Boris Pulcinella - the lord of misrule

I watched as Channel 4's Head of News, Dorothy Byrne, gave her forthright MacTaggart speech from Edinburgh's media conference.

That's the speech where she urges media to confront power with truth and to call out lies and cowardice.

'The mouth of truth/La Bocca della Verità' - Rome

Ms Byrne illuminates her proposition with some of the recent stories told by Boris Johnson and of the curious way he avoided getting involved in panel-based question and answer sessions.

That he then went on to broadcast his own, controlled, Facebook multicast instead of facing credible press questioning.

The aftermath of the speech was predictable. Boris has now boycotted Channel 4's interviews and their coverage of the Biarritz G7 summit.

It's a move direct from Trump's playbook and so surely it can't be that long before we start hearing 'Fake News' chants from his podium? -suitably adapted to an Etonian turn of phrase - maybe a few peeks at Theophrastus for some character traits?

Boris represents (using Bevan's words) "the small body of people who, whenever they have the chance, have manipulated the political influence of the country for the benefit of the privileged few.” He's the traits of a chancer, hell-bent on aggrandisement, using the tools of bluster, body bulk and buffoonery to make his case, the odds of which have slid from a million to one to 'touch and go' in a matter of days. Kind of like a cliff edge?

I realise he is becoming easier to read now, too. The poker-playing distractions can be edited, the expansive arm waving, the personal space invasion, the faux detailed knowledge, the Greek and Latin quotations, the smirking demeanor, the Gary Oldman Churchill impressions, the raggedy attire. He thinks he is playing a blinder at the moment, with the character notes scrawled on his cuffs:

1. Who am I? A chancer
2. Where am I? On the edge of reason
3. When is it? one minute to midnight
4. Where have I just come from? The depths of Tory indoctrination
5. What do I want? Power and the glory
6. Why do I want it? Mine is the Kingdom
7. Why do I want it now? I'd get rumbled
9. How will I get what I want by doing what? Whatever it takes, including suspending democracy.
10. What must I overcome? Vox populi, vox imperium

I doesn't always work though. Donald Tusk illustrates he can read Boris and then use a spot of Neuro Linguistic Programming to out-flank him at this press confrontation. Tusk leans forward, mirrors and goes wide to outflank. Boris the Dangerous gets Tusked.

jamming all frequencies with 'Wir schaffen das'

Come to think of it, the vision of the future was predicted.

The lion and the unicorn
Were fighting for the crown
The lion beat the unicorn
All around the town.
Some gave them white bread,
And some gave them brown;
Some gave them plum cake
and drummed them out of town

The lion and unicorn is, of course, on the Queen's heraldic symbol.

And, naturally, on the gates to Buckingham Palace.

Unfortunately, the buffoon is still playing the plum cake and eat it game although the Germans and the French are, perhaps, familiar with the additional surviving stanza of the poem.

And when he had beat him out,
He beat him in again;
He beat him three times over,
His power to maintain.


So we get the comic bluffer citing Golden Age Pericles as his snobby Etonian preferred leader on his vapid Facebook show, "I'm glad you asked that question..."

Although Pericles may have built many of the surviving structures of ancient Greece, he did so by maladministration, pilfering the riches from the Greek Empire to do so. Then he ran a war as a diversionary tactic to get away from having his accomplices brought to trial.

Pericles' legacy is Athenian imperialism, which denies true democracy and freedom to the people of all but the ruling state. A bit like Etonian toffs using the country and its oiks as playthings.

Boris is having a clown laugh. The promotion of such an arrogant imperialism is said to have ruined Athens.

Now watch Boris ignore EU politicians and speak his own view over the top of theirs.

Symbolically, he puts his boot onto a table in the French Elysee palace. Hardly the studied diffidence of an OE.

The French were politely quick to say that this was no insult, although it illustrates the ruffian nature of Boris, and his wasted Etonian upbringing.

They say that through subtle things, such as F Blockers changing their own sheets, Etonians are shown that they are no longer children and any mess they make is theirs to fix. They didn't allow for this one.

It's a cartoon off! New Statesman vs The New Yorker

Has anyone else noticed, as I have, the remarkable similarity between the punchlines of this week's American dandified cultural commentator's gag and that of the slightly older British liberal sceptical hybrid's cartoon?

I wonder if they are, by any chance, related?

SAM E. DRESS

in which i revise peaky blinders

I had to take a little walk to the edge of town recently, to catch up with Peaky Blinders, before the new season hits. It is quite like a Birmingham gipsy version of Sopranos, with a backdrop of off-track betting instead of - er- garbage disposal.

