Birthday and UK Visit

 

Birthday And UK Visit

I spent my birthday in Scotland with Natalie and family and had a great time there. Natalie had bought some good bitter and it was good to have a glass of that hat soon after my arrival on the Friday and a curry in the evening. Curries, fish and chips and sausages and mash (and bacon sandwiches in the morning and pints of bitter to drink) are now my staple diet when I’m in the UK, food that is difficult to find and which I don’t normally want in France; it’s a function of climate. I’m a foodie of a different sort when I’m in the UK .

On the Saturday I got the full birthday treatment: cards and presents in the morning, lunch at a good restaurant and fizz and cake with candles in the evening (photos below). I didn’t want to do anything special for the rest of my stay, just be with the family, do a little shopping and a little gardening and be around the house. It was a very pleasant few days.

 

I

 

 I left Glasgow to go to see Steve and Jo in the house they are renting temporarily in Sywell while awaiting their eventual move to Scotland. It is a lovely, small old house in a quiet close and of course I got to see Tiloup, the dog, and have a love-in with him. Jo gave me a short tour around the area which has attractive countryside, a couple of good pubs and an aerodrome for antique plane enthusiasts. Their initial foray into Scotland to scout the possibilities there was rather a washout, hindered by floods and torrential rain, but they will be back again in the spring. I also met Carl while I was there, who looked much fitter than I have seen him for a while. Four days a week at the gym have put a lot of muscle on him and he seems content with his life in Birmingham.

From Steve and Jo I went to Reading, as my friend Margaret couldn’t put me up in London, and met up with former girlfriend Mairwen. We went for a pub lunch together aand reminisced a bit about old times and friends there. Reading had changed so much in the past 15 years that I found it quite a shock. The old station that I knew so well from frequent commutes to London had become something of a railway palace with two new entrances, six new platforms and a third-storey concourse with shops and cafes. It’s high all-glass frontage now dominates the road infront of it. The centre of the town had changed quite dramatically too with a lot of new building and quite different shops. Department stores it seem are now “out”, nobody wants them or the space is uneconomic and now empty. The smaller shops seemed predominantly food stores, cafes, restaurants or take-aways with a wide variety of food with different national flavours. I found that quite attractive but not so much the method of payment. After my arrival in the UK I had withdrawn a couple of hundred pounds in Sterling but in the event had difficulty spending it. Many of the shops and pubs insisted on payment by card or phone only. Mairwen said that had started in the pandemic, presumably for hygienic reasons, and subsequently continued and intensified. But it came as a shock to me, used to life in a small rural French village.

I found my visit to the UK tiring but very enjoyable; lugging suitcases around is bound to be for someone at my age but I had numerous unsolicited offers of help with them. Whatever is happening politically in the UK the people are still very much OK.

Rémuzat Etc

Rémuzat

It didn’t take me long to lose my «crown» at the Rémuzat boules tournament. I lost my first game and to win the tournament you have to win every game and by a larger margin than anybody else. In retrospect I’m slightly amazed that I managed it last year. But the few days there were enjoyable nonetheless. On a free day friends Michel and Chantal took me up to a point 2500 metres in the hills where we could see the eagles and vultures at close hand (photo below). Vultures really are huge birds and I hadn’t realised that they can’t get airborne without some assistance from warm updrafts of air. So they don’t appear in the sky until around midday in the autumn. I’ve no idea what they do in winter; presumably they just scramble around.

Gardening

The autumn weather has been very good so far, sunshine for most of the day and cool but not cold evenings. We’ve had no rain so I’ve had to continue watering although the daytime heat is not enough for the ground to lose much water. The pots front and back still have some colour, a bit more than usual as I’ve favoured plants this year that don’t require too much water and continue blooming later. So I still have oleanders, sages and the ageranthemum by my front door that the postmistress has to peer through to see my letter box in bloom (photo).

The allotment has been a bit disappointing in terms of volume as the other gardeners have found so at least I know it’s not just me. However I have had sweet corn, onions, aubergines, chillies and beetroot and the tomatoes and French beans have been prolific and still are. I’ve sown some turnip seed and planted cabbages and leeks so there will be something to come through the winter.

Scotland

At the end of the week I’m off to spend my birthday in Scotland with Natalie and family. Friends Claudine and Jacques have kindly offered to take me to and from Marseilles airport. I’ll take olives, olive oil and a donkey or boar sausage for Natalie and “langues de chat” biscuits for Eilidh, which she loves, plus some lavender essence for presents for whoever. On leaving Scotland I’ll go down to see lifelong friends Steve and Jo who have now moved back to the UK permanently. And then I shall go further down to Reading to see friend Mairwen and do some shopping to bring back. My friend Margaret can’t put me up in London this year and London hotel prices require a bank loan so I’ll skip London. It’s a trip that I am very much looking forward to. All the logistics along the way are pre-booked but “man proposes and….”.

