tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223397462024-03-08T04:07:17.250+00:00a blog from a Citizen of WokingIn the future, everyone will be famous to <strong>15 people</strong>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.comBlogger376125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-47753072924923455222019-12-15T13:28:00.001+00:002019-12-15T13:28:35.383+00:00Films for Planes Review: Ad Astra<p dir="auto"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2935510/" target="_blank" title="">Ad Adstra</a><span> ☀️☀️<br></span><br>I like space movies, generally speaking, so when I was having my dinner on a recent Emirates flight I decided to watch <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2935510/" target="_blank" title="">Ad Adstra</a>, starring Brad Pitt. It was very boring, but I watched to the end because I thought that something interesting might happy and because I like Tommy Lee Jones. In the end, as one of my female colleagues put it, it was just “Pitt porn” and I probably wasn’t the target market. But even Tommy Lee Jones couldn’t save it.</p><p dir="auto">I’ve no idea what Donald Sutherland was doing in this tripe.</p><p dir="auto">The story, about Brad being sent to find his father who has gone a bit Kutrz round the back of Nepture, was almost completely uninteresting. The space story vingettes were unbelievable and irrelevant. The only midly interesting part, where there was a fight between moon buggies (because the Great Power were, apparently, unable to eradicate space pirates living on the dark side of the moon) was ridiculous.</p><p dir="auto">I genuinely don’t understand how millions and millions of dollars can be spent on something like this without someone in the room saying “hold on a minute, this is trash, let’s send the money to starving people in Africa instead” or something similar.</p><p><strong>Rating System</strong></p><p>In case you’d forgotten, I use a five sun rating system. It works like this:<br></p><ol><li><span>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting.</span><br></li><li>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain.<br></li><li>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or having lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen.<br></li><li>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored.<br></li><li>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it.<br></li></ol><p>So any movie I watch on a place usually gets at least one sun, and if they pull out all the stops they can get five.</p><p><br></p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-70659156582711605642018-07-09T16:36:00.001+01:002018-07-09T16:40:38.772+01:00Dumb and dumber (Science, bitch)<p>Oh dear. Just as I suspected, we are getting stupider. I thought the anecdotal evidence for this thesis (ie, the news) was pretty strong, but now science has stepped with the hard evidence to back it up. And it’s even worse that I thought, in the sense that Darwin was right and natural selection is a thing and it works. Unfortunately it selects for traits that lead to reproductive success, which means that the whole idea behind the movie <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy">Idiocracy</a> (that the stupid will outbreed the smart) turns out to be true.</p>
<blockquote cite="#sourceHomeURL">
<p>this analysis suggests genetic contributions to intelligence and educational achievement are currently disfavoured by natural selection</p>
<p>[From <cite><a href="https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21732803-it-does-however-no-longer-seem-favour-braininess-data-half-million">Data from half a million people show that natural selection has not stopped - Evolution in the modern world</a></cite>]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, you read that correctly. Natural selection favours the Jeremy Kyle show over the Andrew Marr show. There is absolutely no hope, and the result of natural selection operating in this reckless manner is measurable. And has been measured. Broadly speaking, our IQs climbed steadily from our time in the caves through the anthropocene age until roughly when Shirley Williams was the Secretary of State for Education and then went off the cliff.</p>
<blockquote cite="#sourceHomeURL">
<p>Since around 1975, average IQ scores seem to have been falling… “The drop is around 7 to 10 IQ points per century,” says Michael Woodley of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium.</p>
<p>[From <cite><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146752-we-seem-to-be-getting-stupider-and-population-ageing-may-be-why/">We seem to be getting stupider and population ageing may be why | New Scientist</a></cite>]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Basically, the robots are getting smarter and we are getting stupider, so the crossover point at which the robots are smarter than us is actually closer than we thought and, frankly, unless the robots take over fairly soon we are totally buggered. I mean, I feel humanity has given it our best shot, but we’re just not up to it. Do you think robots will watch Mrs. Brown’s Boys? No - of course not - they’ll be getting shit done.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-10936655570426091782018-03-04T23:07:00.001+00:002018-03-05T15:23:54.495+00:00Waging war with disinformationIn the superb <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09nqnxw?utm_content=buffer55340&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">BBC Radio 4 documentary on Marshall McLuhan</a>, by Douglas Copeland, one of McLuhan’s comments (from half a century ago) that really struck home with me was that in the electronic, networked, instant media age there will be “ways of being evil that we don’t understand yet”. How astonishingly prescient of the man who invented media studies. I think we are beginning to understand what at least one of those ways might be: destroying the trust that keeps a society together. We can see this happening all around us as the internet and social media are <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21735479-power-fake-news-and-undue-influence-waging-war-disinformation">creating entirely new opportunities for “influence operations" (IO) and the mass manipulation of opinion</a>.<br />
<br />
It seems that (yet again) McLuhan was spot on. The era of mass manipulation is indeed upon us and it is aided and abetted by social media. The well-known example of <a href="https://boingboing.net/2017/11/03/an-alt-right-blogger-with-80k.html">Jenna Abrams</a> (@jenn_abrams) illustrates the general case perfectly well. Jenna was an “alt-right” blogger with 80,000 followers on Twitter, and her tweets were cited by Buzzfeed, the NY Times and other news agencies. It subsequently turned out that “she” was a creation of Russia's Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg.<br />
<br />
This emergence of this kind of directed, industrial-scale trolling isn’t just about using mass media for propaganda purposes. That’s hardly new. But the scale and intimacy of social media make the misuse of them, as McLuhan predicted, a new and different kind of evil. The impact of this evil is not to convince the general public that some particular thing is true, but to undermine the general public’s trust of anything at all. Or, as noted in the Boston Review, the most toxic consequence of this kind of social media manipulation “<a href="http://bostonreview.net/literature-culture/henry-farrell-philip-k-dick-and-fake-humans">[is] existential distrust</a>".<br />
<br />
It’s really hard to know what to do about this. In the past, new technologies (eg, rather obviously, printing) have come along and it has taken generations for society to evolve “<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/">political, cultural, and institutional antibodies to the novelty and upheaval</a>” of the information revolutions set in motion by those technologies (remember the instructions manuals <a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-say-hello-to-answer-the-phone">telling people to say “hello” when they pick up the telephone</a>). However, the accelerating rate of technology-induced change is creating a shock wave, just as an airplane flying ahead of the speed of sound creates a shock wave (that we hear as the sonic boom).<br />
Now that we’ve detected the shock wave, we have to respond. We have to change either democracy or social media.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
We should all care about how social media platforms play a part in our democratic process. Because unless it’s addressed it will happen again. The midterms are in 8 months. We owe it to our democracy to get this right, and fast. <a href="https://t.co/aM3pRrZW4J">https://t.co/aM3pRrZW4J</a></div>
