World War III and Civil War II, social ‘norms’ and fruit drinks

14 June 2025

Labour’s spending review last week allocated more money to housing, nuclear power, carbon capture, new rail links and defence.  Defence?  For heavens’ sakes, what can we offer on the world stage by allying with or against the big world powers of America, China, India, Russia, and even the EU?  The days of empire are gone.  We’re not even part of the EU now.  Britain is just a small island that, apart from renting property to USAF bases, is militarily irrelevant even when compared with states in the Middle East and North Korea.

Surely the money could be better spent?

Almost certainly, but not on corporate failures like Thames Water, whose horrific incompetence continues to make headlines.  Its potential buyers are now asking to be let off its £123m fine for environmental and other criminal breaches of its licences and permits, including intentionally diverting millions of pounds it was granted for environmental clean-ups into bonuses and dividends.

KKR, an American private equity firm, has already pulled out of the auction, worried about its politicisation and its inadequate assets and only a bunch of bondholders who lent the company some £13bn remain.  If their bid isn’t accepted, it’s probable that Thames Water will return to public ownership but a recent report has suggested this could be done without spending a penny; and people spending pennies is one of their problems (younger readers may need to ask what ‘spending a penny’ means because it now seems to cost anything between four and ten shillings).

A recent report by Common Wealth, a not-for-profit group formed in 2019 to “reimagine” the relationships between ownership and society at large, has disputed the cost £99bn reported as the total cost of renationalising of all English water companies, pointing out that this figure was produced by a thinktank funded by water companies.  Common Wealth has suggested that the government could use a process called ‘special administration’ to return Thames Water to permanent public ownership and that when its debts and past dividends paid to shareholders are set against its supposed regulatory capital value, the cost would be much less, possibly even close to zero.

Israel has recently admitted to a novel approach to war:  arm enemy criminals.  Israel Defence Fund officials have confirmed they have been supporting a Palestinian gang, led by Yasser abu Shabab, known locally for his involvement in criminal activity, in an attempt to undermine Hamas after 50 members of this gang have been killed in recent months. 

Then, to distract attention from its culpability in Gaza, Israel attacked targets in Iran to stop them making nuclear weapons.  Does Benjamin Natanyahu really believe it’s better to get your defence in before an attack?  Iran has now promised the attack that would ‘justify’ its response.  They’re like squabbling children, except they’re potentially squabbling over the world’s future instead of which is the best YouTube clip of people falling over.

Except squabbling children don’t risk starting World War III, even if it appears Netanyahu would accept this if it would keep him out of prison for longer.

There’s more confusion in Germany where Joachim Streit, a German MEP, is campaigning to get the EU to admit Canada as a member.  I wonder how he fared in “Geografie” at school.

In America, Donald Trump’s trying to start Civil War II by calling in 700 marines and 4,000 members of the national guard to control protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions taking place in Los Angeles.  The ICE raids targeted immigrant workers in the city but the California governor, Gavin Newsom, and other civic leaders called the mobilisation of troops “authoritarian” and “a brazen abuse of power”, that has “inflamed a combustible situation”.

By Monday, even more residents were taking part in protests and sympathetic protestors were starting their own demonstrations in places like New York, Austin, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco.

In Los Angeles, national guard troops and marines are reported to have told their families and friends they were not comfortable about being used as pawns in politically-motivated domestic operations, while Trump is trying to convince people it’s all a foreign conspiracy.

What makes it all the more poignant is that the actual insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol have been pardoned and released from earned prison while those protesting peacefully in the streets against ICE raids face the US marines.

Even a Republican senator, Rand Paul has described Trump as “a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag” while another dedicated Trump supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has admitted she didn’t actually read Trump’s tax and spending bill before voting for it and that, if she had, she’d have voted against it.

Public records show that, during hubby’s first 100 days in office, Melania, Mrs Trump, spent just 14 days in the White House, which might appear to a cynic to imply a marriage not entirely based on mutual infatuation.

Jonathan Haidt has written a book, The Anxious Generation, which proposes four “norms”:  no smartphones before the age of 14; no social media until 16; phone-free schools; and far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. 

I’d add “no more crisps and pop” to the list (and would limit sugar because I’ve seen too many sugar rushes in children).  My own experience last week came when shopping and I bought a Robinsons orange and mango drink as part of a ‘meal deal’ (“no added sugar, real fruit in every drop”). 

Puzzled by its bitter taste I took a magnifying glass to the list of contents, printed in a white 4-point typeface reversed out of an orange background, a combination not recommended by the Royal National Institute of Blind People.  There was, predictably, more water than anything else, followed by fruit juice from concentrates (apple 16%, orange 1% and mango 1%), citric acid, acidity regulator, antioxidant, carrot and apple concentrate, orange and other natural flavourings, stabiliser, sweeteners, and natural colour (carotenes).  That’s the last time I buy an apple and carrot drink described as an orange and mango drink.  Back to Adam’s Ale next time.

Israel, Ukraine, North Korea, Australia, HS2 and our ancestors

26 October 2024

I wonder how much of Israel’s murderously disproportionate response to Hamas’s unexpected attack last year was due to shame at the failure of their intelligence service to have anticipated it, and how much is due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to delay criminal charges for as long as possible?

Latest reports from the UN’s humanitarian office warn that Israel’s undiscriminating bombardment of northern Gaza is “rapidly exhausting all available means for [the Palestinians’] survival” there.  Coincidentally, Netanyahu is now planning to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians from operating in Gaza and West Bank and is covering his back by attacking and antagonising a lot of other countries in the region, with attacks like air-strikes on targets in Iran, so he’s got other strings to his bow if international pressure finally succeeds in getting him to back out of Gaza.

Meanwhile, Russia’s war on Ukraine continues without any obvious signs of a solution and is threatening the existence of NATO.  Vladimir Putin is increasingly isolated and unstable and he compensates with ruthlessness so it’s vital ‘the West’ presents a calm and united front but Keir Starmer seems to be havering over missiles and other military support for Ukraine.  

