The Stars In Your Eyes

What is it in the human brain that makes it bereft of common sense, normal reactions or indeed much balance when it comes to famous or prominent people?

I have seen strong men who were against class, monarchy, wealth, authority and rest, hard left and proud of it go glassy eyed and wobbly at the knees at the thought of meeting a star of a major TV programme.

One lady, another determined type, none shall pass might well have been her motto, was affected in the same way by actors playing star roles in her favourite soap.  When I suggested that they were prone to quite ordinary human frailties I got it well and truly in the neck.

What was really worrying about this was that they reflected to a great extent the reactions of large numbers of people.  More so was that the lady not only identified with the characters but came to regard them as somehow higher and extraordinary beings as apart and above the rest of us.

After commercial TV began in competition with the BBC monopoly in the late 1950's, the BBC ratings soon dropped like a stone and it became the minority TV channel of two by a good margin.  Worse was that many viewers regarded themselves as either "ITV" or "BBC" and many of the former resented the License Fee as an unwanted tax.

So the 1960's and later became a battleground for viewers.  Critical to this was to capture the prime time evening viewing.  This was done by putting on highly popular programmes with people promoted as major stars and personalities that became required viewing to be able to converse etc. with other people.

To this end the BBC were granted a second channel, BBC2, into which was shunted the cultural, minority and bettering the masses items leaving prime time clear for the Corporation to take on ITV head to head in the race to the bottom.

Therefore all we had in the UK was a two and a half channel service so one effect was to make the leading performers in effect Chosen People in the eyes, affections and interest of the masses.

Inevitably, it took in the other media as the print part had to defer to it for sales, especially as ITV was a direct competitor for crucial advertising revenue.

Consequently, from about 1960 to the 1990's, allowing for the fourth channel of the 1980's, there was a generation of TV viewers in thrall to a limited number of performers.  It really was a devil's pact.  The TV channels needed performers to pull in the viewers, the performers needed TV to make it to fame and fortune.

One way or another it ran across most forms of TV.  There were the newsreaders, the sports commentators, and experts as well as the actors and other artistes and performers.  For pop music TV coverage could rocket you up the charts, for the TV managements the kings and queens of pop were essential to the ratings.

For the BBC this was survival and the license fee.  For ITV it was the advertising revenue and spin offs.  Inevitably, this became enmeshed with politics and other things. 

In the UK it became all very close and together because of the London effect, even allowing for some regional activity in the case of ITV.  We all knew who the Chosen People were and they knew that they were Chosen.

Some ran into trouble, often for tax evasion, but did not suffer much for it.  A few mingled with criminals, others lived complicated lives, many gambled heavily and more drank heavily.

They were readily forgiven their sins because they were Chosen and didn't we all have our faults?  The detail was never clear and a lot went on unmentioned or ignored or keep quiet.

The Chosen people needed TV, the TV needed Chosen people, the elite needed TV and public confidence in it and TV needed the elite to maintain and bolster the duopoly and avoid the kind of competition and diversity that was developing in other countries.

There is not a great deal that is new about this.  But the difference in the TV age was the immediacy of impact in every home and at hours to suit the viewers.  Suddenly, just about every home and other places had TV and it was TV that delivered the information, comment, analysis if any and the stories of the day and the rest.

It would be possible to go down through history and show examples of human attachments to princes, prelates, preachers, orators, famous people and leaders of the past.  There are some sorry tales.  One is The Divine Right of Kings at one extreme, others the horrors of the Roman arenas and many more.

We only have to look at the various cults of leadership around the world in the 20th Century alone to tell us that the human race is a ship of fools and easily deluded and led.  So what is now emerging from the past should tell us a great deal.

But will we learn from it?

Avez Vous Un Cuppa?

Quite apart from the rest of it, the Tour de France is in Yorkshire this weekend, which entails extended TV viewing of places we know well.  Did I really do that there back in the late 1950's?  Never mind the decades living there.

Also widely reported is the surviving Monty Python team doing it for the last time.  Perhaps one should not try to go back, too much has happened in too many ways.

This three minutes of satire is one specially remembered, if only for the intellectuals and southerners who journeyed to Barnsley at the time in search of something never to be found.  As I tried to explain to them it was all the subsidence, going back to the monks of the Middle Ages, that was the problem.

One can only hope that a few airings might be given to the commercial break for PG Tips Tea starring Cyril the Cyclist, a chimpanzee, taking part in the Tour.  Cyril had a broad Yorkshire accent, I think dubbed, but you never know.

It is here and lasts only a few seconds and the punch line comes after the plug for the tea and has a charm of its own.

