Recent fisticuffs over what Keynes meant, would have done, said, have raised past sins. When the Complete Works came out it was noted that in the Introduction to the German edition of the General Theory Keynes's expressed approbation of the Nazi economic proposals for dealing with the Slump - counter-cyclical spending, a raised degree of economic nationalism etc. - had been silently suppressed either by Richard Kahn or the nominal editor.
Which calls into question the worth of supporting present-day political viewpoints with sacred texts, and just how much those texts have been fiddled with.
Sunday 27 June 2010
Disbelief
Awful silence in Monculi. "We deserved to be out," being muttered bravely, followed by the eerily unreal, "It's only a game, anyway."
Going about remarking "Forza Kiwis!" has been strongly advised against.
Going about remarking "Forza Kiwis!" has been strongly advised against.
Monday 21 June 2010
Ripeness Lost To Rain
The heavens opened on Friday and remain so. Not camparis by the pool then, but lasagne al forno and the red. The fire has been lit for two evenings so it's also been bruschetta and grilled sausages on skewers with bay leaves in between (and more of the red).
Finishing Blood's A Rover has been aided by rivers of water pouring off every path and way through the woods, which is the only way over 600 pages of Ellroy inimitable prose style could have been downed (or drowned) as walks and outings are under drizabone and in wellies. Reading Ellroy does lead to disjointed conversational speech and hearing too.
A particularly posh conversation on the merits of various sherries became more surreal (after all, discussing sherry is not the norm, is it? Though norms are easily lost in walls of water advancing across the valleys) as provenance - which was OK-ish - moved on to a consideration of types of trees. Trees? Sherry? I'll down a glass of dry fino with the best but obviously there was more to it all for afficionados who even used plurals for the stuff. When talk of colour turned to blackness and visions of a kind of sherry stout tried to form, Ellroy interference with modes of communication had to be set aside.
"What are you all talking about? And why are you all suddenly so fogeyish about sherries? And how do you all know this stuff?"
"Cherries? Well this part of the world is famous for them. We were comparing the various sorts and flavours, and which we can still find - given the hail and difficulties with the downpours."
Oh.
Finishing Blood's A Rover has been aided by rivers of water pouring off every path and way through the woods, which is the only way over 600 pages of Ellroy inimitable prose style could have been downed (or drowned) as walks and outings are under drizabone and in wellies. Reading Ellroy does lead to disjointed conversational speech and hearing too.
A particularly posh conversation on the merits of various sherries became more surreal (after all, discussing sherry is not the norm, is it? Though norms are easily lost in walls of water advancing across the valleys) as provenance - which was OK-ish - moved on to a consideration of types of trees. Trees? Sherry? I'll down a glass of dry fino with the best but obviously there was more to it all for afficionados who even used plurals for the stuff. When talk of colour turned to blackness and visions of a kind of sherry stout tried to form, Ellroy interference with modes of communication had to be set aside.
"What are you all talking about? And why are you all suddenly so fogeyish about sherries? And how do you all know this stuff?"
"Cherries? Well this part of the world is famous for them. We were comparing the various sorts and flavours, and which we can still find - given the hail and difficulties with the downpours."
Oh.
Wednesday 9 June 2010
Choice Cuts
The removal of twenty four billion euros from Italian public expenditure has had no effect whatsoever in Monculi. Zilch. Everyone is out and about as usual, working gold, making clothes, gardening the countryside, entertaining paying guests in farms (agriturismo is a huge wealth creator) as far as the eye can see. And speaking of sea, everyone has spruced-up their mobile home or renovated their seaside flat/villa in time for the annual mass migration to the coast at the end of the school year.
They are also tending their tomatoes. We are to have four sorts this year, up from three last: large, ribbed salad; small, on-the-vine, salad and posh cookery, for those who can be bothered; smooth round, and smooth elongated (sort of soccer and football really) for bottling.
I am well on the way to bottling already - not the sterilising of the jars and lids, scrubbing out of giant brushed steel vats, checking-through of outdoor gas rings variety; more the familiar bottling of British political cowardice variety. My kitchen garden is very like the European Union: I supply land, seed (well, little plants), water, and the men grow what they want and ignore pleas for radishes, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, brussels sprouts, and potatoes. Not even spinach will they grow, they prefer rape.
My lovely apple tree (planted, nb, by an Australian) flourishes; all other proposals (other than the loving pruning and feeding of scattered, ancient figs) for fruit and nut trees have been nixed on the argument that the birds/deer/boar/scrumpers will get them.
Mr Cameron does not begin to grasp the mountain of immovable cultural obstruction he must climb. What was once grown here has not been forgotten, despite the half-century hiatus, and folk wisdom reigns over modern decision-taking. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Berlusconi knows, no-one gives a hoot about so-called cuts. They aren't cuts, they're just using a different model for allocating resources.
They are also tending their tomatoes. We are to have four sorts this year, up from three last: large, ribbed salad; small, on-the-vine, salad and posh cookery, for those who can be bothered; smooth round, and smooth elongated (sort of soccer and football really) for bottling.
