At it like Rats in a Sack again.
 |
| Cummings applauds as Boris says farewell and the door is held open |
Sir Mark Sedwill, the UK’s most senior civil servant, will announce his departure this week under Cumming's plans - woops, typo - Boris Johnson’s plans for a Whitehall revolution. Sir Mark was appointed National Security Adviser by Theresa May in 2017, a year later was made Cabinet Secretary and allowed to do both jobs. The Cabinet Secretary post is now a lost cause and the National Security post is under a Damocletian sword. Cummings told a meeting of political aides last week that “a hard rain is going to fall” after setting out Whitehall’s failures during the response to the coronavirus. The hard rain will see a scaling back of the Cabinet Office. A friend of Sir Mark said: “He has been viciously briefed against. The whole Gove-Cummings axis has been sowing discord between the Prime Minister and Mark Sedwill.” So that's why Cummings retained his post after doing nothing wrong under Lock Down. Good to know.
And Sir Keir is busy taking politics out of the equation, as he steers his party to the right
by removing Corbyn's slightly-left former Deputy and his own former rival for the leadership, Rebecca Long-Bailey, over some usefully-timed nonsense or other.
which made Corbyn cross.
Roll up, Roll up, get your Political Analysis here:
- They fight like rats in a sack
- There is no left and no right any more
- Which means there is no Opposition
- The independant and politically impartial Civil Service is now controlled by the big rats in political office
- Boris is a big girl's blouse and Cummings runs the country..........................................................
In a spirit of Ecumenicism this week's prize for Comedy Ecclesiatical Hat:
..........................................................
Analytical and prescient, mr ishmail's musings in 1987 may provide a guide to life post Lock-Down as, yet again, the poor will be thrown out of work by the tanking of the economy, and again, as ever, those benefitting from the miseries of others float on the surface of the Great Latrine of State.
The Sturdy Beggar and
the Impotent Poor
Ishmael Smith 1987
The
first of the Poor Laws, passed in 1536, provided relief for “the impotent poor”
but compelled “the sturdy beggar” to work….New attitudes to poverty in the 20th
Century resulted in the introduction of national insurance schemes which
provided a comprehensive social security system that replaced the Poor Laws.
Long ago, there was full employment and we’d never had it
so good. Technology was relatively infantile and even the unskilled members of
society could earn a crust on the hod, on the shop floor or behind the bar. Then
as now, there were worthy folk, lacking in Social Work qualifications who
wanted to help those who had fallen from grace. The authoritarian became J.P.s,
the milder souls became prison visitors; some even managed to do both. All over
the land there were small, ineffective but harmless and meaningless Discharged
Prisoners Aid Societies. Manned – or peopled - by second-generation Guardian
readers, clergy persons and the occasional Judge, they doled out alms and
clothing to the ex-con. Sometimes they were able to secure gainful employment
for the defrocked vicar, the accountant caught cooking the books or the teacher
with his hand up a pupil’s skirt or trousers. In those days the phrases
blue and white collar worker were, like nancyboy and nigger and yid; legal
linguistic tender. The blue collar criminal could always find work; the motor
industry was booming as were construction and engineering. The resourceful
ex-con could always buy a set of National Insurance cards in a pub for a fiver
and then get a job without disclosing his past; or work
cash-in-hand while signing-on. The disgraced professional, however, faced a
different set of problems before he could put his past behind him. Burglary was
one thing, child molestation or professional misconduct were quite another; the
disgraced professional provided a valuable client group for the middle-aged,
middle-class Lord or Lady Bountiful to work with.
