Category Archives: current affairs

amusements, current affairs, history, topographical

Bales of Straw – Only in England!

Between about 18th and 30th April, if you are in central London, it may be worth visiting Tower Bridge for an unusual sight.

The details are in the Port of London Authority Notice (PDF file). Basically work is to be done on a couple of arches of Tower Bridge by men on ropes dangling from the the arches which will on some days be closed to navigation. At other times the arches may still be open to navigation but with reduced headroom when the byelaw requires that the Bridge Master hang a bale of straw “large enough to be conspicuous” from the centre of the arch by day (and a white light by night).

And of course one must not forget that Tower Bridge is officially registered as a ship.

Surely only in this country do we have such arcane, and legally enacted, requirements!

Hat-tip: Ian Visits

beliefs, books, current affairs, history, people, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

Another good selection this week as I’ve been catching up on all sorts of bits of reading.

Tax is imposed by parliament, people and corporations do not pay it voluntarily. The state coerces as much money as possible in the form of tribute to pay for the services and goods the state feels that it requires.
[brianist in a comment at http://www.badscience.net/2011/04/anarchy-for-the-uk-ish/]

The [fifth] duke [of Portland (1800-1879)], a notable eccentric landlord, gave each of his workmen a donkey and an umbrella, so they could travel to work in all weathers. He insisted that they should not salute or show him the slightest deference, and had a roller-skating rink especially constructed for their recreation.
[Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia; Pimlico Books (2001)]

Divorced, unemployed, and pissed
I aimed low in life – and missed.
[Prof. Ray Lees quoted in Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia]

Then we got softer clay and both of us turned out some quite nice little bowls and pots. It’s fearfully exciting when you do get it centred and the stuff begins to come up between your fingers. V[anessa Bell] never would make her penises long enough, which I thought very odd. Don’t you?
[Roger Fry to Duncan Grant quoted in Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia]

My dear, could you advance me a quid? There’s the most beautiful Gl passed out stone cold and naked as a duck in my kitchen.
[Nina Hamnett quoted in Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia. The image on the right is a torso of Nina Hamnett by sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska now in the Tate Gallery; Modigliani is supposed to have said (and Nina Hamnett oft repeated) that she had “the best tits in Europe”.]

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
[Will Rogers]

Relax. There are no gods and you are not going to burn in hell.
[Atheist in America at www.flamewarrior.com]

Each age finds in its favourite crimes images of what it would most love/hate to do. Our own generation of overworked, guilty, child-dominated couples makes of child-abduction the ultimate horror, perhaps because with a dark part of themselves they wish their children dead. The favourite Edwardian murder was undoubtedly centred upon adultery in the suburbs.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]

If any demonstration was needed that the battles of Ypres, Mons, Verdun, the Somme had been lunatic, it was provided in summer 1917 at Passchendaele, when Sir Douglas Haig launched an attack against the Messines Ridge south of Ypres. It was a repeat performance of the other acts of mass-slaughter: 240,000 British casualties, 70,000 dead, with German losses around 200,000. By a second attack, in November 1917, on Cambrai, Haig took the Germans by surprise and gained about four miles of mud. Ten days later the German counter-attack regained all their lost ground. If ever there was an object lesson in the folly of war, the sheer pointlessness, here it was shown in all its bloodiness.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]

arts, current affairs, history, memes, personal, photography, topographical

[13/52] Magnolia

[13/52] Magnolia
Week 13 entry for 52 weeks challenge.

This is the magnificent magnolia in the churchyard outside St James’s, Piccadilly, London. Taken against the backdrop of the church, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren but much restored.

The church also contains a small memorial to the poet, artist and mystic William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) who was baptised there on 11 December 1757.

The churchyard of St James’s hosts an Antiques Market on Tuesdays and an Arts & Crafts Market on Wednesday to Saturday. I’ve not been to the former, but the latter is definitely worth a visit if you’re present hunting and especially in the run-up to Christmas. There is also a coffee shop and the church itself is almost always open.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, pleasures, quotes, science, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

A good selection of amusements amongst this week’s quotes …

The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.
[William Gibson]

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
[Thomas Jefferson]

Society places a great deal of importance upon “being concerned” about this, that or the other terrible thing going on somewhere in the world. I agree that a bit of this concern is useful in helping alleviate suffering in those places. But it strikes me that the vast majority of what we call “being concerned” involves getting into our own heads, turning over the information, imagining whatever we want to imagine, working up our emotions, wallowing in our feelings like a pig in mud. For some reason I’ve never been able to comprehend very clearly this makes us look good socially, like we’re doing the right thing. But I’m unable to see how watching endless reports […] about a disaster really helps anything.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/]

You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people, because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
[George Mikes, How to be Decadent]

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
[Jeff Valdez]

Life is fragile. You and I are living lives just as precarious as those people who got swept away into the ocean last week. We just fool ourselves into believing otherwise. But that’s not a reason to live in fear. Life is a terminal disease.
[Brad Warner on the Sendai Earthquake at http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/03/japan-earthquake.html]

Every mountain; every rock on this planet; every living thing; every piece of you and me was forged in the furnaces of space.
[Prof. Brian Cox; Wonders of the Universe; BBC2 TV, 13 March 2011]

I hear the argument, and it is an ingenious argument only a lawyer of his brilliance could make …
[David Cameron replying in House of Commons to Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Never play with a dead cat and above all never make friends with a monkey.
[Osbert Sitwell, quoting his father in Tales My Father Taught Me. Thanks to Katyboo for this one.]

