Limeslade Bay

If you want snaps of punky herons, Harpy is your only (wo)man.

Her views of the turbulent sea off Mumbles inspired me to take the camera when I was down there today.















It was pretty grey and getting dark, so it looks black and white. But Laban's no Ansel Adams, that's for sure.



















The magic of digital effects turns a slightly blurry shot :
















Into something a bit more more pointilliste :
















(I know it's all going to hell in a handcart ... but I'm too tired to blog political and cultural reality. Harpy and I look at the world from very different angles, but she blogs herons for the same reason I'm blogging Mumbles. At this moment I agree with Molesworth 2 :)

'How beautiful,' sa your mum to your pater. 'If only you could be noble like that ocasionaly.'

'It is only a world of makebelieve,' he repli. 'You must face up to reality.'

'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'

They've Come Over Here ...

To do the torturing of children to death that the natives just won't do !

(You try getting a local exorcist these days when witchcraft's a problem)

January 1, 1917

Telegraph - "A soldier has been killed in an explosion in Afghanistan in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province."

It was New Year's morning, and I lay thinking of my boy, and wondering what this year would bring him. It was early in the morning before I slept. And it seemed to me that I had scarce been asleep at all when there came a pounding at the door, loud enough to rouse the heaviest sleeper there ever was.

My heart almost stopped. There must be something serious indeed for them to be rousing me so early. I rushed to the door, and there was a porter, holding out a telegram. I took it and tore it open. And I knew why I had felt as I had the day before. I shall never forget what I read :

"Captain John Lauder killed in action, December 28. Official. War Office."

It had gone to Mrs. Lauder at Dunoon first, and she had sent it on to me. That was all it said. I knew nothing of how my boy had died, or where - save that it was for his country. But later I learned that when Sir Thomas Lipton had rung me up the previous night he had intended to condole with me. He had heard on Saturday of my boy's death. But when he spoke to me, and understood at once, from the tone of my voice, that I did not know, he had not been able to go on. His heart was too tender to make it possible for him to be the one to give me that blow - the heaviest that ever befell me.

It was on Monday morning, January the first, 1917, that I learned of my boy's death. And he had been killed the Thursday before ! He had been dead four days before I knew it ! And yet I had known. Let no one ever again tell me that there is nothing in presentiment. Why else had I been so sad and uneasy in my mind ? Why else, all through that Sunday, had it been so impossible for me to take comfort in what was said to cheer me ? Some warning had come to me, some sense that all was not well.

Realization came to me slowly. I sat and stared at that slip of paper, that had come to me like the breath of doom. Dead! Dead these four days ! I was never to see the light of his eyes again. I was never to hear that laugh of his. I had looked on my boy for the last time. Could it be true ? Ah, I knew it was. And it was for this moment that I had been waiting, that we had all been waiting, ever since we had sent John away to fight for his country and do his part. I think we had all felt that it must come. We had all known that it was too much to hope that he should be one of those to be spared.

The black despair that had been hovering over me for hours closed down now and enveloped all my senses. Everything was unreal. For a time I was quite numb. But then, as I began to realize and to visualize what it was to mean in my life that my boy was dead, there came a great pain. The iron of realization slowly seared every word of that curt telegram upon my heart. I said it to myself, over and over again. And I whispered to myself, as my thoughts took form, over and over, the one terrible word : " Dead ! '. I felt that for me everything had come to an end with the reading of that dire message. It seemed to me that for me the board of life was black and blank. For me there was no past and there could be no future. Everything had been swept away, erased, by one sweep of the hand of a cruel fate.

Oh, there was a past, though ! And it was in that past that I began to delve. It was made up of every memory I had of my boy. I fell at once to remembering him. I clutched at every memory, as if I must grasp them and make sure of them; lest they be taken from me as well as the hope of seeing him again that the telegram had for ever snatched away. I would have been destitute indeed in that event. It was as if I must fix in my mind the way he had been wont to look, and recall to my ears every tone of his voice, every trick of his speech. There was something left of him that I must keep, I realized, even then, at all costs, if I was to be able to bear his loss at all. There was a vision of him before my eyes. My bonnie Highland laddie, brave and strong, in his kilt and the uniform of his country, going out to his death with a smile on his face.

