WEEKENDER: A View From The Past, by Wiggia

Probably THE party anthem of the Sixties

As with so much with us of the older generations we get berated for opinions that are dated, do not take in the advances made since our youth and being stuck in a supposed ‘golden age’ that never really existed, except in many cases as with all else it did.

Anyone who was in their late teens or early twenties and lived through the Sixties would probably agree it was the best decade in modern times, we had it all.

The music that exploded across the world was nearly all our making and changed the landscape of popular music. It was without a precedent, nothing before or since has matched it.

British fashion was a bad joke until the Sixties. Suddenly an explosion of talent changed all that and we led the world in fashion design: the mini skirt became an icon of the age, Mary Quant hairdos, and barbers became hairdressers much else in design such as promoted by Terence Conran, and innovators appeared and were hugely successful in that same decade.

And through it all up till the present day Twiggy represented the age with style:

And alongside Twiggy a bevy of photographers changed the way the camera recorded the age: David Bailey, Terence Donovan, Brian Duffy and the photojournalist Don McCullin, and Tony Ray-Jones the social photographer changed the way in their respective fields how Britain was seen, here and worldwide.

Bailey could almost be accused of making the Krays ‘popular’,

 such was the success of his portraits of them.

Our way of life changed, not necessarily all for the better as ‘free love’ via the contraceptive pill, came with certain problems but the earlier prudish approach to relationships was swept away in that decade. Women advanced their case more in the Sixties than all the decades before, equal pay after the Dagenham Ford strike was demanded and started to be accepted as the norm, even though the resistance to it stayed for years after.

We started to venture abroad for our holidays and those weeks at Butlins started to became a faint memory for many.

There was full employment, good wages and working conditions were being transformed. At the beginning of that decade hardly anyone owned a motor car at the end of it nearly everyone did, and we got the E-Type Jaguar and the Mini.

And pre-EU we were successful as a nation. The old nationalised industries were slowly being privatised and became more competitive, we led the world in nuclear fusion, had a more than competitive aircraft industry and still had armed forces that could be a force anywhere should the need arise.

Concord first flew in ‘69 and to this day is a marvel of aviation. Anyone who saw it could not help but be amazed something like that was actually flying. Yes, I am aware it never made money but at the time who cared.

Entertainment through the medium of television created the first stars of the screen, pubs and working men's clubs provided entertainers who went on television and became household names, who without that medium would have remained undiscovered.That Was TheWeek That Was broke new ground in the presenting of news and satire with brilliant writers and presenters.

Sporting achievements were capped when we won the football World Cup, we had our first world road race cycling champion in ‘65, we had a whole raft of innovative race car and engine designers who changed the whole way that race cars were built and we won world championships on two wheels and four. John Surtees won the world drivers championship in ‘64 and became still the only man to have won world titles on two and four wheels' Hill Clark and others cemented our position at the top of Grand Prix racing. Lynn Davies and David Hemery made gold in the ‘64 Olympics

No decade is perfect. We went from Harold Macmillan 'You've never had it so good' to Harold Wilson 'From now on, the pound abroad is worth 14 per cent or so less in terms of other currencies. That doesn't mean, of course, that the Pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued' - quite………….

You could see your GP at any time and he would visit if necessary in the middle of the night. The hospital system was more rudimentary but it worked and there were no real waiting lists.

Prices in ‘65 adjusted to today's allowing for inflation:

A pint of beer £1.70, newspaper 25p, average house price £50,000 and you got space inside and out, Ford Cortina 9,500. Not all was cheaper: new technology was much more expensive than now inline with the first mobile phones, and some food items are much the same, but transport was cheap.

Posting a letter cost 19p adjusted in ‘68 compared with 67p today.

Petrol per gallon - see here for how it has gone upwards ever since the motor car became a tax gift.

http://www.citroenhyonline.co.uk/resources/AA%20Petrol_Prices_1896_2012_gallons.pdf

Eating out, something that simply did not exist in the Fifties started to happen in the Sixties. Rudimentary it may have been, nonetheless although Chinese and Indian restaurants had been around for decades they were never really a pull for the general population. That all changed and with the change came food with taste, and along with the spicy food came lager. So much before had been so bland as to be instantly forgettable. As usual not all was good, Wimpy bars arrived!, and Bernie Inns, but it nonetheless got people out to eat in a way not seen before.

We really did not eat out, even the pubs only had a plastic cheese roll under a glass dome that had been perspiring for days and a choice of crisps: salted and unsalted.

