All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
current affairs, ramblings

2016 Predictions

I thought I’d get my crystal ball out again this year and see if I could come up with a few ideas as to what might happen over the course of this brand new 2016.
What follows is the best I can interpret the misty images in the aforesaid crystal ball. As last year they are just my ideas of what might happen based solely on hunches and gut feel; I have no inside knowledge and I haven’t been studying the form — so if you base any decision on any of this I will take no responsibility for your idiocy. However some of them do seem to be somewhat obvious.
Anyway, here we go …

UK

  1. David Cameron will not succeed in negotiating any meaningful changes to UK’s membership of the EU
  2. Nevertheless Cameron declares a triumph & campaigns for the UK to stay in the EU
  3. However the UK electorate will vote narrowly to leave the EU
  4. This could lead to the downfall of the current government and a General Election
  5. Labour’s Sadiq Khan wins the London mayoral election
  6. Boris Johnson is appointed to the cabinet in a summer reshuffle
  7. At least one very well-known UK company (or charity) goes into liquidation unexpectedly with 500+ job losses
  8. The government will go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow despite adverse environmental evaluations
  9. Consequently the value of property within 10 miles of the Heathrow flightpath falls by 20%
  10. Work starts on HS2 and Crossrail 2 despite the lack of available funding
  11. Construction work starts on London’s “garden bridge”, also despite a funding shortfall; the project will never be completed
  12. Inflation remains at about 1%
  13. Interest rates rise to 1% by YE
  14. The FTSE 100 closes 2016 down 10% on the 2015 close
  15. At least one major “accident” (transport? industrial? terrorist?) with 50+ fatalities — and there’s a good chance it will be in London
  16. Death of a senior member of the royal family
  17. Prince Harry comes out as gay (or at least bi)
  18. Artist Banksy is finally unmasked; he turns out to be someone already well known
  19. Bruce Forsythe and David Attenborough die
  20. Arsenal win Premier League
  21. Another warm, wet winter followed by a cold wet summer

World

  1. Donald Trump will not win the Republican nomination in the US Presidential election
  2. Hilary Clinton wins the US Presidential election by the tiniest of majorities
  3. Relations between Turkey and Russia deteriorate further
  4. Fighting in Ukraine flares up again
  5. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un dies unexpectedly, plunging the country into chaos and resulting in annexation by China
  6. Dalai Lama dies, precipitating a diplomatic crisis with China
  7. Major violence erupts in Egypt further damaging their tourist industry especially in the Nile Valley
  8. Assad remains in power in Syria, possibly in a strengthened position as the West comes to see him as the least worst option
  9. Greece will have further financial troubles and will again come close to leaving the EU — and they may even be forced to leave
  10. Cyprus reaches some form of vague reunification agreement
  11. The EU has to formally suspend Schengen Agreement
  12. A further downturn in Chinese economy causes worldwide downturn
  13. Oil prices remain low but fuel and domestic energy prices rise compared with the start of the year
  14. At least two major airline, train, cruise liner or ferry accidents with 200+ fatalities (in total)
  15. A naval vessel (Australian? Russian?) finds the wreckage of MH370, by luck as it is outside the search zone; it is too deep to be safely recovered

Personal
Six personal predictions have been documented but are redacted to protect both saints and sinners.

Let’s see if we can do any better this year than we did last. But do not put any money on this — I won’t be!
Do you have any good predictions for this year? If so please share them.

photography

Weekly Photograph

Another from the archives this week. This was taken in October 2013 when Noreen and I travelled on the paddle-steamer Waverley down the Thames from London (Tower Pier) to Southend and back. We left about 9am on a cold misty morning, but this cleared to a lovely warm sunny day. The final leg of the return journey was in a rather chilly twilight, but it did provide some good photo opportunities …

