Water, water everywhere...

We can't afford education. 
We can't afford to manage our energy supply. 
We can't afford the Arts. 
We can't afford health care free at the point of need. 
We can't afford training or skills for young people. 
We can't afford the elderly. 
We can't afford unions. 
We can't afford "Green crap". 
We certainly can't afford the sick or disabled. 
We can't afford to help people who can't find a job - but that's OK, because we don't want to help people like them anyway. 
We can't afford libraries. 
We can't afford Health and Safety. 
We can't afford soldiers' pensions, so we're sacking them weeks before they qualify. 
We can't afford woodlands. 
We can't afford Human Rights. 
We can't afford food safety inspections and anyway, why shouldn't people eat slurry? 
We can't afford the North, quite frankly, and why would we want to? 
We certainly can't afford to invest in renewables, or to put any money into mitigating the effects of climate change, or to build resilience into our infrastructure - but that is absolutely fine because there's really no such thing as climate change, honest, and we must frack the hell out of the country because there's money to be made and once again we are promising energy too cheap to meter. 
We must have permanent Austerity or else we'll become like Greece - and we wouldn't want to become like Greece, would we? 

And then - Surrey floods! Berkshire floods! Some carpets in millionaires' riverside homes get spoiled! The Queen could see flood water from the battlements of Windsor Castle, were she not staying in one of her other homes at the moment. 

And... guess what? "We are a wealthy country," says Cameron. "Money is no object."

Updated to add: apparently the unlimited cheque of our money that Cameron wrote yesterday to bail out some  Tory safe seats is going to come out of "underspend" in government departments. In other words, from cuts to social security, health, education, defence...

Choices, choices

I have a life-threatening illness.

It is currently curable, they think. With an operation, maybe with more than one. With radiotherapy. Maybe, if needed, chemotherapy. Curable. It may not even affect my life expectancy.

But if it went untreated it would certainly kill me, in time.

So at times when life does not seem worth living, instead of knowing what I would have to do in order to cease, I know that all I have to do is refrain from doing things.

Don't go to hospital. Don't let them operate. Wait. Do what I'm good at: lie low, give no trouble, wait.

And things will happen, of their own accord, and I will not need to trouble myself - before long, will need to trouble nobody.

April Fool: Random Thoughts about Nick

April Fool

Nick always claimed he was an April Fools’ Day prank.

The story was that after his big sister Lesley was born his father said, “One’s enough”. So Nick’s Mum sabotaged the marital condoms. Before noon on April 1^st she was able to say “April Fool!” 

Sure enough, Nick was born on Boxing Day 1950.

I have no idea whether that was true or not, but remembering Romee, Nick’s tank driving, Nazi-escaping, Japanese-Prisoner-of-War-camp-surviving, multi-lingual German-Dutch-Jewish matriarch mother, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.  

(There’s a memorable vignette of Romee in A Liars Autobiography, by Graham Chapman, the deceased Monty Python member. Chapman and other Pythons used to drink at The Monarch in Chalk Farm Road, the pub that Nick’s parents ran, and attended Nick’s wedding some time in the 70s).

The Language of Disagreement

Preparing students for a seminar exam, recommended language for expressing disagreement includes:

- I'm afraid I'm not convinced...

- Well, you may have a point, but...

and

- I'm sorry but I really don't go along with that.

No mention at all of the most commonly used expressions in my household:

- Bollocks!

- Tummy rubbish!

and the diplomatic, not to say literary

- Up to a point, Lord Copper.


It seems a shame that students do not tend to get exposed to the actual English expressions used by people like me (by which I mean habitually foul-mouthed people, of course).

Which reminds me I have totally failed to introduce the expression 'bolleme' into everyday English. Based on lexeme, meaning a unit of lexis (or as we say in English, a word) bolleme means a unit of bollocks.

Examples:

Phew, that management meeting had a particularly high bolleme count, didn't it?

Looks like 'synergy' is bolleme of the day.

I thought that article was pretty good except for the bolleme on page 4

Adam Smith supposed that all participants in the market are rational actors and have all the information they need to choose rationally at all times based on their own best interests - which is a bit of a bolleme, when you come to look at the evidence.


There is clearly a need for this handy expression, but so far, alas, no takers.

What kind of job is Pope?