 

Immigration

A little while ago I did a post on immigration. The result was hundreds of hits on this blog. The hits were obviously bots looking for mentions off immigration. Why? The most obvious reason would be to gather evidence to refine messages on the subject. But who was issuing the bots? Since Google stats no longer gives the geographical region from which hits come it’s impossible for me to say. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the UK government.

 

Family Holiday

 

Family Holiday

Natalie, Andy and Eilidh came again this summer, for the last week in June and the first in July, driving down from Scotland. Their old VW van made it all the way until the last few kilometres when it threw a wobbly which the local garage managed to fix in time for their return. They stayed, as before, at the gite 100 yards down the road so that they could have a swimming pool. 

 

Eilidh’s priorities for the holiday were the swimmig, seeing Mimi the cat, going to the market in Buis and getting a lollipop at the baker’s ( and seeing Papi of course).

They came to my allotment but there was nothing to take back this year, vegetables being 2-3 weeks behind where they were last year, so Eilidh helped with the watering. As last year, they came to my house each morning and we went to the Bar du Pont for breakfast (and Eilidh’s lollipop). Then itwas just a question of deciding what to do with the day. The weather wasn’t s hot as last year but quite hot and sunny enough so the pool got plenty of use.

 

 

At the Bar du Pont we bumped into Josephine. Josephine contacted me last year offering to help with the English conversation classes I give here (she has an EFL qualification) and was with her husband and two small children, Cecilia and Jay. Cecilia is just a year younger than Eilidh and the two got on like a house on fire so we went to Josephine’s house for extended aperitifs and, later, had a picnic beside the Toulourenc river together. Maybe Eilidh and Cecilia will become pen pals; their friendship certainly enhanced Eilidh’s holiday.

Andy hired an electric bike as usual but didn’t cycle up Mt Ventoux this year. He did though decide that he and Eilidh would cycle to the picnic by the Toulourenc, some 4.5 kms and Eilidh made the ride triumphantly on her bike. We also spent several pleasant evenings at the Bar du Pont eating pizza, mussels and chips and pancakes.

 

Life-long friends Steve nd Jo were on the brink of returning to the UK permanently and so invited us to a meal together at the Bar du Pont (photo below). I shall miss their company and our meals together, particularly in the winter when activities are scarce.

 

So once again we had a great time together doing nothing of particular note but relaxing and enjoying every minute of it.

IMMIGRATION

 

Immigration

It’s time the British grew up about immigration (among other things like nationalism, sovereignty, public ownership and taxes, for instance).

If no politician has the guts to say that Britain needs immigration, badly, let me state the obvious. In common with all developed European nations, Britain has an aging population and declining birth rate among nationals. Britain is in reality in competition with other developed European nations for the most capable of immigrants; it needs to be attractive to those people. So a determined anti-immigration policy is not a great start, is it. Of course, some might object, the most capable can come in but that assumes a queue of them waiting to do that and a screening system to sort the wheat from the chaff and there is no evidence of either. As Sunak himself admitted a year ago, the UK approach to immigration is «broken» (his word).

So what bout the small boats and number of would-be immigrants, of unknown and various capability arriving that way? Well several other European countries with fewer resources receive more, even if they don’t all arrive in small boats, and manage to cope. So what is the big issue?

The answer, in the UK, would seem to be that making that a big issue of small boat arrivals deflects attention from much more important issues that the british are experiencing the effects of, on health care, cost of livig, degraded public services generally and very low economic growth in relation to their peers.

It's time for the British public to wise up and man up. Failure to do so will see the British choosing between unicorns offered by politicians at the next general election, the same unicorns that gave it Brexit. It's time for Britain to discover, accept and face reality

Another Letter On The French: Government

Government And Administration

There are obvious differences between the two countries in terms of procedure but also differences in approach and culture that can be easily discerned. The most glaringly obvious is that England is a constitutional monarchy and France a republic. In England the monarch is little more than a figurehead; in France the President has significant power. England has a first-past-the-post electoral system, France has multi-round voting. A common English misconception is that France relies on proportional representation but this in fact plays a very minor role in the French electoral system. Those are major differences but their necessary consequences are far from obvious. So let’s dig a little deeper.

Disagreements occur in all cultures but one in England might result in a letter to The Times whilst one in France is more likely to result in a pile of cauliflowers dumped in front of a Mairie or a blockade of a motorway. If the French are unhappy with the government they will generally make that clear in rather less gentlemanly ways than the English. The French know what a revolution can achieve and they are not about to let a government forget it.

I have often wondered how the French can be both bureaucratic and anarchic at the same time but somehow they manage it. Some friends of mine, applying successfully for a carte de séjour, were told by the civil servant involved: now you have a file; in France, if you have no file you don’t exist. In England, if the government has a file on you are probably a criminal or a suspected terrorist. In England, the letter of the law is the law (before Boris Johnson arrived on the scene). In France…….I wanted to plant some flowers opposite my house, across the road, between two trees, but it meant digging up the hard core at the roadside. I asked my neighbours whether I should ask the Mairie for permission to do this and they all said: No, you will never get permission. But we all love the idea so just do it, move the bench from further down the road to between the two trees so that cars can’t park there, do it, we all love the idea and so nobody will say anything. In France you need the official documents unless all in your locality like what you are doing, in which case f**k the rules.: It’s a very pragmatic approach to initiatives but also leads to the dreaded “saut du loup”: the occasion on which someone sees an opportunity to get one back on you or achieve something by reporting you to the authorities.

