Max Brod

I have just been listening to the repeat of Great Lives on Radio 4. The subject was Ludwig Koch, the first person to record birdsong, as he was never reluctant to inform people. That first recording was of a captive shama bird on a wax cylinder via an Edison phonograph given him on his 8th birthday. Having grown up with Koch's sound recordings on the radio, on Children's Hour and The Naturalist especially (the call of the curlew was particularly evocative) I was aware that he was the expert on sound recording of birdsong. However, today's programme brought home how much his privileged childhood had enabled him to pioneer his art but also make a first career of it in Germany until the mid-1930s when, at a natural history conference in Switzerland, he was advised by a contact close to the Nazi party not to return home "because the air in Switzerland is better". Taking the hint, and making use of a British contact, he made his way to London to start a second career from scratch, having to abandon his library of sounds in Germany.

Koch (=cook) was not an obviously Jewish name. Probably the majority of purchasers of his pioneering sound-books did not know of his Jewish, and rich, family background but it is unlikely that the exalted circles in which he mixed, before racial cleansing became official government policy, were unaware. He had early on had a parallel career as a classically-trained singer and was accepted at Bayreuth, the spiritual home of the anti-Semitic Richard Wagner - and actual home of his even more anti-Semitic daughter-in-law, Winfried.  Goering had been an admirer of Koch and even paid for his ticket to attend the conference in Switzerland which provided his means of salvation. Contradictions abound.

Those contradictions reminded me of the case of Max Brod, surely another fit subject for Great Lives. If he is known in the English-speaking world, it is for his friendship with Franz Kafka and his promotion of his fellow Jewish citizen of Prague. However, he was a poet (five published books) - among many other things - and it was a poem, or rather, a reference to a poem, which first made me aware of his name. A-level language students were encouraged (and today's equivalents still are, one trusts) to read as much material surrounding the set books and the culture generally. One such was a survey of German literature (probably this one) by Jethro Bithell, who knew Brod. The poem, (from memory) Paradies Fische auf dem Tisch, was an allusive one and capable of different interpretations, which, Brod told Bithell, was something he was content with. 

Part of the German-orientated literary circle of Prague, Brod was also a translator and lyricist, which comes eventually to the point. He became a close friend of Leoš Janáček, an ultra-nationalist who was capable of taking on board the anti-Semitic Gogol's novel Taras Bulba as the subject of a tone-poem. Their friendship and working relationship must say much about the man.

Untrustworthy Netanyahu government

 There is a lot to be said for clandestine talks between Israeli ministers and those from nations which do not recognise the state of Israel. They could set out a programme of reconciliation in the long term, with formal recognition alla Egypt on the part of the Arab nation and moderation of the violence of the Israeli Defence Force together with a cessation of illegal settlement on the other. In the short term, there must be practical security problems to solve. It was a brave act by the foreign minister of the internationally-recognised Libyan government to talk informally to Eli Cohen her Israeli counterpart, given that such contact is illegal in Libya. Thanks to a cynical betrayal of trust by the Israelis, she has paid for this with dismissal, exile and even danger to her life.

Cohen must have known what would happen when he made public the fact of his meeting. One must assume that his aim was to destabilise the Libyan government rather than to promote peace and stability in the region.

The truly nasty, polluting, party

 Prime minister Rishi Sunak has come out against the expansion of the ultra-low-emission zone (ULEZ) in London and reportedly was only stopped from reversing London mayor Sadiq Khan's measure because he was told it was illegal to interfere. In the background, the Tory spin machine is claiming that ULEZ is merely a Labour stealth tax aimed at augmenting the capital's coffers. 

The cack-handed way in which the expansion was imposed and the ill-feeling that has caused among outer London motorists and small businesses should not obscure the health benefits which will result. The inner London ULEZ which has been in operation for four years has already shown significant reductions in pollutants. After this was extended to include the North and South Circular Roads, a study commissioned by the mayor showed even more dramatic reductions. It is too early to confirm a marked effect on health outcomes in London, but a systematic review of emission-control zones around the world, published by the Lancet, " identified positive effects on air pollution-related outcomes, with reductions in some cardiovascular disease subcategories". There is more here.

Failing to stop air pollution reduction measures, the Westminster government is aiming for better luck in polluting England's waterways. BBC reports:

EU-era water pollution restrictions for housing developments are to be scrapped in a bid to build more homes, the government has announced.

Up to 100,000 new homes could be built by 2030 if rules around building houses near waterways in protected areas are loosened, the government said.

The government argue water pollution from new homes is "very small" and will be offset by £280m of investment.

The spin-doctors have missed the point. More worrying than the quality of outflow from new housing estates is the quantity. Most of the breaches by water companies of the existing regulations have been caused by excessive flows being too much for their infrastructure to handle, leading to untreated sewage being discharged into watercourses. The combination of increased domestic sewage and augmented surface water drainage resulting from hardening of previously absorbing natural surfaces will clearly be disastrous if additional treatment capacity is not provided soon. One trusts that the Welsh government will not follow the Tories down the same path.