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)<br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/968321022427652096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 27, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Whatever you think about Hillary, she is right that the issue needs to be addressed. I think she is thinking about fixing social media, but given that, for the time being at least, democracy is under our control and social media is not, we instead need to think hard about reinventing democracy in the McLuhan age. But how? At the conceptual level, it seems obvious that someone who thinks the moon landings never happened should not be allowed to participate in any decisions that impact the rest of us. But what about someone who thinks the government spends more on foreign aid than it does on the NHS? What about the one in five British voters who think that <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373505/One-Brits-think-Sherlock-Holmes-Miss-Marple-Blackadder-historical-figures.html">Sherlock Holmes was a real person</a>? These people exist in social media echo chambers that are impermeable to reason and therefore never participate in the discourse that the rest of us depend on to learn about the world and set our opinions in response.<br />
<br />
If we don’t take action, then a generation from now the rule of President Kardashian will make us rue the day the universal franchise was conceived.Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-79985965975276562742018-02-13T14:23:00.001+00:002018-02-13T14:23:12.579+00:00Films for Planes Review: Patti Cakes<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6288250/">Patti Cakes</a> ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️</p>
<p>I couldn’t sleep so I flicked through the “new on board” category. I wasn’t bored enough to watch “Murder on the Orient Express” and I thought I recognised the name of this film from a good review I’d seen or heard so I thought I’d give it a try. But when I selected it, it didn’t look promising as it seemed to be something about rappers. But I figured I’d give it a try for a few minutes…</p>
<p>Wow. A movie that shouldn’t have liked but I enjoyed it immensely. I was caught up in it from the very first scene and genuinely wanted to know what was going to happen.</p>
<p>There’s a slight corniness to the story but all of the characters are interesting the story moves along at a clip. Even though I wouldn’t call myself a rap fan, there’s an intensity to the music in the film that is universal. </p>
<p>The woman who plays the lead character is absolutely excellent.</p>
<p><strong>Rating System</strong></p>
<p>In case you’d forgotten, I use a five sun rating system. It works like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or having lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>So any movie I watch on a place gets at least one sun, and if they pull out all the stops they can get five.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-44165941479570154162017-09-12T14:21:00.001+01:002017-09-12T14:22:05.406+01:00Films for Planes Review: Wizard of Lies<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1933667/">The Wizard of Lies</a> ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️</p>
<p>Now this is a great example of a film that is just right for a plane journey. It has an interesting story with interesting characters and you want to keep watching to see what happens next even though you sort of know what is going to happen next. It’s the story of uber-fraudster Bernie Madoff and how he made millions and millions of dollars by pretending to invest money for clients but really paying their imaginary investment gains from new investors. This is what is known as a “Ponzi scheme”, like social security, where the early investors do OK and can withdraw gains because there are enough later investors coming into to cover it but eventually it collapses because you run out of new investors (or younger taxpaying workers).</p>
<p>It’s too long, which meant it was a little boring in places, and I would have preferred a little more detail about how exactly the fraud was perpetrated (I still don’t understand how more people were not suspicious) but it was interesting and enjoyable. The acting of the central character and his wife, played by Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, is superb by the way - they are both wholly convincing.</p>
<p><strong>Rating System</strong></p>
<p>In case you’d forgotten, I use a five sun rating system. It works like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or having lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>So any movie I watch on a place gets at least one sun, and if they pull out all the stops they can get five.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-9106890528802216402017-02-19T15:37:00.001+00:002017-02-19T15:37:29.922+00:00Films for planes review of "Eye in the Sky"<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2057392/">Eye in the Sky</a> ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️</p>
<p>I think more war films will be like this in the future: people in bunkers controlling drones, at least until the AI takes over. Basically the story is about a drone strike on terrorists in Kenya, and whether and when to pull the trigger. This is an ideal movie for a plane. 100 minutes long, just right for drinks, dinner and relaxing. Genuinely interesting story line and you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Good actors, script with tension and thought-provoking without being too preachy.</p>
<p>It’s also Alan Rickman’s last film and he’s very good in it.</p>
<p>I didn’t buy the mini-drone but hey, it’s a film right.</p>
<p><strong>Rating System</strong></p>
<p>In case you’d forgotten, I use a five sun rating system. It works like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or having lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>So any movie I watch on a place gets at least one sun, and if they pull out all the stops they can get five.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-76960985949699126982017-02-16T16:37:00.001+00:002017-02-16T16:37:13.010+00:00Our Wall<p>Mr. Trump’s plan to build a thousand mile wall along the border between the United States and Mexico is attracting a lot of attention. A good friend of mine, noted for her knowledge of strategy and history, told me not to get too worked up about this harmless public works project. After all, this kind of things is often undertaken by national leaders to secure a place in the national imagination. Although it may never become a tourist attraction to rival the Great Wall of China, and indeed may become a new Maginot Line for future generations to investigate, it may well become a Keynesian landmark integral to the tourist industry of the southwestern states. </p>
<p>I am pretty sure, however, that what it will not become is a barrier to the smuggling of people, drugs or money.</p>
<p>How do I know this?</p>
<p>Well, we Brits have been there and done that. We built a wall. We built a wall that was<strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"> twice as long</strong> as Mr. Trump’s wall. And there is absolutely <strong>nothing</strong> left of it today.</p>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Queen_Victoria_by_Bassano.jpg/170px-Queen_Victoria_by_Bassano.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>In the days when Her Majesty Queen Victoria was Empress of India, the British administration in the subcontinent had, amongst other depredations, increased the hated <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_tax_in_India" target="_blank" data-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_tax_in_India">salt tax</a> (which later spurred the noted rebel <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi" target="_blank" data-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi">Mahatma Gandhi</a> to begin his campaign against the many benefits of British rule with the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March" target="_blank" data-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March">Dandi March</a>). </p>
<p>Our salt tax was not the first (under the Mughal Empire, for example, there was a salt tax of 5% for Hindus and 2.5% for Muslims) but it was particularly despised because hundreds of millions of people in India’s interior were dependent on salt from the coast to survive and it had become something of a cash cow under British rule. Increases in the salt tax meant that the price of salt more than tripled and the natural result was that it was smuggled from the Bay of Bengal to the interior. Other things were smuggled too — opium, people and so on — but it was the smuggled salt that upset us Brits the most.</p>
<p>Now, rather as the United States is run by Trump Inc., India was at that dawn of Victoria’s reign ruled by the Honourable East India Company (until 1858, when it was taken under the wing of the Crown following the rebellion of 1857). So it was that the Company decided to do something about the salt smuggling.</p>
<p>The Company decided to build a <strong>wall</strong> down the middle of India.</p>
