Money Making Nostalgia

Overheard while writing the shopping list:

Hay: "We've run out of English mustard, but we've got plenty of Dijon."

Chairman: "I don't use English mustard - much prefer Dijon. English mustard tastes too Brexity for my liking."

Colman's is owned by Unilever, which is relocating its HQ to the Netherlands.

Had a great idea; what with the government considering starting a plastic bottle redemption fee, I'm going to start saving all our plastic bottles now - and raid the neighbours' recycling each week.

Makes me quite nostalgic - I remember collecting jars and bottles as a kid to make a few bob in additional pocket money.

I feel so nostalgic I may start to wear flares again...

The Pitts of Toryism

Yesterday I was talking about freedom and the aim of liberal democracy being the freedom of the individual. I've recently finished a biography of Charles James Fox, the famous, radical and progressive, Georgian, Whig politician who campaigned for political reform, among other burning issues, and wanted to curtail the power George III wielded over parliament.

This got me interested in the Pitts - the Elder and the Younger - who were his and his father's  opponents. Pitt the Younger was Fox's prime opponent and the founder of what was termed High Toryism, the legacy of which was Thatcherism. William Hague has written a bio of Pitt the Younger and he's admired to this day by most Tory politicians.

Pitt the Younger was a Prime Minister who presided over one of the most authoritarian and repressive regimes since Charles I. During Pitt's tenure we came very close to an absolute monarchy under George III, who wanted total control over parliament, and Pitt's policies facilitated this.

Pitt suspended habeas corpus to tackle parliamentary reformists such as Fox: the 1795 Treasonable Practices Act was a vicious attack on personal liberties, extending the definition of 'treason' to include speaking and writing, even if no action followed, attacking public meetings, clubs, and the publication of pamphlets; the 1795 Seditious Meetings Act said that any public meeting of more than 50 persons had to be authorised by a magistrate; the 1799 and 1800 Combination Acts were passed which forbade societies or amalgamations of persons for the purpose of political reform and his infamous Poor Law Bill proposed that children should be set to work at the age of five. In Pitt's defence, this was due to the fear of a revolution along the lines of the French Revolution.

In the days before political parties really got going, there was little difference between Tories and Whigs - they both included the aristocracy and landed gentry. The way a nonentity got into a position of power was to somehow secure the patronage of a rich landowner and get him to buy him a parliamentary seat in a pocket or rotten bourough. Once there, he'd purposely go into opposition and become such a pain in the arse until the ministry of the day invited him to join the government, at which time he'd start to support the very policies he'd been railing against in opposition, sometimes risking the wrath of his patron, who was usually in on the ruse. Fox didn't succumb to that temptation and stayed in opposition for over 25 years. He was a man of principle and feted as a man of the people.

Pitt the Elder started out in opposition as a pain in the arse, until he was invited to join the ministry of the day, where he rose to prominence and eventually became PM and the Earl of Chatham. His family purchased the rotten borough of Old Sarum which contained only 3 houses and 7 voters, who nonetheless had the right to vote for 2 MPs.

It's sobering to realise that the electorate of the UK comprised only 5% of the population in 1831, and most of those were bribed by rich patrons to vote for their candidate.

Unlike today, boroughs sent 2 MPs to Westminster - those getting highest and 2nd highest number of votes.

Free Speech

A familiar hobby-horse of mine, so don't bother reading further if you know me too well.

Heard something about free speech in universities and some decrying the no-platforming of certain speakers. The example mentioned in what I heard (probably on the radio) was pro-lifers.

Free speech is about freedoms. Pro-lifers want to restrict freedoms for others, so if liberal democracy is a tool to guarantee personal freedoms, their free speech is, by definition, anti-democratic. It's no different to facilitating free speech to Nazis, homophobes or racists, who are also intent on restricting freedom of the individual. No-one is preventing pro-lifers from practising what they preach, but they shouldn't seek to impose their beliefs on others if it restricts their freedoms, and that is precisely the aim of pro-lifers.

However, is merely speaking about pro-life issues harming the freedoms of others?

There are legal limits to free speech though, so why is this? Is it intolerant to deny free speech to white (or black) supremacists purely for their beliefs? It is illegal in the UK to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour intending or likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress or cause a breach of the peace. Are these criteria arbitrary? They're certainly subjective.

Then there are libel and slander laws, which curtail free speech.

So long as truly free free speech facilitates the right of reply to the same audience at the same time, honour is satisfied. It's when the right of reply is denied that we get problems. It's internet bubbles of like-minded individuals separated by great distance where the danger lies and where disinformation and hate spread at the speed of light. Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the earth; whilst truth lags behind; her steps, though sure, are slow and solem

Analyse and discuss.