What Liberals stand for: an opportunity may be missed

 A policy paper which will be discussed at Liberal Democrat federal conference this autumn has been published. It will form the basis of the party's manifesto for the next general election, whenever the Conservatives feel they can safely call it. It is good combative stuff, in the mould of the party's campaigning material over the period of the parliament and through several mightily successful by-election campaigns. However, I feel that it misses an opportunity to address a failing which has been identified by the average person in the street, when interviewed by media reporters, that it is not clear what the party stands for.

The nearest approach to a statement of philosophy appears on the fourth page:

2.0.1 Over the centuries, Britain has taken enormous strides to becoming the fair, free and open society we all know it can be. 

2.0.2 For more than 150 years, Liberals and Liberal Democrats have led that change: championing free trade, introducing the state pension and free school meals, laying the foundations of the welfare state and the National Health Service, legalising same-sex marriage, and taking urgent action to tackle the climate emergency. 

It is a list of individual policies, and not a comprehensive one either. Where are fair votes, cooperation with continental Europe, co-ownership of commerce and industry, fair local taxation, devolution of government, the wages councils (the first effort to establish basic pay for the least well-off, which Thatcher systematically demolished), sick pay, restorative justice and several more initiatives? If there is to be a list, let it not be a partial one. Better still would be to restate the aims of the party, and its predecessor, as laid out in the preamble to the constitution. The introduction to the manifesto should set the background from which the individual policy positions detailed in the body of the document spring. 

My other major gripe follows from the lack of a positive statement of a philosophy. The pre-manifesto is too reactive. It defines itself in relation to the Conservatives. In section after section, there is a reference to the evils of Conservative government. Fine for a campaign in an individual seat, especially at a by-election where the party is the main challenger in a Tory-held seat and one wishes to garner Labour-inclined voters, but for a national campaign open to the charge that it is too negative.  Besides, in a situation where Labour is steadily abandoning traditional social policies* we need to make clear that we are different from both major parties. Merely replacing a Tory government with a Starmer-led Labour one will lead to no change across a significant area of government activity. 

I am too old and cynical to believe that debate at Conference will lead to major changes to the manifesto as set out in the policy paper. However, I am confident that there will be unfettered debate where views such as mine as well as others' will be aired. That is another aspect of the Liberal Democrat party which makes it distinct from the other political gangs - sadly, increasingly so - and one of the reasons I continue to be a member.

* Only this weekend Labour has now set its face against redressing the gap between rich and poor which has steadily widened since Thatcher/Major.

Fukushima water release has started

 So far, the release of treated waste water from the ravaged nuclear power installation seems to have gone smoothly. The emphasis is on the "treated". As I understand it, any radioactive elements that can be removed have been, and the outflow is diluted considerably before release into the Pacific 250km away from the site. Some of the water is tritiated, that is, the hydrogen atoms have been converted to a weak beta-emitter, tritium. This tritiated water cannot practically be separated from the outflow, but it constitutes a minute percentage and, as the advice from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission makes clear, poses a negligible threat. The water will contain about 190 becquerels of tritium per litre, well below the World Health Organization drinking water limit of 10,000 becquerels per litre.

There has been predictable breast-beating from the Chinese who have no love for democratic Japan. However, China has several nuclear plants on her Pacific coast, each discharging more tritium as part of their normal operations than the Fukushima release. This graphic based by Al-Jazeera on official figures, demonstrates that the Chinese reaction is hypocritical and political:  

One trusts that the Japanese authorities had started taking samples from their coastal waters when the release was first mooted, so that proper before-and-after comparisons could be made in order to reassure the local fishing community and the public at large. It would be instructive to do the same for Chinese coastal waters, but as we saw over SARS-COV2 the Beijing authorities are against garnering useful scientific data. 

PS: It seems from the diagram that the older a nuclear power-plant, the leakier. Canada's Darlington was completed in 1993; Heysham is around forty years old. It is not surprising that Ireland is concerned about the continuing operation of Heysham, on the Lancashire coast. On the other hand, there have been no reports of nuclear-related incidents from the Irish Sea.

Rapid and measurable health improvement after coal plant closure

 Somehow I missed the importance of this report in Euronews Green when it came out earlier this month, but Dr Gary Fuller in yesterday's Guardian underscores its message. 

The closure of a large coal plant in the US has been linked to a near-instant drop in heart attacks and strokes among local people.

Shenango Coke Works facility in Pittsburgh closed in January 2016 after incurring millions of dollars in government fines for air and water pollution.

Years of community pressure helped bring its long reign to an end - and locals were quickly rewarded in health gains, according to a new study by researchers at New York University (NYU) Grossman School of Medicine.