<p>A big, beautiful wall. And the Indians would pay for it.</p>
<p>This wall, or the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line">Inland Customs Line</a>” as it was called, turned out to be quite hard to build. In large parts of India, there wasn’t the rock needed to build it or bricks to build it from. But a civil servant thought laterally and came up with an amazing solution. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Octavian_Hume">Allan Octavian Hume</a>, a political reformer, ornithologist, botanist (and one of the founders of the Indian National Congress), a man who remains unknown to the masses but who should be as celebrated and revered as a British innovator in the mould of a Barnes-Wallis or a Dyson, was appointed Commissioner of Customs for the North West Province (1867-1870). </p>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/A_O_Hume.jpg/174px-A_O_Hume.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The Line became Hume’s problem. An observer of local flora and fauna, Hume had noticed that along various sections of the Line, thorny hedges had taken root. In 1869 he began to experiment with different shrubs and as a result of his work, the British were able to grow a thorny barrier that stood in for rock, bricks and other traditional materials. A green alternative had been found! As the map below shows, it became the greater part of the Line.</p>
<p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0c/Inland_Customs_Line_India.png/354px-Inland_Customs_Line_India.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>Yep. You read this right. The British built a <strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong">hedge</strong> to stop the smuggling of salt, opium, cannabis, sugar, people and who knows what else. This astonishing feat of gardening is described in detail in one of my all-time favourite books, Roy Moxham’s <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Hedge-India-Roy-Moxham/dp/1841194670" target="_blank" data-href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Hedge-India-Roy-Moxham/dp/1841194670">The Great Hedge of India</a>, and that is how I shall describe it hereafter.</p>
<p>The Great Hedge is described in the official proceedings of the British Parliament (Hansard) on 13th August 1878:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In order to prevent the ingress into our territories of salt taxed at lower rates, a line had been maintained of many hundreds of miles in length—at one time 2,400— consisting principally of a hedge of thorny trees and bushes, supplemented by stone walls and ditches, which could not be passed by anyone without examination.</p>
<p>From <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1878/aug/13/india-east-india-revenue-accounts-the">EAST INDIA REVENUE ACCOUNTS—THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT. (Hansard, 13 August 1878)</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wowza. The Great Hedge of India. It really happened. There were customs posts every mile, and in order to pass through you had to pay the tax. Many of the customs posts had a police cell where smugglers could be detained on the spot. These were called “chowkis”, the Indian word for a police station (<a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/chowki">from the Hindi cauki</a>). This is why English people of my parent’s generation (my grandfather served in the British Army in India in the 1930s and my mother lived there as a small girl) still refer to prison as “chokey”, the anglicisation of the word.</p>
<p>It was not only smugglers who found the Line inconvenient. From the beginning, the British Viceroys of India didn’t like it either because it was an impediment to trade. They did not feel that the tax collected to the benefit of the East India Company would compensate for the reduction in trade. You can read about it in “<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DSLXGOU?ref=p2e_popup_T2">The Economic History of India Under Early British Rule: From the Rise of the British Power in 1757 to the Accession of Queen Victoria in 1837</a>”, where Romesh Chunder Dutt writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The East India Company would not willingly sacrifice even a revenue of £220,000, or any portion of it, for the prosperity of the internal trade of India. Professing the utmost anxiety for the material welfare of the people of India, they were unwilling to sacrifice a shilling to promote that welfare.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Walls everywhere are a barrier to trade, and trade is essential to prosperity. Hence the objections of the commercially-minded. The Line had all sorts of negative impacts on the trade in things other than salt. Sugar, for example.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sugar was one of the most important products of our own people in Northern India; but the effect of the Customs line was to place artificial obstructions upon its export. "So far as competition exists," said Sir John Strachey, "the duty acts as a protective duty in favour of foreign and against our own sugar."</p>
<p>From <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1878/aug/13/india-east-india-revenue-accounts-the">EAST INDIA REVENUE ACCOUNTS—THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT. (Hansard, 13 August 1878)</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet the Line was built and by 1872 had a staff of 14,000! Even with this manpower it did not stop the smuggling. In some places the smugglers just drove laden camels through the hedge, in other places they threw the salt over the top of it. I suspect that rather than use laden camels to circumvent Mr. Trump’s proposed barrier, smugglers will choose more modern pathways, ranging from drones and boats to ladders and tunnels. (I note incidentally that there are <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/how-escape-tunnel-mexico-el-chapo-was-made">expert tunnellers in Mexico</a>, so unless every <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film)">Tom, Dick and Harry</a> will be welcome across the border, the wall will need to go down a fair few feet too.)</p>
<p>Smuggling was reduced, but at an unacceptable cost. Apart from the substantial running costs, it also led to clashes between smugglers and custom officers (including an event in 1877 when two customs men attempted to arrest 112 smugglers, with predictable results) as well as stimulating bribery and corruption. Dutt again:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>evils had grown under British Rule as compared with the state of things under the Nawabs of Bengal; manufactures were killed and internal trade paralysed by the Customs’ Officers who were paid so low that it was possible for them to live only by extortion; travellers were harassed and the honour of women passing through the lines of customs houses was not safe; and that this huge system of oppression was maintained for the sake of an insignificant revenue.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the end, there was a victory for common sense and the Line was abandoned. The first quote from Hansard above actually began with Mr. Stanope telling Parliament that “it had been so often described that he was almost ashamed to ask the House to bear in mind what it was desired to abolish”. Work stopped in 1879.</p>
<p>There is nothing left of the Line today. When India became independent in 1947, the remnants of the hedge were torn up. In some areas, the Line provided the only surveyed straight line and so it was used for the route of highways in the new country, which is why no Ozymandian testament stands as a reminder to the executive power of the Honourable Company today.</p>
<p>Hence this practical suggestion. Why doesn’t America create a cheap, green and sustainable wall out of thorny cacti, which flourish in abundance in places like Texas and New Mexico? After all, since the wall won’t make any long term difference, why waste money?</p>
<p>What eventually ended the smuggling wasn’t the wall but tax reform, as is always the case. Hansard again (I have reformatted to make it easier to read):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The steps, therefore, necessary for the abolition of the line were</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>first, to extend railways into the salt-producing districts, and to enter into arrangements with the Native States of those districts, so that all salt might be taxed at the place of production;</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>secondly, to remove the inequalities in the rate of duty in different parts of the country.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Sir John Strachey (the minister whose tax review led to the abolition of the Line) later described it as “a monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a parallel in any tolerably civilised country”. Oh well, what did he know about building walls. Sad.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-75019415874525933532016-12-06T17:35:00.001+00:002016-12-06T17:38:02.276+00:00Films for planes review of "Money Monster"<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2241351/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Money Monster</a> ☀️☀️☀️☀️</p>
