Photos And Sham Solutions

Catching Up On Photos

I haven't been showing many photos lately but I have been taking them so I thought I'd catch up. The first of those below is of friends Steve and Jo receiving their French citizenship in the Prefecture in Valence. The second is of one of my attempts to capture the blue of the sky here, at the boules courts in Buis. It doesn't fully capture the intensity of the blue but shows someof the gradations of shades. The third is of my back garden right now. 

Sham Solutions; The Inherent Conflict In Democracy.

Most countries have problems of one sort or another and Britain has as many or more than the rest. So what are, or may be, the solutions? How do you find them? It sounds simple; rack your brains (and most countries have a fair percentage of very good ones) and look at what solutions other countries have found. It has been baffling to me why the UK hasn't found better solutions to many of its problems, better solutions that friend Steve and I even with our political differences, often find. But I realise that I have been naive; it isn't at all that simple.

From the electorate's point of view the problem is simple to state, even if individual solutions may differ widely. It's much more complex from the politician's point of view. There there is not just the problem itself, there are also the Party line and Whips, convictions and the desire to be re-elected.

Citizens within a country may feel they have a big problem, be concerned about the effectiveness/efficiency of their education systems, their healthcare systems, their (personal) security systems or whatever; a single, perhaps difficult problem but not one difficult to define. But they will need a political solution. Over to the politicians then.

Their big problem, whatever issue the electorate raises with them, is how to get re-elected. So their obvious solution is not necessarily to solve the problem that the electorate has raised but they must appear to have addressed it. Illusion is all, from their perspective. If they can successfully provide the illusion they don't need to address the problem at all. Which is easier?

Democracy, to the slight extent that it has succeeded in the world, has depended on two essentials; education of the electorate and the existence of independent sources of information available to the educated public. Only these can constrain any politician whose major concern is to retain position and power (by no means all politicians). The health of any democracy depends on the respect accorded by politicians, of whatever persuasion, to these two essentials. Subvert them, downgrade education and spread false information and the real victims are not just the electorate, fooled into accepting lies and fantasies and unable to discern them, but the very democracy itself.

Spring And Colours

Spring And Colours

All the evidence says that spring is definitely here now. In the open daffodils, narcissi, muscari, forsythia, japonica and violets are all in bloom and friends Steve and Jo's lawn is carpeted in primroses. My garden is too exposed for primroses to take hold but I have one that has sown itself in the front, nestling in the shade between two pots. In the markets and shops there are local asparagus to be had, expensive for the moment but they will reduce in price by a third over the next two to three weeks.

Spring and Easter always gave me a psychological boost in England and they do even more so here because I know that so many of the things I like here are about to appear. There are already Charentais melons from Morocco, which are good, in the shops and the local ones won't be far behind, followed by apricots, peaches and nectarines. My lilac and roses will start blooming, eating outside will become the norm and there will be warm evenings when I can sit on my balcony with a Calvados to hand.

Spring does, however, seem to be rather late this year, somewhat surprisingly after a mild winter. We have had really cold weather, plus the customary one day of snow, for only a couple of weeks in December, since when temperatures have held up during the day. And most of the flora blooming now would normally have been in bloom a couple of weeks earlier. At the beginning of April the hillsides would normally be blue and yellow, the yellow of coronilla and the blue of irises; but the coronilla is just showing signs of coming into bloom and I haven't yet seen an iris blooming anywhere. Anyway, my back garden and the pots in the front are pretty much ready for lift off so there is much to look forward to.

As for colours, blue is the colour, as every Chelsea fan knows, and I have been trying to capture the blue of the skies here on camera, with little success to date. It's the quality of the light that drew impressionist painters here in the past and that comes from the blue sky. I've been tempted to describe the blues in the sky as deep blue but that is inaccurate as the blue is not necessarily dark. Rather it is an intense blue, light or dark, and it tends to have a slight shade of violet within it. It varies from what I would call a pale Wedgewood blue to an intense violet and the deeper shades are generally apparent when the temperature is at its highest. On some days you can see the gradations increase from early morning as the day heats up. And the intensity of the blue tends to be emphasised by the frequent lack of even a whisp of cloud in the sky. One day, hopefully, I'll capture it in a photo.

