A Quiet Day on Twitter

One of the Tweets today observed that it was all very quiet. This prompted the following observations. I know I am now a senior citizen because every so often I have to resist the temptation of starting a sentence with the words, ‘in the fifties...’ I am afraid I look back on those rather bleak times with great affection, even though I didn’t fully appreciate what it meant for me i.e., practically no chance of higher education or a job that required the use of a brain. Such was the lot of many of us Secondary Mod types. (That explains a few shoulder chips I hear you say). With school being a bit predictable many of us tried to specialise in technical matters. Chemistry sets were all the rage, mainly with a view to making smells and bangs, while Amateur Radio was another. It was this latter interest that I devoted some time to. Living right in the middle of a town my parents preferred Rediffusion whereby top quality sound from the Home Service, the Light Programme and Radio Three was piped into our home, which happened to be a pub. I mention this as reliable reception was essential for the big fight nights when the bars would be full to hear Freddie Mills, or one of the other boxing heroes of the day, do the distance to a usually bloody victory. With trolley bus cables and four sets of traffic lights conventional radios would deliver programmes through a haze of interference.

My main ambition was of course to get tuned into some of the radio stations coming from Europe. Radio Luxembourg was the main target because from the mid-fifties it was picking up on youth culture and playing records which would never get to the BBC’s limited popular music coverage. True Ham ( Amateur) Radio was all about , men, and they almost usually were, building transmitters and communicating with people all over the world by means of the short wave frequency. This was rather ‘hit and miss’ as atmospheric conditions and the randomness of the ionosphere would determine whether or not another enthusiast would be contacted. At the centre of this pastime for me was the magazine ‘Practical Wireless’ which contained many advertisements for radios you could build from kits. The one I bought looked good but even my science teacher could not get it to work. I soon went off the idea of amateur radio when I learnt that I not only had to pass an exam but under the then licensing laws the only conversations permitted were with regard to the technical details of the respective sets involved and other spoddy type info. When I was able to buy old valve sets from auctions, Radio Luxembourg and Voice of America, as well as the American Forces Network, soon replaced the BBC as I was able to tune into jazz programmes beyond my limited knowledge. This was achieved by climbing over the pub roof and putting up a hundred feet of aerial wire. I never did tell my parents. In 1961 we moved to the Kent coast where the reception was astounding compared with that at the pub. I even caught JFK live when he broadcast to the world setting out his brinkmanship policy over Cuba: a tad worrying at the time.

So it is with this background that I came to the internet, e-mail, blogging and Twitter. It really is a system of communication which far, far, exceeds our smoggy ambitions of the fifties. Political action was all to do with leaflets and pamphlets laboriously produced by means of a stencil and a hand cranked Gestetner. If there was a bit of money then you might be able to get a professional printer to run some leaflets off. In my part of the world there was a firm run by a Quaker family so the regional CND was greatly indebted to them. Letters to the editor l seem rather quaint now. We did toy with the idea of a pirate radio outside the three mile limit but transmitters, not to mention boats, were well beyond our teenage means or abilities.

By way of contrast I can now be in contact with like minded people all over the world should I care to put in the effort. I can play my part in the dissemination of information and receive as much as I want in return. I can achieve through Skype what radio hams could not do within the technology and licence terms of their day. This is why Twitter and the like is so important to small businesses, environmental campaigning and why the boundaries between town and country can be crossed with ease. It also means that the coming generations of elderly people need never be lonely as long as they can log on and take part. It also means that those who are oppressed by their rulers will always find ways of getting the facts through to the wider world, which will eventually become a ‘global village’ ( see www.marshallmcluhan.com/ ), if we can sustain it. I think it was G.K.Chesterton who said that the village was the highest form of civilisation. To get a global village is surely a worthy aim. Ghandi would probably say, as he did of western civilisation, ‘Now that would be a good idea’.

Dacier

Making a Virtue out of a Necessity: Or, Trident Lite

Having been a ‘ban the bomber’ on those marches in the early sixties I still feel guilty at having failed. I also still feel guilty that underneath all of my marching, speecheefying and giving the thin blue line a bit of a run around, I was always thinking, ‘I hope those Marxist Fascists over there don’t march in when we get rid of these stupid bangers’. By the seventies I was thinking, ‘Well if they do we will go down with our own personal bang which is probably better than inflicting it on the rest of the planet’. Little did I know that the peril to be inflicted would come more from a global economy which made some very affluent, others very poor, and all of us heading for hell in a bucket.

