I Shop Therefore I Am

Shopping is not where I want to be.  Some of my “pairs” of socks are odd because it is preferable to making the effort to buy new ones when an old or too worn one has to be discarded.  Some of my shirts are almost in the vintage class and I am not talking about the manly smells they exude.

Part of the problem is that it no longer a question of making a choice between a local supplier offering a limited range or making the effort to go into town to one of the shops there.  The number of shops which stock a range of socks and a decent choice has fallen drastically.  So either I have to drive somewhere or go online in the hope of finding ones that might do the job.

This is becoming harder and the choice more limited because I want hard wearing ones that wash easily and are not packed with industrial chemicals aimed at neutralising my feet and probably my vital organs as an unintended consequence.  It is becoming more and more like the 1940’s when shopping involved patient searches and rapid decisions; buy now or wait until the next solstice.

There was a time not so long ago when shopping was easy and convenient and people became used to being able to source goods and foods from several and varied sources, sometimes from local shops and at other times from major stores.  It is now all becoming much more marginal.

What happens if because of international finance or the way the world works in the next few years all the choice and opportunities we have had now for at least two generations simply begin to wither away and try as we might, it becomes harder and harder to find the right item at the right price?

This could happen in different ways.  One is the power and control exerted by a limited number of major chains allied to price fixing and the obliteration of the small and medium sized retailers may mean that it could soon be a question of us only being able to buy what they want to sell.

In any case the power they exert over media advertising may be used to make us believe that only the limited number of their goods are the ones we want.  That these appear to be different brands sponsored by different celebrities may fool us into believing that there are differences but as they come out of the same factories with the same basic content these will be cosmetic for sales purposes.

Another is that in real terms shortages begin to develop for many reasons arising from the way the world is going at present.  We may already be beyond the point where growth or new development is “sustainable”.  In other words from now on it is downhill all the way.

So the occasional mad panics for hyped new gizmos or special brand offers or releases may become part of a shopping pattern whenever a product in really scarce supply appears in a shop somewhere.  This has happened before; just look at some of the archive material for UK 1940’s shopping experiences.

Imagine going around the local supermarkets when they have become clones of each other and while there appears to be a choice you find yourself being able to boy increasingly limited amounts of the same kinds of goods, all packaged and frantically marketed to make you think they are desirable. 

One thing I have noticed recently is that the space given to sales of fresh produce and especially local or UK sourced goods seems to be shrinking apace.  They are being displaced by aisles of manufactured items from an increasingly limited number of suppliers and with lengthening supply chains.

At the same time we are encouraged to identify ourselves with particular chains, or brands or patterns of eating, drinking and dressing.  This is reinforced by “offers” which are rarely to our advantage.  We are what we shop, if we can and when we can.

And we can only have what someone far away decides we might be given.

I Don't Know Where I'm Going

Among the many and mighty messes that we are in, the product of two decades or more of fiddling the figures and ducking the difficult questions there is the British Constitution, now better described as the British Constipation.  I will refrain from explaining the precise implications of this comparison.

For the sake of simplicity given the size of the problem in this case the issue will be just how many members of the two Houses we might have, the related question of what purposes they may serve and the crucial one of how they are elected.

In the case of the House of Lords, the reasons for the sharp inflation of numbers recently are clear enough.  Changes of government lead to the new one ensuring that the House of Lords cannot be too obstructive, so another large batch is needed when that happens.

Then there are all the prominent people of one sort or another who need to be paid off for services rendered and a life peerage is a useful part of the package and adds to their incomes and status.  As the Lords are supposed to deal with laws and other devices of government, inevitably squads of lawyers are needed, despite the removal of the specialist Law Lords.

So something that started off as a few tens of associate Royals and their cousins and other leading magnates of the first order has ballooned to over a thousand assorted persons who are essentially political, not elected and apparently without any really clear mandate about what they are there for.

Basically, it is like a train that has no driver and with all the seats occupied by guards, ticket collectors and free riders.  What a way to run a railway.

The House of Commons began as a place for the lesser landowners who were not peers, representatives of certain boroughs and a small number of others.  The Union with Scotland added a number and the later Union with Ireland added a lot more.  Along with this and the mission creep of government were gradual additions.

