Revealed - there was a February this year

 Trump and Johnson like to pretend that they did not realise the danger of Covid-19 until the middle of March, even though the nature of the disease had been confirmed by the WHO in January. China's President Xi Jinping clearly listened to his scientists even if Trump did not do the same. As a recording made by Bob Woodward  (did Trump learn nothing from Nixon's taping??) reveals, in early February President Xi had a conversation with the president of the USA in which he spelled out the risks posed by what was already an epidemic in south-east Asia.

President Donald Trump acknowledged the “deadly” nature of the coronavirus earlier this year in a series of recorded interviews with The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, even as Trump publicly sought to dismiss the disease’s threat to Americans. Recounting a conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump told Woodward on Feb. 7 that the coronavirus is “more deadly than your, you know, your — even your strenuous flus.”

This is a further refutation of Trump's assertion that China deliberately kept the world in the dark until the virus had reached pandemic status. It would be surprising if Trump did not pass on the gist of the conversation to his fellow New Yorker in 10 Downing Street. 

Johnson the M4 vandal

 Arrogant, destructive, careless of our future: those are the terms which immediately came to mind when it was announced that the government in Westminster wants to impose the M4 Relief Road on Wales. It may have been by narrow margins each time, but the people of Wales have consistently voted against the concreting over an irreplaceable wetland for what was, even before Brexit and Covid-19, a minimal gain.

For justification, walesonline quotes Simon Hart MP, Secretary of State for Wales, airily saying: "Our trade takes place overwhelmingly with the rest of the UK and it is vital that it continues to be seamless, safeguarding thousands of Welsh jobs. For all parts of the UK to grow and thrive, products, ideas and investment must continue to flow unhindered."  He offers no specific evidence for growth in Welsh jobs, which in any case would be restricted to a narrow corridor in the south. Saving ten minutes on a journey between London or Bristol and Cardiff would do nothing for growing poverty in mid and north Wales. Hart has even abandoned the figures of billions of pounds in gains which used to be thrown around by the Tories.

The businesses which benefited most from the M4 up until this year were the hauliers taking advantage of fellow-membership with Ireland of the European Union. In severing our ties with the rest of Europe and at the time of writing consistently refusing to conclude a mutually beneficial trade deal with the EU, Johnson's Tories have devastated that business. Irish trade with the rest of the EU will bypass British ports, and Wales will be the worst sufferer. The effect will be to reduce pressure on the M4.

Apart from lobbing large contracts to construction companies which traditionally contribute to Conservative Party coffers, I suspect that the true reason for increasing capacity on the border crossing is to relieve pressure on housing in the Bristol area. Already Bristol commuters take advantage of cheaper housing in Gwent than they could buy in Somerset and Gloucester. The proposed relief road would open up Newport, Cardiff and the Vale to further development for the benefit of jobs on the other side of the Severn estuary.

However, the pandemic has shown that for at least 50% of office workers it is practical, thanks to improved IT, to work from home. Moreover, as public transport restrictions ease, the benefits of Great Western electrification to Cardiff will begin to show. 

None of these arguments will even be considered by prime minister Johnson, who has a history of wasting tax-payers' money on fruitless schemes, both as mayor of London and throughout the current Covid-19 emergency. Uppermost in his mind will be a show of power over a nation of the UK which dares to use the tools which devolution has granted her, while he sees the UK's and his own regard shrink on the world scene, thanks to his misguided petty nationalism.

One trusts that, though his crony cabinet will support him, the growing opposition in the rest of the Conservative party to his petulant would-be autocracy will either remove him or at least prevent this and similar destructive decisions.

All composers matter

We are promised a welcome review of "black" classical music on BBC4 shortly.  That it is to be fronted by Suzy Klein, who was not afraid to go into the darker recesses of nationalistic music not so long ago, and Lenny Henry guarantees that the programme or programmes will not be bland. What concerns me is the amount of time that will be devoted to the subject. David Olusoga's history of the African novel was revelatory but an hour was  not long enough. It was difficult to take in all the different authors and there was time for detail on only a few of them. Moreover, it was restricted to former British colonies. There was no mention of Francophone writers, or on novels from Egypt. And surely there must have been some non-white novelists in South Africa?

At least William Grant Still should get his due on BBC TV. He has been the subject of Radio 3's Composer of the Week - twice to my knowledge - but I cannot recall any TV exposure. In addition to his original compositions, Still - along with Ferdy Grofé - wrote arrangements for Paul Whiteman's big band. I would contend that they contributed as much to the "American sound" of movie sound-tracks as Aaron Copland did. 

Morality in banking

 There is strong evidence that banks routinely forged signatures on legal documents in order to seize clients' property. This comes only two years after the exposure of the corrupt working of the RBS Global Restructuring Group.

Abbott/Farage swap not on

 As a well-documented Commonwealth citizen who was born to British parents, Tony Abbott can come and go to the UK, and stay as long as he likes. However, because of Covid-19 restrictions, "Only Australian citizens and returning permanent residents and their immediate family members are permitted to enter Australia without an exemption until further notice." So there is a prosaic stop on the gallows-humorous suggestion circulating on Facebook that the UK should swap Nigel Farage for the UK's latest appointment to the Board of Trade.

In any case, the Board itself meets only every three months under normal circumstances, so Mr Abbott need only be in the UK for a few days in each year. His appointment is voluntary and will involve promoting UK trade interests to other countries. This has raised questions not only here but also back home:

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen said it was "pretty extraordinary" for a former Australian Prime Minister to be promoting the trade agenda of another country. "It's up to the Government to explain whether Tony Abbott, for example, is regarded as an agent of foreign influence under their rules," he said.

