Hit Me McTavish!

There may be those out there who feel we have had a surfeit of Scottish persons and Scottishness. New Year, the celebration of the Great Rabbi, Haggis, Salmo Salmar rubbing our noses in the fact that we are under a Coalition Yoke ( or is that a Tory Joke?). To those I offer these chaps, the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. I am listening to a session on the iPlayer, featuring them at Celtic Connections, 27/1/2011. If you can't get the iPlayer link in time, bash your ears here

Chasing Cars

3 pipers, and I love the title- chasing cars. Can't see Dave and Gideon pretending to do singalong. Normally I am happy to hear the pipes playing the Black Isle on a hillside somewhere. Sometimes you just have to let go!

Remind me again how many Westminster MPs represent Scottish constituencies or not as the case may be? Never mind the quantity feel the width!

Deer Management

An interesting post, as always, from Susan McCarthy. I love the title -

Act casual, act vegetarian!

I will be pulling the leg of my vegetarian friends and relations for some time about that.

There are other ways of dealing with the beasts, of course!

Nice One Philip

There is an article by Philip Pullman in Open Democracy Our Kingdom.
It concerns the proposed attack by the Coalition Forces on libraries.
As regular readers will know I too have a soft spot for libraries.
I'm glad that someone with a sharper mind and greater powers of argument is here to defend them and make the case that those who need them the most are least able to prevent closure.
The book burners and the library destroyers are a bad lot and who knows what damage they will do to us?

I know that we live in a world where there are greater ills and where unbelievable horrors greet people on a daily basis. I have no answer to this but I do know that libraries in whatever form open access to a shared humanity. Hopefully we are less likely to kill, maim, rape or exploit those we recognise as sharing that humanity.

To paraphrase the great Rabbi Burns, a teacher of some note, who you may celebrate this evening:

Some hae books and canna read,
And some wad read that want it;
But we hae books, and we can read,
Sae let the books be thankit

If I can help somebody

Notice seen in the window of a Dublin Teashop above a sack of potatoes.

This Teashop will be closed for business until further notice.
We are very grateful to all those we have helped along the way.
Please help yourselves to a few spuds from the sack below.
Me Ma said that they are the best she has ever grown!
Brian (without the other Brian this time) xxx

Anyone Who Has a Heart

So. Dick Cheney is in want of a heart and in need of a transplant.


Well that shouldn’t be too difficult. Given his power, wealth and influence the process should run like clockwork. A donor may be difficult. Matching tissue type and rejection can be problems. Not insurmountable I’m sure.

So in the spirit of peace and forgiveness I attach a picture of a source of the finest East Anglian Flints. There must be one there that fits.

Go on Dick! Take your pick.

And to cheer you on your way a wee tune and words for as long as it is up there on the interweb.
Could I suggest that after any successful operation you might like a change of scenery. No, no the hills and glens but The Hague!

AWOL in BABELFISH Translation

At some point over the last few days a Sainsbury's promo appeared to have dropped out of one of the papers. Always on the scrounge for new recipes I opened it and began to browse. Imagine my surprise when Juan Mari Arzak and his daughter smiled at me from a picture under the title of a dish which promised:

PRETTY IN BONFIRE OF GRUDGES

So, after Lady Buddhistpizza and I had picked ourselves off the floor, soothed our aching sides and dried our eyes, we added the recipe to the lost in translation pile! We giggled assuming the pretty fish was bonito, claro! We assumed the bonfire was of taste not a barbie, a salsa fuerte perhaps, but those grudges they mouldered on for some time. Could they be goujons? No, definitely a false friend. Could they be resentments buried deep in the psyche of the Basque cook? I think they dealt with old Boney, at least, with an armoury of pots and pans. A likely candidate is the noun grujidor which Collins Dictionary defines as a glass cutter. Could it be that the shavings of glass (produced by the grujidor?) find a resonance in the scales of the pretty fish!? Well, I leave that to the fevered imaginations of our regular readers.

However, hats off to Emily Drinking Tea, who got there in this blog:-
Sainsbury's you need a recipe editor
Ain't that the truth.