In the 1970's the idea that Yorkshire might have much to do with the Tour de France was one of those surreal comic notions that gained a lot of laughs and helped the sales.  One felt it a duty to buy the tea because it was fun.

It seems that one of the German cyclists, Kittel, has complained that the Yorkshire roads are dangerous.  Given some of the roads used by the Tour this is amazing, he says the dry stone walls along narrow roads are a problem.

He may not be aware that the problem for dry stone walls is Yorkshiremen falling off their cycles and knocking them down with their heads.

They're a hard lot in Yorkshire.

Putting Off The Evil Day

In Past Horizons there is a vivid article on the subject of the wearing of amulets in the shape of Mjollnir, The Hammer of Thor as a protection against the vicissitudes of life.

As few schoolboys know these days, this is an ancient god of the northern peoples who had a bad temper and went in for thunder, lightning and sundry geophysical events. Wrath, vengeance and energy policy were his speciality.  He was happy to biff any passing giant who upset him.

But after a long flirtation with Christianity and related faiths we now worship celebrities and media personalities.  This is much easier and all we are asked to do is believe, reward them with vast riches and ask no questions.

We are all going to need amulets of a kind soon if a much longer and detailed piece from Energy Matters is correct on the subject of when the lights might go out in the UK. 

Serial short term thinking, hard lobbying by corporate subsidy seekers, shoddy research and thinking and Euro regulation has left us with margins that are too tight for security of supply in the near future.

This is the short item about the archaeology.

This is the hefty item an analysis in detail on the subject of our energy supplies.  CCGTs are Combined Cycle Gas Turbines.

The conclusions are:

The complete unsuitability of CCGTs for the only remaining task they will have in the UK, as so much more wind power becomes installed, is not yet publicly recognised, although there can be no doubt that the generators understand this well enough.

The absence of a willingness to invest in new CCGTs is not just because of the uncertainties of the Electricity Market Reform but is driven by the realisation that CCGTs cannot operate profitably in the market being created by so much wind power having priority on the system.

The high likelihood of a pending, forced write-down of the 30 GW of the UK’s CCGT capacity, with a replacement value in excess of £20 billion that must be spent by 2020 in order to “keep the lights on” when the wind is not blowing, needs the most urgent public recognition.

Technical solutions that are better suited to high wind penetration are being developed but do not yet exist[29]. However, the need for the early replacement of most of the incumbent 30 GW CCGT fleet will produce another financial shock in the market for which neither UK policy makers nor are the public properly prepared.

Unquote.

Does anyone know where I can buy an amulet of Mjollnir, I feel an El Nino or two coming on?

Electric Shocks For All

Today the Labour Party came up with its latest grand idea for policies to feature in the election campaign.  Ed Miliband was in Leeds telling an audience suffering an enthusiasm deficit that there would be new economic powerhouses, some of which would be local councils brought together to shape their futures.

The memories came flooding back about all the power houses of the past.  The oldest were all those fervent documentaries about how electrical power would be provided nationwide from the 1930's and 1940's.  So many of them had striking pictures of the applications of various forms of power in technology.

To modern audiences they look antique, even quaint.  The 1950's films of housewives' first experiences with modern kitchens seem almost ludicrous.  Again, visions of power and use were routine in government propaganda.  No party conference was without grand speeches on energy power and the new world to come.

Except it wasn't quite a new world.  Somehow or other, the old world in the form of the structure of industry, trade and many other things would continue in a happier world.  The new world was a sort of bolted on higher standard of living and consumption thing to employ and cater for the younger generations.

The electricity would largely be fuelled by coal with some by other means, so would the gas.  Large gangs of men would still be needed to move goods or do the manual work.  Road transport would expand but be the junior partner to rail.  Air would be the expensive and elite end.  This could go on.

One memory is a Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool, in Lancashire when RA Butler gave a speech on policy some fifty odd years ago.  He made firm promises that the Lancashire Cotton Industry would enjoy full government support and would have a bright future.  In all this were the promises of cheaper, reliable and better power supplies.

It would only be a few years later when Ed and Dave Miliband would be sitting at the knee of their father, Ralph Miliband, the Marxist academic, enthralled by his magic tales of the wonders of Stalin's Electrification of the Soviet Union, which had set an example for all mankind.

It was claptrap of all this kind that formed the mindset of politicians dealing with many issues.  The Power Thing as a critical force was a mystic belief that coloured anything and everything they attempted to do.

So when the Conservative Heath reorganised local government in the early 1970's we were inflicted with a bright new dawn.  It was a set up that was remarkably similar to the one now being proposed by Miliband.  In the radical reshaping that took place on layer in some areas were the Metropolitan Counties.

