Climate Change - or is it? by Wiggia

There is no doubt that the weather in the UK has warmed up, not always when we want it to but it has. Tthis is not about the long running and flawed argument that we as humans have created a failing natural world, this is just an observation on matters gardening, those observations that you see when you step outside.

This winter has been a classic British mish-mash of , well, weather. From September on it did not stop raining until the lock down started, you know, just when people wantED to go outside after after a long wet and very drab winter - Sod’s Law.

But what wasn’t in doubt was the fact it had been a warmer winter despite some snow and with all that moisture in the soil when the sun came out everything sprang into life, many weeks early in some cases. Tulips were finished long before the end of May, as were Crown Imperials that started showing bud colour at the end of February, and my Delphiniums showing bud colour at the end of April - the first are out fully now.

This is not the first time this has happened of course but it is by degrees more frequent. The weather is changing as it has over millennia, hotter, colder that is the way it works and man has to adapt.

What has also happened - and I did write something on these lines awhile back - is that disease in the plant world is also on the move, both plant derived disease and animal/insect driven. Much has to do with world trade: however stringent measures are to protect a country's biodiversity, something somehow will always get through. The real worries are those diseases that affect agriculture and our natural landscape, but our gardens give a mini replica of what is going on.

The last few years have seen an unprecedented assault on many native species, in modern times Dutch Elm disease could be seen as the forerunner for many more and it has been non stop since, many have not reached their full doom laden predictions, fortunately, many have become isolated to areas rather than go national and some have petered out, not unlike viruses that effect man, no one has been able to predict final outcomes in the plant world any more than the human world with any accuracy, in fact Dutch Elm is one of the few to fulfil prediction as it did indeed wipe out the species, or almost.

This list of tree pests and diseases gives an idea of the attack on our woodlands; not all are as fatal as is spelt out…..

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-a-specific-tree-pest-or-disease

Ash die-back has so far failed to have the effect that was prophesied; doesn’t mean it wont, but it hasn't so far. The Oak die-back is a slower one so again it's difficult to say how far it will spread. Horse Chestnut was an early disaster, killing trees in a couple of years, but it was selective: stands of Chestnut almost within touching distance of diseased and dying ones are still healthy and many areas have no visible signs. A similar threat to London's plane trees came some years back when premature leaf drop looked as though it would finish the capital's avenues, but the sickness mysteriously died away over a few years, so we can never be sure as to the final outcome.

The pests are in some ways a bigger problem. Warmer weather has enabled some species to spread at an alarming rate, establishing themselves in short order and the natural predators that exist in their ‘native’ homelands do not spread with them. A good example and one that I have had dealings with (and they are winning) is the box tree moth/caterpillar: now spreading up from the south of the country it reduces box plants to nothing in short order; for topiary, where box is the favoured tree, it is the end as the affected areas never recover and the topiary is to all intents finished. Hedges are the same, I lost all my topiary last year to the moth almost overnight; you can spray but it has to be repeated many times and if you misjudge that is it - the natural predator in Japan, a hornet, is sadly still in Japan.

Box tree, and Very Hungry Caterpillars

I could do a list of pests and diseases that have hit on my garden in the last few years that would eclipse all that came before in my lifetime, such has been the increase; undoubtedly the warmer weather has been one of the factors in this. 

Even ants are on the increase. The size of their colonies is very much influenced by the warmer weather and their activity is dictated by the same, so we have more ants and more activity, but we should be grateful that we do not yet get Argentine ants that have infested the USA; and Asian super ants, 'super' because they create super-sized colonies not because they are huge, have so far only been located in a few sites in the UK - but they will prevail as they always do. We live on sandy soil and the ant activity already this year is way ahead of any previous and again little seems to have any lasting effect on them, they simply pop up elsewhere.

Pests are also getting an easy ride. The harsh winters that helped to kill off many pests and many diseases are fast disappearing and the resultant early swarms of pests can be seen everywhere; diseases that lie dormant underground and await warm weather to spring into action are not having to wait so long, many appear each year now rather than one in ten.

