Sunday, April 14, 2013
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Boring stuff again, and after this we will resume normal service ... but for now I'm drawing your attention to one of Steve Bell’s cartoons in The Guardian, and to what I think might have been Margaret’s Two Big Contributions to British Culture.
Back in the bad old days, following the Thatcherites’ sell-off of so many council
houses, and their decision to let market forces and the private sector re-house
the poor, it was only a matter of time before young people without jobs became
refugees in their own country, and many of the enterprising and adventurous
went off to live on the margins of society in old vans and buses. perhaps they thought they were buying into a culture of freedom of choice. They became what were commonly known as the
New-Age Travellers.
But freedom of choice probably didn’t have a lot to do with it. For most it was a rational decision taken in
the face of a new certainty … that in practical terms, they were no longer
welcome in their own communities. In
time, faced with enduring poverty and squalor, many who were trapped in that
lifestyle found themselves in cultural isolation, and in a perpetually
relocating mobile ghetto. Their children, and their children's children still suffer. Thanks for
that, Margaret.
I’ve often wondered why Mrs Thatcher allowed the Argentines to
invade the Falklands in the first place.
Was it a failure of military and diplomatic intelligence gathering
? To me this seems unlikely because anyone who was reading a serious daily newspaper at
that time knew all about the Argentines’ belligerent rhetoric ... so why on Earth
didn’t Mrs Thatcher just pick up the phone and tell them not to even think
about it ? To me it seemed then like a massive dereliction of the Churchillian precept of protecting freedom
with eternal vigilance, and her inaction amounted to a truly criminal neglect of her duty of
care for distant friends.
So, having got herself into such very hot water she was then forced
to re-invent herself as the glorious leader of a military nation, and in doing
so she committed us all to paying for an unnecessary war that should never have happened, and then to
reinforcing a newly self-important and self-serving military-industrial complex
that still holds the UK’s bankrupt economy in a less than fully creative form of
abeyance. Later, the scoundrel Blair was
to follow her example. Thanks for that,
Margaret.
'Nuff said.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
sorry if football bores you, but this was a one-off, and is possibly the best of all time ... well, er-um, since statistics began !
http://www.thescore.ie/xavi-100-pass-completion-psg-865585-Apr2013/
perhaps its time they introduced a nobel prize for football
Friday, April 5, 2013
trouble at mill ...
Stravinsky's unconventional major-minor seventh chord in his arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner" led to an incident with the Boston police on 15 January 1944, and he was warned that the authorities could impose a $100 fine upon any "rearrangement of the national anthem in whole or in part".[45][46] The incident soon established itself as a myth, in which Stravinsky was supposedly arrested for playing the music.[47]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHYCqFfpNGQ
another unsavoury migrant ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNw1ZPzqP9Q
POSTSCRIPT:
of course, it hasn't all been one-way traffic and here's another naughty boy ... through whom the river of music rushed all too briefly ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ALNd3kIH0
Sunday, March 31, 2013
gold mine in tibet ... an idle cynic speculates ...
i've been using the excellent google earth, trying to locate the high altitude mining area in tibet where a landslide killed a large number of miners last week
this site is in the right area according to some of the vague news descriptions
the wide valley running along the top of the first picture has surprisingly good roads and the river runs down towards lhasa about forty miles to the west
the narrower mining valley branches off to the southern side of it and then runs up to a ridge at the east
the second picture shows the upper valley that runs from the processing plant up to the open air quarries
the mountain sides here aren't solid rock
they are just a mass of dust and rubble as far as i can see and that will be held together by permafrost
... until it melts
so the whole quarrying process is very risky
the lower processing area looks as if a lot of money has been invested here in plant and buildings
almost due south there is an upper area connected with good roads and there are substantial buildings on that mountainside that might be a drift mine entrance
the main valley runs up to the east from the processing area towards two main open quarries and there are a lot of mountain roads that suggest the whole side of the mountain might be excavated in due course
at the eastern end, near the top of the valley, you can see the two areas where the mountain is being quarried
looking down through the clear air, when i zoomed in on the mountain top quarries, i was astonished at the number of lorries and diggers that could be seen
29°41'35.45"N, 91°45'14.79"E
in this picture you see where terraces are being excavated and the spoil is being dumped at one side
at top left and centre of this last picture are two little compounds where vehicles might have been parked overnight whilst their drivers slept
is this where the landslide happened ?
if so, it will have also blocked the only viable route between the open quarries and the processing plant
production would be threatened
might this explain the alacrity to begin the "rescue operation" ?
STOP PRESS : Next day ... i've only just found the mining company's own website with a full description of their plans for the valley ... http://www.chinagoldintl.com/i/pdf/E-PhaseIIJiamaResource12Nov12.pdf ... which was presented to the world six months ago as a feasibility study for investors.
the schemes for shafts and drifts beneath and beyomd the quarries are shown on pages 77 and 78
From my point of view, very interesting and very instructive.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
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apropos du nuffinque ...
The mind floats free on Sunday mornings now that Foxy has taken his long walk to the stars.
I wake to read the first forty marvellous pages of Orhan Pamuk's Museum Of Innocence, and am seduced by his smooth talk in to a mental quicksand, up to my eyebrows in other people's complexities.
Then I try to finish a letter to Linda but stumble to a halt over this question ...
How will my grandson understand the difference between a non sequitur and an oxymoron if I am not there ?
Then I discover that I can change the settings on my cheap printer to scan postcards in wonderful detail.
... all this before eight o clock.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
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