"Our research provides compelling scientific evidence that the closure of this coal-processing coke plant significantly eliminated fossil fuel-related air pollution emissions that improved the air quality and cardiovascular health of nearby residents," says lead investigator Wuyue Yu.

Average weekly visits to the local emergency departments for problems decreased by 42 per cent immediately after the shutdown, analyses of state health records show.

The study did not demonstrate a cause-and-effect link between any one individual’s health and the plant’s closure, exactly. But the results of the “natural experiment” - published in the journal Environmental Health Research - show a strong overall statistical association between the two.

One would expect health improvement (though probably not as dramatic as that in Ptttsburgh) in the area around Tata's works in the county borough if they were able to switch to a steel-making process not based on coal. The government should back initiatives such as that of the Green Hydrogen Alliance.

Laker and Lock

 Jonathan Calder revives memories of Jim Laker's record-breaking 19 for 90 against Australia in 1956. I recall walking round Liscard, Wallasey, in the lunch break from school and hearing the Test Match Special commentators reporting another wicket going down, seemingly every time I passed an establishment with a radio set. Many of the Aussie wickets were "caught Lock [in the leg trap] bowled Laker". The twentieth wicket was "caught Laker, bowled Lock".

Yes, we boys were dismissive of Laker's being picked for the series. Lancashire's Roy Tattersall would have been preferred and, in a spirit of trans-Pennine generosity, we admitted that Bob Appleyard was good, too. Ironically, Laker was Yorkshire-born and -bred, but did not make it as a batsman/medium-pacer with his native county.

Study confirms initial MRI scan best at diagnosing prostate cancer

 A London University College study has confirmed empirical evidence that

A 10-minute MRI scan could be used to screen men for prostate cancer, according to a new study. The scans proved far more accurate at diagnosing cancer than blood tests, which look for high levels of a protein called PSA. MRI picked up some serious cancers that would have been missed by PSA alone.

As long ago as March 2018, BBC Radio 4's Inside Health programme was reporting that 

just published, the largest ever study of prostate cancer over 10 years. Done in the UK, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, it found that doing a single screening test of PSA - confirms what we already know. It is a poor test. It found many abnormalities that wouldn’t go on to do any harm, and missed some lethal disease. And it did not delay deaths. The men in the screened group died from prostate cancer just as often as in the unscreened group.

and that an earlier trial at UCL, the PROMIS study, had shown that the traditional second stage of diagnosis, a biopsy under local anaesthetic

misses over half of all the clinically important cancers. So half the men who were told they were all clear were indeed harbouring clinically significant disease. MRI was about twice as good, it had a sensitivity so its ability to detect clinically significant disease is present in excess of 90%. And so the majority of patients that had clinically significant disease were successfully detected.

So why are health service administrators not rolling out a MRI-based screening programme? It could be that funding is the problem. MRI scanners are expensive and therefore installations are limited. There is also a shortage of trained radiologists. Referrals would therefore have to be rationed and presumably routine scans would be at the back of the queue. Private scans are available at £80 a go, but there is no guarantee that you can be scanned locally. Currently, the Swansea University Hospital is not taking bookings and the nearest alternatives are in Carmarthenshire and the Vale of Glamorgan.

 

Musuka on the moon

 In a cramped and crowded mission control the simple Indian-built displays registered the changes in velocity as Chandrayaan-3 approached the target. It brought back the excitement of the early days of coverage of NASA's sophisticated space centre in 1969. India is the first nation to achieve a soft landing on the south pole of the moon and achieved this largely through her own efforts and ingenuity. India's technologists succeeded where supposedly more experienced Russians failed, and got there before America's more well-funded manned mission. India is the fourth nation to land any craft on the moon, after the USSR, United States and China. That the event occurred during Johannesburg's BRICS meeting must have created some interesting dialogue between President Modi of India and Sergei Lavrov representing Russia.

India had been building up to this. The short documentary Yaanam describes the 2013/14 Mars Orbiter Mission and the historical background to it. Appropriately, given the historical interest in astronomy in India, the language of the film is the ancient one of Sanskrit. The current chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation and designer of the Bahuballi rocket which launched Chandrayaan-3, S Somanath, appears in that film and is also a speaker of Sanskrit. While cinemas around the world are showing Robert Oppenheimer saying "I am become Siva ... the destroyer of worlds", what lines from the Bhagavad Gita might have come to Somanath? (Incidentally, India's NDTV says that his name means "Lord of the Moon".)

BRICS summit

 Although Vladimir Putin will not be attending the meeting of BRICS nations being held in South Africa (there is an international warrant for his arrest for war crimes), he will be in contact via a video-link. Russia will also be represented in person by foreign secretary Lavrov.