And there was another vision that came up now, unbidden. It was a vision of him lying stark and cold upon the battlefield, the mud on his uniform. And when I saw that vision I was like a man gone mad and possessed of devils who had stolen away his faculties. I cursed war as I saw that vision, and the men who caused war. And when I thought of the Germans who had killed my boy, a terrible and savage hatred swept me, and I longed to go out there and kill with my bare hands, until I had avenged him or they had killed me too.

But then I was a little softened. I thought of his mother back in our wee hoose at Dunoon. And the thought of her, bereft even as I was, sorrowing, even as I was, and lost in her frightful loneliness, was pitiful, so that I had but the one desire and wish-to go to her, and join my tears with hers, that we who were left alone to bear our grief, might bear it together and give one to the other such comfort as there might be in life for us. And so I fell upon my knees and prayed, there in my lonely room in the hotel. I prayed to God that He might give us both, John's mother and myself, strength to bear the blow that had been dealt us, and to endure the sacrifice that He and our country had demanded of us.

Sir Harry Lauder, "A Minstrel In France". Captain John Lauder was their only son.

Venite Adoremus

Apologies for the light to non-existent blogging, as things in the UK continue to get more pearshaped.

12 hour working days are taking their toll - and now there are a million things to do ... but tonight let's just give thanks and praise (i.e. Laban's all packed for once). A happy and a peaceful Christmas to all of you out there ...

I just love the singing on this - those Italian tenors ... Pope John Paul II live at the Vatican one Christmas in the late 70s - I think his first as Pope.

It's Tommy Farr All Over Again

Every Welshman (and woman) over 80 knows that Tommy Farr beat Joe Louis in the Yankee Stadium in 1937. Hadn't they heard the fight on the radio, and the American crowd booing the fixed result ?

I'm no great fan of the boy racer, cyclist clipper and swiper of pedestrians on pelican crossings, but it does sound as if Amir Khan got handed a similar verdict.

Storm Clouds ...

It could just be a bit of blustering gesture politics, but ...

"Argentina has launched a naval campaign to isolate the Falkland Islands that has seen it detain Spanish fishing vessels on suspicion of breaking the country’s “blockade” of the seas around the British territories."

Given we have binned our aircraft carriers and our Harriers, in one of Mr Cameron's less inspired moves, and just given Mr Sarkozy's blood pressure a shoeing, we'd be in a right pickle if the Miss Havisham-lookalike who runs Argentina decided to send a few thousand more conscripts to get killed. Once the airfields were occupied we'd be in trubs.

I'd resurrect the Harriers, and there was at least one small carrier still left in Portsmouth this summer. A 5% cut in public sector salaries over £50K should raise some cash - oh, and a performance-related tax on executive pay over, say, £1m or £2m pa.

There seems to be a fair bit of oil down there which is legally ours, and which others would doubtless like to get their mitts on. How exactly does Cameron think he's going to protect it? He seems to find the money and the kit when the oil ISN'T ours.


UPDATE - fair play to those Galician skippers. The Falklands is a long trip. I suppose they've emptied UK waters of everything more than an inch long, and are now looking to do the same to the South Atlantic.

Pity The Poor Employer ...

The standard of school-leavers is so poor that one supermarket has sent back three-quarters of its recruits for "remedial pre-job training" before they start work. Morrisons, Britain's fourth-biggest supermarket with 135,000 employees, found that many of its applicants in Salford, Greater Manchester, lacked even the basic skills needed to stack shelves and serve customers. While some had a poor grasp of maths and English, others lacked simple skills such as turning up on time and making eye contact.

Well - it is Salford. But it was this gloss that struck me.

The warning will fuel concerns that schools are failing to teach the skills necessary for young Britons to find jobs, forcing firms to recruit migrant workers instead.

Now there's no doubt that our education system's been wrecked over the last 40 years, even as exam passes hit record levels. But I seem to recall that in the days before mass immigration, if you wanted to find a better candidate for a post you offered a higher wage - and that usually seemed to work.

My business contacts inform me that this business model is no longer in vogue for jobs at the lower end of the wage scale. Instead the "import someone better and cheaper" model reigns supreme.

But at the top end - say at board level - offering more money - lots and lots more money, the more the better - is still seen as the best way to attract a high-quality candidate. No UK or US bankers seem to think it's a good idea to get in, say, a Chinese CEO, despite the fact that they run the world's largest banks for salaries between 2% and 10% of US levels. Odd, that.