Economics and French Nationality

Thinking

I've been reading a book by the American economist J K Galbraith on what he calls «innocent fraud» (The Economics Of……..), some of it as he himself admits not quite so innocent. What he means by this term is a deception achieved because people believe something that «everyone knows» but which is not actually true or, at least, has no substantive evidence behind it. Two examples he picks are the separation between the private and public sectors and the location of bureaucracy.

He argues very persuasively that the public and private sectors are so intertwined that it is almost impossible in most cases to separate them. The general perception is that public expenditure leads to debt (bad) and private expenditure leads to profit (good). But the US defence budget, about the largest single budget in the US, is purely public expenditure and effectively subsidises a great deal of American industry (in a country that cherishes the idea that private enterprises should never be subsidised). This very point, indeed, has been a bone of contention in US-Europe co-operation talks.

In the other example he suggests that bureaucracy is frowned upon by everyone and associated with civil servants and the public sector, as against private enterprise. Yet he demonstrates that the very large, private sector, international companies that now collectively have more power than most governments and effectively rule the world are nothing but bureaucracies and, indeed, act as such.

I love all this, the exposing of all those unquestioned and mistaken assumptions; assumptions which, importantly, enable those able to understand and willing to exploit them to create «innocent frauds».

French Nationality

My friends Steve and Jo have achieved French nationality and invited me to accompany them to their formal acceptance ceremony in Valence. I was quite impressed with the ceremony. The ceremony started with a short film on what it meant to be French, then there as a short speech by the sub-Prefect for the Department in which we live and finally a photo session, each of the new French nationals being photographed with the sub-Prefect. The French generally love speeches, or rather perhaps dignitaries of all sorts love making them, and I had been in dread of interminable speeches by numerous dignitaries. Such was not the case; the whole ceremony took about an hour, followed by drinks and cakes and………...documents.

Steve and Jo received in their welcoming pack the “livret de famille” that every French family has plus new birth and marriage certificates. Not only born again but also married again! As an official had said to Steve when he and Jo first arrived in France and were completing some early formalities “Now you have a file; in France, if you don't have a file you don't exist”. I know that France is much larger geographically than the UK but where on earth do they store all the documentation and how on earth do they ever reference and find it if they ever need to?

One thing that was said in the ceremony particularly caught my attention and pleased me. “You should be proud to be French, just as France is proud to welcome you”. A country that is proud to welcome immigrants must be good news.

Software Problems, Grape Varieties And Weather

The Paris-Moscow Express

When I first saw in the news that this was coming I immediately thought of a new fast rail link between the two cities. No so; rather it was Arctic conditions arriving with a strong wind, just when I was beginning to think that winter was over. If the weather forecast is correct we'll miss the worst of it here and it shouldn't have too much effect on what I have been planning to do except that a final clear-up in the garden at the back will have to wait and I doubt I'll be playing boules for the next few days. I went into Buis today but played only one match before deciding with several others that it was too cold to continue. Maybe I'll do some more ambitious cooking, although I've just made myself a number of Cornish pasties to consume during the week and probably pass out to some friends. English cooking is still regarded among my French friends with a degree of suspicion despite the efforts of friend Jo and I to inculcate trust.

Anyway, the first asparagus and strawberries are in the shops.  The asparagus is from Spain and the strawberries from Morocco but local asparagus will be around in the next 3-4 weeks and local strawberries a couple of weeks after.  Signs of spring and the good local produce to come so to hell with the Paris-Moscow express.