<p>This is a good story with decent acting. I think George Clooney’s character is based on that guy Jim from CNBC. I never watched his show, but I remember seeing Jon Stewart make fun of it on The Daily Show a while back. In essence, the host of the “business” stockpicking show gets taken hostage by a guy who unwisely acted on one of his tips. I won’t tell you what happens, but it was done in a very plausible way. I didn’t find out until later that the director is Jodie Foster, but I think the direction was excellent.</p>
<p>If it hadn’t had an English villain, it would have got five stars. A great movie to watch while having dinner on a plane.</p>
<p><strong>Rating System</strong></p>
<p>In case you’d forgotten, I use a five sun rating system. It works like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or having lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>So any movie I watch on a place gets at least one sun, and if they pull out all the stops they can get five.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-18884046243630595262016-11-30T15:37:00.001+00:002016-11-30T15:37:09.248+00:00Movie Review: 45 Years<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3544082/">45 Years</a> ☀️☀️☀️☀️⛅️</p>
<p>This almost ticked all of the boxes! An interesting story, beautifully told, with superb acting by both of the lead actors but an especially superb performance from Charlotte Rampling. I would have given it the full five suns, but I really didn’t like the ending – there was too much unspoken – I would have liked a little more closure. But it’s overall a great, grown-up movie night-time plane ride. Highly recommended.</p>
<p><strong>Rating System</strong></p>
<p>In case you’d forgotten, I use a five sun rating system. It works like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or having lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>So any movie I watch on a place gets at least one sun, and if they pull out all the stops they can get five.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-57092042804093478882016-11-08T21:03:00.001+00:002016-11-08T21:03:09.992+00:00Bandung Europa<p>In the early 1980s, while living in Bandung in Indonesia, I played for the Bandung Europa soccer team. The picture below was taken early in 1983, when the team were played 17,won 14, drawn 1 and lost 2. I made a note of the team names on the back of the photo and noted that we were getting an average attendance of 2,000 people at our games in what was I suppose the equivalent of the Conference South!</p>
<p align="center"><a style="color: #22464f; background-color: transparent;" href="http://www.birches.org/dave/myside/mymedia/Indo/be1983.jpg"><img src="http://www.birches.org/dave/myside/mymedia/Indo/be1983.gif" alt="Europa" width="300" height="136" /></a></p>
<p align="center">Yan - Jacques - Simon - Brian - Frank - Tom - <em>Yours Truly</em> - Freddie - Baban - Juan<br />Alberto - Dave - Momo - Ray (capt.) - Martin - Hans - Gustaman</p>
<p>I played on the left side of midfield in a 4-4-2 or, more usually, on the left wing in a 4-3-3. My main talent, given that I had no pace, was that I could cross quite accurately (generally in the direction of our centre forward, Frank the Tank). I did score occasionally, and one of my most treasured possessions is the only existing photograph (as far as I know) of me scoring a goal...</p>
<p align="center"><a style="color: #22464f; background-color: transparent;" href="http://www.birches.org/dave/myside/mymedia/Indo/gola.jpg"><img src="http://www.birches.org/dave/myside/mymedia/Indo/gola.gif" alt="Gola!" width="100" height="100" /></a></p>
<p>As this was in the days long before Facebook, I don’t have many photographs or memorabilia. If by any miracle of Google, any of the people shown in the picture above ever stumble across this picture, I’d be delighted to add your reminiscences to this page!</p>
<p>I’ll add a couple of my favourite memories over the next couple of weeks.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-78084380766764431812016-11-07T01:49:00.001+00:002016-11-07T01:49:40.794+00:00Movie Review: Equity<p>I’ve almost perfected my new rating system for movies on planes. It’s a five point scheme, and it works like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for interesting story with good acting</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not having an English villain</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun for not being too dark or have lots of special effects, so you can enjoy it properly on an airplane screen</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if I watched all the way to the end without falling asleep or turning over because I was bored</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Movie gets one sun if it doesn’t have Kate Winslet in it</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>What do you think? I think this could make me bigger than Barry Norman, or whoever it is that does film reviews on the BBC nowadays.</p>
<p>So here we go with the first review under the new system.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3958780/?ref_=ttgf_gf_tt">Equity</a> ☀️☀️☀️☀️</p>
<p>On my last flight I watched the rest of season two of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(TV_series)">Gomorrah</a>, the Italian mafia drama series that I love. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it, except to say that it is a Shakespearian effort. The characters are wonderfully drawn and rounded, the acting is excellent and everyone is much better dressed than they are in English crime dramas. I never got into the Sopranos, so this was the first organised crime series that I’d seen for while.</p>
<p>Then I watched Equity, which was about disorganised crime (i.e., investment banking). In Dungeons & Dragons terminology, the mafia are lawful evil whereas investment bankers are chaotic evil. The mafia, like the Assassin’s Guild, have a code. Investment bankers don’t: they will stab anyone in the back for a couple of points. No-one trusts anyone, there is no loyalty up or down and anyone could betray anyone else as the drop of hat.</p>
<p>This made it a good movie, although it probably should have been called “Equity by Bloomberg” since they feature prominently through the film. It was different, because it was largely from a female perspective, which meant that it had a couple of subplots that I found more interesting than I might have otherwise. It had a nice dramatic arc of tragedy through betrayal. I thought that one of the lead characters was a little unreal and I found that slightly distracting, and I don’t see why two of the mean characters had to be English, but I watched all the way to end without nodding off even once. It’s about investment banking, by the way, and one of the companies that is a focus of the bankers’ efforts is privacy-enhancing social network (this doesn’t give anything away).</p>
<p>Summary: wouldn’t bother going to the cinema to see it and will almost certainly never watch it again on cable or computer, but it’ a good movie to watch while having your dinner on a plane.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-66436362282298907572016-07-09T14:27:00.001+01:002016-07-09T14:27:37.689+01:00There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen<p>A millennium ago, in <strong>1016</strong>, the people of England were going about their daily business of growing sheep and suchlike and probably didn’t realise that, these being days long before universal suffrage and representative democracy, they were about to become part of a Scandinavian empire and without a referendum. This happened when the Saxon King Edmund Ironside died.</p>
<p>Why? Well, the Saxons had already chosen Cnut as their king but London opted out and went with Ethered’s grandson Edmund Ironside. Then, as now, London was another country.</p>
<p>When Ironside died, London couldn’t hold out and Cnut the Great became the King of England. <a href="http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/vikings_2.htm">He was the Son of Sweyn Forkbeard a daughter of the King of Poland</a> (bloody Polish kings coming over here and taking all of our monarch’s jobs). He was a grandson of Harald Bluetooth. He became the king of Denmark in 1018 and the King of Norway in 1028, forming the Anglo-Scandinavian North Sea Empire. This Empire, it has to be said, did not last very long but following Brexit, who knows!</p>