Last week’s most unexpected story was the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Roman Catholic Church. When I say unexpected, I mean it. A number of sources - mostly traceable to the Ur-source, Wikipedia - reported that it’s the first time a pope has resigned in 600 years, but it’s actually rarer than that. In 1415 three popes (or "popes") resigned simultaneously, because none of them could convince the rest of Christendom of his legitimacy. The RCC seems to have decided in retrospect, I don’t know on what basis, that one of these three, Gregory XII, was the proper pope and shouldn’t have needed to resign after all, in spite of his having been elected by a mere handful of cardinals, but at the time it was one of those historical deadlocks like the Schleswig-Holstein question to which nobody knew the answer. (The history of Anti-Popes, from the same University of Wiki, is most entertaining, by the way).

But Papa Josef Ratzinger has no rivals to the title. There are about five popes currently heading small denominations (two papacies became vacant in 2011), but there is not currently an Anti-Pope in the running for top Catholic. The last undisputed pope to resign was poor old Celestine V, in 1294, and Dante put him, or someone who looks a lot like him, into the ‘limbo of the futile’ for his pains. Celestine’s immediate successor as pope showed his gratitude by imprisoning the old man and then not feeding him, but he was canonized almost as soon as he was cold, which was probably not as much consolation as a few buns might have been. Celestine’s only other Papal act was to proclaim the principle that popes can resign.

Anyway, we are witnessing a one-in-800-year event. The Italians have a saying ogni morte del’ Papa (every time a Pope dies) meaning once in a blue moon, but compared with resignations, popes’ deaths are as common as mayflies’ and blue moons as mundane as midday.

There are a lot of strange things about this story. One of the strangest is how quickly it has been normalized, as it dawned on everyone how apparently sane and sensible this astonishing decision actually is. The Pope is 85, in fragile health, and has reportedly been advised not to travel. In any other line of work, retirement at this juncture would be remarkable only for the fact that the soon-to-be-retiree had gone on for so very long already. Pope makes sensible announcement, shock, horror.

But it’s also curious to consider the line of work he is in. The Pope is not simply a priest and a religious leader, but also a head of state. An absolute head of state, for all that he’s elected, and you don’t get many of those any more. Vatican State is the last absolute monarchy left in Europe, and the only theocracy.

Citizenship in this micro-state is determined by religious affiliation, which is true of a few other states in the world. But simply being a Catholic does not in itself get you a Vatican City passport. You have to be a high-ranking member of the clerical hierarchy – and therefore, male. Vatican City is a state which has no native-born citizens, and citizenship rights are granted purely on the basis of occupation. It seems to have few female citizens, as far as I can tell: the language of the Vatican website, which notes that in certain circumstances, citizenship may be extended to employees’ spouses, is carefully gender neutral, but one somehow doubts the Vatican is an equal-opportunity employer. Of its 800-odd citizens, three-quarters are celibate male clerics and most of the rest are members of the in-house mercenary army, the Swiss Guards.  Lose your job, and you are quite likely to lose your passport with it. If you find yourself stateless as well as unemployed after a particularly hard day at the Holy Office, the Italian state is treaty-bound to take up the slack. Citizenship does not enfranchise you to vote for your absolute monarch, either: that’s done by Cardinals (so long as they’re under 80) who for the most part are not actually citizens of the state whose ruler they are electing.

By far the oddest thing of all is that this bizarre theocratic uni-gender statelet sits on numerous international bodies and commissions, and has voting rights on many of them (not the UN, though, in a rare example of someone being sensible). It uses its position to affect international agreements on laws which govern all of us – notably those which affect women’s lives - and to avoid jurisdiction in matters, such as banking transparency, which most normal states are supposed to abide by.

This is as strange as if Barclays Bank or Tescos had managed to get a few acres of land to hoist their flag over and managed to persuade everyone to agree they were states. But citizenship in BarclayCity or Tescopolis would not be available to the employees, not for shelf-stackers or counter staff or even for the regional managers, and certainly not for the depositors or the customers, even those with loyalty cards - but reserved for just a very few top members of the board, holders of some kind of super Clubcard. Then imagine that this ersatz statehood gave the bank or the supermarket a seat on the international organizations who make decisions about, lets say, tax laws, or town planning. 

In the meantime, a million Pope jokes have succeeded and combined with those about horsemeat in burgers, Chris Huhne and his marriage, and so on. My personal favourite is that when Ratzinger ceases to be Pope he will return to being known as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger: and Ex Benedict, in fact.

NB 'A Hard Day At The Holy Office' is the title of a novel which was published, I think, in the 1970s. I've never read it, or seen a copy, but based on the title alone I'd love to. 