Wine started to appear on menus. Till then wine had been something that Colonels drank in the shires; Mateus Rose and Blue Nun changed all that - basic, but a start.

Among other technological advancements in the sixties, carbon fibre was invented at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in ‘63.

The touchscreen was another British invention in ‘65, who would have believed then what an influence it would become in later years.

Barclays Bank saw the first ATM in action in ‘67 - a British, in its final form, invention; and James Goodfellow a Scottish engineer pioneered the PIN system which incorporated in with the credit card made cash withdrawals from ATMs a part of normal life in ‘66.

Technological advancement meant people had more leisure time. The microwave appeared along with transistor radios and colour TVs; Radio Caroline opened up a whole new a whole new world with DJs who promoted popular music.

Film mirrored the age and actors like Michael Caine, David Hemmings and a list that seemed endless advanced on the world stage, plus the films that were made when we sill had a functioning film industry, many remain classics and icons of that time.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls033305044/?sort=moviemeter,asc&st_dt=&mode=detail&page=1

- and Michael Caine introduces the Sixties:

My Generation | Official Trailer from Photon Films and Media on Vimeo.

People spoke to one another in the street down the pub. Today all you see is people glued to mobile phones. The art of dating has been lost as all go online to meet someone of the opposite sex, and same sex! - can’t think of a worse way to set out in the world with a new partner, it’s like colouring by numbers, you get a result but they are all the same.

Nobody gets married any more and single parents prevail, a backward step on all counts for the child especially, and a further burden on the taxpayer.

Being unemployed during the Sixties carried a stigma with it, no one wanted to go on the dole; today you can’t get a large percentage of the population weaned off it, it has become a lifestyle choice and is aided by the State.

And our ruling class of all colours gets ever more ridiculous and incompetent, yet people still vote for them.

As is the case younger people with no knowledge of earlier times are inclined to sneer at what was a golden age sans smart phones, it’s all they know, which is sad as they missed something they could never envisage. Who knows they might even have enjoyed it, the music was certainly better.

Politics has changed as well, no longer any orators or even speakers with any authority, who today could emulate this from Harold MacMillan:

Or this….

Or this…

Instead we are reduced to this, though it could have been any one of dozens today of the self-serving dross that is foisted upon us: https://twitter.com/PaulEmbery/status/1551998877053624321

"I am Kamala Harris. My pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit." Second in command of the most powerful nation on the planet. God help us.

The Sixties was Britain pre-EU,  a world that we left behind to join a trading bloc? Something else the later generations would not have a clue about. It was on reflection a decade we largely took for granted at the time such was the speed of change, but there has not been a decade like it since.

“If you remember the ‘60s, you weren’t really there.”

That line though with some basis of truth for a small section of society was not of the time, it was first uttered by American comedian Charlie Fleischer in ‘82 and he would be just ten when the Sixties started so probably knew little about the decade. It assumes everyone at the time was on something, that was also not true but it makes a good punchline.

Tottenham Royal with the Dave Clark Five on stage, a regular haunt of mine during the Sixties.
Many top bands played there as they did up the road at the Astoria Finsbury Park (later the Rainbow.)

FRIDAY MUSIC: Cab Calloway, by JD

Cab Calloway (1907 - 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, bandleader, conductor and actor. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His career more or less spanned the 20th century, he led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. 

Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming known as the "Hi-de-ho" man of jazz for his most famous song, "Minnie the Moocher", originally recorded in 1931. He reached the Billboard charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). 

In 1980 he appeared in the film The Blues Brothers (performing Minnie the Moocher, of course) Not many people can look back on 65 years in the showbiz limelight!

https://www.biography.com/musician/cab-calloway

Please drink, smoke, gamble and take drugs responsibly

Last Tuesday's C4 documentary 'Alcohol, Dad and Me' may have helped reopen the debate on addiction and whether it is really enough for the State to stand back and let so many individuals be trapped and flounder.

Businesses and government have a two-part strategy to exploit your weaknesses:

• make profits and raise taxes from your self-indulgence
• say it is your choice so they can’t be blamed and sued

Companies will do whatever is profitable and are tempted to reduce ethical issues to relative-cost calculations. For example in 1970s USA Ford produced a model, the Pinto, known to be fire-hazardous, but worked out that the estimated $50 million compensation for 180 anticipated deaths was less than half the expense of modifying the vehicles to make them safer.