This isn’t helpful when another Donald Trump presidency in America seems terrifyingly possible: polls show so small a margin between the two candidates that the Washington Post and the LA Times (which traditionally give their editorial backing to one of the parties) aren’t supporting either of them.  Why?  Because both papers are owned by billionaires who don’t want a vindictive Trump to take revenge if he wins.

Both Russia and Ukraine are suffering from battle-fatigue and, according to the UN Population Fund, Ukraine’s population is now 25% less that it was when Russia invaded the country in 2022 due to war deaths, people fleeing as refugees to other countries and a reduction in birth rates.

North Korea is now planning to sending two units (12,000 troops, 3,000 of which are already being trained) to help Russia’s war efforts.  Kim Jung Il’s support for Russia may not be entirely thanks to his unbounded generosity but because he wants his army to have experience of killing foreign people, which they haven’t been able to do for a long time.  But it’ll give the braver ones a chance to defect …

More news came recently about the future of HS2 and I couldn’t resist the headline in one newspaper (not the Sun):  “Euston, we have a problem”.

The line is currently planned to terminate in the sunny uplands of Willesden Junction and the curiously named Old Oak Common but the Treasury is reconsidering whether the original plan to extend it to Euston should be resurrected.  Rail industry leaders have claimed this will make more money for the government from leasing out the line.

Opponents have pointed out the Euston is already one of the worst designed and most crowded stations in London and offers passengers almost the same rewards as changing trains at Birmingham New Street (anybody who’s ever done this with a heavy suitcase will know that ‘joyful’ is rarely the first word people use to describe the experience.)

More amusing was the rumpus caused in Australia when an indigenous senator heckled the king on his recent visit, saying Brits had stolen Aboriginal land.  Of course we did:  we did the same in North America and committed, or attempted, genocide elsewhere in what became the British Empire, from Africa to India.  America rebelled against Britain’s colonisation and, after a civil war, ultimately became the United States of America, though it’s difficult nowadays to understand what made them think they were ‘United’.

Other European countries also built their own empires and we all kidnapped people and used more than a thousand ships over many years to transport more than 12 million of them overseas;  those who survived the crossing then became slaves of the white occupiers.

I don’t feel any responsibility for what my ancestors did or didn’t do but I would be perfectly happy to offer my apologies and regrets for what was done by them, or with their knowledge, and admit to a feeling of embarrassment that we Europeans are so primitive that we thought ourselves superior to others.  Sadly, it’s not so far from what our own monarchs (and the brown-nosed ‘aristocracy’ who were appointed by monarchs) stole from our own peasant ancestors, including the land from which they had previously made a living.

Isn’t it curious that some ‘aristocratic’ families claim to be able to trace their roots back to William the Conker as if it’s a big deal, even though he was French;  how many people claim they’re descended from Harold, who was ‘English’ before W the C? 

Do the sums:  if we assume average families grow by four generations a century, 958 years ago we had over a trillion ancestors, far more than the population of the entire world (which is, even now, only 8.2 billion people).  This, of course, raises another interesting question which I won’t answer now but, if we also allow for the comparatively limited movements of people which means we’re less likely to be descended from Japanese emperors than we are from King Harold, the chances are we must all be able to trace our roots back to Harold (and William) so we’re all related and you, dear reader, are probably my 18^th cousin twice removed.

Feel free to draw your own conclusions from this.

One pleasure this week was to learn that scientists have discovered that a massive dust cloud in the centre of our own galaxy contains ethyl formate.  I actually knew that this chemical is contained in rum essence but apparently it can also smell like raspberries and, when combined with other chemicals, smells like horse pee.

If and when this dust cloud coalesces into a planet, its inhabitants will smell fruity, be permanently drunk and keep dashing off behind bushes.

Language, Shakespeare, Bowdler, sitzpinklers and DEC’s earthquake appeal

25 February 2023

Of course Roald Dahl was anti-semitic and prejudiced in all sorts of other ways but children love his books and, as far as I know, don’t automatically grow-up as fascists or Tommy Robinsons.  Nevertheless, to the delight of the anti-woke movement (who invented ‘woke’ so they could condemn people they think are stupidly over-protective of minority groups*), Penguin decided this week to edit his books for language that would now be considered offensive by some people.

The reaction was surprising with all sorts of people from other writers to politicians criticising the decision to delete words like “ugly” and “double chin”.  Salman Rushdie said “Roald Dahl was no angel but this is absurd censorship” and that the publisher and the Dahl estate “should be ashamed.”  Philip Pullman took a more moderate view, not criticising the editing but saying Dahl’s work should be allowed to fade away.

By the end of the week, the publishers had decided to republish the stories in their original form alongside the new versions.  It’ll be interesting to see which versions sell best.

The curious thing is that it was Dahl that caused such a fuss.  Editing and cleaning things up has been going on for centuries but perhaps the anti-woke brigade are being taken seriously when they take the mickey out of well-intentioned avoidance of words that might offend or belittle certain groups of people.

Much of Shakespeare was bawdy and, as far as I know, nobody has yet replaced “whoreson” with “illegitimate child of a woman of easy virtue”, possibly because it would unbalance an iambic pentameter.  However, in the 18^th century, Thomas Bowdler published a 10-volume expurgated version of Shakespeare “in which nothing is added to the original Text;  but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a Family.”  He said his aim was to remove “some defects which diminish their value”, clearly believing that he was a better writer than Shakespeare. 

Curious then that Shakespeare’s words and phrases are still in common use while all we remember of Bowdler is that he gave rise to the verb ‘bowdlerise’, meaning to edit and rewrite things that might be considered offensive, which is not usually used as a compliment.  (What’s also interesting is that it seems OK for editors to read unexpurgated writings and make personal judgements about which words and phrases might offend others.)

Similarly, Cecil Sharp did wonderful work collecting old folk songs and traditions that might otherwise have disappeared but was brought up a Victorian and edited out ‘dirty’ words like ‘maidenhead’ (meaning virginity or the hymen) which became ‘maidenhood’ or even ‘maiden name’.