The Philosophy of Food

We were watching Country File on Sunday evening and some chef was featured who only uses produce from Shropshire and will not countenance anything that's 'foreign', for want of another word. My first thought was; "Good on him," but then I pondered the fact that he must go to enormous effort, for which he must charge an enormous price for the food. Is this just a 'middle-class' fad?

When you think about it, 150 years ago few people had a choice and had to source their food from within a very small area comprising the distance one can travel to and from a market town by horse and cart. Since then we've improved transport to an extent where we can source produce from anywhere within the UK - and indeed the world - and have it on our plate within 24 hours, thereby vastly improving the variety of foods in our diet. The question is, at what cost to the environment? 

If everyone were to source their food from within a very small area, then producers would have very small markets and benefits of scale afforded by 'exporting' beyond one's locale would become obsolete. Not sure what effect this would have on some rural economies. Perhaps a balance is needed.

Yesterday I was listening to The Public Philosopher on Radio 4, which focused on the concept of citizenship in relation to benefits accruing from citizenship (charity starts at home is an argument usually made by those who never give to charity in the first place).

Someone made the obvious statement that the state exists primarily to protect its citizens, but no-one seemed to twig that, for the vast majority of the time we've lived in civilisations and states, the protection is mainly from another state - it's the state itself that is the problem and the attendant concept that people who live in a particular area are somehow superior to another.

When all's said and done, one's citizenship is a matter of pure chance. A state - or, rather, the leader of a state - is a threat to people who are not members of that state, which is why states have fought wars with other states since time immemorial. 

There again, the state is a useful mechanism for bringing people together in order to achieve more than individuals can achieve on their own. It can also protect the citizen from other, possibly rapacious, citizens through regulation of working practices, contracts and other issues that grease the wheels of industry, although that's only a relatively recent invention. The state is a two edged sword.

Improvement

Thought of an idea for improving the NHS and the economy:

1. Link the Health Secretary's salary to NHS performance, and
2. Link all the cabinet's salaries to the country's economic performance.

I believe we'd see immediate funding for the NHS as well as a 2nd referendum on Brexit, with all cabinet ministers exhorting us to remain in the EU.

One thing is certain; we'd have a lot less unproven ideology and a lot more evidence-based government.

Farage, of course, would still be calling the for an ideological destruction of the UK, but you'd expect that from a bloke who only attended one of 40 odd EU fishing meetings and yet moans about the lot of our fishermen who, incidentally, seem to be their own worst enemy.

An academic study has come to the conclusion that grammar schools perform better than non-selective schools precisely because they're selective. Oooh - now that's a surprise. I'd have thought it was obvious in the name, selective school. So, grammars are a bit like university - selective; a bit like jobs - selective; in fact, like most areas of life where ability gives you an advantage - except, perhaps, politics.

Pupils' ability, according to the study, is a predictor of success. Of course, the corollary of that is that pupils' inability is a predictor of failure. Taking a maritime metaphor, does teaching take into account the slowest ship in the convoy? The answer is no; the curriculum is followed according to a timetable, because there are only so many days in a school year.

Given the study concludes that grammar schools perform no better than non-selective state schools, once their pupils' higher ability and wealth is taken into account, my question is how does one negate the effect of higher ability in order to reach that conclusion? It doesn't make logical sense when you're testing for ability in the first place - you can't arbitrarily knock a grade off someone with higher ability and reach any meaningful conclusion; nor can you arbitrarily add a grade to a pupil lacking in ability. You simply can't measure ability by fudging what you're measuring in the first place, which is ability. It's like saying once you take into account the higher value of gold against silver, they're both worth the same.

The DfE says that research has shown that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds make better progress across core subjects in selective schools, and attain better results. So how does that square with the study?

New Gloves

Hayley bought me some new gloves for my birthday.

All I need now is for her to string them together with elastic so they can be threaded through the arms of my coat.

Hamster Ice Cream

Good name for an ice cream shop in Fowey:

Found this plaque in memory of a hamster in Looe. That's one very long-lived hamster.

Hay took exception to me filling our water bottles with wine before our long walk yesterday. Can't think why.

Well, back home today. Fowey is changing fast - it has reached peak plantation shutters and is maxed out on Farrow and Ball Elephant's Breath Grey. Half the shops on Fore St are now chains too and the independent traders are slowly being forced out. It's well on the way to becoming another Salcombe, which is unfortunate. Looe, on the other hand, is still almost untouched by the outside world and retains a lot of independence from the high street chains. It's unfortunate when the chains move in as every high street starts to look exactly the same and the charm that initially attracted people fades.

Can't recommend the Old Ferry Inn at Bodinnick highly enough; excellent, fine-dining food at reasonable prices, peace and quiet and on the doorstep of the River Fowey and its pleasant walks.