Now we have well over six hundred each supposedly representative of a real and particular community.  This is elected by a first past the post system which entails a high proportion with less than fifty per cent of the vote and given the decline in turn out recently, often around only thirty per cent of their electorate.

This has had its problems.  After 1945 this meant a Labour Party dominated by its “safe seats” with heartlands in area with limited types of working tradition.  In the large areas of this kind the consequence has been negligible representation of other interests within those areas.

For the Tories there is much the same, only producing representatives of a different kind.  One upshot has been that in largely rural areas there has been little or no representation of the lower farming classes who also have missed out in Labour held areas.  You could add to this.

The result is that the Commons has never been a truly representative body.  On top of this the disappearance of the old landed class on the Tory side and the loss of the industrial and related elites of Labour has led in the last two decades to the bulk of both parties being largely in the hands of the London Mediocracy which includes all the professional politicians.

While this has been going on there has developed wide disparities in the number of electors between constituencies with little apparent reason other than historical accident.  Also, the cut and shuffle of recent decades mean that the “community” is anything but that.

The Liberal Democrats have nailed their flag to their version of House of Lords reform, including the asinine fifteen year terms of office.  As enough Conservative members have seen that it does not make sense and blocked it the Liberal Democrats intend to prevent any constituency reorganisation.

This was a weak and limited enough project.  What should have be envisaged is a way to reduce the Commons to about 450 members at most elected on a basis that would be more representative of the broad sweep of the electorate.  For the Lords possibly a figure of 250 maximum would make sense if the functions were to be relatively limited.

Whilst people expect the Coalition to survive until 2015, if only by default, if it does collapse over Constitutional issues at a time of burgeoning crisis and the election delivers a government of the Labour London Lickspittles who did so much to create the mess we are in, then the end of the UK could be nigh.

It might be that enough right minded people may come forward to grasp the reins of power, it may be that a coup of some kind could occur, Sinbad Boris and his Bully Boys or if it all turns nasty a revolution. 

Watch the bond markets, anything could happen.

Sport Not Quite For All

No sooner do I stray back into geophysics than something crops up.  It seems that in the year 1258 the population of Britain was hit by a major event.  This is said to be an unidentified South American volcano blowing at about eight times the strength of the big nasty 1883 Krakatoa event.  The story is here and in the paywalled Times.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/05/medieval-volcano-disaster-london-graves?INTCMP=SRCH

More predictable was that Lord Moynihan, the former Olympic athlete is calling for government policy to allow much more money to “invest” in sport.  Certainly, Team GB has had a good Games with possibly more to come.  This has been done on the back of added spending but largely selective and targeted on events and people in with a chance.

He may not have noticed the vast sums ploughed into sport in the last couple of decades.  This too has been highly selective.  In this case it is the loot, sorry, money has been directed into soccer, notably to a small number of leading businesses, sorry, clubs.  Other TV friendly sports have also had benefits, but to a far lesser extent.  If the viewers ain’t there then neither is the money.

So it can be argued that it is not the total amount of money going in, it is the imbalance.  Compare and contrast the earnings of any leading Premier League player with a rowing or running athlete.  Around the nation are many expensive new stadia for soccer, much of it paid for either by TV money or “investors” looking for a slice of the action, or the money laundering opportunities. 

There are other differences.  A handful of cyclists do well, but mostly on the back of their efforts abroad, much of it in continental road racing.  Also, tennis players earn their main money on the world championship circuit.  But when it comes to cycling or athletics stadia or other provision such as swimming, the taxpayer is expected to find the money. 

Applying modern ideas of relativism as to what “investment” in games might mean there are other things.  One is that soccer has become one of the central elements to a vast increase in gambling and the other is the variety of other “games” that have gained in economic strength in the last couple of decades.

There are reports that premises with machines which allow a great deal of exercise to either the right or left arm of choice are now a major feature of modern high streets and leisure areas.  It seems that quite a lot of people are “investing” in this form of activity.

Whilst local authorities are selling off playing fields and shutting down maintenance cost heavy swimming pools the young are urged into playing with the one armed bandits to beef up the councils takings on the business rates.  In the state schools curricula there is little time for or interest in really competitive sport. 