Even in 2010, Enid Blyton was being edited by publishers.

However, cultures and societies change and what was acceptable in the past may not be acceptable now.  What’s written now should reflect these changes but surely language and attitudes that were acceptable when they were written can’t be invalidated by subsequent changes.

I read a lot as a child, unselectively and uncritically, and devoured almost everything. I read Billy Bunter books (which now have ‘faded away’) and, later, adventure books Captain W E Johns, Sapper, John Buchan and the Saint books, all of which I would now see as having old-fashioned notions of racism, sexism, classism, fat-ism, empirism and all sorts of other isms that might detract from the excitement of their plots.  But I don’t think they affected how my world view developed and there isn’t a racist bone in my liver.

Perhaps we should go the whole hog and edit everything every 10 years, starting with the Bible whose King James version includes words that were considered acceptable at the time, but not now.  Leviticus would be a good place to start but please leave the Song of Solomon till last.  (Yes, I know some Christians are critical of some of the translations in the KJV and there have been other versions since that they feel are more accurate but I’m intentionally using an extreme example to illustrate the difficulties of ‘updating’ language to conform with current prejudices.)

But the times they are a-changin’, even in other countries.

German has a lot of fascinating words and the latest I’ve come across is ‘sitzpinkler’.  Used metaphorically, it describes feeble behaviour in men, the nearest English equivalent being something like ‘wuss’.

Literally, it means a man who sits to pee but, and (this is my own understanding only) it is implicit that it only applies to indoor micturition and, when taken short in a forest, a man may stand behind a tree without letting the side (or his trousers) down.  My mother used to suffer from penis-envy on long car journeys when we’d stop for a break and the males would find just enough cover to avoid shocking passers-by while the females would have to tramp for miles to find a suitable wall or bush.

A survey in Japan in 2020 showed that 70% of men sit, compared with 51% five years previously, so it’s a growing trend.  It’s also healthier for two reasons.  The first is that some 2014 research by Leiden University Medical Centre showed that sitting has a “more favourable dynamic profile” so the bladder can void faster and more efficiently;  the second is that “post-void residual volume” is reduced so less urine stays in the bladder and breeds whatever bacteria are on the menu that week.

An American professor who specialises in fluid dynamics has used a urination simulator and a high-speed camera to record the dispersal of the liquid after it’s gained its freedom, and the news is not good if the man is standing.  It starts off in a nice solid stream but then breaks up into drops, then droplets, then very small ‘satellite’ droplets which go off in all directions and can travel up to 2 metres.

I’ve a feeling it might be better to stop here and just suggest you keep your toothbrush in another room.

I can’t bring myself to go into any detail of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission decision not to reinstate Shamima Begum’s UK passport even though Mr Justice Jay said that while “many right-thinking” people would take issue with the home secretary’s decision, and there was credible evidence that she had been “recruited, transferred and then harboured for the purpose of sexual exploitation”, the case wasn’t about Begum but about decisions on security.  The Commission therefore could not overturn the home secretary’s decision that she posed a threat to national security.

Another step on the road to autocratic devaluation of the law?

But I was encouraged to read that the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Turkey-Syria Earthquake Appeal has raised more than £101.5m in a fortnight, including £5m of aid-matched funding from the government.  Wouldn’t it be great if Big Oil matched the total funds raised by all the earthquake appeals.

They could double the money raised by giving less than 1% of last year’s profit.  Isn’t it sad that we know the people who could make this decision aren’t the sort of people who would, and that most of the individuals who give to an appeal got an average of about one millionth of the £30,000,000,000 Shell and BP each pocketed last year.

Back at the ranch, I finished a packet of Waitrose Paccheri Rigati last night and, as one does, read the blurb on the packet as the water heated back up again.  Our pasta was “Made in the hillside town of Gragnano, near Naples, by our specialist supplier who has been making pasta since 1789”.  Their specialist supplier will be 334 this year – they’re going to need a bigger cake.

*          If you think about it, we are all members of some minority group in some way:  even those proud of being ‘English’ are vastly outnumbered by people who aren’t ‘English’, and are themselves are descended from Celts, Picts, Romans, Scandanavians, Angles, Saxons, Scots, Welsh, Irish, French and Neanderthals (especially Neanderthals).

Borders, Russian history, Ukraine, Tory loonies, and ephemera

28 August 2022

Jeremy Corbyn referred to “the Ukraine” when he recently condemned the UK’s supply of arms to Ukraine.  He might have been trying to say that, without arms, there’d be no war but his reference to “the” Ukraine put him firmly in Vladimir Putin’s camp which is claiming Ukraine is still part of the Russian empire, rather as we use the definitive article when referring to the Peak District or the Lake District, but we never talk about the Wales or the Scotland.  How depressing to find a British socialist supporting an autocratic Russian despot.

Island nations’ borders are defined by water, which gives them some sort of permanence.  Countries with land borders between them and their neighbours are defined only by lines drawn on maps and, over the centuries, many boundaries change, the most dramatic example in recent decades being the break-up of Yugoslavia into a number of independent self-governing countries.

Historically, borders have been moved by wars and by people in distant palaces without regard to the social groupings, languages or ethnicity of the people actually living there, or even the geography of the lands being separated.  This has led to the relatively good-natured bantering between Yorkshire and Lancashire or Devon and Cornwall, to the more political differences between Scotland and England to the hate-fuelled isolationism of Palestine and Israel.

However, ignoring geography has led to some interesting quirks.  The eastern section of the border between Canada and America was decided by the invaders while, west of the Winnipeg area, the country was unknown and marked on maps as “Here Be Dragons”, so they just drew a line along the 49^th parallel.  In Europe, this would have meant fixing a border in a straight line from near Paris through Munich and Budapest and on through the north of Romania;  which might have given Hitler pause for thought.

The only problem arose when the Canadian / US border reached the sea for the first time, it crossed some water followed by the southern tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula south of Vancouver, which created an isolated bit of land, now called Point Roberts, that was American but couldn’t be reached by land except by a 25-mile drive through Canada.