One of the subjects for discussion in Johannesburg may be Argentina's application for membership, which had the support of China when it was first made. Since that time, however, China's domestic economy has suffered a down-turn through a collapse in the property market, a fall in consumer spending and USA's tightened sanctions. Sanctions are beginning to bite on Russia, too. One wonders what would be the effect of including a permanently-indebted nation like Argentina.

Minor injuries unit cut-backs

 The Swansea Bay University Health Board has announced a reduction in facilities at the Minor Injury Unit at Neath Port Talbot Hospital due to "ongoing staffing pressures". The obvious assumption is that the Board is suffering, along with the rest of the health service in Wales, from the exodus of EU citizens and the Tory government's hostility to foreign workers, and the inability of NHS/GIG to retain senior staff who find the hours and pay in a supermarket more congenial.

Invasive species

When I were a lad, rosebay willow-herb was remarked upon as an alien species which had taken advantage of the age of railway-building to spread throughout Great Britain. Buddleia is another exotic which spread through rather more malign human action as it colonised bombsites. However, Jonathan Calder is struck by its sudden proliferation long after the end of 'World War Two.  Perhaps it is related to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (a RSPB rep claimed that brambles thrived on increased CO2, but perhaps he was biased). Another possibility is that mutation enabled buddleia to take advantage of many other nooks and crannies.

Another invader described in some quarters as a pernicious weed is Himalayan balsam, commonly found near waterways. Personally, I find it attractive This is a patch snapped on a walk by the Tennant Canal yesterday.

Never more than three miles from a bank counter? I'll believe it when I see it

Yesterday, all the media carry a similar story, that UK banks will be forced, on pain of a fine, to ensure that free cash withdrawals and deposits must be available within one mile for people living in urban areas and three miles otherwise. Given that banks continue to close branches, it is difficult to see how that is to be accomplished.  The Post Office does offer some basic facilities for access to accounts at most UK banks, but government has over the years (apart from a brief respite during the coalition) presided over the closure of post offices and there has been no sign of it encouraging opening new ones. Even before the Covid-19 epidemic struck and there was  a large switch from cash to contactless card, many well-populated townships in Wales were without either. For instance, Resolven in the Neath valley, with a population of over two thousand, has to rely on a mobile post office which stops a couple of times a week in a car park. There is one free cash machine, in a convenience store. There will be reluctance on the part of the banks and the post office to reverse the situation.

This all looks like another gesture, like the ban on IC-engined vehicles, on the part of the government which has no idea about how it is to be put into practice.

King of the chat shows

 The television chat show, adapted from a format imported from America, was made his own by Michael Parkinson. Afterwards, the easy chair was taken over by Terry Wogan before "Parky" had a final stint between 1998 and 2007. The men shared the appearance of being classless, possessing discernible but not broad accents. They also had the benefit of good early training in the media, so that they knew that good preparation was vital to a successful interview. The result was a series of revealing interviews with many stars from different fields (see other obituaries for a list). The repository continues to be mined for gems by radio and TV documentaries. Moreover, the only bias which Parkinson showed was towards the golden age of Hollywood, something which came to the fore when he briefly replaced Barry Norman on BBC's Film 86.

Parkinson was not always so unbiased in public. His writing, initially for the Guardian before a longer stint on the Sunday Times revealed a childhood passion for Barnsley FC and for its uncompromising defender Skinner Normanton. He also disapproved of post-war developments in football, abandoning the W formation. The wingless wonders of Alf Ramsey, the overlapping full-back system and the presence in the England team of Roger Hunt were also in his line of fire. He inclined politically to the Conservatives (but recent Tory governments attracted his ire for their ignorance of the north of England). He was a passionate Yorkshireman and friendships formed there remained firm. But he put prejudice behind him when he engaged in the programme which was the pinnacle of his career.

Will there be another chat show on British network television or even as a leading podcast? Only if and when there is another Wogan or Parkinson.

[Updated from Gillian Reynolds' recollections in the i on Saturday.]

Trouble flares in Libya

 Other stories have claimed the headlines in recent weeks, but what happens in Libya has potential to affect us in the UK as much as the war in Ukraine. Libya is a major staging-post for people-traffickers and a target for several groups inimical to the West. Deutsche Welle reports flare-ups between private armies in Tripoli:

In Libya this week, clashes between two rival militias left an estimated 27 people dead and over 100 more injured.

The fighting has been described as some of the worst violence in the Libyan capital for months and saw civilians trapped in their homes after shooting broke out. It is unclear as yet whether those killed and injured were combatants or civilians.

The fighting, which started late on Monday and had mostly subsided by Tuesday morning, apparently began when  one militia detained a senior leader from another.

What complicates matters is that Western interests supported militias in Libya in the effort to overthrow Qaddafi, as Patrick Cockburn laid out in an article at the weekend. In an echo of what happened in Afghanistan, the leaders of those militias are now competing for power in the country. In particular, Cockburn fingers France and the US for funding Khalifa Haftar, the warlord now based in Benghazi. Consequently, official Western criticism of the violence in Libya is muted.