What is my point? Just hang in there a second. Well, at least I recognised the perils and had to decide what the right route was in moral terms. There were those among us then who had no such doubts. Bertram Russell was one, Canon John Collins another. The Canon had been a bomber pilot at the time of Dresden with Hiroshima and Nagasaki yet to come. Not only listen to your radicals but listen to those who have seen into the abyss. Between the two perspectives we all know that ‘MAD’, i.e., mutually assured destruction, is not a defence mechanism but a suicide pact. Against such people I used to feel a bit of a moral coward, and I think I still do, as it is easier to be brave when you have had a great life.

This really does bring me to my point. Why start proclaiming that we will reduce the number of our Trident submarines down to three from four? Come off it Gordon! You know as well I do up here in the agricultural hills that your mini ministers have done so much to undermine, that you can’t afford to do anything else. You can’t really afford three Trident Subs, let alone an ID Card Scheme not to mention a properly conducted land war in Afghanistan. You have written on ‘Courage’ and now is the time to put that noble concept into practice and have the courage to set out the reality. How about saying, ‘We cannot afford a nuclear deterrent so we will reduce it, and at the very least, we will make every effort to further multilateralism’. Not exactly the moral high ground but at least it is honest and will take a bit of courage to express. You have nothing to lose. In any case, and this will appeal to your fragile political judgement, the environmental flip over point might well be reached before anyone actually has to press the button. At least one thing is pretty clear by now. It won’t be you on the hotline to Washington or to Naval Command at Northwood authorising any such depression. Your vaporisation will have already occurred within the next 9 months. ‘Another fine mess you’ve got us into......’

Dacier

What we have in Common: the School Run, whether Urban or Rural

Not so long ago we lived just round the corner from a popular primary school. Nice for property values, but bad for a quiet life and one’s faith in human nature. I thought that parents might not only care about their own children but might just have a thought for the safety of their child's class mates, not to mention other road users. It would seem that this is a thought which will never be fully fulfilled as I have recently noticed two recurring themes.

Firstly, that a late parent is a menace. They will have no qualms about approaching bad bends at speed and in the middle of the road, nor will they pay much attention to avoid driving in the middle of the road when they are trying to give an impression of a being a champion drag racer. Luckily there are not many other road users coming in the other direction so most seem to survive.

The second thing I have noticed is the way in which the zig zag lines which indicate a dangerous place to park outside a school are universally ignored. Should any unfortunate toddler forget the perils, even of a minor road, and step out from behind such an illegally parked car, then I think a manslaughter ( child slaughter?) charge should be brought against such a parent as well as against the 2 brain celled driver who can't manage to observe a 30 speed limit, let alone engage the limited brain power quickly enough to avoid a post school hyperactive child.

Both these steps of misdemeanors seem to be practised whether the parents live in the countryside or the town. The only difference seems to be is that there are more 4x4s in the town and the urban dweller has a great talent for continuing to turn into a narrow street, even though it is clear that fifty other cars are now stationary due to a badly parked 4x4 owned by a parent who is still gassing with other parents back at the school gate, oblivious of their child’s frustration and the mega traffic jam that has developed. This happened when we lived in Worcester and I took the trouble to walk round the corner and inform the parent of the consequences piling up out of sight. ‘Oh, it’s my husband’s car really; I’ve never learnt how to park it’. I politely advised that this was probably not the best comment to make should a policeman be taking the details of the obstructing vehicle when she got back to it. An idle thought of course because should such a thing have occurred, it would have been as rare as the last sighting of a sword fish at Worcester, as reported in ‘Rural Sports' published in 1812 by the Rev. Daniel. As though that was not rare enough, it is reported that a hapless swimmer fell victim to the fish and died. The fish itself was captured as proof of these events. Such a conclusive outcome cannot be guaranteed with road fatalities, a fact of life which those on the school run, whether in town or country, would do well to remember.

Dacier

Tweeting and the Twitter Twits at the BBC

Two weeks ago the Today Programme, mainly through the agency of Mr John Humphries, had a go at Twitter. Apparently Mathew Paris had been asked to judge some kind of student competition and the audience and participants were invited to tweet each other throughout. What the competition was and why the invitation was extended I have no idea, nor do I wish to have one. Mathew Paris responded in a brilliant piece of prose within the character limit which was admirable, if rather scathing. I have no argument with Mr Paris at all. I respect him both as an ex-politicians, journalist and excellent commentator. What I take exception to was the patronising, and at times dismissive response of Mr Humphries and the background sniggerers in the studio. It was clear that the gargling classes in this matter did not understand what Twitter could be about, would rather not know, and displayed their technophobe credentials, rather like the primitive who might spurn the benefits of an invention like the parachute.