The sense of place is strong too, with Small Heath, Birmingham like a kind of steampunk Bladerunner set, with swirling mists and flames coming from every dark corner. Some say the accents are off, but to this Southerner's ear there is enough to position Birmingham when it's needed and clear offsets to Jewish and Italian London and Belfast Irish when they are required.

There's enough of a context of traumatised soldiers back from World War I in the first series and the casual ways that post-war guns and ammunition are in plentiful supply. We get the struggle as the gangster-like kingpin grasps his way to better things, with almost wild western undertones and despite the inevitable obstacles from police and rival gangs and even the New York mafia.

The women become an increasing force to be reckoned with. A honey trap set in Series one which blows away the end of that particular series, in the last 240 frames.

Then there's Polly, the woman who could probably run the entire empire if required, and we see her steely resolve play out in Series 2. There's something almost Brechtian about some of the scenes in pubs and the living room where the plots get hatched.

Brecht would have Pirate Jenny singing, but here we get an unmissable dark musical soundtrack from the likes of Nick Cage, The White Stripes, Anna Calvi, The Kills, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Tom Waits, Laura Marling...the list goes on, and nearly all remixed to provide the visceral guitar and clanks that set the junkyard tone. Listen for that gun being cocked in the theme tune. Here's a spotify playlist of 120 of them, even David Bowie's Lazerus.

Will I have revised it all in time for the new series 5, which starts next week? I think so, and I'll expect it to be just as cinematic.

Brompton bike Carradice saddlebag

I've been musing about getting a saddlebag for the folding bike, instead of reliance on a backpack. It's a Brompton and therefore care has to be taken to select something that doesn't interfere with the fold. Brompton provides a front mounting hook as well as a rack, but I've talked to the people in the bike shop and they reckon that hardly anyone orders the rack fitting. (ie M6L etc).

I decided to look at a couple of options - the terminally hip Frost and Seker Otis (and priced so!) and the cyclists' friend Carradice Nelson long flap. They are both lovely bags, with pros and cons, but in the end I settled for the well-specified Nelson.

So why the Carradice? It could hold my laptop, whether the flap was extended or not. I quite liked the material too. A dark green duck material, which fluffs up in the rain to provide waterproofing. There's a couple of side pockets too, and a drawstring to pull the content tight.

The Carradice quick-release called a Bagman Expedition keeps it nice and steady on the back and the under-rail stops the bag from swaying. The instructions for fitting were way more detailed than I needed and the bag was fitted in about 5 minutes, complete with quick release. There's also a carry strap for the bag, so it can go across the shoulder when out and about.

Here's the rack fitted, and then another with the bag attached. I did have to make a few fine tuning adjustments once it was all assembled.

The click-in for the bag is very quick, although I'm wondering whether the amount that the rack sticks out at the back might interfere with the folded bike manouvreability?

It is good that the entire mechanism stays out of the way of the fold (which was something I was looking for), but the Frost and Sekers has dispensed with the 'rails' part of the design and added a strap around the seatpost. My folded view of the bike illustrates the way that the rack is mounted.

However, the profile of the bike with the bag is still quite elegant, so I'll see how I get along with this combination.

blamer boris

I predicted that Boris would use Gove as the scapegoat for Brexit, but it looks as if Dom's directed him to use the EU instead. That letter to Tusk illustrates that he's making demands he knows the EU will turn down so he can blame them for no-deal Brexit.

As for Yellowhammer; It's almost a year since it featured on this blog. Worrisome if the press are only just giving it an inspection. I even laid out several scenarios back in September 2018.

Sadly they are still in play: 3. The Bojo/J R-M clown decoy; 4. No deal; and 5. Remain.

It is quite awful that after three years, the best that our well-paid government can come up with is to crash out, with a stupifyingly basic illusion of control and unreciprocated 'wishes' built into the outcomes. Strong and stable? Pah! Lorryparks, shortages, economic uncertainty. That looks more likely.

Tusk has kicked out the Boris backstop plea. The EU has been consistent from before the 2016 Referendum in saying that any member leaving the EU will find themselves in a worse position than if they had stayed.

Comic-book Boris cynically conjures money to buy his way out of a jam, with empty promises lavished upon carefully targeted sections of the electorate. Then wait for the "blame everyone else" tactic to properly kick in, neatly side-stepping the many Referendum infractions. Meanwhile, the so-called leader of the opposition fades ever closer to grey.

hawk

Arriving back home from the Jazz Afternoon, I noticed the birds making a louder than usual noise. I glanced across the field and spotted this hawk sitting on a pole.