UPDATE - I disagree with young clever-clogs and Grabber look-alike Daniel Knowles when he says that "there are no jobs left for the dim" - there are plenty of them and they're all being done by immigrants. The thing is, no matter what the level of job - even shelf-stacker - the cleverer person's likely to do it better than the not so bright. Only in 'pure' manual jobs like fruit or vegetable picking does the intellectually-challenged employee get a level playing field - and that arduous work is done, if the fields around Bromsgrove and the gangmaster's white vans plying up and down the M5 from Brum are any guide, by an eclectic assortment of third-world chaps - beards and pugris at one end of the field, mustachios and bare heads at the other.

Of course, UK average intelligence would be higher if we hadn't been running a vast scheme, not of eugenics, but of dysgenics, for the last fifty years. Bright and conscientious women have been encouraged to go out and work, the not so bright and feckless have been encouraged with hard cash to stay at home and have lots of babies.

Ray Fisher 1940-2011

One of my great musical loves is gone.



MudCat obit thread; Telegraph obit.

Aiieee !!

My daughter (14) was shopping in the big city with her friends on her day off school. There was a demo on ...

Came back festooned in Unison sashes and waving an NUT flag ...

"Dad - it was great ! We wore the sashes as headbands and loads of people photographed us ! We were interviewed twice ! What do we want ? Fair Pensions ! When do we want them ! Now !"

Oh dear oh dear ...

Change For Change's Sake

(non-Catholics may skip this post if they wish)

Since the summer we've had the new super-duper revised version of the English Catholic liturgy - and, if a Baptist who married in is allowed a say - it's a change for the worse. The Catholic Church managed to survive for the last 500 years with one rite worldwide - before the 1960s arrived and Latin went out of the window (I think I'd have liked that, although brought up on King James, seeing it not only as a religious rite but as an introduction to a great language - not to mention the convenience of the same service wherever in the world you were - but parishioners tell me that many Catholics didn't actually understand what most of the words meant).

Now, nearly fifty years on, it's being changed to apparently bring it closer in translation to the old Latin Mass.

Trouble is,

a) much of the new stuff is infelicitous - from "Through him, with him, in him", which can be sung or chanted, to "Through him, and with him, and in him" which is the kind of English you'd get chalked off for at A-level, let alone creative writing classs. Or "it is right to give him thanks and praise" to "it is right and just" - too terse and staccato. How about "of all that is, seen and unseen" to "of all that is, visible and invisible"? Don't know about you, but I understood it perfectly well as it was.

b) some is a total waste of time. How about from

"He suffered death and was buried
On the third day he rose again,
in accordance with the Scriptures"

to

"He suffered death and was buried
and rose again on the third day,
in accordance with the Scriptures"

I ask you, what was the point of that change ? Or changing "this is the Word of the Lord" to "the Word of the Lord", and "let us proclaim the mystery of faith" to "the mystery of faith" ? No change in meaning, some loss in euphony and poetic power.

c) changes which are frankly painful. From "begotten not made, of one being with the Father" to "begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father" ! Who uses 'consubstantial' in their conversation? Stupid word. I always detested those hymns which chucked in stuff like "consubstantial, co-eternal".

While I take the point that there could be a shade of meaning twixt one and the other, no one surely would take "of one being" to mean "absolutely 100% identical" ?

And as for the change from "when supper was ended, he took the cup - again he gave you thanks and praise" to "in a similar way ...." - what, did he use the same arm movements ? That is just awful.



I suppose it's better for the Catholic Bishops Conference* to be tinkering with the liturgy instead of campaigning for all the murderers and thieves to be let out. But it does strike me that they have too many people with too much time on their hands. Change for the sake of change. In that sense the English Catholic Church is indeed a twenty-first century organisation.

"Change and decay in all around I see
Oh Thou who changeth not, abide with me"



* does not apply to Scottish Catholic bishops, who seem to be made of sterner stuff.

Eurogeddon or Wishful Thinking ?

Telegraph :

"Suddenly, no-one wants to hold euro denominated assets of any variety, and that includes what had previously been thought the eurozone safe haven of German bunds... All of a sudden, the pound is the European default asset of choice. "

Ah yes. That must be why the Euro's collapsing against sterling. Not.

