Nicola Knocks On London Doors?

In some parts of the media there has been crabby comment about Nicola Sturgeon's lecture at the LSE on 16 March.  This is tiresome and discourteous and likely to cause more resentment than progress.  There is no need for this.

The lecture is here and runs to 55 minutes, 28 from Nicola and the rest questions and is clear, if often detailed listening.  Make up your own mind.   Click on the Audio button and on my machine at least it comes up loud and clear.

Whether or not I might agree or disagree with anything that is being said, as a lecture there is little wrong with it structurally or the way it is argued.

She is the Leader of the SNP and came down to London at a venue convenient for our media and others giving a better chance of getting these views and policies over at a crucial time in the general election campaign.  She is a persuasive and intelligent speaker mercifully different from one who shall be nameless.

The LSE hosts lectures and events of this kind for many and various political leaders from across the world.  In this case the LSE strap line is that she aims to connect with the Reformist Left which is probably as good a description as any.

When she suggests that what is and what goes on at Westminster is far from good in many ways and needs radical change you do not need to be SNP to agree with this.  My problem is with the Reformist Left and a number of basic assumptions about the future.

One matter is the airy references to long term plans.  When I was young and optimistic and believed government might govern there was a time when long term plans seemed a good idea. Bitter experience has told me that they are a swirling fantasy of the mind doomed to disappoint.

It would take thousands of words to explain but what I would assert that the pace of change and events now means that there is no long term and unlikely even to be a medium term.  So if the financial players are short term they are simply brutally practical.

Moreover to win power the political brokers in our present set up have to win over many of the lower earning groups to the point where they will vote for them.  This means promises about jobs, housing and earnings that possibly can only be fulfilled by what is called the redistribution of income.

But when that involves disincentives for savings, creating money on the basis of debt, spending programmes that will never have any return on investment and handing out money for anything and everything that is demanded and lastly claiming that things will be free when they are not free, necessarily there may be adverse economic effects.

Couple this with a need to keep the big money men and players onside and supporting them and you have economies that are distorted, little real governance and possibly monolithic state run economies and facilities that are effectively controlled by their employees.

An added issue of what kind of population do you think you are governing.  Clearly the reformist Left with its policy of open borders does not like most of the existing legacy population and is anxious to replace enough of it with one that will offer loyal support and tip the balance forever to the Left.

Also there is the financial system that will exist.  At present many places in the world have placed their trust in the money flows generated by major money players.

But like any state that depends on a limited sphere of activity this makes it highly vulnerable.  We know now that the resource curse equally applies to finance as a curse.

The SNP vision of the future is a lost world of the recent past.  Only this sleeping beauty will not be wakened with a kiss.

Who Am I And Who Are You?

This blog sometimes strays into deep antiquity and human origins usually in the field of DNA, genetics study and its implications.  The aim is often to argue that the past and present are both places that are a lot more complicated than we think.

Moreover, humanity likes to think that at the particular moment we more or less know if not all then at least most of it and can be certain about many things, including ourselves.

This choice article  in Science Daily suggests we are not quite what we have assumed to be and might explain something about some things but we do not know what and how it might affect our systems and major functions.

The well I never, what a laugh, aspect of this is that in the past the elements of bacteria in the samples studied for DNA were excluded or wiped because they were classed as contaminants.

So am I cabbage, cauliflower or carrot?

The worm turns.

Anyone For A Takeaway?

In the various elections taking place in the western world and in our own Atlantic Isles there is a ghost at the feast, almost literally.  It is something we do not talk about much these days because it is almost forgotten being relegated to a difficult subject best avoided in the clamour of trivia and headline material.

It is food supply.  At present we are complaining about austerity, debt and shortages of money yet at the same time according to the figures in the UK we are spending a smaller proportion of our incomes on food and a lot less than at times in the past.

This releases money for all the other things that excite and delight us and those gizmo's needing continual replacement.  With energy costs going down as well the economy is becoming highly dependent on consumerism, property and finance.

Historically this is an anomaly.  In the past middling and lower income households would be expected to have to meet higher relative food costs with the added concerns of potential sharp and unplanned rises when real shortages occurred as they could and did.

How has this miracle occurred and can we be assured that it will last and have no problems?  At present, there has been strong competition between the major supermarket chains with price wars.  This has certainly impacted on them as the business pages carry tales of woe in the aisles. 

Even with a rising population which might be expected to put pressure on the market, more and different types of food in the shops and our town centres now becoming eateries as much as any other activity, most of us can afford it.  And do not mention the obesity issue o r the amount of waste.

Yet the very production and supply systems that have enabled this revolution to happen creates risks of their own.  For most it is not what we think it is.  It is mass production coupled with global reach and again with finance at its heart.   It has been a source of major profit and financial activity that is now the key.

It is also increasingly complex and as such vulnerable. I have read that a substantial proportion of the UK food processing and manufacturing now is carried out in 25 major plants, give or take a handful at the margins.

They are the key suppliers of the supermarkets and other major chains etc. and the lynch pin of most of the supply systems through their distribution networks in to manufacture and out to the shops, eateries and takeaways.