Many reading this will remember the Leylandii hedging dying all over the country, brown patches appearing and dying back. It killed thousands of plants. In some ways this was a good thing as the Leylandii Cypress is in most domestic situations an unsuitable hedge for a normal garden: fast growth yes, out of control also yes. It should never have been sold for domestic hedging. The disease is caused by an aphid; there are various aphids that attack conifers and although spray can be effective, it has to be at first sign of the aphids, not always obvious, and spraying lengths of hedges properly is expensive and difficult. To achieve trees is nearly impossible as when I lost a row of Italian Cypress some years ago, there were enormous masses of grey/black sooty mould that lives off the sugary residue left behind by the aphids.

One of the problems when dealing with these pests and diseases is the lack of chemicals that can prevent the infestation or stop the spread of disease. The EU for reasons only they know, removed many items that worked in protecting plant life and nothing has taken their  place; to be fair, some were toxic after many years of use and some had questionable long term effects on humans but many did not, so cheap generic chemicals are removed and in many cases very expensive replacements appear.

Yes there are some natural remedies that have worked for years, but many of those are contact only, require frequent application and still don’t do the job or only partly.

Nature has its own way of correcting things, but globalisation has made things much shorter term; nature can’t respond at that rate of change and nor can we. We only look at things from a short term perspective; huge changes have occurred to our landscape world wide over the earth's life - findings locally of fossilised tropical plants show how we in a temperate zone have gone from glacial freezing to tropical humidity; all has been accommodated over time.

Even the evil toxic stuff that man pumped into the atmosphere during the industrial revolution has had the odd plus side: roses, so popular in British gardens in those pre and post war years were suddenly changed into  disease carriers as black spot took hold of many of the popular varieties. Why? The Clean Air Act of ‘56, passed after the great smog of 1952, cleansed the air of sulphur, sulphur being the best chemical for the treatment of black spot and some other leaf diseases: by burning coal we had  unknowingly been spraying our roses with a fungicide for decades.

Arr, the black spot, Jim!

There will have to be a change in many varieties of plant life in any case if temperatures go up. Many standard species and hybrids are naturalised to the current climate, many will adapt, many will not. We will have to find and breed versions of popular plants and trees that will stand the new climate, they do this all the time anyway; it will now become a more intense program or we can simply swap what we grow now for more tropical varieties, that is already happening and has been going on for many years, in agriculture it is standard practice and new varieties of staples like wheat that grow in adverse conditions are being trialled and used on a non-stop program of roll-out.

Climate will always create challenges, it always has. The Earth itself has constantly overcome climate change and so will we. The view of the English countryside as immortalised in paintings by the likes of Constable are but a snapshot of a very short period of time, it was very different before and will be different again; it’s what climate creates.

John Constable's 'Wivenhoe Park, Essex' (1816) - held at National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA

Coronavirus: The Big Wake-Up Call

Well, we’ve had our VE Day celebration, but was World War Two anything to get fussed about? Not if you share the mindset of Covideniers.

The second Great War killed 384,000 UK military and 70,000 British civilians https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/crime-and-defence/the-fallen/, in all 454,000 casualties out of a 1939 population numbering 47,760,000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_in_1939 , or 0.95%. On average we lost around 6,200 per month from start to VJ Day.

By contrast, UK deaths attributed to coronavirus since the first on 28 February have run at the equivalent of over 16,000 per month. The latest ONS figures https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales , bringing us up to May Day, show that something is certainly happening, and the shape of the virus line in the graph below matches the grey line pretty well, so if the bulge is not owing to Covid-19 then I should be interested to hear an alternative explanation. As to the meme that ‘they would have died from something else soon anyway’, the jury is still out; we leave the excess-deaths calculations to the official analysts, and it could take them years to decide.

Fortunately, the curve was heading downwards at last report. The much-criticised Professor Ferguson had forecast around 600,000 deaths if no action were taken (0.9% of our current population of 66.65 million – very similar to the WWII toll); I think it is far too early for the Internet’s neo-experts to use the present decline as evidence that the model was wrong and that nothing much need have been done.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t review strategy now, and not merely because the public and the world of business is keen for a return to what we used to regard as normal. We now have more hospital beds, more ventilators (assuming they are the answer) and more (though still not enough) supplies of PPE equipment and testing kits. That said, there is the possibility of another, perhaps bigger spike later this year, as per the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919, so spare capacity may turn out to be barely sufficient after all, pace the empty-hospital Nightingale-nigglers. The vital need to maintain our economy, against significant loss of life: it’s a horribly difficult balance to strike.

