a crisis.

We are facing brutal alterations to the economy – ones that were overdue, and for which the coronavirus was a trigger event, like 9/11. How, for example, did our business class allow us to become dependent on a powerful Communist country? What let them give away our productive capacity yet expect society to maintain its cohesion, when Sir James Goldsmith was warning of the consequences a quarter-century ago? Do they not know that we really are in this together, that when civilisation falls all fall with it, that there are no rich Mayans hunkered down in air-conditioned Mesoamerican bunkers, still living off their investments?

The price we have just started to pay, is not because of the virus or the so-called ‘lockdown’; it is the result of the failure to plan and act. Here and elsewhere there have been studies and simulations going back years, and yet when the foreseeable needs arose the resources were still not there - witness the PPE debacle https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-52440641 .

The disaster is set to roll over the economy also, because we have become – thank you, bankers – hopelessly dependent on debt; not just government deficit, but personal and corporate liabilities. It’s bad in many countries, but the UK stands alongside Japan as the worst. As far back as January 2012 McKinsey reported https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Featured%20Insights/Global%20Capital%20Markets/Uneven%20progress%20on%20the%20path%20to%20growth/MGI_Debt_and_deleveraging_Uneven_progress_to_growth_Report.ashx  (page 5) that Japan’s total debt-to-GDP was 512% and the UK’s rivalled it at 507% - five times the value of our economic activity. When debts mount further – as they must, to stop the system collapsing – and thousands of small businesses founder, and millions are added to the dole queue, and the tax base shrivels, that ratio is going to be cruelly higher, a tremendous burden even when interest rates are near-zero.

What is the way out? Massive defaults?

Or reckless money-printing? Perhaps we should visit the ATMs more regularly and build up a stock of banknotes, just in case there is another shortage of toilet paper.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Roy Hamilton, by JD

Another great and unjustly forgotten singer - Roy Hamilton. The man who inspired Elvis Presley and listening to some of the songs here you could be forgiven for thinking you were listening to Elvis during his Vegas years!

Roy Hamilton (April 16, 1929 – July 20, 1969) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Hamilton