DUFF & NONSENSE!

Serves the writer right!

I have mentioned before, ‘many a time and too damned oft’, I suspect, my opinion that the director of a play should serve the writer.  In other words, it is your duty as a director to try and discern the writer’s intentions and by use of all theatrical artifacts make these clear to an audience.  I drone on about this because too many directors think they know better than the writer and impose their views on the text.  (Even worse are ‘adaptors’ of plays, those miscreants who under the guise of translating a text alter it to fit their own opinions and prejudices.  Poor old Chekhov and Ibsen have suffered cruelly under this treatment!)  So, an honest director will study a text and try to tease out of it what the writer intended but a question immediately arises -  why do some writers – and I’m looking at you, Will Shakespeare! – make it so bloody difficult?

I am provoked to this complaint because a friend of mine is directing The Winter’s Tale and I have been re-reading it before I go to see it.  Long before you reach the trickiest stage direction in the whole of Shakespeare “Exit pursued by a bear”(!) which induces a headache in most directors almost immediately, one is confronted with the hideous problem of Act I. scene ii.  For those not familiar with the play (and that includes me) the play opens with two lords, one from Sicilia where the scene is set, and the other from Bohemia.  They are discussing their respective kings with great respect because Polixenes (Bohemia) has been accorded generous hospitality by his true friend, Leontes (Sicilia).  The situation thus set, we move on to scene ii.

Here we meet the two kings.  Polixenes is expressing his enormous regret in having to depart and return home as well as his heart-felt gratitude for the extravagant hospitality bestowed on him by his life-long friend Leontes who, in turn, begs him to stay longer but is unsuccessful and so he turns to his wife, Hermione, and asks her to intercede and persuade Polixenes to stay.  This she does with great affection and some witty banter – when suddenly – out of the blue – no warning –  Leontes, talking inwardly, goes off on one and we are shocked, putting it mildly, to realize that beneath the courteous, friendly exchanges, he is actually eaten up with furious, murderous jealousy because he is convinced that his wife and his best friend are secret lovers!

Now, you don’t need to study Shakespeare for too long to realize that there is a difference between your reaction arising from the written page as opposed to what you see and hear on a stage.  Even so, I suggest that in this case the unveiling of Leontes’s secret hatred comes as a shock whichever way you discover it.  But worse, reading it off the page it comes across as totally unrealistic!  You may read it for yourselves, here.  At this point, a caring and careful director will pull out the first tufts of his hair – there’s usually a lot more to come later!  Did our Will really mean it to be unrealistic?  Or did he actually want a dramatic shock at that point – even if it is a little less subtle than you expect from him?  Should Leontes indicate, somehow, in some way, that all is not well and that he’s merely going through the motions in asking his (ex)friend to stay longer?  Is there anything in the text leading up to that frightening revelation that will help an actor to signal the ticking bomb?  I suppose, at a stretch, you could say that where-as Polixenes talks at some length, Leontes’s responses are mostly two-lines only but that’s a very tiny hook upon which to hang your directorial hat.  And if there’s not much, if anything at all, in the text, how does an actor signal his secret feelings?  And, an even bigger question, if there’s virtually nothing in the text then should you do it at all?  Obviously (never a word to deploy too often in these sort of circs!) if Will meant it to come as a shock to his audience then your job as director is to swallow your doubts and serve the writer.  I think . . . possibly . . . well, probably . . . maybe . . . on the other hand . . . oh, hell, why do I do I get involved in this sort of thing?

 

It's the geeks, nerds and swots wot wunnit!

That is what we will all be crying as we surge down the Mall towards 'Buck House' to cheer Her Maj on the balcony as we celebrate victory in WWIII.  Yes, yes, no doubt our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen will have played their part even if it was reduced to looking like a bunch of spotty teenagers playing ‘shoot ‘em up’ games on X-boxes but that, I suspect, will be the nature of 21^st century warfare.  Instead of “Right, chaps, fix bayonets and prepare to charge” it will be “Right, chaps, download your apps”!

I am provoked to this semi-nonsense by a couple of links supplied, I suspect, by ‘our man in Arkansas’ - taps side of nose and winks!   Take a look at this photo and tell me what you see:

A particularly nasty little bug, you might suppose, and you would be more right than you know because this ‘little bug’ is actually an electronic device which:

"Such a device could be controlled from a great distance and is equipped with a camera, microphone. It could land on you and then use its needle to take a DNA sample with the pain of a mosquito bite. Or it could inject a micro RFID tracking device under your skin.”

Well, alright, that might be a bit of a stretch today but I bet some boffin somewhere is working on it even as I write.  Some progress has already been made:

In 2008, the U.S. Air Force showed off bug-sized spies as "tiny as bumblebees" that would not be detected when flying into buildings to "photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists."

So remember the next time you swat a fly you might be destroying government property!

Meanwhile, if we follow the US Navy’s lead we will soon have a surfeit of sailors to match the hordes of useless admirals we already possess.  Apparently, ‘over there’ they have already experimented with remotely-controlled, robot ships packed with guided missiles.  You may see the results on this video - if the link works:

http://bcove.me/pdpyqtfl

The firing came as part of a test off the Maryland coast on Wednesday. Six of Rafael’s anti-armor Spike missiles got fired off a moving inflatable hulled watercraft, aiming for a floating target about two miles away. The missile firings and the boat’s controls were all handled remotely by Navy personnel on shore at the Navy’s Patuxent River base.

It’s the “first significant step forward in weaponizing surface unmanned combat capability,” Mark Moses, the Navy’s program manager for the armed drone boat project, tells Danger Room. Sure, the U.S. military has no shortage of armed robotic planes and — soon — helicopters. But it doesn’t have weaponized drones that patrol the seas, either above it or below it. The Navy’s early experiments with robotic submarines are for spying and mine clearance, not for attack. Until this week’s tests at Pax River, the Navy didn’t have a robotic surface vessel capable of firing a weapon — the fulfillment of a goal the Navy set for itself in 2007.

Oh dear, so sorry, Your Maj, I'm afraid the Spithead Review will never be the same again!

 

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/future-drone-surveillance-swarms-cyborg-insect-drones

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/navy-drone-boat/#more-95307

 

Oh dear, perhaps Piers Morgan isn't too bad after all!

Never let it be said that I am an old fuddy-duddy not prepared to keep up with the contemporary ‘sleb’ scene – last night I watched Piers Morgan.  Yeeees, quite!  It was all the more remarkable because were you to ask me, which you haven’t but I’m going to answer all the same, I don’t really like Piers Morgan.  Not that I ever think about him much and needless to say nor do I know him, and bar the odd news clip I have never watched him on TV before last night.  Of course, he comes under the general heading of ‘Fleet Street scum’ but by and large I rather admire them as a breed even if I wouldn’t be too keen on one of them marrying my daughter!  I am tempted to fall back on that old cliché concerning ‘the cut of his jib’ but as I still don’t know what a ‘jib’is perhaps I will just say that I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could piss into a gale!

Even so, last night I watched, by accident, one of his interview programmes and I was quite impressed.  He laughed too often and too loudly but he led his victim with some dexterity through a life strewn with self-sown land-mines touching lightly upon some sensitive areas pressing more firmly in others.  The interview was interspersed with filmed interviews with the subject’s friends and that helped fill in the gaps.  All in all, a good job well done by Mr. Morgan.

However, it may have been the ‘guest’ who swayed my feelings and who has put me in such an unusually benevolent mood for a Monday morning.  The subject of last night’s interview was Burt Reynolds, a good film actor in the old Hollywood style.  He is now in his mid-seventies but remains a handsome man with – ladies beware! – considerable charm.  But there was more to him than just that.  Unlike most actors he paused before he spoke, he considered his thoughts, not in order to produce a politely non-committal response but instead to deliver a cryptic, sometimes deeply felt, sometimes sharply witty, reply whose very brevity produced twice the impact of the usual non-stop yadda-yadda that pours forth from the mouths of babes, sucklings and ‘slebs’.

Whatever the opposite of humdrum is, that is Burt Reynolds’s life and with wry good humour mixed with some intense (even if well-controlled) emotion he allowed us to share some of it.  I was struck by the number of his fellow actors – mostly men, it must be said – who spoke of him with intense fondness.  No doubt he has made his enemies but he has certainly retained his friends and that speaks well of the man.  I can put it no higher than this:  much to my surprise I think I would really enjoy sharing a dinner with Burt Reynolds who I suspect is a good and interesting man.  And I suppose, through gritted keyboard, it is only fair to express my thanks to Mr. Morgan for showing that to us.

How I won the Nobel Peace Prize

Aha, you didn't know that, did you?  Of course, my innate British modesty forbids me from boasting of it but "truth will out" and the fact is that I'm down up there with the likes of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, John Hume and David Trimble - I know, I know, but you can't pick and choose your company, it's those soppy Norskis who decide the matter.  Anyway, this year they seem to have got their act together and in their infinite wisdom have chosen me as this year's recipient.  I trust they will not think me ungrateful but despite my frequent 'phone calls since the announcement the cheque has still not arrived.  All I get by way of reply is something that sounds like "Yerdy-burdle-durdle-murdle" which I assume is Norwegian for "The cheque's in the post" which simply will not do!  Of course, the actual name on the prize is the European Union - look, stop that laughing now, this is serious! - but as a prisoner member of this tremendous force for peace - ask any Libyan - I feel I am fully entitled to claim my fair share of it and henceforth I will describe myself as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate - and if there are anymore sniggers from you lot, you will stay in after school!

I do not make this claim frivolously, there is precedent for it from a man - or do I mean Mann? - who stands at the very pinnacle of scientific rubbish learning, I mean, Prof. Michael Mann, he of 'Hockey Shtick' fame.  This poor man has been sorely tried - or is about to be! - by the likes of Mark Steyn, The National Review and The Competitive Enterprise Institute because he has taken out a legal suit against them for denigrating his reputation.  As part of his outrage against this example of  lèse-majesté, Prof. Mann insists that he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner because the IPCC ('International Pirates, Crooks & Con-men) was awarded the prize and he had contributed to their work.  This fatuous claim which has about as much reliability as the 'Hockey Shtick' itself has been absolutely and definitely rejected by the Nobel authorities themselves.

I understand that Mark Steyn has been rushed to hospital with STLS - Severe Traumatic Laughing Syndrome!  I may follow him because, of course, by filing suit Mann has opened himself up to defence claims for full disclosure and all those naughty documents and papers which have so far been kept secret will now have to be publicised.  Read about it all at Watts - such fun!

 

Your Sunday snigger

Well, like watching a man slip up on a banana skin, you simply can't help an involuntary snigger but we all know, deep down, that in the best of comedy there lies tragedy, either real or potential, which is why clowns are funniest when disaster strikes and we watch laughing as the bucket of cold water cascades down their pants.  Bernard Buffet captured this paradox in his famous clown painting, a copy of which hangs in my living-room.  I never tire of looking at that melancholy face beneath the cheerful make-up.  For me, it sums up much of life.

All of which brings me, courtesy of CBS New York (via Drudge), the 'sweet 'n' sour' tale of Mr. David Jiminez who prayed daily to a crucific affixed to the outside wall of a Catholic church.  The heartfelt plea he offered up to this representation of Christ on the cross was that his wife should make a full recovery from ovarian cancer.  The 'Good News' is that the lady did exactly that.  The 'Bad News' is that Mr. Jiminez , in his gratitude, offered to clean the statue which had not been tended in years.  In doing so, the crucifix fell off the wall and crushed one of his legs which subsequently had to be amputated.

Sorry, sorry, you are probably appalled but, I confess (mea culpa), that I sniggered - and, yes, I know it says so much about me.  Even so, after picking myself up off the carpet and wiping my eyes, I did attempt some more serious thinking on the incident.  At this point I must tread carefully because I am uneasily aware of the lurking presence of Deogolwulf who is more than capable of hurling down a logical thunderbolt upon my head if I draw a wrong conclusion.  (You may see the the sort of wreckage that ensues in the comments, here, here and here.)

The question that arises in my mind is whether this incident, encapsulating as it does so much of life's trials and tribulations, tells us anything about the nature of the 'Thing' that originally hurled all those hydrogen and helium particles into a void?  Some might venture that the 'Thing' at least has a sense of humour, others might complain that if so his humour does not seem to rise above the cruelty of 'The Joker':

 

Yet others, like me, might simply suggest that given the billions of years since those naughty particles first disturbed the peace of the void, the zillions upon zillions of objects that have been formed across the universe and the fact that we, the entire  human race, past, present and future, represent only the equivalent of, say, one grain of sand in the entire Sahara desert, then frankly, my dear, the 'Thing', doesn't give a damn!  I might go further and suggest that, apart from some dilettante dreamers with nothing else to think about and whose tortuous contemplations takes us not an iota further forward in our understanding of the 'Thing', we should just ignore it all and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other and getting through this 'vale of tears' - and laughter - in the best way we can.  And, because I always like to finish my parables with a moral injunction, I would strongly urge you all not to stand under statues of Jesus on the cross! 

 

Timon of Beijing!

This is one of my more meandering posts on an even more than somewhat arcane subject -Shakespeare's Timon of Athens - but stick with me, there is a point to it, honestly!  First of all let me correct an inexactitude, Timon was not wholly written by Shakespeare, a new-ish 'kid on the block', Thomas Middleton, was roped in to help out, the boss being somewhat busy around the 1606/7 period writing some of his very greatest masterpieces.  I learned all this and much more, very much more, from the 2008 Arden edition prepared by two Eng. Lit. swots, Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton.  I stress the duality because normally if you were to place two Shakespearean experts in a locked room eventually only one would emerge with three different opinions - the other having been murdered!  But these two are a 'dream team'.  They meld together effortlessly (or apparently so) and, joy of joys, they write clear, plain English that is easily understood, by which I mean that I only had to reach for my OED once or twice!  It is, in my opinion, the very best Arden Introduction I have ever read.  They are helped, happily, by the fact that Timon was not only never performed in Shakespeare's time, but neither was it published!  This only occurred when Shakespeare's old mates got together long after his death, collated his works and published them as the First Folio.  Timon, being of mixed parentage, so to speak, only squeaked in at the last moment almost due to an accident.  Anyway, the lack of a publishing history means that our two swots do not, unlike their compatriots discussing other scripts, spend page after tedious page telling us of the minor work practices of 'compositor A' as compared to 'compositor B' to say nothing of 'C', 'D', 'E' and so on into a yawn-inducing coma.  Instead, they tell us about the play and its underlying themes.