The ingredients come in are large packs of the items that go into the products and what goes out are the brands and packages that are familiar to us from the marketing and advertising.

The ingredients listing will tell only a part of the story.  A great deal of what is left out is substances used in the processing both in the major plants and around the many and various suppliers of all the elements now necessary to these products.  This is not for the faint hearted.

What started out as a natural food may be far from it at the end.  That is if it is natural; the high tech' world of able scientists can come up with substitutes that are not only more reliable but a lot cheaper.  The various claims for this and that being bad for you has impacted on new inventions, constantly ahead of the game.

In the meantime, while there are many people trying to provide traditional food by other means, our experience is that they are up against it and in the last couple of decades the network of local supply and retailing of traditional foods has atrophied.  The internet has allowed some to have greater scope but it is harder for old fashioned foodies to find and obtain what they want locally.

There is a great deal of information and debate about all of this elsewhere but not at the highest political levels. What few realise it seems is how high risk, exposed and vulnerable the central part of food supply is now to shocks or serious disruption however good or bad you may think it is.

We have not been here before because our present supply facilities and systems have arisen only in the last few decades.  Also, we have had the good luck to avoid either major conflicts or weather disruptions or such to trigger a breakdown.

Can this last?  We do not know because the issue of off the agenda for debate or political action.  When the truck drivers threatened a strike recently the smart money was on three days before the supermarket shelves were cleared.  Is anyone betting on it?

And the takeaway will have nothing to be taken.

ISIS And Empires Of The Mind

Would anyone at the time of the Civil Wars in the Atlantic Isles in the mid 17th Century have imagined the scale, power and authority of the British Empire of just a few generations later?  Even after The Restoration of 1660 the Dutch sailed into the Medway in 1667 to inflict a major defeat on the navy.

Going back into antiquity, there was a time when every schoolboy would be expected to know the story of Rome, how it was founded and later became The Glory That Was Rome.  How many of these classical notions embedded themselves into our ideas systems is a question of political philosophy but it certainly loomed large.

In the history of mankind in recent millennia there have been many empires of one kind or another that have come and gone.  In some cases there is knowledge and awareness of their history, however sketchy.  But there are others about which we know little and understand less.

The one certainty is that there have been many and various and now there is endless academic and other debate about some of those past empires, their nature, purpose, function, legacy and how "good" or "bad" they may have been.  This will depend on the moral and other perspectives of those doing the debating.

There are other issues which seem certain and that is that the human past in political terms has been rarely peaceful.   Empires on the one hand  and even mutually dependent tribal societies have been in constant conflict that defy rationality or any moral sense.

The 1914 discussions at present have at their heart the issue of why a handful of European nations who had taken control over much of the world then decided to ruin themselves, begin to lose their empires and inflict disaster on so many peoples.

We do not learn, if anything it is more convenient to forget.  Russia having suffered serious damage by 1918 took another World War to reinstate and expand in the shape of the Soviet Union and its satellites.  When that empire of the mind and military fell apart it lost much of its territory.

Now we have a European Union, dominated by the same nations that triggered the 1914 debacle, attempting to assert itself by corralling in former Soviet entities into its empire of the mind and money.  If President Putin does shut the pipelines for their energy supplies it is the least he can do.  The other is to use Russian money flows to disrupt the fragile and vulnerable EU financial systems.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East there is ISIS.  It might seem ridiculous to suggest that this grouping of violent, aggressive and believers in an old and severe thought system could ever be more than a threat to civil order, peace and the existing mind worlds of the West.  But trawl back through enough of known history it is possible.

Given that there are many political entities; I avoid the word "civilisation" given the violence quotient of so many of them; of the past that began in very small ways and then either slowly or quickly gained control over many peoples and territories anything could happen.

All it needs is for those who are infiltrated, suborned, and made to fear, to be weak, divided, crippled by beliefs and ideas that prevent either a coherent or effective defence and distracted by things that dominate their thinking and lives and they can sooner or later be brought to subjection and made not simply subordinate but in effect enslaved.

In particular, entities which are profoundly divided and muddled in their thinking about those divisions and are more concerned to fight each other rather than the intruders, disregarding them as a real threat and failing to understand their potential for dominance, that can find themselves taken over.

There was a time when the British took over the Sub Continent of India.  Just how many men did it take to assert control over such a large part of the earth and so many peoples?

I Have A Song To Sing

Faced with a world which is making little sense and in The West politicians bent on stunt and shout rather than on facing up to or dealing with the mounting problems or threats it is become very difficult to know what to say.

This is one post which does attempt to make sense about Greece and The Euro but suggests that the problem lies with the clowns courtesy of Stephen Sondheim and A Little Night Music.  Frances Coppola is a class act here and worth five minutes of anybody's time to listen.

The Proms version is here with Judi Dench who starred in the National Theatre production, if wanted.  On Youtube there is another from  on set but with an introduction involving Alan Titchmarsh which might be a disincentive.

Enjoy.

Taste The Difference

The flapping and squawking over election TV debates between the leaders of parties is of little interest.

