Month: December 2020

“We believe passionately …”

Mick Hartley comments on the statement by Julie Birchill’s ex-publishers about why they cancelled her book:

And you can almost guarantee that if someone states how they “believe passionately in freedom of speech”, it’s a prelude to an act of censorship which proves that, actually, they don’t.

It’s the word “passionately” that is so nauseating, in this context. What this actually means is: “Somewhat less than before this row happened, which we are going to give in to.”

Little, Brown didn’t actually use the word “but” in their statement, to signal the reversal. But, if they had, it would have changed nothing of importance.

Harley in Earls Court

This afternoon, I was in the Earls Court area, getting tested for all my aches and pains and coughs. On my way back to the tube, I encountered a Harley Davidson, parked outside a barber’s shop:

The light was already fading, and the background is very distracting, despite being quite entertaining in its own right. But, whatever. Maybe it would have been better if I’d used my mobile. Memo to self: Do a session, in bad light, using only the mobile.

It’s the contrast between the lack of size of the front wheel and the size of the back wheel that I like about this beast. I love to photo these monsters, but I’d hate to own one.

I went searching on the www, to find an exact same beast nicely photoed. No success, although this is a bit like what I saw.

More sport thoughts

Sport has filled the gap in society left by major wars between great powers. In general, as the world gets more peaceful, so too does it get more sports mad.

Earlier this year, a fascinating sporting experiment was conducted. In order to stop The Plague spreading, they stopped Big Sport dead. And all hell broke loose. Politics and political demonstrating, the nearest thing to actual war when there is no war, went berserk. Remember when some guy in American got killed by the US cops, and there were demos all over the world about it? I was out and about in London a few times during all that, and I bumped into all sorts of weird looking characters who ought to have been screaming dementedly at football matches, not wandering about in London, picking fights with total strangers like me. The world’s governments learned their lesson. Screwing with people’s weddings and funerals and Christmas get-togethers is fine. But Big Sport has been bribed and begged to keep going. And as if by magic, the idiot demos have stopped. Poof! All gone. And because of Sport now being allowed, they’ve stayed gone. A big old dog that was barking like hell is now silent. Only freaks with opinions about such things like me are even noticing all this.

So, sport as a whole, very significant. Significant in the same kinds of ways that the Roman Amphitheatres were an important part of the Rome story. Or in the way that things like tourism, pop music, and now social media, are other big parts of the story of the world now.

But the actual results of particular sporting events don’t really bother me that much. I like it that the team I favour is currently top of the Premier League. But if Spurs were seventh or eleventh or even seventeenth, I could live with that. I’d just pay attention to something else. I am not, in short, a Real Football Fan.

But favourite-blogger-of-mine 6k is a Real Football Fan and I really feel for him when things aren’t going his way. And boy, are they, now, not going his way. This time last year, Spurs and Sheffield United were leapfrogging one another towards the top of the Premier League. Now? Well put it this way, one of the more interesting stats you can seek out at any particular Premier League moment is what and where the biggest gap is. Remember when the gap between Man City and Liverpool at the top, and all the rest, was something like twenty points, the biggest gap by far? I do, although I don’t recall exactly when this was because I’m not a Real Football Fan. So, what and where is the biggest gap in the Premier League now? Answer: 5 points. And: It is between the bottom team and the second to bottom team. And Sheffield United are, that’s right, bottom.

To cheer himself up, 6k is now reduced to saying things like this:

Each defeat now makes up a smaller percentage of the overall misery, and so it doesn’t hurt quite as much as before.

Another stat: Looking at the current Premier League again, there are only two teams which have won even four of their last five games. Man U and, would you believe, West Ham? They are just two of about a dozen teams any one of whom could yet win this thing. Only eight points separates the top thirteen teams. It’s like one of those long distance races, with a big leading bunch. You know who is not going to win, but not who will win from among that front bunch.

But if nobody has five wins from their last five games, does anyone have a complete set of five losses in their last five? Yes, and no prize for saying who. And given that for week after week they’ve had just the one point, it’s been going on for a lot longer than that.

That’s the trouble with arriving in the Premier League after a tough promotion battle and then having a good season and staying up. Your reward is: You have to do it all over again.

I’m now in such a second-hand state about this that I’d now swap a couple of Spurs wins for Sheff U wins, except that there’s no such soccer deity able to arrange this.

What chance does some lowlife American who gets himself killed, in what turned out to be tediously inscrutable and complicated circumstances, have against all that?

Photos by Jim Turney of the Libertarian International World Convention of 1984

In 1984, I was one of many who helped organise a big Libertarian Conference at Royal Holloway College. US libertarian Jim Turney was one of those who attended, and he took these photos, which he has just emailed to me:

Left to right there: the late Chris R. Tame (who was the super-organiser of this gathering); me; Peter Breggin.

Left to right: John Hospers; me again; a guy who wrote and writes regularly for the IEA, and whom I know well but whose name is locked in a getting-old brain cave (anyone?); Nigel Ashford.

Left to right: Hospers again; me again; the guy I know well but … again; Ashford again; and a guy I genuinely do not know after all these years. Sorry if it turns out I should know him. Anyone?

Turney picked out the photos he had of this event with me in them, and there I am, the thin geek in the glasses. You can tell he’s a politician, can’t you? I can’t be the only person whom he has photoed during those long ago times when only Real Photographers had cameras and the half dozen digital cameras in existence all belonged to NASA. Think how precious such photos might be to some people, compared to photos photoed more recently.

I will now email Jim Turney back, thanking him for these remarkable photos, and asking if he has any more of this event, and in particular any more of Chris Tame.

