We lose another pub

 Since settling in Skewen twenty-odd years ago, I reckon to have seen the closure of three public houses and the establishment of three new mini-marts. With the imminent conversion of the Miners' Arms, each of those totals will go up by one. 

The Miners' was a fine pub dating, I would guess, from the end of the nineteenth century (the Skewen Historical Society can put me right on that). Latterly, in addition to its traditional ambience it added generous home cooking to its attractions. 

Some of the reasons for British pub closures can be found in this article. I would highlight the fact that "The handful of big companies that own most of the pubs are heavily in debt and they need to sell off more of their assets." The "pubcos" sprang up in the wake of the Thatcher government's apparently laudable attempt to break the monopoly of the big breweries and their tied houses, but, because of the way the legislation was phrased, the cure was worse than the disease. It was a pubco which owned the Miners'. The fight to maintain a great British tradition goes on, though. The is the Campaign for Pubs Facebook page: 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/262278151696447/

But why so many new corner shops when Skewen is already well-served by two establishments on New Road? Can't the planners do something about this? Well, no. As laid out by party colleagues in Cheshire, 

There are lots of valid objections to planning applications, called “material planning considerations”. These include:

• Loss of light or overshadowing (this isn’t just a high wall – it means loss of light to the extent that you don’t get enough natural daylight to see by).
• Overlooking/loss of privacy
• Visual amenity (but not loss of private view)
• Adequacy of parking/loading/turning
• Highway safety
• Traffic generation
• Noise and disturbance resulting from use
• Hazardous materials
• Smells
• Loss of trees
• Effect on listed buildings and conservation area
• Layout and density of building
• Design, appearance and materials
• Landscaping
• Road access
• Local, strategic, regional and national planning policies
• Government circulars, orders and statutory instruments
• Disabled persons’ access
• Compensation and awards of cost against the Council at public enquiries
• Proposals in the Development Plan
• Nature conservation
• Archeology
• Solar panels
• Fear of crime (with evidence to show that the fear is based in reality)

What you cannot object to is an increase in competition, even in an already well-supplied (or even over-supplied) locality. 

As to licensed premises, at least we still have the Bloom Inn piano lounge and restaurant, and the Colliers Arms.

Take me back ...

 Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the taking of Wounded Knee.

Bad Brexit leading to salad vegetable shortages

 A major cause of the shortage of tomatoes and green vegetables in our supermarkets is that, faced with escalating energy costs and market uncertainty, farmers and horticulturists in the UK did not see the point in investing in producing early salad vegetables. Agriculture ministers post-Brexit seem to have been more concerned about the appearance of rural Britain than its productivity. It is clearly time to repeat the advice of a Tory exile, a former land agent, of years ago:

CAP [the EU's common agricultural policy] led to tariff bars and cunning regulatory controls imposed to discourage free world trade in agricultural produce. Pre CAP, UK farmers negotiated guaranteed prices with MAFF annually. World trade in ag produce was free and if market prices fell below the agreed guaranteed price, UK farmers sent their receipts to MAFF and received a cheque for the difference. If world prices rose above the guaranteed price, no handouts were forthcoming. 

The system had the merit of being cheap to administer and did not involve the massive amounts of admin, the high costs to farmers in satellite pix, inspection fees and paperwork when they time would have been better spent farming.

This is surely the sort of support which farmers were expecting when they voted to revert to pre-common market conditions. They form just another group misled and let down by this government's rhetoric.

A nerdy date

 The computer science department of a US university informs us that at noon today the Julian Day rolls over its digit in the ten thousands place, becoming 2460000. This happens about every 27 and a half years

From the House of Lords newsletter

 "On Thursday, the House begins it's [sic] detailed check of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill at committee stage." 

Honestly, they're letting just anybody into the House of Lords media team these days.

Seriously, there should now be some serious examination of this dangerous legislation where, unlike in the Commons, even party appointees will be able to speak objectively on the subject.