Broadly, these were the same areas that are suggested for the creation of new "powerhouses" of grouped councils and the concept was bandied about in the early talk of how they would invigorate, stimulate and all that the local economies.

What did we get, the elected members were all the old war horses of local politics delighted to have a brand new, bigger and better gravy train and there was a lot of gravy to be had.  New large departments were staffed up on high salaries.  There was a business or development department notably lacking in real business experience.

In some of these new councils the members were those with experience of new planning and development under the guidance of one of the masters of the era, John Poulson who also finished up in Leeds, sadly in Armley Gaol for corruption.  You may guess where the great majority of the money available went.

At first, until reined in as the rates bills to local businesses went up to catastrophic levels, these councils were some of the biggest pork barrels in the UK.  There major interest was propping up or helping old declining industries and their affiliates in activities that clearly had no future, only delaying its impact.

Otherwise they were open for business to all the lobbyists, racketeers, confidence men and the rest.  This was the 1970's and these men had no idea about the real new forces. products and technologies that were being established, notably in IT, computing and business machinery and the rest.

They were shielded from much of the ordinary or real politics that went on because the lower level Metropolitan Boroughs dealt with Education, Social Services, Leisure and such like with parallel Area Health Authorities for the National Health Service.

The trouble was that they were embedded into the Labour Party at the time because of the political complexion of those industrial districts.  It was not until the era of Mrs. Thatcher that they were abolished and few other than those at their cash tills regretted their going.

For our politicians looking for the answers to the problems of the now and how to proceed to a sounder and better balance future the restoration of the Metropolitan Counties in one form or another is one of the worst things they could do.

It is not simply more tax and spend it is probably one of the most inefficient and damaging ways to do it.

Making Maps

Around the media a couple of maps caught the eye. One was from the Second World War, apparently taken from a German agent in South America which purported to show how the America's would be carved up in the event that the Third Reich achieved world domination.

The story was that Churchill made sure that Roosevelt was given it quickly and this played a part in the USA decision to go to war in Europe.  How far the map was real and how far it may have been a British Intelligence caper is another question.

The other map is said to be that of the ISIS Sunni groups engaged in the bitter struggles in Iraq and Syria.  This relates to the establishment of a new Caliphate of Islam and the lands to which it is entitled.  These are much the same as the lands held by Islamic forces in the early Middle Ages at the time of the greatest spread of the then Caliphate.

The great thing about a map is that it is visual, might need little explanation as to the meaning and can have a powerful effect; in the ISIS one the Balkans, a battleground of the ages, would revert to Islamic control.  Also, so would the Iberian Peninsula.  So much for the EU or Catalonian independence or for that matter all those British pensioners sunning themselves in retirement.

The idea that a fairly small number of men with extreme views could impose themselves on such a vast area in a short time seems highly unlikely in our highly globalised world, especially with all the talk of self determination, democracy, human rights and individualism.

One of the uncomfortable lessons of history is that it can, it has happened time and again and it always takes people by surprise.  But when you have weak and confused states or nations with inadequate defence arrangements or too many people willing to sell out or compromise with a dedicated enemy the there is the risk.

Just how many British did it take to establish The Raj and how big an area and with what size population did they take over?  Also, it was an area with great wealth, ancient established cultures and principalities and plenty of men at arms, albeit not united or equipped with the latest technology.

A hundred years ago, how many people would think that in Russian the Bolsheviks would be in power within four years and would go on to create The Soviet Empire?  Take The Netherlands, how big was their Empire eventually?  One could go on and one.

Then there was France.  A once major European state it had fallen into disarray and was to all intents and purposes weak.  Then came Napoleon with his armies and navies rampaging round the world.  This was short lived and soon collapsed but later French regimes went in for the Empire business in a big way.

One key factor in the overthrow of the old and the imposition or creation of the new is an elite who are detached and distant from their peoples, distrusted or even hated, weak militarily but rich in wealth yet deep in debt and who have gone soft and stupid.

Now where in the world are places like that?

Who's Sorry Now?

At Prime Minister's Apologies Time in the House of Common, Mr. Gladstone expressed his regrets for giving Mr. Jack Ripper the post of Special Adviser for Fallen Women and Morality Policy among the labouring classes.  These were subjects close to Mr. Gladstone's heart and he had learned much from his nocturnal visits to Whitechapel but now realises that this was an error of judgement.

This is not the first major apology made by the Prime Minister.  It may be recalled that he was forced to admit that sending General "Chinese" Gordon to Khartoum with an inadequate and ill prepared military force was a mistake leading to the death of the General in unhappy circumstances.  The Prime Minister admitted in failing to appreciate the differences between China and the Sudan.