The natural world is a living erotic museum filled with variations in male genitalia, illustrating how natural selection has paid nearly as much attention to the male member as Catholic priests have.
[http://zinjanthropus.wordpress.com/]

To you , I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the loyal opposition.
[Woody Allen]

“Are there circumstances in which the government might …?”
“Well there could be circumstances. To answer your question in any other way would preclude all possibilities.”
[William Hague, UK Foreign Secretary, answering a question from the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee; 16/03/2011]

amusements, current affairs

Committee Decisions

Excellent letter in yesterday’s Times:

Sir, Professor John Murrell has been given the wrong definition of a committee. I always understood that a committee was a group of people who individually could do nothing, but collectively decided that nothing could be done.
Campbell Sylvester

current affairs, topographical

Media Disasters

1 Comment

I have to say I entirely agree with this post from Tim at Bringing up Charlie. WTF do all the broadcasters have to send extra reports out to “disaster zones”? They’ve done it with Japan; I dread to count how many extra reporters BBC TV alone has sent out to Japan to use their precious fuel and get in the way. They did it a couple of weeks earlier with Libya. And a couple of weeks before that with Egypt, where at one point I counted at least 8 extra reporters. If you don’t trust the staff you already have there to cover whatever happens, why are they there in the first place? Come on guys, wake up! This is totally unnecessary consumerism.

beliefs, current affairs, pleasures, ramblings, topographical

Public Holidays

Diamond Geezer posted an interesting analysis yesterday about the UK’s public holidays. In it he shows why we will never get St George’s Day adopted as a public holiday. Basically this is because it concentrates too many public holidays in the period from late March to late May, especially given that Easter most usually falls in April and this we would get Easter, St George’s Day and May Day holidays all within a period of 3-4 weeks. Well yes, that’s just like this year when Easter is exceptionally late (it can fall anywhere between 22 March and 25 April) when we also have the extra bank holiday for the royal wedding knees-up.

Diamond Geezer also makes the point that we’re essentially stuck with this scheme as we can’t move Easter because it’s fixed by the church. Err … why not? We moved the late May holiday away from Whitsun which is also fixed by the church. And we don’t actually celebrate May Day but pick the first Monday in May. So why can we not move (or ignore) Easter?

I suggest an alternative scheme for our public holidays, viz:

  • New Years Day (1 January)
  • Spring Equinox (21 March)
  • St George’s Day (23 April)
  • May Day (1 May)
  • Summer Solstice (21 June)
  • August Holiday (last Monday in August)
  • Autumn Equinox (21 September)
  • Christmas Day (25 December)
  • Boxing Day (26 December)

Note that I propose we keep the actual days and not the nearest Monday, although obviously where any of these falls on a weekend they would be moved to the next available working day. Note too that I have not stooped to include red letter days from ethnic minority traditions.

In the provinces of the UK St George’s Day could be replaced by their “national day”: St David in Wales (1 March), St Andrew in Scotland (30 November), St Patrick in Northern Ireland (17 March).

This has, to my mind, several advantages. It spreads out our holidays a bit better. We get one extra day bringing us more into line with western Europe and other English speaking countries where the average is more like 10 or 12 public holidays annually. It also takes the calendar away from the religious focus and returns it to the actual solar cycle without making it too overtly pagan.

It also presents some other options:

  • We could keep Good Friday, if desired which would generally slot in between the Spring Equinox and St George’s Day. I see no logic, sacred or secular, for retaining Easter Monday, although this could be retained in preference to Good Friday.
  • If desired the late August holiday might move back to the first Monday in August (as it still is in Scotland) from where it was moved in 1965, thus better harmonising the UK’s public holidays.
  • To be logical Christmas should relocate to the Winter Solstice (21 December). However given how entrenched Christmas now is in the collective psyche I can see this not being acceptable. Maybe we should scrap Boxing Day and move that to the Winter Solstice? No, that’s a really bad idea because it will give us three separate holidays within 2 weeks (Solstice, Christmas Day and New Years Day) thus we risk everything shutting down completely for two weeks rather than the current week. So Christmas has to be retained as is, which also helps the balance of holidays between sacred and secular.

I still see one problem with this scheme though. There is still a long (3 month) gap between the autumn Equinox and Christmas, at a time when we arguable need a break. Trafalgar Day (21 October) has been mooted as a possible public holiday. I personally don’t like this as I feel we ought to stay clear of celebrating the military and I’d rule out Armistice Day (11 November) for the same reason (see also my dislike of Remembrance Day). Equally Guy Fawkes Day risks being interpreted as celebrating terrorism rather that its defeat. Halloween I would also rule out as it would inevitably perpetuate that annoying American import: trick or treat. Perhaps we ought to celebrate Harvest Festival (which need not, of course, be religious but remind us where our food comes from) in mid- to late-October?