<p>Five hundred years ago in <strong>1516</strong>, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was on the way to becoming biggest country in Europe. It eventually stretched from the Baltic down to the Black Sea and was powerful enough to invade Russia and occupy Moscow. I’m sure the inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (which, by the way, had a very interesting constitution that included porto-democracy) thought that it would last for ever and found it very difficult to imagine any other form of government or, indeed, sovereignty.</p>
<p>Two hundred years ago, in <strong>1816</strong> (remembered as “the year without a summer”), in the newly independent United States of America (which was having another go at forming a central bank) the last-ever Federalist Party candidate lost the election to previous Secretary of State Monroe (just as the last-ever Republican Party candidate Donald Trump will lose to previous Secretary of State Clinton). America instituted a series of tariffs against British goods, deciding that following the war of 1812 it no longer wanted to be in a free trade alliance with us. Now we have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership">TTIP</a>.</p>
<p>One hundred and fifty years ago in <strong>1866</strong>, there was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Monetary_Union">Latin Monetary Union</a>, or “Victorian Euro” as I think about it. It was created by France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland but was later adopted by countries ranging from Peru and Venezuela to Serbia and Bulgaria. Another late joiner was Greece, in 1867. Greek economic problems meant that they began debasing their version of the currency and they were chucked out in 1908 and then let back in 1910. Ultimately the whole thing fell apart because countries printed paper money that wasn’t backed by a bimetallic reserve and it formally ended in 1927 (although the Swiss continued to mint coins to the LUM standards for size, weight and fineness until 1967). In 1866, people must have thought advantages of a single currency unarguable.</p>
<p>A century ago in <strong>1916</strong>, the last Emperor or Russia, must have found it very difficult to imagine any other Russia than the feudal state he ruled. When Lenin (who once said that the best way to destroy the capitalist is to debauch the currency) led the October Revolution, overthrew the government and established a one-party state the average Russian must have been utterly astonished at the turn of events. Sometimes, things change really quickly. I’m not for one moment suggesting that Brexit is a revolution (far from it) but sometimes profound change can come along relatively quickly.</p>
<p>A generation from now, in <strong>2056</strong>, who knows where we will be. It seems to me, though, that one plausible scenario is that set out in Gill Ringland’s <a href="http://www.longfinance.net/component/content/article.html?id=541">report for Long Finance</a>. She envisages a world dominated by cities rather than countries (which fits with my world view, the Jane Jacobs “<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cities-Wealth-Nations-Principles-Economic/dp/0394729110">Cities and the Wealth of Nations</a>” perspective of economies as cities and their hinterlands). In such a world, where the mayor of London has more power than the Prime Minister and London’s trade deal in services with Beijing is more important than the UK’s trade in goods with China, we will probably remember the European Union much as we remember the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sterling as we remember the Latin Monetary Union. Neither the United Kingdom nor the Pound Sterling are laws of nature.</p>
<p>I know, I know, in the long run...</p>
<p>My point is that the referendum went Brexit. So we should live with it. I don’t like referendums. The idea of a “constitutional” referendum to decide a complex issue by a one-off simple majority, seems daft to me. Richard Dawkins had a point when he asked why we were being asked to vote on this at all, especially when we’re not allowed a referendum on anything else (e.g., capital punishment). And we’re going to have months, years of uncertainty before we get back on an even keel and will undoubtedly suffer economically through this period.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“If there are issues on which the populace at large should be trusted to vote, something as complicated and economically sophisticated as EU membership is definitely not one of them.“</p>
<p>From <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/richard-dawkins-eu-referendum-brexit-david-cameron-a7059201.html">Richard Dawkins accuses David Cameron of 'playing Russian Roulette' with UK's future over EU referendum | People | News | The Independent</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I know it sounds elitist, but I kind of agree with him. But we are where we are. I was marginally on the remain side, but I didn’t imagine that the EU would last terribly long in its current form or that Euro would survive. I thought in another decade or so we’d have a renegotiation following a euro collapse and new EU would emerge from those discussions with a core or business-class EU centred on France and Germany and an outer EU centred on us and our Scandinavian friends (hence my fantasies about the return of the North Sea Empire!).</p>
<p>Shit happens.</p>
<p>If Brexit does happen in its current form, which seems far from certain, we’ll be fine. We’ll end up in TTIP, we’ll have a trade deal with the single market, we’ll have a free trade zone with the Commonwealth and so on. The thick as pigshot Brexit racist arseholes who are out setting fire to the sheds of Polish taxpayers will be defeated and the dire warnings of the Remainers will fade.</p>
<p>The title, by the way, is another quote from Lenin.</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-39482494677481953302014-12-21T17:35:00.001+00:002014-12-21T17:35:36.260+00:00The way forward for British politics<p>The most important political event of the year here in the UK, bearing in mind the degraded nature of our democracy and the nature of modern political debate, was the edition of the BBC's flagship public political discussion programme, Question Time, that featured both Nigel Farage and Russell Brand.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage/11303268/Russell-Brand-read-his-best-Question-Time-lines-of-a-cue-card-Nigel-Farage-claims.html">
<p>Russell Brand pre-prepared his best lines when appearing on Question Time and read them off cue cards, Nigel Farage has said as fallout from the pair's on-screen clash continued to rumble on.</p>
[From <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage/11303268/Russell-Brand-read-his-best-Question-Time-lines-of-a-cue-card-Nigel-Farage-claims.html"><cite>Brand read his best Question Time lines off a cue card, Farage claims - Telegraph</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>Brand is like Farage in so many ways. Neither of them seem terribly smart and they are both much less charismatic than they think. They both promote a populistic rehashing of genuine grievances and benefit from the real feeling of alienation abroad amongst the populace without proposing any rational or even plausible solutions.</p>
<p>Now, on this point, I cannot help but observe that what constitutes a sensible solution is hard to determine. I have noted before, as have others, that policies advanced by the Monster Raving Loony Party and dismissed out of hand by the establishment, and the media (and, indeed, the public) have a strange habit of becoming mainstream thinking once there’s been some water under the bridge, </p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/12/what-are-monster-raving-loony-party-s-election-plans">
<p>All-day pub opening hours, “passports for pets” to avoid them having to go through quarantine after returning from holidays abroad, lowering the voting age to 18, and the abolition of the 11+ exam because it’s “the wrong age to take an exam that affects you for the rest of your life” are all measures we have in place today.</p>
[From <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/12/what-are-monster-raving-loony-party-s-election-plans"><cite>What are the Monster Raving Loony Party’s election plans?</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>The lesson of history comes through loud and clear. Policies that appear Loony at first will eventually be implemented by a future Labour government. But now, our politics have fallen to a state where endless coalitions mean that Loony policies will not get the attention that they deserve from future Parliaments.</p>
<p>The solution is obvious. Russell Brand should become the leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party and forge it into a powerful opposition force to provide an alternative to UKIP. This will transform the British political landscape back into a two-party system, the UKIPpers and the Loonies, where the parties stand for something different. He should do it soon, so there is plenty of time to get Russell’s plans for a socialist egalitarian paradise into the manifesto in plenty of time for the election. It will sit nicely alongside existing manifesto commitments.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.loonyparty.com/history-4/loony-archive/2010-general-election-manifesto/">