Times have changed. The Arabs decided they’d had enough
crumbs from the rich man’s table and grabbed the cake, the loaf and nearly all
the biscuits. This event, like any other disruption of global capitalism, meant
that the poor had to be squeezed a bit more; they had to feel guilty
about their low comparative productivity. Nobody, of course, said anything
about offshore investment or antiquated plant. It was all due to overmanning,
restrictive practices and Marxist union barons. When the poor would not respond
to the demands of the rich, inflation was invented. The Tory press rallied
round the pound in our pocket and a minority of the electorate returned a
government determined to see that the things which divided society remained
greater than those which united it. The only way for the rich to maintain their
differential was to throw a few million onto the dole. Suffering became the
handmaiden of efficiency, and, as we see daily, graft and corruption the
bedfellows of investment.
So-called high technology completes the tide of change.
Robots don’t go on strike. Since the discovery of fire and the wheel technology
has been hijacked by the powerful. The silicon chip – produced for pennies,
from sand – has certainly liberated people from the tedium of the factory and
the danger of the pit. But whilst the Fat Cat Hooray Henry, almost as a
birthright, “earns” a fortune on the Stock Exchange, the recently-liberated on
the dilapidated Council Estates balefully view the Pandora’s Box of consumer
goodies and the “lifestyles” enjoyed by the majority. The future is here, but
only for some.
Among the dispossessed some, righteously indignant,
oppressed by a racist, brutal and trigger-happy police force, and others aping
the greed of their betters, took to the streets.
 |
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, DStJ,
PC, FRS, HonFRSC , Prime Minister 1979 to 1990
|
What was a poor girl to do? How was one to create the New
Jerusalem with all these uppity blacks and all these unemployed criminals
kicking up a stink? How could one hold up one’s platinum head in the world’s
councils with unprecedented civil violence erupting every summer? You know,
when one was abroad, as one often was, representing Britain, one found it
extremely tiresome having to explain about the wreckers within. Was one
presiding over a revolution?
As Prime Minister Thatcher and her Cabinet became alarmed about unemployment they dreamed up the Special Employment Measures Action Group, which funded a raft of programmes to prepare the young and the unemployed for jobs which didn’t exist. The pain of unemployment, which is as much to do with boredom, purposelessness, apathy and the erosion of self-respect and identity as it is to do with a poverty-line income led the once-proud worker and provider if not into debt, alcoholism and marital breakdown, then despairingly into the Micky Mouse world of Special Employment Measures, a shoal of red herrings, the cosmetic caring face of a savagely repressive, compassionless and short-sighted society, providing sinecures for yesterday’s yes men, failed captains of industry earning a nice little supplement to their pensions, the difference between four holidays a year and two and an opportunity to spend one’s declining years in good works.
Although the work is no longer there the long-enforced
values linger. Nobody in power seems able or willing to address the simple fact
that there will never be a return to full employment. There is simply no need
for it. Instead of resculpting our values and redistributing our resources we
sentence millions of our fellows to poverty and despair. In a recent televised “debate”,
The Ancient Scarman, the Establishment’s one size fits all, batteries not
included, multi-purpose placebo, assures us, quoting in one breath, Jefferson,
les sans culottes, and the worthless European Convention on Human Rights, that
everything’s ok really. Just a period of transition. We really are a caring society,
the evidence is everywhere, says his Lordship from his Gilbert and Sullivan
comic opera TV studio.
 |
| Leslie George Scarman, Baron Scarman, OBE, PC (29/7/1911 to 8/12/2004) Barrister, Judge and Law Lord. |
........................................................................
The Stanislav Spot:
Stanislav, commenting on a post in which Guido Fawkes appears to have mispelled faint as feint:
A good recovery Lord Guido, but it was only a typo and you should have owned-up. We would all still respect you in the morning. Anyway that first bloke was a cunt for drawing attention to it. Stanislav know straight-up what Lord Guido mean. And is fucking Pole. Mean damning with faint praise. Only maybe finger is shake from cocaine and hit mistaken key. Maybe head fucked up with red wine and mix words, easy done. Happen all time. Worms come out all wrong. No need for big elaborate cut-and-stick rebuttal from dictionary to show CAN be damning with feint praise. Is like vanity number plate. If squint can read "I AM CUNT." But is not really correct spelling of I AM CUNT is probably LAM 644T and all twist up with screws and shit. Police should arrest, give good hiding and confiscate car; what else we pay them for ? Tell driver Yes, You IS Cunt and throw down nearest mineshaft.