 

Destruction of an ancient city

 The second set of after-shocks reported yesterday delivered a further blow to an ancient Turkish city which was a model of interfaith tolerance. On Sunday Supplement on 12th February, about 6 minutes in, Times correspondent Hannah Smith related:

Anatakya is a city right on the Turkish/Syrian border [...] a really special and unique place. because it's a mixed city. It's got Christians, it's got Muslims, it's got Jews. It's been a place of refuge for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees over the past twelve years. [...] It's just the most beautiful ancient city. Now there's nothing left of it.

Smith has no doubt where the blame lies for needless loss of life. 

The state's response has been entirely inadequate. When we got there, most of the people who were working at the collapsed buildings were not professional. 

[AFAD, the official disaster agency, was slow to get to any of the towns along the line of the earthquake; and]

 a lot of the new buildings, particularly in the poorer places, the poorer parts of the country are not being built up to scratch. Everyone knows also about [president] Erdogan's links with the construction companies. You know, these constructors, in particular the five biggest construction firms - they are known here as the "gang of five" - these are owned by businessmen who have conglomerates. What they do is they buy up newspapers - they take them over forcibly - and newspapers, television channels, they give Erdogan and his party blanket propaganda and good coverage and in return they get all the state contracts for construction and everyone has known for a really long time that there has been corruption, there has been incompetence. And we've known that a disaster like this is coming.

  

Sledgehammer to crack nugatory nut

 Peter Black has already commented on the Labour/Plaid co-operative's micro-management of a social issue, and I am with him 100%. Friday's BBC News brought another example of their complicating legislation, this time in the political field. 

Welsh ministers and Plaid Cymru are working on the fine detail before publishing a proposed Senedd reform law by autumn 2023.

BBC Wales has been told further changes agreed include:

• requiring candidates for Senedd elections to be resident in Wales;

• a ban on party defections so MSs who are elected to represent a party will not be able to resign and join another party in the Senedd - they will have to instead sit as independents;

• independent candidates will have to disclose their membership of any political parties in the year ahead of an election

The first proposal is clearly aimed at one individual, Neil Hamilton MS, who has chosen to retain his English residence. However, it seems unduly restrictive when one considers how the border weaves between England and Wales, cutting across transport links. 

It is noteworthy that Scotland, which has the same electoral system for her parliament as Wales has for the Senedd, has not chosen either of the other two measures. It is a symptom of the group-think and paranoia of Labour and the Nationalists that they want to constrain MSs in this way. It is rather like the hard-line Islamist line of "once a Muslim, always a Muslim" and of punishing any apostasy. 

It may also create more problems than it solves. Suppose there is a radical change of policy on the part of a Senedd party. Perhaps Labour in Wales changes its policy on Europe to mirror the Europhobia of the current Westminster leadership. There will be some Labour MSs who cannot in all conscience be whipped into line on this. Their natural retreat would be to the Liberal Democrats - but the proposed legislation would prevent this. Or take a current issue, that of deterring the use of private vehicles. The Conservatives would welcome Labourites who felt that traditional motoring was a crucial issue. 

The proposers clearly have in mind politicians who join the party which offers them most prospect of advancement and/or remuneration. Maybe there are too many of these around, but there are also politicians of conviction and conscience. Consistently, political surveys reveal that the general public does not like the party system. Labour and Plaid are seeking to reinforce it.

The answer, of course, is to do away with the party-based additional member system, not to revert to a first-past-the-post regime, but to a fair system which puts more emphasis on the individual representative and less on his or her party, if they have one.

Ancient and modern barbarism

 The Scythians are probably better-known and -celebrated in Eastern Europe than further west. One thinks of an early work of Sergei Prokoviev, the Scythian Suite. However, as an article in Discover, headed "Who were the Ancient Scythians?" explains, they had a major effect on Europe's early history. They were nomadic raiders, ruthlessly efficient in their deployment of cavalry, which they had developed into a sophisticated weapon. The article concludes:

Scythian metalwork was likewise varied and sophisticated, including many iron, silver and bronze works. But Scythian objects wrought in gold have always been particularly coveted, especially in Russia. The Hermitage Museum, in St. Petersburg, is home to possibly the largest and most valuable collection of Scythian objects. But evidently, that hoard wasn’t enough. In May of 2022, Russian forces occupying the city of Melitopol in Ukraine looted a history museum, making off with one of the country’s largest collections of rare Scythian gold. Its current whereabouts are unknown.