Another courtyard photo

This photo, from 2004, is another one I enjoyed encountering again. See also these photos.

I appreciate that, for you, it is nothing special. To you it is just some people doing some fairly insignificant and undisruptive work, in a courtyard:

But, this is my courtyard, and the contrast between how my courtyard usually looks and how my courtyard looks in the above photo is, to me, pretty dramatic.

Also, the improvements that these good people were contriving were of direct benefit to me, making the process of putting out my rubbish significantly less depressing and actually even rather enjoyable, because my courtyard ceased from being depressing and became a nice place to visit. This was, and is, no small thing.

I miss those Wicked Campervans

I do ever more trawling through my photo-archives, and every time I do this, I seem to come across more Wicked Campervans, Wicked Campervans that I have not shown on a blog before, like (I’m pretty sure) these two, which I photoed in the summer of 2014:

I don’t really understand either of these WCVs, but the one on the right has definitely non-human creatures on it, so it’s suitable for a Friday here.

I miss these vans a lot. They used to live not far from Lower Marsh, where I used to go to buy second-hand CDs. And there was a brief time when they used to congregate in Lower Marsh itself, in a piece of dead land now built upon to a much more lucrative purpose.

That arrangement was never going to last, and they’ve now moved up north.

Falcons flying

I photoed this photo way back in 2004, at Twickenham railway station:

And ever since, although as sporting photos go it’s nothing special, I’ve always been rather fond of it. It conjures up a world of fandom and fellowship, because if any other Falcons fan sees this guy, for instance on a train from Twickenham to Newcastle, he’s going to know he’s met a soulmate, and they’re going to have plenty to talk about. Nothing transforms public transport quite like sports fans embarking on it en masse, because sports fans, unlike regular travellers, all communicate with each other. This can be annoying, but it is certainly different.

I did some digging concerning the recent form of the Newcastle Falcons, and it turns out it’s been rather good. They got relegated from the Premiership at the end of the season before last, but bounced back in style. It was decided that they should be promoted by a committee, but since the Falcons had won fifteen out of fifteen games down there in Nearly The Premier Division and were heading for victory before Covid abolished the last few games of the season, they surely deserved their instant reinstatement.

Confirmation that they deserved to be back to the Prem came in the form of the Falcons winning all their three games so far. So they’re now eighteen for eighteen. Only the mighty Exeter Chiefs are now above them, with three stonking wins compared to the three close wins that the Falcons have got.

All this falconry is because it’s Friday and that’s my day for non-human creatures of every sort. Humans have a habit of calling their sports teams after animals and insects and fishes and whatnot. In the Premier League, the members of whom you can see at the other end of the above link, there’s the Newcastle Falcons, the Bristol Bears, Sale Sharks, Leicester Tigers, and of course there’s Wasps. Gloucester just call themselves Gloucester but there’s a big old red lion on the shield they promote themselves with.

Such creaturely ruminations aside, the one big fact that all rugby civilians should be aware of is who the most famous Newcastle Falcon has so far been. It’s this guy.

Would you like to live on top of a petrol station?

Today I staggered out to do some shopping. Well, to be more exact I walked out, but then staggered back. Whatever. Anyway, during the walking bit, I photoed just one photo. This:

The light is dim and the focussing uncertain. (I think I should start photoing more photos with my mobile phone.) But you will get my point, once I get around to making it.

My point being: That’s a petrol station in Vauxhall Bridge Road, just before I get to my shops. And above it and right next to it, people live.

Would you want to live above a petrol station? I don’t think I would.

I grumble here from time to time about health and safety, but only in a world where health and safety trumps everything else would a building such this one seem routine. Irony alert: “Health and safety” means that there are now huge risks that we are willing to undergo now, which we were not before.

Imagine living in such a place during the Blitz. Not that I suppose for one moment that anyone ever did.

Young Mozart statue in Belgravia

At the point where Ebury Street joins Pimlico Road, which I think is in “Belgravia”, wherever exactly that starts and ends, there is a small triangle of space, the most notable feature of which is a statue of a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, holding a violin:

The photo on the left there shows a bit of context, but is also badly lit, by which I mean lit from behind. I have frequently photoed this statue over the years, but never to any better effect than that. However, at the time I photoed the above photo, way back in 2004 with my antique Canon A70, I also photoed other photos of this statue that were half decent, as you can see above right, and below:

Sorry about the wire going through his head there.

This statue is quite recent, but I really like it. Read more about it, and about Mozart’s time in London in this piece. Mozart and family came to London when Mozart was eight. He and his elder sister amazed high society with their musical excellence, especially Mozart himself of course. Apparently he wrote his first two symphonies when in London.

London seems to be pretty short on great composer statues. Haydn? Mendelssohn? Both caused enough of a stir here to earn such recognition. I searched, but found only plaques. Elgar? Worcester. Vaughan Williams? Dorking. Purcell? A walk away from where I live, but I have long thought it hideous.

So this Mozart statue is probably London’s best composer statue. Any commenter who can prove me wrong will be gratefully attended to.

LATER: I forgot Bartok!

The chaos from which buildings arise

It is the sundrenched late afternoon of April 21st 2009, and they’re busy building something:

What I’m getting at with the above imagery is:

(1) This is a construction site, and these people clearly know what they are doing. Constructions almost always turn out exactly as planned.

And:

(2) Look at the state of it!!!

I recognise various individual bits of tech there, like the reinforcing rod tubes, and that big blue propeller for digging holes, to put such things as reinforcing rod tubes in. But all that stuff jammed together in a confined space like that? It looks like someone’s attic for goodness sake.

Yet, it was from this outdoor attic that there duly emerged … the Shard.