In Cod We Trust

Up to a point Capt'n Copper, up to a point.
Channel 4 has been running its muckraking paws through our fish.
One aspect of this has been Hugh's Fish Fight the link will give you the idea of the waste of food/fish in the requirement to discard over quota fish! A crime! It will be interesting to see if this campaign will have an impact on the Common Fisheries Policy, I hope it does.

Alex Thomson in today's fish supper "Fish Unwrapped" (Dispatches Series at 19:05) presented a tale of dodgy labeling and treatment of product that would cause Arthur Daley to blush. Catch it if you can and you think you're hard enough! It's on 4oD for the next 29 days as are most of the fishy tales

One good thing to come out of it though is an addition to our supper menu.
Mackerel in a bap, with salad and a wasabi/yoghurt dressing.

(Ed. That wasabi looks a bit wabbit to me.)

Elizabeth 1916-2011

Time takes its dreadful toll on us all.
We panic at the flickering of a dim light.
At the going down of the sun
We fear we may not be there to remember.
Unspoken the fear that we will be there but not remember.

Life, a fragile web of chemistry,
Forms the human to make what it can.
Self, family, friends; stations on the impermanent way.
Fortunes good, bad, and those made by our endeavours.
Our name and our future shining bright behind us.

Born into slaughter, growing in hard times,
You carried life and gave it four forms.
Tumult passed you by as did the voices of those you loved.
You nurtured your family, your friends, your garden
and the birds that pleased/vexed you silently.

These are your name and your future.
Two generations loved and blessed, no harsh words for any,
But every hedge clipped to within an inch of its life.
Your own words, your tribute,
Good and Gracious!

Unfair

Letter to the Wall Street Journal

Dear Sir,
Could I draw your attention to the blog on your website titled
You Decide: Goldman’s Facebook Pitch or Nigerian Email ‘Opportunity’

This scurrilous piece makes a very unfair comparison between Goldman Sachs and entrepreneurial activity by Nigerian citizens. It is my view that Goldman Sachs are not a financial services organisation that I or any of my immediate circle of friends and colleagues would wish to do business with. It has been subject to criticism the latest here which, of course, they deny. We await the report of the The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission this month with interest and expect it will throw light into many corporate dark places!

I would like to make the case in a free market economy for the little person and can attest that I have had nothing but kindness and consideration from my many Nigerian correspondents. Of course, I have chosen not to take advantage of the abundant investment opportunities they have offered me but damn it all that is the essence of capitalism, caveat emptor.

NOW IF YOU WILL IN STRICTEST CONFIDENCE EMAIL YOUR BANK DETAILS TO ME AT BUDDHIST PIZZA INC. I WILL BE PLEASED TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME

Minder

One of the sharpest criticisms of Thatcherism in popular culture in the eighties was, in my view, Arthur Daley's hapless, seedy entrepreneur. I was reminded of this when our own becondommed leader offered us flu vaccine from previous years.

So there you are in some drinking dive in Westminster. Smoothie chops Dave, camel hair coat, ridiculous titfer, cigar in one hand and V&T in the other is holding forth. He leans across the bar to Andrew, a dour silvertop who is polishing bedpans.

“So Andy, we are running out of the old flu vaccine.

It just so happens I know this guy in Catford who has a warehouse full of the stuff.

This is the real McCoy. It would bring down a herd of swans at 50 paces. Lamentable, because it is a tad past its sell by date it is languishing in a crummy lockup!

Andy holds a bedpan up to the light squints at it. With all the enthusiasm of man about to cut off his own right arm with a rusty butter knife he lets out a slow stream of breath followed by,

“I suppose we could give it a try, it would have to be dated 2000 an somefink though Dave, no tricks mind!”

Arthur looks mortified, as if someone had accused him of a VAT fiddle. He replies,

“Andy, how long have you known me? Would I seek to abuse the bonds of friendship, pollute the trust of two trading partners with some cheap legerdemain? “

He turns to a sallow yoof at his side and rouses him from a reverie of heaven knows what with,

“Gideon, get the motor, pop round to Stavros at Biggie Pharma and pick up a few cases of Chateau Avian 2009! Try not to drop it. “

Arthur smiles, empties his glass, points it in the direction of the vodka optic and requests,

“A large one, please Andy, not too much ice!”