Grape Varieties

At lunch on Sunday friend Steve produced a couple of bottles of wine to replace our usual favoured local red. One was a Côtes du Rhône but with just a blend of Grenache and Carignan, without the usual supporting Syrah or Mourvèdre. On tasting it I was instantly reminded of the dessert grapes I used to buy in the winter in England, which were always called Red Flame grapes (from south America). I think those grapes must have been either Grenache or Carignan, so why weren't they labelled as such?

It seems strange to me but dessert grapes seem never to be labelled, either here or in England, by their variety, with the notable exception of Muscat. In the autumn here red Muscat grapes are in all the shops, labelled as such. Both here and in England there are also grapes labelled Italia, which are most probably Muscat but could just be Ugni. Apart from that all the labelling I have found says just red or white, which is really redundant, pretty obvious when you look at the grapes. It occurred to me to wonder why this is, particularly in France where people are much more conscious of grape varieties than we Brits are. I wonder whether the same applies across Europe.

Resolving Software Problems

I had been using Skype to see and chat with my daughter and her family until a couple of week ago when Skype failed on me; when I tried to make a call it went immediately to “call terminated”. So I installed Messenger and used that instead. Then Messenger failed on me, refusing to initiate a call and insisting I review parameters which were all as they should be. Scratching my head about what was going wrong I decided the best solution was probably to uninstall both and then install them again. That seems to have solved the problem but.……………...what a crazy way to have to proceed.

I remember at the 1968 NATO conference on software engineering a guy from Bell Laboratories commenting on a problem they had had with one of the earliest telephone switching systems. He, responsible for keeping the system up and running, had had to resolve an intractable problem the essentially the same way, by rebooting. Called before the Board to explain why a large part of the Bell telephone network had gone down for some time; he explained that he had done it deliberately (to resolve a problem). He said the Board totally failed to understand why someone employed to keep the system up and running would deliberately tear it down (and he ondered about his career progression).

Two things occur to me. One is former friend Edsger Dijkstra's stricture that when we create systems we don't adequately understand we are on dangerous ground. The other is how the hell a desperate measure conceived half a century ago still manages to be a common answer to software problems today.

But the culture shock produced by computers at the time was very considerable; people struggled to understand.  In the same period the UK Customs and Excise totally misunderstood the import/export of programs. Programs punched on cards passed duty-free because the cards were used whereas boxes of unused cards attracted duty.  And magnetic tapes had to have an extra long leader attached to them because Customs was entitled to sample goods passing through and sometimes did.  I often wondered what they did with the bits of magnetic tape; try to get a tune out of them or find some pictures? 

Mollans And Brexit

In Mollans

I went to the old people's lunch last Sunday and a very good lunch it was, prepared by the cooks at the Les Tilleuls restaurant in the village. There were cocktails to start followed by canapés filled with pieces of pork in a delicious sauce surrounded by salad and a «quenelle». Quenelles, a Lyon speciality, are a rather bland concoction of flour, milk, probably egg and i'm not sure what else; I'll have to look it up sometime. The French love them but I find them lacking in any discernible flavour. This was followed by fillet of pork in a very good cider sauce, vegetables and the usual selection of wines, served by members of the village council. It was all very good and enjoyed by about 100 of us, as the photo shows.

Cheese and dessert were to follow but I left after the main course to watch Chelsea play, much to the amazement of the mayor who was standing outside as I departed. I explained that I had to watch a football match but he still seemed perplexed. Non-believers in the true religion will never understand! The match was not on TV so I had to get it on my PC via a very dodgy Russian website. The Russian mafia have their uses, although even they seem to be finding it harder and harder to intercept broadcasts; at least, I'm finding it harder and harder to get a good feed to my PC.

So far we've had a quite mild winter, the coldest weather being in mid-December. Most days have been sunny and quite warm in the middle of the day, with also a reasonable amount of rain. We are bit yet through winter, of course, but a cursory glance around my plants suggests that most of them have survived.