A Few Thoughts On The Euro Crisis

Just as a communist might argue that "true communism" has never been tried, dismissing the Soviet Union, China et al as flawed implementations that don't invalidate the basic model, you could argue that there's never been such a thing as "true capitalism" or "free market" outside of say the local car boot sale. To a greater or lesser degree governments have always put their oars in, special interests wielded their baleful influence - and individual capitalists done their best to establish monopolies or cartels, destroying the market.

But, at least as far as the post-war period's concerned, all that pales into insignificance compared to today's interventions. For at least the last four years, all investment decisions have turned on what governments will do. As Jonathan Weil put it three years back :

"... the clearest path to making money in the public markets is to know in advance what the government plans to do next ... and when - and then trade on it. Let there be no doubt: Plenty of people with access to such inside information are enriching themselves this way now."

Prime example in the UK - the Bank of England Pension Fund, who moved the bulk of their assets into inflation-proofed securities when they started printing money.

Today's big question - will Germany either

a) print ?
b) bail out Southern Europe ?
c) neither - at which point defaults start, absent
d) Euro-area fiscal union - with Germany running the show hands-on, because while they may trust the Irish, Dutch and Finns, they can't trust the Greeks or the Italians, and maybe even the French ?

Now either a) or b) will see a surge in global stock prices - even though it won't actually address the "structural imbalances" - a PC way of saying that the Germans are German and the Greeks are Greek. It's just kicking the can down the road for another few years - but when have the markets worried about the long term ?

c) will see a collapse of prices, the break up of the eurozone and perhaps 2008 all over again, until the realisation dawns that the sky hasn't actually fallen and that Spain, Italy and Greece are better off with their own currencies (though leaving would be seen in all of those as a national humiliation). But the "imbalances" would at least be fixed.

d) - "now this is the d you can't see, said the cat" - can you really see German civil servants and Bundesbank officials sitting in Greek government offices and out enforcing tax collection ? Not at all sure I can. If anything was likely to cause major friction 'twould be that - and I don't think the Germans want to be Europe's police and civil service. They'd just like the Greeks and Italians - well, to be more like Germans. We can all dream.

And, talking of major friction, I'm yet again impressed by the UK left - for the last 20 years we've been hearing from them how much more sensible and better-organised the Europeans are, and how the awful little Englanders just don't appreciate how much better off we'd be in a closer European embrace.

But now they're warning that if the Euro breaks up, the continent faces descent into war. I heard Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet (of "Everyone Dead in Iraq" fame) on Any Questions (in Ely) a few weeks ago. Asked about the possibility of the Greeks leaving the Euro, he launched a hysterical rant on the subject of 50,000 Jews being deported from Greece during WW2 and implied that a replay was on the cards in the event of a Greek exit. Apparently the lovely Europeans, who we should all strive to emulate, are only restrained by the EU from slaughtering each other ... looks like a late conversion to the Peter Hitchens thesis (written, admittedly, before Britannia went on crack and started working the streets) that "Britain is the only virgin in a continent of rape victims".

To be fair, the left is being given ammunition by a host of Eurocrats fearful for their jobs. I'm not at all surprised that Herman van Rumpy-Pumpy waves the grisly spectre. Where else would he get so much money and power ? But I think the Polish Finance Minister needs to take an aspirin and have a lie-down, rather than warning, as he did last Monday, that Euro breakup would lead to a European war.

Now all the way along Germany's been saying "we will do what we have to do to support the Euro" at the same time as saying "we won't print or bail out". Does not compute.

The conventional wisdom is that the Germans won't print because they're scarred by the memory of Weimar and wheelbarrows, although that took place nearly 90 years ago. Not so, according to a commenter at FT Alphaville.

"the Weimar hyperinflation is often cited as the main reason for Germany's 'obsession' with sound money. But visiting Germany frequently on business and speaking to Germans I doubt that. Most people alive today did not live through that period.

The real reason is that post WW II-Germans got used to their DM as a reliable store of value and kept on doing that with the Euro. Only 40% of Germans are home-owners, as indeed, under a stable currency renting often makes more financial sense. Germans don't invest in the stock market but prudently put their money in cash in a savings account.

Hence, the typical German family is completely unhedged against inflation, and is therefore worried about it.

For the average German who has worked and saved 20 to 30 years, it is actually a better prospect to live through a deflationary depression and have a 30% chance of being out of work as opposed to seeing his life's savings wiped out through currency debasement. That's what's driving German politics, not the Weimar memory."

