Thoughts on attending an exhibition of John Constable’s painting at the National Gallery in Washington
 
 
            One knows only too well that landscape paintings hide
            Unseen miseries, unhappiness and early death.
            Yet here’s Old England, on the cusp of change,
            Captured immortally by the painter’s brush,
            The rustic face of that more vigorous age.
            Ah, if one could just step back in time!
 
          “The sound of water escaping from mill-dams,
            The willows, old rotten planks, the slimy posts and brickwork;
            I love such things….” *
            The grey-brown River Stour, drifting lazily across the fields;
            The mauves, the purple-greys of towering Anglian skies,
            The clouds changing, fleeting and ephemeral,
            Next to which the landscape is a flat, low plain.
            The carters and the harnessed horses;
            The deep dark grey-green elms and chestnut trees,
            Touches of sunlight filtering through the foliage;
            The lock, the barking dog, the working water mill;
            Reflections in the still, untroubled waters;
            The fisherman, maybe casting for a trout,
            In the clear current, where fish could still be clearly seen.
           
            In Sussex, too, impressions of this vanished age:
            Threatening rain clouds and roughening, Channel seas;
            Simple vessels drawn up on the shore, with drying sails;
            Fishing boats anchored, captured in sepia and set in mist.
            All this in contrast to the high society, the lords and retinues
            That promenaded on the front, more concerned with being seen
            Than breathing fresh sea air and gazing at the waves.
 
            But think a little harder and the viewer can discern
            Impressions of new economies and changing times.
            Constable faithfully painted them, and maybe mourned,
            As he witnessed the passing of an age.
Among his images of age-old country scenes
Are hints of industry and  new technology,
The still new canal beside the horse and cart,
The barge beside the “modern” mill.
No, the famous haywain hadn’t long to last,
            Overtaken by the tractor and the drawn low-loader.
            Four generations on, the leaping horseman will have gone,
            And with him will have disappeared the horse,
            Except as recreation for the adolescent girl.
            The fisherman will be there, but arrive by car.
            Even the lock, the barge and loading dock,
            Big advances at that point in time,
            Have fifty years of life before the train
            Renders them redundant, rotting and forgotten.
            The villagers of Dedham will commute
            To city jobs with banks and brokers;
            Willy Lott’s cottage may become a weekend home,
            Or maybe a museum, selling prints and souvenirs.
            The Stour will become less a highway, more a drain,
            Carrying run-off and fertilizer to the polluted sea.
            Coachloads of foreign tourists will debauch
            Upon the tarmacked parking lots.
            Shutters will open (but will minds?),
            Capturing  scenes degraded by time and endless feet.
            Only the dog will still be there, bounding along the river bank,
            Still in the picture, even if the picture’s changed.
           
            As for the Brighton seafront, maybe lesser known,
            The fish have gone, and with them have the boats,
            The nets, the ropes, anchors, knots,
            The exquisite ladies strolling on the front,
            The beaux and carriages and violet sellers,
            Replaced by harassed mothers pushing walkers
 .          And older women toting Marks and Spencer’s shopping.
 
            Maybe we are better off for all this change. 
            All the same, if one could just step back in time!
 
           (Robert Hanrott, February 2007)
 
            * A quotation from Constable himself

Is meritocracy what we really want?

Theresa May has said, “I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit, not privilege, where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like “.

Sounds reasonable.

And yet, in the wake of the financial crash of 2008 it became clear that meritocracy wasn’t working. Jobs had dried up, debt had soared and housing had becoming increasingly unafforadable. Both May and Trump acknowledge inequality, but prescribe meritocracy, capitalism and nationalism as the panacea. Both praise economic havens for the super-rich, the group they regard as the meritocrats.

Meritocracy used to be regarded as a term of abuse, describing an unequal state that no one would want to live in. Why offer more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted, who could look after themselves, and do? Instead, we should concentrate on helping people who do important but poorly paid jobs (teachers, for instance), spread wealth more widely and thus have a better quality of life and a happier population. This should be the Epicurean way.

Regrettably, it is the “meritocrats” who control the levers of power. Maybe over half these people have been the happy recipients of sheer luck, being born to the right parents, being in the right place at the right time. No doubt the people who run the huge tech firms are smart people, but they caught the tide, had good technical skills, but were also good “politicians”, a must in big corporations. They manipulate the party politicos, donating huge sums, ensuring low tax rates for themselves, and then broadcast misinformation that further divides the country. If they are typical of meritocrats, let’s find some people who do something for the country, not just for themselves.

Every hot dog a person eats shortens their life by 36 minutes, according to new research. Experts at the University of Michigan said that the 61 grams of processed meat in the hot dog results in 27 minutes of healthy life lost. “Then, when considering the other risk factors, like the sodium and trans fatty acids inside the hot dog – counterbalanced by the benefit of its polyunsaturated fat and fibres – we arrived at the final value of 36 minutes of healthy life lost per hot dog,” they said.

My comment: Epicurus ate sparingly and healthily. So should we.

There’s no such thing as the season of goodwill when it comes to political debate on social media. It’s all about fury and outrage. Even when tweets are funny, you can taste the “anger inside the sugar coating of smug satire”. Rage is contagious – it spreads like an infection across online forums, which have a vested interest in stoking it. It’s part of what has been dubbed the “outrage economy”. Shrill, divisive opinions attract eyeballs and yield a “double payoff” for publishers and platforms, as posts are then shared by people who both agree and violently disagree with them. Sharers come to enjoy, even grow addicted to, this easy way of displaying righteous indignation.