NHS/GIG comparisons

 Steve Barclay's clearly political empty gesture in offering hospital places to patients on waiting lists in Wales caused me to look into the differences between the bases of the two nations' waiting time statistics. (It is an empty gesture because the places offered would be in private hospitals, as the Telegraph article makes clear but for some reason the BBC headline did not. Either the patient or GIG in Wales would have to pay for the privilege.) I had been led to believe that the Welsh statistics are more realistic in that the statistical clock starts ticking at an earlier stage in the process of treatment. The Welsh Chief Statistician's explanation bears that out to some extent:

The key difference between England and Wales concerns some types of diagnostics and therapies. In England only ‘consultant-led’ pathways are reported, whereas in Wales some non-consultant led pathways are counted as well. We believe that most of these pathways in Wales fall into two groups: direct access diagnostics and Allied Health Professional therapies (for example physiotherapy, osteopathy). We estimate these account for at least 88,000 of the 755,000 open pathways in September 2022. This is based on the types of activities we’ve been able to identify, but the true number could be higher.

If we remove these 88,000 pathways from the total open pathways for Wales, that leaves around 666,000 open pathways. Based on our current understanding, this would be a more comparable measure with England than our regular headline statistic (though as stated, there may be more than the 88,000 non-consultant led pathways that we’ve not yet been able to identify). For Wales this would be equivalent to around 21% of the population, or one open pathway for every 5 people. The 7.1 million pathways in England are equivalent to 13% of the population, or one pathway for every 8 people.

From this it would appear that there is still a disparity in favour of England. This blog has in the past criticised the Welsh government for not taking more drastic action to improve health outcomes (and it looks as if actual cuts are on the way*), but at least the direction of travel in Wales is better than in England. While the Tory administration is intent on driving doctors out of the NHS, increasing privatisation and presiding over record high waiting times, these are coming down faster in Wales in a rather more collaborative working relationship between professionals and government.

* Coincidentally, the last big health service cuts in Wales were also when Plaid Cymru were involved with Labour in government

Brittle with relics

 I have already mentioned Richard King's book, which is a history of Wales, through the recollection of people intimately involved, between two key events: the founding of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) in 1962, given impetus by the Tryweryn Dam project; and the passing of the legislation which set up the Welsh Assembly, now Senedd. in 1998. I have been dipping into it from time to time, and will surely continue to do so, but I completed my reading of it today with the final chapters.

The story of the long wait for the result of the devolution referendum is well told. The nervousness of Yes campaigners, many of whom were pessimistic after a campaign beset by troubles, comes over, along with their relief when the results from Carmarthen and Powys narrowly sealed the deal. Strangely, the unexpectedly large Yes majority in Neath which to my mind was the deciding factor was not examined, even though Peter Hain, then MP for the Neath constituency, was one of Richard King's contributors. A greater disappointment, considering that the devolution settlement is similar to what David Lloyd George advocated over a century ago, is that no Liberal Democrat let alone an old Liberal was quoted. Welsh LibDems leader Mike German (now a peer of the realm) was in the thick of the cross-party campaign to secure a Yes vote, on one occasion witnessing a near-riot in a local meeting, such were the strong feelings aroused. He would have been an ideal commentator, as would Roger Roberts who could have given a North Walian, Welsh-speaking angle. 

I cannot claim to be involved or even to have voted, because I was away on a contract in England when the vote took place. Besides, I was less than enthusiastic about the narrow choice offered in the referendum, the limited powers granted to the Assembly and the way that the legislation had been arrived at. There had been no constitutional convention, as in Scotland, which would have brought both politicians and national institutions together, to recommend what form devolution should take. If John Smith, an enthusiast for devolution, had lived to see the Labour victory in 1997, no doubt things would have been different. Tony Blair is revealed by King's witnesses to have been hostile to devolution, but clearly he could not be seen by the party to go back on the word of his predecessor as leader, nor the will of his de facto Welsh Secretary, Ron Davies, an enthusiastic convert to the cause. Blair also had to be persuaded to include proportional representation in the proposals. (Having been thwarted in the Convention in their proposal for STV for the Scottish Parliament, Liberal Democrats compromised with Labour on an AMS - additional member system - crafted to give the closest possible reflection of voter intentions by, I believe, Andy Ellis.)

In the end, rather than devising a tailor-made model of government for Wales, the scheme devised by the Convention for Scotland was shoehorned into Wales, distorting the voting system so that it was less than proportional, favouring the dominant party by possibly one or two seats. 

Those quibbles by an admittedly political nerd apart, this book is thoroughly recommended.

Footnote: Richard King can also be heard in his personal tour of the communities on the coast of Britain, Radio 4's "Living on the Edge".