<p>We will ban all forms of Greyhound racing. This will help stop the country going to the dogs.</p>
[From <a href="http://www.loonyparty.com/history-4/loony-archive/2010-general-election-manifesto/"><cite>2010 GENERAL ELECTION MANIFESTO | The Official Monster Raving Loony Party</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>There are plenty of other policies from earlier manifestoes that Russell could draw on to create a policy document to change the political landscape for a generation. Like Russell, I think we should focus on the economy, where the Loony proposals for a 99p coin (to save on change in shops) and a campaign to persuade European countries to leave the Euro and join the Pound will engage a public that it is not too comfortable with numbers. I’m sure Russell can add to this list with little effort. Encouraging people not to vote is an excellently Loony manifesto commitment, as is the idea of <a href="http://rt.com/usa/195992-russell-brand-revolution-wall-street/">the Occupy Movement giving “the people” hope</a> (I’d wager that at least 51% of the people have never heard of the “Occupy Movement”).</p>
<p>I want to go back to time when the two main political parties had clear and different ideologies, an inspiring vision for Britain in the 21st century and leaders that television impressionists (e.g., Mike Yarwood) can work with. This is how to do it! Russell do not let the people down!</p>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-61371572652831628312014-10-29T15:28:00.001+00:002014-10-29T15:28:26.450+00:00John Cooper-Clarke is a prophet as well as a poet<p>One of the reasons why our society is doomed is that it has no moral compass.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11195373/Facebook-removes-mothers-breastfeeding-photo.html">
<p>Facebook said breastfeeding photos have never been against the firm's Community Standards, but nipples had to be covered or concealed.</p>[From <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11195373/Facebook-removes-mothers-breastfeeding-photo.html"><cite>Facebook removes mother's breastfeeding photo - Telegraph</cite></a>]
</blockquote>
<p>So. <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/28/miley-cyrus-robin-thicke-vmas-cyndi-lauper_n_3828228.html">Pretending to rape women on MTV</a> is OK for Facebook, and I'm sure you can find a zillion Robin Thicke or Miley Cyrus videos (I didn't look, because I didn't want my interest in them to be misinterpreted on some GCHQ computer somewhere), but a picture of a nipple is beyond the pale. Never mind Facebook, this is Modern Britain in a nutshell. Our greatest living poet, John Cooper-Clarke, saw all of this coming a generation ago. In one of his greatest works, a heartfelt rage against the truly bizarre public morality abroad in a United Kingdom, he wrote:</p>
<p>“This paper’s boring mindless mean<br/>
Full of pornography the kind that’s clean<br/>
Where William Hickey meets Michael Caine<br/>
Again and again and again and again<br/>
I’ve seen millionaires on the DHSS<br/>
But I’ve never seen a nipple in the Daily Express.”</p>
<p><i><a href="http://johncooperclarke.com/?p=91">You’ll Never See A Nipple in The Daily Express (John Cooper-Clarke).</a></i></p>
<p>The Bard of Salford says it all.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-78250149424301414492014-10-07T16:28:00.001+01:002014-10-07T16:28:47.582+01:00Time for slow TV<p>The recent success of Scandinavian television in the UK has been quite surprising. "The Killing", "Borgen" and "The Bridge" were stalwarts on my iPad for many months. But I think the next wave of Scandi-TV might be even bigger. We need to look beyond Denmark and beyond Sweden: Norway is the next big thing.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/big-in-norway/355748/">
<p>Since then, “slow TV” has become a staple of Norwegian public broadcasting. In 2011, more than half the country watched a cruise ship’s 134-hour journey up Norway’s west coast.</p>
[From <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/big-in-norway/355748/"><cite>Big in Norway: Slow TV - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>I think I will add a slow TV element to my campaign to become the next Director General of the BBC. I have in mind a camera mounted on the 18.15 to Portsmouth Harbour via Woking as a regular feature. I'm also thinking about a channel that is nothing but someone reading (in full) all new legislation coming from Parliament for people who find the train too stimulating.</p>
<p>Of course, I'll need a famous face to get it underway. The most talentless, uncharismatic and boring television presenter I can think of is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Winkleman">Claudia Winkelman</a>, so I think I should get in touch with her agent right away.</p>
<p>[Addendum] When I wrote this post, I assumed that Claudia Winkelman was married to someone famous and that was how come she was on TV but according to the wikipedia link she is actually a hereditary celebrity and is on the BBC because she has famous parents.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-7120664337363211702014-07-28T11:35:00.001+01:002014-07-28T11:35:41.318+01:00Our tax system is almost completely wrong<p>There’s an excellent piece in the July 2014 Prospect magazine by Philip Collins called “<a href="http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-is-tax-for/">What is tax for?</a>” in which he notes that almost half of the tax raised in the UK is income tax (ie, a tax on work) and only around one-twentieth is tax on land and buildings. He calls the case for tax property and land “excellent”, and I agree. We went down the wrong path on this a couple of hundred years ago and have never recovered from it. He also calls for the re-imposition of capital gains tax on the primary residence: I’m not so sure about this, because I wonder if it might be better to abolish capital gains tax entirely in order to encourage more people to invest for their pension-free futures, but I’ll have to think about it a little more.</p>
<p>Talking about direct taxes, Collins calculates that a 1% tax on land value would be sufficient to abolish corporation tax entirely, which would surely benefit the nation in many different ways. Apart from encouraging more people to invest in businesses here, it would also begin to redeploy to the legions of clever people at accountancy firms who spend every waking hour trying to dream up tax loopholes to apply themselves to more productive enterprise.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-13723042532120578702014-05-28T20:22:00.001+01:002014-05-28T20:22:04.497+01:00The Wolf of Woking<p>I just couldn’t sleep on my last long-haul flight back into Heathrow. One of the reasons what that they guy next to me, who was a lawyer for one of the big international law firms (and had spent ages marking up a long document with Rothschild written all over it, so not short of a bob or two I would imagine) was watching “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993846/">The Wolf of Wall Street</a>”. This probably the most socially-irresponsible film to be exhibited to still-forming teenage brains since ‘Rock Around The Clock” had them tearing up the seats in cinemas the length and breadth of the country. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a fraudster who becomes a multi-millionaire building a bogus trading business and eventually gets arrested and sent to jail. His victims were left a couple of hundred million dollars out of pocket. The eponymous hero goes to jail for a few months and is then released to a new life. Propelled in no small measure by the success of the film, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-19/wolf-of-wall-street-belfort-sees-pay-top-100-million-this-year.html">he is expected to earn $100m this year</a> from books, speeches, corporate gigs and personal appearances. Once he’s paid back the $50m that is his share of money owed to investors, he will still be quids in. Crime doesn’t pay? Really?</p>
<p>The lawyer was chortling all the way through the film, and my teenage son loved it too. How am I now to persuade him to go off to University to do something socially-useful like engineering or science? The message he got from the film was that cheating people out of money, provided you wear a suit, is excellent fun and delivers girls aplenty.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-88082222014384522622014-02-13T17:13:00.001+00:002014-02-13T17:13:01.895+00:00Othello<p><a href="http://www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk">Guildford Shakespeare Company</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.holytrinityguildford.org.uk">Holy Trinity Church</a>, 5th to 22nd February 2014</p>