What is life?

I can remember reading one of Richard Dawkins books and feeling a sense of paranoia.

Pretty devious stuff this DNA, my guess is that it is taking over the world!

If you want to know the mechanism for the central dogma behind this assertion the video in the following link may give you a clue, or it may not, anyway pure Star Wars.

The Central Dogma

Better

We were riveted by Rosie.

How much better if she could have been an engineer.

We need both, of course.

Dead, Dead, and never called me Mava!

Got that one spectacularly wrong then.
Nigel, in the Archers, should have taken advantage of those flying lessons when he had the chance.

We are acquainted with an eponymously handled couple and herself received a text at 19:16 hrs on Monday 3rd Jan. 2011 from our Nigel to the effect that:-

It's official, I'm dead, please address all future communications to Elizabeth.

Very droll but I'm not sure I would want to tempt fate!

The Year Ahead

A Statement by the Chairperson.
Buddhist Pizza Inc has, over the holiday period, been reconsidering its mission statement, its strategy for the next five years, its business plan and cash flows.
The executive summary is set out below with an appropriate reference.

Robert McCrum, in Th'Observer, has an interesting paragraph or two about the tensions between what we buy to read and what some of us would like you to think we read:- Stieg Larsson ahead of Hilary Mantel (Ed. I read and enjoyed both) He points out the importance, especially now, of the publishers being able (and of course willing) to cross-subsidise.

Being a literary gent he uses a quote to lend weight to his argument:-

In search of some support from the past, I found this passage in the preface to Tom Jones. "An author ought to consider himself," wrote Henry Fielding, "not as a gentleman who gives a private treat, but rather as one who keeps a pub, at which all persons are welcome for their money."

That's it then.

Buddhist Pizza:- think of it as a pub with no beer, but it's free.

Cheap at half the price!

What will the New Year bring?

I try not to allow the real world (Ambridge) to encroach on these musings and I am no great shakes in the prognostications department. I have enough problems with the here and now and the recent... However, here goes:-

I would put good money (50p each way) on Tony, the whinging misery guts, popping his clogs in some fashion on Sunday.

There now, I apologise to the host of our regular readers, yes you two at the back, who do not know what I am bleating on about.

Good wishes for the New Year!

More Pleasure Now!

Have been waiting for Treme, the series, to cross the Atlantic.
I came across a short video on the grauniad site about Treme, the district in New Orleans. Anyway, Wendell Pierce speaks about the origins, music and customs of Treme, and mentions the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs (Mutual Societies). What a great idea, the name that is.

Too late now but we should have suggested that when they were looking for alternative names for the, somewhat presbyterian, Industrial and Provident Societies!

The link is here and it's short.

Another brick in the foundations of slow politics.

The time has come

The end of the year; no doubt we will be plagued by pundits, caused to fret by futurologists, and startled significantly by jobbing scriveners. Concerns will be raised about many things and I would, if given to betting, put 50p each way on the tired old nag being dragged to the starting line that the interweb is shortly to, if it has not done so already:-

• reduce our brains and those of our first-born to jelly,
• turn us into a nation of drooling addicts with personal hygiene problems, significant gambling debts and RSI in our wrists,
• suffer the horror at an ATM of finding that all our accounts have been emptied by arms dealing Albanians operating from a grass hut in Nigeria,
• force good, honest, hardworking monopolies to reconsider their modest surpluses,
• and in the last, mortal, words of Bluebottle that we have been deaded by an evil jazz playing conspiracy of grizzled old men called the Biderbeck Group.

(Ed. Ahem... could we move on a little?)

I made brief reference in a blog to some thoughts John Naughton had about the internet
in June of this year, and I would suggest you reread them.

They will act as an adumbrating antidote, a poultice for puffery, a balm for the bewildered....

(Ed. That's enough now. One more alliteration and I will turn the electrons off. Adumbrating antidote indeed!)