The last party political broadcast we attempted to watch was by George Brown, the excitable, often tired and emotional senior Labour man, I think in 1970.  Enough was enough.  The news bulletin snatches etc. tell us we have not missed much.

As a way to make any judgement about the persons, policies or their abilities to do the job it is a very bad one, a lot less reliable than buying an expensive device from a cold caller or door knocker.

There are times when it is good to know you are not alone and indeed there are others out there who have the same disquiet about what we do and how we do it in terms of governance and all its ramifications.

This article by Jenny Manson today in Open Democracy via the Camden New Journal on "What's Wrong With HMRC" explains in a terse and direct short item why so much is going badly wrong.  She cites the recent work done by "Private Eye" in this field which for some time has been trying to chart the murky waters of tax, government and associated business interests.

In short it is about the madness of the managerial fixations that have been applied across the board in so many entities and organisations for which they are entirely wrong and too often damaging and harmful.

A very different issue which may seem well removed from this is the latest Joanna Blythman book on what is in our foods and how and why it is put there. This article is a rather longer and fuller item which needs reading through, especially if you might have a wind problem.

We have the book and on the cover flap it says:

Quote:

The paramount goal of the modern food processing industry isn't giving us healthy life sustaining food, but manufacturing lucrative products at the lowest possible production cost, using every trick in the book. It is aided and abetted in this mission by powerful supermarkets that have more to gain from selling us complex multi-ingredient foods than honest to goodness whole foods.

Unquote.

Joanna sticks to her quality of food brief and gives sources.  But there are other drivers in this business.  There is the globalisation of food supply and trade; sharply rising population and above all the creation of mega financial companies who own and run the show.

For the UK and a number of European countries we have major deficits between home demand and supply of food which entail a reliance on foreign and other sources.  The USA may soon follow.  What that might do to pricing is an interesting question.

How these companies etc. are run is now what matters, not what they are run for.  What defines what is important is financial performance, profit and funding other monetary related activity, which may or may not have much to do with food.

In the present election campaign there is a lot of debate and taking up positions on tax and the spending that is being promised so easily and freely.  But the question of food supply, the problems pending in the future and how it is run are all ignored.

We could soon find that leaving it to the managers and money men and their ideas about what they are for will leave us both hungry and broke and there will be little tax to be had to do anything.

The Army - Dismissing The Squad

This week I have revisited Adrian Goldsworthy's book "In The Name of Rome - The Men Who Won The Roman Empire" which also tells how the Roman Army changed over the centuries from The Republic to the end of Empire.  At the same time the exploring the newly available digitised and indexed newspapers of the past has led to findings probably impossible in the past.

One it that far from being the law abiding and respectable lot claimed by parents and grandparents there are a few ancestors who were up before the local magistrates.  Thumping neighbours (Clydeside), game laws (Antrim), unlicensed beer selling (Worcester) perhaps reflect to some extent the local cultures.

What was unexpected was that one, at first thought to be just a local businessman doing moderately well, was a militia officer in Lancashire, who turned out to deal with local workers striking for higher wages and the right to vote.  But all in one way or another saw some kind of service.

In the last half century the British Army has gone from being widely based, sometimes more professional sometimes less, to what is now claimed to be almost wholly professional, even the Reserve has to meet the relevant standards and the Reserve is not large.

In the last couple of decades it has been cut and trimmed and cut again.  This is not the only feature.  Whether it has been because of the complex science and technology behind the gear or the radical change in support systems and provision what happens behind the front line is very different.

Looking at the Roman example the Army was the cutting edge of the free male population all of whom were liable for service.  It was a society in which war was normal and service part of being Roman and an honourable and respected duty.  It was an integral part of living and life.

Even when it later became a largely professional force, these ideas held some force although by the end of Empire had declined.  Now it seems almost that the UK government is attempting the reverse, reducing the professional army to one dependent on other support and men who make themselves available for duty.

But this is an entirely different world.  There are two key problems now, one is are the men there, the other is of the men around just how many of them are capable of serving? It is likely, looking at the UK as it is and the generation in question that they are not to be had and one reason is that now so few are capable.

Moreover, now that any semblance has gone of a military ethos or awareness of history and the need to be ready and aware of the threats of the world there is little incentive for either service or the support of service.  We are gulled into thinking that somehow we can be sheltered from and avoid predators and potential attackers.

Our governments have not helped by using what is left of our forces to what amount to occasional forays into foreign crises where they are the led and not the leaders and there to make up the numbers.  Indeed there are brave men serving their calling but they are now a marginal contributor in the greater scheme of things.

Returning to Ancient Rome and the campaigns and wars what is striking is the numbers of men involved and over long periods.  Often it seems as though Ancient Rome could easily and readily put many more men in the field and more effectively than our rich nation with a population of over 60 million.

When that Empire eventually collapsed spending too much of its gold buying off enemies and inflating the currency, losing its core military recruitment and dissolving into political factions and territories it became a patchwork of separated fiefs ruled over by grasping and violent rulers.

If History is any guide and we are unable to defend ourselves in any conventional war and the Atlantic Isles becomes an area of small states in constant dispute, who will pick up the pieces?