That is mostly at local level and levels matter. At the top level the English tend to pride themselves on being the birthplace (Magna Carta etc) of democracy and the best exponents of it. But are they? The English extol the virtues of their electoral system on the grounds that, if you have complaint against the government you know who to take it to: your MP; the MP is then under an implied threat to lose a vote if he/she doesn’t react appropriately. But how often in practice do people appeal to their MP and how much does an MP care about a single vote?

In France you don’t have that single source for a resolution of your problem but you do have sources, dependent on the level of your complaint. That could be the Mairie, the Communauté de Communes, the Département or the region but the sources are there. It is an English myth that without an MP you don’t have someone to complain to.

Moreover, in an English general election the principle that the political party with the majority of votes, on the basis of one person one vote should win, fails and has done. A majority of voters can vote for the political party that loses the election. In France, it is much more likely that no single party wins power in an election but that some coalition takes power. In England a coalition government is often regarded as a failure of the election or the political parties involved, possibly leading to dreaded political/economic instability and stalemate on decision-making. in France it is simply a reflection of the mood of the country and has few other connotations. Coalitions are accepted as normal. I remember a time in the 1960s/1970s when Belgium was ridiculed in the English press because the Belgian government seemed to change coalitions about every six months. Yet over the same period the Belgian economy outstripped that of England by a very considerable margin.

Democracy and its consequences is not all about one person one vote; indeed, in respect of other requisites in terms of independence of and respect for the judiciary, respect for independent sources of information and individual rights England currently does not show up well. In England with its first past the post system, if you vote for a losing candidate your vote is totally discounted. In France’s multi-round system, your vote is still counted if your favoured candidate loses the first round and may be important in the next round.

Within all this is the cost of administration, which must be paid for one way or another by the inhabitants of the country, the so- called tax burden. In very general terms the more granular an administration, the more layers of administration, the better it can serve local needs but the greater the cost. I don’t have figures but the tax burden seems obviously greater in France than in England. This begs two important questions: on whom, proportionately does the tax burden fall and whom, proportionately, does it benefit?

Several more differences come to mind. In England there is a strict separation of the military from the police, the former being under the control of the Ministry of Defence and the latter under the Home Office. In France the gendarmerie and the CRS have both civil and military roles. The judiciary as well as the legal codes differ. I don’t intend to go into the differences in legal code but it is worth noting that neither side in judicial disputes in England has responsibility for establishing the truth. Rather, cases are fought in a manner analogous to former duels but with words as weapons. In France an investigating magistrate is appointed with the specific responsibility of establishing the truth.

As a final point, a point that is also discussed in the letter on business, there is also the question of which services/businesses should be run by the government and which run by private organisations. At the moment the tendency in England is towards privatising almost everything that can be privatised. In France there is much more inclination to have many services/businesses run or at least tightly controlled by the state. Over the past several decades England has tended to favour private enterprise over state ownership or control. There has been little movement in this direction in France over the same period.

 

Style And Psychology

Gardening Style

I think I’ve commented before on contrasting gardening styles in England and France, the French preference for geometric patterns and discipline and the English preference for a ùore natural arrangement. One neighbour called my back garden a jungle and another a “ savante désordre”. The difference is just in stylistic appreciation.

The same is true in the allotments. Those French who are taking them seriously have much more orderly arrangements than mine but also much more barren ground. The peasant in me says “but you could grow a a lot more in all that space” despite the fact that we all grow a lot more than we need individually. Nature abhors a vacuum. The French-owned allotments have plants mostly arranged in lines and wide apart while I tend to plant in clumps and, if a useful plant, aflower or vegetable, sprouts somewhere I haven’t planted it, I leave it to grow there. Poppies have sprouted in various places from the seeds I gathered and scattered last year, as also have a couple of Californian poppies. In amongst the rows of potatoes I planted I have sunflowers, borage and lettuces growing from seeds self-sown from last year. Does it matter, does it offend? I don’t know but I can foresee some exchange of views ahead. Rather smugly I think that I will have a greater variety of plants in my allotment than anyone else. But does that matter? It’s simply a question of point of view and aesthetic appreciation. Whatever our points of view we’ll all get some satisfaction from our efforts and more vegetables than we need. I give my excess to friends and to the Bar du Pont for whoever wants it. I grow it simply because I like to.

Water

“Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink…..”. Well we do have drinking water but also a great deal more, which is unusual in these parts at this time of the year. The weather has been almost tropical, like English April weather on steroids: downpours and hot sunny intervals, frequent storms. It was estimated a few months ago that France needed two months of rain to reach normal levels of precipitation and, though we haven’t had the floods that Italy has I think we are well on the way to achieving that. Last summer we had restrictions on water use and the supply to the wash-house opposite me, which I use to water the plants in front of the house, was cut off. It still hasn’t been restored but I’m hoping that we will soon have enough for that to happen.