Liberal Democracy does not work for everyone

 The second episode of former diplomat Tom Fletcher's Radio 4 series The Battle for Liberal Democracy was broadcast in the middle of the Niger emergency. Fletcher's tone at the end was optimistic, though one wonders whether he would have been such if he had heard the latest news. The leaders of Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali have all voiced support for the coup leader. All three countries were once French colonies and themselves seen democratic institutions overthrown by the military. Ominously, Russia and the Wagner mercenary group appear to have been winning round elements in those countries and Niger, trading on resentment at French and American influence. 

France and through her the European Union relies on Niger for uranium to power the largest nuclear generator installation in Europe. France and the wider West are interested in the mineral wealth of west Africa generally. Niger was also seen as a bastion for the West against militant Islam. 

So the prosperity and to some extent the security of traditional liberal democracies has depended on, to a greater or lesser extent, exploitation of less-developed states both through colonisation and, afterwards, by ensuring friendly governments in those states. The United States, in modern times the leader in democratic government at home, was notorious for abetting dictatorships abroad to further her interests. In de-colonising, European powers tended to be more subtle, but still endeavoured to ensure that replacement administrations were friendly.

At least until the present century we could point to the success of liberal democracies as a model for emergent nations to follow. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent surge in prosperity of its former satellite states reinforced the message. However, the rise of China's elective dictatorship is making the case for authoritarianism again. It is not surprising that many in Africa, still resenting being taken for granted by transatlantic interests, see fascism as a valid model for the future.

Mary "Mollie" Perris

Last year, about this time, I expressed regret that not much was widely known about some women who were important in the lives of composers.  My curiosity about Isobel Holst, widow of Gustav, was coincidentally met shortly afterwards by Dr Philippa Tudor, but we still await a biography of Carice Elgar. Last Thursday, thanks to Radio 3's Breakfast (here, 38 minutes in), another figure steps out of the shadows, this time the wife of a singer. Mollie Brown, who died a few weeks ago at the age of 100, was the widow of tenor Wilfred Brown, a unique voice in British music. She supported him by taking up the post of matron at Bedales School when Wilfred gave up a teaching post there to devote himself to singing full-time. In the fifty years after his death, she worked to keep his memory alive. 

She was born Mollie AG Perris in Lewisham in July 1923. I have found nothing more on the Web until 1947, when there is an intriguing record of a Mollie Perris in the trace & paint department of the short-lived Gaumont British Animation studios at Moor Hall, Cookham. Electoral registers between 1947 and 1949 show a "Mary A Perris" at the location. This could be the same person but there was a surprising number of Perrises around at the time and Mollie was not an uncommon nickname. One also wonders how the teacher in Hampshire met the artist in Berkshire, who continued to appear on the electoral register there even after the marriage to Wilfred Brown in 1949 in Hendon. 

It was clearly a happy marriage which produced two sons and two daughters or six children according to which personal reminiscence one reads. From actress Patience Tomlinson's recollection on Breakfast, it transpires that Mollie Brown retired to Suffolk and would welcome visitors with home-baked bread and memories of Wilfred.

It is not certain that victims of miscarriages of justice will receive compensation

 Michael O'Brien and Andrew Malkinson were among the lucky ones. They are eligible for compensation for the years they spent in gaol having been wrongfully convicted (O'Brien for murder of a newsagent, Malkinson for rape). Malkinson will not even be charged for board and lodging under an infamous ruling by the House of Lords in 2007, O'Brien might even have his deduction returned to him.

However, as Private Eye points out, thanks to Chris Grayling's stint as Minister of Justice, compensation for wrongful imprisonment is not automatic.

In what lawyers, academics and MPs have condemned as an attack on the "innocent until proven guilty" principle that underpins the criminal justice system, it is no longer enough to have appeal court judges declare a conviction fundamentally flawed and unsafe. Only those who can show new evidence proving their innocence "beyond reasonable doubt" will get a penny for their wrecked lives. And who decides if a case meets that threshold? Not the courts, but the Ministry of Justice, which holds the purse strings.

Among those who were denied compensation under this ruling, in spite of the fact that any reasonable person would conclude from the belated disclosure of evidence which would have discredited each prosecution case, were Sam Hallam and Victor Nealon. They have now taken their claim for compensation to the European Court of Human Rights, but it should not require this lengthy and uncertain procedure for each victim of injustice to claim his or her due. The rules must be changed.

Nor does Labour have clean hands. There is a draconian cap on the amount of compensation, introduced by Charles Clarke in 2006. But at least he did not claim the right to second-guess the courts when it came to the right to compensation.

