DUFF & NONSENSE!

The Sunday Rumble: 30.6.13

Whither America?  No sooner did I post 'The Good News' on the Great Republic as announced by Mr. Daniel Drezner yesterday when I read 'The Bad News' as forecast by Mr. Doug Bandow in The American Spectator:

This year’s deficit has fallen from outer space to the upper atmosphere. That’s
good, but only a very modest first step. Moreover, without real budget reform,
future deficits will rocket back upward. In short, the budget crisis is not over. In fact, it has only just begun.

This blog remains resolutely irresolute, shifting and shuffling in circles around the centre, in line with its new editorial policy which lays down that it will adamantly refuse to forecast anything ever again on the grounds of terminal embarrassment!

The ultimate in soppiness?  Did you miss it - didja? - didja?  Well you should be ashamed if last weekend you failed to stand silent with head bowed, or perhaps lay prostrate on the ground gently beating Mother Earth and begging her forgiveness for the slaughter of, er, bees.  Oh yes, the bees, those nasty, bad tempered, buzzing thingies that give you a painful sting when you try to weed your flower beds.  Well, the daft good people of Oregan, USA held a memorial service last weekend in memory of 50,000 bees - and, no, I didn't count them and nor do I know who did - who were slaughtered by the use of insecticides which were used, of course, to provide food for, er, people.  Anyway, it's not too late so, altogether now:

Well, buzz, buzz, buzz goes the bumble bee
Tweedle, deedle, dee goes the bird . . .

 

Little 'Georgie Moonbat' whacked by a windmill:  Oh, alright then, it's not true but a man may dream, may he not?  And admit it, if George Monbiot was clobbered by a windmill we would all end up on the floor drumming with our fists and feet helpless with hysterical laughter.  As it was, the (latest) victim of these disgusting and useless machines was a White-throated Needletail (Hirundapus caudacutus) - and no, me neither - which is a very rare bird not seen in 'this septic Isle' for 18 years.  Anyway, it was spotted 'ooop north' and dozens of 'twitchers' ('bird watchers', for the sake of my foreign  readers) rushed up there to see it.  Alas, all they saw was the carcass after it flew into one of those monstrous blades.  If even Greenie 'technology' is harmful to wild life then there is only one course for us all to take - mass suicide - it's the least we can do!

 

Absolutely and definitely my last rave review of this book:  I have already mentioned it a couple of times but I make absolutely no apology for urging you again to go and treat yourself to a copy.  If you refuse to take my word for it then let me tell you that that final arbiter of taste and discernment, er, except in the choice of husband, the 'Memsahib' has also given it a rave review to her friends.  If I describe it as a legal murder mystery that is simply to underrate it.  It is a terrific family story and the writer has the gift of being able to write dialogue in character - he really should try his hand at playwriting.  The ending is - and I use the word with care - shocking!  So shocking that neither of us can erase it from our minds.  Defending Jacob by William Landay - don't hang about, buy it now!

 

And this sounds like a book with a difference:  Not my recommendation but Jeremy Clarke in this week's Spectator under the heading of 'Summer Reading'.  The actual book is Elephant Bill by J.H. Williams (1950) but the bit that struck me was the forward by Field Marshal Slim, no less, a good fighting general and the man who liberated Burma: 

In the 16th Army our soldiers varied in colour from white, through every
shade of yellow and brown, to coal black. The animals we used reflected a
similar variety. Pigeons, dogs, ponies, mules, horses, bullocks, buffaloes and
elephants, they served well and faithfully. There were true bonds of affection
between men and all these beasts, but the elephant held a special place in our
esteem. It was not, I think, a matter of size and strength. It was the
elephant’s dignity and intelligence that gained our respect.

So, if elephants are your favourites, this is the book for you.

 

'Bunga-Bunga' Berlusconi was screwed:  Our British 'Cocklecarrots' merely combine terminal dimness with arrogance but I fear that 'il Cocklecarrotti', their less than distinguished Italian counterparts, manage to inject large doses of political corruption into their fumbling, bumbling manipulations.  Thus it was with 'Bunga-Bunga Berlusconi' who has been found guilty of sex with a minor despite the minor, 17 years old at the time and hardly a chaste virgin, denying absolutely that it took place.  As Nicholas Farrell points out, again in this week's 'Speccie' - do treat yourselves to Britain's best weekly - the fix was in:

Yes, Berlusconi paid Ruby [the 'victim'?] money (she was present 13 times at his infamous parties and received €3,000 a time). He pays dozens of women money. So what? Is that proof of prostituting a minor? About 30 young women who were also paid regularly by Berlusconi to grace the parties at his villa outside Milan appeared as witnesses in the two-year trial to say that they had never seen any sex at those parties or him having sex with anyone, let alone the nubile Moroccan.

Perhaps it is also worth bearing in mind that at the time he was 74 and, even
though an Italian, a prostate-cancer survivor. Even though the media joked about
him being equipped with the ‘pillola blu’ (blue pill), the ‘pompa’ (pump), the
‘puntura’ (injection) and the ‘piccola gru’ (small crane), was he even capable
of full-on sex?

None of that mattered to the three 'wimmin' judges:

The Procura di Milano teems with left-wing ones. Ever since Berlusconi entered
politics in 1994 to stop the otherwise inevitable victory at the elections of
the post-communist party (Italy had the largest communist party outside the
Soviet bloc before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989), the Milanese judges
have hounded him with a hysterical fanaticism that can only be described as
personal.

And to give you the full rank flavour of Italian 'justice' some thirty women who were regular 'guests' at the parties gave sworn evidence that no sexual activities took place.  They have now been charged with committing perjury!

Here endeth the last rumble!

 

Damn Yankees, they're going to prove me wrong - AGAIN!

I'm getting fed up with this.  Everytime I make a forecast about the Yanks based on wide reading, sound intelligence and the acute brain with which I have been endowed the rotters prove me wrong!   If  I was embarrassable, I would be embarrassed!  I mean, how can a government keep on printing money like a demented sorcerer's apprentice on coke whilst at the same time borrowing ever more and more and more - and not only live to tell the tale but to do so in increasing prosperity?  "Only in America", I suppose is the answer, or at least, close to it according to Daniel W. Drezner in this week's Spectator:

Predicting the decline of the United States has been in vogue since the birth
of American hegemony. Sputnik, Vietnam, stagflation, budget deficits, trade
deficits and even the end of the Cold War all triggered predictions of the end
of America. With the 2008 financial crisis, however, there seemed to be a sense
that this time was different. Tomes with titles like The Post-American World
and The End of Influence began to appear on bookshelves. Germany’s
finance minister confidently predicted that the United States was entering its
last days as a financial superpower. Serious commentators [er, that's me, I assume!] spoke about how a ‘Beijing consensus’ would supplant the ‘Washington consensus’. America looked as if it would disappear in a vortex of debt.

Fast forward to this year, and a funny thing has happened to American
influence — it’s unbowed. The very suggestion that America may be strong enough not to need quantitative easing sent global financial markets into spasm last week. If America was coming off life support, then the subsidies for all kinds
of financial packages would end. As one financial strategist told the New
York Times, ‘The Fed isn’t just the US’s central bank. It’s the world’s
central bank.’ This point was not lost in Britain, where government borrowing
costs surged. It’s said that when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. But
even as America gets better, Britain can remain ill.

It gets worse, well, 'worse' if you're a pontificating micro-brain like me, but better if you're American:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the United States has actually been
deleveraging from the bubble years of the past decade. Yes, millions of
households were in foreclosure in America three years ago — but taking the pain
then has allowed recovery now. While commentators have focused on rising
government debt, US households and companies have been tackling their own.
According to the OECD, the debt-to-income ratio for American households has
fallen from a pre-crisis 137 per cent to 116 per cent by the end of last year.
That figure is now lower than European household indebtedness. Britain is at 160
per cent.

And, despite my unsound impression, the Federal government, unlike ours, is actually cutting spending with genuine ruthlessness:

The US federal budget deficit has declined more dramatically in the past three
years than at any time in postwar history. The Congressional Budget Office
projects the federal budget deficit to fall to 2.1 per cent of economic output
by 2015 — an astonishing turnaround from the 10.1 per cent figure four years
ago. By the same year, Britain’s deficit will still be at 6 per cent of GDP
— the highest in the western world. [My emphasis]

Of course, there is a certain amount of 'luck' involved.  Their potential rival, China, has suddenly hit some overdue problems with their own banks and also with their own increasingly demanding work force.  There has been a small story hanging around all week concerning an American entrepreneur who wished to down-size his Chinese manufacturing plant in order to move to India or somewhere where the wages are cheaper.  The Chinese workers promptly held him prisoner for several days until he changed his mind.  Also, despite their green-black president getting all weepy over global warming he has signally failed to impede the race to extract oil and gas by fracking which has reduced gas prices to a third of their European rivals.  Now foreign-owned factories are relocating back to the USA.  Mr. Drezner summarises the changed circumstances thus:

There is no denying that the relative power of the United States is less now
than it was a decade ago. And yet, five years after the start of the Great
Recession, US power does not appear to be on the wane. If anything, the
trendlines suggest the opposite. Even Arvind Subramanian, the author of
Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, has changed
his tune a bit. In a recent paper he paraphrased Mark Twain, concluding:
‘Reports of the decline in American economic power appeared to have been
exaggerated.’

So, wrong again, but at least this distinguished blog can rest its reputation on its consistency!  I almost forgot to add one last observation by Mr. Drezner who pointed to the gridlocked, bickering Congress which has struggled to pass any legislation since the midterm election in 2010 split the body politic in half.  He quotes an astute comment by Larry Summers, "The great mistake of the gridlock theorists is to suppose that all progress comes from legislation and that more legislation consistently represents more progress."  There-in lies a truth!

 

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I think Dan Drezner cheerleads a little too much about US developments

The superpower returns

The younger generation - dammit, they're splendid!

It is just so irritating when one's prejudices are tipped arse over and doubly so when one's deeply-held conviction that the younger generation of what I call the 'youfs' and 'youfettes' are a pathetic load of wastrels turns out to be about as wrong as it is possible to be.  I am grateful to Tim Worstall for pointing me to an article in 'The Graun' by John Harris in which he investigates, by means of old-fashioned reporting and the results of sundry opinion polls, the attitudes and opinions of different age groups.  He contrasts what is called 'Generation Y', those born between 1980 and 2000, with those born before 1945 - he gives no name to that group so let's just call them 'the old farts'!

When asked for their opinions on the welfare state, 'Generation Y' turn out to be somewhere to the Right of Maggie Thatcher!  One could almost sense the shiver of shock reverberating inside Mr. Harris's Leftie frame:

So it was in Peterborough, where I stopped for a chat with a young woman – born and raised in Cambridgeshire, it seemed – who was selling subscriptions to LoveFilm, next to a row of empty retail outlets and a branch of Caffe Nero. "British people are rubbish," she said. "Lads especially need to be pushed into jobs more."

"I think they need to stop letting people into the country, to start with," she went on, and then paused. "And stop jobseeker's, as well. I don't think it's right."

This was a reference to jobseeker's allowance, the benefit that pays unemployed people under 25 the princely sum of £56.80 a week. "There are hardly any people that are willing to go and get any job that's out there, just to say: 'I've earned that money'," she continued. "They want the best, don't they?"

At this point, my lefty, bleeding-heart soul could take no more, and I blurted out a riposte. Don't they just want to be paid seven or eight quid an hour and be treated with some respect?

"I was on £6.55 in my last job," she said. "If you don't want to go to college, start at the bottom and work your way up."

Make that lady prime minister, I say!  (Incidentally, did you know that 'youfs' and 'youfettes' could pick up nearly £57 quid a week for doing nothing?  I didn't and I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!)  There was a further suprise in the fact that support for the welfare state amongst the 'old farts' was amazingly high.  Actually, when I think about it, most of my ancient friends are "so wet you could shoot snipe off them" which is why, by and large, I try to keep politics out of our conversations.