Provençal Psychology.

An important part of living here is understanding Provençal psychology. There seems to be a directive that you do not offend anyone if you can help it. So if you ask something of anyone, some kind of service, they do not want to say no; in effect to offend. It could be a routine service, a local plumber, an electrician or whatever but, if they don’t want the job, they will not say no they will simply not turn up when they say they will. So it is important to understand that non-appearance is equivalent to a “no”. In effect you are invited to look elsewhere for a solution to your problem, which obviously you can do. But…...you have to understand that that is the situation, yourself; nobody is going to tell you that that is the reality.

This occurred to me on one one occasion when one regular boules player in the village pissed off all the others and so the others all sought to play elsewhere. My response was to tell the others to tell this player to play elsewhere. But…….this was apparently not possible (I didn’t understand why at the time). Now I know that this would have created offence and that was why it was not possible. The problem resolved itself only when the offending player no longer came to play, because there were no other players to play with. So for a while no boules was played in the village. The message was clear but only implied, not stated. Eventually, when the offending player had understood the message or got frustrated, boules in the village resumed. All things come to those who wait?

 

On Being Franglais

On Being Franglais

Becoming officially both French and English has made me ponder to what extent I am either. The thought has been accentuated by the fact that both of my closest English friends will shortly be joining the general post-Brexit exodus of English people from the area. I shall then be one of only two Brits in the village and the other I hardly know; he doesn’t participate in village life. In most ex-pat communities I have observed, the English remain primarily and essentially English, however they interact with the native population; is that true o me too?

By upbringing I am certainly English. By education I am primarily English but a slight mixture, schooled in England but predominantly studying French. When I was young I didn’t allow foreigners to criticise my country; I had to defend it, a reflection of my nationalist education. Now I dislike all forms of nationalism.

By culture I am a mixture too, enjoying English and French music, films and literature equally. By language I am definitely English; my understanding and mastery of French is good but will never be as good as that of my English. By experience I must definitely be English, having lived over 60 years of my life there, even though I have travelled extensively.

By lifestyle I think I am decidedly more French than English. I particularly love food, wine and humour; someone once wrote that the French at play are a gladdening sight and I would heartily endorse that. Certainly I seem to have avoided the English Calvinist tendencies which seem life-denying to me.

So what is it I most appreciate about each country? I can’t separate the people in general because they are just that: people in general. I also have the problem in making a comparison in that most of my life in England was spent working; I was retired in England for only a few years and decided almost immediately that I wanted then to live in France. So my experience here has been just in retirement. Throughout my life I have had French friends, felt at home in France and empathised with typically French attitudes.

Having decided to live in France, what do I miss about England? There isn’t much. True I would see more of my family if I were in England but they have their own, mostly busy lives,so my contact though more frequent would always be brief and peripheral. We can and do visit one another. In spring I miss the deciduous woods that I loved in England at that time of year and that are not present in my part of France. I also miss uniquely English pubs occasionally and a pint of good bitter but that is about it.

Against that my friends in England were far between and here they are close at hand. Here I experience a strong sense of community, which I value and never experienced in England after my very early years. I’m not sure whether that is a function of living in a small village rather than living in France but one of the most commonly used French words is “solidarité, getting together, supporting one another to achieve things. It reinforces the sense of community.

Politically I am not enamoured of either government though certainly very much less so of the current English one. The French government has lurched to the right following the prevailing trend in Europe but still takes better care of the elderly and those on modest incomes, like me, than does the current English government.

How to sum up? Maybe it is just a matter of attitude and preferences. I certainly believe I am happier now in France now than I would be in England. Whether that makes me more French than English I am not sure. If someone were to ask me whether I was English or French I’m not sure either how I would answer.. Saying Franglais would be a cop out. Maybe I would say that I was not sure but that I was certainly European. That is obvious geographically but to the extent that England has distanced itself from Europe via Brexit it probably makes me more French than English.

 

The Coronation And Gardening

 

The Coronation

Yes, I watched the coronation on TV, or at least a little over an hour of it. I couldn’t be quite as cynical as Private Eye which previewed the event as “man on chair, puts hat on”. I thought the ceremony and views of London and Westminster Abbey would at least be worth it and so they were. I had hoped to see Charles crowned but had been invited to lunch at 1.00 ( CET) and so just missed that. My impressions then are just of what for an hour or so went before.

In truth I found the ceremony rather boringly slow and I really didn’t want to know such details as which trousers Charles was wearing. The gospel singers were an innovation but (cynically) a sop to the black community? There was a reference to “people of all faiths”, an inclusivity, that seemed subsequently drowned out by numerous insistences on protestantism. OK, the Church of England is protestant but is it necessary to ram that down the throats of people of other faiths? How well does that help the delicate situation in Northern Ireland and do we want to feed religious strife?