Thursday at the Gnoll Ground

 

If there were more room and better facilities for spectators, Neath could well take over as a county championship venue from Swansea, which has given up on cricket at the top level. Yesterday, a capacity (over-capacity?) crowd at the Gnoll enjoyed a run-feast, helped by inconsistent bowling by Glamorgan. What we would give for another Roland Lefebvre! As it was, the batters made a valiant effort, falling twenty-five runs short of victory when Warwickshire bowled them out.

CAT spin-offs

 The Centre for Alternative Technology is still regarded in some quarters as the cuckoo in the nest of Eryri. In his absorbing collection of accounts of the 35 years leading up to the second devolution referendum ("Brittle with relics - a history of Wales 1962-1997") Richard King draws attention to the fact that well-to-do English incomers founded the Centre. 

The Centre for Alternative Technology, initially titled the National Centre for Alternative Technology, was founded in 1973 at a disused slate quarry on the outskirts of the market town of Machynlleth, Powys, in mid-Wales by Gerard Morgan-Grenville, the great-grandson of the last Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

It was initially seen as just another commune, an indulgence of rich English hippies. However, even as staunch a patriot as Cynog Dafis came to recognise the significance of their initiative and was for many years a board member of CAT, while recognising that

The contradiction was that all of this activity in Wales was happening in English and among English people, and among people from quite well-heeled backgrounds. We've been living with that contradiction ever since.

It is true that not all the incomers endeavoured to learn Welsh, and not all those that did persisted. More importantly, Machynlleth's guarded welcome turned to curiosity and involvement. When degree-level courses in sustainable technology started (an achievement in itself because CAT as an entity has never been rich), they attracted Welsh as well as English and continental European attenders. Local boy Owen Morgan was one such and became a successful solar power entrepreneur as a result. As is the way of these things, he had to emigrate to establish Cambridge Solar, but he ensured that another company he started, Exeo Energy, has a Machynlleth office and is keen to grow the Welsh language within the business.

Other spin-offs from CAT which have remained local are Dulas Ltd which has developed the world’s first mass produced solar powered vaccine refrigerators, and The Solar Design Company. I believe that, certainly in terms of return on money invested, CAT has created more lasting employment than the WDA and its ilk and their "screwdriver jobs".

Mature opportunities test?

 Steve Webb in last Friday's i newspaper objected to Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride's "get on a bike" message to the over-50s. 

the sorts of jobs that Mr Stride is talking about are often tough, insecure and relatively lowly paid. We must avoid a situation where these jobs - which are likely to be unsuitable for many - are all that is available. One particular concern about these "gig economy" jobs is that many of them fall the wrong side of the employed/self-employed divide. As a result, those who take them may miss out on vital employment rights such as workplace pensions or sick pay.

There was another part of the Stride briefing that Steve Webb believed had merit, a "mid-life MOT".

The idea is that just as we get our cars checked periodically, we should also review our career plans and financial plans from time to time - preferably when there is still enough time to change things. 

The mid-life MOT is, in my view, a good initiative in that it encourages us all to recognise that the job we do now may not be the job we always do and plan ahead. Similarly, the mid-life MOT can give us a chance to review our finances and look at what we can expect to have in retirement from a combination of state and private pensions. For many of us this would be a wake-up call to encourage us to set more aside (if we are able) for our retirement.

However, we need to avoid a situation where the only outcome of such a review is to be forced to take up potentially unsuitable jobs because they are all that is available.

If we are serious about harnessing the skills of the over-50s, we need to make sure they have the opportunity to retrain and find fulfilling second and third careers rather than be forced to take the only jobs that are available.

 

Sunak, king of the rat runs

 As a CO (clerk) in the Roads division of the old Ministry of Transport in the early 1960s, I picked up expressions thrown about by the civil engineers in the office. One such was "rat-run", applied to a suburban street or streets parallel to a major road and thus used by commuting motorists to avoid traffic congestion. The phenomenon turned from a casual observation to a feature of most urban areas as vehicle ownership boomed and successive governments presided over a rundown of public transport. At the same time, increased vehicle speeds presented a greater danger to children and other vulnerable people.

Now prime minister Sunak, as part of a pre-election campaign to brand opposition parties as "anti-motorist", has announced a review of traffic-calming measures. These increased during the Covid-19 pandemic as local authorities throughout the British Isles rushed to protect cyclists and pedestrians. The London Borough of Hackney was typical. The government will not be forgiven if it overrides local democracy in forcing councils to rip up their bollards to the detriment of the safety of their citizens. All for the support of the Jagworths on his back benches.

Johnson and Cummings print media "bungs"

Byline Times tells us that it has submitted in evidence to the Hallett Inquiry on Covid-19 a report which it first published in the early days of the epidemic in the UK. It concerned a scheme: 

arranged for members of the News Media Association (NMA) – which include the Evening Standard, Guardian, Mail, Murdoch, Telegraph and Mirror groups – in April 2020, a time when newspapers were seeing their circulations fall as the pandemic took hold.