Did that balance need striking? A crisis develops into catastrophe through a series of forced moves and hard choices. The point of contingency planning and preparation is to sidestep that sequence, but historically, the British way is to let a disaster happen, then scramble to survive and hope for a big helping of luck. If only we had listened to Churchill in his wilderness years… HMG, binge, brewery.

So, among the lessons that are definitely to be learned, one of them is that not all need have been learned the hard way. The UK had two golden opportunities to prepare: first, the studies and simulations here and in the USA going back years, that taught us some of the things we would need; secondly, a last chance to get ready as the virus burned its way through China but hadn’t yet come here.

It’s not entirely our fault. When the Chinese were so ruthlessly locking down Wuhan and other areas, why did they let international flight departures continue with little if any restriction, when this form of transport was known to be a main vector for spreading respiratory disease around the world? Nevertheless, even now, the UK Government is merely considering quarantine for incoming airline passengers. Melanie Phillips contrasts our approach and its consequences with those in Greece and Israel, here https://www.melaniephillips.com/terrible-cost-ignoring-common-sense/ . The Greeks say, ‘Pathema, mathema’: ‘I suffered, I learned’; but it seems that our lessons aren’t learned. even after the pain.

Now that our eyes have opened, there is more we should be seeing. One is the long-standing disgrace of the care home sector – scramble, scramble, goes the Government. Another is standards of public hygiene generally – how many deaths from influenza were preventable, over the years?

There is a personal lesson to learn, too. We know that we are more liable to suffer and die from the virus not just if we are old but if we are obese, diabetic and so on. This disease is now out of Pandora’s box and it’s not going back in. Sooner or later, we are likely to come into contact with it and our best chance of survival is to be as fit as possible. We have to address our weight issues, dietary habits (that can cure Type 2 diabetes in many cases, it seems) and exercise routines (without getting sweaty in gyms). These are things that the Government and NHS cannot do for us; and they could also help us defer or escape other health challenges.

Don’t wait for a vaccine. In the first place, it’s not certain that a safe and effective vaccine can be developed. Bill Gates has what (if I am to be charitable, and discount the profit motive) is a naïve belief in vaccines, despite his less-than-encouraging experiments in mass vaccination schemes in India and Africa; but even he has referred to the need for legal indemnity (see from 16:00 in this video https://youtu.be/o7A_cMpKm6w ) as he contemplates jabbing the whole world. He plucks a figure of one-in-a thousand adverse reactions out of the air – a mere seven million humans – but who knows what the actual casualty rate would be? Remember that much of the world is far less well-nourished than we – and even in our country, many people are technically malnourished, used to eating the wrong (cheap) things. Also, it’s possible that a vaccine may itself trigger outbreaks among the ‘immune-depressed’, as witness the massive measles epidemic among Yanomami jungle tribespeople in 1968 http://www3.gettysburg.edu/~dperry/Class%20Readings%20Scanned%20Documents/Methods/Tierney.htm .

Now let us widen the focus. We have become far too dependent on a system of international trade that has made us very vulnerable. I have read that when the USA opened up its markets to the Chinese economy, in part it was a strategy to drive a wedge between the Middle Kingdom and Russia, both then Communist countries. However, this was exploited by the Western business class to undercut and immiserate their own workers and boost corporate profits, so weakening our economies and throwing enormous debt onto us all -

‘Global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion. At over 322% of GDP*, global debt is now 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis—a sobering realization as governments worldwide gear up to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘ [* Gross Domestic Product, i.e. total economic activity] https://www.iif.com/Search-Results?sb-search=total+debt+to+gdp&sb-bhvr=1&sb-logid=51481-gqau9z7y7v88l19y  (£)

… but especially the ‘First World’ economies; and it’s not just government debt we should be talking about. Governments can keep rolling-over and increasing their debt issuance, whereas private individuals and corporations can be driven into cashflow crisis with loans that must be repaid within some limited timescale.

Overall, it has been getting far worse, even without the dislocations caused by Covid-19. In 2012, a McKinsey report 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

 looked at total national debts -  what the US calls ‘Total Credit Market Debt Outstanding’ (TCMDO) – and found that the burden on America was then 279% of GDP; by the end of 2019 this had grown to 347% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=7h0A . The same report showed that Japan and the UK were far worse off – over 500% debt-to-GDP. Unlike the USA, the UK does not routinely record this ratio and goodness knows where we stood before the coronavirus hit us.