Now, at this point, someone sensible would have said “what the hell, let’s bend the border south round the peninsula to save all those border crossings”.  However …

Ukraine’s borders have changed over the years, as different regimes controlled different parts of the country.  During the middle-ages, before anybody had heard of Moscow, Kyiv was a key centre of East Slavic culture, and what we now know as Ukraine subsequently came under Austria, Poland and the Ottoman empire.  In the 1770s, Crimea, previously inhabited by Muslim Turkic Tatars, the indigenous Crimean people, was invaded and taken over by Tsardom of Russia.

After the Russian Revolution, Ukraine enjoyed a short period as an independent republic until Eastern Ukraine became part of the United Soviet Socialist Republics (which was, for all practical purposes, a new name for the Russian Empire).  Then, in the carve-up that followed the second World War, Western Ukraine was taken from Poland and allocated to the USSR.

Russia’s other borders have been similarly flexible over the years but Moscow has effectively considered Russia a single country that includes separately identifiable regions even though some of these regions never considered themselves Russian. 

After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II following the 1917 revolution, there was a short and bad-tempered interlude until the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, whose stated aim was to share power and resources more equally between the rulers and the people.  This naturally didn’t work and the leaders kept the money and ruled by fear and oppression, reaching their nadir with Joseph Stalin who sent people who sneezed without written permission to Siberian gulags.  It’s estimated that, during his 30 years in power, Stalin was responsible for tens of millions of deaths (in addition to the 20 million Russians who died in the 1939-45 war).

On his death, Nikita Khrushchev ended up in charge and Russia became rather less isolationist and, some years later, Mikhail Gorbachev could allow the iron curtain to fall and the Soviet Union effectively ceased to exist.  (Putin thinks this was A Bad Thing.)

When Boris Yeltsin was in charge, internal problems arose, notably organised crime whose gangs joined up to become a formidable power in the Federation, and many of the autonomous ethnic regions moved started resenting Russian dominance.

In an unexpected move, Yeltsin chose Putin, the relatively unknown director of the Federal Security Service, one of the KGB’s successors, to be his prime minister and, following Yeltsin’s resignation, he became president.

Putin started by limiting the powers of the oligarchs – at least those who opposed him – and strengthening links with Europe, America and China, while attempting to re-centralise control of what he still considered to be the Russian Federation.  This involved the invasion and occupation of Crimea in 2014 and, in February this year, a “special military operation” involving almost 200,000 Russian troops to ‘reclaim’ Ukraine.   The operation was expected to last about 3-4 days but has so far lasted 6 months and Putin’s incompetence has weakened him internally, which makes him more dangerous.

Many of his own troops became increasingly unenthusiastic when they realised they were actually at war with another, independent sovereign state, and Putin brought in the Wagner Group.  They are a Russian paramilitary group he set up in 2014 to support Russia’s invasion of Crimea and who are now being authorised by Putin to commit atrocities and war crimes he can then deny.

It’s also, of course, in Putin’s own personal interests to keep Russia’s military forces divided and the group has become less secretive, even advertising for recruits on billboards in Russian cities.  Officially, the group doesn’t exist since private military companies are officially banned in Russia and Putin regularly denies any relationship with Moscow.

However, according to Al Jazeera, the Wagner troops are ill-equipped and suffering heavy losses.  Nevertheless, their presence helps secure Putin’s survival as president for life ruling an empire that isn’t so vary different from the examples set by the Tsars and Stalin.  So much for the noble aims of doing away with empire and plutocracy and sharing wealth more equally in the common good.

His latest ploy has been to occupy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine which has been damaged by incoming artillery fire, either Russian fire designed to encourage sympathy for Putin’s noble cause or Ukrainian fire designed to frighten the Russians off.  The power plant is also being used as a base for Russian armour and personnel since they’re safe from any attack sheltering under nuclear reactors.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, and other world leaders have called for the removal of all military equipment and personnel from the area and for a demilitarised zone to protect it from further attacks but Russia has refused to allow this.

Earlier this week, shelling disconnected the plant from Ukraine’s power grid for the first time in nearly 40 years, something the Russians tried rather unconvincingly to blame on Ukraine.  The reactors’ cooling systems are powered by electricity with a back-up supply from a nearby coal-burning power plant;  if that fails, diesel-powered generators take over and the operators have only 90 minutes before overheating leads to disaster.

Similar tensions are of course building up over Taiwan, whose historical separation from mainland China is not dissimilar to Ukraine’s.  Taiwan (formerly Formosa) was under Japanese rule for the first half of the last century but was ceded to China after the Second World War.  The losers of the Chinese civil war in 1949 then settled in Taiwan and declared themselves independent, something that China has never accepted.  Hence the tensions that arise when America makes an official visit to the island (where it keeps a foothold of 39 military staff).

The UK now has its own nuclear worries since the person who still seems likely to become our next prime minister told the Conservative faithful when she was in Birmingham last week that she’s “ready” to launch nuclear war if necessary, even if it would lead to “global annihilation”, which would solve all these problems within a few minutes.  The ultimate in cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

Then the chancellor of the exchequer said people earning £45,000 might need support with increased energy bills.  A lot of people subsist on a fraction of this and wouldn’t need any support if they got £45,000.

Where do the Tories find these people?

While reading the news this week, I saw a Sky News headline saying “Girl walks ‘emotional support’ alligator”.  I couldn’t bring myself to open the link but I did wonder if the alligator attracts as many people who say hello as our ‘emotional support’ Labrador does.

My eye was also caught this week by a wall poster in the dentist’s waiting room showing an unsmiling woman with “Does your appearance reflect who you want to be?”  No teeth in sight so I wondered why it was on display but it got me wondering about what I wanted to be and how my appearance might reflect this, something that had never previously crossed my mind.

Having seriously considered this, I realised very quickly that I have absolutely no idea who I want to be, or how my appearance should reflect this.  Suggestions on a postcard please.

70 years of H Gracious M – what next?