Then Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the public money was being spent “in support of the print newspaper industry” and it was combined with an advertising campaign, with wrap-arounds about the Coronavirus, normal ads and paid-for editorial content labelled as ‘government-sponsored’ (though not always prominently). 

While the initial agreement was for £35 million for its first three months, the scheme lasted beyond the first lockdown, with articles appearing into 2022. The ICNN and the PINF believe that the final cost may have approached a staggering £200 million – a figure a Government source has strongly disputed, although for unstated reasons.

[...]

After protestations from community papers, just one local independent outlet covering Wokingham* received access to the scheme.

The Public Interest News Foundation – as well more than a dozen other signatories to the COVID Inquiry submission including Byline Times – believe there has been a deliberate lack of transparency surrounding the scheme. 

*It may be a coincidence, but this is John Redwood's marginal constituency

Mabel Wayne

 It started with a rare hearing of Coleridge-Taylor's violin concerto in a recent Prom. The opening bars of the second movement were very familiar. The same phrase begins a popular song of yesteryear, "Little man, you've had a busy day". Who was copying who, I wondered? 

Sure enough, the song was from the 1930s and the violin concerto premiered before the Great War. The song composer might just have heard that premiere or even seen the published score. On the other hand, the opening phrase is developed differently, so that it might have come from subconscious memory rather than deliberate plagiarism, if it was not entirely a coincidence.

The big surprise for me was that the later composer was a woman, Mabel Wayne, in an era when women, if they were involved in popular music at all, contributed lyrics rather than tunes*. Further, Little man was not her only hit and her music has stood the test of time. It happened in Monterey and In a little Spanish town have remained in the middle-brow repertoire, The Bachelors had a hit with Ramona 36 years after it was first recorded and only seven years ago Eric Clapton included Little man on an album.

* Previously I had been aware only of Ann Ronell, who wrote Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf for Disney.

Cunning stunts

 I must admit to some admiration for the demonstrators who draped the prime minister's mansion in black last Thursday. It was cheeky and attended with some danger.  Of course, it was an intrusion on private property, taking advantage of the family's absence in California, taking in Disneyland and Star Wars exhibits. One should not condone such acts. No doubt Rishi Sunak will ensure there is year-round security in future. 

Another stunt which received rather less attention was the SNP's distribution of mugs mimicking Labour ads with the added slogan "controls on family sizes - what's the point of Labour?" The leader of the party at Westminster, Stephen Flynn, reinforced the point by adding a note on Commons stationery, reading: "The Labour Party has a new range of mugs in production. They're made in China - just like Keir Starmer's latest policy." It is the latter touch which has drawn the wrath of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Stationery is provided free for members' use but only for constituency correspondence, not for political campaigning. I am sure Flynn was well aware of this and would be among the first to complain if a political opponent misused taxpayers' provision in this way. One suspects that he transgressed deliberately in order to achieve more publicity for his stunt. 

The groups behind the anti

 DeSmog provides a summary of the main pressure groups working to stall the UK's move to Net Zero (greenhouse gas production). Funded largely by vested interests, these people donate to and brief politicians and opinion-formers. 

In their introduction, the authors of the DeSmog report highlight a sinister development: confusing net zero policies with measures such as ULEZ to reduce pollution from motor traffic. There is a theoretical, but largely discredited, possibility that global warming is part of a long-term natural cycle to which human activity makes a negligible contribution. However, there is no doubt that there is a correlation between heavy traffic on roads and illnesses, mostly affecting the lungs and heart, suffered by residents, particularly children. Some conservative politicians have extrapolated from this that pursuers of green policies are "anti-motorist". Sadly, Sir Keir Starmer appears to have buckled under this pressure.

The Conservative Party’s victory at last week’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election has been credited to an aggressive campaign against the expansion of the Mayor of London’s ultra low emissions zone (ULEZ). 

In the days since, the wider net zero “agenda” has been pulled into the spotlight, with opponents of green action seeing an opportunity to capitalise on the by-election result. 

This net zero scepticism has quickly entered the upper echelons of Westminster politics, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying that policies to achieve the UK’s legally binding climate targets shouldn’t “hassle” households and should be “proportionate and pragmatic”. 

It has quickly been speculated that flagship green policies, including the proposed ban of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, and new household energy efficiency standards, will be reviewed or delayed.

This is despite new polling showing that 57 percent of 2019 Conservative voters think that Sunak hasn’t gone far enough to tackle climate change, while only 9 percent think he has gone too far.

Labour leader Keir Starmer, meanwhile, has urged London Mayor Sadiq Khan to “reflect on” the impact of the ULEZ expansion, in the wake of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip result. 

Over recent days, we have seen how pressure is being exerted on both the Conservatives and Labour by a sprawling alliance of public figures, think tanks, pressure groups, and media outlets that are hostile to green policies and sketchy on the science of climate change.