<p>I’ll save you the trouble of the reading to the end. This is a brilliant production, not to be missed.</p>
<p>The story is well-known. Iago, angry about being passed over for promotion, determines to destroy Othello, the "Moor of Venice” (a character many believe Shakespeare based on the Ambassador to the king of Barbary, who visited London around 1600), and sets about deceiving Othello into believing that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. It’s a play about jealousy. So I knew all of this, although I hadn’t read the programme or any notes about the play, when I sat back hoping to be entertained and surprised. I certainly was, but I was also shocked, because I was unprepared for the intensity and depth of emotion that the play stirs up in the hands of such talented actors.</p>
<p>Somehow the interplay between the atmospheric environment of Trinity Church, the “double stage”, the clever lighting and the intimacy set up by Caroline Devlin’s excellent direction worked to heighten and make compelling Chris Porter's outstanding Iago to the point where I almost wanted to jump up on stage and attack him myself. The play was compulsive from beginning to end. I couldn’t take my eyes off the leads as the action switched from stage to stage.</p>
<p>Matt Pinches seemed to inhabit Cassio effortlessly and David Carr’s Othello had the nobility needed to make the play set off on the right path but I thought that the women stole the show as it moved to its tragic close. The way that Nicola Hartley played Desdemona was perfect to her end and the Emilia’s final speech was delivered rich with emotion, right at the edge but never over the top, by Rosalind Blessed (who, it turns out, is the daughter of noted thespian Brian Blessed).</p>
<p>I’m not sure that the “Cold War” theme completely worked for me. If it wasn’t until I read the other reviews of the play that I realised that that was the point of the 1950s staging. I thought it was 1940s staging and I'd taken the uniforms to represent British or American troops in Italy in 1943 or 1944. I’m a man, so how am I supposed to tell the difference between 1940s dresses and 1950s dresses? But the reason that this did not resonate with me was that the war between Venice and the Ottoman Turks was not a Cold War in any sense. In fact it was an almost continuous extremely hot war, or more accurately, series of wars, seven in all, that ran from 1463 to 1718. Cyprus, where most of the action takes place, fell to the Turks in 1571 following the siege of Famagusta after which the city, surrounded by 100,000 Ottoman troops and 1500 cannons, surrendered and the Venetian commander was flayed alive.</p>
<p>I really appreciate the opportunity to see theatre of this quality. I fell asleep still thinking about Othello’s feelings towards Desdemona and how they mutated in response to the information he was fed. Run, don’t walk, to the box office and beg, steal, or borrow a ticket to see this wonderful production before it ends on 22nd February.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-23723668120248040092014-01-28T09:17:00.001+00:002014-01-28T09:17:07.763+00:00I give up - it's time for post-democracy<p>We keep hearing that politics is in crisis because of democratic disengagement, low voter turnout and a lack of real ideas and ideology. All true. It is time of philosophers and scholars to put forward genuine alternatives and show us an enlightened path to a post-democratic future.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/18/bob-geldof-russell-brand_n_4622761.html?utm_hp_ref=uk">
<p>Sir Bob Geldof has thrown his weight behind Russell Brand's call for a political revolution, warning that the current system of democracy "may not be viable for much longer".</p>[From <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/18/bob-geldof-russell-brand_n_4622761.html?utm_hp_ref=uk"><cite>Bob Geldof Backs Russell Brand's Revolution In Call For New Politics</cite></a>]
</blockquote>
<p>I couldn’t agree more. Letting the general public have any kind of say is madness. I think it would be far better for affairs of state to be left to “artists” of one form or another, which is why I clapped with delighted when the Today programme revealed that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbuVa6GEJUg">FAG</a> puppetmaster Matt Damon was lurking in the Davos shadows this year. We live in a world beyond satire, so abandoning democracy for Russell’s socialist egalitarian paradise seems a natural step.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-60231482189092269432013-12-23T10:58:00.001+00:002013-12-23T10:58:11.868+00:00New icons for our plastic banknotes<p>I’ve submitted a new petition:</p>
<p>"Please instruct the Bank of England to use modern, inspirational Britons on the new plastic banknotes. I suggest that England’s greatest living poet, John Cooper-Clarke, should feature on the £20 note, Andy Murray on the £10 (unless Scotland votes for independence next year, in which case Sir Bradley Wiggins), Harry from One Direction on the £5 and Nigella Lawson on the £50."</p>
<p>I hope you will get behind my obviously sensible set of icons for modern Britain by <a href="http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/58486">signing up here</a>.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-72852603800792027862013-10-06T16:01:00.001+01:002013-10-06T16:01:11.231+01:00Thank you America: twerking is a crime, as I'd suspected<p>Scanning the news headlines with half an eye on my way down to the football results, I notice that the forces of law and order in the USA have finally decided to take a stand on behalf of the next generation.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2446080/Homeless-woman-charged-disorderly-conduct-twerking-schoolchildren-Florida-bus.html">
<p>A homeless woman has been arrested after twerking in front of a Florida school bus.</p>
[From <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2446080/Homeless-woman-charged-disorderly-conduct-twerking-schoolchildren-Florida-bus.html"><cite>Homeless woman charged with disorderly conduct after twerking in front of schoolchildren on a Florida bus | Mail Online</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>This is excellent news. Having <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/2013/06/woking-warning.html">learned what twerking was</a>, I'd taken it to be merely unpleasant and a typically revolting commentary on our collapsing society, but it turns out that in America, doing it in front of children is a crime (at least, it is if you are African-American). I'm assuming, therefore, that the vigilant men and women of the Lake County police force are even now contacting their counterparts in wherever-it-is that Miley Cyrus lives to have her arraigned. Hopefully, she'll get at least a couple of years in the slammer and we can all be spared ever hearing about her again.</p>
<p>My only concern about this is that the people behind MTV need to be charged with aiding and abetting, or perhaps even maintaining a criminal conspiracy, since they knew in advance and actively planned for Miley Cyrus to twerk in front of under-age children. It will be a travesty of justice if these evil people escape the long arm of the law in this case.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">
<p>Machine-gunning the pop stars and sending their families to prison camps may seen like a tough line, but you've got to take a stand somewhere to protect the children.</p>
[From <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/"><cite>a blog from a Citizen of Woking</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>I'm not suggesting we adopt Kim Jong-Un's line here: machine-gunning pop stars is out of the question because of the European Court of Human Rights and prison camps are a reasonable alternative. Come on America: bang her up and show us that you care about the children.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-4328273469623195602013-06-26T21:40:00.001+01:002013-09-11T10:28:23.514+01:00What is worse for society? Porn or MTV?<p>I do like expanding my vocabulary. As a child I used to read the Reader's Digest "It pays to increase your word power" column when I visited my grandparents and found it interesting. I was that sort of child. Anyway, I learned a new word recently: twerking. It refers to a kind of dirty dancing. Here is the word used in context.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/miley_cyrus_struggling_to_be_an_adult/13956">
<p>She emerged from a giant teddy bear, her tongue lasciviously protruding from her mouth and proceeded to ‘twerk it down’ on to the stage. After this incredibly subtle intro, she pulled off her already scanty outfit to reveal a flesh-coloured bikini and did so to a soundtrack repeating the lines: ‘It’s our body, we can do what we want.’ She then joined in a duet with Robin Thicke while simulating self-pleasuring actions with a giant foam hand</p>