Pylon
Pylon
Thames, East London; October 2013
Click the image for larger views on Flickr

history, links, science

Your Interesting Links

OK boys and girls, here’s the next instalment of links to items you may have missed the first time round.
And as from this issue, these link posts will be monthly, on around the last day of the month (or maybe a day later).
So here we go …
Science & Medicine
Let’s start with a look at some science myths that just refuse to die. Own up: how many of those did you believe?
You would expect, wouldn’t you, that medics would by now understand the menopause and how to alleviate its worst symptoms for those women worst affected? Seems that isn’t the case and the menopause isn’t well understood at all.
We hear a lot about “evidence-based medicine”. But is there any evidence that “evidence-based medicine” is any better than any other variety?
You need to be fit to go into hospital. Yes, really! Apart from the rise in hospital-acquire infections, it seems that the environment is physically and mentally debilitating.
So who has needed a hangover cure in the last few days? Here’s a bit about the possible underlying causes of hangovers, which again are still not well understood.
Sexuality
Possibly only the French would dare put on an exhibition called Splendours and Miseries: Images of Prostitution 1850-1910. Kim Willsher reviews for the Guardian.


Now here’s a brave teacher who believes in what I have always said: we would be better off being open and honest and discussing sexuality etc. This really should be the norm.
Hair. Why do men grow it on their chins but (apparently) insist women remove it from their genitals? Could we be about to see a resurgence of pubic hair?
Environment
George Monbiot (yes, him again!) has a rant about the environmental damage caused by agriculture and the growing of our food.
Social Sciences & Business
Cheating (generally, not sexually). We all do it — some more than others. But we all do it to some extent if only in pursuance of our personal myth.
Talking of cheating, it’s estimated that 3% of £1 coins currently in circulation are fakes. To counteract such forgery the Royal Mint will be issuing a new 12-sided £1 coin in 2017.
Londonist proposed 15 ways in which London’s train network could be improved, and all without building a single foot of new track. Some of them do seem to be incredibly simple to do!
Art & Literature
Is there really any point in collecting books? Howard Jacobson has a view.
History
This really should be called London Curiosities, but they all have some historic basis …
Londonist, again, hunts out London’s top 10 moats. Oh yes, there really are that many moats in London, although not all are historic.
And one more from Londonist, this time London’s top 10 tunnels and catacombs.
Being English we do like our cup of tea (or a large mug in my case!). So why didn’t I previously know about Twining’s teashop and museum. Must add this to the 2016 bucket list.

And finally in this section, an old favourite. Caroline’s Miscellany gets a look round the long closed Down Street Station.
Food & Drink
Most of us probably drank some champagne over Christmas, or maybe to see in the New Year, so here’s a little of the chemistry that makes champagne work.
Alice Roberts writes about choosing to be a vegetarian, although she eats fish for health, and actually likes the taste of meat.
Shock, Horror, Humour
And in our final sections, Ipswich’s most famous cat burglar, Theo, relapses into his thieving ways.

And lastly, Londonist (yes, them again) investigates the 10 rudest museum exhibits in London.
More in a month’s time!

personal, ramblings

2015 Predictions, the Results

Back at the beginning of 2015 I made some predictions as to what I thought would happen during the year. How well did I do? Well no, not very well. But then I didn’t really expect to. Here are the results:

UK

  1. Labour win the General Election — although probably not with an overall majority; they form a government in coalition with the LibDems. WRONG
  2. As a result of the new government the unions start demanding, and getting, inflation busting wage rises. WRONG; due to election result; although the rail unions have certainly tried over all-night running on the London Underground.
  3. Theresa May beats off a challenge from Boris Johnson to become leader of the Conservative Party. WRONG; due to election result.
  4. There is no change in UK interest rates. CORRECT
  5. A major household name (possibly a high street store) calls in the receivers. MAYBE: if Kid’s Company counts.
  6. At least one UK holiday tour operator goes under stranding several hundred holiday-makers abroad. WRONG
  7. Against expectations UK inflation will be around 4% driven by higher wage settlements and spending by the new government. WRONG; annual inflation remained at under about 1%.
  8. On 31 December FTSE will close down 10% compared with 1 January. WRONG; at 6242 it is down just under 5%.
  9. UK will see at least one major plane crash and one major train crash. WRONG
  10. Duke of Edinburgh dies and is given a state funeral. WRONG
  11. Queen Elizabeth II becomes Britain’s longest reigning monarch. CORRECT
  12. The UK has a warm winter and a cold wet summer. CORRECT; winter was marginally warmer than average (about +0.5°C) with average rainfall but more sunshine; summer was as predicted colder and wetter than average.