In my experience the phobia to which I refer is displayed by a mocking laziness which denies the possibility that there might be something in the subject under discussion. Those who will decry what I have called the ‘privatisation of society’, namely the cloistering of us all into out little boxes where we are unlikely to know who is in the next box, also decry the expansion of communications which are now available to us all. From our ‘isolated’ residence, as journalists often describe this part of the world, I can be in touch with any number of people , check out my facts and e-mail my MPs and Councillor should I so wish. I am as isolated as I want to be or as much in the swim as I feel I need to be. Granted, there are all sorts of people using Twitter, many of whom you will quickly block, but there are others who you will gladly spare some time to see what they have to say or what information they want to pass on. This can be both entertaining and informative, as well as plain nosy.

So why all the mockery? In the first place it is a natural response when confronted by something new, which requires a bit of effort to understand, and which consciously or subconsciously threatens the status quo, to resort to mocking the messenger. Secondly, and I have banged on about this several times already, perhaps the antagonism is prompted by seeing all this ‘talking’ to each other as a threat. They are quite right to do so because it may well expose the fragility of their own democratic principles. All I can say is to tell them to read, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and they might just see that it really is better to communicate, rather than to remain silent.

Dacier

Wanted prime Movers: No Previous Experience Necessary

I’m afraid some of my regular readers may have noticed I whinge on a bit. This is not a symptom of age, it’s just me. However, I have always felt that if you are in a position to do something about the subject of your whinge, you have not earned the right to whinge unless you try to do something about it. If this rather untidy life has taught me anything the low art of whinging is no more than throwing paint in the air. Whinging needs something more to elevate it to the heights of grand art. The real art lies in the development of arguments which show that the whinge is not only justified, that it is perfectly sensible to do something about it, and that other ‘no action whingers’ should either shut up, or roll their sleeves up. When I hear someone declare, ‘Well, we didn’t have a safe footpath to the school, so we decided to do something about it’, I am filled with admiration. If someone says they like moaning in the absence of action I put them down on the list somewhere in the region of the Nihilists and politely point out that their attitude is not only negative but is proving to be rather irritating.

On a very minor scale Sian and I have taken up a few issues over the years, usually on points of fairness, and dare I say Justice, and given the objects of our attention a good run for their money. This can sometimes be a worrying process but what is the point of just existing if you do nothing? These little campaigns have often failed but the small successes remind us that something can always be done, even thought it may lead to nothing. We have found that there is no need to go looking for trouble and when there is none about, we go about our lives in a perfectly normal manner. Others may disagree. Why should the bullies have the best advocates, or claim the victory because there is no one to take them on. The famous McDonalds libel case should remind us that every so often, a few individuals, two in that case, can have enormous strength to keep on going against all the odds, and serve as a great beacon to us lesser mortals that sometimes we can have an effect.

In my well spent youth as an enthusiastic unilateralist, syndicalist, vegetarian and drifter, I used to be, and continue to be, very amused by people who think there must be a person in charge who can command the unruly mob and remove the problem for the sometimes unruly representative of authority who wishes to tidy things up. Or more prosaically, who will be in charge of the refreshments?

Should we ever be asked who is in charge Sian and I would now encourage all present to recite, the words of the Clown protesters at the G 8 summit at St. Andrews a few years back. Asked by a bemused police Superintendent, ‘Whose in charge? ’ the Clown Collective, after muttering nonsense in a huddle, burst forth with the reply, ‘We are!'.

In my more verbose moments, and these are difficult to ascertain, as most of my moments are verbose, I can scale the heights of condemnation, assisted by exaggeration, hyperbole and sarcasm, none of which talents, if talents they be, I admire. I like to think I still recognise them however. But, I will never respect ignorance, albeit coming from a great height, especially when seasoned by the salt of patronisation, although I will pity it when it comes from those who know no better. I will listen to objective reason seasoned by humanity, and I will attempt to expose fallacies and untruths. In all of these I will fail, but once in a while the power of the spoken or written word, and sometimes the forces of embarrassment, will succeed in some small measure and I feel that for once we have had a glimpse of whatever that notion of Justice might be. Those who moan and do nothing should try it. It might do them some good. Why not become a prime mover?