[From <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/miley_cyrus_struggling_to_be_an_adult/13956"><cite>Miley Cyrus: struggling to be an adult | Chrissie Daz | spiked</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>I didn't see this, but I imagine it was even more disturbing to see than to read about. Interestingly, in the same week, North Korean father of his people and champion of national socialism, Kim Jong-Un, demonstrated a robust approach to pop singers who make pornographic videos by machine-gunning them.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.spin.com/articles/north-korea-kim-jong-un-execution-pornography-pop-star/">
<p>"Excellent Horse-Like Lady" singer Hyon Song-wol among those publicly shot over pornography charges</p>
[From <a href="http://www.spin.com/articles/north-korea-kim-jong-un-execution-pornography-pop-star/"><cite>North Korea Reportedly Executes 12 Performers, Including Kim Jong-Un's Ex | SPIN | Newswire</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>Machine-gunning the pop stars and sending their families to prison camps may seen like a tough line, but you've got to take a stand somewhere to protect the children. If CallMeDave was really interested in strengthening our society, protecting the weak and creating a moral dyke that can stand fast against the rising tide of deparativity, rather than obtaining cheap votes from idiots who don't really understand how anything works, then he would be launching a campaign to ban MTV, not internet porn. Pornography doesn't pretend to depict reality, whereas the unfortunate children who are fed from the teat of the music industry's robber barons are led to believe that MTV depicts society as it should be. MTV, as Beck famously sang, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ-orW3ZJ1k">makes me want to smoke crack</a>. Debbie Does Dallas made me want to get an American girlfriend.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-13743814480604968302013-05-13T13:31:00.001+01:002013-05-13T13:31:32.395+01:00Risky businessmen<p>I was happy to discover that the real reason for the British banking crisis has finally been uncovered.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/2261336/bankers-cocaine-use-caused-financial-crisis-exgovt-drug-adviser">
<p>Former top drugs adviser to the government David Nutt has made a controversial claim that the financial crisis was caused by bankers' habitual use of cocaine, the Telegraph reports.</p>[From <a href="http://www.investmentweek.co.uk/investment-week/news/2261336/bankers-cocaine-use-caused-financial-crisis-exgovt-drug-adviser"><cite>Bankers' cocaine use caused financial crisis - ex-govt drug adviser</cite></a>]
</blockquote>
<p>This seems as reasonable explanation as I've seen so far, but I think David is missing an additional factor. Scientific studies seem to show that men take more risks in the presence of attractive women, and I imagine that sort of behaviour is amplified considerably under the catalytic impact of Bolivian marching powder.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.livescience.com/8118-men-risks-pretty-women.html">
<p>Beautiful women lead men to throw caution to the wind</p>[From <a href="http://www.livescience.com/8118-men-risks-pretty-women.html"><cite>Men Take More Risks When Pretty Women Are Around | LiveScience</cite></a>]
</blockquote>
<p>Basically it all went wrong when they let women in. I wonder what Sheryl will have to say about this? Anyway, as far as I can see, broads and blow are a far more plausible explanation for the catastrophe in the British financial system than the line that Gordon Brown endlessly parroted.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/07/brtish-bankers-unpunished-unashamed">
<p>"A crisis that began in America" destroyed the British banking system. If it had not been for sub-prime loans in California and Bush's refusal to bail out Lehmans all would have been well… The banking commission, a strange but surprisingly intelligent group of MPs, peers and – only in England! – His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, takes the wishful thinking apart with admirable brutality.</p>[From <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/07/brtish-bankers-unpunished-unashamed"><cite>Bankers carry on unabashed, unscathed and unashamed | Nick cohen | Comment is free | The Observer</cite></a>]
</blockquote>
<p>Mr. Cohen is here referring to the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/professional-standards-in-the-banking-industry/membership/">Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards</a> (the Commission on Banking is something different). Oddly, as far as I could tell, the Archbishop of Canterbury seemed to be the most qualified member of the panel, having been a corporate treasurer in a previous life. Some of the others appear to have either no knowledge of the subject at all (<a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/professional-standards-in-the-banking-industry/membership/">Lord McFall was a chemistry teacher</a>) or a bankster heritage that makes me suspicious of their opinions (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Kramer">Baroness Kramer was with Citibank</a>).</p>
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<em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em><br />
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Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-86297689420306111342013-03-30T11:43:00.001+00:002013-03-30T11:43:27.988+00:00In the English film industry, the stunt men work in the accounts department<p>One of the oddest stories I've seen in the newspaper in months was that of the "fake" film gang who claimed to be making a Hollywood movie in order to obtain some ridiculous sleb-welfare lolly that the (broke) British taxpayer doles out.</p>
<blockquote cite="http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/03/25/five-jailed-for-fake-hollywood-film-tax-scam/">
<p>The gang submitted claims to HMRC, explaining that they had spent millions of pounds on the film: paying actors and film set managers. Under the tax relief regime for film-makers, they reclaimed £1.5 million in VAT, and nearly £1.3 million in film tax credit claims.</p>
[From <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2013/03/25/five-jailed-for-fake-hollywood-film-tax-scam/"><cite>Five jailed for fake Hollywood film tax scam - AOL Money UK</cite></a>]</blockquote>
<p>Now, it's absurd that film makers should get this ludicrous subsidy at all. But what's truly absurd about this story is that the film, which went straight to DVD, wasn't that bad! It won a "Silver Ace" award at last year's Las Vegas Film Festival. Compared to an actual British film made with taxpayer money such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368259/">Sex Lives of the Potato Men</a> (an unbelievable million quid of funding from the Lottery via the Film Council), it's Citizen Kane.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22339746.post-44309579238807067552013-03-16T13:53:00.001+00:002013-03-16T13:53:47.226+00:00Cyprus Says Deposit Levy to Involve Bank-Share Compensation - Bloomberg<p>Wow. This is pretty extreme. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-16/cyprus-says-deposit-levy-to-involve-bank-share-compensation.html">Cyprus Says Deposit Levy to Involve Bank-Share Compensation - Bloomberg</a>: "The Cypriot government decided earlier today to impose a 6.75 percent tax on bank deposits as high as 100,000 euros ($130,580) and a 9.9 percent levy on deposits in excess of that amount in order to win a European aid package."</p>
<p>I suppose I can see their point. I guess they figure that most of the large deposits are black money from Russia so no-one is going to complain much about it being "taxed" and, in a way, it's better to extract the money from oligarchs rather than from taxpayers.</p>
<p>Many years ago I was living in Indonesia. One day, the government closed all the banks and abolished the highest denomination banknote which if memory serves was the 10,000 Rupiah note. This was essentially a tax on the Chinese diaspora, because the Chinese didn't trust the banks and kept their money in cash. They woke up and discovered that their stash was worthless and, on the other side of the monetary fence, the government's liabilities for the outstanding notes were wiped out.</p>
<p>Perhaps Baronet Osborne might consider a combination of the two. Close the banks for the day, impose a levy of 10% on all accounts with more than, say, the limit for deposit insurance in them, and simultaneously abolish the £50 note. Yes, there would be a bit of squawking from criminals, drug dealers and money launderers, but I'm sure they'd be prepared to sacrifice for the greater good.</p>
<div style="text-align: right;"><br /> <em>In the future, everyone will be <a href="http://citizenofwoking.blogspot.com/">famous to fifteen people</a>.</em></div>Cayce Pollardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18441199457742532638noreply@blogger.com0