FRIDAY MUSIC: The Quebe Sisters Band, by JD

"Grace, Sophia, and Hulda Quebe front an innovative Progressive Western Swing band of archtop guitar, upright bass, fiddles and sibling harmony. The Dallas-based five-piece presents a unique Americana blend of Western Swing, Jazz-influenced Swing, Country, Texas-Style Fiddling, and Western music."

https://quebesisters.com

Come The Revolution

The Daily Mail has been running a series by Richard Kay on ‘vulture capitalists’, i.e. the hedge fund managers who have run out of twisty things to do in futures and options and have turned to buying up real businesses, hoping to continue making stellar profits. The social consequences may hasten the Revolution.

Years ago as an IFA I attended a presentation that explained we were passing peak pensioner prosperity: hordes of companies were closing ‘final salary’ pension schemes and loading the risk onto private individuals through alternative, ‘defined contribution’ arrangements. Ordinary people are now facing a standard of life in retirement that depends on the vagaries of the stock market (so very volatile in recent decades) and annuities (now crippled by ultra-low interest rates as the country’s debts pile up so that we cannot afford to raise bond yields again.)

 

Like the worm Ouroboros, capitalism has begun to eat itself. Once, a business would increase its profits by attracting more customers through offering a quality product. Also, employers enlightened by Christian values would experiment with better pay and conditions for their workers (I know that other religions urge similar ethics but we are discussing this country as it was, historically.) 

However, in the 1980s, business management began to preach a new doctrine, that of maximising shareholder value. How to achieve this profit maximisation? By externalising costs – de-risking pension schemes (and grabbing the fund surplus, if any) and downsizing the labour force (to be supported by the public purse); by arbitraging labour and materials costs through globalisation; and even by trying to short-change the customer (think of the cheapening of ingredients in Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut; what happens when you take quality away from a product that sells on quality ? Who cares? This year’s dividend and this year’s executive bonus are all that matter.)

 

A touchstone for this bottom-line, presbyopic madness is the case of Southern Cross Healthcare, a chain of care homes that saw a management buyout and then a sell-off to an American fund that set up a sell-and-leaseback scheme requiring upwards-only annual rent reviews. This converted the prospective future income stream to immediate capital, and by the time that – inevitably – the concern collapsed financially, the foreign speculators were away, free and clear, leaving the dependent elderly to face the consequences; like Conrad’s Lord Jim jumping ship to leave his passengers heading for the rocks.

 

This model cannot go on forever. As the rich get richer and the rest poorer, domestic demand and the taxation yield on work are doomed to decline, and the welfare state will need increasing debt financing until it gives out under the strain. Readers will have seen stories about how the elite are conscious of where this is going, and have begun preparing boltholes in faraway places such as New Zealand (though perhaps they will fall foul of the old Pacific tradition of cannibalism – poetic justice, if so.)

 

It’s not only insane greed that threatens society. For the doctrinaire revolutionary, the suffering of the disadvantaged represents an asset. When John DeLorean set up his car factory in Northern Ireland, thinking locals would be grateful for the chance of employment, he was visited by representatives of the IRA who explained that they wanted it to fail in order to intensify support for their subversive cause. Similarly, in 1965 Labour’s Minister for Education and Science Tony Crosland (educated privately at Highgate School and then Trinity College, Oxford) swore to close every last grammar school  - he was not the only figure on the Left who wanted to block working-class advancement so as to keep hot the fires of resentment.

 

This takes us right back to Lenin and his 1902 pamphlet, ‘What Is to Be Done?’ As a recent essay about resurgent support for Leninism explains, social democrats wanted ‘to reduce working hours, improve working conditions, and raise wages’ whereas Lenin wanted the workers to revolt, not to be bought off with trades-union-negotiated concessions. Revolution looks for opportunities in chaos, as with the end of the Great War that cursed Russia with a Communist government and powered similar dangerous movements in countries from Austria to Australia.