Overseas

  1. Violence in South Africa between black tribes threatens to turn into civil war and causes a white exodus. WRONG; although in April Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini asked for an end to violence after attacks against migrants.
  2. Death of President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is followed by further civil war. WRONG
  3. Major epidemic will affect the developed world — could be Ebola or flu or MERS or something entirely new. WRONG
  4. Australia will experience an earthquake of at least magnitude 7. WRONG
  5. The Pope will issue a revolutionary encyclical, possibly on birth control, divorce or the celibate priesthood. MAYBE; three things I spotted (1) the Pope telling people they don’t have to breed like rabbits, (2) reform of the marriage annulment process, (3) an encyclical in June on climate change.
  6. A number of international sporting bodies are proven to be driven by massive bribery and fraud. CORRECT; see FIFA and the IAAF.
  7. The Islamic world continues to descend into total meltdown with more factional fighting, civil war and coups d’état; the exceptions are Saudi Arabia and UAE which remain relatively stable due to their oil wealth. CORRECT
  8. Russia continues to be belligerent over Ukraine and only their economic woes will prevent World War 3. CORRECT; although Russia’s intervention in Syria seems to have relieved the pressure somewhat.
  9. Brussels finally gets fed up with the UK’s posturing and formally asks us to leave the EU. WRONG; but they got fairly close to this with Greece over the summer.
  10. A major airline goes into liquidation MAYBE; does Cyprus Air (who closed in January) count?

Personal

  1. I finally have to be put on insulin to control my diabetes. WRONG; but we must be getting perilously close.
  2. We lose the venerable Harry the Cat (well he is over 17) but he is replaced by two kittens. WRONG; but again we must be getting close to losing Harry; he’s now over 18.

For once being wrong most of the time was actually quite a good thing!
2016 predictions to follow in the next few days.

personal, ramblings

My 2015 in Summary

As I’ve done for the last couple of years here is a survey to summarise my engagement (or, more accurately, lack of it) with 2015.
In summary it has been a bit of a crap year what with a couple of nasty gastric bugs, worse depression than I’ve had for years, more voluntary work than I felt able to cope with (yeah, I know, self-inflicted) and the death of my mother. But then life’s not fair and shit happens.

At the beginning of the year I posted ten things I wanted to do in 2015. The results are in and I think it fair to say I didn’t just lose; I was overwhelmed and crushed — which just proves how bad the year has been:
1. Kick the depression LOSE
2. Drink more champagne WIN
3. Keep breathing WIN
4. Restart meditation LOSE
5. Take more photographs LOSE
6. Be drawn/painted/photographed nude by someone other than family LOSE
7. Have at least one 2 week holiday LOSE
8. Celebrate my mother’s 100th birthday with her LOSE
9. Visit Horniman Museum LOSE
10. Go somewhere/do something I’ve not done before WIN
3/10 is not terribly good, now is it! Could do very much better; must try harder!