Schools are judged on tests in classroom work and not on their times on the track or in the pool, if they had one or even access to one.  There are no credits for how the honour of the school has been enhanced by winning local leagues or cups in sport.  There is little urging on of pupils to outdo each other.

It isn’t the amount of money going into “games” or “sport”, however defined, this is already a substantial part of economic activity, it is the direction and purpose.  If Lord Moynihan could persuade people to put their money into sport for the young instead of gambling or boozing it would be much better.

But he must be aware also that the profits from these go offshore and are little taxed relative to the tax take given from any actual activity and their providers are well connected in politics.  Also, he must ask whether it possible in the modern UK to make sport a normal part of the life of young people as a whole.

If that I would put money on him being a loser.

It Takes A Worried Man To Sing A Worried Song

The advantage of looking at geophysics on the web is that the data is relatively reliable.  It is the interpretations and predictions you need to watch for, but even those tend to be cautious.  The volcanoes, earthquakes and actual weather events have their own uncertainties for the future but you know what you have in the present.

Currently, the volcano scene looks relatively quiet; Ijen in East Java is on high alert and may become livelier but may not.  The earthquakes occurring seem to be a little different from the usual patterns and the run close to Puerto Rico was a worry, but this often occurs without a big one hitting hard in urbanised areas.

In the Atlantic area, though, it is looking as though the hurricane season may become more active.  A depression has been over The Bahamas but Tropical Storm Ernesto is on its way towards Jamaica and somewhere into The Gulf. 

How big or bad it will become will emerge in the next couple of days or so.  On the other side of the Atlantic Tropical Storm Florence is also on its way west at present following in the path of Ernesto.  There have been damaging typhoons already in the Pacific and China Seas.

But in the USA the weather has turned nasty causing large areas to be declared as disaster areas with drought, storms and other problems impacting on crops and the general economies.  This will be costly and are not the sort of thing politicians want in election years.  The bad news could get worse.

But when we turn to the economics, something that you might expect humans to be able to deal with and influence the way things are done and the consequences we are in a tunnel without apparently any exits.  We do not know clearly why or how we got there nor how to get out nor in which direction to go.

The latest major concern, substantially ignored by the main media because it is difficult to understand is the bond markets.  Here the data is far from reliable, we think we know the patterns but they can change rapidly without warning and we have theories to address the issues which compared with our theories in geophysics amount to wishful thinking and voodoo practices.

The politicians roam around from conferences to the media and back again assuring us that they will be able to come up with effective political solutions if only the banks and the public will behave and do what they are asked.  The economists look in their toolboxes and discover their tools are the wrong ones and do not fit.

While this is going on a variety of interested parties and experts are proclaiming their own views.  As very many of these are self serving, based on data which is old, related to past events in different circumstances and plagued by a reliance on equations which no longer have a solution, it is difficult to understand or predict.

Amongst all this is the suggestion that with all the money flushed into the systems and all the governments and their major agencies buying each others bonds the system is reaching break point.  As these bonds also have been used for bolstering the work of bust banks there are very serious problems here.

Add to that all the pension schemes relying on such bonds as a critical basis for their existence.  Then there are the raft of others who have bought into them, notably in many countries, local authorities using them as reserves.

As an extra, if the bond markets do go into free fall, all the low interest rate policies, forced on economies to stimulate them will fail and the rates could move up very sharply.  As many of the “investments” made from this money are far from that and could become money drains in the near future it does not look good.

So which are the best guesses to follow?  Would you bet on the markets or the geophysics? 

Above is a statue from the ancient Hittite Empire, where did they get to?  And why is he looking puzzled?

Eurodammerung

When Angela Merkel went on her works outing to the Bayreuth Opera House for a performance in their Richard Wagner season, what did she go to see?  Was it the laugh a minute “Parsifal” or something serious such as one of the Ring Cycle?  Was it perhaps “Gotterdammerung” where it all ends in tears, or rather flames?