True Grit

Back in the UK for the first winter and spring we've had for 4 years, apart from very brief visits in January. Well, it was a fair old winter, the coldest December in 200 years (although globally the year was the warmest ever recorded). Snow fell, and stayed, until Christmas Day.
The worst thing was that it became intensely slippery underfoot. For some reason (increasing girth, decreasing agility) I hate and detest the idea of falling over. Partly physical cowardice - I really don't want to get hurt - but a good deal to do with not looking any more ridiculous than usual. The Beloved, who already had a dodgy knee, was much the same.
So as the ice stuck to the pavement day after day, I went out in search of grit. Now there's a thing you don't often have cause to shop for. Luckily the wonderful Roy's (Roys of Wroxham - it should be Wroys, wreally), which is just down the road from us at Anglia Square, has bags of budgie sand. In two different textures. This is a situation where choice doesn't work for me: I had no idea. Ended up grabbing 3 bags of one and 2 of the other. Sanded the pavement from one end to - nearly - the other. It did make a difference. Enlightened self interest, I suppose, especially as in one fairly short journey back from the city centre I had seen three people hit the ground hard. And then, at B's choir concert rehearsal, the professional tenor soloist stepped outside and broke his leg. I suppose choir masters have emergency tenors on direct dial - the replacement arrived 10 minutes before he was due on, taking the solo in the St Nicholas Cantata. And very good he was too.

Beware of pasta

The justification (or should that be "justification"?) for the blockade of Gaza has always been to preserve the security of Israel by keeping out dangerous materials. If pressed, apologists sometimes elaborate the justification from preserving security, to preserving Israel's very existence.

So, now that the announcement has come that the blockade is being eased after the public relations disaster of the storming of the Mavi Marmara and the detention of the aid flotilla on the high seas (footage of which, having been saved from confiscation, can be seen here)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/11/gaza-flotilla-attack-new-video

it's interesting to have a look at the list of things which can not be brought into Gaza.

Sewing machines, razors and spare parts for tractors are a no-no. Fair enough. Ingenious people, Palestinians: one can see how tractor parts, blades and perhaps needles could be cobbled together to make some sort of cutting (or perhaps sewing, or harrowing) missile which would threaten the security of the most heavily armed country in the Middle East.

Flavourings and smell enhancers, A4 paper, and something called "industrial margarine" are also banned, possibly in case an attack of greased paper planes impregnated with vile smells is planned.

But, OK, flavour enhancers have got to be chemicals, haven't they, and there may be some fiendish method of engineering them into something even nastier and more vuirulent than pine air freshener. The same goes for pencils, also banned - the graphite in them must be dangerous, I think.

Clothing fabric cannot be brought into Gaza. Nor can baby chicks. Nor can seeds. Nor can dried fruit. Nor can sage, cardomom, ginger, nutmeg, halva and, until now, jam, although apparently the "easing" of the blockade will henceforth permit the import of jam.

Rejoice, for jam is going to be available to the Palestinians of Gaza... tomorrow. Halva too, though apparently chocolate remains on the banned list unless brought in by a humanitarian organisation: it cannot be imported by merchants to sell.

Pizza, macaroni, and biscuits are also banned, lest they threaten Israel's security or its very existence.

In 1990, as Saddam invaded Kuwait, I was in Naples watching Italians panic-buying tins of tomatoes and packets of pasta. I was bemused by this at the time, because the products being swept off the shelves were staples produced in Italy, not imports whose prices and availability depended on peace in other countries.

But seeing that macaroni is banned from Gaza makes me think that maybe those Neapolitan shoppers were onto something. They were not, as I had assumed, spurred by atavistic memories of 1944 in Naples when the warehouses were boobytrapped and the sea mined, when there were no cats to be seen because they had been eaten ("and frankly," said a friend, "there were no rats either."), when all the trees for a day's walk outside the city had been stripped of their bark which was boiled up for soup.

No, they were not stocking up on food as I had supposed, but cunningly preparing an arsenal to be used if Saddam, not stopping at Kuwait, had swept west, crossed the Meditterranean and landed in Calabria.

They were preparing to defend themselves with tomato-paste missiles and the macaroni of mass destruction.

And it's obvious from reading the partial list of items banned in the blockade (apparently the list changes almost daily, but numbers about 4000) that macaroni is as dangerous today as it has always been, along with baby chicks, olives and soft drinks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7545636.stm#food