A NEW WORLD

We are impatiently awaiting the end of Pandemics and Lockdowns. We are already frayed at the edges and yearn for a return to an ordered, sociable and civilised life and to the prompt return of the freedoms temporarily lost during the emergency. I will not stray into the immediate plans of our present bunch of third-rate politicians but instead raise my eyes to the New World we will soon be stumbling through. I am a retired oldie, with very limited ambitions and horizons, but many of you, my readers, are enjoying the prime of life and have bursting energy to seize the opportunities which will present themselves globally. For our Old World is going to change radically and we all must adapt.

                                                         An Empty City of London

        An Empty Regent Street in London’s West End

The necessities of Lockdown have propelled commerce and industry to embrace, much earlier than forecast, the latest technologies and novel ways of working. Home working is now well established, often with all necessary digital equipment provided by employers. It appears to be every bit as productive as office working. Businesses are learning how to train home workers and integrate them into the culture of their employer. At most, one day a week may be required for group personal interaction – the other 4 days of home working will have the benefit of zero commuting, looser hours and more time for wife and family (or their equivalent). We are social beings and I assume post-Covid we will be free to meet up with all and sundry and travel where we will.

The elephant in the room is the fate of Britain’s forests of metropolitan offices – in the likes of The City, Canary Wharf, West End and in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Edinburgh – home working could see them empty rapidly. These reliably growing (and highly lucrative) property interests have made entrepreneurs seriously rich and underpin the value of many a fund or share portfolio. Yet they could simply go poof! and spectacularly so.

Severe reductions in commuting will have other effects. Transport will have to recalibrate with far fewer trains and fewer peak periods. City centre businesses will languish or move to other, cheaper catchment areas. Populations will shift: why live in some deadening South London suburb when you could be on the South Coast? Maybe the reduction in offices could mean instead a rejuvenation of central areas if many more flats were built and “entertainment” complexes emerged.

Looking further ahead, is there employment for everybody? So many clerical or unskilled jobs can be done efficiently, using artificial intelligence and robots. Self-driving vehicles and transport systems may make redundant an army of bus, railway and airline staff, joined by warehouse and wholesale people. Every state may be faced with a growing pool of un- or under-employed citizens who will need an ever-increasing financial safety-net and to be appeased with bread and circuses to keep them acquiescent.

                 A State-produced happiness drug

Another problem of our New World may be the polarisation in society between the minority of busy contributors and the majority of relatively idle hands. The divide will be even greater than our existing gaping social chasms. Recent experience suggests that achieving agreement between the various classes will not be possible. Democracy may be a casualty with a search for a Strongman (“Big Brother”), rule by decree and a regimented lifestyle. I do not want to paint a wholly dystopian picture but we may need to brush up on our Huxley, Orwell, Golding and Attwood!

Ever the optimist, let us instead explore a sunnier scenario, to lift our spirits and stimulate our warmest hopes. We will emerge from the Covid crisis healthier and wiser. Commuting will be in decline but the pace of change may be slower. A huge building boom of city centre residences on brown land, of new settlements outside London and of recalibrated infrastructure will save the jobs and swell the ranks of building workers, joiners, plumbers and electricians and their supporting businesses. A quickly recovering UK will generate the taxes substantially to reduce budget deficits and to attract foreign investors.

                    Surveying The Promised Land

Trading arrangements with the EU will be settled amicably on a pragmatic basis without the panic of deadlines and ultimatums. International travel, holidays and business, will resume, in due course with hydrogen powered aircraft. Eating more fruit and veg and less red meat will improve our health and our air quality and we will soon live in a world flowing with milk and honey (calm down, Sidney). A liberal Tory or moderate Labour government will return our beloved UK to being a proud and happy land capable of prospering mightily in the brave New World!