Looking at the year through the usual 25 questions doesn’t improve things either.
1. What did you do that you’d never done before?
Buried my mother — well you would normally only ever do this once!
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I keep telling you I don’t do New Year resolutions.
3. What would you like to have in 2016 that you lacked in 2015?
A properly working body and head.
4. What dates from 2015 will remain etched upon your memory?
26 May and 17 June: the day my mother died and the day we buried her.
5. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Had a very nasty gastric flu just before Easter and again in late September. And then there’s the depression and the diabetes.
caledonia6. What was the best thing you bought?
Anthony Powell’s Caledonia.
7. Where did most of your money go?
Survival, I think.
8. What did you get really, really excited about?
Nothing; I don’t do excitement, just like I don’t do panic and crisis. But completing my set of Anthony Powell first editions was good.
9. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a. happier or sadder? — sadder due to the worsening depression.
b. thinner or fatter? — the same to within a kilo, but that’s overall still way too much.
c. richer or poorer? — richer, thanks to my mother.
10. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Nothing.
11. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Everything except sleep.
12. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Buying Caledonia.
13. What was your biggest failure?
Can I have three things? My mother not making her 100th birthday (by about 5 months). Overall illness. Depression.
14. How many one-night stands?
I don’t collect night stands; I have one bedside cabinet and that is perfectly sufficient, thank you.
15. What was your favourite TV program?
What’s TV? I’ve hardly looked at TV all year. Is there anything worth watching these days?
16. What was the best book you read?
According to the reviews I’ve posted here it would be Maureen Evans’ Eat Tweet: A Twitter Cookbook. But there are several other close contenders.
17. What did you want and get?
Caledonia
18. What did you want and not get?
Good health.
19. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Mum living to 100.
20. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2015?
“Henery, how do you like my new frock?”
“Min … Where did you get that sack dress?”
“I got if off the coalman.”
“You mean he’s walking around naked?”
[Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers in The Goons, 1958]
21. What kept you sane?
Noreen and sleep.
22. Who did you miss?
My mother and Victor.
23. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2015:
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations” [George Orwell]. In other words, it’s all marketing bollox.
24. A quote or song lyric that sums up your year:
The Beatles, When I’m Sixty-Four
25. Your hopes for 2016
Something better — I’ll post more on this later, probably as ten things to do in 2016.

God, I hate everything being so down! We need happiness and wins.
But anyway, enough of me. How was your 2015? And what are you hoping for in 2016? Do tell!

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech

Pampered Students

While we’re on people who aren’t impressed, here’s a piece from Harry Mount in yesterday’s Telegraph. Mount is fulminating at the Oxford University students’ demand that a statue of Cecil Rhodes be taken down from the wall of Oriel College because of his imperialist and racist views.


The whole stupid suggestion is, for me, summed up in this one paragraph:

We shouldn’t be so surprised. If you’ve had a lifetime of people saying “yes” to you, of never being told off, you remain frozen in a permanent state of supersensitivity. I wasn’t offended by the Rhodes statue when I was at Oxford 20 years ago. But, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have thought my wounded feelings should be cured by tearing apart the delicate fabric of a beautiful university.

Quite so.
I wonder how many of these same students (or perhaps their academic role models) are (or were) on Rhodes Scholarships? I bet some are.
And moreover I would add that we have to tell history as it was, not how we would like it to have been. To do anything else is not only deceitful but puts you on a short and very slippery slope towards totalitarianism.
Time to grow up, boys and girls!

current affairs, environment

Publicly Subsidised Flooding?

Yet one more time George Monbiot, writing in yesterday’s Guardian, has his knife in the government’s environmental policy. He maintains that the massive farming subsidies the government have pumped into grouse moors (mostly owned by their chums) are responsible for the widespread flooding in northern England.
While I’m not qualified to make all the connections made by Monbiot, he does seem to have a good point.
Here’s the Guardian article, and here is the fully referenced version.

amusements

The Amusements of 2015

There have been so many hilarious things in 2015 — even leaving our benighted politicians aside — that it’s hard to know where to start. So I’ll follow the scheme of the last couple of years.

Product of the Year
Two examples of Indian food tie for this year’s gold medal:
Chicken Tikka Yorkshire Pudding on the market care of frozen food chain Iceland.
Indian Lasagne. Marinated chicken tikka lasagne bound in a mild massala sauce served with garlic naan and hand cut chips. This delicacy appears on the menu of the Boar’s Head Hotel near Sudbury, Derbyshire.

Auction Item of the Year (from our local auction house)
This year’s three winners are:
Third: A large ouzo decanter in the form of a Greek gentleman in national dress
Second: A vintage rhinoceros foot worked as a plant pot, circa 1900, an old whale tooth and a section of mammoth tusk
First: A collection of antique oddments
[Yes, that really is what they catalogued as a lot!]

Name of the Year
One always comes across some excellent names, but I think this year’s winner has to be Satchidananda Panda, a biologist who was mentioned in Scientific American back in February.

Best Neologism
The prize here has to go to whoever perpetrated the reality-based community.

