Back to School

Wondering, or even wandering, in a daze this morning about the 'Big Town' I pitched up in front of the Oxfam Bookshop. Yes I know these places are, as the moral mentors of my youth would say, DANGEROUS OCCASIONS OF SIN! However, I was early for a meeting, I am weak and anyway the odd book or three is not going to drag me down to hell. Is it?

(No, but unwarranted capitalisation and dreadful puns will drive me to the bottle or an early grave, or both...Ed)

Moving on. I saw a book under the poster advertising volumes for going back to school. The Title - Study Kills...hmm!
So does bathtub speed, unfettered capitalism and chemical weapons!
A closer inspection proves we are not radicalising a generation and the exhortatory volume was in fact a resource to enhance studying.
The Title - Study Skills; must see the old optician about a new pair of glasses.

While we are on the subject of books, a quote.
The internet is for books you want to read. A library is for books you did not know you wanted to read.
Not original, of course.
(What round here ever is. It  gets worse, folksy, homespun, mumbojumbo, quotes without proper citation and rigorous attribution. You couldn't make it up...Ed)

Exactly.

Lost for words

Cory Doctorow, who knows a thing or two, points out the fact that it is not possible to own some digital material!
You can of course sell what you like as long as the great washed and unwashed desire to buy it. In order to avoid any doubt I am, of course, only referring to that which the law and m'learned friends would approve of. (Thank god for that. We don't want the peelers round stomping their big boots on the antimacassars and the like looking for contraband and the stuff you should have turned over to the Receiver of Wreck years ago... Ed)

In an article in the Grauniad he points out that it is not possible to buy a digital copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). This raises a number of interesting questions.  I was struck again by the fact that the interweb has changed forever things we have taken for granted as being part of the fabric of society - You sell... I buy - and changed them in ways we do not recognise or see where they will leave us.

But the point is that we have sleepwalked into a new way of accessing some very ancient tools. Commercial decisions married to the lawyerly norm of asking for the world, the moon, and your first-born in rental agreements have birthed a new, non-negotiable relationship between people who live and die by words and the lexicographers whose work serves them. A university whose name is synonymous with the perpetual archiving of books is now telling scholars that their crucial references can never be their property, and that their ongoing use of those works is subject to continuous monitoring and indefinite retention.

I particularly like the idea of a lien on your first-born.

Have a gander at it and of course remember Aaron Swartz.

(Glad to see you back. Have a good break? Weather fine? Relatives and young thriving? Get much reading done?
Now about the price of coal and the vital editorial work I do for this enterprize - any chance of a sub...Ed)

More Holidays?

Another wee flower for the collection.

And a strange naming of streets...

From Grope to Grove to Union!?

At least we know what the Gauleiter  has been up to this summer.

Chocolate Pickles

and he's grown a mustache.

Well Well

Couldn't resist the pun!

Doomt, Doomt, I Telt Ye!

Maybe it was the delayed effect of seeing the World's End (not the world's end I hope, of course not, otherwise we would not be here... only my little joke...Ed!) or the curry afterwards but when the daily update concerning the Scot's latest bid for freedom popped into my inbox, courtesy of the much maligned Mr Googles, the lead story was

Scottish independence would lead to a 'complete nightmare' in immigration policy

The Scottish Daily Record reports Michael Moore, The Secretary of State for Scotland, claiming the above. Of course, I see it all. Lines of the undead slumped by the side of the A1 just waiting for the word. WWII surplus army lorries, their tattered tarps flapping in the breeze just north of Carlisle. The signal to move would be the declaration of independence. Closer inspection of the transport would reveal the horror contained within. 

Interesting fact about Scottish Independence, No. 1 in a series.
Have you ever seen
Michael Moore, The Secretary of State for Scotland, and
Michael Moore, The well known prankster and filum maker,
in the same room?

(Now you come to mention it, I have not... Ed)

Summer Filums

We went to the local flea pit twice in one week.
West Side Story
Neither of us had seen it, or seen it all the way through, or could remember seeing it all the way through!
What emotion, what music, what dancing, what panstick, and that was just the sharks! Lenny could certainly write a tune or two.
No credit for our own dear Wills scratched on the wall at the end, such a difficult name to get right!

The World's End
A bit of a contrast. However, as part of the deeply moving Cornetto Trilogy it provided a useful reminder of the perils of drink, drugs and the undead! I have yet to see Shaun of the Dead or can remember seeing it all the way through! That is a treat to come.

Erwin Schrödinger - A Joke

(Any similarity to a joke told,recently, on a BBC programme - Boffins Telling Jokes - is not coincidental...Ed!)

A garda stops a car on the outskirts of Dublin.

"Could I see your driving license please?"  He says.
The driver, an elderly academic type, pulls it out of his wallet and hands it over.

"Ah Professor Schrödinger! Would you mind popping the trunk there?"