We have been in systemic trouble for a very long time. As debt grows, it cuts into discretionary income. Financial commentators like this one https://capx.co/keep-calm-we-can-bear-the-cost-of-coronavirus/ sanguinely hope for a bounce back, but a wave of insolvencies will start a round of beggar-my-neighbour: who is ready to splurge when the all-clear sounds? So far, the UK and USA have kept things going by dropping interest rates to near-zero, but this is hammering the ability of pension funds to pay annuities, which are generally secured with government bonds. Add in a stock valuation swoon and the prospect of a comfortable retirement flees ahead of the investor.

In a way, the coronavirus was a trigger, or catalyst, for problems that have developed personally and communally for decades. Be prepared.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Pavarotti's granddaughters (not)

Much obliged to Wiggia for sending this first video which set me on a quest to unravel a mystery. The clip he sent me was entitled "Pavarotti's 11 year old grandaughter singing." It wasn't a YouTube clip and I wasn't sure how to transfer it. I went looking for it on YT and found it but with a different title (see below).

So why would it be labelled as Pavarotti's granddaughter? To attract more viewers seems to be the obvious answer but with the quality and the power of that voice she does appear to be 'channelling' the spirit of il Maetro!

Her name is Amira Willighagen and she is Dutch. And she does indeed have a wonderful voice (not helped here by the sickly mush of Andre Rieu and his 'orchestra')



Here is another young singer and, again, the claim is that she is the granddaughter of Pavarotti and that is written on screen throughout. She is called Mariam Urushadze and was eight years old at the time of this performance from the television show 'Nichieri' (Georgia's Got Talent) in November 2016. (The song is "Caruso" written by Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla in 1986. It is dedicated to Enrico Caruso.)



This next video cleverly puts together Pavarotti and Amira singing live and 'together' in montage. One of the comments states that Amira was aged nine when singing live on stage!



Yet another one claiming to be 'the granddaughter of......' (although to be fair it says daughter in the title) This fifteen year old is called Sislena Caparossa from the Dominican Republic and performs Nessun Dorma in this Spanish TV show.



Sislena Caparossa once more, this time singing in the Parliament of the Dominican Republic. I can see from the comments that she was born on Tenerife and it is her father who is from Republica Dominicana and her mother is Spanish. Her voice here is a bit wobbly but with a good voice coach she will become a very polished performer.



Finally a nine year old Lucia Garcia sings for Montserrat Caballé. The longer version of this encounter has captions on screen saying that Lucia had been singing since the age of six and it had been her dream to meet and sing for Montserrat Caballé.



The final video makes no claim that there is any connection with Luciano Pavarotti. So which one is his granddaughter? Well none of them actually. Pavarotti had one granddaughter and so far as anyone knows she doesn't sing!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Hank Marvin, by JD

Last week on BBC4 there was a programme celebrating sixty years of The Shadows, the backing band for Cliff Richard who went on to enjoy huge success in their own right.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000hqn0/the-shadows-at-sixty

For an oldie such as myself who remembers the music from all those years ago it was an enjoyable journey down memory lane. I know everyone hates the BBC and would like to see it disappear but for all their faults they are consistently far better than any of the commercial channels. Without the Beeb I wouldn't bother having a TV.

Towards the end of the programme we were told that Hank Marvin was currently playing with a gypsy jazz band. That set me off searching through YouTube and..... look what I found!

Hank is still enjoying his music and is playing as well as ever. Old rockers never die......

A number of other pieces I wished to include have suddenly been taken off Youtube, perhaps because the BBC programme stimulated a run on them and provoked the copyright watchdogs to respond. So I found some alternatives including Petite Fleur which is not quite gypsy jazz but no matter, it is rather good.