 

SMD

24.9.20

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2020

SHAFTS OF LIGHT

There has not been much to cheer about in recent weeks globally or nationally; yet while we may be on the cusp of disaster, the odds still favour the UK and the West and a positive outcome to the crisis is still the most likely outcome. Now and then a shaft of light breaks through. On Saturday night I watched the Last Night of the Proms and despite earlier woke wetness from retiring Lord Hall, the new BBC Director-General Tim Davie did a U-turn and delivered a perfectly sensible concert with much reduced numbers (and, alas, no audience).  The BBC redeemed itself and did not do its usual act as the broadcasting wing of BLM. A South African soprano Golda Schultz sang beautifully and a modest choir sang Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, and Jerusalem in the time-honoured fashion, words and all. I was even able to blub through You’ll never walk alone in my own time-honoured fashion! I imagine certain arrogant London virtue-signallers and their provincial toadies hated it, but I am equally sure most of the nation cheered loudly. These Proms were a welcome morale-booster.

Pared-down orchestra for the Last Night of the Proms 2020

The news from the Covid battle-front has been gloomy. A sharp rise in infections in the UK, as restrictions are loosened, leading to a tightening-up. The Rule of Six drastically limits social life and will no doubt be much evaded. Our population is somewhat anarchic, with faint deference to government and scant respect for the real perils of Covid. Happily, the death rate remains quite low. The government does its best, but constant changes undermine its credibility. We need a vaccine quickly. Other European countries have similar experiences. We crave a return to normality, to civilized family gatherings, shopping, restaurants, pubs and international travel.

The UK economy is slowly recovering from the crisis. GNP had declined 20% to June 2020 and is forecast to bounce back by 11% to September. Many businesses are operating below par, the return to school is not complete and universities see much confusion. Predictably, teachers and NHS nurses are threatening to strike if they are not paid more in this time of emergency and shaky public finances. The next six months will see an employment shake-out as the furlough scheme unwinds and other subsidy schemes end. Inventive new programmes are required. The UK has signed a new trade agreement with Japan, the first step in re-focusing our overseas commercial arrangements, to our mutual benefit.

Lord Frost and Michel Barnier at loggerheads

There is no sign of a break-through in the Brexit negotiations with the EU. Both sides have notionally immoveable red lines and the most likely result today is no-deal. The UK must plan for that sad outcome and her dramatic proposal to override the Withdrawal Agreement in respect of Northern Ireland is part of that planning. Both sides are fighting dirty in the count-down to final Brexit. EU hypocrisy in respect of ignoring treaties was remarked upon by maverick, but articulate Greek ex-Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis noting that France and Germany ignore EU state aid rules at the drop of a hat. The UK must defend itself against the EU’s “predatory diplomacy” in Ambrose Evans-Prichard’s words. There is still a chance of a last-minute deal, but time is ebbing away. Roll on 1 January 2021!

            

Another shaft of light is the retreat of BLM, to the dismay of the woke super-spreaders in our universities and in academia. The BLM movement had set off generous sympathy and support for minorities oppressed by brutal police action in the US or otherwise disadvantaged. In a pitch for popular support, after its bouts of statue removal, it had talked about the “football family” and how together crowds and players should “take the knee” to demonstrate solidarity. Then newspapers published the actual manifesto of BLM proposing, inter alia, the destruction of capitalism, the abolition of the police and the emptying of all jails – in other words the usual Hard Left claptrap. Suddenly the penny dropped. The BLM movement was not Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela incarnate but rather Karl Marx and Malcolm X disguised. The FA, with the support of many black players, ordered the removal of BLM slogans from players’ shirts and nobody is authorized to “take the knee”. Football is a conservative and apolitical pastime, ill-suited to Marxist discipline, so BLM was always on a loser. Let’s hope it fades away.

There is some cheer in the real world of sport. Arsenal had a good early season win but Leeds gave champions Liverpool an epic game in their 3-4 thriller. England bounced back to beat the Aussies in their ODI cricket series and Lewis Hamilton won yet another Grand Prix. Life isn’t so bad!