The State is expected to take a wider, less commercial view; besides, at first sight the figures seem to argue for stringent control of alcohol and tobacco:

• UK alcohol taxes in 2021/22: £13.1 billion, vs ‘health, social and economic consequences, estimated at between £21 and £52 billion a year.’
• UK tobacco duty 2021/22: £10.27 billion, vs ‘£14.7 billion per year’ cost to the economy.

That said, the revenues quoted above don’t include the income and corporation taxes and National Insurance contributions generated by the industries concerned. Taking them into account, perhaps ‘Pinto maths’ might win the argument after all.

[In the case of gambling, coldly considered, it already looks like net profit for the country - c. £3.1 billion in tax receipts, vs ‘annual economic burden of harmful gambling … about £1.27 billion.’ Does that make it right?]

Moral issues can’t be simply resolved by analysing cashflow; that’s the sort of thinking that could even be used to justify killing unproductive people, which is exactly what the writer and socialist George Bernard Shaw advocated in 1931 - and again in 1948.

Keeping the debate on the ethical level, liberty is a strong counter-argument to puritanical bans, though one has to weigh freedom in one’s personal habits against the harm and expense they cause to others.

A test case for that assessment was America’s experiment with Prohibition (1920-1933). Note that the Eighteenth Amendment did not forbid drinking alcohol; it proscribed the ‘manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.’ The term ‘manufacture’ implies large-scale production, so technically ‘home brew’ might be considered unexceptionable. The real target was the commercial exploitation of these products.

It’s often been supposed that Prohibition was a failure, but that may not be so. Not only were there definite health benefits but the popular idea that crime and violence increased may also be mistaken, as this 2019 article on Vox suggests. What brought it all to an end was the Depression: in 1933 the revival of the alcohol industry increased employment, made profits for associated businesses and raised much-needed revenue fot the Government.

On the other hand, if the 1933 Banking Act that curbed investment banking had been introduced when Prohibition started, maybe America would have been both more temperate and much wealthier, and there would have been no Depression.

Obviously there are challenges in trying to uproot well-established enterprises that batten on the vulnerability of individuals, but Prohibition was introduced on the back of much popular support and clearly did reduce alcohol consumption. The clampdown might have worked even better if Canadians had not helped to undermine it; it was this that hardened the previously porous border between the countries.

In the UK, the three vices discussed so far are money-makers and the costs to the NHS are only a fraction of the overall disbenefits, which are diffused throughout the economy, so the Government may not be so motivated to take action as if all costs impacted directly on the Treasury.

Tax hikes on alcohol and tobacco may sometimes be justified in terms of dissuading overconsumption, but one has yet to hear of many people giving up drinks and smokes because of the expense. My father started his tobacco habit when the local shopkeeper sold children a cigarette and a match for a penny; once addicted, his generation might have cheerfully called fags ‘coffin nails’ but it didn’t stop them buying packets of ten and twenty at a time as adults.

What would happen if drinkers and smokers all ‘went on strike’? It could be argued that the State is hooked on the income; and our political representatives are liable to be lobbied by powerful interests, too.

So the official strategy is to legalise, regulate and tax; and to try to keep the damage down to some acceptable level (measured how?), without going all-out for abolition.

Another element in that policy is to throw the responsibility back on to the addict. ‘Please drink responsibly’; ‘smoking kills’; ‘when the fun stops, stop’ - there. we told you! It was your free choice; we wouldn’t dream of interfering with your liberty; and there are organisations to help you - Drinkaware, ASH and NHS Stop Smoking, GambleAware - more fool you if you don’t seek help.

This plays on our perception of ourselves as free and rational, but the long-term recovery rates for the seriously addicted make for discouraging reading.

Even if we give up hope of turning the tide on the first three vices, should we also give in to the clamour for legalising currently illicit drugs? There is tremendous pressure to normalise cannabis use, even though the modern, genetically modified strains are so much stronger than what was around 50 or 60 years ago; and now one sees articles linked from social media suggesting the health or mental benefits of LSD.

The discussion of disbenefits needs to widen. It’s not enough to talk about serious illnesses and fatalities, or increases in criminal behaviour. A major objection to letting the young be ‘stoned’ - even if that doesn’t happen in their school years - is the tiredness and apathy that hold them back in those crucial years of early adulthood.

I saw that last when working in a scheme to help 15-year-olds who had been out of the education system for some time. One was falling asleep at nine in the morning, during the group session designed to raise morale and aspirations. He didn’t last there.