In all this I wonder about the involvement of various parties, who has the most influence and the final say. The government, the military and the clergy obviously have major roles in the organisation and pageantry of the event, the traditional procedures. But what about, beyond that, the messaging? Sunak was quick to say that the event showed the great in Great Britain but any politician can be expected to put some political spin on the occasion. However I am led to question just how much input the government can have on what is supposed to be very much a non-political occasion. If I’m suspicious it’s because the current government has shown that it has little respect for established standards of parliamentary behaviour and even legality, so what else may it trample on?

Anyway, Charles has been crowned king and I wish him goodwill. A good king is certainly better than a bad one and if he carries out his office as well as his mother he will be judged a good king. Going by his past record, his sympathies would seem to be to the nation’s benefit but whether he will be allowed to express them and whether he can use them to influence the government in his decreed non-political role remains to be seen

Flowers And Vegetables

The weather being particularly clement I have left my bedroom windows open. The honeysuckle rambling outside r immediately took the opportunity to ramble into the room (as in photo) and is now perfuming all the house. It is now in bloom on both sides of the house, top to bottom. The lilac by the front door is in bloom too. The jasmine one floor up has yet to bloom so I’m looking forward to a perfumed summer.

The front of the house is looking good, fully planted and people stopping to take photos, particularly of the Dublin Bay roses on both sides of the road. The one opposite (in photo) has previously been just a bush but seems to have broken through the hard core on the roadise beceause it is now way up the lime tree beside it. I think the front is is largely done, barring renewal of the hanging baskets. The back needs a little attention but is mostly planted with perennials so not much is needed.

A lot of the

allotment is already planted but I have to dig up the remains of the spinach beet from last year and the last few leeks. I’ll hold off on the garlic I planted last autumn for at least another month. Corn, spinach beet and tomato seedlings are on the way but I have yet to get the beans going and will need to repeat the sowing of lettuces and radishes. The potatoes, onions, lettuces, beetroot and herbs already planted are looking healthy.

On the fence around one side of the plot I’ve planted three honeysuckle rooted cuttings, eight forsythia cuttings and four grape vines. Hopefully they will cover the fence next year if not this. The gooseberry and thornless blackberry bushes look healthy and hopefully will deliver in due course. A great deal though will depend on water usage restrictions over the summer.

The mad English gardener, who also plays boules, strikes again! And I have my “crown” at the Rémuzat tournament I won last year to defend in September. So, enough to keep me occupied.

April, Education, Mice And Men

April

I’ve always loved April, the month that for me means spring, puts a spring in my step and a song in my heart. It’s the time when gardening in earnest can really begin and, here, when locally grown asparagus and strawberries abound in the shops and markets. Cantaloupe melons are appearing in the shops too, from Spain at the moment but locally grown ones will appear within a couple of weeks also. It’s the start of a local fruit bonanza that will last into September. And I’m a fruit-aholic.

I’ve not yet done any planting of summer flowers in front of my house but the allotment has kept me quite busy. White onions, lettuces, potatoes and radishes are all in and sprouting as well as the sunflowers with which I want to completely surround my plot. The rest will be planted in the next couple of weeks. As no one has claimed the fence bordering one side of the plot I’ve planted eight forsythia cuttings and three honeysuckle cuttings alongside it. I’ll take more cuttings in the next few weeks which hopefully can be planted in the autumn. It’s go, go, go.

Education

So what do you think education is about, what is part of it, what negates it? I think that tick boxes, as part of any evaluation negates it. Think about that. Tick boxes are antithetical to education and yet they are widely used to evaluate it. How can that be?

Just consider this. How many times have you seen the virtue of thinking “outside the box” as having produced a new insight, a breakthrough on a problem, an advance in knowledge? I think it has has happened quite frequently. Just as one instance, Einstein’s theory of relativity couldn’t have happened without it. Einstein couldn’t have had that insight without thinking outside the box. But, educated today, Einstein wouldn’t have been allowed that insight, he would have been marked down, as less intelligent, because of it.

So why are tick boxes used to evaluate education? It seems fairly obvious to me that it is because they make education (and teachers) esay to evaluate, which happens to be very important to politicians, particularly useful in fooling the public into believing that education levels are maintained or increased while budgets are cut.

Of Mice And Men

My French friends are puzzled about the English; they think we have changed in personality. The French have for long regarded the English as “bagareurs”, always ready for an argument, a, fight, stubborn, perfidious. Isn’t that what saved Britain in WW2?S o they look at what has been happening in England and scratch their heads and think “Why isn’t London burning? We know the English can be taciturn but have they all become mice?”. If the same had been happening in France the guillotines would already have been dusted off and wagon loads of MPs would be on their way to meet their maker. The price of electricity is soaring in England; here the price rise is capped at 15%, raised from 4%. Inflation of food prices isreported as 17% in Britain, here it is just above the general inflation level of 5.7%. And the French are up in arms about the price rises. A proposal to raise the retirement age to 3 years lower than the British retirement age has already seen Paris burning in parts. Why isn’t this happening in London?

So the French ask:what has happened to the English?Mice or men? Was Macron right when he called Brexit the vassalisation of the English?