I vaguely remember skim-reading a cheap edition of the script very many years ago when my AmDram club decided to give it a go.  I was underwhelmed!  My 'whelm' was not increased after seeing our production of it - not that it was a bad production - just that the play, somehow, didn't quite work.  Thanks to Dawson and Minton I now have a clear idea why but, oddly enough, I am now very much more interested in it which is just as well because I am booked into my local cinema on the 1st of November to watch a 'simulcast' of the current production at the Royal National Theatre(*) starring Simon Russell Beale.  I urge you all to give it a go at your local cinema and it's no excuse to tell me that you live 'over there' or 'down under there' because these things go world wide, so your absence will bring down on your recalcitrant heads at least a hundred lines by way of punishment!

The main theme of the play is money.  When Shakespeare/Middleton wrote the play England was, just like today, in a state of flux over money and its uses and abuses.  Usury, that is charging interest on loans, had been forbidden across Christendom and it was only that old 'rebel', Henry VIII, who finally permitted the practice.  'The times they were a-changin' but in those days they changed exceedingly slowly and the mores of the earlier age hung on.  Thus, through Elizabeth's reign the higher levels of society worked on the give and take principle of you scratch my back today and I will be obliged to scratch yours on another day. Now you see the point of my silly title because this is the practice in modern day China where 'obligations' are, so to speak, banked!  As the recent Bo Xilai scandal has illustrated, this system is coming under extreme strain in a new era of international banking.  Back in 1606/7, similar rifts were occurring and, one might ruminate, Shakespeare himself was somewhat at sixes and sevens over this tricky problem of money, interest and obligation.  He, after all, was an artist, a creator, and yet we do know, or can infer, from his scant history that he was personally very keen on aquiring and keeping money.  He even sued to recover a loan that had gone bad!

Of course, mention money and you must instantly mention its bedfellow - sex!  To lend money at interest and thereby beget yet more money has obvious metaphorical connections to sex and procreation.  Shakespeare's approach to sex was ambivalent, being apparently idealistic in his earlier plays (R&J, for example) but even there, beneath the surface of the text there is a more than somewhat realistic, verging on cynical, undercurrent.  In later plays his approach to sex its almost vitriolic (MforM, T&C).  Not, except for a minor interlude, that sex as such enters this particular play, it's just that the references to usury have strong sexual undertones.

Timon lives under what he fondly believes (because he wants to believe it) a code in which gentlemen are always but always generous in gift-giving to each other but his fault-line lies in his insistence that he must forever be the biggest giver!  With all the inevitability of a stock-market crash, he goes broke and then finds out the hard way that his beneficiaries and 'friends' have deserted him.  This sends him from one extreme of lunatic generosity to the other extreme of almost psychopathic misanthopy.  He dies, mysteriously, and there's an end on't!  The play features one of Shakespeare's favourite devices, the apparently detached observer and commentator.  One thinks of Feste and Jaques but Epemantus in this play almost rivals Thersites from T&C in his venomous, vitriolic attacks on Athenian society in general and Timon's individual stupidity in particular.  This is a play of extremes and it lacks the subtleties and depths of his other great tragedies.  It is best described, I think, as 'a work in progress' but unfortunately he and Middleton never quite got around to finishing it off and providing it with a bit of polish.  Even so, I have learned, via this excellent Arden edition, that sometimes Shakespeare's lesser works are tremendously illuminating.  This is a savage, unformed attack on the society of the early 17th century - it can be read as a warning shot aimed at James  the First's notoriously spendthrift court which was causing much alarm at the time.  Anyway, Simon Russell Beale is in it and I would pay to hear him recite his laundry list!  Even if you don't see the 'simulcast' treat yourself to this Arden, the Introduction alone is worth the money:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Timon-Athens-Arden-Shakespeare-Third/dp/1903436974

(*) I try always to give the Royal National Theatre its full title because the left-wing scumbags who run the place are almost ashamed of using their 'Royal' title. Harrrrumph!

 

I say, old chap, shoot out at six suit you?

This blog prides itself on finding the very best of truly esoteric stories to bring to your grateful attention, er, you are grateful, aren't you?  Yes, of course you are, and this one is a corker from The Daily Mail:

To the casual Victorian visitor, Runnymede could have been any English country town. Locals would gather at the Runnymede Arms to discuss the cricket or the failings of Runnymede Wanderers Football Club.  There was a tennis club, polo ground and a thriving amateur dramatics society full of people speaking in the assured tones of the British upper class.

You might have thought you were in Berkshire, if it wasn’t for the fact that the local hunt chased coyote and some of the town’s polite young men liked nothing better than to swagger down the High Street firing rounds from six-shooters strapped to their hips.  For this particular Runnymede lay amid the endless plains of Iowa and its citizens weren’t the usual grizzled bunch of settlers scrabbling out a hard existence, but the sons of Britain’s ruling classes seeking a new life in the wide open spaces of the American West.

The article written by Tom Leonard follows the publication of a book, Prairie Fever by Peter Pagnamenta which charts the history of this odd fascination by the British aristocracy for a life in the 'wild west'.  One of the leaders of these 'awfully decent chaps' was no less than Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, who set up a community in Tennessee and, naturally, called it Rugby:

Thomas Hughes, famous in Britain as the author of Tom Brown’s School Days, set up his own colony in 1879, this time down south in Tennessee, where the English could learn to farm and lead a ‘manly outdoor life’ in a community of alcohol-free Christian fellowship.  Hughes named it Rugby — after his and Tom Brown’s old school — and it soon had such British landmarks as a 50-room hotel called the Tabard after Chaucer’s inn at Southwark, and a wooden Gothic church.

Hughes attended the church’s inauguration service and they all sang Jerusalem the Golden and God Save The Queen. It was, said a prominent New York visitor, nothing less than Britain’s second colonisation of America.

So why didn't these splendid chaps, the cream of the British public school system, go on to retake America and return it to its rightful owner - Her Maj Victoria?  Well, er, mainly because they were a bunch of total plonkers, that's why - read the article or the book for the details.

Still, jolly good show, chaps, 'E' for Effort, and all that sort of thing!

 

"Rex Quondam, Rex Futurus"

Yes, yes, another no doubt futile effort on my part to raise the tone of this low-life blog and for those of you ignoramuses lacking a Double First in Google Translate Classics, 'my' heading translates as - the once and future king.  You will have noticed the inverted commas round the word 'my' because, of course, with the larceny for which I famed in Blogdom I nicked it off Prof. F. H. Buckley of George Mason University and The American Spectator.  Prof. Buckley is a legal swot and he points unerringly to an aspect of American political life of which even I have become dimly aware over recent years, that is, the increasing theft - I choose the word with care - of, shall we say, extra-constitutional powers by successive presidents but blatently so by this one.  The Latin phrase, I gather, was allegedly written on the tomb of King Arthur but it might just as well have been applied as a campaign sticky on President Obama's limo.

The 'Prof' begins by reminding us of American consitutional history:

OVER THE LAST 250 YEARS there have been four American constitutions, each giving us a very different form of government. The first constitution was that of the pre-Revolution Crown colonies, under which royal governors dominated the elected assemblies. These were swept aside by the American Revolution, and (after the interregnum of the Articles of Confederation) the Framers, at their convention in the summer of 1787, produced the second constitution, one of congressional government, with power centered in the Senate and House of Representatives. The seeds of the third constitution were found in the second constitution and emerged over the Republic’s first 50 years, as the president became popularly elected and his office emerged in the form of the modern executive: commanding, decisive, and possessing all the authority of the only person elected by the nation at large.

With Obama, we have now entered into a fourth constitution, one of strong presidential government, in which the president has slipped off many of the constraints of the third constitution’s separation of powers. He makes and unmakes laws without the consent of Congress and spends billions to reward his friends. His power exceeds that of any American ruler since the Revolution. He is rex quondam, rex futurus—the once and future king.

My only timorous objection to the Prof's learned treatise is that I seem to remember 'Dubya' pulling more than a few strokes in his time.  Even so, Obama's constitutional blagging is on a scale all of its own.  Here, with my emphasis throughout, is but one example of how his polit-bureau has ragged, bagged and shagged the constitution:

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation statute provides a striking example of this abdication. The act created two new federal agencies, the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, each with enormous and ill-defined discretion over a large sector of the American economy. The CFPB is empowered to proscribe “unfair, deceptive or abusive” consumer loans and “predatory” lending, open-ended standards that place little discernible limits on the regulators. The CFPB is also immunized from Congress’s power of the purse, because the agency has a claim to more than $400 million from the Federal Reserve each year and because Congress is prohibited from reviewing that budget. Just what these agencies will do depends on who is appointed to run them, and that decision lies with the president.

The controversy over the CFPB was heightened by the manner in which it got off the ground. The agency could not begin its work until its director was appointed. This would have required Senate confirmation, however, and Republicans filibustered the appointment. To get around this, Obama made a “recess” appointment of Richard Cordray in January 2012, at a time when the Senate, according to its rules, was not in recess. Instead, it was in a “pro forma” session, which means that senators appear periodically for a few minutes to bang the gavel. Before 2012, this tactic had worked for five years to prevent two administrations from making an appointment without Senate confirmation, and Cordray’s recess appointment was therefore a precedent-setting expansion of executive power.

The 'Prof' offers other examples of a White House determined to either circumscribe or circumvent Congressional rights and his article is worth reading in full.  Where I slightly disagree with him is when he expresses the view that this election will present voters with a chance to choose between rule by presidential diktat or a return to constitutional governance.  My guess, depressingly, is that Romney will be no better behaved than Obama once he slides his well-tailored arse in behind the desk in the Oval Office.  Of course, the dummies mainly to blame for this sorry state of affairs are the politically corrupt 'critters' in the Congress who are incapable, apparently, of raising principle above party.  So no change there, then!

 

I was abused by Elizabeth Taylor!

And Brigitte Bardot!  Oh, and that Sophia Loren, she never left me alone.  Then there was that NAAFI girl who served the tea in the barrack canteen.  And I was very young to be taken advantage of in that fashion.  Worst of all was the year I was serving Her Maj and living in a tent on the end of runway #2 at Bahrein airport, those hussies kept abusing me on a constant basis, in fact the 'Tom' in the next camp-bed to mine complained about it!  Anyway, I have consulted my distinguished solicitors, Messrs. Whyte, Lippe & Tremblin, although to be honest I'm not totally sure which one I saw because they all look alike.  Anyway, Messr. 'whichever' was most encouraging and assured me that I had a very good case and they would be only too pleased to argue it all the way to the High Court; although, to be honest, I was a little hurt when he insisted on his fees being paid up-front!  Anyway, as the entire country seems set upon suing everybody else for sexual harrassment I don't see why I shouldn't have my day in court, I mean, you'd never believe the things those women did to me . . .

 ADDITIONAL:  That old devil coincidence strikes again.  My somewhat plodding satire on the current hysteria surrounding the late, and not very great, Jimmy Savile was no sooner written and posted when I began my usual trawl through my favourite blogs beginning, of course, with the redoubtable Anna Raccoon who is in the process of telling her life story.  Apparently the corner-stone of this whole Savile broohaha emanated from the Newsnight story in which some former inmates of an approved school for girls in Staines claimed that Savile, with the connivance of the lady who ran the establishment, had sexually assaulted them.  Ms. Raccoon was actually a resident of this school herself at that time and her views are well worth reading.  They can be summed up in her own words, thus:

Abuse victims should be heard. They should be listened to intently. By the same token, those accused of such heinous crimes should be so accused by tested evidence, not newspaper circuses. This shouldn’t be a subject to push up newspaper circulation, nor for a Punch and Judy show between branches of the political media – the damage done by sexual abuse is too profound for that. What is happening, with a – shall we call it polite disbelief – in some quarters, that not all the ’400 victims who have come forward’ are entirely motivated by a desire for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, does a disservice to every genuine case.

I’m not afraid of the truth, I have nothing to fear from it. If other girls were cowering behind bedroom doors in 1965 and I failed to notice, nor even hear mention of the man’s name, let alone meet him – well then, after eating my Raccoon tail, I shall take myself off for counseling; I would obviously have a profound case of ‘false memory syndrome’.

I have absolutely no knowledge of any of it but her words add to my general unease which always arises when I see a mob in full pursuit!

 

So, was he a drunken sailor or a canny Scrooge?

I'm referring to Obama, of course, and please note the past tense because he'll be history in a couple of weeks!  However, the question as to whether or not he has spent America into a coming catastrophe continues to rage.  Here at D&N, of course, we maintain a lofty neutrality which acts as a superb disguise of our total ignorance!  Here are two sides of the argument beginning with the defence 'counsel', Rex Nutting of MarketWatch:

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Heavens to Betsy, who'da thunkit?!

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

Of course, silly me, it was all 'Dubya's fault - but hang on, here comes prosecuting counsel, Vincent Giandurco on Breitbart News:

The White House is promoting the column to prove their fiscal probity, so his opponents need to get their facts straight in order to demonstrate just how profligate his spending has really been. Nutting claims that Obama has held the line on spending since sending up his first budget for the fiscal year 2010. The claim is based on the truism that all budgets are written the year before, so that Fiscal 2009 must have been written and signed by Bush before he left office with his tail between his legs. This is Mistake Number One. Having been thoroughly embarrassed, Bush had no interest in sending up a budget. The Democrats won a landslide? Fine, let them write the 2009 budget. Which they did.

Next, recall that Bush had pushed through TARP before leaving, which was $750 Billion in deficit spending. Nutting, like most commentators, adds this to Bush's deficit in 2008, when it passed. Mistake Number Two. In fact, Bush spent $400 Billion of TARP. He left $350 Billion for his successor.