Anyway, it is a very interesting article which I urge you all to read, not least because it points to some profound possibilities for the future.  Also, Mr. Harris is an excellent reporter who combines good writing with political detachment and, above all, a deprecating sense of humour.

 

How Crocker stuffed his dollars in the Hoosac and caught a crock!

I confess, I do like a contrarian and apparently they do not come much more contrarian than the late Albert O. Hirschman - and no, me neither!  In a fascinating book review by Michael Gladwell in The New Yorker, he tells the story of the successful folly - the oxymoron is deliberate - that was the Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Troy, New York branch of the railway destined to join Boston to the Hudson river.  It was necessary to drill a tunnel through the Hoosac mountain which was a 5-mile deep obstacle to progress.  'Easy-peasy', said the railway engineer, a mere $2 mill should do the trick.  'No probs', added the president of Amherst College, a distinguished geologist, it's made of candy floss.  'Roll up, roll up', cried the project promoter, Mr. Alvah Crocker.  Oh dear, Big Mistake, it cost ten times the projected amount, in other words, it was a crock!

So where, you ask, does the late Mr. Hirschman come into this story?  Well, according to his biographer, Princeton historian Jeremy Adelman, Hirschman, a renowned economist with a subversive love of paradox, looked back on this episode from the 20th century and drew an entirely different conclusion.  In Gladwell's words:    

Everyone was wrong. Digging through the Hoosac turned out to be a nightmare.
The project cost more than ten times the budgeted estimate. If the people
involved had known the true nature of the challenges they faced, they would
never have funded the Troy-Greenfield railroad. But, had they not, the factories
of northwestern Massachusetts wouldn’t have been able to ship their goods so
easily to the expanding West, the cost of freight would have remained stubbornly
high, and the state of Massachusetts would have been immeasurably poorer. So is
ignorance an impediment to progress or a precondition for it?

The economist Albert O. Hirschman, who died last December, loved paradoxes
like this. He was a “planner,” the kind of economist who conceives of grand
infrastructure projects and bold schemes. But his eye was drawn to the many ways
in which plans did not turn out the way they were supposed to—to unintended
consequences and perverse outcomes and the puzzling fact that the shortest line
between two points is often a dead end.

Hirschman's early personal life sounds like one of Alan Furst's (superb) espionage novels set in the late '30s, early '40s.  After fighting in the Spanish civil war, Hirschman ended up in Marseille with several different aliases where he helped others to obtain false documents and escape to Spain.  After the war he went into various international aid projects in his capacity as an economist but always with a beady, sceptical, open eye:

People don’t seek out challenges, he went on. They are “apt to take on and
plunge into new tasks because of the erroneously presumed absence of a
challenge—because the task looks easier and more manageable than it will turn
out to be.” This was the Hiding Hand principle—a play on Adam Smith’s Invisible
Hand. The entrepreneur takes risks but does not see himself as a risk-taker,
because he operates under the useful delusion that what he’s attempting is not
risky. Then, trapped in mid-mountain, people discover the truth—and, because it
is too late to turn back, they’re forced to finish the job.

A fascinating man even if there are a couple of points over which I could give him an argument - but then, with two contrarians what else would you expect?

"Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman” (Princeton) by Jeremy Adelman

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Jean Dupas (21 February 1882 - 1964)

The other day someone paid me a visit here at D&N from a website with a strange name - or at least, strange to me - and taking a look I came across an astonishing selection of paintings and illustrations which I have still not been able to study in detail.  By and large I liked the look of them so here are a few for you to consider.  They are quite sexy and so, so different from the English poster artists of the '20s and '30s.  Jean Dupas was the artist but, according to Wiki, he also did some great work on interior designs:

Thus his collaboration in the decor of famous steamships during the 1930s, emphasizing the Art Deco mode of the time. Among these works, the SS Île-de-France and the SS Liberté were among the first. But in 1935, with the help of glass master Champigneulle, he decorated the grand salon of the Normandie, in more than 400 square meters of painted and frosted glass.

Here is a small selection of his work:

 

                

     

 

This is why you must vote 'OUT' at the EU referendum

This doesn't just 'take the biscuit', it takes the whole bloody tin and shoves it where the sun don't shine!  Sometimes one single story sums up a multitude of different factors.  Today, The Mail reports that the EU Commission are planning to cut the budget of the financial watchdog which checks their spending.  For eighteen straight years the EU Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the Commission's budget on the grounds that it was so lax that corruption was almost certain - why am I not surprised?  So now the Commission is seeking revenge by cutting the Auditors' budget whilst, at the same time:

Spending on the pensions of Brussels bureaucrats is set to rise by 7.2 per cent, partly
because of costs associated with an increase in the number of officials taking early retirement.

The budget of the European Parliament will also rise by 1.7 per cent next year, while
administrative spending in Brussels will increase by a similar amount.

Spending on the EU’s ‘decentralised agencies’, which form the bulk of the EU’s 52 quangos, are set to receive a 3.8 per cent rise.

Your duty is clear - vote UKIP at the next European election and vote 'OUT' at the referendum - if we ever get one!  Failure to do so will bring down on your miserable heads the curse of D&N and you will awake to find your body covered in festering sores and your store of euros saved for the hols reduced to ash!

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So farewell then, Mrs Gillard, don't think you'll be missed!

So, one of my many reasons for not living in Australia has exited stage left, or perhaps, has been 'written out of the script', is a better summary.  To be fair, I think Mrs. Gillard had some virtues.  Like my heroine, Mrs T., she had to fight her way up a greasy ladder crowded with men but she made it.  If the world of Westminster is male dominated then God knows how you describe the macho-male, testosterone-fueled hot-house that is Australian politics so, fair dos, or perhaps, fair dinkum, Mrs Gillard did well.

Unfortunately, the lady failed with me on three counts.  First, of course, she's a bloody socialist - need I say more?  Second, she's very, very pert!  I can't stand pert women.  I get this almost uncontrollable craving to punch them in the face - yes, yes, I know, shocking, shocking!  Finally, my dears, that voice!  She has an Aussie accent which I think she learned from a kangeroo.  Of course, she's Welsh, you know (taps side of nose and winks knowingly!) and perhaps she has spent her life trying to out-Aussie the mostly incomprehensible Aussies.  She succeeded but the collateral is that nobody in their right mind could listen to her for more than two minutes!

So, 'E' for Effort, Mrs Gillard, or 'F' for Fail - take your pick.

 

My new God is Gödel

No, no, Gödel's not some character from Star Wars or one of those interminable Norse-based operas that Wagner composed, no, he was, er, well, sort of . . . a thinker, I suppose.  To be more accurate, he was a thinker on the abstruse subjects of logic and mathematics.  These twins and all their problems and contradictions were thought to have been licked into shape by Bertrand Russell and A. N. Whitehead in their monumental three-volume book Principia Mathematica (PM).  In so far as I understand it - yeeeees quite! - the pair of them reckoned that they had reduced every possible statement into a logical mathematical code of such rigor that henceforth there could be no confusions in reasoning.  For example, the liar's paradox, 'this statement is false', was dealt with and, so to speak, the logic-tight doors of reasoning were slammed shut with no untidy bits left outside!

And then along came quiet, shy, nervous Kurt Gödel blinking behind his black-framed specs and, in effect, pointed at Russell and told him his flies were undone!  There was, he discovered, an untidy bit left outside of Russell's reasoning and no amount of logical jiggery-pokery would make it go away.  Gödel's work became known as 'the incompleteness theorem' and I find it deeply comforting. 

Personally, as I have grown older, I have become more and more suspicious of those people, particularly swots of various kinds, who claim to have the final and complete answer to everything, and Principia Mathematica was supposed to have been the Absolute and Forever Answer to Absolutely Everything!  I can't debate with these great thinkers - and Russell and Whitehead were certainly very great thinkers - on their terms because I'm not brainy enough so you could describe my scepticism concerning their theories as being based on hunch - or perhaps a better word is 'faith' - and perhaps a better image is of a caveman clinging to his totem pole!  I still remember the thrill I experienced some years ago when I learned that at the sub-atomic level of matter, 'titchy thingies', that is, all the 'titchy thingies' that make up the 'things' we see about us, behave in a totally different and bizarre way such that their actions cannot be predicted with complete certainty.

'SoD' (Son of Duff) has been banging on about Gödel for years but I never quite took it in.  I think I learn better from reading words rather than listening to them so thanks are due, again, to James Gleik and his marvellous book The Information.

 

 

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Nothing quite like a really good bitch fight!

Well, of course, I wouldn't really call either of these ladies a bitch but there is certainly the makings of a ding-dong punch-up in Ms. Cristina Nehring's review of Ms. Katherine Angel's book entitled, awkwardly: Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell.  For me, 'the most difficult to tell' part of this story is Ms. Angel's exact job description.  According to Ms. Nehring (in the blue corner), Ms. Angel (in the red corner) is "a historian of female sexual dysfunction at Warwick University".  Somehow, in some obscure way, you really do not need to know anything more concerning Ms. Angel, her title tells you everything.

However, helpfully, Ms. Nehring provides a background to the contemporary academic world which, like WWII, I am forever thankful I missed!

In the groves of academe that Angel inhabits, sex is anything but a laughing
matter. The relation of Anglo-American academics to sexuality remains a troubled one—at once obsessive and puritanical, criminalizing and infantilizing—even in our day and even (or especially) in disciplines specifically devoted to gender studies. This is a culture where a graduate student can cry sexual harassment if her academic adviser closes his door during office hours, but turn around and solicit congratulations for personal tell-alls bearing titles with some variation on Vagina, which inflict far more violence on her intimate space than any indiscretion she’s ever charged. (More or less, this is the career path of Naomi Wolf.)

You see, Ms. Angel is definitely no angel!  She is being shagged rotten, or, rottenly shagged (you need to read the book to find out) and is writing about it as she goes along.  One has a vision of her on her back, man clamped between thighs, with iPad held high as she reports, er, from the front, as it were!  Some admiration is due to the man in her life because if, back in the day, any of the ladies I knew in the biblical sense were writing up a round-by-round report on our encounters I would have shrivelled on the spot - but of course they never would because they were always in a constant transport of joy - natch! (Sorry, didn't quite catch that, Andra.)

It is possible that Ms. Angel is also a professor of contemporary, er, writing.  I come to that tentative conclusion based on these extracts from her book kindly, or, dread thought, maliciously offered by her reviewer, Ms. Nehring:

Here is a sampling of the words Angel singles out for readers’ especial attention by placing them alone in the center of an otherwise pure, white, empty page:

Fuck me. Yes, fuck me!

I know what he means.
This thing in there. All
that. These.

Let the boy win at
tennis!

It’s OK, it’s OK. I’m really not that
hungry.

I am so fucking hungry!

Fuck, he says, when he’s inside me, Oh
fuck.

Dupe. Collaborator.
Victim.

Fuck me. Yes, fuck me!

Peck. Peck.

 

Eh?  What?  "Peck. Peck."?  What's going on?  Oh dear, my mind just boggled again!

 

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Our scrofulous hacks out-hack their neat 'n' tidy hacks

Fascinating article in the NYT by David Carr who is not quite grumbling about the invasion of 'Fleet Street hacks' into the American media.  Actually, he's not grumbling at all really, and indeed, he seems to think that on the whole they bring some much needed virtues to the American media.  As seen from 'over here' the American media is a total PC desert of conformity with only the occasional oasis of contrariness, so if some of our dandruff-ridden scribblers can liven them up, so much the better.  Having written that, however, a brief glance at some of his examples, which includes the likes of ex-BBC boss, Mark Thompson - they can keep him with my compliments! - I can't quite see where the excitement comes from.  Mr. Carr explains part of it thus:

If that’s so, then the renewed British invasion on our shores makes sense because media are becoming more competitive and less mannered with each passing day. Apart from the fact that Mr. Oliver is a very funny man, “The Daily Show” continues to storm along partly because, like Mr. Stewart, Mr. Oliver suspects everyone and everything and says so aloud.