 

Brexit Revisited

Brexit Revisited

At the risk of revisiting territory already covered in the past, provoked by issues I am still discussing with friends and acquaintances, I want to provide a definitive statement of my attitude to Brexit.

Referenda are a legitimate democratic mechanism, used by many countries as a part of their democratic constitution, with a specific purpose and rules to achieve that purpose. The purpose is to get a direct reading of opinion/desires from the electorate unfiltered by intermediaries such as elected representatives. To this end two of the rules are that the electorate must be properly informed and the result must be decisive: the government is looking for a directive. Thus any misinformation in referenda campaigns must be heavily penalised and may invalidate the result and a threshold is imposed on the winning result margin, often 60% but which may be less. A result of 2-3% either way is interpreted as the electorate being more or less evenly split, unable to make up its mind and therefore offering no clear direction to the government. The referendum result is thus null. Other normal electoral regulations apply.

None of this applied to the UK EU referendum; all the normal referenda and electoral rules were broken and what ensued was akin to a rugby scrum without even rugby rules. Any country that uses referenda responsibly would have declared the result invalid. I therefore regard the UK EU referendum as having no legitimacy at all and very far from having any kind of binding commitment on the government.

So what was it all about? Here I think we have to separate the promoters and the voters. What the promoters had in common was that they were all rich and powerful or represented those who were. And they were faced with a stated EU intention to bring in legislation to crack down on tax avoidance. For the promoters there was the incentive to avoid this legislation and also to repeal many EU laws, such as on food, environmental standards and worker rights, that inhibited profits. Easy money and low tax were the goals, I think. What do current events suggest?

 However, those goals were hardly likely to appeal to the electorate at large What was needed for an effective referendum campaign were populist slogans, appeals to nationalism and a false idea of sovereignty. This was exactly the problem faced by Goebbels in Germany prior to 1933 and may explain why analogies to him and Nazi measures are sometimes applied to the current UK government. The Leave campaign adopted very similar arguments to those of Goebbels, slogans and superficially attractive sound bites, denial of reality and appeals to wish fulfilment, albeit without the overt racism. The jews as a target were simply replaced by the EU.

 Finally there was the UK’ endemic xenophobia. Foreigners and what is foreign are widely regarded with suspicion and distaste and the Leave campaign ramped up the xenophobia., particularly over the issue of immigration: immigration=foreigners=bad. In fact the UK needs immigrants because of its ageing population, in common with most developed western countries, and is in reality in competition with those other countries for the most needed immigrant skills. So ùmaking immigrants unwelcome is a clear own goal.

Economically Brexit makes no sense since it reversed the economic reasons for the original decision to join the EU when the same economic consitions applied as in 1972. The decision to join was because the economy was in poor shape and the UK was doing much more business with the EU with tariff barriers against it than it was with the Commonwealth countries with no such barriers. Joining the EU removed those barriers and boosted trade. Trade requires a correspondence of interests and the UK thaan had more with the EU than with the Commonwealth, as it still does today The UK joined the EU for economic reasons, not political ones, and has left for political reasons,no wonder trade is now suffering.

So how did it work? From subsequent anecdotal evidence the appeal to a distorted understanding of sovereignty worked best, the idea that the UK alone could not just control but impose its destiny on the world: take back cpntrol was the slogan. There was also the appeal to funds for the NHS which many people apparently believed; from an overtly rich, right-wing group traditionally opposed to spending on public services? And appeal to many in small but significant professions who felt undervalued by their allotment in the EU, such as fishermen and farmers. EU allotments in other areas, such as economically deprived areas, were simply countered by empty promises, empty as has proved to be the case.

So the campaign worked. Should I therefore regard it bas binding? I can’t for the life of me regard it as in any way legitimate, as anything other than a travesty of democracy and a farce. It would seem to have resulted in a mountain of problems, of chaos; and that is what, if we had given it real informed thought, we should reasonably have expected.

Reason, however, is not the order of the day, emotions that have been evoked are still alive and it seems that the major political parties in the Uk are wary of them. By far the largest and most influential part of the media in the UK is determined to keep the Brexit fantasy alive; even that national institution, globally respected hitherto as independent, the BBC, is apparently willing to compromise, to compromise not only its independence but also its global reputation.

So what of the future? Reality has already bitten, and bitten bitterly for many. Will Britain, and its political parties, face up to reality or continue to pander to fantasy?

 

Think

Think

Think was apparently at one time the watch word within IBM when that company was the dominant force in the IT world. I don’t know how well that worked for the company but I believe it should be the watch word for everybody today.

I recently had an article published in a reputable English IT journal but had difficulty trying to access the published article. There had been recurring problems, the journal admitted, over access for new subscribers (not financial, subscription is free). I took a look and the soution became immediately clear and my problem was resolved. I passed the problem resolution on to the journal. So, no problem?

Well, my background is in IT and when I retired many ears ago one of the great benefits I felt was that I no longer had to try to keep up to date with new software releases. It used to take me at least half a day a week to do that when I was working. So I am well out of date on new software and quite generally on new developments in IT. Yet I easily found the problem with this website when their own IT personnel, who must have been much more up to date than I was and much more familiar with their website , apparently couldn’t. How can that happen?