Best Oxymoron
We have two winners here:
Gluten-free beer
[I’m not at all sure that it’s beer if it isn’t brewed with grain containing gluten; certainly the Germans wouldn’t recognise it as such.]
Precisely simulate
[My heart sinks whenever I see some set of scientists supposedly proving something using a simulation, or as we experts like to call it “in silico analysis”.]

Best Book Title
As always there are many contenders, but for me pride of place has to go to:
Advanced Pavement Research: Selected, Peer Reviewed Papers from the 3rd International Conference on Concrete Pavements Design, Construction, and Rehabilitation, December 2-3, 2013, Shanghai, China, edited by Bo Tian
[I think what clinched it for me was the idea of pavement rehabilitation.]
The runners-up, but only by a short head were:
Diana Rajchel, Divorcing a Real Witch: For Pagans and the People That Used to Love Them
Kaz Cooke, Living with Crazy Buttocks

Best Academic Paper Title
There was only ever going to be one winner: Flaccid Mechanics: From Penis-Size Statistics to Penis-Size Physics

Best Folk Custom
The winner here is the Annual Ceremony of the Christmas Cheeses.

Most Unusual Sport
This award has to go to Elephant Polo [see below]

Outstanding News Headlines
I could have overfilled this category in the first month of 2015 so here is just a selection of the many, many contenders. If I had to pick a winner it would be between the first two.
Idaho lawmaker asks if women could swallow cameras for gynaecological exams before abortion; Boing Boing, 23 February 2015
Masturbation will make your hands pregnant in the afterlife, televangelist warns; Independent, 26 May 2015
Southall Man Jailed For Sex Assault on Bus; Ealing Today, 9 June 2015
Three jailed for garden fork murder; BBC, 24 July 2015
[I’m still trying to work out how you murder a garden fork, or rape a bus.]
Singing tampons follow dancing genitals on Swedish kids’ TV; Guardian, 14 October 2015
Old Mice Drinking Champagne Three Times A Week Navigate Labyrinths Better; IFLScience, 9 November 2015
[Don’t we all?]
EFG Switzerland wins Elephant Polo Championship; Kathmandu Post, 27 November 2015
Stockholm clinic hands out penis measuring tapes; Guardian, 30 November 2015
Stolen circumcision ambulance found after tip-off; Evening Standard, 3 December 2015

Best Photograph
This guy on the London Underground clearly doesn’t realise his shopping isn’t properly bagged.

exposed

Best Press Release
There is only one real contender here: National Hot Dog and Sausage Council Announces Official Policy On ‘Hot Dog as Sandwich’ Controversy

And finally we come to …
Do what?
Where we celebrate the intelligibly unintelligible. Again we have two winners:

Wordsworth seems to uphold affective mind transmuting partial objects into a sublime whole, but in actual poetry parts ARE wholes.
[Nick Birns on Twitter, 09 January 2015]

Aerial images of bombings translated into abstraction, along with notions of purity constructed then consumed by its own consumerist culture; very real things, which mutate into some hyper-real coded symbolism in the work of Ian Parker and Srinivas Surti. The beauty and elegance of the work belies the twisted, contorted and inverted translations taking place. These two artists are pushing the gooey mess of their source material, 20th century photographs including bombsites and male figures (for Parker), and retail branding architecture (for Surti), through multiple mesh filters, separating, folding, splicing and reconfiguring them to arrive at a sort of ‘new brutalist’ abstraction. What’s striking in this transformation is that modernist structure and process have been replaced by transcription and interpolation.
[Quoted by IanVisits @ Facebook; 10 January 2015]

Let me know your favourite amusements of the year — and don’t forget to start collecting for 2016!

amusements, arts

Oddity of the Week: Pencils

A train on tracks, carved delicately out of graphite pencil lead, emerges from inside a carpenter’s pencil …


More details at Colossal and Laughing Squid.
Yes, there are other proponents of this art, see for instance Dalton Ghetti and Cerkahegyzo.
As someone who can’t even sharpen a pencil properly by hand (just one of the many things which made my woodwork master tear his hair out), I find these absolutely incredible.