Snow Job

The word "snowflakes" has been taken out of its seasonal and meteorological context to describe persons who are ultra sensitive not just to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune but all the glancing by-blows, bumps and irritations of living a life.

As many suggest, it is becoming ridiculous. Worse, it is becoming an excuse for a person with authoritarian leanings to stamp on anyone who differs, remarks or jests in a way that is not to their taste. If I was minister in charge of the DCMS, culture, media and sport I would ban all mention of Arsenal.

It is December and time perhaps for real snowflakes, those white bits of frozen water to come down from the skies to paralyse life as we know it in Britain. Many of us have a strong dislike for snow. It disrupts the diary, makes shopping difficult and far worse might entail some physical effort. Yes, I know snow can mean another thing, so please don't go into a tizzwas.

It is not all bad, because this is the season when the ballet "The Nutcracker" is favoured by many for a couple of hours easy living and listening. Above is a desktop picture for the part of the ballet known as The Waltz Of The Snowflakes. If you are an ultra sensitive person you might use it.

There is a lot of this on Youtube, notably the Royal Ballet version and if you like to detach yourself from the real world there are worse ways. Even better, it is not "challenging" "socially real" with the crash bang wallop, shouting and blood and guts etc. that is so much of TV and film in the 21st Century.

And I am not just talking about the football.

Carney's Banking Bust

We have been told, no less, by the Guv' of the Bank of England, Calamity Carney, that the last decade's since 2006 missing growth and messy economics is the worst since the 1860's. Oh really?

First, before making comparisons, ensure what is being compared is comparable. Second, make sure that you do not stick to narrow estimates of figures within complex political and economic structures. Third, what the figures say and what was actually going on may raise other cogent questions.

Is he saying, for example, that the periods of 1910-1920 and 1940-1950 were far superior because no doubt of high levels of QE, government spending etc and economic activity? I have little doubt that those alive then might have cause to disagree.

In the 40's my parents earned good money. The trouble was you could not spend it on food, clothes and other luxuries. All those guns and battle tanks and airplanes were reserved for select elite groups. Their use required high levels of replacement etc. which meant work for the factories.

As for the 1860's, just what were the economics of Japan? In China there was major civil war, check Chinese Gordon. In the USA they had a Civil War. In Africa, I suspect hard economic data was hard to calculate. Germany and Italy were just in the making, France was broke because of a high cost Emperor and Spain was poverty stricken.

Back in dear old Blighty the speculators in railway shares, bills of exchange, gold and silver and metals that did wonders for the money figures were having a high old time. The sudden advance in technology notably the compounding of steam engines was leading to major spending on uprating existing maritime and land systems of communications.

The Overend Gurney banking crash of 1866 resulted which caused a lot of trouble, but the City and economy recovered surprisingly quickly. The provinces then were a lot more detached from London than now. Also, possibly, because The City then was the major player in the world game and could rely on its own resources.

And Skittles, Catherine Walters, courtesan extraordinary and Scouser, had an affair with Edward, Prince of Wales, that caused Queen Victoria some grief, and boosted media activity.

Time Of The Year

It is December, the time for fun and forgetting the bad stuff. So here are some reminders.

China and the bread basket is from Dr. Mercola, who does not do much for economics but thinks about the health things.

Tony Blair feels fragile in Zero Hedge and don't we all, and who we may ask was one of the most responsible?

India is a big economy and according to Project Syndicate its boss has just trashed the monetary system because cash is untidy. The trouble is that 90% of the population use it.

If you are buying online The Guardian tells us to beware of the cookie monsters.

Choose your friends carefully Science Daily suggests and as grandmother used to say.

Have a nice day.

I Spy With My Big Eye

As someone adult before Theresa May was born the passing of the Investigatory Powers Act on 29 November is not exactly a surprise or a shock. It is very likely that this or something like it has been done on the quiet for a very long time. That it is now legal does not make it better.

In the UK once it did have its advantages, especially the phone tapping. In a period when on moving to a new house one of the most difficult things was getting a telephone. What was sometimes even more tricky was getting one fixed in the event of failure.

Personally, I never had any trouble. On one occasion I told someone when making a call that the connection was dodgy and the GPO were round in the hour.

This Verge article linked from Samizdata shows what is now done in the new age of the 21st Century. As there are a lot more people to be watched on a lot more devices it is necessary to apply high tech' and automation to deal with the bulk and extent.

Also, it could be easier for people to realise that someone out there is interested and not just those who hate adblockers or want to sell things.