SMD

14.09.20

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2020

JOY ON THE WING

In this Limbo-Lockdown life we are living, we come to appreciate birds rather more – many come to see you and you do not need to make a huge or perilous effort to see them. So, I celebrate a clutch of British birds, not always the prettiest but easily remembered and much cherished. Of course, birds get a mixed press, they are unpredictable and coolly independent as Hitchcock reminded us in his 1963 The Birds (see clip below) and others will shudder at the memory of the pigeon lady of Central Park, NYC, in 1992’s Home Alone 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplpQt424Ls&ab_channel=Movieclips

A black-billed magpie in flight

I start with the Magpie as there are many here in Folkestone and, unlike many other breeds, its population is growing. I am not sure why, but lack of predators and protective laws must play a part. A member of the crow family, it is said to be a most intelligent bird, which can recognize itself in a mirror and use casual items as a tool. It is attracted to shiny objects and has a reputation as an aggressor and a thief – most delightfully captured in Rossini’s opera The Thieving Magpie (La Gazza Ladra), whose overture is a perennial concert “lollipop”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYfaKAIf-SU&ab_channel=MannheimerPhilharmoniker.

Another breed of bird which is plentiful (maybe over-plentiful) here in Folkestone is the Seagull. They roost and nest in every spot they can find, usually high up on roofs and chimneys and they make plenty of noise, an unmelodic squawking. They swoop about and will quickly pinch a neglected sandwich when not dive-bombing you or your car with unpleasant bird-lime. They are not lovable birds with their beady eyes, surprising bulk and insolent manner, but they are an indispensable part of coastal living and we must live-and-let-live in the prescribed generous fashion.

Personally, they opened a door for me. In the early 1960s I read The Herring Gull’s World by Niko Tinbergen, a masterly description of a gull’s habitat and life-style. He was a father of the modern science of ethology and inspired me to build up at least a superficial knowledge of animal organization and its evolution into human traits. This led me to read the splendid books by the American dramatist and scientific populariser Robert Ardrey, notably African Genesis and The Territorial Imperative, both fascinating reads, and to read Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression even though many of both’s assumptions have since been challenged. So, the seagull flies further than expected.

Seagulls loudly making themselves at home

I move on to the somewhat unloved Starlings, a very common garden bird but drastically declining nationally. I remember starlings in our Scottish garden, chasing blue-tits, thrushes and blackbirds away from the feeder, greedily gorging themselves. At a distance they look black but in fact they have a purply- green sheen.  Starlings are most famous for their spectacular “murmurations”, huge flocking legions near their roosts – often 5,000 birds and occasionally 30,000, a sight to behold.

A UK starling murmuration

The common Starling

 

When I lived in the Cotswolds, a regular visitor to our garden was the colourful Great Spotted Woodpecker, clicking her beak on the bark of trees searching for insects. Further afield, visits to the Hebridean island of Mull would include a short trip to Staffa, home of Fingal’s Cave, inspiration of Mendelssohn. Staffa hosts a colony of Puffins, those jaunty little birds who delight by their tameness.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

The sociable Puffin

My final British bird is altogether more formidable. The migratory Osprey or sea-eagle had become extinct in southern Britain in the 19^th century and extinct in Scotland in 1916. It was reintroduced with I pair in 1954, at Loch Garten in Spey-side, but by 1976 there were only 14 pairs, achieving a kind of break-through by 2001 to reach 158 pairs. There are few more thrilling bird-watching sights than an osprey dive-bombing into a lake catching a fish in its talons, (see below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqGKX7Eofy4&ab_channel=BBC.

To conclude, common in the Mediterranean, but rarely seen in Britain, is the Hoopoe. This beautifully crested bird greatly attracted our dear Cotswolds friend Philomena de Hoghton who was our first house-guest when we moved to Athens. She delighted in the hoop-hoop song of this proud little fellow. Happy memories!

Th splendid Hoopoe

        

SMD, 

5.09.20

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2020