Getting to Grips with Rural Housing

A full discussion paper is available on request by leaving a comment

Firstly, let me make it clear that I appreciate that this can be a sensitive and highly charged topic. Having been observing the trends and listening to people’s views on the subject for more than forty years I have no illusions as to how strongly some people can feel. Secondly, I think we must all appreciate that market forces sweep us all along whether it be in past or present generations. More often than not people finish up being swept up on their residential beach by virtue of economic forces expanding or reducing their choices. Fairness to the individuals or the communities concerned does not come into it. The modern mantra seems to be that you cannot fight market forces. It would seem that in recent times, whatever the rhetoric, we cannot even moderate or mitigate their effect either.

The consequence for rural housing is that young people who have grown up in the countryside cannot afford to stay, a fact recognised this week by the Federation of Master Builders in their press release of 1.9.09:

‘The Federation of Master Builders has demanded action to increase the supply of affordable rural housing following today’s announcement by the National Housing Federation, the National Association of Small Schools, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, that Primary schools are closing at a rate of one a month in rural England’.

Granted you can accuse them of having a vested interest in taking up this cause, but all of us who live in the countryside, for whatever reason, have a vested interest in seeing that market forces do not rumble on towards their inevitable conclusion of an absence of young people beyond higher education age. The demographic imbalance is already seeing schools, shops, post offices and pubs closing with those left behind in a landscape with an ageing population. There is a need to assess whether we like the outcomes predicted and then discuss whether there is anything we can do about it. The aim should be a viable and sustainable community.

The question at the centre of that assessment is whether intervention by central or local government is possible, whether it should be done at all, and how can competing interests be resolved. The government will say that it has already intervened into the housing market by introducing measures to reduce the number of unoccupied houses and by encouraging the building of affordable homes for local young people through housing associations. This is undoubtedly true, but it is not enough. Last week it was reported that the desire of the Government to see that social housing rents fell in line with interest payments for mortgage borrowers, would lead to a fall in the already limited funds available for new builds.

The Master Builders also reminded us of the ever present threat to our schools. Having lived in a village where the school was closed there is nothing more effective in killing a community spirit, closely followed by closing the shop, the pub and the church. Twenty percent of us live in the countryside, so why not recognise it as a worthy contrast to the city sprawls of the rest of the nation and try and maintain a healthy inter relationship? If the question has even been considered there does not appear to have been much of an answer as the original life blood of the countryside, agriculture, is seen as a marginal industry. Who cares if 50% of our milk producers have left the industry in the past 12 years or that pig farmers are following suit, or that there are many other products are having to be sold for less than the cost of production? One milk producer whose withdrawal from the industry was reported on Farming Today on BBC Radio 4 this Tuesday (1.9.09) said that he was no longer prepared to do a 70 hour week for £2 per hour. To achieve a sustainable countryside we need affordable housing, and jobs, at least within reach, so that we keep the young families we have. Without children there will be no need for schools and so the possibility of attracting young families who can afford rural properties, will have also gone. Trying to balance these competing elements while preserving the quality of the landscape is by no means easy and it is not surprising that many would rather deal with more easily solved problems. A search under Rural Housing will reveal loads of papers and bodies reporting on the problem. Meanwhile the inexorable forces do their worst in the absence of positive action.

So where should we go from here. Firstly, we should stop ignoring the question and leaving it to the hierarchy. Inhibitions and prejudices about where we are from and how long we have been here must be set aside and, as country dwellers, if we really believe this aspect of civilisation is worth maintaining, we should have a good think and press for change. As a starting point, should you want to be e-mailed a rather long draft discussion paper, please leave a comment.

Dacier

Citizen Cider and the Rescue by Ciderman

Having been trying to get rid of our accumulated junk for sometime I decided that it was time that our garage had some attention. The only thing we don’t keep in it is the car. There is so much junk and my visits so infrequent that it never fails to provide a surprise or two. This time it was a load of home made alcohol at the back which I had forgotten about. Although there are several full wine bottles their labels have all fallen off so it was only the cider which was clearly recognisable because it is in crown top beer bottles. I also remembered that the bottles with a white sticker were the sweet whilst those with no sticker were dry, or more correctly, sharp.