 

I was struck by a recently-rescreened episode of the ‘Hairy Bikers’ TV cookery series, in which the motorcyclists visited Russia. A man they met there said he would go back to Communism if he could; people said they used to feel 'supported’ with health treatment, education, housing and so on. We read of the real, horrible tyranny and oppression in Russia and China, but not so much about the millions of peasants whose standard of living improved, and who supported the grisly autocrats.

 

For now, the British people have been distracted by Covid and their perceived salvation by jab (complications yet to come ?) plus the conversion of the Magic Money Tree that PM May said didn’t exist, into a Niagara of cash. The same narrative is now playing in the USA, even as audiences flock to see the Oscar-winning movie ‘Nomadland’ with its story of multitudes made ‘houseless’, ground by the upper and lower millstones of low pay and soaring rent. Here in the UK, 3.4 million people have never had a paid job; residential owner-occupation by 16-24-year-olds dropped from 25% to 10% in the twenty years after 1996; increasing numbers of young people (aged 15 – 34) are living with their parents.

 

The fuel load under the trees is increasing, and awaits a spark.

China's smokin' !

https://signal.supchina.com/chinas-cigarette-smoking-epidemic/

Now that 'Bazooka Joe' Biden is reopening the debate about where the Covid virus came from, perhaps we can wave that pointing finger around a bit more.

So far Covid deaths worldwide (as attributed, and that's a moot) total c. 3.5 million; but tobacco-related deaths in China alone are running at a million annually and set to double that by 2030.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/over-a-million-people-die-in-china-every-year-due-to-smoking-report-121052601195_1.html

I recall reading years ago that BAT saw great prospects for growth in China, which now has over 300 million smokers. A medical website confirms this:

"Paul Adams, the director responsible for BAT's business in the Asia Pacific region, reported, “China is … by far the largest and most profitable opportunity … " https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598483/

You may remember that at one point the tobacco companies started targeting women, beginning in Germany with a brand called Kim (thanks, BAT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(cigarette)); currently in China the vast majority of smokers are men but I'll bet Ken Clarke's pals are working on breaking their cultural resistance to female smoking and when they do it'll be trebles all round for execs and shareholders - though China is resisting: https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/28/4/409

Who has brought disaster on whom?

Doctor who?

When is the last time you got a house call from your doctor?

If you’re old enough, you’ve seen it on TV – e.g. Peak Practice (Dr Jack: ‘I’ll just pop over the moor and see how Mrs Bassenthwaite’s headache is doing’) or even Dr Finlay’s Casebook (Dr F: ‘And while I’m here I may as well take a look at your cat.’)

Now, not only does the GP not come to you, it’s getting hard to contact the GP for an appointment.

A couple of days ago, a doctor advised my wife (via telephone, of course) to have this and that checked. So she called the group practice, and a recorded message said that there were no appointments left for that day and – well, that was that.

So she went online and found the practice website. There was a long rigmarole (mustn’t scream, mustn’t throw laptop) of registering, plus password and memorable check-word. Finally, she was shepherded through to a page promisingly called Patient Access. This asked what the patient wanted, and the enquiry box wouldn’t recognise the various messages she typed in; but there was also a list below of available services, which if you were incautious you might request – but which were private and mostly fee-charging. How does an NHS GP practice lead to this? How many patients, some elderly, some perhaps not good readers or speaking English as a second language, might walk into this spider’s web?

All we wanted was an appointment with the GP or practice nurse! You can phone/email your dentist (at least, we can – in fact, just got a same-day morning slot today!*) – but not your doctor?

Okay, frustration threshold crossed, time for ‘action directe’; she went next morning in person to the Centre. After standing in line behind someone with a complicated query, she got to the front and was told ‘you can’t come in to book an appointment, you have to do it online.’ (Because Covid? There were only a few people in the waiting room and she was wearing a mask.) Oh, and what if you don’t have a smartphone or a working computer?

There are, of course, no email addresses to reach the practice manager, admin staff or individual doctors.

Back to Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and internet grief. Somehow the practice site led us onto a different link, Engage Consult aka engage.gp, and by dint of not answering most of the questions and ignoring hints to call 999 or 111 we got to the point where we could ask for a call-back; which came by text the following day, with an appointment - for 10 days hence.