5 June 2022

Thursday saw this year’s greatest fancy dress parade (with the possible exception of North Korean marchpasts) as hundreds of soldiers rode on horseback past their “colour” so the survivors would recognise what flag to gather under after the battle was over.  It took hours.  By the end of it, an enemy would have had the lot of them.  Perhaps it goes back to Plantagenet days when the king was the one with a bunch of greenery (plant à genet) stuck in his cap.

I found myself wondering why some of them carried modern guns with a bayonet on the end.   If you’re selecting historical weapons, surely bows and arrows would have been more decorative, and much more effective if you’re more than a bayonet’s length from the person you’re trying to kill.

But the rain held off and the whole event was brightly coloured – ceremonial pomp is probably one of the few things that Britain still does well.  A lot of people turned out to wave flags and watch as much of it as they could see while millions more watched it on television.  To cap it all, the queen appeared on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to watch the fly-past and appeared to enjoy the spectacle, inspiring thoughts like “she’s a game old girl” and “not bad for 96”.

The fly-past itself was the only bit I actually watched and I’m sure the queen turned to Charles and said “That’s lovely” as the Lancaster (or was it a Wellington) flew over.  I thought it was a pity that none of the 1950s V-bombers (from memory, the Valiant, the Victor and the Vulcan) were fit enough to join the flypast but I have to admit I enjoyed the planes that flew in the 70 formation.  I also wondered idly what would happen if one of them crashed into the palace courtyard before exploding just under the balcony. 

Justin Welby, the Canterbury Archbish, had tested positive for covid and couldn’t lead the service in St Pauls and I’ve been cheered by how many other people have commented on Prince Andrew’s own fortuitous and entirely coincidental positive covid test that prevented him from appearing anywhere and saved everyone a lot of embarrassment – unless a plane had crashed in the courtyard and exploded.  King Andrew?  Doesn’t bear thinking about.

The respect in which he’s held can be judged from a song called ‘Prince Andrew is a Nonce’ by a group called the Kunts that hurtled up the charts last week.  Its words include “The grand old Duke of York, he said he didn’t sweat / So why’d he pay 12 million quid to a girl he’d never met?”

When Harry and Meghan appeared, they got more cheers than jeers, unlike Boris and Carrie Johnson who managed to inspire the exact opposite. 

Welby had earlier made a plea for society to be more “open and forgiving” which is a commendable sentiment except possibly when applied to Prince Andrew who is, he said, “seeking to make amends”.  I know from very painful personal experience that it’s only possible to forgive someone if they have admitted and accepted responsibility for their mistakes and apologised, and there isn’t much sign of that so far from Andrew (or even, after several decades, in my case).

In some ways, it was a sad day because it was almost certainly the last time we’ll see a similar celebration.  The next big event will probably be King Charles III’s coronation, whose enjoyment will be tempered by mourning for the queen’s death.  (I wonder if Charles will change his name when he becomes king?  After all, the prince known previously as David became King Edward VIII and his brother Bertie became King George VI.  At one time, there was a rumour Charles would choose to be King George VII but there’s now another George further down the line.  Perhaps he should choose a contemporary name.  Dwayne should do it – King Dwayne I.)

In real life, the survivors of couples who’ve been together a long time often die shortly after their lifelong partner;  the Duke of Edinburgh only died last year and his widow is already showing signs of ageing for the first time while she’s increasingly letting Charles take over her official duties.  I wonder if she’ll see the year out?  Weekly meetings with the prime minister we’v got at the moment?  Hmmm.

A bigger question has again been widely aired as the celebrations have been analysed:  the future of the monarchy.  Many of us think that the queen has done an amazing job throughout the last 70 years, scarcely missing a step, and she deserves our admiration.  But admiring an individual’s tenacity isn’t the same as supporting the monarchy.

I’ve never really had any strong feelings one way or the other – and I suspect many people share my apathy – but I wonder how things will change when the queen dies and Charles (or Dwayne) becomes king. The monarchy certainly costs the UK a lot of money but it also brings in a lot of new foreign money, especially for the fancy dress parades and other ceremonials.  However, it still has to overcome its legacy of supporting slavery and the genocide and theft involved in building the ‘empire’, and its inability to limit the racism its governments have consistently applied and enforced, even to the present day.

On the other hand, republicanism would require the election of a president and the wholesale reform of the constitution, and parliament.  This could allow positive changes such as proportional representation to be made if the reform was carried out by people with no vested interest in the outcome but look at the crippling system that, despite the best intentions of its creators, disempowers American presidents.  And just imagine us having presidents like Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson. 

Actually, now that Britain’s reputation has been so reduced internationally, it probably wouldn’t make any difference if a president did suddenly have stupid ideas like deciding to reintroduce outdated and illogical measurement systems that the last few generations were never taught and older generations have forgotten.  Perhaps presidential candidates could be required to take tests to measure their intellectual capacity and mental stability and may the gods forbid the election of a politician as president.  And perhaps candidates should also be required to demonstrate their lifelong lack of any involvement in party politics.  Or the military. 

The biggest problem is that anyone interested in becoming president is, by definition, unsuitable.

Somebody suggested Sir David Attenborough would make a good president but, apart from his age, he gave up running BBC2 because he didn’t like the job and wanted to return to nature.  So what about Dr Charlotte Uhlenbroek?  She shares Attenborough’s interest in nature and is younger and much better looking.

More unmarked graves, kindness, face masks, the mind, neuroscience and tree-hugging

4 July 2021

The number of unmarked graves at the sites of church-run residential schools in Canada is now around 1,000;  that’s 1,000 children who just happened to be born to Indigenous parents who died in the care of a church that dumped their bodies in unmarked graves. 

These children were abducted from their families so they could be “civilised”.  If that’s civilisation, give me the wild.  The whole thing makes the Ku Klux Klan look like the Women’s Institute making strawberry jam flambée.