Another, a very nice lad who habitually referred to cannabis as ‘bud’ or ‘bud-dha’ and was desperate to stop even though his friends and family were a constant temptation, turned to religion, praying five times a day as Islam expects, and listening to beautifully-sung hymns to help his meditation. It’s not his fault that the amateur makers of the CD waited a few minutes into the light hypnosis to begin their perorations on the wickedness of Jews; I hope he made it through one temptation without falling into the other.

It’s not just poor fallible individuals who should be expected to behave responsibly; the State cannot disclaim its own share of responsibility.

That drone strike: a teeny-tiny query

UPDATE: apparently it was a new, horrible slicing-up weapon, one of a family of ghastly new inventions as discussed here: https://theconversation.com/bladed-ninja-missile-used-to-kill-al-qaida-leader-is-part-of-a-scary-new-generation-of-unregulated-weapons-188316

_________________

Two intelligence sources tell Fox News Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al Zawahiri was killed in the CIA drone strike. "Over the weekend, the United States conducted a counterterrorism operation against a significant Al Qaeda target in Afghanistan," the senior administration official told Fox News. "The operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties." 

- https://www.fox5ny.com/news/biden-announces-counterterrorism-operation-al-qaida-afghanistan

Why is the qualifier 'civilian' there?

Does it imply that there were others? Another account I hear said he was standing on a balcony - all alone in a big house?

If there were other casualties, what would make them non-civilian? Being members of his family?

A fuller account, please.

COLOUR SUPPLEMENT: Back to Mono 2

Back to mono again…but this time in painting not photography. My exceedingly excellent tutor said to use a single colour only plus white to help learn about tonal values. She is a really good teacher.

Herewith the results of my efforts: top one is in oils and the bottom one is acrylic both using burnt sienna plus titanium white (the EU banned flake white in the weird belief that artists might mistake it for toothpaste.)

WEEKENDER: The push for sustainability, by Wiggia

It was browsing through some drinks-related articles that sparked my piece off this week, I came across this…

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2022/07/one-in-four-uk-adults-willing-to-pay-more-for-sustainable-packaging/

The headline quotes 1 in 4 as willing to pay more for sustainable packaging; that is, 1 in 4 said they might be willing to pay more whilst 3 out of 4 don't want to pay more or can’t afford any more price increases on anything, but that isn’t mentioned, they don’t matter as they don’t support the narrative.

As with so much today corporations are following the agenda for all things climate change, for that is what this is actually about, it has nothing to do with saving precious resources. What all these aims have in common is more expense for the consumer, at a time when inflation is at its highest in thirty odd-years, earnings are falling in real terms and basics in particular energy are not only becoming a very expensive necessity but will naturally mean the general public will cut back as they have already started to do on various items.

Sometimes I wonder what planet these people and organisations are on. During a period of financial stress for the many they faff about adding costs to items that may well be off the agenda all together in the next year; what is the advantage for them in that?

Already in the magazine a piece on Philip Schofield, yes him, whose own wine brand (wine brands are the new celebrity cause célèbre, all must have one) is going to promote for the same reasons cardboard packaging i.e. bottles. No quibble with that but its sustainability advantage over glass is doubtful; will it also be cheaper? No comment on that point - with glass techniques producing thinner and much lighter bottles the advantage is not that obvious. 

I have to admit I can’t stand Philip Schofield, my problem, a modern day version of the obsequious  Uriah Heep, but plenty do like him as his endless appearances prove.

It seems that along with diversity managers, sustainability managers are now onboard most big firms. It seems sometimes as though the private sector is mirroring the public sector in creating jobs for the boys. If sustainability is something they deem necessary why not use one the agencies who specialise in the subject? No, can’t do that, they need the name of their own sustainability manager on the letter heading to prove how worthy they are, so another layer of management is created that we all pay for one way or another.

Sustainability is just another arm of the climate change industry, and it is an industry. Oil producing firms are changing to sustainable forms of energy not because they are particularly of the belief that they are polluting the planet but because having their arm forced by green led governments simply means they switch to an alternative way of producing profit that allows them to stay in business. 

Companies like Shell have moved into a range of businesses that enable them to use their huge resources and carry on making money. The fact that the man in the street has had to dig ever deeper just to stay afloat is not their or the green lobby's concern and so it is with the extension into sustainable products.