I have looked at his 'Hank Marvin Topic' YouTube listings and this is on the page marked Playlists, under the heading Django's Castle there are 14 videos listed and they all play including those which have been supposedly deleted.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI9umn9y0BwixqV5wRLKbvw/playlists?disable_polymer=1

A Telegram From Mr William Boot

PRESS COLLECT BEAST LONDON

NOTHING MUCH HAS HAPPENED EXCEPT WHOLE COUNTRY UNDER CURFEW BECAUSE OF PANDEMIC PROFESSOR WHO RECOMMENDED IT RESIGNED BECAUSE HE BROKE IT WITH MARRIED LOVER BUT PRIME MINISTER ALL RIGHT AS MOVED HIS OWN MISTRESS INTO NUMBER TEN SHE HAS HAD BABY AND THEY ARE NOW ENGAGED FOLLOWING HIS DECREE ABSOLUTE HE NEARLY DIED FROM SHAKING HANDS WITH EVERYBODY UNPROTECTED BUT IS NOW OUT OF HOSPITAL

PERSONAL PROTECTION EQUIPMENT ORDERED FROM CHINA BUT IMPOUNDED ON ARRIVAL AS NOT GOOD ENOUGH DAILY MAIL ORGANISED ANOTHER LOT DIRECT WE ARE ALL SUPPOSED TO WEAR MASKS AND GLOVES BUT IF WE DO THE NHS WILL BE EVEN SHORTER OF THEM STILL WE CAN STAND OUTSIDE AND CLAP ON A THURSDAY TO ENCOURAGE THE HEALTH WORKERS

EVERYBODY HAS BEEN TOLD TO STAY HOME EXCEPT TO GO FOR SHOPPING MEDICINE EXERCISE NEWSAGENTS OFF LICENSE AND TAKEAWAY FOOD SO MY LEGS ARE GETTING TIRED LOVELY SPRING WEATHER WILL CABLE AGAIN IF THERE IS ANY NEWS YOURS BOOT

With apologies to Evelyn Waugh

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
_________________________________________________________

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
_________________________________________________________

... 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

Covid update

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) releases its weekly data at c. 09:30 each Tuesday. For administrative reasons it runs a couple of weeks behind, so today’s figures take us up to Friday, 10th April. In the first graph below, I show the average number of deaths from respiratory disease in the decade 2010-2019, plus the highest figure for each week in that period, and compare those with:

• ONS figures for 2020 excluding Covid
• Registrations where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate
• Hospital deaths reportedly related to Covid, as mediated by Worldometer

I start from Week 10 (ending 6 March 2020) because that is when the first death from Covid was reported, though it doesn’t appear there in the ONS, which records date of registration, not decease.

According to this, the death trend from respiratory disease (excluding coronavirus) is slightly above average, though not the highest, but the new virus claimed three times as many victims in Week 15 as from all other respiratory illnesses combined.

There is a temptation to hope that, at least in some cases, the causal connection with Covid is mistaken or tangential. However, if we focus on total deaths from all causes whatsoever, it looks as though the recent increase roughly tallies with the official count for coronavirus victims:

In Week 15, this year’s number is around 6,000 higher than the maximum in the equivalent week a decade before, and 8,000 above the average. Something is certainly going on, and the onus is on the doubters to explain what that may be, if it isn’t the pandemic.

That’s not to say that we have adopted the correct strategy for dealing with it. Here is a report from a 74-year-old professor in Canada:

‘We live in an Ontario health district about the size of Connecticut (with ~200,000 population), in a small city with a medical school. Our public health officer in January alerted nursing homes and hospitals to prepare, e.g. get supplies and train staff for higher hygiene standards. Example, auditing handwashing practices in nursing homes. As a result, we have 50 total positive cases, almost all cases traceable to travel. No nursing home outbreaks. No deaths. No ICU care. Two people currently in hospital.’

The floundering in the UK seems to have led, not to lying about the facts (which could be very serious for those involved) but to contradictory advices. For example, first we were told that masks didn’t really make a difference, then that they did, and now that we shouldn’t use them because that would leave the NHS short of supplies.

Good old British ‘muddling through’ has brought us to the brink of absolute disaster more than once in our history, the incompetence perfumed by myth-making and sprinklings of medals. There will be other, quite possibly even worse threats in future; can we begin to prepare for such eventualities systematically, rather than wave COBRA at them like Sooty’s wand?

My two latest pieces on The Conservative Woman

The Government's failure to act on previous analyses and recommendations is what cost our freedom
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-terrible-price-of-being-unprepared/

The old and sick are disposable; Britain's death culture becomes more obvious
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/has-the-virus-wiped-out-the-notion-that-human-life-is-special/

FRIDAY MUSIC: Music to panic by, by JD

Oh how the media love to frighten us with their daily onslaught of panic and the "whoopee we are all going to die!" narrative; their daily invitation to thanatophobia.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321939#causes-and-types

And while the world's leading crackpots are drooling at the prospect of vaccinating the whole population to 'protect' us from dis-ease, a much more agreeable and joyful and long lasting immunisation will always be provided by music!