It’s a very British way of thinking. The one question all young reporters on Fleet Street are taught to keep foremost in their mind when interviewing public figures can be best paraphrased as, “Why is this jerk lying to me?”

The news that flows from that mind-set is often far more interesting than American media, which frequently bow to power even as they seek to hold it accountable. (Mr. Stewart, so rapacious when annotating video clips, often goes soft when confronted by an actual interview.)

So, if my e-pal, JK, comes on here again and asks me to take Piers Morgan back, the answer will be 'No' and in fact I might make a small charge for him!

 

Binge, spend and splurge - George the Toff shows how to do it

Austerity?  Don't make me laugh!  'Stop the cuts'?  Do me a favour!  Just check these figures adjusted to 2011/12 rates:

£634.2 billion

£645.7 billion

£647.1 billion (projected)

That is your government's annual spending over the last three years and the smallest amount at the top is at the beginning of their term!  Or, as Mr. Ross Clark kindly points out in this week's 'Speccie':

Osborne is no mad axeman but a bodger blundering around with a blunt chisel. Go back further and you can see just how absurd is the notion that the coalition
has turned Britain into neoliberal hell or paradise, depending on your point of
view. In 1975/76, in the depths of economic crisis and shortly before Denis
Healey went off to the IMF to beg for a bailout, public spending peaked at
39.8 per cent of GDP. In 2011/12 it was 42.2 per cent. That year, the then
Labour government spent, in today’s money, £260 billion — less than half what
the coalition will spend this year. In other words, the sub-socialist British
state of the 1970s, with its nationalised car factories and shipyards, was
smaller than it is now.

According to Wiki based on last year's figures, it costs us around £43 billion a year to service that debt but, as George the Toff would be quick to point out, we are very lucky because under his wise stewardship Britain's money lenders are satisfied to take a very low interest rate.  Er, well, they did, up until last week when shivers ran down the global spine at the thought that China might have caught financial flu - which they have because their banks are broke!  So last week, almost unnoticed amongst the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the interest rate on British 10-year bonds went up and as of two seconds ago when I looked at the front page of the WSJ site they are already up 7.7% today!  So last week we were paying something like 1.7% on our borrowings but today we are paying 2.590%!

Well done, George!  Not, mind you that he is alone in being totally incapable of cutting even a sponge cake, whatever happened to Dave's "bonfire of the Quangos"?

 

I'm in love - again!

It's alright, you can tell the 'Memsahib', she's quite used to me being in love with other women.  I suppose it began with the very young Brigitte Bardot and I haven't looked back since.  The only problem with my multiple, nascent love affairs is that the other party never reciprocates.  In this particular case I think the reason is probably because the lady is dead - and has been for a century and half!

Ada Lovelace - and you would have to love her for her name apart from anything else.  Here she is:

Ada was actually born Augusta Ada Byron and she was the daughter of that rapscallion poet, romantic and adventurer, Lord Byron.  He and his wife seperated immediately after Ada's birth and she never had contact with her father again not least because he died when she was eight.  In due time she married and produced three children.  By and large it was a good-ish marriage but Ada was a very modern woman for her time and she might well have indulged a few naughtinesses - such a pity I wasn't around!

However, as James Gleik (yes, it's him again!) reminds us in his superb book The Information, Ada was a very considerable mathematician who moved easily in the highest scientific circles of her time.  She struck up a friendship with Charles Babbage who was desperately trying to bring his 'difference engine' to full fruition.  Babbage was one of the very greatest of the Victorian polymaths but amongst the many schemes and visions he had, his desire to produce a fully automatic calculating machine was pre-eminent.  Ada threw herself into the work and messages between them would criss-cross London several times a day and night.  Alas, she died desperately early of a hideously painful cancer and Babbage's machine never quite took off.  What a cruel fate for two such brilliant people, both able to sense the future but both born too early to have the means to bring it about.

The London Science Museum's difference engine, built from Babbage's design. The design has the same precision on all columns, but when calculating polynomials, the precision on the higher-order columns could be lower. The Engine is not a replica (one was never built during Babbage's lifetime); therefore this is the first one - the original.

(And don't ask me what "polynomials" are!)  Anyway, as I have mentioned before, she was, I think, the inspiration for Tom Stoppard when he wrote his superb play Arcadia and invented the character of young Thomasina Coverly, a scientific genius before her time.  And, yes, I'm in love with her, too!

 

Your Monday Funny: 24.6.13

You will need to blow the cobwebs off these ones but, hell, any jokes at the expense of lawyers are worth it:

 

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband
said to you that morning?

WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy ?'

ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?

WITNESS: My name is Susan!

_______________________________________________________


ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?

WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

_____________________________________________________


ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?

WITNESS: July 18th.

ATTORNEY: What year?

WITNESS: Every year.

__________________________________________________________


ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you shitting me?

_________________________________________



ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?

WITNESS: Getting laid.

____________________________________________


ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition

notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

______________________________________


ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a
pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No..

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

The Sunday Rumble: 23.6.13

Stereotypes are so much easier:  In a very careful, detailed, scientific and rigorous piece of research - not! - The Mail reports that Brits do have stiff upper lips and Americans are more optimistic and amorous than us.  This is based on a survey by someone or other which also 'shows' that Brits are tightwads - I put that down to the Jock influence (another stereotype) - but Americans are free spenders.  Pheeeew, thank the Lord for that, life is so much easier if people comply with their stereotype, I simply can't be doing with 'peace 'n' love' Germans, charming 'Frogs', Chinese who are even minutely less than inscrutable and Italians who fail to make a pass at my wife.  Actually, this story touches upon a somewhat deeper subject which keeps niggling at the back of my mind, that is, the question of boundaries.  When does an individual item, or group of items, gradually, or perhaps suddenly, take on the characteristics of the whole thing?  I have been meaning to blog on this abstruse subject but it requires great thought and consideration and so, hey, I didn't want to break with my personal sterotype!

 

Will the USA collapse from the inside out?  No, of course it won't, er, it won't, will it?  I ask because whilst we have seen various big-ish cities in California go broke the next one over the cliff is Detroit in Michigan.  As Bloomberg reports:

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s plan to suspend payments on $2 billion of
Detroit’s debt threatens a basic tenet of the $3.7 trillion municipal market:
that states and cities will raise taxes as high as needed to avoid default.

The city lacks the means to maintain law enforcement and even street lighting.  If wages and pensions go by the board how long will it be before the people 'do a Brazil' and come out on the streets?  Jest askin'?

 

From frying pan to fire:  So that upstanding defender of freedom and democracy, Mr. Edward Snowden, late of the CIA/NSA, after delivering an underhand blow against his own country has now decided to flee to that haven of personal liberty and civil polity, er, Venezuela via, of course, Russia and Cuba.  It says so much about him.

 

The new (Chinese) kid on the block:  A fascinating article in The Spectator (where else?) by Owen Matthews.  It concerns a very discreet meeting which took place at Green Templeton College in Oxford and if I provide you with just some of the names of those attending it will, I fancy, tickle your curiosity:

General Huang Baifu, head of the Chinese delegation, is a former chief of
China’s military intelligence. But he was in Oxford in his civilian role as a
fellow of the China Institute of Strategic Studies. Similarly General Doron
Avital, former commander of Israel’s Special Forces and ex-chairman of the
Knesset’s Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, attended as a private
individual.

According to Mr. Matthews this sort of meeting is described in current diplomatic jargon as "‘track three’ — talks about talks via non-diplomatic channels".  Yeeees, quite!  Anyway, this and other surreptitious meetings are a sign that China has decided that it needs to take a more direct interest in Middle East affairs particularly so as to avoid outright warfare between Israel and Iran which is only a matter of time unless circumstances can be changed.  China, unlike America, is heavily dependent on Middle East oil, especially Iranian oil, and would be severely hampered if supplies were interrupted.  The Americans have lost any imperative to become involved, as the Israelis now know, and apparently the Iranians are only about a year away from completing their nuclear weapon programme.  Watch this space - or better still, read Mr. Matthew's fascinating article.

 

But do they really, really want him?  I return again to that famous freedom fighter, or something beginning with 'f', Mr. Edward Snowden, now apparently on his way to that ancient bastion of civil rights, Ecuador.  Sky and Fox are both getting very excited about it all and the obvious fact that China and Russia have cocked a snook at the USA - and they're surprised? - but neither of them have wondered just exactly how much does the American government want this reprobate back in the USA giving evidence in a public trial under the manipulative control of a Left-wing defence attorney of the worst snarling dog variety?  As much as a hole in the head, I would guess.  But perhaps Obama will do one of the few things he is good at and 'drone' him!

 

Printers - heh!  I was rather amused at this passage in James Gleik's excellent book The Information in which he desribes the travails of 18th century mathematicians trying to draw up comprehensive but accurate tables of logarithms:

Errors arose from mistakes in carrying.  Errors arose from the inversion of digits, sometimes by the computers themselves and sometimes by the printer.  Printers were liable to transpose digits  in succesive lines of type.  What a mysterious, fallible thing the human mind seemed to be!  All these errors, one commenter mused, "would afford a curious subject of metaphysical speculation respecting the operation of the faculty of memory."  Human computers had no future, he saw: "It is only by the mechanical fabrication of tables that such errors can be rendered impossible."

Obviously he had yet to learn the first rule of mechanical computers - shit in, shit out!  But what took my attention was the dig at the printers.  This reminded me of the invaluable aid their constant errors have contributed to the study of Shakespeare's texts.  Read any forward to an Arden Edition of a Shakespeare play and you will find an alphabet of printers, A to F and onwards, all of whom made not just random mistakes but the same mistakes over and over, thus unintentionally aiding the tricky science of pinning dates and circumstances to the first printing of Shakespeare's texts. It's all a bit like my habit of constantly inverting 'teh' - bugger, there I go again!

Here endeth my rumblings for the day!

  

Whither democracy? Down the toilet, apparently!

Max Hastings touches a few sensitive spots on the rotting body politic when he suggests that democracy is becoming increasingly decrepit and might even be approaching death's door!  In an essay in The Mail he begins by giving a big 'fuck you' to the political 'philosopher/historian' Mr. Fukuyama who proposed some years ago that with the triumph of democracy everywhere but especially in Russia history had come to an end.  A bit like those Hollywood war or western movies which always end on a high note with a flying flag and some stirring music.  'F' for Fail, Mr. Fukuyama!

Hastings points to numerous continents, well, all of them, actually, and emphasises the growth of totalitarianism and the slow death of democracy.  Even, or perhaps especially, in those places hitherto thought of as both cradles as well as bulwarks of democracy - Britain and America:

In the U.S., sensible people talk and write openly about a democratic crisis. The bitter divisions between Republicans and Democrats have created gridlock in both houses of Congress. The old willingness to cut deals and make compromises to keep government moving has become a dead letter. A large chunk of the U.S., and especially its old, white, mid-Western, Western and southern heartland, feels as disenfranchised as do UKIP supporters in Britain. It sees a host of things being done, or not done, in Washington, which inspires bitter hostility on religious, economic or social grounds.

'Over here' one senses not so much fury as the smell of decay bred by cynical indifference as the notion grows and grows that 'they're all the same', 'they' being the politicians.  That is, I think, an accurate assessment but a dangerous one.  It positively encourages our politicians to take an extreme line and, as Hastings reminds us with the example of Adolph Hitler, once an extremist gains power via the ballot box it doesn't take long to turn those metal boxes into guns!

Optimists, or as I describe them, those who are deaf, dumb, blind and lack a sense of smell, might lodge their hopes for the future with a free and independent judiciary but Hastings despaches that silliness, and the Cocklecarrots, better than I can:

The judiciary displays a sorry combination of conceit and complacency. It has contributed substantially to the British people's mounting belief that, while they supposedly live in a democracy, they are denied their rightful voice in their own destinies.

It is another judge, Sir Brian Leveson, whose report last year into Press ethics threatens an unprecedented legislative assault on Press freedom, that vital pillar of democracy.