Having originally said they wouldn’t release the information they hold, the Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate said on Friday they will now release all their documents.  The change of heart might just be related to four Catholic churches being destroyed by fire in the last two weeks which, in turn, might just be related to the grief and rage felt by the people of the First Nations, many of whose children had just been disappeared.  Statues of Queens Victoria and Elizabeth in Winnipeg have been toppled. 

But things are moving forward there, which is more than can be said for Britain which has reverted to the ancient tradition of abusing the messenger who brings bad news.  Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, has provided a refreshingly factual balance to the dithering of politicians since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic but is now being harassed by thickos.

Last weekend, a couple of young men filmed themselves assaulting him and then posted the video online.  The police spoke afterwards to Whitty who apparently didn’t want to take the matter any further. 

Why can’t people be kinder to each other?  Why don’t we think more about how other people might be feeling than how we are?  Let’s spread kindness around.

Despite their subsequent claim only to want a selfie with Whitty, the young men were warned off and ordered to leave the area by police who had witnessed the attack.  One of them, Lewis Hughes, lost his job as an estate agent as a result of the incident.

Whitty’s not even a politician, just doing a job giving politicians the facts and his best advice, from vaccinations to social distancing and masks.

Face masks have one great advantage even if they do hoick glasses and hearing aids out of place when you try to remove them:  you realise just what beautiful eyes so many people have when you aren’t distracted by broken noses and wrinkles, in the same way that the niqab proves just how many Muslim women have beautiful eyes.

Surely we can learn from this:  whatever imperfections other people may have, let’s concentrate on the beautiful bits and realise how lovely they are. 

Think of the joy that Emma Raducanu is bringing to people.  She’s 18, awaiting her A level results and a wildcard player at Wimbledon this year and has, so far, reached the fourth round.  She’s now playing Ajla Tomljanovic tomorrow for a place in the quarter-finals.  She’s said she wants to “stay [in the tournament] as long as possible” and is “having a blast”.  Doesn’t that lift all our spirits?

The human mind has a need to see patterns where there aren’t any and hear words that aren’t spoken, and it’s susceptible to optical illusions.  In days of old, people looked up at the night skies and saw bulls and crabs and scorpions and fish and invented astrology.  This is fair enough – many of us have in our time been drunk and/or stoned enough to see star patterns shifting and changing without actually moving – but we’re now so advanced (ahem) that we don’t try to tell people’s fortunes from them.

There’s a famous picture of apparently random blotches that reveal a cowboy sitting on a horse if you stare at it for long enough, and there are those coloured ‘abstract’ posters from the 1980s which reveal pictures.  Or if you listen closely to the sound of water, such as a tap splashing into a bath, the mind will turn it into random words and phrases.  I used to know somebody who talked like that – I understood all of the words separately, but not what the sentence meant.

It’s also fascinating to see the changes in how your mind works when your chosen hallucinogen is coursing through your system (and, before we write these off as the imaginings of people with too much spare time, we need to remember that scientists are once again using hallucinogens to help people with mental health problems).  It is, for example, possible to see a lump on the trunk of a tree, formed where a branch has been cut off, both as a distortion in the bark and a koala hugging the tree;  or to see a twisted mass of roots under a beech tree both as roots and intertwined snakes, both at the same time;  or a mountain chain in the dust in the bottom of a teacup.  We see faces and dragons in clouds but, curiously, the extra dimension isn’t frightening, it’s fascinating, and beautiful.

Synaesthesia is another example of what the brain is capable of with some chemical assistance.  If you listen with your eyes shut, music can produce brilliantly coloured and ever-changing pictures in your head which are just as fascinating and just as beautiful.

Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University has also infected the brains of mice with light-sensitive algae and fired lasers into their brains through tiny fibre-optic cables, recording what happens when he turns neurons on or off.  He discovered that individual brain cells can be activated / deactivated in this way and the possibilities seem endless.  For example, in May this year, the Swiss neurologist Botond Toska showed how he’d used these optogenetic principles to partially restore the sight of a blind person.

This all seems quite important but if we put it in the context of our sub-microscopic existences in an unimaginably vast universe where space and time and energy interact even though nobody here knows how it works, we can imagine all sorts of possibilities that make fantasy fiction look as unimaginative and limited as a Jeffrey Archer novel.

We know that honey bees can tell others in the hive where there’s a good source of food, in which direction and how far and (for all we know) what colour it is.  We also know that insectivorous plants have a memory:  they don’t snap shut when they’re touched by a passing breeze or even brushed by an inspect but if an inspect lands on them and moves around, there’s a second movement that triggers the ‘catch’ response which captures their next meal, which means they must ‘remember’ there was a first touch to recognise the second.

I’ve mentioned trees communicating before, but biologists are now discovering that their actions and reactions are much more complex than they’d thought, just extremely slow (rather like slo-mo versions of Tolkien’s ents).  Branches will lift and fall during the day and they can warn other trees of invasions by bugs and disease so they can prepare their own defences and it’s possible that, if we hug a tree, they might respond to this, but probably not until next week so don’t wait.

I’m now off to swear at some bindweed.

Comparative religion, estate agents, Indigenous Canadians, ageing, football and a book recommendation

20 June 2021

Last Sunday evening, when two Jewish diners were attacked outside a Baker Street restaurant by two masked men, a member of the Muslim community intervened and the attackers ran off.

You may also remember the man who collapsed in Finsbury Park in June 2017 and he was found by a group of Muslims who had just performed tarawih (night time prayers) at the mosque just down the road.  While they were administering first aid, they were rammed by a van driven by a man who’d decided all Muslims should die.  Ten people were injured and the man who had collapsed later died of multiple injuries.  Bystanders dragged the driver out of the van and were beating him when the Imam of the mosque calmed the crowd and stopped them assaulting the perpetrator who was then restrained until the police arrived.

Isn’t it sad that it’s necessary to emphasise stories like this that show Muslims to be as peace-loving and human as society at large, and a lot more so than, say, racists and xenophobes?

Why can’t we accept that love, peace and tolerance that are the foundations of most of the world’s religions and beliefs and that loonies are just loonies whose ‘faith’ is irrelevant?