Stirling Moss, by Wiggia

By coincidence it was only a week or so ago that I said to the wife, 'We haven’t heard much about Stirling Moss.' I was aware that he had been unwell ever since he contracted a serious chest infection in Singapore in  December 2016 and retired from the public eye on return after 134 days in hospital, so he was anything but a well man.

Yet somehow with the likes of Moss they become so embedded in our psyche that they are mentally to us always there, immortal; of course, no one is, but with some people that is how it seems.

When I was a youngster, Stirling Moss was the stand-out British driver of the age, an icon; the phrase often used by police if they stopped a speeding driver was, 'Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?' and it stuck.

I am not going into a long résumé of his life, there will be far better versions out there in the near future by those in the know than I could ever cobble together, but it certainly was an interesting life and one played out at probably the most glamorous and most dangerous time in motor sport. Drivers and motor cycle racers died at alarming rates in those days and for far too long it was taken as being part of the job; in fact I would go further, it was not considered to be anything other than expected, so all carried on regardless.

Moss was one of those British drivers that made the sport glamorous: the girls, the parties, the venues all added to the overall 'dashing racing driver' image promulgated at the time.

He was also a bridge between those earlier legendary days of pre-war racing and the emergence of Fangio, on into the resurgence of British racing car design that in many ways saw us become the leaders in that area, to Britain as it is today.

He was very much part of the jump from cars like the Maserati 250 F, every boy's real racing car, to the early Cooper Climax and the wonderful designs by Chapman and Eric Broadley and others that put us in the top tier of motor racing. Enzo Ferrari didn’t like it one bit, calling them ‘garagistas’ - a condescending remark about small race car operations - and saying ‘aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines'; statements which backfired on him for a while.

Moss was also the bridge between the previous generation of racing drivers, the gentleman drivers, many who had money and indulged themselves with fast cars. The day of the social-climbing talented driver was only just beginning; the likes of himself, Peter Collins, Mike Hawthorn and later Graham Hill were every boy's notion of what a racing driver driver should look like and be. They said what they liked, they were seen everywhere with glamorous women, drove fast on public roads, were feted on TV chat shows and were known by name by a large part of the public. The corporate restricted driver was yet to come but come he did and in my opinion the public's interest has waned, apart from petrol heads: who on the Clapham omnibus wants to know who was fastest on the second set of qualifying tires? Answer: no-one.

Moss was not a rags to riches driver. His parents were middle class, his father a dentist who Moss spoke of as having invested wisely in property in central London. Moss went to several independent  schools including Haileybury where he suffered from anti-semitic bullying because of his Jewish roots.

His father, an amateur race driver before the war, purchased an Austin 7 for young Stirling at the age of nine that he could drive round their grounds in. It was the start of a long love affair with cars, racing cars that is. His first successes came in what was the equivalent today of Karting, 500cc rear engined race cars using Manx Norton engines. He was an accomplished horseman and competed, as did his talented sister Sheila, and the winnings from the equestrian world went towards his first race car, a Cooper Norton. His father was reluctant to see his son start racing cars as he wanted him to follow in his own footsteps and be a dentist.

The rest is history. Moss was not an exclusive driver of Grand Prix cars as like most drivers of the era he drove almost anything and his win in the Mille Miglia in 1955 was for many his greatest drive: a road race round Italy in a Mercedes with his co-driver Denis Jenkinson, who relayed directions using pace notes as in rallies today. Ten plus hours of driving on your own; just staying awake was an achievement, but in Moss fashion 'After the win, he spent the night and the following day driving his girlfriend to Cologne, stopping for breakfast in Munich and lunch in Stuttgart.' Ah, golden days indeed.

It was also one of the few times he beat his then team mate Fangio. If he had a weakness it was his deference to Fangio; always he put Fangio on a pedestal and when he did beat him it was because Fangio let him or he had an off day. Actually, in many people's opinion he was never Fangio's inferior; Fangio was just the elder statesman, to be deferred to.