Finally, the new President pushed through the Stimulus in Feb. 2009. This was $800+ billion added to the regular budget, which in itself was increased by $425 billion year-over-year by Reid, Pelosi, et al.  Again, this being 2009, it falls to reason that this was Bush's spending, But as we saw, Bush left no budget and of course had no hand in the Stimulus.  Altogether, spending increased at least $1.5 Trillion from Fiscal 2008 to 2009. The actual Bush deficit in 2008 was approximately $850 Billion (including the $400 Billion from TARP), and the Obama deficit in 2009 was actually $1.75 Trillion, including the remainder of TARP.

Experts - heh!  - they leave you more confused than when you began!  However, for a final sideways view, try Tyler Durden on his own excellent blog Zero Hedge.  This was written on 1st May this year:

There is nothing quite like a $70 billion debt auction settlement at the last day of a month to bring total US debt to a record $15.692 trillion, which happens to be just $600 billion shy of the $16.394 trillion debt ceiling. (and no, contrary to simple economic textbook lesson, this does not mean that the private sector just got another $70 billion in debt capacity courtesy of taxpayers, as explained here). And now that we know what Q1 GDP was at the end of Q1, or namely $15.462 trillion, it is simply math to divine that today alone total US/debt to GDP rose by 50 bps to a mindboggling 101.5%. [My emphasis]

Mr. Durden is not satisfied with just delivery a head-butt but insists on giving us a good kick once we are down:

Then again who cares about the short term. Here is what the total US debt/GDP will look like, frankly under either administration as both the presidential candidate and the incumbent have absolutely no idea how to fix an excess debt problem without issuing more debt (nor do they have any interest to). [My emphasis]

I must go and have a coffee, I can feel a headache coming on!

 

There is a God - and He just smote the BBC - bless Him!

And what a mighty smote it was yesterday when the 'only-just-appointed-but-about-to-depart-I-bet' boss of the BBC was shown up to be a walking-talking suit with about as much grip as a feather boa.  Surely there has to be the makings of a corking new comedy series based on the BBC bureaucracy, something like "Yes and/or No, Director-General" or "Carry On Buck Passing" or "Don't Tell Me Anything I Don't Want to Know" starring Rowan Atkinson, of course.  Now, to make the show complete, enter stage right, left and centre simultaneously (he's a slippery sort of chap) we have 'Fat Pan' Patten, our former man in Hong Kong who has adminstered a slap on the substantial bottom of our new Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, for daring to raise some serious questions concerning the behaviour of the BBC hierarchy.  Patten intones from on high (as boss of the BBC Trust - which is a laugh in its own right) that Ms. Miller should mind her own business and not interfere in the independence of the BBC.  To which I would reply something along the lines of - listen, 'Fat Pan', everyone in the country who own a TV set is taxed to pay for you and your circus even if they don't watch the unspeakable crap you slosh out every night, so it is entirely right and proper that if the BBC is shown up to be a bunch of lying kiddie-fiddlers then we are entitled to know and we have the right to haul your fat arse into Parliament to find out - so watch it!

Rowan Atkinson insults our intelligence - I'm delighted to say!

Not much time, except to offer grateful thanks to 'Guido' for displaying this YouTube film of Rowan Atkinson making a superb speech in support of the movement to reform Section 5 which makes the practice of insulting someone a criminal offence.  Do yourselves a favour, you  ungrateful lot of lazy, useless, pig-ignorant 'pillicocks' (see below the paragraph in which I insult the DPP) and take a few minutes to enjoy Atkinson's speech.  It's a corker!

http://order-order.com/2012/10/22/rowan-atkinsons-defence-of-freedom-of-speech/

 

I'd bang up this programme-maker inside a cell!

There was programme on over the weekend which I wanted to see very much .  It was called, I think, Inside the Cell, or some such, and a terrific bio-chemistry swot had been wheeled in to provide the spiel.  Now, as you all know, I am a semi-educated man, in fact, worse than that, I am a semi-self-educated man which, of course, provides me  with little inthe way of hard facts but a great deal of self-inflated opinions!  Where was I?  Oh, yes,  Inside the Cell, well, I didn't stay for long, but before I blow the BBC to hell and back let me explain why I was looking forward to this programme with such eagerness.

I can still remember my exact location the day I first found out about the intricacies of the human cell - a remote farm cottage in Wales, since you ask, and yes, it was raining!  The book was Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe which itself caused a minor sensation in the world of biology and nearly caused 'Archbishop' Dawkins's mitre to achieve lift off.  This was because of its advocacy of the Intelligent Designer notion which is about as convincing as the idea that something like a human eye could have evolved as a result of zillions of tiny incremental improvements.  However, in the course of supporting his argument Behe, a micro-bio-chemical swot, himself, went into some detail describing the actual 'mechanics of what goes on inside a living cell. 

It was a very quiet weekend that weekend in Wales because I was so utterly gob-smacked as to be incapable of anything in the way of conversation with my wife and friends - probably to their relief.  Until that moment I had simply no idea of the complexity - well, 'complexity' is hardly the word, think of 'complexity' multiplied a hundred-fold - and then multiplied again - of the processes which go on inside every cell in our bodies every minute of the day.  I cannot describe the excitement I felt on learning all this, but also I felt a sort of rage because I realised that had I known of this as a boy I would have concentrated on chemistry and made it my life's work.  In a recent exchange of comments down below somewhere, the subject of blood-clotting arose, and again, that is one of the 'miracles' (I use the word loosely because I cannot find another to express my reverence for the process) that Behe describes and which left me - well - silenced!

So, you can imagine my eagerness to watch this programme Inside the Cell.  Of course, being a weekend there was Strictly Come Prancing on and the 'Memsahib' has prior rights to the schedules so I turned in gratitude - yet again - to dear, old Rupe's 'do-flicker-recording-thingie' (which is the cleverest clever thing since, well, blood-clotting, really) and duly recorded it.  Yesterday I watched it.  I switched off after 10 minutes.  Rage ensued!  I do realise that making scientific programmes is not easy.  Not everyone wants some dusty, old university prof (sorry DM!) standing there talking directly to camera, although I seem to recall it worked quite well in years past, but neither do we - or I - want ludicrous, special effects cartoons all over-laid with portentious and ghastly non-music.  That's what we were provided with on this programme.  It was science for seven year-olds! 

The boss of the BBC is up in front of a committee of MPs this morning to answer questions about this hsyterical Jimmy Savile nonsense.  I wish someone would ask him about his totally crap science programmes!

 

Tin Man vs. Iron Lady

This will be worth watching!  According to a financial newspaper I will not name because it refuses me permission to copy and paste despite my habit of always providing links, Dave Tin 'Iron-man' Cameron is going head-to-head with 'die neue Iron Lady', Frau Merkel.  I know who my money's on!  Dave has stated clearly (well, sort of) that he will not countenance any increase in the EU budget whilst Britain is (allegedly) cutting our own.  If you detect a hint of doubt it arises from his actual words, “If there isn’t a deal that’s good for Britain, there won’t be a deal" and, of course, it's amazing how an increase in the EU's budget could be sold as a good deal for us, it's just a question of finding the right form of words.  In the meantime, Frau Merkel has telephoned him and threatened to call off the the next EU budget meeting entirely if Britain is determined to veto any increase at all.  Irresistible force meets immovable object!  And the EU polit-bureau has warned Britain of massive amounts of incoming diplomatic brown stuff if 'Tin Iron Man' Dave puts a spoke in their well-oiled wheels.  In the meantime, the Luftwaffe is preparing to drop its versionof the 'Bouncing Bomb' when it delivers Frau Merkel to London early next month for talks with Dave.  Done deal, I reckon!

 ADDITIONAL:  However, this from Isabel Hardman at The Coffee House: 

The problem for the German Chancellor is that if Cameron vetoes a deal, it will be good for him politically, but bad for Merkel as Germany will lose its rebate and therefore will have to contribute more.  If that threat was supposed to worry Number 10, it doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said this morning:

‘We don’t see a case for increases in spending above the rate of inflation.’

This suggests that there could be a small increase in the budget that is below inflation. What is most likely is that an agreement is reached to freeze the budget, rather than Cameron vetoing any other deal. But it’s important for the Prime Minister to be clear that he’s keen for more veto moments to keep his party on side.

 

Well, at least we'll be looking at the real culprit as we shiver!

Even the Met Office has agreed, muttering through clenched teeth, that there has been no significant global warming for the last 16 years.  Needless to say, carbon dioxide has been pumping out at increasing levels throughout, so sooner or later the Grand Panjandrums of the IPCC and all the other crooks and/or clowns will be forced to own up.  In the meantime, a truly disturbing picture is beginning to emerge from a direction we should never have ignored in the first place - the sun:

Something strange, very strange, is happening on the sun. On October 8th, NOAA’s Solar Cycle Progression monthly update report came out.  Sunspot activity has dropped off to its lowest point in over 100 years, perhaps to its lowest since the Dalton Minimum of the early 1800s.

The sun is headed into a quiet phase. The evidence is mounting. Sunspot activity is down. Solar flux is down. The sun’s magnetic field is decreasing linearly toward zero by 2026. The long term trend points towards a less active sun.  Solar physicists believe a prolonged period of low solar activity lasting more than one cycle is coming.

This change in the sun’s behavior could have profound long-term implications for climate change over the next several decades.

This quote is from a writer calling himself 'azleader' at a site called Inform the Pundits.  Alas, I don't know any pundits but I do know you, so here goes.  This diagram shows sun spot activity since 1700.  Obviously you will need to treat the earlier measurements with care because they had less sophisticated equipment with which to observe.  However, as you can see from the chart, their observations followed closely the recorded drops - and leaps - in earthly temperarature and climate, as reported at the time.

In a previous post I quoted from The History of British Winters which describes the dreadful winters of the early 19th century which played havoc with harvests and led to great hardship.  Now take a look at the sun spot chart for that period.

'Azleader' continues:

The Maunder and Dalton minimums share something in common. Both are associated with cold periods in Earth’s climate history. The time of the Maunder Minimum is often referred to as the “Little Ice Age“.  It is probably not entirely by chance that the Modern Maximum and another earlier period of high solar activity, the Medieval Warm Period, both correspond to warmer temperatures in Earth’s recent climate history.

In the satellite era it has been found the sun varies in radiant energy from 0.1% to 0.2% over a solar cycle. It is hottest during maximum solar activity. That could be a forcing mechanism driving historical climate change, just like the IPCC says CO2 is today.  It is unknown what the cooling effect of a prolonged period of inactivity might be. Physics cannot yet answer that question, but a long history of anecdotal empirical evidence suggests it does.

So, we must not leap to conclusions but wait patiently for the physics to catch up.  Solar science is in its relative infancy but it is already making great efforts to peer as closely as it can into the sun and its workings.  The general consensus is that the sun is heading for a sustained period of inactivity and will produce a 'cold' period.  Our globe is but a speck in the eye of the mighty sun and if it sneezes we need to watch out and be prepared.

I have said it before but I don't mind repeating myself - oh, you noticed! - cold kills a lot faster than heat!

 

Kevin Dujan clinches it! Kevin - who?

No, me, neither but 'our Kev' is on to something and his story should be noted.  Apparently, Kevin, a former 'events organiser' himself, has spotted that the Obama campaign has very quietly and discreetly turned its back on Grant Park in Chicago as a venue for their post-election, er, celebration.  Grant Park, of course, was the site of the huge rally that went off with almost religious fervor after his victory four years ago.  Being an open park it is able to cope with multitudes. 

However, the trusty Kevin Dujan has nosed out that the site chosen by the Obama circus for its farewell post-election, er, party is the dreaded McCormick Centre.  This is literally 'across the tracks' as far as most Chicagoans are concerned because it lies on the far side of a huge motorway and has very poor rail and bus access.  It is also much smaller as a venue and would not have been chosen over Grant Park if great multitudes were expected.

This charmless fortress was considered a very suitable location for the recent G8 meeting in which the delegates and ministers were in danger of their lives if the crowd could get at them!  I will let Kevin sum it up in his own words: 

Take a look at that photo above again.  The place sits on the highway.  After the results come in, Obama just has to deliver his concession and then he’s in his car and on his way to his house in Hyde Park while Mitt Romney takes the stage in Boston as the new President-Elect.  The highway that runs through McCormick Place leads right to Hyde Park…it would be less than a three minute drive for the Obama motorcade after they leave the convention center to head home and sulk.

I just don’t know any way else to put this, but planning his event at McCormick Place instead of Grant Park again (or another high profile outdoor venue like the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, for instance) is a tacit admission that the guy is going to lose and will have an early bedtime on Election Night in Hyde Park at the Obama/Rezko Mansion.

Well said, Kevin.  Let us hope he knows where-of he writes!  Read the details here:

http://hillbuzz.org/daily-doom-antidote-solid-proof-obama-is-planning-a-concession-speech-event-for-november-6th-election-night-10182012-10182012

 

 

The Sunday Rumble: 21.10.12

Will Dave make it to the end?  It's not "the vision thang" with Dave, he doesn't have any, but the judgment thing.  I suppose, in retrospect, the first doubts arose before he even entered No. 10 when he hired the ex-editor of The News of the World to be his main spokesman.  I remember thinking at the time, The News of the World - uuurgh - The Times, possibly; The Independent, maybe; The Telegraph, perhaps; but the good, old 'Screws' - never!  Anyway, that was but the first of a series of misjudgments which have culminated in the long-overdue despatch of Andrew Mitchell whose only claim to fame appears to be his ability to drag down even further the contempt in which most of us hold politicians.  He should have been marched into No. 10 the next morning and in brusque, Clem Attlee-style told to get on his bike - and use the proper exit!  Dave funked it and now he's paying for it and, even worse, his own party, already aware of his general uselessness, are beginning to realise that he is an electoral disaster.  It can only be a matter of time - watch this space . . .

If Romney loses:  'MDA2' which stands for 'My Darling Andra' and has the numerical suffix to differentiate her from 'MDA1' (My Darling Ann [Coulter]) poses a question in a thread below: when Romney doesn't win ... what then?  Well then, MDA2, America will go to hell in a handcart and you, as an Australian living in the southern Pacific will either have to seek about for new powerful friends - and don't ask me where - or learn to speak Chinese!  At home, Obama, with nothing now to lose, will let loose the Democrat dogs of big spending and constitutional tampering with catastrophic results.  And to put the final seal on it, Obama will choose the next one or two Supreme Court Justices who will set his Marxist ideas in stone for a generation.  The good news' is that he will not win.  As I have said since the last Congressional elections two years ago, he's dead man walking!