(The guarda had been watching the American Series -  Highway Patrol  on TV and knew this was what you said.)
The driver protested, asking  if it was really necessary. The guarda was adamant. With a resignation that ebbed in long suffering waves over the top of his glasses the driver complies. The guarda walks round the back of the car, looks in the trunk, stages a theatrical double take and needs a moment to compose himself.

He moves to the front of the car and addresses the driver, somewhat uncertainly.

"Professor Schrödinger, do you know you have a dead cat in the trunk?"

"I do now!"

Visions of Poesy

I've been reading Wendy Cope's dream in 
COPE, W. (1986). Making cocoa for Kingsley Amis. London, Faber and Faber.
p 59.

It reminded me of a nightmare which occurred ten years or more before  this was published as I staggered around the festival in Edinburgh.

Down the Festival with Germaine.

It wasn't a grope I had just then
I needed some help to keep level
I wanted to set the record straight.
You think I'm a devil!

(God almighty are you at the  Poesy again, morning, noon and night. Who is it this time? Oh I see now. Old Percy Bish and his Petery Loo. You have had that far away look in the eye ever since you saw Mervyn Peak pronounce on the The Masque of Anarchy. Anarchy indeed I should get paid more for the editing of 'Poetry', highly skilled and exacting work it is too!  ...Ed)

Do you want payment by the yard or will a clip round the ear suffice?

Zero Influence

Behind the bike shed in the garden of a building in Downing St. a red faced boy of 40 something in too tight shorts takes the fag out of his mouth and extends a packet to his companion.

Want a gasper Liz?

Don't call me that Dave! You know the Lizard of Oz really gets on my tits.

The aggrieved party is also wearing shorts of regrettably revealing dimensions. To the proffered fag he addresses a swift homily on the virtues of brand loyalty and declines.

Just think, Dave, if these were in plain packages I wouldn't be able to choose.

He takes out his own packet and sparks up.
They inhale deeply and, more or less, companionably for a few moments.
Liz the Lobby breaks the silence...

I offered Gideon a fag  the other night and the soft dingbat thought I was soliciting for my intern. Jesus, you Poms!

Memento

Two pictures for Elizabeth

A bright, fierce, flower
glowing and thriving.
A silver bower,
remembering and resting.

Storms and Waves

HEADLAND

I shelter by rocks, dragon tailed.
I watch the roaring breakers,
big enough to turn a man inside
and the toe teasing tide
mesmerises me, taking me to another place.


A TEUCHIT STORM

The black shadow drifted half menace, half intent.
It circled, lazy days rich pickings.
A buzzard high above the field.

First one bird flew directly, the raptor continued,
A second flew and the hunter banked.
At once the sky was alive with lapwings.

The big bird glided on without concern.
Then a teuchit storm, a volcano, erupted and it departed
 Letting them feed their young for another day.

Austerity Plus

One might be tempted, late at night and behind closed doors, in the priv... (come on man, I have a job to do and the electricity to pay, children to feed and all sorts of business to attend to... Ed) to say ARSE to austerity, we have never had it so good. That might be a mistake. We are all in this together and I have no wish to see my neighbour beggared. I allow that I might feel different if I were the possessor of a small fortune, a millionaire Da and a name like Gideon. If I had invested my somewhat short political future on the idea of cutting the nations economic throat as a cure for fiscal obesity I would be committed (or possibly should be committed...Ed) to the idea of austerity. However, there is this wee Scots guy who makes a very strong case for equating austerity with madness. If you think of Billy Conolly on Speed with the intellectual power of the laureated Mr Krugman you may be able to imagine the economic cruise missile that is Mark Blyth. If not you can watch him here giving a talk at Google or Guggle as it is referred to in Scotlenad. For ye of little faith and shorter attention span the Grauniad has an interview here.

So Gideon, we want
- Hipocratic Economics, No Slash and Burn
- Pay down debt and build buffers when you have the money,
- Now we need hope based priorities, policies and spending!
Three pointers for the young leader of a party near you.

Merv the Swerve at the Old Lady always appeared to me to be a bit of a Banker! In a FT lunch conversation with Martin Wolf he is quoted as saying that one of his prescriptions for the eurozone's woes...

to continue with mass unemployment in the south, in order to depress wages and prices until they've become competitive again. FT Life and Arts p 3 June 15/16 2013

A brave man indeed and perhaps the shy and soon to be retiring banker will offer to share his retirement package with the sons of Hellas, Napoli and the Reyes Catolicos  who pitch up in the summer, on his doorstep, asking for a crust or two or even a job.
I believe - Da me un trabajo, pendejo is roughly equivalent to - Gis a job la! in Spanish. It might be useful to know that.

Flowers of Scotland.

First a portrait of the artist as a fat old man as we missed Bloom's Day.

We were taking the air ....

Slowly!

When we chanced upon a host of wee fleurs...

(A host usually implies a significant number and what's all this nonsense about chancing, chancing your arm no doubt... Ed)

I hope you had a good break from your labours too!.

What we did on our holidays, again.

Stoned?

History Lesson

Very Pharonic?

Twitching the Electric Snipe

And Calling the Silkies.