Moss drove 84 different machines during his racing career, unimaginable today. In later years, after Mercedes he drove British cars, despite never having the best works cars: he drove for a private outfit - Rob Walker was one - and they would have last year's cars with updates, never the current Grand Prix model, which naturally put him at a disadvantage. Why not drive for a foreign factory again? He answered, 'Better to lose honourably in a British car than win in a foreign one'; always one to show the Union flag, he did so to the end.

I was fortunate to see Moss drive on a few occasions before my own short and expensive foray into motor racing. One outing in particular stood out: in a last year's Lotus 24 (the 25 revolutionised Grand Prix cars) he was in an early pre-season race at Goodwood, not a Grand Prix; the cars were really using the race in many ways for a shake down before the season proper, and there was much pitting and adjustments being made. Moss more than most, but each time he reappeared he seemed to take great chunks out of the opposition and it was ‘round’ the corners he did it, not on braking, not on acceleration but with sheer corner speed; you could see him time and again close on the opposition, a masterclass in driving skills.

Sadly this was the last time Moss would race. He crashed out of sight on the far side of the circuit, a plume of smoke went up and the word soon spread that it was Moss. As always he drove flat out even when it didn't matter, he had lost several laps with pit stops; what happened was never fully explained. Did he overdo it, did he get on the grass and lose it? Moss himself was never sure, as he was in a coma for some time, but it was the end

After his crash in ‘62 the resultant injuries and near death caused a pause and when he tested again that was it, he did not feel he had got back to where he should be and retired.

Most race drivers when they retire start their own teams, go into managing teams or something similar. With Moss he made a very good living out of being Stirling Moss. Even his house in Mayfair, which he lived in to the end, was pure Stirling, with modern gadgets that got it into the House Beautiful magazines, such was its high tech interior much inspired by Moss himself. He raced vintage cars, made public appearances around the world and as in an earlier time loved telling the world all about his career and life.

Was he the best? To answer that is always an impossible task, as all eras in sport are different. It is all relative, and today total wins seems to cancel out any other attributes which would put Moss out of the frame; but for me, yes: I have never seen anyone with that car control. 'Who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?' We have all wished we were, at one time or another !

Idle Hands, by Wiggia

Being imprisoned for any length of time does strange things to the mind. One starts to look for things to occupy the time to keep the old grey matter active and the body moving.

This shutdown must be the biggest imposed restriction on mankind in, well anyone’s lifetime, probably any lifetime other than being incarcerated in Château d’If. Being let out to go to the supermarket is about all the exercise many are getting, so those of us who have an outside space are turning to outdoor exercises as in projects.

After weeks, and it is weeks now, of finding tasks that have been put on the back burner for years we have slowly worked our way through repainting small rooms to repainting large rooms, clearing rubbish accumulated over time, discovering lost relics of the past in the loft, re-organisation among the Christmas decorations, finding long lost tools down the back of boxes in the garage and starting to repair those items that have been waiting half-dismembered on the workshop bench.

The sight and sound of this industry can be seen as neighbours emerge from hibernation desperate to find something to do. Hands appear above fence level as next door's daughter starts to paint the shed, on the other side a lot of banging as they construct a run for the new puppy, gardens are being spruced up to levels never before reached and a new-found love of growing your own has swept the land.

How long the nation can go on discovering projects long forgotten to keep idle hands busy is anybody’s guess though I am sure many of us are beginning to run low. The wife who has been smiling at all those requested jobs that were never completed but now are, is beginning to falter in finding more of the same; once those flaky windows have been painted that is that for another couple of years and some jobs despite needing doing are now out of bounds as the advancing years make them verboten - the long extending ladder doesn’t see daylight these days.

So what has been my latest project? The shed, long awaiting a clear out and re organisation. I started to attack it a couple of days ago. It is a fairly large shed (12 x 12) and contains much of my garden equipment including the ride on mower, yet somehow it has become the dumping ground in recent times for non related items that could not be found a home elsewhere. So while the sun shone all came out onto the lawn and a good spring clean ensued. Large numbers of spiders were disturbed, their webs pulled down and boxes opened to find nothing but rubbish inside. Why do we keep rubbish? That old adage ‘it might come in useful later’ has been shown over a lifetime to be just, er, rubbish, so the garden fire just got bigger.