Crime stats down - you're 'avin' a laugh!  At sometime during this week I heard an item on the news that crimes stats in the UK were down across the board.  What I would really like to do is meet the solitary man, woman or, more likely, child, who actually believes any stats issued by this government but in particular the crime stats.  They, in particular, are the most ragged, bagged and shagged set of numbers in the entire government machine.  It starts at the very bottom of the imput process in which the various police forces throughout the land duck and dive with the full connivance of their Chief Constables, a bunch of self-interested, self-promoting chancers I wouldn't trust with a two times table.  The results then go to the "not fit for purpose" Home Office and after that they don't stand a chance.

My bottom:  Yes, I know, not the most prepossessing subject to contemplate over your Sunday breakfast (or is it lunch, you lazy sods?) but it gets even worse because it is actually what emanates from my bottom that is the real subject.  I know, I know, it might not be something you wish to know about but Her Majesty's National Health Service are tremendously interested and have kindly sent me a special pack with instructions and little cardboard sticks with which to lovingly take samples to send back to them for inspection.  I hasten to add that there is absolutely nothing wrong with my bottom, or its contents, but apparently my age has triggered this enquiry.  As a less than sympathetic friend remarked, "Well, if it's your shit they're interested in, tell 'em to read your blog!"

The Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is a pillock!  To be honest, I'm not absolutely sure what a 'pillock' is so I looked it up.  According to the OED it is "a stupid person" which is what I meant but its archaic origin comes from "pillicock, a penis"!  Anyway, it's nice and rude and above all - insulting!  At this point my innate sense of fairness intercedes which it tends to do from time to time thus ruining many a good rant.  The fact is that I have no idea who the head of the CPS is and anyway, he or she is not to blame, it's those 'pillicocks' (and their female equivalents) in Parliament who deserve the insults for it was they, in their infinite dimwittedness, who made a crime out the very fine, old, British tradition of insulting.  I have become dimly aware (look, I've told you lot before, I do the  jokes!) that various mouth-breathers using a public communications system called 'Twitter' which confines your comments to a tiny number of words - to the relief of the afore-said mouth-breathers - have been arrested and charged in the courts, so the Head of the CPS does share some of the blame.  These alleged miscreants have not been urging violence or racist attacks against anyone, all they have done is publish moronic grunts - to call them 'thoughts' is to stretch meaning too far - usually in extremely bad taste.  For this the 'Old Bill' are suddenly galvanised and whilst incapable of catching or stopping your average burglar they are right on the case of some dimwit who helps them by providing an identity - and it improves their stats no end!  Brenden O'Neill, editor of Spiked has an excellent article on this over at Reason.

At last, some words of wisdom here at D&N:  No, no, not from me, come on, you should know better than that!  No, these, courtesy of Cafe Hayek are from a very wise old bird, indeed, a man who had an enormous influence on my hesitant tiptoes into philosophy and science - Karl Popper:

There is, first, the classical myth, vox populi vox dei, which attributes to the voice of the people a kind of authority and unlimited wisdom.  Its modern equivalent is faith in the ultimate common-sense rightness of that mythical figure, ‘the man in the street’, his vote, and his voice.  The avoidance of the plural in both cases is characteristic.  Yet people are, thank God, seldom univocal; and the various men in the various streets are as different as any collection of V.I.P.s in a conference-room.  And if, on occasion, they do speak more or less in unison, what they say is not necessarily wise.  They might be right, or they might be wrong.

On this Sunday morning, here endeth the first lesson - and what a corker!

ADDITIONAL - A 'MUST READ':  Do not, under any circs, miss Chapter One of Anna Raccoon's life story.

 

"Amadeus" - The Director's Cut

I had a copy of this stored, courtesy of nice, old Rupe's 'do-flicker-recording-thingie', and last night I decided to watch it.  It must be over 25 years since I saw the original, general release version which, at the time, I thought was superb.  "Never go back!" is an old prescription I try to follow but happily on this occasion I wasn't too disappointed.  I remember the 'shock 'n' awe' of the original was immense.  I was not particularly familiar with Mozart's music at the time, so that added to the thrill of the film which I thought was quite brilliant.  Looking at it again, and allowing for the more leisurely (self-indulgent?) pace of the director's cut, I was less impressed.  I'm sorry to say that the American accents in the gorgeous mid-European settings grated, and doubly so when the British actors switched to 'American' to maintain the linguistic ambience.  Tom Hulce's performance as Mozart was good but less impressive than I remembered it.  Above and beyond them all, however, was the magnificent F. Murray Abraham, whose playing of Salieri is, in my book, one of the greatest screen performances of all time and I can hardly believe that he has not done more film work than he has, preferring, apparently, to concentrate on live theatre.  Also, I was glad to see that my memory of Jeffrey Jones playing the intensely stupid Emperor was as delightful and funny as I remembered.  (Poor Jeffrey Jones, I often wondered what happened to such an obviously skillful actor and now I know, I wish I hadn't found out!)  Writing of the history of Amadeus cannot preclude mention of its beginnings as a hugely successful stage play written by Peter Shaffer and that, of course, brings to me to one of the barely reported highlights of its progress on various stages, that is, my own performance in the crucially important role of Count Franz Orsini Rosenberg in a production by the Teddington Theatre Club.  I can't think why Wiki have failed to mention it!

 

I take my eyes off China for 5 minutes - and there's trouble!

I am uneasily aware that having started my keen observations of the 'Mysterious Kingdom Polit-Bureau-dom' I have allowed my attention to stray back 'over there'.  Sorry and all that but 'over there' is so much easier to try and understand then 'all the way round there', not least because the former, being more than just scrutable, are hopeless at keeping secrets whilst the latter wouldn't tell you if your zip was undone!  Anyway, I do remember that the Central Committee was supposed to be having a grand 'how's-your-father' this month in which all the new, hand-picked candidates would take their seats at the high table whilst trying not to show that it had all been fixed months ago.  This morning, in a comment thread somewhere down below, the subject of China arose and I realised that actually I had read nothing about this hugely important meeting in any of the MSM for some considerable time.

Happily, George H. Wittman of The American Spectator was to hand with a useful essay explaining, as best he could, what was going on, or to be precise, why nothing was going on - yet!  Remember, it is quite an extraordinary event when the very pinnacle of the ruling Communist Party of China appears to stumble - even slightly.  If the Party machine coughs, how sick is the body politic?  Anyway, first of all, Mr. Wittman reckons the Bo Xilai affair (click on my 'China' category for details) has taken much longer to sort out than originally thought.  He was not a troublesome loner but the leader of a Maoist movement intent on taking China back the 'good old days'.  There's "nowt as queer as folk", as they say north of the M25, and just as large segments of the Russian population revere 'good old Uncle Joe' despite the fact that he murdered them in their millions, so too, in China the greatest mass murderer of all time is still held in high regard.  Anyway, one casualty appears to be a certain Zhou Yongkang, hitherto the top man in charge of Chinese internal security.  He 'agreed' (yeees, quite!) to relinquish his main responsibilities half a year earlier than his retirement date.  Such apparently trivial detail is all you ever get out of Beijing's hall of mirrors.

Even more mystifying is the absence (Not terminal, I trust, Comrade?) of the heir apparent, Xi Jinping, who has not been seen in public for weeks.  He was supposed to be hosting seriously important talks with the military leadership for reasons which can only be guessed at.  Mr. Wittman reports that perhaps serious surgery has intervened and that might have been the cause of the unprecedented delay in the Central Committee meeting which is now due to take place in November.  China and its government faces some gigantic and unbelievably complex problems.  The new Central Committee could either lurch to the extremes or remain more or less centralist.  Loud-mouthed denunciations by American presidential candidates will not help.  "Softlee, softlee, catchee monkey" must be the guiding principle!

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/19/china-under-stress

ADDITIONAL:  A note to my Headmaster, 'DM'.  Please, Sir, don't bother, I have already started the hundred lines for the howler in my title and I have changed "of" to "off" and I blame 'SpecSavers'!

 

Was there ever a worse group than the Rolling Stones?

I ask because for once I am admitting, up front, that I do not know.  Yes, yes, I realise that ignorance is not always a bar to me expressing an opinion but in this instance I thought it better to be honest.  Not that I am entirely ignorant because I must have heard, I suppose, over the last 50 years, at least, say, three and a half of their tracks.  Not that I have ever sat through an entire blast, you understand, my total is made up of a considerable number of accidents in which either I failed to exit a room quickly enough or reach the 'Off' switch in time.  And, of course, I have from time to time, like this morning on Sky bloody News because it's their 50th anniversary, seen films of their performances - but happily the sound is always off on my kitchen 'telly'.  As I may have mentioned before, I am never embarrassed by my own behaviour and that 'virtue' has seen me through a blush-inducing amateur theatrical 'career', however, other people's antics create rivulets of sweat down the back of my shirt.  I cringe, I cry, I crumble in an effort to avert my eyes or ears from "... the horror ... oh, the horror".  This morning, catching a glimpse of these talentless, ugly, ridiculous, mega-rich, old-age pensioners shuffling their awful stuff - for the first time I got the joke!  Yes, I smiled, and then I chuckled and then - God bless my soul - I laughed out loud.  You see, all this time I had thought they were serious in trying to be sexy, raunchy, talented musicians instead of the hideously ugly string and skin bangers they so obviously were - and all the time it was just their little joke.  And best of all, which must have had them convulsed in the dressing-rooms after their shows, you suckers thought it was for real, that they actually were what they were pretending to be, and you couldn't shovel the money to them fast enough!  Anyway, I'm not slow to learn and so I am giving you all advanced notice that early next year I shall be appearing - live (or at leat, 'a-live', I hope!) at Milborne Port townhall where I shall be running through some of my favourite numbers - some waltzes by Franz Lehar, perhaps - whilst wearing the Long Johns which have driven so many ladies mad with desire since I first published a photo of, not so much me in them, as me filling them - know what I mean, ladies!!!  The only thing I do need to master is this guitar-thingie which I have not quite worked out which is the right way round - still, those Rolling Stones weren't up to much as guitarists, either!

Please tell me you're lying, Mr. Romney!

It is rather ungracious of me, I know, because only today I received a friendly comment from a Mr. John Gardner who appreciated reading a blog that was not rude about Mitt Romney - and now I am going to be rude about Mitt Romney!  Sorry, but "truth will out".  And no-one spells out economic truths better than Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek.  I have not heard the presidential debates in full, only the excerpts on TV and the written commentary.  However, one thing I keep picking up like a  monotonous  rhythm, is an anti-Chinese shtick which is decidely alarming because it comes regularly from both candidates!  Once again, it seems, we are hearing the dim, dumb clamour of fear and loathing from the Great American Public (GAP) and it is being played upon by Obama and Romney, each attempting to wave the flag higher and more vigorously than their opponent.

Obama may be forgiven because he is, at heart, just another political shyster, this time one hiding behind what I suspect is a totally fraudulent academic record which provides him with a veneer of intellectualism - to the brain dead, that is!  Romney, on the other hand, knows better, or should do, and thus his efforts to outbid Obama on how "tough" he's going to be with China is fraud of the highest, or lowest, calibre.  As Boudreaux puts it, much better than me:

Each man insists that America’s economy can be harmed by inexpensive imports – in other words, harmed by opportunities for voluntary exchanges that lower Americans’ cost of living.

By promising to raise taxes on Americans who buy Chinese-made goods, Mr. Romney again promised to break his campaign promise to not raise taxes.  That he is unaware of the contradiction isn’t promising.

Thus, the GAP (just like their British counterparts from time to time) are encouraged to support a politician who will increase their cost of living by banning cheap imports!  I mean, would you vote for such a thing ?  Oh!  You did once - sucker! - how old were you?

Mr. Obama is no better.  He bragged that he “saved a thousand jobs” with his “tough” trade action that – by raising taxes on Americans who buy Chinese-made tires – ensured “that China was not flooding our domestic market with cheap tires.”

By this logic, the President’s policy is inexcusably lame.  If creating more jobs in U.S. tire factories justifies forcing consumers to pay higher prices for tires, the Obama administration should also outlaw the sale of used tires (which, like low-priced imports, are “flooding our domestic market”).  Indeed, the president should seek legislation mandating that all rubber used to make tires be non-vulcanized.  The resulting decline in tire durability will create even more jobs in U.S. tire factories by “protecting” our market from being “flooded” with cheap tire durability – that is, with tires that last for tens of thousands of miles before needing to be replaced.

If it was just economics (or 'freakonomics' more like) perhaps we might forgive them but their swaggeringly aggressive attitude goes dangerously beyond cheap Chinese imports.  They are whipping up a war scenario.  This time, to the surprise of my readers, I will quote no less an authority than Prof Paul Krugman, er, this is the earlier Paul Krugman, the one who appeared to possess considerable intelligence until he put it down somewhere and forgot it:

I believe that if the rhetoric that portrays international trade as a struggle continues to dominate the discourse, then policy debate will in the end be dominated by men like [protectionist author of The Trap, Sir James] Goldsmith, who are willing to take that rhetoric to its logical conclusion.  That is, trade will be treated as war, and the current system of relatively open world markets will disintegrate because nobody but a few professors believes in the ideology of free trade.

And that will be a shame, because for all their faults the professors are right.  The conflict among nations that so many policy intellectuals imagine prevails is an illusion; but it is an illusion that can destroy the reality of mutual gains from trade.

That comes courtesy, yet again, of Cafe Hayek and is a quote from a 1995 essay by Paul Krugman.

In my poor, meagre opinion, Sino-American relations are going to be absolutely critical during the first half of the 21st century.  The sort of huckster boasting and bragging engaged in by both candidates will be watched with close attention in Beijing and may come back to haunt them - and us!

 

Met Office in a 'multi-decadal oscillation', or a flat spin, as I call it!

Perhaps the only positive advantage to be enjoyed as global warming dies the death in the cold mists, rains and fogs of a new (and totally expected) cooling period is that I no longer bore on about the subject - or at least, not quite so much.  To paraphrase the mighty Python, this global warming is ex-global warming; this global warming is DEAD!

And to prove it, we have no less an authority than the Met Office (and it is difficult to be a lesser authority than that unforecast shower!) who quietly slipped out a press release a couple of weeks ago telling us that global temperatures have remained static for the last 16 years. 