The Company He Keeps

So then Nige, Keith's Mum says you ran into a little trubba north of the border.
When I used to frequent the hoofs and hoosies of Auld Reekie, the Royal Mile and environs was the haunt of tourists, Nasty Nats and Old Labour. (Did you not, yourself, drink with your trot Chums in the Cowgate...Ed?)
Anyone with a thirst for genteel political debate (or anything else) would repair to Rose St., New Labour, or the New Town Watering holes for the Tartan Tories.
If you had played your cards right I'm sure you could have dropped in on Malaky for a drop of Sancerre, possibly not though.  That's frog juice, is it not?

Mass, Length and Time

I have been measured ( and found wanting... Ed.)
In various medical examinations and investigations I have been asked to provide a measure of my height. I would as a matter of course offer the value of 1.87 metres, give or take a haircut and a pair of good brogues, say 1.88 amongst friends (Not thank god, any business about six foot two, eyes of blue...Ed)

I now know after extensive measurement with the latest laser technology, adjusted for relativistic effects, British Summer Time etc. ( You were put up against a wall in you socks and a plank dobbed on your nut...Ed!)

Ahem. I now stand, corrected, at 1.863m.
I just thought the readers would be interested to know what was going on after a period of silence.
(Pah, a bloody excuse for congenital indolence and stupidity...Ed!)

You know you can be a real snappy bugger when you don't have any of this editing business to do!

Driving Over Bitter Lemons.

"Cyprus? What Cyprus?"
Mr Murphy nails most of it with this link, as usual, I love the sound of the money Swissing by at the end!

"See the Euro's turned out nice again."

Don't be stupit or a zafty  go to Cyprus and get crafty
(Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon)
Final word in this listed link from Mr Forsyth. Is the site significant, death and taxes?

Nick Shaxon may supply some answers, including quotes from the laureated Mr Krugman. If you really want to worry your socks off, Google the FT on Security aspects of Moscow Gold Plate in the Med!!

(Right having got that off your chest do you think we can get this blog back on track, you know, promoting world peace and justice, the arts, culture, fluffy stuff like that... Ed?)

Quite so!
I have thought for some time that the watch phrase for the new left should be :-
Impuestos o Muerte; don't eat the rich, tax 'em!
Step one:-  you cap my benefits I cap your tax allowances.

We are all in this together!

Interesting article, at this time,  about a part of the Spanish Economy by Giles Tremlett in today's Grauniad.
The term recession proofing is used, with some justification, when speaking about Mondragon the magic mountain.
There are problems, not all workers are members of the coop, finance can be hard if squeezed by mainstream banks or defaulting local authorities but, what is claimed,  as greater flexibility by member cooperatives and more committed workers seems to have kept the ship afloat! Broad brush it compares favorably with the devastation of other parts of Spain which, of course, we ignore at our peril.
We have our Coop, not that sexy, a bit like a spinster aunt in my youth, could be relied on for support and the odd fiver!
Linked, sadly and apparently,  without much influence or effect to the Labourandconservative party. The new face of the Big(ass) Society, the John Lewis Partnership. Good for high quality schmatter and service; god help those who can't afford it.
Fraternally yours
His Enlightenedness
Swami BP (the tall fat one)
Toady Lane
Nirvana

A Foggy Day in Suffolk

The miasma from the fens  has  seeped into the old brain box. (Now there's a thing...Ed)
I have been lurching around the house and in between lecturing Newsnight on the paucity, stupidity and childishly elemental nature of its economic analysis (ultimate put down they can't hear you dear) and proposing a cap on tax allowances and interest rates, I have proclaimed stoutly, robustly and without allowance of any contradiction to Messrs All and Sundry that today is International Book Day and not International Women's Day.

I believe I must now make an abject apology. I stand corrected. The interweb informs me that World Book Day is 23 April and also, he.. hem, that today is, in fact, in one sense, up to a point, International Women's Day, in most places.
Easy enough mistake for a busy man to make - women, books;  books, women.
The important thing is to move on going forward not to look back in any way shape or form and as both women and books are my passion I offer this tasteful portrayal of a clutch of beauties that have me ensnared at the moment.
(I'm not expected to edit  material which may contain pornography or what we might euphemistically call art photography, am I? I have standards. I left the employment of the dirty digger on a matter of ethics you know...Ed)
I didn't know there was a brand called ethics, is it 12 or 15 year old?

Runners and Riders in the Papabile Steaks

Seen outside our local health food shop, shameless.

Even more shameless, punting on:-

Marc Ouellet, good pedigree and a useful bet to date, now fading against the paced and well proportioned Odilo Scherer. Tipped, incidentally,  by Tom in the Telegraph.
(Stop forthwith! I will not have the Sacred Conclave, the expression, through Holy Mother the Church of the will of HIMSELF reduced to some seedy susurrations that would ill behove a group of blind drunk Orangemen on a day trip to Aintree...Ed)
Ooops! Somebody  dropped a pony on Angelo Scola. Looks good in the press photos but is carrying a bit more weight nowadays.