Lost tools were found, a rather nice Italian container believed missing in action was found also, along with assorted lengths of different hoses (why?), and - a small delight that I related to JD yesterday - the home of the dormouse was found at the bottom of a large cardboard box: perfectly round and around five inches across, it had been made from small pieces of capillary matting in the same box chewed off in small pieces and assembled into this most cosy of winter abodes, a work of art indeed. No sign of the dormouse though, perhaps he has moved.

The shed with the contents back inside looks twice the size: items can be seen, new hooks added for tools and all that rubbish gone, job satisfaction guaranteed.

But what next? The first project in this confinement period I tackled was a mower brought out to be serviced before the summer season begins. Having completed the service I fired it up, only to see it hiccup and die. Several repetitions had same result. I went through the usual troubleshooting list but still couldn't get it running, so I parked it and ordered the only item I thought would solve the problem: a new carburettor, not kosher of course but a Chinese repro model. Why? The mower is a Honda and anyone who has owned anything Honda knows that spares are expensive, and this mower being 34 years old is not a candidate for expensive overhauls. It has never ever faltered until now and is a good example of why I purchased a lot of Honda equipment in previous years: they don’t go wrong.

The new carb arrived and was fitted but the problem remained: it would run at start up and then die. I parked it and was not prepared to spend any money on something that old, as it is not cost-efficient, but I was loath to dump it as everything else about it was in top condition.

Anyway to cut a long story short I ordered online (as you can’t find anywhere open) some spark plugs for the other mowers and strimmers as I was servicing all, and when they arrived I put a new plug in the old mower, pulled the cord and it started and stayed running; problem solved. The plug in it was the original, it had never looked worn so was never changed but it has now and a new lease of life has been given to a trusted piece of equipment. This early model Honda was, I see, voted best mower ever in an American publication on the subject; I’ll go with that, it is a Honda HR214 before the roto stop became obligatory.

Enough of mowers. The garden itself has had extra treatment: new edges have been cut on the lawns, the final vestiges of autumn leaves have finally been cleared away (a pain job this season as the prevailing strong  winds have meant being the last in line of a series of large plots and gardens I get everyone else's leaves as well as my own), the seeds are all sown in the propagator, the greenhouse has been cleaned earlier with Jeyes fluid, the containers are ready with fresh compost and yes I am running out of things to do, though the exterior windows of the house do in some cases need repainting. After that if lock down continues, apart from the country being broke I will be sitting outside, weather permitting, drinking my way through my cellar. I have already started, all that good stuff that has been purchased and hoarded for later in life has finally reached that later in life stage when you start to broach it. Would that moment have happened without the lock down? Probably not, so at least one good thing has happened.

I see two doors away the daughter there is now painting the front door. It seems a trend here with daughters, and the father is starting to renovate their under cover eating area, something I know he has been promising for at least five years - he really isn’t into doing anything round the house other than talking about it.

Where and when will it all end? Dogs have never had so much walking imposed on them, the trip to the supermarket has gone from one resembling those pictures of cold war eastern GUM stores with one loaf on the shelf to a form of a retail maze with arrows, taped areas and wardens directing you; the antics of people trying to self distance in a place that cannot ever allow two metres and all times has resulted in people doing some athletic sideways jumping and backtracking resembling line dancing, so worried are people about actually meeting someone inadvertently.

Will we ever get back to normal? Of course. Those who say things will never be the same forget what history has taught us. Certain things will change but most will revert. They had better hurry up with it all for as well as the country bankrupting itself I am rapidly running out of things to occupy myself with.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Easter 2020, by JD

Easter has crept up unawares with some other story the only thing on TV....... so here is some music for Good Friday and Easter Sunday:

FRIDAY MUSIC: Mechanical music, by JD

A collection of mechanical music making!

Wiggia sent me one of these videos and that sparked an idea. We are all currently under 'house arrest' and pubs, restaurants, 'non essential' shops and the productive economy has been brought to a standstill. This means that lots of machinery is standing idle but, resourceful as ever, people with imagination* have decided to make music with these mechanical rhythm sections! Some of this even sounds like real music.

















And two bonus tracks, being late entries from Wiggia! (The first one is an imposter as it is not a redundant machine but was created as a musical instrument; it deserves to be included.)





( * people with imagination excludes politicians and civil servants; that much is self evident.)