Is one thing Mrs Alana Johnston make excuse himself for holocaustal slaughter of patients in shithole hospital run by greedy imbecile career fuckwits (like whole fucking country). Another altogether for Lord Guido twist and squirm like fucking politician and make cover-up, think nobody notice. Well Stanislav notice but not mention until now. Many people think Stanislav stupid fucking Pole, eat beetroot, drink vodka and cry about war, think Stanislav know fuck nothing. But is wrong, Stanislav know fuck all.
Anyway better watch out or get Lord Cover-Up Stevens of Northern Ireland and the Met uncover real facts of FeintGate. On second thoughts, no point; right Worshipful brother Stevens not recognise fact if bite on fucking nose. Stevens and fact is not acquainted. Not even feintly.
A good recovery Lord Guido, but it was only a typo and you should have owned-up. We would all still respect you in the morning. Anyway that first bloke was a cunt for drawing attention to it. Stanislav know straight-up what Lord Guido mean. And is fucking Pole. Mean damning with faint praise. Only maybe finger is shake from cocaine and hit mistaken key. Maybe head fucked up with red wine and mix words, easy done. Happen all time. Worms come out all wrong. No need for big elaborate cut-and-stick rebuttal from dictionary to show CAN be damning with feint praise. Is like vanity number plate. If squint can read "I AM CUNT." But is not really correct spelling of I AM CUNT is probably LAM 644T and all twist up with screws and shit. Police should arrest, give good hiding and confiscate car; what else we pay them for ? Tell driver Yes, You IS Cunt and throw down nearest mineshaft.
Is one thing Mrs Alana Johnston make excuse himself for holocaustal slaughter of patients in shithole hospital run by greedy imbecile career fuckwits (like whole fucking country). Another altogether for Lord Guido twist and squirm like fucking politician and make cover-up, think nobody notice. Well Stanislav notice but not mention until now. Many people think Stanislav stupid fucking Pole, eat beetroot, drink vodka and cry about war, think Stanislav know fuck nothing. But is wrong, Stanislav know fuck all.
Anyway better watch out or get Lord Cover-Up Stevens of Northern Ireland and the Met uncover real facts of FeintGate. On second thoughts, no point; right Worshipful brother Stevens not recognise fact if bite on fucking nose. Stevens and fact is not acquainted. Not even feintly.
Stanislav in conversation with mr anonymous:
Anonymous said...:(20:28 17/10/2017) "Stanislav": your "Polish" accent is slipping a bit, dear boy. I'm inclined to think Stanislav is either the Hitch or a Guido alter ego.
stanislav for real said... (21:51 18/10/2007) mr Anonymous - Fuck
off English cunt. Stanislav is real person. Not Guido. Not Hitch.
Everybody know Stanislav. Fix-up toilet cheap and help economy. In spare
time rant and rave like fucking nutter. Is ancient venerable Polish
tradition. Same as getting fucked up arse by Germans. Can't help if
english improve, is why come in UK, learn English, be doctor, like
Stanislav heroes, Gerry and Cilla McCann, not work, Just go in and out
of church for tv cameras; just live off public. Is great. Better than
politician scam. Only pension not so good and wonky scouse wife go
barking. Woof-woof, woof-woof. I is brilliant mother, woof-woof,
woof-woof.
Anonymous said... (23:06 18/10/2007) STANISLAV
Are you really Matt Allwright from the critically acclaimed 'Rogue
Traders'on bbc1(soon to be on channel sky2..probably) doing his
impression of the eastern european worker? you fraud mongering scamp..)
stanislav said...(2:21 19/10/2007) No,
is Polish plumber live in Scotland, best part of England and have some
time when not down toilet make effort learn about politics in new
country. Also has MRSA from shithole hospital run by Mrs Alana
Belsen-Johnstone, minister for extermination and is all fucked-up with
bug drugs. Can't therefore be BBC entertainer. All those cunts go
private. In Bupa, innit?