So what are we to do?  I dunno!  Happily I'll be dead by the time all that plays out so I can only emulate the captain of that cruise liner which sank off Italy recently and salute you all as I step into the lifeboat and before pushing off utter the immortal words, "Well done, chaps, good show, carry on!"

 

Let Lincoln rest? Not likely!

Yes, I'm back to poor old 'Abe' once again because his detractors and defenders are still locked in battle nearly 150 years after his death.  I would urge you all to read two recent articles.  The first by Christopher Orlet in The American Spectator, and the second by Rich Lowry in the National Review.  There is some irony to be enjoyed in the fact that today it is the political Right which is divided over Lincoln's reputation.  A slightly odd combination of old world, 'Tory' agrarians mainly from the South and modern free market libertarians from the North have joined hands in damning Lincoln and all his works.  But other, more main line Right-wingers, defend him vigorously.  As Orlet summarises it:

THE GREAT EMPANCIPATOR will never be short of defenders, like Lincoln apologist Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, whose recent cover story, “Lincoln Defended,” calls Lincoln’s critics a fringe of left-over agrarians, southern romantics, and people-owning libertarians “who apparently hate federal power more than they abhor slavery.” A cheap shot, certainly, but judging from the growth of the anti-Lincoln press, those left-over agrarians and libertarians are as fanatical in their abhorrence of Abe as Lowry is in his admiration.

Orlet lays out the case for the prosecution.  First:

Then as now critics objected to Lincoln’s unnecessary war of coercion in
which 650,000 soldiers and countless civilians died. In this time of preventable
conflicts, Lincoln’s war against the CSA was the bloodiest and arguably most
needless military adventure in American history, one fought — not to free
slaves, but to crush an independence movement.

Second, he reminds us that the idea of secession is gaining ground in several states, after all, as secessionists would remind you, the entire concept of America resulted from a revolution so what was good for your forebears is still good for you!  Thirdly, they list the inumurable illegal acts perpetrated by Lincoln's regime in its total war against the South including the arrest of politicians, the suspension of habeas corpus, raising funds without Congressional approval and so on.  Fourth and fifth, Lincoln shifted power irrevocably towards centralised Northern government - and Wall Street! - and then set about eradicating ruthlessly all vestiges of the old South.  Finally, Orlet quotes the historian, Robert Kagan who draws some contemporary parallels: 

The North’s efforts to reshape the South after the Civil War set a standard
for future American occupations and attempted transformations… Then as later,
the United States Army took effective control of a conquered land, eradicated
its leadership — the slaveholders — and attempted to empower others to take
their place, including the formerly oppressed slaves. Then as later, this
enormous undertaking was made almost impossible by inadequate resources and
inadequate and faltering commitment. Then as later, the results were mixed.

Rich Lowry, an editor of the Right-wing National Review will have none of it.  He accuses those of his fellow Right-wingers who curse Lincoln and his heritage of being a fringe and of a failure to see the wood for the trees - the ones Lincoln never cut down! 

A portion of the Right has always hated Old Abe. It blames him for wielding dictatorial powers in an unnecessary war against the Confederacy and creating the predicate for the modern welfare state, among sundry other offenses against the constitutional order and liberty.

The anti-Lincoln critique is mostly, but not entirely, limited to a fringe. Yet it speaks to a longstanding ambivalence among conservatives about Lincoln. A few founding figures of this magazine were firmly in the anti-Lincoln camp. Libertarianism is rife with critics of Lincoln, among them Ron Paul and the denizens of the fever-swamp at LewRockwell.com. The Loyola University Maryland professor Thomas DiLorenzo has made a cottage industry of publishing unhinged Lincoln-hating polemics. The list of detractors includes left-over agrarians, southern romantics, and a species of libertarians — “people-owning libertarians,” as one of my colleagues archly calls them — who apparently hate federal power more than they abhor slavery. They are all united in their conviction that both in resisting secession and in the way he did it, Lincoln took American history on one of its great Wrong Turns.

As always with historical controversies it is almost impossible to keep current politics out of the argument, nearly everyone approaches it through the gunsmoke of today's political warfare.  Also, of course, this being an American controversy, lawyers figure mightily in the arguments!  Lowry reminds us:

It hasn’t been entirely put down yet. In his anti-Lincoln tract The Real Lincoln, Thomas DiLorenzo argues that secession is as American as apple pie. “The United States were founded by secessionists,” he insists, “and began with a document, the Declaration, that justified the secession of the American states.” No. The country was founded by revolutionaries and the Declaration justified an act of revolution. No one denies the right of revolution. Madison said that revolution was an “extra & ultra constitutional right.” Even Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, concedes the point: “If, by the mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution — certainly would, if such right were a vital one.”

The friends of secession aren’t eager to invoke the right to revolution, though. For one thing, when a revolution fails, you hang. [My emphasis] For another, the Declaration says a revolution shouldn’t be undertaken “for light and transient causes,” but only when a people have suffered “a long train of abuses and usurpations.” What was the train in 1860 and 1861? Seven southern states left the Union before Lincoln was inaugurated. The South had dominated the federal government for decades. Abuses and usurpations? It’s more like lose an election and go home.

Lowry ends his defence of Lincoln thus:

There is one final indictment against Lincoln. It is said that he elevated the Declaration and the principle of equality that it enshrines over the Constitution. NR’s venerable senior editor Frank Meyer worried that he had loosed a free-floating, abstract commitment to equality throughout the land that supported the leveling tendencies of modern liberalism. But Lincoln’s equality was the equality of natural rights, not results. “I take it,” he said in 1860, “that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.” He warned a delegation of workingmen during the war of the peril of a “war on property, or the owners of property”: “Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself.”

God knows when I'll have the time but I really must try and get to know the ins and outs of Abraham Lincoln.  Certainly, following Washington's original drive for independence, Lincoln's great impetus set the giant American train trundling down the tracks.  It all seems inevitable now as we look back on it but of course that is a false view because the ifs, buts and maybes of history are legion.  Anyway, do read those two essays, they are excellent.

 

 

Related articles

Thomas DiLorenzo: More on the Myth of Lincoln, Secession and the 'Civil War'

Rich Lowry: Lincoln Unbound

Giving 'footie' a good kicking

I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons for Brazilians to go on the rampage but if one of them is to protest against the bizarre amounts of money being spent on mounting Sepp Blatter's international circus then please allow me to throw a symbolic rock in sympathy!  As Tim Worstall points out drily, 'the Graun' (and the BBC) cannot bring itself to admit that the riots are aimed at a centre-Left government run by an ex-Marxist - such lèse-majesté!

Still, talking of majesty, "Oh bliss 'will it be' in that dawn to be alive" when King-Emperor Blatter is given a right good kicking!  If the people of Brazil, perhaps the greatest 'footie' fanatics in the world, can bring themselves to burn down all their corruptly-built and eye-wateringly expensive stadia so that the world cup venues are reduced to rubble, it might just provoke the Russian people, already irritable with the winter olympics venue in their country, to emulate their Latin bravado in 2018.  Just think, if we could get Blatter and Putin with one good uprising who would say no?

So, back to my usual rubbish, then!

After the wise words of David Friedman in the previous post I'm afraid it's back to Duff & Nonsense today!  And it may be more nonsensical than usual because I am grappling with some profundities and, as you all know, I am not terribly good at them.  I am provoked by two things.  First, a passage in James Gleik's excellent book - I describe it thus despite only having reached page 95!  The book is called The Information and the first three chapters were fairly easy going because they were concerned with the history and development of language which I could follow.  Alas, in chapter four he moved onto sums - dread word!  Well, not really 'sums' but even worse - mathematics.  Within a few pages we were onto logarithms and in an instant I was transported back sixty years to Mr. Jones, my mathematics teacher, who, in regard to myself, earned a big, fat 'F' for Failure!  In an effort to try and teach myself 'sums' and thus read Mr. Gleik's book with some understanding I resorted to Wiki.  Here is the opening paragraph of their entry for 'Logarithm':

The logarithm of a number is the exponent to which another fixed value, the base, must be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 1000 is 10 to the power 3: 1000 = 10 × 10 × 10 = 10³. More generally, if x = b^y, then y is the logarithm of x to base b, and is written y = log_b(x), so log₁₀(1000) = 3.

Got that, have you?  Hmmn, thought not!  Well, probably - no, certainly - 'DM' has 'cos he's a swot and always sits at the front of the class!  Anyway, I decided to follow my practice from those long-lost school days and just ignore the mathematics.  Gleik is a good writer and provides me with the gist even if for me the detail is hazy.  What is genuinely fascinating is his description of the likes of Babbage and Herschel and their efforts to build a mechanical 'computer'.  Of course, in their day, the turn of the 18th into the 19th century, the word 'mechanical' implied steam engines.  They saw the possibilities in using steam-powered machines as great calculators in order to simplify the composition of logarithmic tables which hitherto had been done by hand - an indescribably tedious process also prone to error.

However, it was Gleik's reference to steam which raised my interest.  He puts it thus:

Steam was the driver of all engines, the enabler of industry.  If only for those few decades, the word stood for power and force and all that was vigorous and modern.  Formerly, water or wind drove the mills, and most of the world's work still depended on the brawn of people and horses and livestock.  But hot steam, generated by burning coal and brough under control by ingenious inventors, had portability and versatility.  It replaced muscles everywhere. [My emphasis]

Of course, it didn't do so immediately, after all, coal still had to be hewn from the ground, and canals dug mostly by hand in order to move the stuff around, and so on.  But then, into the 20th century, came oil and gas, and also machines had begun to achieve real sophistication and so indeed, musles was no longer needed.  This had dire effects on the men (and their families) who provided the muscle but still, new industries arose in which workers were required not so much for their muscle but for their ability to assemble and thus exponents of free market capitalism, like me, were able to mock the dinasours of Marxist-Socialism for their inability to see how out-dated they had become.  Stop worrying, I urged them, as one industry dies another arises out of the now freed capital available for new investment and therefore new jobs.

But then a particular ratbag, albeit, one close to my heart - Son of Duff or 'SoD' - sent me two links which, when I pondered on the implications, really spoiled my day.  I refer to these new-fangled 3d machines which, in so far as I understand them, take carbon particles and mould them into real-life objects.  The latest - apparantly - is a real car mostly produced simply, well, probably not too simply, by one of these 3d machines:

Competing in the prestigious Formula Student 2012 challenge, a 16-man strong
team of next-generation engineers from Group T have unveiled the
world’s first race car created in great part through 3D Printing: the Areion.
Named after the divinely-bred, extremely swift, immortal horse of Greek
mythology, the Areion is a powerhouse of innovation and green technology. On
July 31st, it lived up to its name on the Hockenheim race circuit by going from
zero to 100km/h in just 4 seconds and achieving a top speed of 141km/h on the
track. Cutting-edge technologies incorporated into their eco-friendly race car
included an electric drive train, bio-composite materials, and of course,  Additive Manufacturing  (3D Printing) on a grand scale with Materialise.

You can see a film of this car in action here.  However, 'SoD' was not finished with giving me the shivers because he provided a second link to an excellent April Fool joke concerning a 3d printer that could replicate itself!  I gather from Wiki that there is a distinguished history in higher scientific circles concerning the development of self-replicating machines involving people like John von Neumann and Freeman Dyson so it is only a matter of time before practical outcomes begin to effect industry, economics and society.

The question that arises is brutally simple - what do we do with all the simpletons?  In such a world where brawn is no longer required - soon we will have driverless cars, lorries and buses - and where even the semi-educated (like me!) are just surplus to requirements, what will we do with them all?  At this point there was a nasty gurgling sound as my mind boggled!

 

Related articles

Calculus: The Basics (Part II)

Logarithms in measuring inflation

Why don't logarithms have horizontal asymptotes?

Chris Thorpe: 3D Printing the Industrial Revolution

For a change, some wise words on this blog

Needless to say they are not mine!  I am forced into blatant thievery - again! - because today is the very height of the social season in which our little development of fourteen houses holds it annual garden party.  Given all the 'non-global warming' we have I doubt it will take place in the garden but being true Brits we shall carry on regardless.