Brexit Again

A recent Sky News item suggested criteria for a successful dinner party. Among the things definitely forbidden was any discussion of Brexit. Why? The subject is somewhere on most peoples' minds so why not discuss it reasonably? The answer would appear to be because most people can't; the issue goes straight to the emotions and reason quickly goes out the window. The lack of reason perhaps explains some of the government's dilemmas in trying to decide what can be negotiated.

Brexit Follow-up

Brexit Follow-up

A friend pointed out to me that my seeking French nationality as an “insurance policy”, for purely practical purposes, as I put it in my last post, could be construed as an insult to the French and their nationality. I have to concur that it could be construed that way although that is not at all what I intended. My friend also stated that gaining nationality where you lived enabled you to play a full part in the life of where you lived and I agree totally with the importance of that.  I have always felt that I wanted to make a positive contribution wherever I lived. The point on reasons for nationality stuck with me and made me try to work out what nationality is really all about or should be about. It is necessary for practical purposes; being stateless can cause all number of practical problems. However what is or should nationality be all about?

The first point that occurred to me is that, from a historical perspective, for the vast majority of people their nationality is almost certainly recent. My historian friend Steve would be only too happy to recount to anyone interested the extent to which national borders have changed over the last two centuries, even in Europe let alone the rest of the world. Every time a border changes so does the nationality of the people in the changed areas. Thus any idea that one's nationality necessarily connects one to the nation's long-term history goes out the window. So do political parties that seek to impose some kind of racial “purety”; it can't exist other than in a negligible minority of cases. Over the past few centuries nearly all of us have become mongrels, even if we weren't before.

There are nonetheless easily discernible differences in different regions of the world, often associated with specific countries, but are these differences necessarily national? There are geographical and climactic differences but these are a continuum and take no account of national borders. There are historical differences that do often relate to specific nations but not necessarily nations as currently constituted; in any case, few of these have much to do with nationality today. Neither does religion recognise national borders; even states with a national religion include many inhabitants with another religion. And there are cultural differences of course but all of these that I can think of either relate to legal and administrative differences (practical matters) or are regional rather than national. In matters other than schooling and language (both administrative) a Frenchman who has long lived in the south of France is most probably more culturally similar to near Italian or Spanish neighbours than he is to a Frenchman who has long lived in the Dunkirk region.

What is left? Only emotion, I think, and duty. People may be emotionally attached to the country of their nationality (or to one of them) but this may be for any number of disparate reasons and anyway isn't necessarily the case. Duty has two aspects. There is a duty to abide by the laws of a country (and if you want to change them, to do so by legal means) and there is also a duty to defend the country, one way or another, in time of war. This last point is, I hope, and most probably, hypothetical in the case of European countries.

I have one further point: is nationality desirable? Mitterand said that nationalism means war and nationalism can only be associated with nationality. So I come to the conclusion that nationality has no intrinsic characteristics and may not even be desirable but is necessary for practical purposes. In other words I can't think of any intrinsic reason for having or choosing to have a nationality other than for practical purposes. Some people may be insulted if another chooses to obtain their nationality for purely practical purposes but I think they would have a lot of difficulty explaining why they feel that way, other than as a purely personal emotional response.

Religion

As I am engaged on explaining (justifying?) myself I thought I might as well have a go at my thoughts on religion at the same time. I am not a believer in God (any God) so religion rarely impinges on my thoughts. However I often find myself not neutral but definitely antagonistic to others' religious beliefs and I sometimes try to work out why. The first point is that I won't accept anybody else's right to tell me what is morally right or wrong; that explains an innate antagonism towards Catholicism, even though I can see value in some of its doctrines. If that, in my cultural context, would make me a protestant, then I have objections there too. I think Calvinism, as I understand it, encapsulates them. Calvinism proposes that there is no enjoyment or satisfaction to be had in life except in positively pleasing its version of God. Hence the saying that every Scot who enjoys himself in some other way (Scotland being a hotspot for Calvinism) knows that he is going to have pay dearly for his pleasure afterwards; bring on the guilt! A S Neill, a significant influence on my thoughts, would call this attitude “anti-life” and I would agree, which explains my antagonism to much of protestantism. I would also dismiss out of hand claims or compulsory practices by any religion that are based on evidence supported only by superstition or some script written around two millennia ago. And I abhor anyone who wants to kill others on the basis of their religion. I accept that many people with specific religious beliefs do a lot of good in the world, also that many of the same do (in my view) a lot of harm. Other than that I have no problem with religion.