Call me ishmael said:
"Confiscate car.....Tell driver Yes, You IS Cunt and throw down nearest mineshaft."He used to make me laugh out loud, stanislav, weep rivers of tears. One guy said his wife had had to call him a fucking ambulance, he'd damaged his sides, laughing so much. His voice and subjects are anachronistic, here, and discordant, but fuck me, Jesus, he was a one-man Zeitgeist of Rage. I wish he was still around. (21/06/2016)
Advertising Break
Stanislav know Fuck All posted 21/06/2016
In conversation on another place posted Ocober 2007
Essays:
The Sturdy Beggar and the Impotent Poor written 1987 Stanislav know Fuck All posted 21/06/2016
In conversation on another place posted Ocober 2007
33 comments:
Is it just me? Or maybe because I'm 13000 miles away? But I'm starting to warm to DomCum. He's part pantomime dame, but seems to be ruffling feathers, so that's good in my book. Oh, and Stanislav certainly had a way with words.
Didn't he just, mr mike? "Fuck off, English Cunt", is up there with the Best Ofs.
As for Cummings, I like his down-market style. As an eminence grise he beats Mandelson hands down.
If we are agreed that they are all the same and that it needs burning down then DomCum might be just the man we need. Sidwell gone today? Not until Sept having helped to pick his successor. What price a complete outsider brough in to rationalise, reorganise, strip it all back to the wood,and start again? No. Me neither.
Mr mongoose: the powers that be would have been moving heaven and earth to be rid of him after his virus faux pas. That he is still there should worry them. Even PMs have not been able to get rid of the head boy, yet Sedwill is toast.
David Frost apparently mr mongoose, the current Brexit negotiator, gonna get an honorary lordship for his efforts in giving away the fish, in return we get to keep buying cars off the Hermans.
Yes, a much missed plumber mrs I.
I don't think that they will give away the fish, mr inmate. It is too easy for it to be fixed. The French fishermen can sail on French fishing boats from French ports but the boats can be registered in the UK and/or owned by UK corporates. Tax goes to HMRC, fish keep going where they were going. Real hardball would exclude lots of that.
Sadwall has been given some sinecure fecking with "economic security" at the G7 - can't imagine what he will say about Europe. It is though env\couraging that the BoJo loon has rediscovered his nerve.
Yes mr mongoose, you are probably right the corporates will continue to kept from penury, poor things. My problem is Mr Frost has only been in the job 5 minutes and not yet completed the task. Then this from Wiki: On 28 June 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he had nominated Frost for a life peerage and as National Security Adviser, succeeding Sir Mark Sedwill.[17] The Financial Times reported that this was unpopular with military and security services, who felt Frost was underqualified.[18]. Fuxake.
Mr Inmate: it might not be a bad thing, Frost being rewarded in advance, so he understands where his loyalties lie. What's a life peerage, after all, but an expenses tab. A variant on Graucho Marks' comment comes to mind: "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member".
Used to be a time Mr Mike, when rewards such as a peerage, were awarded after a lifetime of service to the nation or community. Since the great terror under blair one only had to have your drug dealer son murdered to become a dame; maybe when the Herman, currently being blamed for the abduction and killing of Madeline, admits his guilt, the McCann's will justifiably earn their reward, in the Lords,for good parenting.
No sir, I believe that this is the fallout of Ruin mr Ishmael warned of, the likes of Capita, Serco, G4S and other GlobaCorp, the Pharma's n Banks rewarded for getting it wrong, govament looking out for their bezzie mates.