This wasn’t the only Ring Cycle around, these days there is plenty of choice if you like your fun grim, grimy and gruesome.  A choice one was at the Munich Bavarian State Opera.  In the Project Syndicate web site, Harold James, Professor in History Princeton University describes it thus:

Quote:

The euro analogies are not just to be found on the playing field. In its annual festival this year, Munich’s Bavarian State Opera put on a new production of the apocalyptic Götterdämmerung, the final work in Richard Wagner’s four-evening cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The doomed characters held onto a rocking horse in the form of a large golden euro symbol. The backdrop was a modern glass façade that alternated between a bank headquarters (with the word “Profit” in flashing lights) and a temple of consumer fashion. The crash at the end of the opera was a financial collapse in which corrupt bankers were eliminated.

In Andreas Kriegenburg’s Munich production, the euro is presented as the counterpart of Wagner’s own use of the Ring as a symbol for power, reflecting a widespread European quest for some conspiracy theory about what is going wrong. The Ring and the euro become the center of a bid by Rhineland businessmen for supreme mastery in Europe.

It is all a sort of musical parody of the view of the euro crisis expounded by Martin Wolf, George Soros, and others: Europe and the world are doomed by Germany’s relentless quest for export surpluses.

The way the tale is presented by Germany’s modern critics in the financial press, that bid for power is ultimately futile. On the stage, it all ends in a German way – in terror and destruction.

This kind of interpretation is not new. Even in the nineteenth century, the socialist writer and critic George Bernard Shaw produced a cogent interpretation that Wagner’s Ring was really a fable about the rise and fall of capitalism.

Wagner himself wrote letters to the mad Bavarian King Ludwig about the corruption of finance (though bankers’ remuneration at the time was not comparable with the handouts that Wagner received from the King).

He may have had the idea for the final cataclysmic conflagration while fighting in the 1848-1849 revolution in Dresden alongside the Russian anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin.

Unquote.

If you want the full article, interesting and readable, see:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/eurod-mmerung-by-harold-james

It concerns the end of Europe as we know it. 

Perhaps at Bayreath Angela was watching the new production of “The Flying Dutchman”, which I understand was roundly booed.  This is about a cursed mariner forced to sail the stormy seas, returning to land every seven years to find a lady who will sacrifice herself for unrequited love to save his soul.

I hope it didn’t give Angela ideas, she might have been better off at the Munich “Gotterdammerung”.

Reach For The Sky

While the fun has being going on others are active in the absence of so many of their local police.  At the Redoubt Fortress And Military Museum in Eastbourne in Sussex, a thief stole, with other items, the medals of General Sir John Hackett.  The Museum serves both the Royal Sussex Regiment and Hackett’s regiment, the 8^th Kings Royal Irish Hussars.

The Royal Sussex Regiment provided a parachute battalion in WW2, the 10^th, so the location for his medals was appropriate.  Sir John Hackett is pictured above in September 1944, with the cane under the arm, the Brigadier of the 4^th Parachute Brigade about to be sent to Arnhem in Operation Market Garden.  He is with King George VI inspecting a battalion of the The Parachute Regiment.

Last Friday when the much commented parachute drop was done for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games it was blithely assumed that this would be a novelty for the Royals.  But King George knew all about them.  More to the point HRH The Prince of Wales is Colonel in Chief of The Parachute Regiment.

He, probably along with his two brothers, The Duke of York and the Earl of Essex will have done some jumping as will have William, the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry.  It is unlikely that Her Majesty has and maybe not The Princess Royal, they prefer riskier high fences.

One of the more ill informed suggestions when critics deal with the role of the Royal Family in WW2 is to suggest that when they were at Sandringham, just north of Kings Lynn and close to the Norfolk coast they were is some remote spot far from any hint of war and action.  It was quite the reverse, it may have been rural but it was in the middle of it.

When the Luftwaffe came to visit England from high in the sky they would be guided not simply by radio but by sight of the ground, especially the great estuaries and waterways along the East Coast.  One was certainly The Wash, across the fields from Sandringham.  How many nights must have the local air road sirens blared out to send you down into the shelters?

The East Coast was thoroughly policed by various small naval craft being regarded as vulnerable to opportunist attacks or even attempts at landings for raids or gathering intelligence.  The troops there to guard the House were not for show they were for real.