This meant that they had to be brought down to the house for sampling. The sweet was quite good and some ended up going to Glastonbury with Mary. It has lots of flavour and a good aroma but as usual too much alcohol. I always drink it by the wine glass. Being a complete slap dash merchant when in comes to cider making I just follow the old John Seymour recipe from his self-sufficiency bible and throw a good lot of sugar into the juice and let nature take its course. Having had many disasters down the years I don’t make too much so as to avoid a lot of wasted effort. I have not only made quite a lot of undrinkable cider but also I am constantly reminded at this time of year not to repeat the great pea pod wine fiasco again. We had such a good crop of peas that it seemed a shame to waste all the pods so five gallons of pea pod wine were set in motion, bottled and stored. The brew had quite a kick but had the one big snag: getting it past your nose! That done, it had quite a kick but not enough to obliterate the smell, so eventually many years later it went down the drain on the occasion of one of our many moves chasing the work.

When we lived on the edge of Worcester I imported large quantities of cider apples to the back yard and spent many hours pulping and pressing them to make a nearly forty gallons of cider. This was all stored in our brilliant cellar which had a near constant temperature throughout the year. My Hereford cider, brewed in Worcester, was soon being sampled by neighbours and I eventually learnt that I was known by some neighbours as Ciderman.

One set of neighbours fell victim to the persuasive powers of Ciderwoman in that she had encouraged them to consider the merits of camping as a cheap holiday for a large family. Soon, thanks to the local ad mag, they had acquired a full range of equipment, including an old style frame tent with steel work which seemed to be a scaled down version of a New York construction site back in the thirties. Such was its size that the family had tried several times to complete its construction and on its umpteenth attempt was nearly there but was a pair of experienced hands short. Up went the shout that Ciderman was needed and soon a knock was being applied to our front door. The small child sent to summon help was in an agitated state of mind but clearly someone was needed across the street. Ciderman was already engaged in a project to preserve his job i.e., meeting a deadline. Ciderwoman therefore dashed to the rescue and soon the huge tent was in place and soundly pitched. At this point Ciderwoman and Ciderman (who had eventually put in a belated appearance)were applauded for their help and deliverance from the violent ways of the steel framed tent. Needless to say we had not been sampling our harvest at the time. If we had been the result could have been somewhat different.

Dacier and Sian

Population Increase: The Elephant in the Cabin

An Indian government minister has said that the question of population growth, 14 million a year in India’s case, should be left out of climate talks. See Guardian 28/8/09 http://bit.ly/4vaTjj
Why? Various reasons can be given, not least that the carbon emissions per capita are low compared with our American friends. But the trouble is that the question is being left out of much of the environmental discussion for some reason, although we all know, or should it be, because we know, with some dread, that the problem is getting worse.
A few weeks ago I threw out a book entitled ‘The Population Explosion’ which I had bought in about 1964. It was a very depressing read and showed how Malthus, who predicted the problems of population growth, had underestimated the rate at which it was taking place. I do not remember the authors name and of course I now regret getting rid of the book. I think it went to Oxfam, but whatever the dire warnings, we are all now living through the various consequences.

Great efforts are being made to produce food for the increasing world population but these efforts are at the same time threatening the sustainability of spaceship Earth. Any form of transport with too many people on board will usually come to grief, so while we are all trying to reduce our carbon emissions we are failing to slow the world’s population growth. Peoples aspirations also grow, and with them, the demands for the products of both factory and farm.

When populations in any form of life get too big nature usually finds a way of solving the problem. Starvation and disease are the most common and the human race is not going to be any different. Add to that the major shifts in population which will occur as food producing areas shrink, then Earth’s population could be crowded into the northern and southern hemispheres which we already know have finite food production potential. We are already seeing the results of rainfall and monsoon changes and how this effects populations in the Indian sub-continent and Africa. Limitation of population growth through birth control seems a more humane alternative to disease and starvation. To think that population growth can be matched by increased food production is a cruel allusion.

Given such depressing facts it is not surprising that environmental campaigners would rather not think about population growth. But, all the time we don’t talk about it the elephant in the room, or should I say, cabin, is getting bigger. There are some who will say that there is little enough encouragement to keep on campaigning and if it is that bad we might as well give up. My answer is that there is still a chance there is just enough time to get the passenger list stabilised, the catering department in order, and the cabin atmosphere of sufficient quality for the duration of the flight. Neither the crew nor the passengers know how long the journey will take. There is no bail out option, nor should there be. Why? Well, because it is surely better to spend the money on getting this spaceship in good order rather than tripping off to foul up a few more.

Dacier