Weather, Laptops And Brexit

This And That

I feel that another post is due but there is not a lot that has happened since my last post. The weather changed momentarily and we had two days of heavy rain, which has saved me a lot of time watering. The warm autumn sun has returned now. I've redone the hanging baskets out front with cyclamen which, with luck, should provide some colour through to the spring. There is colour also from some yellow daisy-flowered plants (chrysanthemum family but not chrysanthemums as you think of them) I bought in the summer which have sulked until now but finally decided to do their thing. There are also michaelmas daisies, two plumbago, a solanum and a fuchsia in bloom. So the front doesn't look too bad.

My favourite laptop developed hardware faults so I'm having to look for a new one and have finally decided I'll just have to get accustomed to using an AZERTY keyboard. The difficulties in acquiring a new laptop with a QWERTY keyboard are just too restrictive and complicated. So be it, although I really don't understand why suppliers who offer all kinds of options on other elements of a PC seem to get rigid when it comes to keyboards. Global markets??????

I went to BELL (Beaumont English Language Library) to hear Stanislas Yassukavich talk about a book, two lives, he has written on his and his father's life in banking, which he didn't actually talk about, saying that was all in the book (so buy the book!). He expounded on his trials and tribulations in finding and dealing with a publisher, which simply confirmed my opinions on the point. Publishers today are simply glorified printing and distribution organisations and understand little or nothing of the markets they supposedly serve. His experience was even worse; his publishing house didn't even have useful proof-reading or indexing expertise. Admittedly my own experience was helped by not having to seek a publisher, since my three books were all commissioned, but in all cases I was asked by the publisher how it could sell the book and, indeed, had to agree to a short lecture tour for one of them.

Stanislas did however provide some useful answers to questions. Friend Steve asked him about the impact of Brexit on the London financial services market and he thought there would be little impact since the supposed services «passport» doesn't really exist. Individual countries within the EU don't have to recognise the qualifications of service providers in other countries and generally don't, to protect their own practitioners and markets. The euro zone could, presumably, and presumably would, exclude euro-linked services but the issue was otherwise irrelevant. I asked him for his opinion on the survival of the euro and he was adamant in saying that it couldn't survive. According to him, total financial integration within the EU would be required, implying a financial authority above national banks such as the Bankof France, Italy, Germany etc, and few if any EU countries would accept that. The eventual break-up of the euro zone, he added, could be very messy.

Incidentally, I read a couple of articles in the responsible press today about Brexit. One stated that Parliament now understands that constitutionally the result of the EU could only be advisory; though why it didn't understand this from the outset defeats me. The second was that MPs of all parties accept the referendum result as a mandate but want to insist on debating the proposed terms of Brexit. I can understand the latter: Parliament should debate the terms. But I can't understand the former; if the referendum result was only advisory, how can it be a mandate? To substantiate this, The Independent newspaper commissioned a survey which now shows, of people regretting and wishing to change their vote, a sufficient swing to provide a majority favouring retention of EU membership. What can only be termed near-hysteria in such popular newspapers as the Mail and Express tends to confirm the suspicion that they know they are backed by only a minority. So what is the « mandate » now?