There’s good news for estate agents in England and Wales as house prices rise and their fees rise with them.  The Bank of England’s chief economist reports that residential property prices increased by 10% in the 12 months to March 2021 and things are likely to get worse, so the loudest noise is now the squelching of estate agents rubbing their hands together.

And here’s another story that almost makes me wish there is a hell somewhere.

Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, an Indigenous nation in British Columbia has discovered evidence of 215 unmarked graves behind the site of a former residential school in the city of Kamloops, British Columbia, which had been staffed by the Sisters of St Ann and administered by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (who have taken religious vows of poverty, chastity and obedience).

This has reopened the whole question of how Canada treated its Indigenous children.  In 1896, the state started to take children, some in cattle trucks, away from their parents to residential schools run by the government or the church, where many of them suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse as part of an attempt to “assimilate” them into the culture of the invaders.  Which doesn’t say much for the culture of the invaders.

In the following 130 years (until 1996!), more than 150,000 Indigenous children were abducted and forced to give up their birth names in favour of ‘westernised’ names, to wear uniforms and learn English, and boys’ braided hair was cut forcibly.

In 1910, one official wrote that the schools were “geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem”.  The (presumably intentional, and manipulative) use of the word “problem” implies it needs a “solution” and the addition of the word “final” makes me shudder.

I knew something similar had happened in Australia but I didn’t know that Canada – which likes to be perceived as squeaky clean, at least in the French-influenced eastern half – had done the same thing.  Both countries were part of the British Empire at the time so their “assimilation” programmes are never compared with Hitler’s abduction of Jews;  I find the word ‘hypocrisy’ hovering in the background of this even though the Reich’s own ‘final solution’ was more terminal*. 

Official records in Canada show that 3,213 of these children died of untreated illness, neglect, abuse and suicide but the actual number of deaths is known to be much higher and the mortality rate for Indigenous children in these schools was between two and five times higher than for non-Indigenous children.

In a report submitted in 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation commission identified 20 unmarked graves across the country and recognised that there would be more, recommending a national programme “to complete the task of identifying the many unmarked residential school cemeteries and gravesites across Canada”.  This was accepted at the time as a breakthrough in relationships with the Indigenous Canadians but not much has happened since and Justin Trudeau’s government is now fighting a class action seeking reparation for the efforts to destroy Indigenous languages, culture and identity, which implies a reluctance to uncover the truth.

The BC state government has asked the Sisters of St Ann, the catholic order of nuns that staffed the Kamloops school, to release its records but they continue to withhold these because “It might be … there were things that weren’t relevant to the school system or names of those students, as well as other people like visitors” and they want to be able to correct historical inaccuracies before documents are made public.

The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate said their congregation would not be providing personnel files of the staff at the residential schools, which could include disciplinary records of nuns who mistreated children, claiming that privacy laws forbade this. 

Canada’s Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that thousands of records documenting abuse at residential schools should be destroyed and, since 2020, the federal government has been trying to block even the creation of basic statistical records of claims of abuse in residential schools.

So much for British legacy.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Vladimir Putin told Joe Biden he can’t guarantee that Alexei Navalny will survive his prison sentence (although he refused to use Navalny’s name) because the state of medical care offered to prisoners was poor and Navalny’s detention wasn’t his decision.  Of course it isn’t.  How could anybody fail to believe that if Putin said “Free Alexei”, the answer would be “No way, mush”?

Better news comes from a group of scientists from 14 different countries who’ve been researching whether good health and life expectancy could be extended by preventing ageing.  Their conclusion was basically that, once a species reaches adulthood, a species has a relatively fixed rate of ageing and the increase in the average age of humans is down to fewer people dying in childhood and better medical care as people age.  Isn’t that a relief!  Imagine being 200 in a world full of people whose average age was 150 and who were standing on each other’s shoulders for lack of space.  I’m happy to die, but not quite yet please – I’ve still got so much to do.

Boris Johnson obviously supports this bit of ‘science’ and keeps dithering while swathes of the population die, although he has postponed the final easing of lockdown restrictions in England by a month.  He rather spoilt the announcement by saying he’d be “guided by the data” but he wouldn’t tolerate a further delay.  Seems self-contradictory somehow, but that’s his nature.

Some sporting events are already going ahead subject to some conditions and there was a big football match on Friday.  I actually watched about five minutes of it before I got bored but I was interested in how the game now contrasts with rugby union.  There were very few stoppages and people kept kicking the ball around while rugby now stops every 45 seconds while all the players pile onto a huge heap on the ground for a group hug.  Somebody (sorry, I forget who) said that the difference is because rugby used to be a game of evasion but is now a game of collision, which is probably why the average footballer is now so much prettier than the average rugby player.

The ever self-abnegatory Antony Gormley has been supervising the refixing some of the 100 iron statues he scattered over Crosby beach in 2005 after their foundations had been damaged and they fell over.  “I was just very, very concerned that they all face west, between 247 degrees west and 275 degrees west,” said Gormley on Monday. “I also wanted them all to share a common plane, which was 0.4 of a degree of inclination on the horizon.”  When we saw them some years ago, I did wonder if a few of them had slipped and were inclined more closely to 0.41 of a degree.

He added “I think they’re really points of meditation, contemplation, just thinking about time, our time, our relationship to the elements, our relationship to the horizon.”  Ah yes, that must be why the faulty inclination unnerved me so much.

Now, to cheer you up, a recommendation for an excellent book that I loved:  ‘Returning’ by Catherine Mainland, available to download or buy in hard copy from Amazon and reviewed on goodreads.com as “Wonderful reading. Touched me deeply. Want more from the author the characters very rich and genuine to their time.”   Thoroughly recommended, 5 stars, and the fact that Catherine is my niece didn’t affect my judgement (I wouldn’t have included it here if I’d hated it would I?)  One for book clubs?

*          I’ve always had a feeling that “Arbeit macht frei” was adopted as a concentration camp slogan by somebody whose knowledge of German was even more restricted than mine and what they’d meant to say was “Arbeit macht tot”.