Anyone got any better ideas?

books, current affairs, history, science

And the Managers are Still in Charge of the Loony Bin …

This is a long quote and deserves a post all of it’s own.

Sir Hartley Shawcross, after the Labour victory [1945], had announced: ‘We are the masters at the moment.’ But who were the ‘we’ in this sentence?

The most eloquent answer to this question in art is found in Anthony Powell’s comic masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time, the first volume of which, A Question of Upbringing, was published in 1951. The story begins in the year 1911 at an unnamed boarding school, obviously Eton, as the hero, Nick Jenkins, ambles idly through the winter mist to have tea with his chums. As he makes his way back to the house he passes a very different sort of boy – it is Widmerpool, who forces himself to have a run each afternoon. Widmerpool appears to be no more than a figure of fun in the school section of the book, but even in this early glimpse of him, the narrator and his readers become aware that he is a figure who lives by the will, in some mysterious sense more in tune with his times than the languid, bohemian Nick, who wishes to live by the imagination.

Powell was a close friend of Malcolm Muggeridge at this date, and the two men would often walk round Regent’s Park together discussing the fundamental clash on which the emergent novel was to feed, namely the war between the will and the imagination. Power mania had been an obsession of Muggeridge’s since his Marxist days: what draws men and women to power, how they become addicted to it, how it takes over from other appetites. One of Muggeridge’s beliefs was that power addicts were often dyspeptic, and he rather cruelly attributed Stafford Cripps’s dyspepsia to power addiction. When Widmerpool grows up, he too is a dyspeptic. There is a memorably funny Sunday lunch when Widmerpool gives the narrator a meal in his club, washing down cold tongue with a glass of water. By the time the narrative has reached the postwar period, it is no surprise to find that Widmerpool, a fellow-traveller with the Communists, who has rather dubious associations in Eastern Europe, is an MP in the Labour interest. He has achieved what he wanted from the very beginning, on that run through the winter mists in the Thames Valley: the free exercise of power. Widmerpool is a manager, a wheeler-dealer. He judges people by how they have got on; he has no sense of England’s past, no feeling for people (at quite a late stage of the sequence, he forgets the narrator’s Christian name). Much of Powell’s somewhat peppery Toryism goes into the creation, no doubt, but the novel contains a really acute perception of what had happened to England during the war. It had not been taken over by Bolsheviks or by the working class. Widmerpool is an efficient, ruthless staff officer, a paper pusher. He could easily have said, after the 1945 election: ‘We are the masters.’ He would have meant that the managerial class, previously all but non-existent, had taken over. The growth of bureaucracy in Britain in the postwar years, the filling up of political, Civil Service and professional posts with colourless, pushing people controlling others for the sake of control, was to be a feature of life from then onwards. Widmerpool was a man of his time, and a man of the future.

[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]

Well, no change there then!

As so often in his two books, The Victorians and After the Victorians, AN Wilson gets his rapier right to the heart of the matter. Although both books are chunky paperbacks (both weigh in at some 500 pages) they are well worth reading – and eminently readable. AN Wilson gives a rather more perceptive, and admittedly slightly jaundiced, view of the history of Britain between the 1830s and 1950s than one finds in the standard texts. He delves under the political and economic covers, especially around the underlying reasons for both world wars and (at least for me) puts a completely new spin on modern British history.

current affairs

So They Think It's All Over, Do They?

As readers will know I rarely comment on politics and international affairs, but I have to be honest and say that the situation in Egypt (and indeed in Tunisia) is worrying.

The Egyptian people (the demonstrators anyway) seem to think that having got rid of Hosni Mubarak it’s all downhill.

Well maybe not. As I read it, all they have done is manage to force Mubarak into an orchestrated military coup. Mubarak bought himself enough time to get his money to a safe haven and is now in the process of following it having handed power to the military. Let’s not forget that the military senior officers are almost certainly all Mubarak’s men; as such they have little interest in change even if their junior officers and men don’t share their views.

What would you read into these headlines from BBC News today?

Egypt army tries to clear square. There is a stand-off in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as protesters who have camped there for 20 days thwart army efforts to clear the area.

Egypt’s army dissolves parliament. Egypt’s military authorities say they are dissolving the country’s parliament and suspending the constitution, two days after taking power.

Superficially this looks to me like the actions of the average military dictatorship:

We do not want any protesters to sit in the square.

Hundreds of policeman – who had become hugely unpopular for their violent attempts to suppress the uprising – had entered the square.

Military statement said the current government and regional governors would “act as caretakers”.

The higher military council said it would stay in power six months, or until elections … saying it would suspend the constitution and set up a committee to draft a new one.

Main priority was to restore the country’s security … if instability continued there could be “obstacles”.

It is all the right noises, but they are the noises all newly installed military rulers make: “We’ll stay in power until we can arrange elections”. And so often those elections never come.

It all sounds to me like the beginning of a repressive military dictatorship. For everyone’s sake I just desperately hope I’m wrong, and that this …

… doesn’t turn into this …