It is not all bad. The use and risk of misuse of information relating to the present is something certainly to be very wary of especially in the hands of politicians and others with particular agendas.

Information can only be trusted if handled by people who are trustworthy for proper purposes. But if we are looking at the past the extent of information becoming available can give many new insights.

For example, we might think we need all there is to know about the Civil War of the 17th Century. But much of it is just scraping at the surface. In the British Library there is under English Civil War: Thomason Tracts a gold mine of documents yet to be fully studied because of their volume and extent. Roll on digitisation.

As for the internet and modern gizmos, be careful, very careful.

Not Going Shopping

In the last couple of decades not only in our local town, but others we know, we have seen a rapid and continuing process of the shops in the town centre and elsewhere changing.

There are many complicated reasons for this, but among the specialist and other shops you might have expect to have a longer life or remain they now seem to be going just as rapidly.

We may have put it down to the internet etc. but there could be another major reason for this destruction of traditional retailing.

Quote:

From Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt’s book,

Private Equity at Work:

For instance, one way that private equity overlords enrich themselves at the expense of the businesses they acquire is by taking real estate owned by the company, spinning it out into another entity (owned by the PE fund and to be monetized subsequently) and having the former owner make lease payments to its new landlord.

The problem with this approach is usually twofold. First the businesses that chose to own their own real estate did so for good reason. They were typically seasonal businesses, like retailers, or low margin businesses particularly vulnerable to the business cycle, like low-end restaurants. Owning their own property reduced their fixed costs, making them better able to ride out bad times.

To make this picture worse, the PE firms typically “sell” the real estate at an inflated price, which justifies saddling the operating business with high lease payments, making the financial risk to the company even higher. Of course, those potentially unsustainable rents make the real estate company look more valuable to prospective investors than it probably is.

Unquote.

Now where can I find some shoelaces?

Another Vote Another Surprise

I was thinking of doing a post about the bye-election on Thursday which resulted in a shock slight shiver win for the Liberal Democrats. It was to be titled "The Loss Of Richmond Hill" with a link to the old folk song about a Lass.

But on checking it I was reminded of something I ought to have remembered. The Richmond in question of song is in North Yorkshire up by The Dales and is a delightful town which at one time had an excellent choice of public houses.

Not the same at all as the grubby suburb of Richmond in South West London that was a Tory seat in the House of Commons until the local party either lost its wits or fell subject to Central Office and put in Zac Goldsmith, scion of one of our plutocrats. Zac resigned as MP in a fit of pique, perhaps assuming he would win the bye-election.

Probably, somewhere in the media are comments about it being a dark reminder of the past. In 1962 the Liberal no hope man in Orpington, a grubby suburb in South East London, Eric Lubbock, see Wikipedia, took the seat against the Tory, Peter Goldman, (cue joke about Gold Standards) who upset voters by taking them for granted. An austerity budget from Selwyn Lloyd did not help.

In 1963 the Tory Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan went. In 1964 the Tories went having lost the election to Harold Wilson's Labour Party. Whatever we may think of him now, in the early 60's Wilson was regarded by many as a political adventurer and hard line socialist, rightly or wrongly.

Can and does history repeat itself?

Are You Listening?

A major issue in the debate on the deep history of mankind is what came first?  Was it tones of sound; a paleolithic form of music? Was it what passed for language as a means of communication rather than arm waving and shouting like that of our new age leaders?

A link takes us to what is claimed to be the first known tune from recorded music from a clay tablet found in Syria. It takes a little time to load but then scroll down to the video Ancient Lyre to hear what it sounds like, it takes two minutes.

This is the first known tune, and does not sound too far away from many of our present forms of music, it seems familiar to several pieces. Did I hear a hint of "Danny Boy"? But who liked what music and what might it have done for their thinking, work or influences?

This longer in depth article by Mark Lindley on Marx and Engels in Music in the Monthly Review of 18 August 2010 is an attempt to work out what music they listened to, liked and how it may have fitted in with their ideas.

Reading it made me wonder if these thinkers of our futures and explainers of the past might have benefited from a few nights in the popular music halls with the workers, brass band concerts, hymns ancient and modern, military bands, ballroom dancing and for history all the many and various folk tunes and songs to hand.

Here is my two minutes from Fisherman's Friends and given the number and nature of the mariners in the DNA it is no surprise. Mrs. Thatcher was a great fan of Giacomo Puccini's, especially "Turandot", see the picture above from Covent Garden. She was still clapping when we made for the exits.

Marx seeing Wagner as the music of the future gives pause for thought.

Who else was a great fan of Wagner's?