Trusting Boris Johnson, G7 and Brexit, your medical secrets, Michael Gove broke the law and releasing murderers

13 June 2021

Cornwall was closed this week.

Nothing to do with local demonstrations against the destruction wrought on local village economies by second-home owners, or even ‘entertainment industry’ owners (like ice-cream merchants) complaining about the loss of tourist income, just the G7 meeting at Carbis Bay where world leaders were supposed to meet to solve the world’s problems, with a side order of hammering the final nail into the coffin of the mythical honour of an English gentleman.

Well, I suppose the image of an Englishman’s honour (no question that Celts or women were ever involved) was self-generated anyway and the “my word is my bond” stuff only worked if the Englishman was on the blunt end of a weapon.  England’s power and wealth is the result of theft – international piracy and the British Empire, which developed for purely commercial reasons at the expense of the indigenous peoples (“natives”) who worked as slaves or were massacred.

So Johnson is not the confident host he so wanted to be but is stuck in a corner, trying to avoid admitting that nobody who backed Brexit realised that the UK has a land border with the rest of the EU, that he left negotiating an agreement until the last minute and now wants something different, risking the Good Friday Agreement that’s given us all 20 years that have been a lot more peaceful than Friday nights at the Bullingdon Club (an interesting article on which can be found at https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2021/02/02/a-day-in-the-lockdown-life-of-a-bullingdon-club-member/ )

The EU’s anger is based on the demonstrable fact that, under Johnson’s leadership, the UK can no longer be trusted and even Joe Biden said, in the exquisite language of an experienced politician, that “Any steps that imperil or undermine the Good Friday agreement will not be welcomed by the US.”  He went on to say that this was not a threat or ultimatum but he was “crystal clear about his rock-solid belief in the Good Friday agreement as the foundation for peaceful coexistence in Northern Ireland” and urged both sides to sort it out (the NI problem, not the mixed metaphor).

Less familiar with weasel words, Emmanuel Macron said that “nothing is negotiable” in the agreement and protocol that was voluntarily negotiated, agreed and signed by all parties.

All this in the background while G7 was trying to concentrate on things like the Covid pandemic, the distribution of vaccines, global economic recovery, the climate emergency, China, how quiet St Ives is, and the quality of the breakfast sausages. 

Before the summit had even started, foreign policy experts and former British diplomats were worried that the UK was widely perceived as not trustworthy and therefore not in the same league as Biden, a big man from a big country, who all too obviously outclasses Johnson, a small man from a small country, in every respect.

A side benefit of these tensions is that, presumably because he can’t risk upsetting even more people, Johnson has agreed to delay his plan to share our medical records with the private sector via NHS Digital, something his government had been trying to sneak through the back door with an absolute minimum of publicity.  Luckily some eagle-eyed cynics noticed and told everyone. 

Otherwise, in no time at all, Google, Amazon, Rupert Murdoch and any half-way competent hacker will know all about our abortions, acne, acute hypochondria, heartburn, hernia, piles, STIs, verrucas, Viagra addiction etc and will be able to target ads directly at our, er, frailties.

So put pen to paper NOW and tell your GP your information must not be released.

And tomorrow it seems likely we’ll hear that we’re not being freed on 21 June and the remaining Covid restrictions will stay in place for an extra two or more weeks, depending on scientists’ judgements of the increasing likelihood of a third surge in infections as the Delta variant hurtles through the population.  (What are they going to do when they reach Omega?  Go on to a chronological list of Derby winners since 1950?)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the High Court has ruled that Michael Gove broke the law when he awarded a large contract to Public First.  The Cabinet Office has said this doesn’t matter, setting a worrying precedent:  if Cabinet Ministers are now allowed to break the law and stay in office, we’re on a greasy slope.

Remember Jonathan Aitken?  He broke the law, went to prison and was subsequently ordained as a parish priest in the Church of England.  Or Jeffrey Archer?  He broke the law, went to prison, and is still writing rubbish books.  Why don’t they just let Gove go to prison and do whatever he’s capable of when he’s released?

But the most impressive news released this week was a brilliant wheeze that the FBI and police in Australian and Europe set up three years ago.  Frustrated by their difficulties in intercepting criminal communications, they set up their own secure, specialised, end-to-end encrypted messaging app, An0m, shut down its two major competitors and recorded all traffic using An0m.

This led to the arrest of 800 suspected members of criminal gangs and the recovery of more than £100m in cash plus tonnes of drugs, cryptocurrencies, weapons and luxury cars.  It also revealed that some gangs were being tipped off, which led to more arrests and “high-level corruption cases in several countries” according to an FBI agent.

Also this week, the UK’s Parole Board approved the release of Colin Pitchfork, who was jailed for life in 1988 with a minimum of 30 years when he was 28, for raping and murdering two 15-year old girls.  His release remains provisional for 21 days until the Justice Secretary Robert Buckland decides whether to approve or appeal against their decision.

The Board heard evidence from Pitchfork as well as his probation officer, police and a prison service psychologist and its decision said “After considering the circumstances of his offending, the progress made while in custody and the evidence presented at the hearing, the panel was satisfied that Mr Pitchfork was suitable for release.” 

Pitchfork has been in an open prison in 2018.

If he is released, he would be subject to a risk management plan that would impose strict conditions, including living at a designated address, being subject to probation supervision, wearing an electronic tag, undergoing lie detector tests, disclosing the vehicles he uses and who he speaks to, with particular limits on contact with children.  He would also be subject to a curfew, have restrictions on using technology and on where he can go, and he would not be allowed into Leicestershire or to knowingly approach any of the girls’ relatives.

What would you do?

On a lighter note, a 17-year old in California saw a large mother bear with two cubs on top of a wall in their backyard.  Four dogs ran out barking and the bear batted at them.  Without thinking what she was doing, the teenager rushed out and pushed the bear off the wall, then picked up the smallest dog and got all of them back into the house.  Great bit of film recorded by a surveillance camera …  (Poor old bear, said a friend, she was only trying to protect her cubs.)