In the meantime, here is a quote from the always excellent Cafe Hayek:

 From page 70 of David Friedman’s 1996 book, Hidden Order:

There are two ways we can produce automobiles.  We can build them in Detroit or we can grow them in Iowa.  Everyone knows how we build automobiles.  To grow automobiles, we first grow the raw material from which they are made – wheat.  We put the wheat on ships and send the ships out into the Pacific.  They come back with Hondas on them. From our standpoint, growing Hondas is just as much a form of production – using American farmworkers instead of
American autoworkers – as building them.  What happens on the other side of the Pacific is irrelevant; the effect would be just the same for us if there really were a gigantic machine sitting somewhere between Hawaii and Japan turning wheat into automobiles.  Tariffs are indeed a way of protecting American workers – from other American workers.

 

Keep the Cocklecarrots OUT!

Two hefty examples of lunacy today.  First we had the Cocklecarrots at the so-called 'Supreme Court' (it isn't 'supreme' because the European Court over-rules it so they should be sued under the Trade Descriptions Act!) have allowed human rights laws to apply to cases of death and/or injury incurred during active service operations.  Thus, any 'Tom', or his family, may now reach for m'Learned & Now Even Wealthier Friends to seek redress in the courts if, in their view, someone, anyone, made a mistake and sent their 'loved one' into action with anything less than the very latest and best equipment.  How one proves that this or that is indeed the very best I do not know.  What I do know is that the Cocklecarrots on the non-Supreme Court could do with a six month tour in Afghanistan to learn the reality of soldiering as it is today and indeed as it has been for evermore.

The next nincompoop I saw on my TV today was some female halfwit who, God help us, actually sits in the House of Lords.  Baroness Kramer, for it was she, waffled and piffled on behalf of the ill-conceived, in fact, totally useless, recommendations of a Parliamentary enquiry into banking practices and ways in which "reckless bankers" (their words) can be charged with a criminal offence if their decisions bring about a collapse in the bank for which they are responsible.  Again, like the arrant nonsense exhibited by the Justices, their proposals only merit about 25 seconds of thought to see how useless, irrelevant and morally wrong they are.  Banks are not run by dictators, although their chief executives might be very strong-minded men (as most leaders are - except in politics!) but they can only act with the agreement of their other directors, the chairman of the board, senior executives, independent auditors and their own legal department.  On top of that there are government-run watchdogs, the Bank of England and, finally, whoever is Chancellor of the Exchequor and the Prime Minister of the day.  All of those people are a party to big decisions made by banks.  Are they all to be hauled before the courts?  Well, if so, then perhaps it isn't quite such a bad idea because the first two men in the dock should be Brown & Balls!  Anyway, on checking Kramer the Krackpot who looked vaguely familiar I learn that she is a member of the il-Lib-non-Dem party - need I say more?

 

Related articles

Families Can Sue Govt Over Iraq Troop Deaths

An 'A-', master Gove, well done!

Spikey little fella', that Michael Gove.  He seems to be alone in running a department of state and actually achieving genuine change.  Yes, it's slower than we would like but given that he's up against the massed ranks of the teachers' unions, his own civil servants and every 'edukashun' authority in the country, I think he has done splendidly.  The proof, of course, comes in the fact that Ed 'Minibrains' and his utterly useless Labour party have just surrendered.  Time for the' champers', I feel!

According to Guido, the suitably named Mr. Twigg, he'd never make a branch let alone a trunk, Labour's 'Edukashun' spokesman, said this:

Existing free schools will stay open, free schools in the pipeline will go ahead, but we will not have additional free schools.

This is after two and half years of virulant opposition to them.  He went on to say:

What we will have is a new academies programme including parent-led academies, really good teacher-led academies like Peter Hyman’s school in East London – those sorts of things. We would want the opportunity for those schools to open.

As Dave was quick to inform the House at Question Time today, Peter Hyman's school is, er, a free school!  Gove himself, with typical Jock ruthlessness, throws acid onto Labour's non-sense, non-coherent policy:

Labour’s policy on free schools is so tortured they should send in the UN to
end the suffering. On the one hand Stephen Twigg says he will end the free
school programme, but on the other he says he would set up ‘parent-led’ and
‘teacher-led academies’ – free schools under a different name. As Andrew Adonis
has said this morning, “free schools are academies without a predecessor
school”. When is a free school not a free school? When Stephen Twigg is trying
to appease the teaching unions.

Twigg has been reduced to attacking Gove's laissez-faire policy of allowing free schools to set up in areas where there is no shortage of existing schools and he accuses Gove of a gross waste of money.  But as Isabel Hardman points out at The Coffee House, the reason parents might be moved to all the bother of trying to set up a free school is that the plethora of surrounding state schools are probably rubbish!

Gove has roughly another two and a half years to get his education revolution settled and fixed and I think he deserves longer.  That is, perhaps, the sole reason to vote Tory at the next election.

 

Related articles

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He's not guilty, he's just short-sighted

 

It's quite obvious that Mr. Saatchi, that Grand Patron of the Farts, ooops, sorry, I mean the Arts, is entirely innocent of any, er, application of force against the delicious Nigella, it was just a case of mistaken identity.  It has been apparent for years that Mr. Saatchi's eyesight is deteriorating rapidly because only someone who is half blind could buy the rubbish he does in the art world.  I have applied "zee little grey cells" and I can now tell you with the very greatest confidence that at the time this photo was taken (and God bless the scrofulous lurking hack who took it), Mr. Saatchi was under the misapprehension that he was lunching with Tracey Emin:

 

In his misunderstanding he was probably saying something along the lines of 'how in hell did I spend all that dosh on your crap non-art?'  And whatever the answer was, he added something like, 'Gimme it back - now!'  If, having come to his senses, he now sells off his collection for a penny in the pound and thus brings about the implosion of the phoney, post-modernist art racket then he will deserve the thanks of a grateful nation.

In the meantime, what can one say except, perhaps, that he should have gone to SpecSavers!

 

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So what do you think of it so far, Vlad?

And how does Ulster compare with Hawaii, Mr. President?  Oh dear, if there is any chemistry going on between these two then it's about to explode!  Meanwhile, 'Dim Dave' bimbles about, oozing old Etonian charm like an ineffectual maitre d' at some posh restaurant, all of which has zero effect on the various 'house guests' who are as ripe a collection of crooks, killers, liars, cheats and reprobates as you could ever wish to avoid.  Yesterday, I had Sky News playing for most of the day with the sound off because I was buried in a book (more on that later*).  Glancing occasioanlly at the screen was quite interesting because, of course, without the sound you watch the body language.  There was an hysterical press conference between 'Vlad 'n' Dave' in which Dave pursed his little lips, furrowed his brow in order to look really, really serious and appeared to say absolutely nothing.  Vlad simply stood there looking as though he would rather have a winter in Siberia than two days in Ulster (he may not be wrong there!) and from the expression on his face as Dave waffled on I began to suspect that he was fantasizing about one day getting Dave down in the cellars at the Lubyanka!

What a colossal waste of time and money this whole farrago has been!  Nothing has been solved or even inched forward.  It reminded me of Chamberlain rushing off to lick Hitler's boots and then coming back and waving his useless bit of paper and promising "peace in our time".  I also thought of my own personal 'hero' in the world of foreign policy, Sir Edward Grey, who in his eleven years as Foreign Secretary never set foot abroad - and quite right, too!  And if you doubt the ridiculousness of this whole travelling circus let me tell you that the most hilarious sight was that of the Laurel and Hardy of the European dis-Union, Herman Achille Van Rompuy and José Manuel Durão Barroso.  What they added to the proceedings God only knows - a few surreptitious giggles, possibly.

(* The book which has captivated me is the one on which I bestowed a rave review last Sunday despite having only reached page 79, but now I am up to page 449 and it has already gained my Corker of the Year Award.  It is ideal holiday reading, a good meaty plot culminating in a tense court trial and written impeccably, the author has the knack of writing dialogue in the style of the speaker concerned.  The revelations, as they come one by one, are not so much clues concerning the murder but more about about the psychology of the people involved, not least the 'hero'.  Do not miss: Defending Jacob by William Landay)

 

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Your Monday Funny: 17.6.13

I guess you all need cheering up as you splash and shiver your way through all this 'global warming' on your way to the salt mine.  Actually, courtesy of Andra, this is rather an appropriate joke on the day after a Brit won the American Open:

 

Two women were playing golf. One teed off and watched in horror as her ball headed directly toward a foursome of men playing the next hole.

The ball hit one of the men.

He immediately clasped his hands together at his groin, fell to the ground and proceeded to roll around in agony.

The woman rushed down to the man, and immediately began to apologize.

'Please allow me to help. I'm a Physical Therapist and I know I could
relieve your pain if you'd allow me,' she told him.

'Oh, no, I'll be all right. I'll be fine in a few minutes,' the man replied.

He was in obvious agony, lying in the fetal position, still clasping his hands at his
groin.

At her persistence, however, he finally allowed her to help.  She gently took his hands away and laid
them to the side, loosened his pants and put her hands inside.

She administered tender and artful massage for several long moments and asked, 'How does that feel?'

He replied: 'It feels great, but I still think my thumb's broken!'

 

The Sunday Rumble: 16.6.13

Are our political rats worse than their political rats?  When I write "our" I mean mainly British and American because I know more about them than other democracies, and by "their" I mean any of the sundry dictatorships that litter our global pavements like so many dog droppings.  I suspect, gloomily, that there isn't too much in the way of difference between them because it seems to me that it is precisely and exactly the same sort of people who go in for politics as a full-time occupation in whatever part of the world they are situated.  They all share both that besetting vice of wanting to boss people around and the absolute conviction that they know best.  Happily, they mostly also share another characteristic - sublime stupidity.  Unhappily, that often makes them "useful idiots" in the hands of people we rarely see but who frequently operate the real levers of power, that is, the senior civil servants, trade union bosses, the generals and admirals, and occasionally, the odd philosopher or two.  The great difference between the two types of polity is that in our democratic system we do get the chance every five years to toss the rascals out which at least keeps them slightly honest - not very, but slightly!  The people of North Korea, to choose but one from a myriad, have absolutely no chance of giving their politicians a smack and that is why their country resembles Bedlam with the loonies in charge.  However, the sophistry employed by our democratic leaders which rarely withstands more than 3.7 seconds of scrutiny is not much of an advert.  "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" would only be accurate if you substituted the last two 'peoples' with the word 'politicians'!  And anyway, government by the people would be ghastly; all the people I know are more or less clueless not least because they always disagree with me!  Need I say more?

Hubble-bubble, Egyptian toil and trouble:  There is a fascinating and well-worth reading book review at Democracy Journal by Marc Lynch.  He is a middle-east politics swot and he is reviewing a book by Carrie Rosefsky called The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement.  In it she describes the development of the movement and the way in which its almost non-stop persecution meant that over the years it retreated even further into dogma whilst persecuting its very own modernisers, and all of that meant that it was totally unfit to govern when Mubarak fell.  After decades off shouting slogans the actually very messy business of governing is proving too much for it.  Now, facing a hostile electorate, it is wondering whether or not to stick to democratic free elections, whilst its so-called democratic opponents are considering the advantages of an army take-over.  Like its northern counterpart, Turkey, Egypt hovers on the cusp.  Fascinating to watch, hell to partake!

A history of three beards:  As so often I came across this amusing and elegantly written essay via the excellent offices of Arts & Letters Daily.  This particular essay was written by Donald Hall, a poet and man of letters - and, no, I hadn't heard of him either although now I wish I had.  During his life, he tells us, he grew three beards.

 

His second wife described the early growth of his beard, thus:

1. A page of exclamation points.
2. A class of cadets at attention.
3. A school of eels.
4. Standing commuters.
5. A bed of nails for the swami.
6. Flagpoles of unknown countries.
7. Centipedes resting on their laurels.
8. The toenails of the face.