Opposition spokesmen here have queried the appointment, too:

Shadow international development secretary Emily Thornberry said Mr Abbott was "the wrong" choice "on every level" and had "no experience of detailed trade negotiations, no understanding of Brexit, no belief in climate change, no concern for workers' rights". A group of equality activists - including actor Sir Ian McKellen and Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies - has written an open letter against Mr Abbott's appointment. It says: "This is a man who described abortion as 'the easy way out' and suggested that men may be 'by physiology or temperament more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command'." "For all these reasons and more besides, this man is not fit to be representing the UK as our trade envoy," the letter adds. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Mr Abbott had "no place in any British government". And the SNP's deputy Westminster leader, Kirsten Oswald, called the appointment "beyond indefensible".

He has also suggested that:
corona-virus lock-downs come at too high a price and that people should be allowed to choose to "let nature take its course" if their elderly relatives get COVID-19.

His sister, who is out gay and in a same-sex marriage, has come to his defence. He is no homophobe, she asserts, and was happy to attend her wedding ceremony. That must mean that he merely hypocritically trades on prejudice for electoral purposes. So that;s all right, then - except that he has also cast doubt on ecological measures. Is that also for consumption in coal-exporting Australia and will he promote the UK's green industries? Or is he there to balance green-promoting board adviser Michael Liebreich? 

It is hard to see what is in the appointment for either side, except for causing controversy.

Chaminade

One of the reasons for the eclipse of the reputation as a composer of Marie Jaëll (see earlier blog post) must be the rise of that of Cécile Chaminade who may not have been as adventurous musically but who had the knack of writing appealing melodies. Indeed, I recall hearing her "Autumn" on both Radios 2 and 3 before the pop and modernist controllers moved into those networks respectively. But her respectability among serious critics had disappeared in her lifetime as her works were dismissed as "salon pieces". The concertino for flute and piano survives.

Who was her successor? Presumably Germaine Tailleferre, the last member of Les Six to die, but who has never had the exposure on this side of the channel which is her due. 

 

Cops of the World

 Phil Ochs' lyrics were never more true. 

We've got to protect all our citizens fair 

So we'll send a battalion for everyone there 

And maybe we'll leave in a couple of years '

[...]We'll find you a leader that you can't elect 

Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck

'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys 

We're the Cops of the World

As Miles Kington pointed out in one of his Independent columns, imperial Britain used to feel the same way. (He quoted one of Arthur Conan Doyle's lesser-known stories where one of the characters uses just that phrase, "police of the world".) But we never went as far as Donald Trump is now aiming to do, threaten the financial future of two leading officers of an international body.

The International Criminal Court is the spiritual descendant of the international military tribunals held in Nuremberg to prosecute Nazis and others under international law governing warfare. It also follows on from the UN-sponsored international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. However, there had long been a feeling among international jurists that a permanent international court was needed to prosecute genocide and war crimes and the UN duly set the ball rolling in 1989, though the prime mover then was Trinidad & Tobago, concerned more about international drug trafficking than war crimes. 

By implication, Trump is siding with Nazi, Balkan and African ethnic cleansers, not to mention international drug-dealers (who, by the way, have not featured as targets in his pitch for a second-term as president). The US is not a signatory to the Rome treaty setting up the ICC. She is therefore legally (if not morally) justified in ignoring its judgments and has every right to refuse to extradite any persons convicted. She does not have a right to use her control over the international banking system to threaten investigations in another country by citizens of other countries.

More Covid-19/SARS2 developments

One of BBC's best-kept secrets is the (very) early Sunday morning science programme on Radio 5. Perhaps it is better known to a younger generation as a podcast, but it would be good to give more publicity about it to us oldies more used to listening the radio. Although Inside Science on Radio 4 is an enjoyable and varied update on things technical and scientific, the extra half-hour gives 5 Live Science the opportunity to examine a topic in depth. Last Sunday's programme ranged widely over the latest research, some of it (user warning) not yet peer-reviewed. This piece is a mish-mash of what I have gleaned from both programmes - probably with a bit of More or Less thrown in.

The most controversial suggestion was that SARS2 (which seems to be now a common designation in the scientific community) did not make the leap from animal to man in Wuhan as is generally accepted. The researcher putting forward this theory bases it, as I understand, on two facts: the precise SARS2 has not yet been found in ... and that there are B and C strains in circulation. Only A is found in Guangdong, so he reckons this is the source. An aternative interprettion is that it has had more time to mutate in Wuhan.

The other is the only school survey carried out in Israel (apologies for not finding a URI). From an admittedly low sample, it seems that peer-to-peer transmission between teachers is much higher than that from teacher to pupil, pupil to teacher or pupil to pupil , thelatter being the lowest. The general finding that children are least at risk from the virus is borne out. Although they can be infected, they tend to shake it off quickly (no evidence of it spreading to other organs like heart lungs and liver as with adults) and do not shed virus as readily  So perhaps Kirsty when she introduced her first tentative return to school in the  summer should have put teachers on a rota rather than the children.

[Later] Listening to that 5 Live Science programme again and more carefully persuades me of the strength of the case against Wuhan as the area where the virus first jumped from bat to human. It also further weakens the accusation that it escaped, or was deliberately constructed in, the laboratory there - not that president Trump ever listens to scientific evidence.

Pushing the date of the initial mutation back to 3rd September at the earliest also enhances the possibility that Covid-19 escaped China in the autumn of  last year. Maybe more cases of death previously ascribed to pneumonia in continental Europe as well as Guangdong should be reexamined.