Some eagle-eyed hack at The Mail, no doubt snuffling through their waste-bins late at night, found the so-called press release and published it.  Smelling salts all round at the Met Office and poor old Prof. Jones at East Anglia 'Polytechnic-Night-School' came over all faint.  Since the publicity there has been a sustained soft-shoe shuffle from all concerned as they spun in 180 degrees un-saying their previous declarations that 15 years was long enough to establish a trend, the previous warmer period having lasted 15 years, natch!, and now they are trying to stretch the term required to establish a trend to 17 or even 20 years whilst they all practice sun-dancing in the hope that it gets a bit warmer.

Frankly, I wish them well because I would much rather have a warm globe than a cold one but given their abilities in things like, well, climate science, I don't rate their chances very highly.  Even a piss up in a brewery is quite beyond their abilities.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/15/noaas-15-year-statement-from-2008-puts-a-kibosh-on-the-current-met-office-insignificance-claims-that-global-warming-flatlined-for-16-years/

 

Horse manure? You want it - they've got it!

After my fit of giggles in the previous post it is back to reality with a thumpingly hard landing as John Tamny (new name to me) from Forbes summed up last night's debate between Obama and Romney.  He called it 'a nauseating draw in which both deserved to lose'.  Good as that, eh?  Tamny strikes me as a man with a very keen eye for the essentials and the ability to skip easily through the horse manure which, apparently, dismally failed to fertilise last night's turgid debate despite being knee high!

His description of Romney's efforts made my heart sink, not least because it confirmed latent suspicions already grumbling quietly in the background of my mind.  On the other hand, I remind myself that there is always a world of difference between what candidates are forced to spout in an effort to please all the people all the time, and what they will actually do once they have their arses comfortably settled in the Oval Office.  Even more comforting was the thought that young Ryan, his 'wannabe' VP, seems to be a bit of a bruiser who, on grounds of his own swelling ambitions, will not wish to be associated with yet another disasterous one-term president.  And the final clincher, for me, at any rate, is that Romney, dumb or dumber, is not Obama - 'nuff said! 

Tamny is equally scathing towards Obama's parroted gobbledegook which serves merely to provide a glimpse of the strange planet he inhabits.  Allegedly (I stress the word), he wrote a book called Dreams from my Father although opinion seems to be divided as to who was his real father in the sense of being the dominant male voice in his early years.  Whatever, Hawaii beckons in the new year and he will have plenty of time and money to write another book because, according to the CU Political Science Professor Dr. Michael Berry, there is a 77% likelihood of Romney winning the popular vote.  I reported a few weeks ago that Colorado University's computer programme has correctly forecast the results of the past eight presidential elections.

I recommend John Tamny's analysis - well worth a read.

I never realised the Poles had a sense of humour!

I mean, if you were to ask me about the Poles I would instantly think of that lady's description of Lord Byron as "mad, bad and dangerous to know", also, crazy, incredible courage would spring to mind; but clowning - prat falls, custard pies in the face, buckets of water down the pants, that sort of clowning - never!  Well, yet again I have been proven wrong.  Last night at their brand new, multi-zillion, state-of-the-art 'footie' stadium they put on the funniest show since Morcombe and Wise last performed.

I expect that, like me, you were all settled down comfortably in your favourite armchair or sofa with your feet resting up on several packs of lager, the missus either safely tucked away in the kitchen with orders for bacon butties at half-time, or, tucked up in bed, warming herself up on Fifty Shades of Filth (or whatever that book is called) so as to be ready for her conquering hero as he dances up the stairs, triumphant after thrashing the Poles at least 5-0.  Instead, we had rain.  And I mean RAIN!  It didn't just rain, nor did it just pour, it positively cascaded and it did so for hour after hour after hour. 

And, of course, in this new high-tech stadium - someone forgot to shut the roof!  As a lover of TCCs (Truly Colossal Cock-ups) I was emitting high-pitched whinnies of pleasure which were almost louder than the Memsahib's upstairs with her dirty book!  On the screen there appeared one typically British fan with a finely-tuned sense of irony who stood on the terraces soaked to the skin, trying to avoid being swept away by the torrents of rain water - with a knotted handkerchief on his head!  By now my carpet, upon which I had landed several minutes before, was beginning to feel rather damp because of my tears of laughter.  Then, with exquisite timing, known only to the very finest comedians in the world, the Poles sent out the referee wearing, goggles, flippers and a 'Mae West' - if you don't know what a 'Mae West' is - grow up or get old, one or the other!  Just for a moment I thought that I was the victim of a time warp and that somehow I had been sent back in time to the summer Olympics when various nutters athletes seemed to be trying to paddle their canoes upstream instead of down, for reasons I never did quite fathom.

Anyway, our brave and funny ref started with a slow breast-stroke as he crossed the pitch to the centre.  As a bit of an expert on swimming - er, have I told you that ... oh, right - anyway, I admired his style which was somewhat hampered by him carrying a football.  I thought he was going to entertain the crowd with a few tricks, you know, like those dolphins that balance balls on their noses so that the keepers throw them fish as a reward - although I dread to think what the average fan would throw at any ref!  Anyway, what he actually did was to throw the ball around in the vain hope that it might bounce - well, at that point my carpet was as soaked as the pitch and the neighbours were banging on the walls because my howls of laughter had become exceedingly high-pitched.  Of course, I had realised that what he was actually doing was testing to see whether it was possible to play footie on that pitch at which I became well and truly hysterical. I was then sent into extra convulsions when a Polish lady official explained with precise, patient English - and a dead straight face - that they could not close the stadium roof because it was raining!    Oh, how I howled!  Then, when I didn't think I could take any more, they announced that they would re-check the pitch in an hour!  By this time the water was so deep it was subject tidal forces!  The Memsahib insisted I go to bed because she didn't think my heart could take the strain of so much laughing, and anyway, the cat was threatening to leave home (so not all bad, then, I thought!)

Well, the match is going to be replayed this afternoon but I just know those crazy Poles will have thought of something else - ten foot of snow, perhaps?

 

Compare and contrast: The 'Go git 'im, boy' and the 'Decent British chap'!

I am obliged to my regular commenter, 'Back of an Envelope' (who I wish would choose a more succinct psuedonym!), who points me in the direction of the ineffable Richard North who has written a post on the incipient corruption lying at the heart of our MoD High Command to which I drew attention in the preceding post.  In the course of his post, Dr. North introduces us to Col. Harry D. Tunnel IV, an American officer of, shall we say, very decided views as to the operational policy in Afghanistan, in general; but in particular, to the utter uselessness (in his view) of Maj. Gen. 'Nick' Carter, British Army, and his superior at the time - circa 2009/10.  Here they are:

You may read Col Tunnel's views (if you are up to taking on military jargon!) courtesy of Michael Yon, surely the very best war correspondent of his era, here.  In essence, according to Col. Tunnel, Carter is an ineffectual tosser unfit to command a latrine work-party.  You see, Col. Tunnel thinks that what armies are actually for, when you strip away the BS, is to kill people - mostly the enemy but if a few civilians get in the way, well, hell, that's war!  There is considerable merit in Col. Tunnel's, er, robust views and in any normal war between conflicted armies his notion complies with Lanchester's Square Law of Attrition which states, in simplified terms, that if you can kill more of the enemy over time than he can kill of you, then the rate of difference will increase exponentially and you will win - all other things being equal!  (Ah, yes, military strategists have learned a thing or two from the second-hand car trade when it comes to weasel words!)

But of course, the campaign in Afghanistan is not one of two armies facing off against each other.  It is one, clod-hopping, stumble-bumming army (because that is the nature of all armies everywhere) facing a more or less hostile population who, whilst they might hate each other for sundry tribal and/or religious and/or political and/or business reasons (usually the latter!), are combined in their desire for all foreigners to fuck off and leave them alone.  In so far as I can understand it, Maj. Gen. Carter's operational inspiration arose from a desire to make nicely-nicely with the civilians and by holding the roads open at all times to allow trade to flourish thereby winning friends and influencing people.  To which I can only ask - where do they find these little innocents?  And why do they put them in charge of armies?  Col. Tunnel is entirely right to suggest that putting troops into static positions guarding roads is simply to offer perfect targets for the enemy.  And who in hell actually likes any government, let alone one held in power by foreign troops?

Now, in the unlikely event that Maj. Gen. Carter reads this from ex-Cpl. Duff and complains,  my answer is simple - just look at Afghanistan - NOW - TODAY - after years of all your clever, subtle strategies and tactics!  You lost, Carter, but so did you, Tunnel, you poor man's John Wayne!  The pair of you should have taken one look at the country, and another look at recent history, and then told your bosses in Washington and London that there was absolutely no chance of ever running Afghanistan.  If they failed to listen to you then you should have put the lives of your men before your rabid desire for higher rank - and resigned!

The only operational plan that might have achieved some success should have been applied years ago when you should have wrecked the country's infrastructure (not a long job!) and departed, leaving a letter on the presidential desk telling whoever it would be who would eventually run the cesspit country that they had better behave because we know where you live and we can send a missile straight through your front door if you don't!

 

Would you want your son to fight and die for a weasely shit like him?

"You're an absolute shower" was the catchphrase of the ineffable Terry Thomas and how very applicable it is to the bunch of second-hand car dealers former members of the General Staff who were caught out by The Sunday Times flogging their influence in the government and the Ministry of Defence to the highest bidder - in this case a 'supposed' South Korean company selling drones.

According to The Telegraph:

Lord Dannatt said last night that the bogus lobbyists offered to pay him a monthly fee of £8,000 if he would approach senior figures in the MoD on behalf of the company. The peer said he did not agree to accept any money, however he told the undercover reporters from the Sunday Times that it might be possible to make an “indirect approach” to senior figures at the department.

So far as I can tell, none of them told the fake lobbyists to jump in their sampan and 'Foxtrot Oscar' back to Korea, or, perhaps more politely, simply write out the telephone number of the Ministry of Defence and hand it to them.  It isn't just the greed that practically dribbles out of the corners of their mouths but their dim, dumb naïveté in failing to spot, or even suspect, the trick being played on them.  Cupidity and stupidity all wrapped up in fancy uniforms and smothered in bullshit about comradeship and duty.

"What an absolute shower!"

 

"The Chicago Code", or, codswallop, as we call it 'over here'!

At first I was intrigued by advanced news of The Chicago Code because it came from the team that had produced a fairly good cop series some time ago.  As its first airing approached my eagerness began dropping in proportion to my sniggers increasing.  It was, claimed the preview, a police story in which a gutsy Chicago cop - and a woman at that! - gains the top job as Superintendent of the City Police Department.  That produced snigger #1!  Then we were told that this living breathing 'statue of liberty' was going to clean up Chicago.  The sniggers rapidly turned into howls of weeping laughter.  Even so, broad-minded chap that I am, I gave it a go and within, I think, the first five minutes this female Titon made her first appearance - to dangerously hysterical screechings as I lay on the floor with fists and feet pounding and crying, "No more, please, no more!"  I assumed, you see, that the producers would have chosen a Rosa Klebb look-alike who would probably be a lesbian but who would at least look like a grizzled, experienced cop.  Wrong again, Duff, for this was the lady who we were supposed to believe had risen through the ranks of the Chicago Police Deprtment to the top job:

Jennifer Beals is her name and she is actually 48 years old but looks 28 and is slimmer than a really, really slim thing and as elegant as a fashion model.  But a hard-bitten, tough cop she ain't!  Then we are introduced to the statutory, male, rough-tough cop who is still low-ranker in the Homicide Department but whom she chooses to be the 'noo' secret leader of her 'noo' secret task force which will clear up Chicagoan corruption.

The other drumming sound you can hear is Rahm Emanuel's heels hitting the floor of his office in City Hall as he, too, watches the first episode.  Alas, dear reader, I cannot tell you what happened after those first five minutes because I had switched off, and nor will you learn anything from me as to when or how Chicago is finally turned into the City of Sweetness and Light.  As far as I am concerned this series is an ex-series!

 

"Good Cop" and absolutely brilliant TV drama

I hesitate to write at this particular moment because I have just finished watching a recording of the last episode of Good Cop played on BBC1 and I am genuinely in an emotional state.  This, to use the very old, almost flogged to death cliché, was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.  In it we followed the descent into hell of a young 'scouse' copper who does the 'right' things in the 'wrong' manner and once begun can no longer control events.  Like Hamlet (whom he does not resemble) he might well howl to the heavens, "How all occasions do conspire against me".

All of the acting was first-rate but Warren Brown playing the tragic-hero was simply superb.  By and large his face gave nothing away so that the occasional small movements, only apparent in close up, under-scored his emotional state far better than histrionics.  I would pay good money to see this young actor play Coriolanus.  To add to the pleasure of this excellent series there was writing of the very highest order providing an intelligent text but not too unbelievably intelligent for the characters delivering it.  The directing was superb and several of the action incidents in the story line had me on the edge of my chair.

This was a truly great piece of television drama.  It deserves a second showing on BBC1, this time played over successive nights rather than weekly, but that is probably quite beyond the intelligence of the BBC hierarchy.  Maybe it will re-appear on BBC4 where it will well and truly knock out all those super Scandinavian police stories.  I will keep an eye out for it and let you know if it re-appears but in the meantime, if there is a DVD release - then buy it - buy it now!

Meanwhile I shall retire to a quiet room and weep at the fall of 'Constable Rocksavage'.

 

'Deogolwulf' unmasked!

I have long wondered at the identity of the man lurking behind the 'nom-de-keyboard', Deogolwulf, and now, at long last, courtesy of the excellent Corky Again, I have it!

We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind, for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.

There you have it, people, pure unadulterated 'Deogolwulf' in all his caustic splendour, the exact ... er ... ooops ... sorry ... my mistake ... actually that was the late Sir Peter Medawar, an absolutely terrific biology swot with a line in philosophy.  So, 'they seek him here, they seek him there, they seek that damned Deogowulf everywhere' - but still with no success.

Oh well, back to "The Sun - We Love It"!

 

So why didn't Jimmy Savile 'abuse' me?