Hall is both amusing and shockingly honest.  Here he summarises a mutual seduction:

When she left the room to pee, I waited by the bathroom door for her to emerge.
I led her unprotesting to the bedroom, and a few moments later, gaily engaged,
she said, “I want to put my legs around your head.” (It was perfect iambic
pentameter.) When we woke up, we became friends.

At a moment like that only a true poet could be picking up the rhythm of an iambic pentameter.  Go give it a read, it's worth it.

'Paddy' Obama falls for the 'Oirish' trick:  According to the Paddies, Obama, like every single American president - ever! - is one fourty-seventh, or two twenty-sixths, or, well, indeed to goodness, somethin' or other, part 'Oirish'.  Well, as good jokes go it's not bad but any joke told fourty-four times begins to pall.

So the menopause is all men's fault:  Why am I not surprised?  Everything is our fault according to 'wimmin'.  Mind you, this piece of, er, research is based on computer modeling so, like global warming predictions, you can safely ignore it.  CBS Pittsburgh reports the story and if you want a change from the wife telling you what else is your fault then give it a read - unlike the nagging at least it's short!

Beach reading:  It's bucket-and-spade time again and you will need some good holiday reads, you know, the sort of books that you don't have to keep re-reading in order to follow the thread!  I have just finished the latest Harry Bosch tale, as told by Michael Connelly in The Black Box.  Harry went off a bit recently but he's back in form with this fairly straighforward police procedural dealing with a 20-year old 'cold case'.  The 'Memsahib' bought it for me for my birthday so you can see she knows exacly how low my brow is!  I really shouldn't recommend this next one because I'm only on page 79 but I'm lovin' it already!  Defending Jacob by William Landay is a combined murder and courtroom legal fight and I just love those stories if they are done well.  Landay has been compared by one critic to Scott Turow, than which, etc, etc.  Anyway, so far, so excellent but if I am forced to give up at the halfway point I shall apologise!

No more rumbles today.

 

 

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Why be a Republican? So you can be spanked by a blonde with brains!

First of all, apologies for my absence due to slightly unexpected social events.  The normal sub-standard service has now resumed!  A few days ago MDA (My Darling Ann - Coulter), a stern disciplinarian, went in for a bit of lashing and her helpless, hapless target was the GOP of America, you remember, the dimwits who managed to lose against the stupidest and most dangerous president since, er, well, you choose your favourite.  With clenched teeth and straining tendons in her muscular arms - Max Mosley would have loved it! - she thrashed those conservative dimwits with words.

The main target for her contempt were the likes of Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, all of whom, God help us, are strong contenders for nomination as the Republican runner in 2016.  They, according to MDA, have fallen for the Democrat chimera that the Hispanic vote is so important that you must dance to a Democrat tune.  Thus, they chase each other in kissing Hispanic babies' arses and in supporting Dem plans to throw open the doors to even more Hispanic immigrants as well as legalising the illegals already there in a fruitless effort to win the Hispanic vote.  The fact that this bloc only represents 8.4% of the national vote and that in the last election it actually dropped appears to have completely passed the GOP leadership by.  In fact, only 48% of Hispanics bothered to vote at all!  MDA emphasises the point:

As Byron York has shown, even if Mitt Romney had won 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, he still would have lost. No Republican presidential candidate in at least 50 years has won even half of the Hispanic vote.

However, the GOP bigwigs are so terrified of the Hispanic vote that they insist on being led by their 'Rino' (Republican in name only) noses in a direction which only suits the Democrat party.  What they fail to understand because, as MDA points out, the GOP leadership is made up almost entirely of mega-rich businessmen with little or no understanding of life at street level, is that most Latinos in America are as keen, if not keener, on immigration controls because if the country is flooded with more of them then wages and conditions will drop!  Mind you, that might suit the personal interests of GOP businessmen, as MDA points out:

Maybe the greedy businessmen now running the Republican Party should talk with their Hispanic maids sometime. Ask Juanita if she'd like to have seven new
immigrants competing with her for the opportunity to clean other people's
houses, so that her wages can be dropped from $20 an hour to $10 an hour.

So, if the Hispanic vote, always low in national terms, went even lower in 2012, then who won it for Obama?  MDA turns to a recent article by Steve Sailor at VDare.com for the answer, in my version of Sun-speak, 'it was old, black wimmin wot dunnit'!

But who did turn out in 2012 to drive Obama to victory? Who was the fresh new
face of the American electorate in 2012?

Old black ladies.

According to the Census survey, fans of Tyler Perry movies voted in remarkable numbers in 2012—even more than in Obama’s first victory in 2008.

Unsurprisingly, given Obama’s candidacy, from 2004 to 2008 the number of
black voters had grown 15 percent.

Unexpectedly, however, blacks added another 10 percent to their vote total
from 2008 to 2012. Nationally, 66.2 percent of eligible blacks voted compared to
64.1 percent of whites, 48.0 percent of Hispanics, and 47.3 percent of
Asians.

Thus in the crucial battleground state of Ohio,
blacks achieved a voting rate of 71.7 percent compared to 61.9 percent for whites.

Overall, the raw black vote total grew more than
even the Hispanic vote from 2008 to 2012: an incremental 1.68 million for blacks versus 1.44 million for
Hispanics, and a decline of 2.00 million for whites.

Well, as Steve Sailor emphasises, you can hardly blame elderly black ladies who grew up during the struggles against racial discrimination for managing to overcome their aches and pains of old age and somehow getting themselves down to the polling booths to ensure that one of their own (as they see it!) stays in the White House.

However, one thing is now critical for the Republican party and that is a thorough cleansing of their leadership stables and the introduction of a new, shrewder and more intelligent group of political leaders.  And the very first thing they need to do is to read and assimilate that Census Bureau report upon which Steve Sailor based his analysis.  In fact, why not employ him full-time with MDA as his deputy?

 

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Rank humbuggery, by God!

If anyone can think of a more sickening sight and sound than that of Westminster MPs whining and whingeing and shouting and shrieking because businesses arrange their affairs to avoid paying any more tax than they have to then kindly keep it to yourself because it must be too frightful to contemplate.  The stench of humbuggery from Westminster is revolting particularly given that so many of the 'honourable members' regularly cheat on their expenses and take back-handers from corporations to help them lobby ministers.

A parliamentary committee has just issued a report blasting Google for being intelligent and avoiding, in a perfectly legal way, as much tax as they can.  This shit-pie of a committee is decorated beautifully with a neat turd on top in the form of its chairman, Patricia Hodge MP, whose hefty family fortune is safeguarded from tax liabilities by means of careful concealment in various trust funds.  The fact that her Labour party advises its own donors on how to avoid tax when they make contributions is beyond satire.  On the other side, the Tories are proud of the fact that they have lowered corporation tax  in order to attract more businesses to Britain whilst at the same time they try to beat up small countries who do the same.

Needless to say, the fact that it is our law-makers who, er, make the laws is never mentioned!

 

Roast Turkey

As I watch, rather helplessly, as Turkey slowly turns and cooks on the spit, I am reminded of a post I wrote just over two years ago entitled "The decline and fall of Arab civilisation?" - and please note the question mark at the end!  I think I would alter that today to read 'The decline and fall of Islam' - without any query at the end.  You don't need a PhD in geopolitics to work out that the Islamic states of north Africa and the middle east are engaged in a gigantic internal struggle somewhat akin to that which occupied the English over the question of the Divine Right of Kings and then later the civil war which was to decide between monarchs and parliament.  All of that took centuries but things move faster these days, almost as fast as the speed of light which accelerates touches on a keyboard round the world virtually instantaneously.

Most of the various Islamic turmoils are difficult to work out because they are bedevilled by a variety of religious 'groupuscles' of either more or less fanaticism plus some embryonic secularists who have fallen for western ways.  However, in Turkey the situation is more clearly defined.  First of all, Turks have enjoyed two free-ish elections recently and there is something magical about voting - especially if you have never had the chance before.  It is such a simply device but just for that magical moment it empowers you and once enjoyed most people do not ever want to give it up.

Turkey, of course, is a divided nation and a huge gulf exists between town and country Turks.  The former have drunk (some of them literally!) at the well of western ideas but even more important they have prospered on western capitalism.  These twin influences have eroded their Islamism, particular amongst the young, both males and females.  The country Turks, of course, remain deeply conservative and the greater the perceived threat is to their Islamic religion the more fiercely they cling to it.  Mr. Erdogan, the prime minister, has played to this re-actionary segment of the population and duly won the (free-ish) election handsomely.  However, in gradually moving the nation further into compliance with strict Islamic laws he seems to have under-estimated the resentments of the young but noisy and violent youth of his cities.  They may be in a minority but the wealth of Turkey depends on the new urban industries and the unions will side with the westernised workers who form their membership.

Thus, all along the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean from Turkey, through Syria and down into Egypt we have "this sea of troubles" and it is difficult, if not impossible, to work out how it will end, although 'tears before bedtime' can be expected!

 

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Waiting for the second European shoe to hit the floor!

Is he cleverer than a really clever thing, that Mario Draghi, chairman of the European Central Bank (ECB), or is he just too clever by half?  Alas, we shall not find out until after September when the German Constitutional Court, delaying its decision until after the German election, decides whether or not Draghi's "cunning plan" to buy up government bonds in "unlimited quantities" (his words!) from any euro-member state is legal - under German law.  Thus, this week we have the extraordinary spectacle of a European institution, in effect, standing 'trial' in a German court.  They do so, of course, because if Draghi's 'Ponzi scheme' goes broke it will be German tax-payers who will have to pick up the tab.

It might be said that Draghi has earned his title as "a really clever thing" because his plan of action taken to save the euro has worked - without him actually doing a single thing!  He simply issued a press statement last year promising to do whatever it takes and the markets instantly subsided  but to date there are no hard and fast details of his policy, but as Spiegel points out, this is deliberate:

Monetary policy and legal objectives tend to clash, as witnessed by the judges' attempt to find out from the central bankers exactly what lies behind Draghi's nebulous announcement to buy unlimited quantities of sovereign bonds -- and a lack of information about when the purchasing is slated to begin. The ECB is treating the decision as a classified matter. "Until now, we have had to make do with a press release," complains someone closely involved with the case.

This air of secrecy is maintained on purpose: Monetary policy relies on psychology, and precision is generally damaging.

Bluffing, as every poker player will tell you, only lasts for so long.  This court action could be the beginning of a real test of the ECB's will and power.  Of course, the German court cannot rule on the behaviour of a Eurpean institution as such but it can force its government not to support policies considered inimical to German tax-payers, as the WSJ points out:

The Karlsruhe
court has ruled in favor of all crisis-fighting measures to date. The ECB
doesn't fall within the court's jurisdiction, so it can't technically halt OMT
even if the program is deemed unconstitutional. A ruling isn't likely before
September.

Yet the German
court will be considering important questions about the commitments of
taxpayers across the euro zone. For now, those commitments remain as
theoretical as OMT itself, and so the justices may well conclude that they
can't rule on a hypothetical.

But if the ECB
does have to go all in for Spain or Italy, it could be too late by then for the
court to rule on the constitutionality of German involvement. If it ducks the
issue now, Mr. Draghi will be pleased, but German taxpayers may pay the price down the road.

It is necessary to constantly remind oneself that since the recent alarums and excursions within the euro zone - nothing has changed - nothing has been really solved - there is still no, er, 'final solution!

 

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Shakespeare on love

Slightly nerve-wracking evening yesterday when I delivered one of my Shakespeare talks to some of my fellow members at my theatre group.  The problem was that there were one or three or more present who had probably forgotten more about Shakespeare than I actually know!  But they were kind and treated me gently.  My talk is entitled Shakespeare in Love: the Young, the Middle-Aged & the 'Don't Ask'! and my main conclusion, based on the love affairs in three of his plays (R&J, Much Ado and A&C), was that Will rated friendship above passionate love, or, to put it another way, liking usually lasts longer than loving.