In the buy now, pay never UK the chancellor can take a political decision to bail out borrowers by printing, to the detriment of savers - because borrowers massively outnumber savers. In Germany the prudent ARE the electorate.

So will Merkel print ? IMHO yes - once a big enough disaster has happened - maybe a Greek default or euro-exit. She'll remember all the promises that were made to the electorate when they lost their beloved DM - then she'll break them.

But that's predicated on the guess that she won't want to be the one bringing the Euro down. And I might be wrong (to be honest, I think that massively ripping off the responsible and sober German electorate is far more dangerous than Greece or Italy defaulting).

Any ideas ?

The Fall Of The Sparrow

I used to cross metaphorical swords with this chap some eleven years back, and noted his subsequent rise in the criminal-charitable complex.

While we disagreed vehemently, he was (for a pro-criminal lefty) mostly civil in debate.

I'm sorry to see that he seems to be in trouble for the same kind of thing that got him into trouble a dozen years ago. I guess he'd just say that society was to blame.

Cameron vs Merkel

We've seen an interesting spectacle - Chancellor Merkel of Germany lambasting the Greeks and Italians for borrowing and spending too much, and preaching austerity to them.

But now come the French, US and UK, lambasting the Germans for not printing Euros the way the US and UK printed dollars and pounds.

Cameron, representing a highly indebted country with a dreadful balance of payments and a riotous immigrant and underclass population, whose prime export is intelligent natives, will today preach profligacy to the leader of Germany, a nation with none of these problems.

"You want more IMF cash, because you're too squeamish to print? We debauched our currencies - you can damn well debauch yours! And if you don't, there'll be a global depression - and it'll all be Germany's fault!"

Numbers ...

Telegraph :

Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that unemployment was 2.62 million in the three months to September.

The number of non-UK nationals in British employment was 2.56 million, up 147,000 from the same period year earlier.

(That's legal employment of foreign nationals. God knows what the illegal numbers are like ...)

Racist Stereotyping

Andrew Gilligan (along with every other financial commentator in the world) :

For all its pretensions of unity, Europe is made up of two very different kinds of country whose economies are not really compatible and which were never ready to share a currency at all. Greece is the most extreme example of the first kind – profligate Mediterranean places where productivity is low and inefficiency rife. Germany is the opposite – northern, thrifty and responsible, the EU’s cash cow.

Isn't all this stuff about the hardy Northerners and the lazy, corrupt Southerners just the worst sort of racist stereotyping?

Mr Gilligan, I thought you'd worked for the BBC. Surely they must have taught you that we are all exactly the same, and that's why we should celebrate our difference?

Economic Illiteracy - Media Edition

Great news !

"British retail sales grew more than expected in September after a surprise increase in sales of laptops and video games, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday."

By strange chance, Laban bought a new laptop in September - and his youngest son also got a new games console as a reward for better-than-expected GCSE results, after a paternal promise the previous autumn which at the time seemed unlikely to ever need redeeming. Fair play though - he got the grades. Perhaps that made the sales difference ...

How good that must have been for British laptop and video console manufacturers !



Terrible news !

"In a blow to the government's aspirations for exports to lead a recovery, the trade gap – the difference between imports and exports – widened to almost £10bn in September, prompting warnings that already lacklustre economic growth for the third quarter will be downgraded."

Perhaps one day someone will put two and two together and recognise that, for as long as we continue not to make anything, strong retail sales are part of the problem, not part of a solution.

A Dangerous County

Guardian obituary (via PA) of Jimmy Savile :

"His success was founded on a totally overweening belief in his own abilities and a tremendous energy, which took him from the Yorkshire minefields to radio and TV stardom."

Change For Change's Sake

They've trashed Google News. Now those clever-clogs at Mountain View seem to have removed the cache results from Google search.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Perhaps they'll notice the increased number of hits here.

Google Search was an order of magnitude better than the competition around the late 1990s - I remember moving from Altavista. They got big as the punter looked and liked. But, as they came to dominate, the competition vanished. And now the punter's going to get what Google like. Where's the 'Classic Search' option in Preferences ? There ain't one.

UPDATE - you have to follow the arrow on the RHS of each result, which gives a preview of the page. There's a cache link there. As I said, where's the Classic Search option ? It was fine as it was.

Now That's What I Call A Vision Statement

New CEO of Orange Broadband :

"Our objective is to get to a point where we are no longer ashamed of what we are doing to our customers"