Why all this complication and delay? Even now, the average GP has fewer than 2,100 patients https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/workload/number-of-registered-patients-per-gp-rises-to-almost-2100/ , as compared with MPs who have on average 73,000-plus constituents, though admittedly the latter manage by ignoring many of us altogether. Also, where MPs are paid c. £82,000 plus expenses, the average GP in England and Wales earns £98,000 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9356701/NHS-GP-earning-700-000-year-one-hundreds-earning-Prime-Minister.html ; I make that £1.12 per constituent p.a. versus £47 p.a. per patient.

Is it, perhaps, something to do with the way that doctors, like police and politicians, have gone from a bottom-up model of working, to top-down? Modern GP work is a business (it always was, but more consciously so now) and patients are profit centres who can be made more productive by having mass screenings and vaccinations rolled out to them, like the aorta scan (part of a large program) they made me have some years ago. For this kind of thing, you get contacted by letter, email, telephone; you get assigned provisional dates and venues; you get reminders.

‘Contact your personal physician’ – really, that’s so last century. It’s not personal any more; not ‘your doctor.’

_______________

* i.e. last Friday

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Ras Prince Monolulu, by JD

'I gotta horse !'

The death of racehorse trainer and legendary gambler Barney Curley last week reminded me that racing has always been peopled by larger than life characters like him (as well as others of a more dubious provenance.)
https://www.attheraces.com/news/2021/May/23/famed-gambler-and-former-trainer-barney-curley-dies-at-the-age-of-81

Curley's death marks one more sad step towards the uniformity of blandness that is one of the curses of modern life.

British racecourses are one of the few areas where the upper class and the working class meet on more or less equal terms. The middle class could never come to terms with racing and in fact The Guardian would not cover it until quite recently.

It wasn't always like that and one of the most famous and colourful characters was the man shown on the extreme right of this photograph who styled himself Ras Prince Monolulu. His real name was Peter Carl Mackay (1881-1965) and rather than being a chief of the Falasha tribe of Abyssinia as he claimed to be, he came from the Caribbean island of St Croix.

His father and brothers were horse breeders and trainers on St Croix and that is undoubtedly how he knew how to spot a winner in the racing world.

He made a living as a racing tipster and on racecourses up and down the country he would stand with a clutch of small brown envelopes in his hand and talk endlessly to attract punters.

I gotta horse
I gotta horse
God made the bees
The bees make honey
The soldiers do the dirty work
The bookies take all the money.

He became famous after tipping the horse Spion Kop to win the 1920 Derby, which came in at the long odds of 100-6, and from which he personally made some £8,500 (a huge amount of money at the time) and also gifts from grateful punters who had followed his advice.

And always the non stop yarns:

I know an outsider with four legs, one leg at each corner, this one will cross the winning post and the others will be arrested for loitering!

He wrote his memoirs in a book entitled "I Gotta Horse" but whether those memoirs are reliable or not is open to question since he did talk a lot and did contradict himself a lot; all part of his showmanship of course.

His death in 1965 added another myth to the story of his life. Jeffrey Bernard, another colourful character who wrote the Low Life column in the Spectator and also worked as a racing journalist, visited Monolulu in the Middlesex Hospital to interview him. Bernard had brought with him a box of 'Black Magic' chocolates and offered Monolulu a 'strawberry cream'. Monolulu subsequently choked to death on it and Bernard bade him farewell. He later declared that the story was untrue but it does add to the legend.

To add a personal note: this photo was taken by my father on his old Box Brownie and has the date June 1950 on the back. When I was old enough (i.e. still in my pram) I would go with my family to the races. And when I was a bit older I met Prince Monolulu and to a small boy he was a fascinating sight and sound. A very large black man with coloured ostrich feathers in his hair. 

I don't know if my father ever bought one of those mysterious small brown envelopes but I remember on occasions he would say "right, I'm playing with the bookie's money now" as he folded some notes and put them into his pocket. I blame my father and Prince Monolulu for my everlasting devotion to the semi-anarchical world of the turf.