Maybe I'm just being self-indulgent here.

Brexit

Brexit

I have now started gathering the documents I need to apply for French citizenship. I have prevaricated over this and delayed, possibly too long, thinking that the UK population would come to its senses and Brexit would be reversed. I'm no longer so sure and clearly need an insurance policy: French nationality.

I have presumed that, if and when Brexit actually happens, little will change during the transition period, which would give me until some time in 2021 to obtain French nationality. The Prime Minister has said she will guarantee retention of the existing rights of British nationals in Europe after Brexit but her word is worth little given the numerous U-turns, rethinks and double-thinks the government is displaying. I simply have to hope that my assumption about having until 2021 is correct. All my English friends and acquaintances here seem to have come to the same conclusion and are engaged in the same process or have already completed it.

That decided I am trying to clarify my attitude to Brexit and to understand better why I deplore it and believe it should be reversed. I find there are several aspects, which I will explore here.

The Referendum

The first is the legitimacy of the referendum and its result, on which I find several acquaintances (let alone a number of MPs) divided. On the one hand is the fact that most MPs said before the referendum that the result would be binding. On the other hand is the fact that all the legislation enabling the referendum clearly states that there is no way the result could be binding. Therein lies an anomaly and people have to make a choice as to how to resolve it. If one chooses to accept that the result is binding it cannot (by definition) be classed as democratic, so the idea that the referendum result was a democratic decision has to be false. It may nonetheless be accepted. It may surprise some people that a free vote and its result can be undemocratic but democracy is more complex than many people think. If, on the other hand, one chooses to accept that it is not binding there is a conflict with majority view in the UK's supreme democratic body, Parliament. Anyone's decision cannot be other than a personal choice and I, of course, refuse to accept the view that the result should be binding. As an aside, this is simply one of a number of anomalies regarding Brexit that can be decided only by personal choice; if any rules could apply, they have yet to be written.

That is a detail, albeit an important one. There is also the larger world view, of the UK, the EU and the role that each may play in the evolution of the global social and political picture. The EU has made no secret of the fact that it seeks, in effect, to “homogenise” Europe. That is, it will seek to iron out and reduce the differences between the member states. The devil here is in the detail (which we will come to next). The idea that the UK should in some respects lose its national identity is understandably anathema to many Britons: “hence “we want our country back”. The same, of course, can be assumed to be true of every other EU member state. Every other EU state must be expected to also want its country back so the eventual compromise can only be a matter of negotiation (and speculation).

The Global View

Given that stated aim of the EU, what is likely to be the social effect? My take on this is focussed on what I believe to be a major question in the UK: the wealth gap. Historically it can easily be demonstrated that as the wealth gap increases so it leads to political instability and extreme forms of government. This is already evident in the UK, with extreme right and left wings vying for power and no one apparently seeking the middle ground. Whatever the result of EU social aims they must inevitably lead to reducing, over time, the wealth gap in member states. There will, of course, be other social effects of EU legislation, such as initiatives for a cleaner and safer environment already enacted or in the pipeline, but exactly what they will be is unknown at present as also is whether the UK will do anything similar (and be able or choose to finance them).