I believe it’s to do with thinking, not rocket science, just ordinary but rigourous thinking. The article I wrote focussed on the importance of what I knew as the ELSE clause, part of a logical construction used in programs of my day: IF, THEN, ELSE. IF (whatever) occurred/applied, THEN all possible reactions, ELSE because you are not God and may have overlooked some possibilities. As I understood it, even if you were totally, absolutely sure you had covered all possibilities in your THEN clause, thinking as hard as you could, you still had to include an ELSE. And it’s the ELSE clause that is so often missing today.

Why? Is it because people (and specifically IT employeees today) are not encouraged to think for themselves? That’s a possibility, though a damning one if it is true.

The other more general possibility lies in education. If you want to judge levels of education by numbers, as governments increasingly seem to want to do, geerally for political purposes, you use tick boxes. They are easy to mark, right or wrong and you can count the numbers. Tick boxes force a limited number of possible responses. So how can anyone think outside the (tick) box?

If you are not allowed/educated to do so you don’t. So how do we bring up people to think independently, out of the box?

There’s an awful corollary. Could it be that governments don’t want people to think out of the box but only within the constraints that they have decided? If that is true we need revolutionaries as never before.

 

A Conjecture On Human Development

A Conjecture On Human Evolution

The weather lately has been dry and sunny but most often with the cold Mistral blowing. When it stops we have 14-15 degrees but the Mistral cuts that in half. So I’ve not been doing a lot outside, more reading and writing indoors. So here’s a conjecture on human evolution.

A friend of mine here has spent a large part of his life in the East, which means there is at least one person here I can enjoy a chilli-laden curry with, and he has acquainted me with some eastern thinking; which leads to the following conjecture.

Hindous believe that human development has not been linearly progressive, as is thought in the West, but cyclic: cycles of development ending in catastrophe followed by renewed development. I find the possibility intriguing.

The first evidence of Homo Sapiens is about 300,000 years ago, humans with intelligence if not a lot of education. Agriculture, on currently available evidence, is estimated to have started around 14,000 years ago. So it took humans with intelligence, even very basic intelligence, 286,000 years to think that planting a few seeds might be a good idea? It’s possible of course but is it probable? Hindous don’t think so.

There’s another interesting calculation. If a global catastrophe were to happen today, a global nuclear war, a large asteroid hitting the Earth or some such, it is estimated that it would take only about 300 years for all evidence of our current civilisation other than that in stone or pottery to disappear, except perhaps for a few chance exceptions.

So…..let’s allow for some margin of error on the estimates. Suppose agriculture started 1000 years earlier than estimated and suppose it takes 1000 years for evidence (other than stone, pottery) to disappear, that gives a possible cycle of around 18,000 years. Eighteen thousand goes into 300,000 rather a lot of times.

All this is just conjecture of course and there is one overriding problem: one of scale.

When discussing the distant past it is common to talk in terms of estimates of “within a few thousand years, ten or twenty thousand years” because we know so little about it. But it is quite possible for a hell of a lot to happen in a few thousand years, as we do know today and, as I hope I have shown. Did it, in the distant past? The possible eradication of all evidence within a thousand years doesn’t help.We’ll probably never know but you could think about it if the Mistral or other factor is keeping you indoors.

 

Religion

 Here is another of my letters on the French

 Religion

Voltaire said that while in France, because there were only two religions, they fought one another, in England there were 20 so people of all religions co-rxisted happily side by side. This, as with many of Voltaire’s observations, was somewhat of a simplification although there was some truth in it. It is true that in England in the 18^th century there was no longer any official antagonism between catholics and protestants but it is also true that antagonism still exists to the present day, certainly in Northern Ireland. Elsewhere in Britain old antagonisms are evident mostly just in insults hurled by football supporters at one another. Several big towns in England and Scotland have two big football teams, one with catholic origins and the other with protestant ones.

Protestantism, as a rebuttal of catholicism, didn’t really arise in Europe until the 18^th century, the century of philosophers and rethinking of previously held beliefs. It was the century in which logic was first widely applied to fundamental questions. The sacred cows of superstition were milked mercilessly and religion relegated to the position of faith rather than absolute truth.