To get some idea of his 'style' here he is with Groucho Marx on the US show 'You Bet Your Life' and for once Groucho is lost for words! (from 15:56 onwards )

He made a second appearance with Groucho Marx the following week and talked more about his life (from 3:55 onwards)

And more, this time from Wiggia -

This has several pages about Prince Monolulu and his life, a lot of his tales are the ones he told Groucho in the second clip above. They may or may not be true but if just half of them are loosely based on the truth then he certainly had a colourful life!

https://flashbak.com/ive-gotta-horse-the-life-of-the-glorious-prince-monolulu-411471/

WEEKENDER: Max Moseley, by Wiggia

MAX MOSLEY 1940-2021

 

It would be disingenuous of me to claim I knew the man; I didn’t, yet I first saw him briefly in East London in 1962 with his father Sir Oswald Mosley at the latter's last appearance at a rally in the East End.

The publicity that naturally surrounded such an event drew the usual anti-fascists of the time and inevitably trouble broke out and the meeting was abandoned. Max was seen fighting to protect his father from being attacked and that was the end of it; well, not quite, he was arrested and charged with threatening behaviour but was released without charge after claiming he was protecting his father. Soon after, Max got out of politics.

For young people like me at the time Mosley's Black Shirts belonged to a pre-war era so this meeting was a ‘novelty’ in many ways, one which drew a few of us to go and see what it was all about. The police knew that trouble was on hand and had cordoned off Mosley’s truck from which he would give a speech from the back of with a megaphone, if my memory serves me correctly.

But not long into his speech, after a delay the trouble started and the meeting was abandoned, after which we went home none the wiser and Oswald Mosley disappeared from the limelight to live in France.

That wasn't quite the end of his political association with his father. A last-ditch rally in the East End in Brick Lane in ‘65 saw Max again in his father's company: 

Photo: Daily Mail (see link below)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5479785/What-Max-Mosley-doing-vile-anti-Semitic-rally-1965.html

This is a picture I took at the time of the meeting in ‘62 taken on my trusty Rollieflex, of the thin blue line separating the factions at the meeting before it went off. Notice: no fat policemen, no midgets and no endless aids to controlling people.  

Max then went into law and studied as a barrister, qualifying in ‘64, specialising in patent and trademark law which was to become useful when he later took the reins at the helm of F1.

His family background is interesting to say the least and it is worth a read

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

My brief and very expensive encounter with motor racing ended in ‘66 and I sold up what was left after a series of disastrous mechanical failures. Among the items advertised for sale was 'selected Ford engine block'; these were not easy to come by and I had a few offers, one was from a Max Mosley who had started racing in clubman's class in a Lotus 7 - these were full race cars not the road versions and nearly all had Ford Cosworth engines.

He later graduated to F2 before deciding he was not going to make it as a driver and going into race car production with MARCH engineering and later into running the constructors' association of F1 and then to the top as President of FISA.

But my little story is of when he came down, from Northampton I believe, to look at the engine block. He didn’t buy it but it sold anyway. What was interesting about him was coming from the background he had and visiting me still living at home on a council estate in east London there was absolutely no side to him; after deciding not to buy the engine block we sat on a wall outside the estate and talked for what must have been about 45 minutes about motor racing: naturally, his thoughts about what he wanted to do which he wasn’t set on at that time, and inevitably his family and his father.

I mentioned the ‘62 meeting in Dalston were he was charged but released over assault and he just smiled. He said he saw little of his father now his parents were living in France, but not once did he malign his father in any way. My impression of him from that meeting was of someone with a lot of charm and a quick mind. We shook hands and he left; that was it, a small moment in life that left a very favourable impression, despite all that went before and later, that I always remembered.

And like so many other things it is difficult to believe all this happened nearly sixty years ago. Where has it all gone ?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dead Can Dance, by JD

Dead Can Dance is an Australian music duo from Melbourne. Currently composed of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the group formed in 1981 and relocated to London the following year. 

Australian music historian Ian McFarlane described Dead Can Dance's style as "constructed soundscapes of mesmerising grandeur and solemn beauty; African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras, and art rock."

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