In the world view politically it must be clear that the UK will lose clout. Whatever clout the UK has as a single, albeit important, nation it must have less than it would have as a member of a 28-nation group with much greater collective economic and demographic power. Does the UK's global political influence matter? That is a matter of personal preference but must surely rule out any idea of an independent UK having more influence. Why would it?

Even more important in my personal view are the advances in education, science, research in all fields and security control that have been achieved through pan-EU cooperation. The UK will automatically be excluded from these at Brexit; re-inclusion will be only with consent of the EU and may be denied, particularly in fields where the UK has less to offer and more to gain.

The Economics And Practicalities

I may as well state right away that I believe Brexit will cause the UK to be economically weaker. Such indeed was the opinion of virtually all MPs prior to the referendum. For a start, the UK will have to renegotiate as a single country some 50 trade agreements previously agreed as one of a group of 28 countries. I cannot conceive of how one of that group, not even the most powerful economically, can obtain more favourable agreements than were obtained previously. So I believe that UK must lose out to some extent here, even ignoring the cost and time needed to renegotiate the agreements. Just the time needed must put pressure on the UK to concede more; other states will still have their agreements with the EU in place, they need just an agreement with the UK alone. The UK will urgently need an agreement with the other 50 or so states.

The divorce bill has been variously estimated at between £30 and £50 billion. Whatever it eventually proves to be, the cost in terms of increased civil service personnel must be the next most important. Various numbers have been mooted, even the smallest in multiple thousands, and increased border control can only add to them. This is in the context of a public sector already reeling from the effects of austerity cuts. The only certainty is that public sector costs must rise significantly, to add to the divorce bill. And that will coincide with a time when the UK must compete economically with rest of the world at a disadvantage to its current position. So I can only conclude that the UK will be significantly economically weaker.

One other economic effect comes immediately to mind. All EU states obviously want a safe environment (safe drinking water, clean beaches, clear product labelling, etc). One benefit of the EU is that legislation to effect all such measures has been negotiated by the EU rather than each member state deciding it individually. The cost savings per state are not negligible. The UK can take advantage of such legislation on past issues but will have individually to incur the cost of future legislation, or neglect to legislate.

There are many other practicalities of course, the status of the Irish border being just one important one of very many.

Conclusion

I've already stated my personal conclusion: the Brexit decision should be reversed. I think that although anyone can quibble with some of my statements it would be difficult to substantiate any significant disagreements to the broad conclusions; the only basis for disagreement can be blind hope. Britain must end up poorer economically and in terms of global political influence (and in many other aspects in my view).

So why wouldn't any reasonable Briton want the Brexit decision reversed? I think there are two sticking points. One is anyone's personal choice on the status of the referendum result. That is a personal choice and not subject to argument. The other is trust in the EU, with immigration control as a central issue.

Immigration is a sensitive issue and the Leave campaigners successfully hid the fact that the UK had many avenues for control open to it which it simply chose not to use; the fault of the government rather than the EU. Be that as it may, immigration remains an emotional and ill-understood issue and could be a reason for maintaining a Leave stance, despite the overwhelming evidence that the UK badly needs immigration in one form or another. I doubt that the practicalities of the precise control that Leavers would advocate have ever been thought through by them. I've tried thinking them through and find them impossibly complex, unmanageable. But I wrote “reasonable person” as the test and this of all the issues seems largely to be decided emotionally rather than rationally. It is, to an extent, an emotional issue for me too. The racist and bigoted element which exists in all societies has in the UK claimed Brexit as a “win” for its views. Whatever is a “win” for its views is anathema to me.

The remaining question is whether belief in the EU, with all its faults and unknowns, is a preferable bet to a seemingly bleak and perhaps even more unknowable future outside it. That again is a personal judgement, although the weight of evidence of what is known favours remaining in the EU.

As I said at the beginning I have started on the process of seeking French nationality. I hope that if and when I obtain French nationality it will facilitate my son and daughter gaining EU citizen status, should they choose to do the same in the future.