Well, I suppose the answer to my question is the fact that when he achieved 'fame' I was a grown man and not a child and therefore he wouldn't have fancied me.  But still, it is irritating because I, too, could have joined the gold rush to sue the BBC, Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Broadmoor loony-bin and anyone else I could think of for a shed-load of dosh.

The sharp-eyed amongst you will have spotted the inverted commas round the word 'abuse' in my title.  I use them to indicate that there is a world of difference between a little girl having her leg stroked by 'dear old Great-Uncle Sam' at her birthday party because, well, he's 'good old great-uncle Sam' and he's always been a bit too affectionate with his nieces but no harm done; and then at the other extreme there is the vile monstrosity of three men simultaneously gang-banging a girl of, say five or six years.  In between those extremes lies that 'world of difference' I referred to earlier.

Some much shrewder and far more experienced commentators than me have what they call a 'bull-shit detector'.  Alas, mine is not yet very good which is why I get things wrong so frequently, but I do have a very good nose for sniffing hysteria in the air!  And it's amazing, you know, how the hysteria levels rise as the possible amounts of compensation rise, an example, you might think, of action at a distance!

Now the gamut of possible actions that lay between the two extremes I described above is one thing, but the range of 'damage' that is caused by any of them, is altogether a different set of possibilities.  One girl having her crutch felt whilst fully dressed will shrug it off (perhaps she has a Great-Uncle Sam of her own) where-as another girl will be traumatised.  The only thing you can absolutely rely upon is not to rely on the evidence of professional 'psycho-babblers'!  I can say with complete confidence that when it reaches court the range of activities indulged in by Savile will all, without fail, have been hugely traumatic - without exception.

Perhaps I should add at this point that I write all this having once been the victim of 'abuse' myself as a child.  A man standing next to me in a public lavatory took my hand and placed it over his penis for a few seconds before exiting hurriedly.  I remember the incident, I was about 9 or 10 at the time, but I only think about it on average once every ten years.  Traumatised, I was not!  But then again, I am a very phlegmatic personality capable of withstanding "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" where-as others are more highly-tuned, shall we say.

Even so, when it comes to deciding the seriousness of these alleged crimes I would suggest that any attempt to re-imburse the victims based on the supposed damage to their psyches should be ignored.  Instead there should be a standard charge against any organisation which is shown to have failed in its 'duty of care' towards children on its premises or under its control.  These rates should increase heftily on a common-sense scale based on what exactly took place, ranging from, say, a squeezed bottom through a dress, up to penetration.

Mind you, as it is the sanctimonious BBC which is the main target, and without, I assure you, the slightest hint of hysteria on my part, I don't mind putting the boot into them, either - kiddie fiddlers!

A touch of Delhi belly in the night!

Actually, it began the night before.  God knows where I picked it up because I wouldn't go into an Indian restaurant if you paid me.  It is, to me, an amazing thing that an itsy-bitsy, titchy, little microbe that you can only spy through a microscope can wreak such havoc to a healthy body.  Anyway, in line with my policy when taken down with a truly serious illness like the dreaded Man Flu, or a dose of the trots, I have instantly taken to my bed.  Fortunately, the 'Memsahib' is only too happy to trot up and down stairs to sooth my fevered brow, although in this case my brow is not the problem!  Anyway, no more blogging today - hopefully I will see you tomorrow.

Me, me, me and you and you and you!

These random ruminations follow on from my earlier post on Thomas Szasz.  In the very finest traditions of D&N, of course, they are based on virtually nil professional expertise!  The mind/body problem is as old as Man and I don't suppose that I will contribute anything to a solution.  This is, really, an effort on my part to clear my own confusions.

There are, it seems to me, as many human personalities as there are humans and each and everyone is unique whilst at the same time each shares an enormous number of characteristics with most of the others.  The steady, merciless pressure of evolution has ground down most extreme characteristics.  Personality, it seems to me, can only be judged by actions.  You might sit and brood on murder but unless you actually do it, or attempt it, no-one will ever know.  Thus, I, the real, secret 'I', sitting inside this shell of skin, peer out through my eye sockets at you, the shell of skin opposite where-in the real 'you' hides, and I try as best I can to evaluate your personality.  The only clues I have reside in your behaviour - and that means very much more what you do rather than what you say!

By and large, the number of behavious is limited by the design of our bodies and the laws of physics.  That still leaves an enormous number of possibilities and humans being human there is a tendency to aggregate them so that such-and-such behaviours, being common, are considered 'normal', whilst others, being more or less uncommon, are not.  (It is around this point that semantics begins to interfere with the free-flow of ideas but I hope we can keep it to a minimum.)  For different societal and historical reasons some forms of uncommon behaviour might be labelled as eccentric but harmless whilst others as mad, bad and dangereous to be around!  For example, generally, killing people, especially strangers, for no apparent reason is frowned upon - but not all the time!  Some societies perceive all strangers to be a threat and killing them is sensible; equally, in some societies killing an unknown member of a family or clan or tribe with which you are in a state of vendetta will be encouraged!  So we need to be very careful before we classify certain behaviours as 'abnormal' or 'psychopathic' or - whatever.  A constantly evolving legal system offers only a very rough guide as to how to classify different types of behaviour.  The history, just in my lifetime, of the legal attitude to homosexuality is but one very obvious example.

As we struggle with these problems which seem to grow in complexity the harder we look at them, an even more important question arises, and to provide this miserable blog with a veneer of learning I will, courtesy of Google Translate, break into Latin - qui judicat?  Who judges?  In simpler times, anyone who exhibited strange or eccentric behaviours (as judged by those with 'normal' behaviours!) was either locked up or possibly burned at the stake.  Today, it seems to me, we lack the iron will to burn them, and also the nerve to lock them up.  Instead, so it appears, we let them roam freely but drug them up to the eyeballs to sap their wills.  Obviously, or at least, it is obvious to me if not to the medical profession, this procedure is not safe and with all the regularity of rain at a Test Match, some 'nutter' stabs someone to death.

So, on what basis do we decide how to deal with people who exhibit 'strange' behaviour, that is, behaviour which does not fit what we think, and decide, is 'normal'?  It seems to me that we must start with a basic premise - everyone deserves to live their life free from physical attack.  However, in deciding whether or not someone is likely to carry out such an attack it is necessary to judge by their behaviour, not by some judgment arrived at by a psychiatrist attempting the impossible, that is, to try and look inside someone else's secret self.  Of course, this leaves open the possibility of someone going off on a rampage without warning, but that is the very stuff of life - and death.  It is only after an event that we should make judgment.  Sometimes, of course, there will be behavioural warning signs, like the constant wife-beater, and action can be taken then to restrain the person including imprisonment.

But there are a variety of behaviours, judged to be 'abnormal', which fall short of violence against a third party.  For example, one of my commenters in the previous post mentioned a lady who, in every other respect, appeared to be 'normal' but who nevertheless talked to an imaginary third party.  Well, lock me up because I frequently 'talk' to third parties.  In fact, just this afternoon I was talking to you!  Yes, you, and you, and you, and all the others who read this blog.  To be fair, I wasn't talking out loud and my lips weren't moving (well, not much) but even so the 'Memsahib' asked me what I was thinking about and I told her that I was trying to compose a blog post.  But on other occasions, just like you, I do talk in my head to other people some of whom are dead!  Does that make me a nutter?  I think not.  It makes me human.

Until the malign influence of Freud it was violent behaviour or superstition or political/religious bigotry that decided whether you were insane or not.  Today it is pseudo medical 'science' that decides.  There are cranks, who call themselves psychiatrists' who truly believe that they can 'see' inside your 'secret self'.  They cannot.  One commenter pointed to x-ray scans of brain behaviour  which, according to him, offer absolute proof of this or that or the other.  I have no doubt that certain impulses applied to a person will result in certain sorts of increased brain activity but actually deciphering accurately what that activity amongst the zillions of synapses inside a brain means as an expression of the secret self is pure unadulterated rubbish.  You should read my brain scan after a speech by David Cameron!  Murderous isn't the word!  It is, in my view, barely one step up from reading tea leaves!

I remember my days as an army interrogator in which we were trained to try and grade 'prisoners' as either introvert or extrovert, and then, in both cases, to divide them even further into either extreme or mild versions.  It acted as very rough guide as to how to conduct the forthcoming interrogations and sometimes it worked but more often it didn't.  The secret self nearly always remains secret.  Here is a witty summary by Tom Stoppard from his play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour set inside a Soviet prison for the allegedly insane:

Alexander:    I have a complaint.

Doctor:         (Opening file)  Yes I know - pathological development of the personality with paranoid delusions.

Alexander:    No, there's nothing the matter with me.

Doctor:          (Closing file)  There you are, you see.

Alexander:    My complaint is about the man in my cell.

Doctor:            Ward.

Alexander:    He thinks he has an orchestra.

Doctor:           Yes, he has an identity problem. I forget his name.

Alexander:    His behaviour is aggresive.

Doctor:            He complains about you, too.  Apparently you cough during the diminuendos.

Alexander:    Is there anything you can do?

Doctor:            Certainly.  (Producing a red pill box from the drawer.)   Suck one of these every four hours.

Alexander:     But he's a raving lunatic.

Doctor: `        Of course.  The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while the people walking about outside are all mad is merely a literary conceit, put about by people who should be locked up.  I assure you there's not much in it.  Taken as a whole the sane are out there and the sick are in here.  For example you are in here because you have delusions, that sane people are put in mental hospitals.

Alexander:    But I am in a mental hospital.

Doctor:            That's what I said.  If you're not prepared to discuss your case rationally, we're going round in circles.

And so on into an infinity of mirrors . . .

 

Boring is good!

I have mentioned before my habit of keeping Sky News on at all times in the kitchen with the sound off so that each time I pass through a quick glance tells me whether or not WWIII has broken out.  For the last few days the news has been totally tedious and boring and that is not entirely due to the annual political party conferences taking place.  The fact is that our poor old globe has been remarkably quiet.  Of course, it isn't boring at all if you happen to be a 'Tom' teaching sundry scallywags how to shoot a rifle and hoping they don't take it into their turbened heads to practice on you; nor, I suppose, is it very boring if you are unfortunate enough to live in Syria; and, of course, if you happen to be a poor Mexican peasant trying to scratch a living in the area between two drug cartels life is anything but boring.  But even so, looking at it from a lofty global point of view, as we tend to do here at D&N, it's all bloody boring!  The only items I keep seeing on Sky is the hideously ugly mug of that very peculiar man, Jimmy Saville, who, surprise-surprise (not) turns out to have been very peculiar; and that American pedalist with a totally improbable string of victories to his name which now turn out to be, er, very improbable.  What a yawn!

Still, boring is good because of the alternative - "exciting times"!  I don't do 'exciting' any more.  Total tedium is my métier.  The only trouble with tedium, though, is that it leaves you time to think and, dammit, one of the things you think about is what 'exciting' thing is going to happen next and, imagination always being worse than reality, one becomes even more excited!

Oh sod it, I'm off for an afternoon nap - if WWIII breaks out, don't wake me, I'll find out soon enough!

 

Thomas - who? Thomas SZASZ!

But first of all let me pause and, metaphorically speaking, cover my e-pal, Louise, with kisses - poor girl!  Until yesterday I had never heard of Thomas Szasz who, incidentally, died on September 8th at the ripe old age of 92.  I cannot find the words to express my gratitude to Louise for bringing this man to my attention, er, hence the metaphorical kisses.

So, who was this Thomas Szasz?  Well, with the usual caveat, you can get a very good idea of his life and achievements from his Wiki entry which I urge you all to read.  He, during the course of his lifetime, has put into words all the nagging doubts and the confused fumbling thoughts I have had for years concerning the nature of psychiatry and psychiatric practice.  Let me just quote a few lines from his Wiki entry which will provide you with the flavour of the man:

His books The Myth of Mental Illness (1960) and The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970) set out some of the arguments with which he is most associated. [...]

As Szasz said, having become convinced of the fictitious character of mental disorders, the frequent injuriousness of psychiatric treatments, the immorality of psychiatric coercions and excuses, he set himself a task to delegitimize the legitimating agencies and authorities and their vast powers, enforced by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, mental health laws, mental health courts, and mental health sentences. [...]

"Since theocracy is the rule of God or its priests, and democracy the rule of the people or of the majority, pharmacracy is therefore the rule of medicine or of doctors." [...]

Oh boy, is that ever righter than right!  And this sums it up exactly:

"The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed."

I know it is quite ridiculous but I am so excited by discovering this man.  My lonely grumblings about the iniquity amounting to an inquisition on the part of the medical hierarchy, in general, and the psychiatric branch of it, in particular, has brought down on my head the ill-tempered abuse of most of my friends at one time or another - usually towards the end of well-oiled dinner parties when they all start swapping their medical histories and going all gooey-eyed over their wonderful, wonderful doctors!

Also, at the risk of being even more boring than usual, I must repeat again my excited and passionate belief that this internet-thingie is the greatest invention in the history of Man.  I have mentioned before the appalling state of my ignorance (and I keep 'Deogolwulf' around like Lear's fool to remind me should I ever forget!) and the fact is that via the internet I have learned more about more things in the last ten years than I have learned in the rest of my life. Anyway, I can see yet another book approaching at speed. 

In the meantime, out of respect, I shall sit quietly for a moment and contemplate the life of a great and original thinker - Thomas Szasz. 

 

Nothing to say - I plead the Fifth!

It doesn't happen very often, as you regulars have learned the hard way, but the fact is that this morning I have nothing to say.  (No need to applaud!)  So, without a word of apology, I shall, instead, quote the words of others.  There is no plan or design to these quotations, I am simply picking books off my shelves, opening them and quoting what I fancy.  Alas, gentlemen, Fifty Shades of Grey has not yet entered these hallowed halls!

In the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, the Reverent Robert Southey, the then Poet Laureate of England, declared in two volumes of passionate prose that manufacturing was all some terrible mistake.  Not only were the new factories and worker row houses laying waste to the pastoral harmonies of British town and countryside, but Watt, Arkwright, Stephenson and the other heroes of innovation had plunged the poor into a new form of slavery to immiserating machines.  Wealth, it was clear to Southey, as to many subsequent seers, peering squeamishly through the smoke and soot of industry, creates poverty.