Romeo and Juliet is a superb, classical, Renaissance love-story written almost entirely in verse and with such a cruel and tragic ending that it scars the memory.  But, once out of the theatre, you don't have to be entirely cynical to guess that had the youngsters made their escape the chances are that they would not have continued in marital bliss forever.  Similarly, those two 'golden oldies', Antony and Cleopatra, sunk in a mutual swamp of luxury and sensuousness, certainly have an almost ferocious bond between them but somehow, in someway, I slightly recoil from it - perhaps it offends my very English nature.  I never saw the film Cleopatra but surely it was a Hollywood stroke of genius to cast Taylor and Burton as the two lovers and judging from various extracts I read of Burton's recently published diaries, they lived their roles!  One of my pals last night insisted that theirs was a true love and cited the magnificent poetry in which they talk to and of each other.  To me, that confirms my belief that Will was indicating that such overblown language was a cover for a less than concrete coupling.  Even so, under pressure from my audience last night I was forced to admit that they both died for each other.

To me, the greatest love story he wrote was that between Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado.  Middle-aged (by Elizabethan standards), old friends, or perhaps old adversaries from their earlier days, who enjoy their mutual wit and beneath the banter a growing and increasingly deep regard develops between them based, I think, as much on friendship as the sort of high-blown 'lurve' of the two juniors and the two seniors mentioned above.

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Chop Suey 'n' grits - too, too delicious!

So 'Comrade' Xi Jinping meets 'Brother' Obama, an example, perhaps, of the inscrutable facing the screwable!  What, I sometimes wonder, have we done, both 'over here' and 'over there', to deserve the third-raters who run our nations.  Well, I suppose the cruel answer is that we voted for them!  Anyway, it would have been amusing to watch Obama stumble over his falling trousers as he departed the meeting and realised that somehow Xi had removed his braces without him feeling a thing!  And as for Secretary of State John Kerry, he probably forgot to put his trousers on in the first place!

Today, of course, we can all enjoy the sweet 'n' sour sauce provided by the American traitor, Edward Snowdon, who has blown open the activities of the National Security Agency in their deep-sea, wide-net fishing activities as they trawled the internet.  He, apparently, has sought political asylum in Hong Kong but not being a very intelligent Intelligence man he failed to realise that a year before us Brits vacated the place we signed a mutual extradition treaty with the USA.  Now the Chinese government (Sole Prop: Li Jinping) must decide whether to stand by it or deny it despite having just departed from dear President Obama promising to look hard, I tell you, velly, velly hard, at alleged communication hacking by Chinese, er, 'entrepreneurs'!

It's no wonder you sometimes have to wait when you rush to this distinguished blog every morning because there are so many security agencies checking me over that a queue has formed!  (Waddya mean, you never have any trouble?  Don't tell me they don't bother with D&N!)

 

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Your Monday Funny: 10.6.13

No time for long intros, I'm off to London again for the day.  Suffice only to say, "Hail to thee, Caesar", er, that's Sid Caesar, actually!  How could I have forgotten the incomparable Sid, a man who nearly did me a physical injury when I literally fell of a sofa helpless with laughter as I watched him on TV.  Watch this and I defy you not to laugh - although if you are a wage-slave beware that it is rather noisy and lasts over 7 minutes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA5YAAdvNuk

And as I'm in both a YouTube mood and a generous mood, here's another delight, courtesy of Andra, featuring another funny man, Mel Brooks and his gorgeous wife, Ann Bancroft.  Am I correct in thinking that Mel Brooks used to be a gag-writer for Sid Caesar?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Saz0FrMvlq8

 See you next Tuesday - and I do the acronymic jokes round here!

 

The Sunday Rumble: 9.6.13

If you have nails, prepare to bite them now:  For the last two days the new Chinese president has been in talks with Obama who has been supported in these subtle and delicate negotiations by, er, John Kerry ... yeeeees, quite!  One would like to think ... hope? ... that behind the scenes there is a top level of serious, intelligent and strategically-minded thinkers in the State Department to guide these two dummies men as they lay the groundworks for a new Sino-American 'arrangement' in the Pacific.  Well, a man may hope, may he not?  Mind you, and to be fair, I also hope that Xi Jingping has the political muscle and guile to keep his bellicose military under control.

 

What's the French for 'dropping a bollock?  Well, we have the Duke of Edinburgh to keep us endlessly amused by his ability to drop bollocks but now the French have President Hollande to do it for them.  On a state visit to Japan he expressed his condolences to the people of China - eh? what? waddesay? - for the deaths of ten Japanese citizens in a recent terrorist attack in Algeria.  'Eh bien, zey all look zee same, do zey not?'  The Japanese, I'm glad to say, remained, er, inscrutable!  And I have just remembered the French expression - un faux pas.  In Japanese it's called a - 失言.  See, you never stop learning on this blog!

 

How dare they!  This, from an article at The American Spectator:

The strange irony here is that critics initially regarded pulp fiction as gauche
pseudo-literature read by friendless kids, blue-collar rubes, and chronic
masturbators.

Well, I don't know which category I fit into but as a devoted, not to say, voracious, reader of pulp fiction I think it says all that needs to be said - about critics!  The article, by Daniel J. Flynn, reports on a recent effort to list the greatest writing in TV drama series.  The Wire only came 9th - morons!

 

Further rumbles as the day progresses . . .

Oooops, sorry, ran out of time!

 

 

 

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President Obama, Chinese President Xi Jingping, wrap up Palm Springs meeting

It's not what they listen to but what they do with it

I am perplexed - so what's new? - by the furore over security agencies collecting what amounts to several landfill sites of electronic data as a means of searching for some indications that X, Y or Z might, or might not, be contacting terrorist organisations.  My instant re-action was that I would have been exceedingly cross if they were not doing that sort of thing.  That, after all, is what we pay them for and as I have an aversion - a very strong aversion - to body parts being blown across tube trains and London buses then I don't mind if some mole at Cheltenham finds out about my frequent web-visits to the site of Miss Whackem's Institute for the Discipline of Naughty Young Gels because, of course, as you know, dear Reader, it is entirely innocent and is simply a means by which I can research the appalling lack of discipline in our 'skools' today - see previous post!

Also, I am equally perplexed at the notion that when you do anything on 'the net' it is somehow 'private' and 'privileged'.  Of course it's not, it never has been and never will be.  It is no different in essence from living in a 19th century village or small town in which the local squire is spotted paying the occasional visit to 'Widow Twanky', no doubt, he would say, for the puroposes of comforting her in her loss!  All actions are public not private, the only difference is that some are spotted and some are not.  So it is best to work on the assumption that sooner or later whatever you do will be noted by someone somewhere.

What is more important than the collection of information which will happen no matter what, is what the authorities do with it!  If they, by which I mean the professionals in the security services, simply concentrate on the 'baddies' then I wish them well.  Instantly, of course, that begs a definition of 'baddies' which you, me and the man in the street would have no difficulty in defining, but those twisted, psychopathic, mental retards who have allowed politics to rule their lives and who, by means of slithering and greasing their way up the political pole have reached positions of real power, only ever think that their political enemies are the real enemies of the state.  We have just discovered a prime example of this with the current imbroglio in the USA where the enormously powerful Internal Revenue Service has been infiltrated by Left-wing activists raised in their youth in the hothouse of campus politics and who see it as their duty, no less, to use bureaucratic malignancy to attack their political opponents.

I leave you with one thought, in the event of the next Labour government would you want some paid Westminster minion of Len McCLuskey to have access to your collected data?  Take that as a 'no', shall I?

 

 

Get fell in, you 'orrible lot!

News today of a government initiative - oh for God's sake, come out and stop hiding!  I know what you mean but this one's fairly harmless.  Apparently they are going to help ex-soldiers to become school teachers by cutting their training time from four years to only two.  (Four years to train a teacher!!!!)  Anyway, the fun potential in this idea is fairly high as I think  about the various rascals, scallywags, drunks, killers and fornicators with whom I served.  The 'lickle kiddie-winkies' might not learn much of an academic nature but their eyes will be opened to the, er, vageries vagaries (see below) of human nature in all its forms.  Anyway, they have to be an improvement on the wet, idle and mostly useless lot who run our 'skools' today.  I heard one on the radio this morning from one of the teacher unions whingeing and whining about what a disgrace it was for teachers to qualify in only two years.  Hopefully, one of the new ex-squaddie intake will stick one on him and shut him up.  That will be a very fine lesson for the lads and lasses!

Why is America so damned confusing?

I ask because I was on the point of adding yet another 'MD?' (My Darling whoever) to the increasingly long list of lovely political ladies who have graced these distinguished columns over the years.  A vacancy has occurred because MDM (My Darling Michelle - Bachman that is) has retired hurt from the great game.  However, today, via Drudge and Politico I learned that a winner of the Miss America competition had announced her intention of running for office in a congressional district in Illinois.  All you regulars know of my predilection for slobbering at the feet of these lovely, powerful ladies and I assumed that as a former Miss America she would be an exceedingly hot piece of pulchritude.  However, I learn that she won it on the basis of her opera-singing ability - opera!? eh? what? - and that bikinis are no longer the sole requirement for Miss Americas.  Dammit, you can't rely on anything these days!

Anyway, this lady, Miss Erika Harold, does look exceedingly attractive and her record is exemplary in that she only entered the Miss America competition in order to win scholorship funds so that she could study law at Harvard which she did with considerable success.  She's a Republican and only 33-years old and single, so I'm in with chances!  It goes without saying, of course, that she will enter the White House someday and you can take that as a surefire bet given my superb ability at forecasting US presidential elections - and before you bother, JK, don't!

Remember you read it here first!

 

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Let's hear it for Eddie, oops, sorry, Ellen Sturtz

This is him, I mean, her, he's she's the one on the left with the short back and sides, and her name is Ellen Sturtz and she is an activist with a homosexual organisation called 'GetEQUAL':

Ellen is, apparently, a bit of a 'collar and tie job' and yesterday she had the temerity to heckle the FLOTUS (a particularly unfortunate acronym which brings to mind something other than the First Lady of the United States) on the subject of discrimination against homosexuals working for Federal contractors and, according to The Daily Mail, FLOTUS was not amused!  Well, she wouldn't be, would she, seeing as she's married to that wuss in the White House who wouldn't say boo to a goose, let alone FLOTUS.  It is, of course, grossly unfair, and therefore totally in line with the spirit of this blog, to cast aspersions on people who are only known via their public personas but the fact is that FLOTUS strikes me as an arrogant, priggish, American il-Liberal of the worst sanctimonious and hypocritical sort.  I do not doubt that the dreadful woman takes every opportunity to play her black race cards whilst spending fortunes on wigs which are intended to deny her negroid hair!

 

Still, despite this public row I really do hope the two ladies can kiss and make up - and that I can be there to take the pictures!  Actually, my admiration for Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms (delete according to taste) Sturtz is such that I am inclined to do her a very great favour - Ms. Sturtz, please meet Mr. Chris Huhne, the very finest lesbian-straightener Britain has ever produced . . .

ADDITIONAL:  Good grief, I appear to have 'gone viral', or at least, this post has.  Over 700 1,119 hits - and counting!  You don't think they're all from the American Secret Service do you?

 

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Super-duper Sidmouth!

Of course, blazing sunshine makes almost anywhere look attractive but actually Sidmouth was a tiny delight.  Not the least of its attractions is that it made me feel young, by which I mean that the 'Memsahib' and I plus our two friends, all in our 70s, lowered the average age in Sidmouth by about 10 years!  The other instant attraction is that it passed my tattoo test and by that I mean that in strolling along the promenade and into the main shopping streets I saw only one tattooed body!  Actually, the shops, on the whole, were a bit shabby but at the western end of the seafront there are some very nice hotels with magnificent sculptured gardens  and we enjoyed a delicious lunch at one of them whilst sitting on their handsome sun-terrace.  Finally, and I canot stress this excellent characteristic strongly enough - 'kiddie-winkies' were virtually non-existent!  Need I say more?

 

Off to sodding Sidmouth

Actually, I am assured that Sidmouth is far from 'sodding' and that it is, in fact, a seaside town of great charm and some antiquity.  Anyway, armed with bucket and spade and pocket money for the ice creams and, I hope, the Punch and Judy man, that's where I'm off to for today.  My goodness, what a whirlwind of exotic pleasures my life has become.