I am well on the way to bottling already - not the sterilising of the jars and lids, scrubbing out of giant brushed steel vats, checking-through of outdoor gas rings variety; more the familiar bottling of British political cowardice variety. My kitchen garden is very like the European Union: I supply land, seed (well, little plants), water, and the men grow what they want and ignore pleas for radishes, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, brussels sprouts, and potatoes. Not even spinach will they grow, they prefer rape.
My lovely apple tree (planted, nb, by an Australian) flourishes; all other proposals (other than the loving pruning and feeding of scattered, ancient figs) for fruit and nut trees have been nixed on the argument that the birds/deer/boar/scrumpers will get them.
Mr Cameron does not begin to grasp the mountain of immovable cultural obstruction he must climb. What was once grown here has not been forgotten, despite the half-century hiatus, and folk wisdom reigns over modern decision-taking. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Berlusconi knows, no-one gives a hoot about so-called cuts. They aren't cuts, they're just using a different model for allocating resources.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Cultural Behaviour is Often Wrong For Political Health
The aging of the political class in Italy is getting embarrassing. All of a sudden the entire lot of them are over seventy. (Well, they are completely worn-out and used-up, even if some might manage to squeeze under the class of 1940 bar). While keeping down the generations below is a national pastime - the socio-legal structure is given over to holding back the oncoming generational tide - the slippage into dotage is becoming marked again.
There has been some improvement, insofar as not actually gunning-down the under-forties and fifties is much practiced any more; and the two most impressive politicians of the centre-right and centre-left are both middle-aged women with lots of business and political experience, and lots of money (always such a blessing -lots of money). But the mano morta rests still on the Italian body politic.
The slow death of social democracy because of its contamination by infiltration from elderly communist, socialist and fascist personnel - what you might call the Former Party - is devastating for the achievement of quite basic aspects of social justice: land redistribution, access to capital, support through advanced intellectual and technical training, access to elites various, and must be interrupted.
We need rid of old authoritarian men.
And if we really insist on having them, then at least let's have Giulio Andreotti (who puts England's Peter Mandelson into withering context).
There has been some improvement, insofar as not actually gunning-down the under-forties and fifties is much practiced any more; and the two most impressive politicians of the centre-right and centre-left are both middle-aged women with lots of business and political experience, and lots of money (always such a blessing -lots of money). But the mano morta rests still on the Italian body politic.
The slow death of social democracy because of its contamination by infiltration from elderly communist, socialist and fascist personnel - what you might call the Former Party - is devastating for the achievement of quite basic aspects of social justice: land redistribution, access to capital, support through advanced intellectual and technical training, access to elites various, and must be interrupted.
We need rid of old authoritarian men.
And if we really insist on having them, then at least let's have Giulio Andreotti (who puts England's Peter Mandelson into withering context).
Monday 7 June 2010
Tripe
All this talk of the collapsing euro is tripe. Tripe was the standard word for an argument or thing without value, in my father's usage of the word. You'd be surprised how many aircraft are airborne tripe, how much German philosophy (borrowed from the library in English translation in pursuit of understanding 'what made them do it?') is tripe.
Disgusting tripe ended up in the kitchen boiler: The Grapes of Wrath got it; but that was nothing to The Red Room - a small misunderstanding had led me to Francoise Mallet-Joris instead of H.G.Wells - and its fate as unnatural disgusting tripe.
Here we see that the kitchen boiler is possibly the best place for all the tripe being printed in the Sunday papers about the end of the euro and European Union as we know it.
Disgusting tripe ended up in the kitchen boiler: The Grapes of Wrath got it; but that was nothing to The Red Room - a small misunderstanding had led me to Francoise Mallet-Joris instead of H.G.Wells - and its fate as unnatural disgusting tripe.
Here we see that the kitchen boiler is possibly the best place for all the tripe being printed in the Sunday papers about the end of the euro and European Union as we know it.
Travelling Sensibly
People carrying lots of luggage on European flights are weird, so I was taken by this site.
After all, wherever you go there is all that is needed already there - other than your own clothes (and even those can be replaced in Germany. Well, Paris too but that's very expensive. Moscow was disappointing - no valenkis, despite all those Russian novels where people tramp through the snow with felted-up feet; they even denied they understood what I was talking about - though that's not unusual.)
So, while returning from London involves filling a case with ginger cake from Waitrose (which means arrriving with spare capacity in the first place) for every other European destination one small bag is enough.
After all, wherever you go there is all that is needed already there - other than your own clothes (and even those can be replaced in Germany. Well, Paris too but that's very expensive. Moscow was disappointing - no valenkis, despite all those Russian novels where people tramp through the snow with felted-up feet; they even denied they understood what I was talking about - though that's not unusual.)
So, while returning from London involves filling a case with ginger cake from Waitrose (which means arrriving with spare capacity in the first place) for every other European destination one small bag is enough.
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