This Frost chappie was the CEO of the Scotch Whiskey federation or some such, now the head of the Spooks, the Cabinet office and fuknose what else, all while negotiating with Mutty Merkels man in Brussels, the guy must be a fuckin genius...or a yes man. I think we know where his loyalties lie.
To be fair, mr inmate, Frost seems to be putting it to the EU. The French in particular are in their normal position - the rock and the hard place being the UK and Germany.
It would be relatively easy to ring-fence fishing. We just could just require the fish to be landed in the UK. That would screw the gig completely. Processing, secondary packaging and distribution would move back to NE ports once again. It would be simpler to tie up the boat in England overnight and have the crew kip and therefore live there. The alternative would be treasure in the form of eye-watering licences or some such but I would take the many thousands of jobs and the visible resurgence of 'proper' jobs for the NE end of the 'red wall' communities. Keir would wet himself. It's worth doing even if it costs a few quid in infrastructure front-loading.
One feels regret for the coming losses of the EU fisherfolk but did they feel the same about their British confreres over the last forty years? I think not.
The proof of the pudding, Mr mongoose, is in the eating, and the eating stage is very close now. Boris needs a good Brexit, after making a horlicks of Covid. He must know his legacy depends on Brexit. Frost is just a tool, hopefully not too blunt.
That's true, Mr Mike, but everyone has made a Horlicks of Covid, and it's probably not over yet. That's the Horlicks not the covid, which may just mutate itself itself into relative cosiness all by itself. It may have already done so. Did you see that Barcelona has traced the virus to sewer samples taken over e year ago? What's that all about then?)
And as the EU starts to really wobble, instead of being a new Churchill, Bojo could rebrand. Is that a new Wellington I see?
Agreed mr mongoose and Mr Mike, with all you say and yes Boris dropped the ball with this virus lockdown nonsense but, he panicked, they've had four years to decide on a strategy and the goals they are aiming for but we don't appear to be any the wiser as to direction. If they wanted the fishing industry to grow, on the east coast, then they should have been offering some incentives to local companies to ready themselves, otherwise as you say it's expensive licenses. An we know that govament will want to charge all boats for a licence, including British ones, 'snot gonna go down well on the Red Wall.
Yes Mr mongoose, I saw that Barcelona have a sample dating back to March 2019. It throws a spammer in the Mad in China works. There is anecdotal evidence that this has been around for a while: mysterious coughing on the London Underground over a year ago - we know someone who caught this, classic Covid symptoms. Cases in America of mystery viral flu at that time. A couple of years ago we were in Spain and my wife was very ill in Seville again with classic symptoms. And my mother in law died in April 2019 here in Sydney from "viral pneumonia" - she went into a local hospital with a bad back, caught this bug, and died within 5 days; she didn't respond to antibacterials, and they said she would die within 2 days and she did. So I'm sure is been around a while just not recognised as such, and I doubt the press would have made a big thing of this if it wasn't the China angle just when Trump was pressuring for a trade deal. Ironic if the world economy has been trashed so Trump could get his deal, which turns out to be a non-deal. I've noticed the UK has been at the forefront of the Sinophobia. We have gone a bit that way here, but we China being our biggest trading partner, by far, we can't overdo it.
I am sorry to hear of your loss, Mr Mike. Over here, we all Christmas visited - in three or four batches - the kids' elderly "grandfather". He passed away of a respiratory illness early in January. It is sad but it is what it is, and 90+plenty years is a good score.
I see that the news (scare?) now is of a new swine fever in China which "could" cross the species barrier if "precautions" aren't taken. I think that the world's governments have just learned a very bad lesson, and think that they have discovered a wizard wheeze to keep us on what they think is the straight and narrow.
In other news, another green grandee, Michael Shellenberger, has had enough of the hysteria and non-science. See Apocalypse Never. Greta will, I am sure, have cancelled him by the weekend.
Mr mongoose: Luke 15.7, commenting on the greenie, "there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent".