 

That's me and the 'Memsahib' on the left!  Here are some more views:

  

 

 

Another socialist tablet of stone crumbles to dust

 

No, no, not him, I only put his picture there to give you all fright!  What I wished to comment upon was the fact that one Ed has obviously just snookered another Ed.  By making Ed Balls break the news that the Labour party now believes that the age of universal benefits has ended, Ed Milliband has demonstrated that he's in charge and what he says goes - and that includes Ed Balls if he doesn't toe the new party line!

Admitting that paying winter fuel allowances to people on high rates of tax is "A Bad Thing" means that they  will have to admit that the government's efforts to direct other benefit payments only to those who need them is "A Good Thing".  Whether or not it is 'Good Politics' or 'Bad Politics' will only become clear over time but at least it has brought Balls to heel.  What the Labour party (sole prop. Mr. Len McCluskey of the UNITE union) will think about it we cannot be sure but the destruction of shibboleths always causes grief.

Master James Forsyth at The Coffee House sums it up thus:

The Labour leadership is hotly denying they’ve abandoned universality. But it
is hard to see on what grounds they’re arguing this. This provides an opening
for the Tories to offer a scaled back version of the welfare state that is more
of a safety net than a universal system.

Finally, I suspect that this speech has provided some political space for
Ukip. I’d be surprised if it didn’t go into the next election as the party
committed to protecting pensioner and middle class benefits.

Whatever, it is a delight and a treat to see Ed Balls eating his own words and trying to smile as he munches through them.

 

Your Monday Funny: 3.6.13

Before I give you my Andra's joke of the week let me tell you what a fantastic early morning I have enjoyed today.  Glorious sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, a gentle breeze, the hedgerows burgeoning, the cow parsley as "high as an elephant's eye" and, just as I entered the village before mine, along the road came a thousand lolling tongues and a forest of waggy tails!  Well, I exaggerate, of course, but it was the local hunt moving their dogs from one location to another.  They filled the road and were a joy to behold - although I guess the local fox was not too impressed!  Then, leaving them behind I turned a corner and straight ahead, apparantly motionless in the clear blue sky, was a hot-air balloon.  They really are a lovely sight to behold.  Anyway, enough rhapsodising, back to earth with one of Andra's funnies which is short, sharp and to the point:

A man walks into a crowded local bar in Darwin brandishing a
revolver yelling,          

"Who's the bastard that's been screwing my wife?"      

A voice from the back of the bar shouts back,           

"You don't have enough ammo mate!!"

 

The Sunday Rumble: 2.6.13

'The Americans' is crap!  And before DM gives me a hundred lines for bad grammar please note that 'The Americans' is a title for a new TV series based on the actual fact that the KGB inserted English-speaking agents into the USA where they adopted totally American lives, sometimes married and even had children.  To all intents and purposes they were American - except, of course, when they slipped away for surreptitious meetings with their controllers.  So, you, like me, might think, wow! a potentially fascinating scenario for a sophisticated, multi-layered drama series in which nobody is quite what they seem.  Oh dear what a pity never mind!  If only it had been produced by David Simon, main begetter of The Wire, the best TV series - EVER!  And if only it had been written by le Carré, a writer of infinite patience and subtlety.  But alas, neither of those people were engaged, instead it was produced by some pillock called Jo Weisberg who couldn't spell 'subtlety'!  Thus, we were given some unbelievable crash, bang, wallops, a bit of what appears now to be statutary sex on recent American cable channel broadcasting, and the incredible - and therefore totally unbelievable - coincidence that an FBI man moves in next door to our all-American all-Soviet family! Total garbage!

Oh, no, say it ain't so!  According to Ms. Anna Raccoon - and am I going to give her an argument? - not bloody likely! - yesterday marked the 50th birthday of Carnaby Street which makes me - officially - old!  Of course, she acknowledges that Carnaby Street has been around since Dickens was scribbling his sentimental tosh (that's my opinion, not hers!) but she is referring to the (relatively) modern incarnation of Carnaby Street.  I did, once, buy some 'gear' from there but I only wore it once because I looked an even more complete tosser than usual!  Still, her post is worth reading.

 

No mercy for Mercer:  Yet another raft of parliamentary rascals caught taking back-handers from dodgy PR companies according to The Telegraph and the BBC.  I was forced to agree with Polly Toynbee - SHLOCK-HORROR! - who was on Sky News a few minutes ago and said, in effect, that it was not so much a revelation concerning their cupidity as their their stupidity!  I was not too surprised to see that one of those taken in by this bogus PR company set up by the scrofulous hacks of 'Fleet Street' was Patrick Mercer MP, a particularly pompous and rather stupid ex-army officer who was wheeled out on TV every time some BBC know-nothing reporter needed a quote on military or security affairs.  I can remember thinking how glad I was never to have been led into battle by such a donkey!  

A pox on the lot of you!  Well, not really, that's just my way of pointing you to these people "Schubert, Schumann, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Flaubert, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Wilde and Joyce with contentious evidence around Beethoven and Hitler" who, unlikely as it is, all shared something - they all suffered with syphilis!  This is according to Sarah Dunnant in a grim but fascinating article in 'The Graun'.  Someone must have been to blame and that man was Christopher Columbus who compounded his folly in discovering America by allowing his sailors to consort with native women and thereby introduce the pox to Europe.  As she points out with considerable irony:

Though there has been dispute in recent years over pre-15th-century European bones found with what resemble syphilitic symptoms, medical science is largely agreed that it was indeed a new disease brought back with the men who accompanied Columbus on his 1492 voyage to the Americas. In terms of germ warfare, it was a fitting weapon to match the devastation that measles and smallpox inflicted travelling the other way.

It is generally reckoned that Winston Churchill's father, Randolph, was a member of this less than exclusive club, too.

 

Not a good day for the 'slebs':  Do try to contain your emotions but several 'slebs' have recently suffered bad hair days.  First, poor Tiger Woods, a world champ at the sport of 'Hockey at the Halt' took "two double bogeys and a triple bogey on the back nine for a 44".  Oh dear, what a pity, never mind!  I'm not exactly sure what all that means except that it is bad; very, very bad.  Then, and I was shocked, I tell you, shocked, to hear that that that well-known religious irreligious icon, Madonna, has been savaged by her 'fans' and called "a fat face" because of something or other she has done, or not done, to her face.  Still, I expect she'll cheer herself up by going home and counting her money - shouldn't take more than a couple of months!  Finally, and I should warn you that this not for those of a delicate nature, poor Michael Douglas has blamed his throat cancer on human papillomavirus which is caught by an excess of the practice of cunnilingus.  Pity that, because I had thought that when he finally croaks I was going to drop his wife, the delicious Catherine Zeta Jones, a line to say that, er, you know, I could be available and all that.  Not any more!  (Thanks to Drudge)

 

No more rumbles today.

 

Thinking or grunting, which came first?

It's another of those coincidence things again.  They keep happening to me.  It must be a coincidence!  Anyway, this one is the infinitely tricky subject of language, an attribute we take for granted because it appears to have been granted to us as of right, which has cropped up in two very different books I have just aquired.  The first book, The Information by James Gleick, proposes that everything in the universe is 'information' in various discrete forms and Gleick investigates the various means by which 'information' is passed between humans.  He begins with primitive language including perhaps the most primitive of them all - African drums!  In so far as I have ever thought about it I always assumed they were generalised signals of feast-making or war-making or some such.  But Gleick tells us that they were language, a highly stylised one but capable of transmitting simple but fairly detailed information.  It was not until the mid-19th century that white men gradually realised that the drums were 'talking' - possibly about them!

Daniel C. Dennett in his book Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking, approaches language from a slightly different angle.  As a philosopher he deplores (whilst recognising its utility) the way in which mathematics has impinged on philosophy.  He prefers a return to plain, straighforward language - well, as straightforward as language can ever be!  His opening reflections made me ponder, not so much on contemporary philosophical language but how and why the ability to speak and then to write evolved.  I think we need to beware because so many of the things that evolution has wrought seem obvious, almost pre-destined - now - but it should never be taken for granted, as the last survivors of the zillion species which tried existence but failed would tell you if they were still around!

Most higher level creatures (and, no, I'm not going to define that because I'm not a philosopher!) have the means to communicate with each other, mostly through 'body language' or through whatever 'sound system' they have developed.  They can indicate, for example, flight or fight or another word beginning with 'f' but it is signalling rather than language.  For language it is, or was, necessary to take a truly giant leap.  The signalling I referred to above merely indicates what I might call 'a mood' but to use language requires a being to think, and to think requires (I think) self-consciousness.  It is necessary to recognise yourself as an entity and that will cause you to recognise other things about you as entities.  Well, we're all aware of the difficulties and complexities that still surround the notion of self-consciousness, and once I have finished Gleick's book I look forward to reading what Dennett has to say on the subject.

However, I would add that whilst self-consciousness is one thing, having the physical ability to emit a variety of sounds is equally important.  What a bummer to be a creature that has become self-aware but who lacks the vocal ability to form a variety of sounds that could be joined together to form something coherent and meaningful!  (Perhaps that was Cro-Magnon man's problem but at least he didn't have to put up with his nagging wife as he waited for his species to die off!)  So which came first, the vocal chords or the self-awareness and the desire to speak?

Anyway, gradually a cacophony of clicks, grunts, snuffles and squeaks gradually evolved into a language more or less as we understand it today.  Truly miraculous!  There then ensued thousands of years of human life in which communication was only ever verbal.  As Gleick reminds us, it is almost impossible to imagine a world, one which existed for thousands of years, in which there was no writing.  And lack of literacy, of course, entails lack of definition because, as we all know, 'word of mouth' is not to be relied on!  In a non-literate world, Humpty-Dumpty rules because words 'mean' whatever the speaker chooses for them to mean.  Well, the non-literate world was never going to last forever and eventually some 'trouble-maker' picked up a bit of soft clay and started making marks on it with a bit of sharpened reed and, hey-ho, writing was invented.  Of course, many (most?) written words are not fixed forever in their exact meaning even when they're chiselled on stone but they are certainly more definitive that verbal communication.  Once literacy arrived memory suffered and again Gleick reminds us, Plato bemoaned this fact in Phaedrus:

For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory.  Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.  You have invented an elixer not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom.

Much of the uncertainty in written language stemmed from the fact that no-one laid down 'rules and regulations' to cover meaning, spelling, syntax and so forth.  In English, Gleick tells us, it was not until 1604 that a village school-master and priest produced a book with the less than punchy title of: A Table Alphabeticall, conveying and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes.  His name was Robert Cawdrey and, alas and alack, both he and his truly monumental work faded into obscurity and today only one example remains.  In compiling his Table Alphabetical, Cawdrey discovered, the hard way, that in his age the act of defining words means choosing, first the spelling and then the meaning.  The difficulties involved are demonstrated in Cawdrey's own title page in which he first writes wordes and then in a later sentence words!

At this point I feel the approach of a Shakesperean quote which constant repetition on this blog has rendered hackneyed so I will avoid temptation and bring this meandering post to an end.  Needless to say, like most of the posts on this blog, it ends with absolutely no conclusion except, that is, to say that the history of language is a fascinating topic well worth investigating.

 

Gregg Kreutz, courtesy of Rogerh!

Look, I know I told you yesterday that I was attempting to post on the subject of language but, alas, just at the moment I don't have, er, the words - or the time given that we are suffering a brutish attack of global warming (hurrah!) and the accumulations stemming from yesterday's trip to the garden centre must be dealt with today.  But fear not, as I do so, be assured that I will be pondering on some of the mysteries of language which I will vouchsafe to you - later!

In the meantime, my regular commenter, 'Rogerh' raised the name of an American artist, Gregg Kreutz, in a comment to yesterday's post.  Taking the easy way out I have decided to give you some samples of his work from a comprehensive site featuring his paintings:

 

           

            

Right, no more time, stand by, begonias, here I come!