This quote from a Conde Naste article is taken out of context but you can tell from it which way the wind is blowing:

‘with the promise that the current climate crisis can be turned into a business opportunity through innovation, engineering and eco-modernisation.   If many of these schemes come to pass they will be lucky to have anyone left to afford their ‘business opportunities.’

Conspiracy theories aside there can be no doubt now that the green lobby has infiltrated the government hierarchy and workings of state,  not just here but throughout much of the western world.

Another part of the same document:

‘Last year, poor social and environmental performance caused the CEO of the world’s largest mining company to resign; the stock of three chemical giants plummeted; and corporations were called to the carpet for poor emissions offset programs. This shows that climate action is no joke among the public, and the stakes are only going to get higher.’

The truth is the public would likely know nothing about it, What happened was a leak on the performance and the threat from woke banks and institutions threatening the funding of further projects unless they comply, so the part about the public apart from the green blob is disingenuous.

They don’t want you to travel, yet apart from a few asides will not  come out with that fact outright and we see the creeping agenda: EVs that few can afford, the subsidy to the same EVs being withdrawn and the edge they have in running costs now evaporating with other ways of taxing.

It can’t be a coincidence that world wide we are seeing airports in chaos and ferry ports blocked. All the excuses have only a modicum of truth, as the fact that people would want to get away after two years of lockdown was obvious, yet here we are with everyone conveniently blaming everyone else.

The utter disconnect between what they wish for and what is possible, and it isn’t with current technology, is highlighted here; as he says at the end, we are being led by political science:

https://thecountersignal.com/toronto-pearson-international-airport-ranks-as-worst-airport-for-flight-delays-in-the-world/

Not only do they not want you to drive, they don’t want you to fly or travel unless it is by public transport. It will be made as difficult as possible in the short term by the mandating of vaccine passports; even if we in the UK are slow to this others will lead and all will follow. Only private jets as already will be exempt for the elite and the rich, anyone who thinks this will not happen is kidding themselves. The lying and scaremongering will continue unabated as it has been shown to work.

Schipol Amsterdam airport has just announced it will restrict the number of flights by ten per cent; interesting, as it is in the last phase of building a terminal to increase passenger numbers. So where did this bad business decision come from? It comes of course from the Dutch government who own the majority of the airport's holdings, the same government who are wanting to stop 50% of Dutch farming.

Were the Dutch public when they voted for this lot aware what was in store for them? If they were then on their collective heads be it, but I doubt that any political party would be shouting these policies from the rooftops, it will if at all be buried in the small print.

https://www.timeout.com/news/this-is-the-first-airport-to-limit-flights-to-combat-climate-change-072622

Sustainability has already been voiced by no other than the clothing industry which now has advocates of so called sustainable materials at much higher prices as the way forward despite years of the Primarks of this world dominating the industry. This philosophy is being applied to everything, in a recession of which we are on the edge, a lowering of living standards, and with wage stagnation over the last ten years. Simply, few will be able to afford this new way forward; in a growth economy there may be some justification for it in some areas, but that is not the case and won't be for years with the debt that has been forced on us.

Yet none of this will make the slightest bit of difference as outside the western woke world no one is listening. The climate change argument has no traction in places like China and India so we are impoverishing ourselves for nothing.

Remember this?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1552198551148576768

(President Trump warning in 2018 against overedependence on Russian energy supplies)

- Not laughing now, are they?

And finally, for those who believe that Britain should be turned into a version of Jurassic Park we have smug ‘conservationist’ Chris Packham at odds with smug SNP windbag Ian Blackford over Sea Eagles carrying his lambs away. My wish would be for the Sea Eagles to up their game and carry both of them away.

Blackford said this awhile back:

“Blackford’s calls come less than three years after a non-native mink killed his three-year-old ducks — named Mrs McGregor, Mrs Campbell, Mrs Morrison and Mrs McFarlane“

The price that’s paid for all this re-wilding and moves to sustainability have a price that is worth paying - until, that is, it affects you.

We will all be scavenging soon if this lunacy is allowed to carry on.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Darrell Scott, by JD

I first became aware of Darrell Scott when he appeared on the BBC's Transatlantic Sessions many years ago. Last weekend he popped up again on SKY Arts as one of the members of Robert Plant's Band of Joy in an hour long concert recorded in Nashville and very good it was too! I believe the whole thing is on YouTube somewhere. 

Anyway, Scott is an exceptionally fine musician and songwriter of American folk music loosely categorised as Americana or Roots music.

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