Lockdowns being re-imposed. Even if only selective, this will kill the economy.
It's not locking down that Leicester needs, Mr Mike, it's burning down.
Mr I, in that first bit, saw the terrible emptiness behind the triumph of technocapitalism. We have acquired now a Green embroidery but the void remains and we can’t endure it for very much longer.
Mr mongoose: I lived for a couple of years in Sheffield, back in the good old 70s, where I met my wife. The steel mills were still fired up the - quite a sight from the M1. But last time I was there they had been converted to artificial ski slopes, and "leisure centres". FFS.
Then I moved to London. Still driving up the M1 to Sheffield I clearly remember the acrid smell in the air approaching Chesterfield. Life threatening, and that was just driving through.
In the 80s I did a few projects in Leicester. From memory it seemed like a fairly upmarket version of Sheffield, and there were some prosperous areas of Sheffield back then. Seems like its turned to shit.
My comment on selective lockdown and the economy refers to the whole UK economy. Who in their right mind would contemplate setting up a business or employing people under such uncertainty?
BTW before I left for pastures new in the late 80s, I lived in your neck of the woods in E Devon, in a house built in 1512 - thatched roof, 2 meter thick cob walls, oak floors with timber which would have been felled at the time of Drake and the Armada, etc. It was a halcyon period, but the dark clouds were beginning to form.
Thanks for the link, mr mongoose - I read the blurb with interest, whilst remembering that it is all just product, like all the excretions of the publishing industry. mr ishmael, of course, was personally perfectly convinced that the nuclear option was the only way to save the human race from self-imposed extinction. Not the planet, mind you - as the planet has survived far greater devastating climatological crises than any the human race could produce, up to and including global thermo-nuclear total warfare. Another admirable evasion of whoremaster man, demonstrating hubris that challenges the gods, to equate the survival of the human race with the survival of the planet. Après nous les mouches.
Anyway, mr ishmael's take on the nuclear option - it was two-fold - first thing we do, he would explain, in teacherly mode, is nuke China. 'Snot their fault they want to eat meat, keep warm, wear warm clothes, enjoy all the empty hollowness of technology - but there's too many of them to sustain the same standard of living that the West has enjoyed and taken for granted for decades.
Second thing we do (if we survive the first step) is to switch to a nuclear-powered economy.
But, before anyone rushes to adopt the two-fold plan (calm down, there, Donald), you should bear in mind that mr ishmael thought that individual consciousness is a dead end, and that an excellent option for the planet would be for the ants to take over, building their towering cities on the ruins of our own.
You are referring to "The Sturdy Beggar and the Impotent Poor", mr bungalow bill - I like your statement: "Mr I, in that first bit, saw the terrible emptiness behind the triumph of technocapitalism", and it seems that spiritual emptiness is a theme in Michael Shellenberger's book - link kindly provided by mr mongoose. I have been poking a bit of gentle fun at the dying throes of organised, hierarchical, career structured, parasitical religion - through my Comedy Hats spot - can't blame them for wanting to cling onto the power, the dressing-up, the nice tied houses, beautiful buildings, the eminently-exploitable young acolytes. The amazing new warrior's Cathedral that mr mike linked us to in the last comment thread is a fine case in point - people will flock to their own exploitation as they strive to fill the god-shaped hole in their souls. But it could be any religion: the new Russian Cathedral could have been dedicated to the Roman soldier's god, Mithras, who was quite a nasty old boy, requiring preposterous and cruel church services. Of course, inventing your own religion seems to be a sure fire way to unlimited wealth, especially if you can attract some Hollywood celebrity-buffoons to endorse it. Valentine Michael Smith's Church of All Worlds did rather well - but then that was made-up nonsense. (Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein, 1961, credited with helping shape Modern America, and other airy, specious claims).