A quick grab of the camera, during which time it spotted me, and one "through the window pane" snapshot. I'm guessing that the birds on the field have all gone into hiding and so maybe it was still looking out for dragonflies from the stream and the pond.

a Woodstock state of mind

Sometimes I'll wake up at a random early hour and think its better to make a cup of tea, rather than to try to get straight back to sleep. So there I was at 3am listening to the World Service with a cuppa and on came a show about Woodstock. Woodstock was in 1969, so that's 50 years ago.

And as Arlo Guthrie narrated it, I realised I knew all of the lyrics and all of the scenes. From Richie Havens opening the festival to Jimi Hendrix closing it. Buzz Urkle's famous photo catches the scene of daybreak and mud across Max Yasgur's farm "It's a new dawn."

Havens, drenched in sweat, brought on early to improvise a three-hour set, whilst organisers finished building the primitive stage and wiring the sound system. The other bands and performers caught in the traffic of 500 thousand people coming to the event.

The recordings were all spectacularly taped by Eddie Kramer who had brought the Hendrix mobile recording studio along and volunteered to record and engineer everything, in what is sparklingly good quality. "Up is Louder," as Eddie might say.

Add the sheer number of cameras with all the original footage shot on 16mm film, and post-produced to 70mm, so that the optical soundtrack could be added.

No wonder so many people came; the $18 roll-call of acts included Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, Melanie Safka, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Country Joe McDonald and the Fish, Santana, The Incredible String Band, Canned Heat, Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Ten Years After, The Band, Johnny Winter, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and more.

It's three days later that we see the now free concert with Hendrix playing out with the Star-Spangled Banner which since is often used as the outro at live Stones gigs. "The best electric guitarist".

An hour of radio, but a lifetime of philosophy.

stand and deliver?

I've commented before about the proliferation of Parking Apps, including ones that are re-badged clones of another (stand up, Westminster Council). It is almost time for a Manager of Managers to cover the whole lot with a single App on top.

I'd changed bank cards which has meant progressively standing around re-programming each of them when I've wanted to park. The other day a different experience.

Payment rejected, card invalid.

I tried this with a couple of cards and eventually resorted to huge quantities of coins. The machine didn't have a card reader or a WavePay. A few minutes later I'm contacted by someone claiming to be from my bank.

"Ahah," I say, "But how do I know it is you?" They agreed and told me to call the usual number.

Big mistake. I was now in call centre purgatory and had to wait for another 10 minutes. Then the man (Raj) called me again. He suggested that I could ask him some letters from my password.

"Okay," I thought.

"X and Z" he swiftly replied.

"Nope." I thought and told him he was wrong.

He hung up.

I restarted my long call to the help desk. It was raining.

After around 35 minutes from my failed attempt to pay for parking, I was through to a person.

"Lat's see," she said,"I see you need our fraud department. I'll put you through"

I recognised the music.

Gritted my teeth.

Eventually I was through to Raj again.

"Hello," and he started to put right my cards.

"The last transaction...Was it to APCOA?"

"Yes, I was trying to pay for some parking."

"I see we have stopped your credit card too - it looks like around the same time."

"Yes," I said, "I'm trying to do some shopping, but you've blocked both of my day-to-day cards"

I could tell he was a professinal, not to be drawn into any of my venting.

"It's all put back to normal now," he said, or something like it.

Now I could go shopping and ponder the advantages of coinless payment.

interrail

I noticed the Rail Delivery Group were about to withdraw from Interrail, but have now scrapped the idea.

I say keep it. I've travelled twice on youthful Interrail cards and can say that both trips are still packed with memories.

I started one of them in London, and the other in Germany (where I was living, at the time). And yes, I still have that small orange tent. The map shows approximately trip one. Entirely made up as we went along. The Alps and Greek Islands.

I know that people go on gap years now, to Australia, South America and India, but there's something densely packed about the experiences when one can simply write a new destination into a little book, hop a train, and go there.

Some examples, notwithstanding the changes in security, currency and correctness.

• sitting outside a smoky sunlit cafe in Brussels, with a copy of the Thomas Cook timetable, planning a route. The whole of Europe beckons.
• arriving in any European train station and looking for the lockers to stash backpacks.
• staying in German youth hostels and marvelling at their hotel-like quality.

• sleeping rough on park benches, under silver space blankets and with just enough local currency to buy a coffee and croissant in the morning.
• arriving in Venice on the day of the Historical Regatta.
• climbing the Acropolis in the midday sun.
• listening to other tourists marvelling as they do just one of our sightseeing trips
• Buying those little flat Greek leather sandals that I still wear.
• Being asked by the gun-toting Caribineri, to move from the steps of the train station in Rome
• Running, breathless, to catch the deck class ship from Patras to Brindisi
• Being offered packs of 200 cigarettes by 8-year-old boys in Naples
• Marvelling at how the train's formation would keep changing, and the coffee would reflect the local culture.
  