Two thoughts arise in my mind.  First, why are so many of our Poet Laureates such total tits?  Second, the non-seeing seers are still with us despite having been proved wrong over and over again.  The quote comes from the 'Introduction to the British Edition' of George Gilder's book Wealth & Poverty.  I first read it in the early '80s and it remains a favourite in my memory.

It chanced on that very evening that Sir Nigel Loring having supped before sunset, as was his custom, and having himself seen that Pommers and Cadsand, his two war-horses, with the thirteen hacks, the five jennets, my lady's three palfreys, and the great dapple-grey roussin, had all their needs supplied, had taken his dogs for an evening breather.  Sixty or seventy of them, large and small, smooth and shaggy - deer-hound, boar-hound, blood-hound, wolf-hound, mastiff, alaun, talbot, lurcher, terrier, spaniel - snapping, yelling and whining, with score of lolling tongues and waving tails, came surging down the narrow lane which leads from Twynham kennels to the bank of Avon.  Two russet-clad varlets, with loud halloo and cracking whips, walked thigh-deep amid the swarm, guiding, controlling, and urging.  Behind came Sir Nigel himself, with Lady Loring upon his arm, the pair walking slowly and sedately, as befitted both their age and their condition, while they watched  with a smile in their eyes the scrambling crowd in front of them.  They paused, however, at the bridge, and, leaning their elbows upon the stonework, they stood looking down at their own faces in the glassy stream, and at the swift flash of speckled trout against the tawny gravel.

From The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a book I was given to study at my Grammar School in 1951 and which I loved so much that I stole it - mea culpa!  The irony that I learned more about moral behaviour from that single book than all the churches I have ever attended and yet I stole the damned thing, is not lost on me!  If you have children or grand children around the age of eleven, give them a copy for Xmas.

When they had eaten he took the boy out on the gravelbar below the bridge and he pushed away the thin shore ice with a stick and they knelt there while he washed the boy's face and his hair.  The water was so cold the boy was crying.  They moved down the gravel to find fresh water and he washed his hair again as well as he could and finally stopped because the boy was moaning with the cold of it.  He dried him with the blanket, kneeling there in the glow of the light with the shadow of the bridge's understructure broken across the palisade of treetrunks beyond the creek.  This is my child, he said.  I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair.  That is my job.  Then he wrapped him in the blanket and carried him to the fire.

A random passage from Cormac McCarthy's cataclysmic novel The Road.  A grueling read but worth every minute of it.  In fact, having hooked it out I may have to re-read it!

'Right there,' I said, and started to to point at the moniter.  But I was pointing with both hands and they didn't make it to the screen.  My right hand stopped at his neck.  My left took the gun out of his left.  It dropped on the floor and sounded exactly like a pound of steel hitting the a plywood board covered with linoleum.  I kept my eyes on the office window.  Beck and Duke still had their backs to me.  I got both hands round Doll's neck and squeezed.  He thrashed around wildly.  Fought back.  I shifted my grip.  The chair fell over under him.  I squeezed harder.  Watched the window.  Beck and Duke were just standing there.  Their backs to me.  Their breath was misting in front of them.  Doll started clawing at my wrists.  I squeezed harder still.  His tongue came out of his mouth.  Then he did the smart thing and gave up on my wrists and reached up behind him and went for my eyes.  I pulled my head back and hooked one hand under his jaw and put the other flat against the side of his head.  Wrenched his jaw hard to the right and smashed his downward to the left and broke his neck.

Of course, the incomparable Jack Reacher doing what he does best in Lee Child's book Persuader.  Be honest, can you really see that little squirt Tom Cruise playing the role of Jack Reacher?

If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations.

Cheers, Sir Jack Falstaff, make mine a double sack on the rocks with a splash of sherris!

 

 

My new hero Hendrik!

The counter-revolution has begun and our glorious leader is Hendrik Pohl!  Under his inspired leadership, at last, gentlemen, I can make the great announcement - the tie is back!  That appalling, open-collared, Israeli politician look is dead and buried.  From now on, no gentleman of taste and discernment will be seen without a tie - and not just any old tie, tied any old how, but a proper, elegant tie with exactly the right knot to fit the chosen shirt.  (Let me warn you, Gentlemen, Hendrik is hot on shirts, collar fitting, collar shape and angle of cut, none of this escapes his eagle eye!)

You may read his expertise here where he analyses the respective dress sense of the two current presidential candidates.  Alas and alack, he gives Obama a points lead over Romney:

Now I should confess my own bias in this matter - I am definitely a tie-man.  I didn't used to be back in the days when I had to wear a tie but, given the vagaries of human psychology you will not be surprised to know that now, when I no longer need to, I can hardly wait for the opportunity to do so.  And, I have become a bit of a mouth-foamer when I see our Prime Minister trying, unsuccessfully, to appear 'one of the boys' by going about his prime ministerial duties tieless.  "Yob! Scruff! Phoney!" are the least of the epithets I hurl at the 'telly'.  Can I really vote for a man who wears a suit and no tie - I think not!

Please do not think that I am a latter-day Beau Brummel.  Normally, I shuffle around my village in scruffy cargo pants and T-shirts, "dogs bark at me as I pass" and elderly ladies tend to cross the street when they see me coming, but, when the occasion calls for it - what a transformation was there!  My one and only suit is brought forth and a shirt is chosen.  There then passes an excruciating hour or three whilst I agonise over which tie to wear.  (I had a major throw-out of ties some time ago - yes, I wept! - and I am now down to about18 or 20 ties.)  I should make clear that all of my ties are patterned or plain coloured rather than striped.  (Happily, my old Brigade tie is a series of light blue Pegasus horses on a maroon background which goes with almost anything and is quite attractive, and as no-one knows what it means I don't have to explain it!)  I must also confess, which might bring down the wrath of Hendrik my hero upon my head, that four of my favourite ties are plain-coloured knit ties with very old-fashioned, straight across ends to them.  All the rage back when 'the colonel was a subaltern' but today, like their owner, a little passé - but I like 'em!

Finally, as I am now in the confessional, let me admit to one last piece of carefully unflamboyant flamboyance!  I am, when full dressed, an aficionado of the carelessly tucked-in, floppy, foppy, top-pocket handkerchief.  I have several and the colour must, simply must, darlings, not match but compliment or contrast with the tie!  The world of fashion has hardly recovered from the shock of the published photo of me in my Long Johns and so I feel it unfair to publish a photo of me in my finery.  And anyway, as I only appear in it about once every two years it might be some time!

Anyway, pop over to Hendrik's place and see an analysis of the Obama/Romney scrap that you will not read in the boring, lying MSM.  Also, you will learn four different ways to knot a tie.  To be honest, I can never quite get the knack of those diagrams which explain the 'right over left, left over right' and all of that, it's a bit like trying to follow Deogolwulf's philosophical arguments!  But you lot are brainier than me - and also, whilst you're there you might just find the perfect Xmas present, er, for me, of course!

ADDITIONAL:  'Hendrik the Hero' informs me that he has opened a polling booth in which you can choose and then vote for the best tie for either of the two presidential candidates.  Get over there now and choose your favourite choker!

http://www.tie-a-tie.net/blog/obama-vs-romney-necktie-vote/

 

 

Honestly, Sir, I'm doing my prep

I am, so to speak, girding my loins, or, if that is too inflammatory an image, I am doing my homework before I undertake my in-depth investigations of Messrs. Disraeli & Gladstone, former 'Managing Directors of Great Britain Inc'.  As I indicated down below, whilst I know a fair bit about the early decades of the 19th century when Bonaparte provided some excitement for those of us who enjoy vicarious thrills, and the latter decades provided Bismarckian and Prussian mischief and venom to keep keep me amused, all the inbetween seems deadly boring by comparison.  But, as the 'cousins' say, all this is my 'bad' and I am determined to rectify my ignorance.  However, before launching into biographies of these two 'giants' of British history I had a quick look at my book shelves to see if their was something that might set the scene, so to speak.  Hey-ho and hoorah, there was an old paperback entitled, rather forbiddingly, "The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918" by A. J. P. Taylor.  I have a soft spot for Taylor because once, as a callow youth, I had the impertinence to joust with him at a meeting of CND when he was a guest speaker in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament.  I can't remember the details but I am fairly sure he squidged me like an irritating mosquito.  See, I was an argumentative sod even then!

I suppose I must have read this book at sometime - it was first published in 1954 and my paperback version was printed in 1971 - but for the life of me I cannot remember it.  Anyway, yesterday, in between meeting old friends, I managed to begin reading his Introduction which is superb.  Clear, straightforward English that directs the reader immediately to the crucial factors involved but which does not avoid some dry wit.  Hence, in a footnote he writes: "It becomes wearisome to add 'except the Italians' to every generalization.  Hencefort it must be assumed." 

Oh boy, am I going to enjoy this one!

Yet another 'Away Day'

From crack a' dawn until "the chimes at midnight" on Monday I am away.  I leave the site to your good care - just make sure to toss out those two old drunken sailors if they get noisy!  If life becomes unbearably boring without my wit and wisdom you can always watch the Tory party conference!

Or are philosophers just ill-mannered yobs?

I ask the question as a follow-on from the question I posed earlier, "Are philosophers more like lawyers or car salesmen?"  I am provoked to it (so blame him!) by my old e-pal, 'Norm', who has been reading naughty magazines, in this case, The Journal of Philosophical Psychiatry.  I say "naughty" because how else can you describe a rag that implies that professional ethicists are a bunch of oafs and grunt-snufflers?  I am shocked, I tell you, shocked!

If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behind clutter at the end of a session (versus leaving one's seat tidy). By these three measures, audiences in ethics sessions did not appear to behave any more courteously than did audiences in non-ethics sessions.

'Norm', himself a moral philosopher of  impeccable courtesy and considerable intelligence, asks a couple of very acute questions.  First:

What were these ethicists like before they became ethicists? Maybe they were real hooligans - like just totally?

In other words, a good course, or dose, perhaps, of moral philosophy might be a way of de-yobbing yobs!  I remain unconvinced, myself, having just experienced some religious philosophers at first hand.  Their Christian beliefs do not run as far as courtesy and kindness to anyone who disagrees with them, but then again, that is a characteristic that makes constant re-appearances throughout the history of their religion of 'love and charity'!

The second point 'Norm' raises is that their sins of omission and commission do not rate very highly in yobbery terms.  Certainly, they would not be enough to gain you entry into my gang!  He asks:

Second, have the authors tested to see how ethicists and non-ethicists compare when judged on more serious delinquencies, such as: throwing rotten fruit at the speaker; elbowing others aside and knocking them down so as to get to, or out of, the door first; smashing up the furniture?

Ah, now, that's more like it!  Well, I suppose I could try and attend one of Edward Feser's lectures and propose that "classic theism" is a load of old cods - just so long as I was by the door and able to make a quick getaway!

 

And nobody ever wrote songs about Detroit

Over recent months I have given Chicago a hard time on this blog and I think it's time to apologise.  It can't be quite as terrible as its reputation would have me believe if someone provided Frank Sinatra with a terrific song to sing about the place, and someone else wrote a witty musical called Chicago.  So, even if it did spawn Obama and Emanuel, it can't be all bad - especially if one holds one's nose and considers - Detroit!

My first visit when I click onto the 'News' section of my bookmarked favourites, is Drudge which provides me with a quick overview of the serious news down to the trivial news.  Naturally, I begin with the trivial!  Well, it's always more interesting and usually provides a snigger or three.  Today, Detroit featured not once but twice.  I could not resist one of the stories because the writer's name is Charlie LeDuff of FOX 2 News.  Oh boy, do I ever like that name!  'LeDuff' just sounds so much more 'je ne sais pas' than plain old 'Duff'.  I may have to consider a name change.

Anyway, my Franco-American 'cousin', Charlie, tells us all of the shenanigans - oh, all right then, the shagging - going on in the Detroit Police Department.  Apparently, the Chief of Police promised promotion to a, um, lady officer in return for regular, in-depth, er, interviews, shall we say?  I didn't read the story in great detail, and alas, my 'cuz' Charlie either failed to write the story clearly or was attacked by some sub-editor with a grudge, but in any event I couldn't quite get the hang of the details.  Apparently the Mayor's office is involved - who'dathunkit?!

In the other story from CBS, the Detroit Police union - so warning bells should ring - have actually begun issuing leaflets to anyone visiting delightful, downtown Detroit warning them that they do so at their own risk.  According to the union, the murder rate in Detroit is the highest in the entire USA.  They say it is because they are so  over-worked and underpaid but perhaps it may be that they are all too busy shagging - I don't know.  All I can say with certitude is that I have cancelled my summer holidays in Detroit!

 

The bottomless pit of my ignorance

There's no end to it!  The more I try to learn something the more I realise how miniscule my knowledge is.  Take for example, Disraeli and Gladstone.  Oh, go on, give them a try.  How much do you know about either of them?  Almost certainly more than me.  Disraeli?  Bit of a flash-Harry, Jewish chap in a frock coat.  Gladstone?  Bit of a dull, Anglo chap in a frock coat.  Gladstone, I think, out-whiskered Disraeli!  Mind you, I do know a bit about Lord Salisbury because I have actually read Andrew Roberts' biography.  Proper chap, that Salisbury, and an all-out winner in the whiskers competition, too!

Anyway, now, because I have just read Dominic Sandbrook in The Mail, I simply have to read a good biography of both of them.  I have a vague memory that the late Roy Jenkins wrote a much-praised biography of  Gladstone but I am slightly wary because Jenkins, as a liberal politician himself, might be a touch too sympathetic.  Anyway, if any of you lot 'out there' can recommend anything I would be pleased to know.

So what, I hear you ask, did Mr. Sandbrook have to say on the subject of these two mighty Victorian statesmen?  Well, enough to convince me that Disraeli was the Tony Blair of his age:

At bottom, Benjamin Disraeli was interested only in Benjamin Disraeli. His entire political career was devoted to his own advancement; it is not for nothing that he famously boasted of having climbed ‘to the top of the greasy pole’.

As a young man in the 1830s, he tried to make his name as a novelist. But when money and fame were slow to materialise, he decided on politics instead.

Like so many of today’s professional politicians, Disraeli had distinctly mercenary motives. Although his father was a rich literary critic, young Benjamin had run up large debts because of his inordinate fondness for the high life. As an MP, however, the law would protect him from imprisonment for debt.