There's no shortage of spiritual solace on offer these days - a pick and mix of eastern and western stuff and nonsense, eternal grievance, another hard-luck story pressure group cant - I don't mind what they do in private, as long as they don't try to pretend it is anything other than another manifestation of opium for the masses.
Sex, birth and death - the three constants (oh, yes, and taxes. For the Wars, don't you know.)
"We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves." (Lear, Act 1, scene 2)
There you go - that guy said it - mr shakespeare.
Anyway, didn't you just love in "The Impotent Poor", the early manifestation of of mr ishamel's superb ability to render the voice of the politician - he has Maggie down to a T.
Nuclear Power? Yes, please. As soon as you like to start. It is the only answer in the long run.
I used to tease mr i, mrs i, by pointing him at Hans Rosling. Hans was a visual stats man and just served up the real numbers in a way that was understandable. His lessons: no, the world is not going to hell, no, people are living longer, healthier and wiser lives, no, the poor are not getting poorer... It is interesting and a bit of a shock to the purveyors of gloom and the protesters of today.
See the impossible is possible
But pick any of them. Do the test! I still got three wrong and I know what it's trying to say. Even I am a doomster.
I knew some lads from Sheffield and I was wokring there in the mid-eighties, Mr Mike. They were pulling down the foundries and building the malls. Great town though.
BTW that stench by Chesterfield was the Avenue Coking Works. it chucked out a thousand tonnes of smokeless fuel and the best part of a million cubic-metres of gas every day. (Where, yes, I also toiled against the tide for a half-year.) There was a berm around the chemical works to stop the ick from spreading. I suspect that there'll be a rectangle of despoilation still visible now.
NB Avenue has been closed for 28 years. And still looks like this: Avenue
Thank you, mr mongoose - Hans Rosling is fun and persuasive, although I could have done without the sword swallowing. Loved the line: "Now I'm going to get serious. How do I get serious? I do a Powerpoint."
I also did the test and got 54%.
I'm convinced - my world view is wrong. I've probably watched too much news. Forget about Ruin. We are not going to hell in a handcart, ishmaelites, it's onwards and upwards!
It's interesting and just a bit beginning to get annoying. The world really is a better, fairer, kinder place but that's not acceptable news. Slavery in the real sense of the word really has ended. Poverty in the real sense much diminished. Now it is true that we could do other things better and that there is much yet to achieve but the post war generations in mnay, many countries really have delivered something worth having and keeping.
I hide here, Mr Mike, in a similar house, although we are here in bandit Country on the very eastern edge of Wessex - tile not thatch, brick and flint country. Near enough we are to the outer-London heathen that just crossing the river outside the door takes us it seems to a different country. It's a conceit though. It is not the different regions that upset. It is just that the cities have been turned to shit. England, and even the best part of it, is still much like it has always been.
Whisky! un hopped beer converted into terrible vodka aged in a sherry barrel, Petrol aged in a sherry barrel for 12 years would probably be drinkable... Such nonsense spoken about drink peaty tangs and other shite, Many years ago i distilled for my amusement and found out it wasnt a dark art anybody can do it.. Beer can be a delight if brewed properly ie no extra sugar malt only... But as an alcoholic i dont drink anymore..cheers!! Love Benjamin
Hello, mr benjamin, welcome to our musings. And thank you for your whisky contribution - which had me puzzled, until I remembered the Advertising Break for Japanese Whisky in the post. The feature is only there to take the piss out of greedy Hollywood actors who, not content with making squillions out of us with their appalling films, sign up to do these commercials in Japan on contracted condition that the adverts are not shown in the West, where they have a reputation to uphold. (Hah!) I wouldn't say they're all at it, but there's quite a few - I've featured Keanu Reeves and Shir Shean so far, but there's plenty more - Peter Falks and Orson Wells, Sammy Davis Junior....
The very best comment on it all is the film Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray makes a Japanese whisky ad.