• Being offered a lift by Swiss baker to the local camp site.
• Seeing the frenzy of white goods like fridges being loaded onto the train in Serbia.

• Saying "See you in Rome," as our group divided, from the grassy slopes of Grindelwald.
• Planning a longer route in order to sleep overnight on the train.
• Triumphantly getting a couchette carriage.
• Pitching a tent on the beach in Greece.
• The cliche of meeting someone we knew, in the sea, on the shores of the Mediterranean

• Finding the Diana the Huntress Club in Athens, leaving all our bags and then getting stranded overnight on Aegina when we missed the last catamaran.
• Heading up the Jungfraujoch to the Ice Station and the Glacier, in the Swiss Alps, fresh from the sun of Greece.
• Eating beautiful red Rhone grapes as we flashed through the French countryside on a quiet express.
• Turning up at the Montreux jazz festival.
• Getting picked from the platform by a 'little old lady' to stay in her rental room in Salzburg.

• Stopping off in Belgrade because we'd been on the same train for 24 hours.
• Finding the Prater (Harry Lime) and the Blue Danube (not the big wide brown one) in Vienna.
• Walking through Pompeii

The list goes on. What about Cologne Cathedral? The Black Forest? The French Riviera, sitting eating a huge cool ice cream in Cannes? Monte Carlo?

I've been back to many of the places, on a combination of business and car-based road trips, but there's a certain magical thrill to arriving all low-carbon-footprint with one's belongings on one's back, in the main train station.

Hmmm. I'm still tempted...

the big lie and the big wrong

Rummage around the various Remain web-sites and it is noticeable that there isn't a declared game-plan to halt the path of intelligent comic-book villain Cummings. He's already said that even if there's a vote of no confidence in Boris, that through 'people vs parliament' trickery Boris will stay in position long enough to see the No Deal roll into ratification by default. He's probably modelled it in one of his visualisation rooms. People, Ideas, Machines and Boyd OODA loops (observe–orient–decide–act).

The alternative he needs to parry is formation of a government of national unity from the other parties. Cummings' agnostic ideology blocks this. It's all about the power. And, ironically, the money.

Too many of the Cabinet interests and their supporters are ready to cash in on Brexit. Welcome to Casino Britain. Like Vegas, only rainier. And well-leveraged by Cummings' vocabulary of insight.

He understands that immersion in his version of the truth can be overwhelming. Data, charts, graphics, maybe a cartoon or two. Stories (e.g Icarus) and authority (e.g ‘witch doctor’) to evidence/experiment (e.g physics, wind tunnels) and quantitative models. He's the combustion for the headpieces filled with straw.



Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow


I've decided to put up a strategy for the Remainers, because no one else will.

We must remember that Cummings eschews Parliament (he's already refused to be summoned to a select committee to answer for the last round of alleged misdeeds). Now with the keys to Number 10, he's prepared to bully the elected members, threaten the Civil Service, jam the constitution, ignore Parliament's protests and to suggest that Sovereignty is only for guidance. He's a wrong-un, but the blond buffoon is riding on his tails.

X reality enhancements

We've usually had Sony TVs as our main telly. They give high-quality pictures and are usually built like tanks, to the point that a couple of them still worked when they were replaced. Average life? At least 10 years.

That made it suspicious when a 4K flat screen one died after about 2 years. Right in the middle of a TV show, with skittering lines across the picture. To start with I thought it was a transmission error, then I realised when I rebooted the set that it was something altogether more serious.

I found the paperwork, realised that we'd bought it at a well-known store and took it back. "No problem", said the kindly folk, "It'll take about 10 days to fix."

And off it travelled, this time from Exeter to Swindon, to a repair shop.

Days passed.

Weeks passed.

I called them.

"Can't get the part, it's on order from Sony."

We waited.

More days.

More weeks.

I decided to pay the store a visit. They thought it had been repaired. They hunted around. Couldn't find it. Called the repair place.

"Can't get the part, it's on order from Sony."

Okay. What to do.

"How about a replacement?" ventured the helpful associate.

"Well, okay, but I wasn't expecting to have to do this..."

"It's an XYZ123. We have the 2019 version in. Its got the improvements. I'll see if we have one boxed."

"Can I take a look at it as well? You know, the aesthetics?"

He nodded: "Sure. There's one in the display area. It should look the same."

An hour later I'm sliding the bulky box into the back of my car.

I'll have to reprogram everything, but we're now 2019 4K X-Reality Pro Upscaler Triluminos enabled.