Prior to this both catholics and protestants had indulged in the universal religious sport of killing those who thought differently. Both those in England and those in France had greatly indulged in this sport up until almost the 18^th century. In france there had notably been the Albigenses but also other non-catholic (hence heretic) groups. These groups were defeated at this time in France as a power of influence but persisted in the background. Prior to that “heretics” and catholics had committed outrages on each other possibly in equal measure. In the Baronnies where I live, Mollans was a catholic viilage sandwiched between protestant enclaves. In one attack Mollans lost over 100 men, about a fifth of its then population. And a neighbouring village, Pierrelongue, was completely wiped out and remained uninhabited until a plea for inhabitants resulted in an influx of people from the Auvergne to repopulate it. Subsequently Napoleon 1er sought some kind of understanding with the catholic church which lasted, with increasing unease, through the 19^th century until Aristide Briand, managed to negotiate an agreement in which France became officially a lay country with church property becoming state owned. The officially lay status of the country is of great importance to the French;

England indulged in the same sport for many centuries but king HenryVIII came up with a game changer. Refused, for good catholic reasons, a divorce he wanted, he created a new religion, the Church of Ebgland. This new religion wasn’t catholic in that it did not accept the authority of the pope but wasn’t necessarily protestant either. It was some kind of hybrid unorthodox religion whose dictates seem designed to encompass as many attitudes to faith as possible. Catholic/protestant antagonisms persisted after Henry VIII but so did the Church of England.

The English tendency to conformity, though frequently attacked by renegades, has ensured its presence as the major religion in the UK. I’m not sure what you have to do to be excommunicated by the Church of England, other than declaring yourself an atheist or of another specific faith, but it is that flexibility that has ensured not only its survival but its pre-eminence in England.

A friend of mine, on joinng the British navy at age 15, was asked to state his religion. He said he had none so the interviewing officer put him down as Church of England. A friend in France, when I among a group of others, proposed singing carols in the village at Christmas, wanted to join in but refused on the grounds that carols were religious and she did not want to be associated with religion. In France the lay ethic is fiercely defended.

For these reasons and no doubt many others, attitudes to religion between people in France and England differ markedly. In France, people tend to be very religious or not at all. In England the distinction between those who are religious and those who are not tends to be much more vague. The Church of England tends to sweep up those in the middle.

I have made no mention of Muslims or jews and should probably explain why. With respect to muslims the reason is that neither had noticeable influence on religious thinking in either Britain or France until recent times. True the so- called Saracens invaded parts of southern France in the Middle Ages but they didn’t stay for long and had little influence at the time. They didn’t get as far as England. Subsequentltly France’s annexation of of northern Africa has seen an influx of Muslims and a much more significant role for them today. Similarly in England there was no muslim influence until an influx of Pakistanis after that sub-continent obtained its independence in 1948. Islam is now strongly associated with terrorism in both countries and has for that and other less easily identifiable reasons made muslims the subject of a great deal of prejudice. As for the jews, they were always the fall guys in any dispute that didn’t involve any immediately identifiable other groups and have from time to time been persecuted in both countries when no other scapegoat was readily available.

Christmas

Christmas

I feel I should record my Christmas, although it was uneventful; but it was enjoyable. On Christmas eve I was invited by Martina, a gardening friend, to share her Christmas meal with some other gardeners. Martina is German so used to having her Christmas meal on Christmas eve. I left late. and all the street lighting had been switched off, one of the energy saving measures here, so I ad to navigate my way home in complete darkness, which I somehow managed without falling over or knocking into anything.There was no moonlight and complete ptch-black darkness is something I haven' experienced since I remember having to cross an orchard in it at Summerhill school some sixty years ago. At leastt there were no trees to avoid this time.

On the day itself I got up, made myself some coffee ad toast and Messengered my daughter and family before going off to lunch with friends Steve and Jo, picking up Jean-Claude along the way. Jo had cooked a traditional Christmas meal which we all enjoyed and she and Steve gave me a portable greenhouse kit as a present. I think it will be very useful when I start gardening again, probably in March. I gave Steve and jo a print from artist neighbour Florence; I thought that as they will be leaving before long they should have a memento of Florence’s work to take with them. When I returned home late in the afternoon, dropping off Jean-Claude on the way, I phoned my son to see how his meal had been; I hadn’t phoned earlier because I knew he was cooking it.

On Boxing Day I had invited Steve and Jo and eight others but only five of them turned up so there was a lot of food left over. I decided the best way to use it up was to invite some of the gardening crowd over and that provided another enjoyable evening.

So, all inall, a very enjoyable if uneventful time.

Football on TV began again on Boxing Day and I have been watching a lot of it. While watching I’ve been tearing into small pieces all the cardboard and paper that I have accumulated over the period. The soil in my allotment is sandy and I’m hoping the bits of papre and cardboard will help it absorb water better. I’m assuming we will have several heatwaves again this year. I plan to dump that and garden refuse bit by bit on the allotment over the coming months and dig it in. I’ve already scattered considerable guano over the soil which should compensate for any nitrogen lost as the debris breaks down.

I’m already reflecting on what I want to grow this year and avoiding last years mistakes. Land cress and onions were clear omissions last year and I shan’t bother with potatoes this year. All vegetables are available here quite cheaply in season and I can’t grow them out of season so it’s a question of what I can and want to consume and what I can store easily. Steve and Jo have given me their gooseberry bushes so that will be an addition to which I may add further and I want to add some more lavender also. And I want to completely surround the allotment with sunflowers. Other than that I shll continue to reflect.

There is one sad aspect of Christmas to me, a function of my age and that of most of my friends: it is the exchange of cards and greetings. Every year I have to cross the names of friends who I know have died and wonder about those I do not hear from..