And you are quite right about whisky, I think. If you want to get off your head, it works. But it ain't culture. It's a big thing here in Scotland. Peat and heather and barley and snobbery. My friend and I went on a tour round the local distillery, watched the clear alcohol gushing through transparent pipes, before it became dyed peaty brown, were invited to sniff at one of the sherry barrels used to age and infuse the stuff. My friend sniffed disparagingly - "but if I wanted to drink sherry - which is highly unlikely, I'd buy a bottle of sherry."
Many, many congratulations on your sobriety - it's not easy in a society as steeped in alcohol as ours is.
Love, (right back at you), mrs ishmael
As we endure the twilight-life we are being persuaded to acceot as normal - pretend fun in pretend pubs and haircuts in laboratories - we might reflect upon the meaning of progress, at least as the Whigs among us would have it. How to measure human freedom, especially freedom of spirit; how to measure, paradoxically, freedom from the world of measurement?
For measurement is power, the assessment of human worth as a function of profit; those who cannot be measured or who do not, disgracefully, present themselves at all for measurement can fuck right off into oblivion.
What's gone wrong is that we think technological facility means that we will be at peace, if only we carry on for long enough and build bigger and bigger barns. There is good dentistry too, and we have anaesthesia - for which, much thanks. And yet, and yet, we are at a loss and we strive for increasingly ludicrous palliatives. All present absurdities are traceable to the loss of truth and meaning, utterly beyond our miserable metrics.
Bread alone, you know, won't cut it.
Sorry I've been away - I've been a bit under the weather.
mr bb, I was just saying to my friend that I find these these media pictures we are being regaled with of young men looking like reasonable human beings before going into the barber's and coming out looking like thugs, with stubbled heads and shaven lines, quite distressing. If I'd thought a bit harder about my reaction, I hope I'd have got to your conclusion - that it is, yet again, manipulation of human worth in pursuit of profit.
You remember how Douglas Adams' Total Perspective Vortex allows the theoretical extrapolation of the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake?
So maybe we can extrapolate the state of Britain today from the brutal male hair-cut.
Government encouragement to have pretend fun in pretend pubs, thus enabling the coronavirus to dine on more human hosts, is clearly a concession to the profit-lobby. Whether or not coronavirus stalked the land, Britain's pub culture needs massive reform, as it is at the centre of a nation-wide alcohol problem, an alcohol problem that creates derision whenever Britons venture abroad and conduct themselves as they do at home.
Dentistry and anaesthesia. Great goods. Antibiotics - another great good. But the single invention that has created the greatest good for the human race, is cheap, available, reliable contraception. Less humans. That's what's needed.
I instantly sympathise with your elegy for the loss of truth and meaning. There's no solution for that, I don't think, short of dismantling Western civilisation, and, despite my posturing, I'm not really up for that.
Hope nothing too unpleasant, Mrs I. No, I'm far past dismantling anything too. Let it roll on. The Taoists have it right with Wu Wei.
Thank you, mr bb, just a short-lived thingy (technical term)and I'm fine now. Currently wrestling with pulling the Sunday Ishmael together, when I saw that you had dropped in.
Anyroadup, I had to look up Wu Wei, just being an ignorant savage, and Wiki tells me:
Wu wei (Chinese: 無爲; pinyin: wú wéi) is a concept literally meaning "inexertion", "inaction", or "effortless action". Wu wei emerged in the Spring and Autumn period, and from Confucianism, to become an important concept in Chinese statecraft and Taoism, and was most commonly used to refer to an ideal form of government, including the behavior of the emperor. Describing a state of unconflicting personal harmony, free-flowing spontaneity and savoir-faire, it generally also more properly denotes a state of spirit or mind, and in Confucianism accords with conventional morality. Sinologist Jean François Billeter describes it as a "state of perfect knowledge of the reality of the situation, perfect efficaciousness and the realization of a perfect economy of energy".
Thanks for the steer.
Back to the Sunday Ishmael - there's so much nonsense to choose from, this week, where does one begin?
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