The Prime Minister assured the House that the occupation of Egypt was purely temporary until Sir Evelyn Baring had restored the Khedive and nation's finances to stability and Egypt was able to pay off its debts to The City of London at a market rate of interest.  The recent crisis over the Suez Canal would be the last of its kind.  Also, Britain would have the major role in building the High Speed Cape to Cairo railway through Africa.

Similarly, in Africa after recent difficulties with the Zulu tribes the Government was on course to create a new union of the territories of southern Africa based on the principles of English law and with full adult male suffrage for all in a fully representative government of all races.

Mr. Gladstone told the House that the Married Women's Property Act giving women in marriage control over their own monies would not damage family lives or lead to marriage becoming more optional.  Press reports relating to the Prince of Wales were utterly false and not related to this matter.

Similarly, the Prime Minister was aware that the Empress of Austria would be out with The Oakley Hunt during the season  and Mr. Bay Middleton solely acted as her pilot in the field.  The Empress was purely an occasional visitor arising from her interest in rural life.  That Mr. Arthur Macan, the Joint Master and the Hunt were funded by the Whitbread Family had nothing to do with the adjustments to the beer and malt taxes.

Due to the recent financial difficulties in The City and its effects the Rupee currency of India has fallen heavily against the pound sterling.  While this is adverse for those in India paid and with pensions in rupees it has allowed more prosperity for those paid in pounds, admittedly employed by the British Government and its agencies.  The net result will be a number of adjustments allowing for much needed austerity in the Indian population at large.

Mr Auckland Colvin, who lately was most helpful to Mr. Evelyn Baring in Egypt and has now resumed duty as Treasurer of India has introduced extra taxes, including a new Income Tax to balance the books.  This has attracted criticism, especially from excitable journalists as Mr. Rudyard Kipling, but the Prime Minister was confident that all would be well soon.  Mr. Colvin is reported to be a cousin of Mr. Arthur Macan, above, but this is purely a coincidence.  As the capital and share structures of Indian Railway companies are based on sterling, the Indian Treasury will continue to draw on tax revenues to meet interest charges and guaranteed dividends in The City of London.

The attention of the Prime Minister has been drawn to reports that in his home city of Liverpool, the Everton Football Club have employed a footballer on a paid, that is professional basis.  Mr. Alex Dick was formerly with the Morton club of Scotland.  The Prime Minister asserted that both the Morton and Everton clubs were founded by persons of deep Christian faith and on Temperance principles in keeping with the true British traditions of sport.  While from time to time certain minimal expenses might be met for poorer persons this did not set a precedent.

The Prime Minister insisted that while jockeys and boxers might earn money, so far as Association Football, Rugby Football, Tennis, Athletics and other major sports key to character, honesty, fair play and integrity were concerned they would remain wholly amateur.  To assume that they would have regular pay and expenses was as ridiculous as suggesting that Members of the House of Commons would be paid or allowed large expenses.

On the subject of Ireland, the Prime Minister guaranteed the House that his personal interest would ensure that the problems would be soon resolved.

Is Your World Cup Really Necessary?

The first soccer World Cup was played in 1930, with two more before WW2 with limited numbers of entrants.  When it began again in 1950 and entrants increasing with air travel available it became bigger and more complicated.

So it began during a period of strong nationalisms and continued in the second half of the 20th Century on a national basis with the teams being substantially drawn from players in their own national leagues.

By and large the national teams were better than the individual teams in their own home leagues and the standard of football reflected this.  When watching a World Cup game you were looking at the best playing the best in general.

In the 21st Century as a result of the globalisation of football, ease of long distance travel, the impact of finance from satellite TV and major corporate sponsors, there is a very different situation.

There are particular national leagues, notably in Europe, where the clubs have substantial squads of foreign players paying top wage prices for the best players they can hire from anywhere in the world.  There has been a concentration of these players in Europe.

For the crowds and TV audiences now the best football to be seen is not an international match featuring your national team, it is a match between elite clubs from the national leagues playing either in their own league or in one of the plethora of international competitions now in existence.

It is arguable that the day of national teams playing on the basis of nationalist interests is now over and it not just secondary, but actually an intrusion on the real business and purpose of football and a costly one at that for the taxpayers. The way things are going in Brazil, if anything, seem to confirm this.

The trouble is, as ever, the politics.  There is not only FIFA and the rest installed as relics from the past there are politicians anxious to show off at prestigious international fun fests of one sort or another.  They are very happy to spend the taxpayers money on these fun bunfights.

But when a World Cup finals group match turns out to be more boring and worse football that you could see at a routine English second grade Championship match between teams with international squads it does raise the question do we need the World Cup any more?

How do we get rid of FIFA and its monopoly power?