Things to Ponder

Overheard in The Old Ferry Inn, Fowey, where we're staying for a couple of nights:

Chairman: "You don't like sauternes, do you?"

Hay: "No, but I do like a muscat."

Chairman: "That's a small, furry animal, ain't it?"

I'm getting the distinct impression that Trump is having the scrape the nutter barrel in order to find people prepared to work in his administration. All the sane ones have been purged and his choice is now extremely limited. He's drained the swamp and built a lunatic asylum on it. Why does he appoint people who are eminently unsuited and then fire them a couple of months down the line. It really calls his judgement into question.

Confused the hell out of someone at a motorway service station coffee outlet yesterday when I asked for a flat black. We ordered a latte for me and a black coffee with hot milk for Hay in the restaurant last night and, once Hay had added the milk to hers, I couldn't see any difference.

Pyjamas - what's the point? They're restrictive in bed, for a start. I can understand their purpose in pre-central heating and pre-duvet days, but not since.

Why does the place in which a dog has a crap have to smell right, and what's the difference between the odour of a wrong place and a right place? There must be some essential difference.

When tarmac is subject to potholes and cobbles aren't, because they move rather than crack, why don't we have more cobbled roads like they do on the continent? The short term laying cost of tarmac is probably a lot cheaper, but long term maintenance of just has to be more expensive, by a long chalk. Additionally, with the advent of silent electric cars, cobbles at least provide an audible warning. Anyone for cobbled motorways?

Spotted this on the Bodinnick to Fowey ferry yesterday:

I wondered whether it was Cornish tarmac...

Did Leatherman, the company that make those folding pocket tools, ever regret using that name?

Over The Top

Economists for Brexit suggest unilaterally eliminating import tariffs will reduce prices in the UK - for items such as blue passports - yet Brexiteers are up in arms about this and demand they're made in the UK. You can't have unrestricted tariff elimination and protectionism to ensure UK employment at the same time. The irony!

Classical economics teaches us that free exchange works to produce the best results for all, whether the exchange takes place within one nation or across national boundaries. But this concept works only when the exchange is an equal one that occurs within a common framework of laws, customs, rules, and regulations. A bit like the EU...

Something struck me yesterday - what is Stephen Hawking known for? Name any other great scientist and the man in the street can reel off their greatest accomplishment; Einstein = relativity and E=mc2; Darwin = evolution; Copernicus = heliocentrism; Newton = calculus and Newtonian mechanics; Niels Bohr = the Bohr model of the atom; Heisenberg = the uncertainty principle, etc.

However, when it comes to Stephen Hawking the only thing most people can come up with is A Brief History of Time, which was no more than a layman's guide to the evolution of the universe. Yes, a few may mention Hawking radiation and quantum thermodynamics, where he made impressive gains, but in general he's lauded as one of our greatest scientific minds on the back of being a scientist in a wheelchair who wrote a bestseller, and little more. A cult developed around him because of his disability and his determination to overcome it, which was no mean feat, but even among physicists he's not ranked that highly, being lucky to make it into the top 100, let alone top 10 of all time. Yet we eulogise him and his ashes have been placed in the hallowed precincts of Westminster Abbey. Hawking himself, in a 1993 interview, denounced as media hype around the suggestion that he was one of the greatest scientists of all time.

Is this a sign of our times?

It's the same with commemorations - plaques being set up to things that wouldn't have warranted a plaque say 50 years ago. Sadiq Khan wants a memorial for those who died in the 2017 terrorist incidents and said; "Londoners will never forget the tragedy." One thing I can guarantee is that they will - it's human nature and history is the evidence that supports this.

Are we as a society going over the top in eulogising the mediocre and the unexceptional (and no, I'm not calling Hawking mediocre) simply because we've had an unprecedented period of peace and no great national tragedies in which we've all shared for such a long time? Is it part of modern celebrity culture?

Burning Internet

Overheard in the living room as Hay related her disastrous journey to London this week:

Hay: "When I stood...."

Chairman: "On the burning deck, your legs were all aquiver, you gave a cough, your leg fell off and floated down the river?"

Hay: "No."

For the third time in a row she had a bit of a problem travelling to and from London by train - this time it was being sat for 2 hours outside Didcot on the return leg.

Blue Brexit passports to be made by a Franco-Dutch firm - you couldn't make it up, could you?

Boris Johnson has called Russia a brutal and corrupt regime. Obviously he's making a play for selling arms to Putin, just like we sell them to other brutal and corrupt regimes. Must be part of his Brexit export drive.

The Chairman's 63rd birthday today. I don't feel any different to my 21st birthday. The mirror tells a different story though.

The Vodafone internet seems to have settled at a reasonable speed, but I do need another router, rather than the locked-down and very basic model than Vodafone provide.

I understand from various forums that this is a common complaint.