The Farm and The Valley.

Richard Benson was brought up on a small farm in the Yorkshire Wolds but turned his back on the rural life to become a journalist and eventually editor of The Face. When his parents were forced to sell up Richard returned to help with the farm sale and went on to write a best selling book about the trauma of the decline of both a small family business and a way of life. The Farm should be compulsory reading for all those townies who think that the countryside is populated mainly by premier league footballers, rock stars,  hedgefund managers and second homers, or for that matter that most British farmers are foxhunting barley barons. In the The Farm,  Benson gives an amusing but moving account of one family, one farming community and how the global food and financial markets impact on them. The author's father came from farming stock but his mother's family were miners and  now in The Valley the failed farm boy turned London trendy is taking a long hard look at that side of his family history. If he writes about the final days of mining as convincingly as he did about the decline of the English smallholding it should be well worth a read.

At last a star of the past without a hint of scandal.

I bloody told yer! This blog broke the story of a planned comeback for one of the nations favourite characters months ago and now it's confirmed. At last a light entertainment star from the past who never sucked up to the Royals and not a hint of scandal has ever been attached to. Never mentioned in the honours list and not a whiff of touchy gropey creepiness. Cometh the hour-cometh the man. Morph is back.

                                                            Well, we won this one.

BBC to be crank free zone.

I have never been that big a fan of the "no platform" view of opinions that differ from my own. It's not that I am concerned about the freedom of speech of the nastier fringes of the far right but rather that exposing their cretinous ideas to the light of day seems the best way of ensuring that they are seen for what they are. Opposing neo-nazis on the streets when they try to intimidate communities is one thing. Trying to airbrush their odious ideas from the media is quit another. Worst thing that happened to the British National Party was getting Nick Griffin on Question Time. Give 'em enough rope etc.
Of course not all cranks are evil as well as potty and, irritating though many of them may be, I can't think of a single  religious, political or pseudo-science screw job that I want to have silenced. Bring it on I say. It seems however that the BBC now have a different take on things and are aiming to keep cranks of the airways and make telly a fringe free zone. BBC managers are to be given a no nonsense induction course in the merits of a no platform for weirdos policy. All power to the mainstream is to be the new credo. Well I reckon it's all wrong. If we can't hear the opinions of Islamo-mentalists, vegetarian bunny huggers, climate change deniers and cracked racial theorists of every hue how can we ever develop the critical faculties necessary to deal with them?

If you don't laugh you will surely cry.

Victims of psychopath dictators, the worst excesses of religious maniacs or the inept interventions of over armed and under informed western powers, there seems no end to the misery endured by the the people of the Middle East. One incident that would have been laughable had the consequences not been so tragic, was the massive scam pulled off by multi-millionaire con-man James McCormack. This so called "British businessman" sold £40 million of completely useless bogus "bomb detectors" to the Iraqi authorities and thousands of innocent people lost their lives as the result of undetected explosives being waved through checkpoints. When McCormack was exposed and sent down for  ten years we might have thought that we had heard the last of a piece of kit that had been the rounds of the murky world of pseudo science for some time and had been sold as a golf ball finder prior to being a bomb detector. Unfortunately the very same piece of junk has resurfaced once again, this time being marketed by the ever entrepreneurial Egyptian Army as, of all things, a cure for AIDS and hepatitis C. Interesting but disturbing article here.  First as tragedy - then as farce.

Chairman Mao and the great property bubble.

Will the Chinese property bubble burst before London's? That is the question exercising the minds of developers both here and in the Far East. Of course, just like their British counterparts, Chinese estate agents are convinced that they are on a roll that will last into the foreseeable future, but this breed probably have no more credibility there than they have here. It seems almost beyond belief that any of us in the west can have ever thought that the Chinese Communist Party was the instrument of genuine social change or that the thoughts of Chairman Mao had anything much to offer to the Britain of the sixties. The truth is that although UK Maoist groups were tiny Chinese propaganda was received with interest and even enthusiasm by some on the revolutionary left. Why, even a few anarchists had to admit to a grudging respect for all of that Maoist activism. It was all part of the sort of "pick and mix" anti-establishment thinking of the time where Marxism, astrology, free-love and progressive rock were all spoken of in the same breath. It would be less than honest if I gave the impression that I was immune to this kind of thinking myself and I was indeed the owner of one of the good chairman's Little Red Books at one stage. At that time visiting Chinese ships would be covered with huge portraits of Mao and banners proclaiming the inevitable victory of the workers struggle. I happened to be loading a barge in one of the Royal Group of docks when one such Chinese ship arrived and being suitably impressed toddled off round to avail myself of anything that was going. I climbed the gangway and asked the first seaman that I came across if I could have a Little Red Book. Turning to his mate he said what I imagine would have translated as something like, "Go below and get this shit for brains hippy one of those fucking books. It will be worth a few brownie points from that bastard political commissar."  Anyway, I departed clutching this beautifully produced little volume that was chock full of useful advice about reaching the masses. I seem to remember that the dockers loading my barge thought that it was all a load of old wank. I wish that I had hung onto it now. Been interesting to check out Mao's take on the housing market.

The real WW 1 .

 I don't want to speak too soon, but so far the centenary of the start of the First World War has been nowhere near as jingoistic as I feared it would be.  Certainly we have had plenty of newspaper articles, books and TV/radio programmes about the war but it has not all been in the "ultimate sacrifice for country" vain. There has even been some coverage of those who resisted the war and I recently came across The Real WW 1. An interesting antidote to both nationalism and the Great Men view of history.

Fat coppers rough up pensioner.

This is what happens to pensioners in Sheffield who use their Travel Pass before the allowed time!                    
                                                            Up with this we will not put. Not in London anyway. We will not go gently into that good night.