On top of this was that East Anglia and Lincolnshire to the north as well as the counties adjacent was more or less one long air strip packed with fields for the RAF and US Air Force.  If I can recall the sky being full of bombers on their way East where I was then certainly anyone in Norfolk could as well.

Then there was the Army, a good deal of terrain being used for troops returned or on their way to action.  In late 1943 the 7^th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) were pulled out of Italy and located just to the south of Kings Lynn being prepared for the Normandy Landings.

So why were the King and the other Royals at Sandringham?  Because then it was not “remote”, it was remarkably well connected if you know the road systems of that period and especially the more used railway systems and connections.  You could go by rail from Kings Lynn to almost anywhere in mainland UK by a variety of routes with multiple choices.

If the King or Queen was needed or wanted a short unmarked special could be on its way within the hour.  London could be reached by lines and options that could take the train into any of the main line stations north of the River Thames and by more circuitous routes into those to the South.  An early start could have the King well into Scotland by lunch time by any one of several routes.

Many of these journeys would not have been “official” or recorded as such, turning up unannounced here and there and sometimes unreported.  Quite how many units or other military establishments the King or Queen visited is unknown, never mind the hospitals or other places. 

So one day there would be an inspection announced and the grumbling troops yet again clambering into their full kit for a going over.  But this time it wasn’t a fussy Brigadier checking on the detail, it was the King, who had seen active service himself, seeing off his troops and wishing he was going with them.

Among the items in the museum is the remaining uniform of a soldier of the Desert Rats from the 1942 Battle of El Alamein, Hackett later commanded the Division.  I wonder if that was stolen as well. 

The Sussex police are pessimistic about making an arrest because of their manpower problems at present.

Jolly Good Sporting Weather

First the good news, second the prayers that all the bad news out there will not be noticed.  The competition has been intense, the immense efforts put in by the politicians to be at the right event at the right time has been rewarded by medals won by the GB athletes.  With others won by our cousins, The Empire Strikes Back.

After the business in Rome when the only medal won by GB needed the help of a horse it is refreshing to see our lot do well.  It has taken a long while and a lot of money, but that is in line with other states.  Also, for those so minded it raises interesting questions.

One exercising what is left of the minds of those engaged in main media is who is the greatest Olympic athlete of all time?  There are a number of contenders.  Should it be based on the number of medals, or that there was something special about their victories or that some medals rate higher than others.

There are those pitching for Fanny Blankers-Koen (see Wikipedia) who was certainly special amongst others.  For my money though I can only opt for Tebbs Lloyd Johnson (see Wikipedia) the bronze medallist in the 50 km Walk also in 1948.  This is because I knew him and once appeared at the same athletics meeting.

It was at a works sports day in the mid 1940’s when he was engaged in a five mile walking race round the perimeter while less regarded events went on in the middle.  I was in the egg and spoon race, with wooden eggs because of the rationing.  With the help of a dab of US army chewing gum on the spoon this was my only ever athletics success.

It was a pleasant afternoon when everyone could forget the troubles at that time.  The difference then was that the main media did not pretend that none of it was happening or that it would not affect us.  Even the politicians were inclined then to spell out the problems.

So most of us were aware of what we were up against.  This does not seem to be the case at present when despite the availability of alternative sources the bulk of the population knows little, has less reliable information and even less truthful or coherent explanation of the uncertainties and potential risks in the present world.

There may be informed comment on the net about the all the bad economic news in many parts of the world and the gathering storm in Europe.  There is less being said about American anxieties about the control of the Eastern Mediterranean in the event of a collapse in Greece.  The BRIC group suddenly does not seem to be the dawn of a new world economy.

In the meantime in the UK and USA we are just becoming aware of how far the application of The Economics Of Extraction has gone in the application of fancy highly leveraged financing in all sort of commercial, charitable, governmental and welfare provision. 

The scale of the wreckage, the long term effects and the reduction of most of us to the status of debt slaves either directly or indirectly as tax or fee payers or consumers is only just beginning to emerge and it will be nasty.

Meanwhile in London, the gold medals contain little gold; the silver a limited amount of silver and the bronze are largely copper.  At least the athletes have something real to show for their efforts in the memories of their achievements.