His principles, meanwhile, were as changeable as the winds.

I'm not suggesting that Mr. Blair is a financial wastrel but he certainly pursues the big bucks with a dedication that is almost frightening.  Back to Disraeli:

Having initially pretended to be a radical, he then flirted with ultra-reactionary Toryism, opposing efforts to improve the lot of the downtrodden working classes and scorning attempts to reform the corrupt political system.

Indeed, it spoke volumes about Disraeli’s essentially destructive style that he made his name with a devastating attack on his own party leader, the dogged and serious Sir Robert Peel, who wanted to scrap the archaic Corn Laws which protected British farmers against foreign competition.

Peel and his fellow reformers believed that free trade would benefit ordinary British families, who were naturally delighted at the prospect of cheaper food. But in this crucial test of principle, Disraeli preferred to back the wealthy vested interests of the day.

It was entirely typical of his cynical style, though, that once the Corn Laws had bitten the dust, he made no effort to restore them. Throughout his career, he saw principle as subordinate to tactical self-interest.

Oh boy, do I have to learn more about this man!  But what of Gladstone?  According to Mr. Sandbrook:

 Although Gladstone and Disraeli are forever associated in the public imagination, they could hardly have been more different. Disraeli was funnier, more flamboyant and more dashing.

But on almost every count that actually matters, Gladstone was far superior. He was a more convinced reformer, a more imaginative chancellor and a dedicated public servant who genuinely cared about the plight of the poor.

He upheld the principles of free trade, banished corruption from the civil service and introduced universal education for Britain’s children. And although he campaigned passionately for oppressed peoples abroad, he shrank from foreign adven- tures and despised Disraeli’s jingoistic excesses.

Above all, Gladstone was a man of impeccable moral seriousness, a hard-working, high-minded man with the courage to address the thorny issues of the day who left Britain a richer, fairer and more virtuous society than he found it.

Oh dear!  And just when I thought I could return to my favourite pulp fiction for a bit of R&R after all that learning from Ferdinand Mount, it's 'bak to skool' time again!

The GOP's Michael Moore or 'He Who Speaks Truth To Power'?

Dinesh D'Souza is the name but what his nature is appears to be a matter of contention. I wrote a post based on one of his articles for Fox News.   I rather liked his style because he frequently picks up a big stick, or a sharp impliment and leaves poor Barry Obama bleeding and bruised!  Yes, I know, he looks a bit like an Indian Rowan Atkinson but he is, in fact, the very latest media rotweiller to emerge from the American Right.

     Rowan Atkinson                                                Dinesh D'Souza

Apparently, he has just released a film called "Obama's America: 2016" which, I gather, delves deeply into Obama's murky background, an area hitherto considered by virtue of a 'gentleman's agreement' off limits to the supine, corrupt, American media.  Also in the film, D'Souza takes Obama's Marxism as real and paints a picture of the USA after another four years of rule by his 'Central Committee'.  A fairly arcane subject, one would have thought, but it has enjoyed an unexpected success in cinemas across the USA.  If it helps boot Obama out then it can't be all bad!

However, some people think it is very bad indeed.  Both Jack Cashill at The American Thinker and Gene Healy at The Washington Examiner express some severe doubts concerning Mr. D'Souza's ability and judgment.  Both are impeccable conservatives not averse to giving President Obama a slap when it is deserved but it is Mr. Healy who dubs D'Souza "the Right's Michael Moore", a damning indictment.  You may read both of their opinions and then draw your own conclusion.  However, I am glad that there are watchful eyes on the American Right prepared to undertake critical assessments of their own kind in the media.  It is precisely that lack of self-criticism which has allowed the vast bulk of the so-called 'liberal' media to slide en masse into the sewage of intellectual corruption in which they now wallow.

 

The Denver chainsaw massacre!

Not much time right now but a quick word on 'The Debate'.  I had a bad night last night and lying awake I stuck my radio ear-piece in my ear and caught the last hour of it.  It should have been stopped on grounds of needless cruelty!  Obama was hopeless and Romney was 'Slick Willy' personified.  I have just had a very quick look at the immediate re-actions of the MSM 'over there' and even they, through gritted keyboards, have been forced to admit that Obama crashed.  You may remember my post on 'The Think Tank' , a group of mostly elderly, middle-class, black Chicagoans who meet regularly at their local coffee shop and whose street-level gossip contained some very interesting insights.  Amongst them was their conviction, based on some vague connections to Obama's mother-in-law, that the Obama family are already planning their post-presidential retreat back to Hawaii.  Mere gossip, I thought, but amusing - until I read that arch liberal, Andrew Sullivan, this morning:

There are two more debates left. I have experienced many times the feeling that Obama just isn't in it, that he's on the ropes and not fighting back, and then he pulls it out. He got a little better over time tonight. But he pulled every punch. Maybe the next two will undo some of the damage. But I have to say I think it was extensive. (My emphasis)

But Sullivan's opening paragraph which he blogged in real time as he watched the TV is absolutely devastating:

10.31 pm. Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama's meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.

Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.

The person with authority on that stage was Romney - offered it by one of the lamest moderators ever, and seized with relish. This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight. It's beyond depressing. But it's true.

I said it before and I will repeat it, unless they find Mitt in bed with a boy scout Obama is dead man walking!

ADDITIONAL:  And lest you doubt me, 'The Kraut' spells it out:

I thought Romney won and Romney won big, he won by two touchdowns. You know, when a challenger just steps up on the stage that already gives him stature. But when he performs the way Romney did, I think it really changes things. It doesn't change the game, but it changes the momentum.

 

Are philosophers more like lawyers or car salesmen?

In the commentary to my post on "This God Business" I was admonished - and how! - by my e-pal, Deogolwulf, and instructed sternly to read the words of wisdom that flow from Mr. Edward Feser, a philosopher much admired by him.  Always an obedient pupil, if not a very bright one, I did as I was told.  How was it for me?  Well, in my heading I ask whether philosophers are more like lawyers or car salesmen but I think I should have added footie fans to the list of possibles!  The first few paragraphs consist mainly of Mr. Feser booting and nutting his philosophical opponents.  Now I know that so-called high-minded swots just love going in with boots and bottles (it must be the unrequited yob in them) and vicious university common-room rows are the stuff of legend, but it is more than somewhat tedious for a reader seeking knowledge.  To give you the flavour these are some of the words that occur in Mr. Feser's first few paragraphs: hacks, mediocrities, intellectual rubbish, this stupid argument, silly argument, utterly contemptible and sleazy, the feeble argument, intellectually dishonest and sleazy, stupid, a slimy debating trick - and needless to say they are aimed at those who disagree with his particular 'opinion'.  (I slightly stress the word 'opinion' because that, at the end of the day (or the last two and half thousand years), is what it amounts to because, as far as I can tell, almost every philosophical thesis put forward suffers with an antithesis that simply will not go away!

Of course, Deogolwulf abjures emotion and warns us all against indulging in it but, alas, we're all human and the fact is that Mr. Feser's tone pisses me off!  Rather like watching a pub fight on Saturday night, one is tempted to put the boot in against this hectoring bully boy.  Mind you, I have a suspicion that his opponents are equally bitchy and it is that sort of constant handbags-at-dawn slapfest that was part of the reason I gave up on philosophy years ago.

I have yet to finish Mr. Feser's blogpost and reached only his first point of contention - after wading through all the nonsense in the first few paragraphs.  His complaint against those who attack him, and his ilk, is for suggesting that what he, Mr. Feser, is proposing is that everything has a cause.  Mr. Feser is outraged, I tell you, outraged!  That is absolutely and definitely not what he is proposing, far from it.  What he is actually putting forward is - now pay attention - what comes into existence has a cause.  Yeeeees, quite!  Well, I have read it, first with one eye and then the other, I have stood on my head and looked at it, I even gave the computer-thingie a slap and took another look, and still I can detect no difference in the essential meaning between the two phrases.  If Mr. Feser is only concerned with things that do not come into existence, well, good luck to him, I say, but it is of no concern to me, I want to know about things that do exist.  But you see what I mean about lawyers and car salesmen.  I do think that all philosophical writings should henceforth come with a government health warning and a reference to the Sale of Goods Act!

I am short of time this morning - it's my 46th wedding anniversary and a posh lunch is called for - but if any of you swots out there can explain the difference I would be most grateful.  However, I should warn you that I may be even less sensible this afternoon than I am this morning.

ADDITIONAL:  For God's sake don't tell  'er indoors' that I said it was my 46th wedding anniversary because, of course, it is actually my 48th but then, time goes so quickly when you are enjoying yourself!

 

Dammit, we can't let the Frogs out art us!

I am grateful, I think, to 'SoD' (Son of Duff) for bringing this to my attention.  It is a statue of Zinedine Zidane, the former captain of the French footie team who, in a famous, or infamous, if you like, incident in the 2006 World Cup Final nutted an Italian defender and was sent off.  The French went on to lose the match on penalties.

The statue has been placed in the grounds of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, a sort of post-modernist depositary for artistic rubbish, much like the Tate Modern in London.  'SoD' has proposed that we should out do the Frogs by erecting a statue of John Terry, a man who has succeeded in being sacked as the England captain not once but twice due to his inability, despite his millions, to rise above the behaviour of a council estate yob.

As a refinement, if that is quite the word, the statue would have an in-built sound system which would broadcast a shortened version of Mr. Terry's latest outburst but leave you, the onlooker, to fill in the blank at the end:

Oi, you! Why don't you fuck off, you black ****

The only question is, where should it be placed?  Outside the Race Relations Board, perhaps?  Nothing like inter-active art - such fun!

 

A damn good novel!

This book would have earned one of my very rare but much sort after 5-star Corker Awards but I have decided that Corker Awards must be confined to pulp fiction only.  This book, Lush Life by Richard Price, I think qualifies as a novel, although, to be honest, I'm not sure quite what the definition of a 'novel' is, not least because I rarely read them.  However, if a novel is concerned as much with character and setting as it is with action then Lush Life easily qualifies.

If I begin by telling you that the author, Richard Price, was a writer on the TV series The Wire then you will know instantly that the quality of the writing will be excellent.  The story is set in an area called the Lower East Side of New York.  From the description it is a district typical of all great western cities, a previously poor area gradually taken over by young, middle-class, arty 'wannabes', situated uneasily between the really affluent centre and the impoverished projects (council estates) on the outskirts.  Needless to say, the friction arising as these very different stratas of society rub and rasp against each other produces considerable crime. 

Thus the story begins with a particularly pointless, almost accidental, killing and as a result we meet our 'hero', Det. Matty Clark.  I placed ironic inverted commas around the word 'hero' but in fact that is exactly what he is.  Middle-aged, rancorously divorced, two useless sons, with a police command chain above him solely concerned with headlines, he struggles to make headway in finding the killer.  There are no brilliant flashes of detecting insight, only his slow, relentless but tedious efforts in following well-honed police procedures.  In this process we meet a gallery of characters who people the neighbourhood and the novel.  Gradually you feel yourself enmeshed in the warp and woof of the Lower East Side, in exactly the same way that occurred in The Wire.  No-one is particularly evil or particularly good, they are all just very, very human.

As a taste of the sardonic humour that arises from time to time, we meet on the very first page the self-styled 'Quality of Life' police team, four case-hardened cops who spend their shifts cruising the 'hood in a police car disguised as a taxi:

The Qality of Life Task Force: four sweatshirts in a bogus taxi set up on the corner of Clinton Street alonside the Williamsburg Bridge off-ramp to profile the salmon run; their mantra: Dope, guns, overtime; their motto: Everyone's got something to lose.

"Is dead tonight"

The four car-stops so far this evening have been washouts: three municipals - a postal inspector, a transit clerk, and a garbageman, all city employees off -limits - and one guy who did have a six-inch blade under his seat but no spring release.

A station-wagon coming off the bridge pulls up abreast of them at the Deancey Street light, the driver, a tall, gray, long-nosed man sporting a tweed jacket and a Cuffney cap.

"The Quiet Man," Geoghan murmurs.

"That'll do, pig," Scharf adds.

Lugo, Daley, Geoghan, Scharf; Bayside, New Dorp, Freeport, Pelham Bay, all in their thirties, which, at this late hour, made them some of the oldest white men on the Lower East Side.

Forty minutes without a nibble ...

Restless, they finally pull out to honeycomb the narrow streets for an hour of endless right turns: falafel joint, jazz joint, gyro joint, corner.  Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner.  Tenement, tenement, tenement museum, corner.  Pink Pony, Bling Tiger, muffin boutique, corner.  Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner.  Boulangerie, bar, hat boutique, corner.  Iglesia, gelateria, matzo shop, corner.  Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner. Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner.  Bar, school, bar, school, People's Park, corner.  Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Lady Di mural, corner.  Bling shop, barbershop, car service, corner.  And then finally, on a sooty stretch of Eldridge, something with potential: a weary-faced Fujinese in a thin Members Only windbreaker, cigarette hanging, plastic bags dangling from crooked fingers like full waterbuckets, trudging up the dark, narrow street followed by a limping black kid half a block behind.

"What do you think?" Lugo taking a poll via the rear view.  "Hunting for his Chinaman?"

"That's what I'd do," Scharf says.

"Guy looks beat.  Probabaly just finished up his week."

"That'd be a nice score too.  Payday Friday, pulled your eighty-four hours, walking home with what , four?  Four-fifty?"

"Could be his roll on him if he doesn't use banks."

"C'mon, kid" - the taxi lagging behind its prey, all three parties in a half-block stagger - "it doesn't get any better than this."

"Actually, Benny Yee in Community Oureach?  He says the Fooks finally know not to do that anymore, keep it all on them."

"Yeah, OK, they don't do that anymore."

"Should we tell the kid?  He probably hasn't even heard of Benny Yee."

"I don't want to come between a young man and his dreams," Lugo says.

"There he goes, there he goes..."

"Forget it, he just made us," Daleys says as the kid abruptly loses his limp and turns east, back towards the projects, or the subways, or, like them, to simply take five, then get back in the game.

There you have it, hunters and hunted in the 'Noo Yawk' jungle.  A terrific book and, praise the Lord, he has written several others!