Slow Slow Quick Quick Slow

An article in Open Democracy caught my eye, Slow Food and the Pleasure Principle, by David Ransom and Richard Swift. It wasn't the prospect of even more overindulgence at this time of year but the trail:-

Much of left thinking has been based on denial: don't eat this, believe that or behave like the other. Slow Food provides a healthy antidote of inclusion, rather than exclusion...

It got me thinking.

The final paragraphs

Slow Food raises a lot of questions about what a social movement actually is. It undoubtedly has had a wider impact in Italy, where it has spun off a number of other slow movements (Slow Cities, Slow Money). But also beyond, there are now tens of thousands of adherents all around the globe, who identify with an analysis that merges issues of quality with those of justice and sustainability. The movement is, by and large, entrepreneurial, championing smallholders' rights to produce and sell their goods to eco-conscious consumers, in a market setting not dominated by corporate agriculture. This separates Slow Food from the conventional left. So does its enthusiastic embrace of the pleasure principle.

identify other evolving approaches, movements, but it also sets out what could be problems for the left.

We know what we want (see UN declaration of Human Rights if you don't)

We have had a few years since that was published, boy have we done well!

That is the problem. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick.

Slow politics. Why not?

The cycle of politics even in democratic states means that little is achieved in the 4 to 5 years between elections. The parties, organisations and movements of the left are not geared to securing irevocable progress for people who need it. Added to which, of course, no one who has power ever relinquishes it.

Even though I am old, grey and have not changed much in the world I am heartened by the yoof of today and its approaches to these problems. Laurie Penny articulates some of these, in the cement is free grauniad, and captures a fine absurdity.

Of course, the old left is not about to disappear completely. It is highly likely that even after a nuclear attack, the only remaining life-forms will be cockroaches and sour-faced vendors of the Socialist Worker. Stunningly, the paper is still being peddled at every demonstration to young cyber-activists for whom the very concept of a newspaper is almost as outdated as the notion of ideological unity as a basis for action.

We speak in hundreds of thousands of voices – voices that are being raised across Europe, not in unison but in harmony.

Now if you can turn that very elegant phrase into a programme of action and create a set of tools for progress and conviviality you will really do something. But don't forget the conviviality, in my view it is what defines us as truly human!

Sod 'em

I'm reading a book about the other mafia; no not the Tories boy, do pay attention!
Gomorrah is a view of the Neapolitan Camorra by Roberto Saviano. (I did not select it from the wonderful world of Suffolk County Libraries on the off chance that it contained lewd and lascivious material. It contains much that is obscene but in a very different way.)

It would appear in the world of the Camorrista at some point you acquire a defining nickname which stays with you for the rest of your life.

Have we reached that point with Gideon? The Beeb website gives the following quote attributed to David Heath Deputy Leader of the House:-

George Osborne has a capacity to get up one's nose, doesn't he?

Gideon "Chicken Scratch" Osborne?

If not there are alternatives, including:-Bazooka; Blizzard; Blow; Bouncing Powder; Florida Snow; Foo Foo; Gold Dust; Prime Time; Star Dust; Star-Spangled Powder; Sugar; Sweet Stuff; Toke; Toot;
Sourced at link

Personally, I could go for sweet stuff.
Any offers gratefully accepted.

Ding dong!

Some things and some people are such a part of life, as we know it Jim, that we rather take them for granted. A certain Mr Bell is one such. I have lived long enough to know that, in some future biography, there may be allegations of a concrete curdling nature. Did he show less than complete kindliness to children and small animals? Would he regularly down the last of the sherry straight from the bottle before the vicar called? Discounts for cash, an account at the Gay Hussar, the company of East End pre-owned vehicle executives, a penchant for pipe and herbal tobacco, did he, really?

Apart from a lifelong affection for country and western music, for which there is not one scintilla of evidence, I could forgive him much for such little gems.

Having Steve Bell portray you as a caring, sharing, smoothie chops, politician with a condom over your head and knowing that he will do so for the rest of your time in power must give you a boost in the morning.