And “so the cycle of provocation continues”, as people yield to the temptation to correct perceived wrongness with “a caustic retort” online and one side’s scratch becomes “the other side’s itch”. Any sense of empathy or curiosity is lost in the “riotous rhetoric of online dispute”. We can’t do without our devices, but now and then we desperately need to log off for a few days to regain a sense of perspective.
(Rafael Behr, The Guardian).

My comment: In the early days of Facebook I went onto it frequently, but quickly learned how negative most of the comment was, posted by people who want to put you down, with no idea of how to debate a topic. And now school children are anonymously shamed and denigrated. What started as a useful means of keeping in touch has become another form of battle, serving no one except the mean and inadequate. I never even glance at any of it, and Epicurus would probably have supported me. It must very seldom result in peace of mind.

The Rueful Hippopotamus

Research now seems to indicate?
That hippos can communicate,
Like dolphins or the great blue whale,
With clicks. And thereby hangs a tale,
For they can hear beneath the water
Things on land they didn’t oughta;
And from the bank can hear what’s said
By colleagues on the river bed.

Imagine you’re a great bull hippo,
?Flumping down to take a dip-oh
In the greasy, grey Limpopo
With the girls in your seraglio.
You’ve had a hot and tiresome day
Chasing other males away.

You’ve gored them, left them sore and bleeding;
Now you are intent on breeding.
You’ve had your fill of the savannah.
You’re young, you’re fit, you’re top banana.
Why, every female hippolump
With big brown eyes and handsome rump
Is sure to swoon and yearn to be
The mother of your family.

Ah! Potty, with inviting lips;
And Mussy, with the sexy hips;
Heffy, with her nostrils flaring;
Lumpie, her whole midriff baring!
Yes, all will find you simply stunning.
Just one word and they’ll come running!
With thundering and galumphing stride,
You trundle to the riverside.
But nowhere, nowhere can you spy
Your eager hippopotamae.

And then to your acute dismay
You hear an amorata say,
Oh, dearie me, oh, what a shocker,
(Straight from Davey Jones’s locker,
Deep below the surface swirl:)
“He don’t know how to treat a girl.
I don’t expect no chocs or flowers,
Or sweet-talk that will last for hours.”

“But when in heat and I’m his squeeze,
I wish he’d simply add a ‘please’.
“I quite agree.” (another voice)
“I wish we girls could have a choice.
He’s rude and gruff and rather rough,
And isn’t even good at stuff.
He’d like to think he’s quite a stud
I’d much prefer to doze in mud.

(A third voice) “Yes, he’s humourless and brusque
And far too quick to use a tusk.
I too agree with both of you.
My preference is for a zoo.
At least in zoos you laze away
With three square, well-cooked meals a day.
And if you have to mate, o.k,
You do it on a Saturday
With hoards of visitors in sight-
They keep a hippo male polite.”

You’re shocked, you’re shattered, angry too.
Was this gossip aimed at you?
Such comments make a chap’s skin crawl.
You never fancied them at all!
And lest you lose your pride and face,
You move off to another place,
Flumping down to take a dip-oh
In the greasy, grey Limpopo.

Sorry, but I need to vent!!!!

I experienced the WORST customer service today at a shop in Malvern, I don’t want to mention the name of the shop because I’m not sure how I’m going to proceed. 

Last night I bought something from this shop. I paid cash for it. I took it home and found out it didn’t work. So today, less than 24 hours later I took it back to the shop and asked if I could get a refund. The girl in the shop told me “NO” even though I still had the receipt. I asked if I could get a replacement instead then. Again this person told me “NO.” I asked to talk to a manager now, as I’m really not happy, and I explained that I had just bought the item, had got it home and it didn’t work. The manager just smiled and told me to my face that I was “OUT OF LUCK.”
No refund.
No FREE replacement.. 
I’ll tell you what…I am NEVER buying another Lotto Ticket from that shop again…

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution has rejected accusations it is operating a “migrant taxi service” by rescuing people at risk of dying in the water as they cross the Channel in small boats.

The volunteer lifeboat charity said it was “very proud” of its humanitarian work and vowed that it would continue to respond to coastguard callouts. Some volunteers have faced abuse, including having beer cans thrown at them and people shouting “f*** off back to France”.

My comment: I believe that Epicurus would have been a staunch advocate of taking in the refugees who have travelled thousands of dangerous miles to reach a safe place where there are no (or very few, anyway) religious zealots wanting to kill anyone who is not an upholder of pre-historic, reactionary social and religious teachings.

By the way, what will the British protestors do when they see Afghans, who have helped Britain and America in that benighted country, seeking shelter and jobs in Britain? Somewhere in history each and every one of us has someone in the family’s past who fled to England (my own family included) from some upheaved and dangerous situation.

Yesterday, I posted a comment in praise of the British National Health service. Polls show that British people overwhelmingly oppose the privatisation of the National Health Service, which has been surreptitiously proceeding under the right-wing Tory government. In 2017 a YouGov survey found that 84% were against it, and I suspect that that opinion hasn’t changed an iota. Suspicion remains that gradual privatisation is a front for an attempt to “dismantle the NHS”.

On the other hand, the private sector is now embedded in an NHS which can ill afford to sacrifice any of its capacity. And as The King’s Fund think tank puts it: “Provided patients receive care that is timely and free at the point of use, our view is that the provider of a service is less important than the quality and efficiency of the care they deliver.”

My comment: Yes, but while good doctors should be amply rewarded, everything depends on attitude and ability of the staff, their calling and dedication. It is very unlikely, for instance, that there could be doctors more attentive and caring in the private sector than there are at my local NHS surgery. The commitment there to patients of all origins and ages is wonderful. I fear that the lust for money, that is a hallmark of private medicine, is not going to result in a healthier nation.

P.S. When you get old you begin to learn a lot about the medical world!

Britain’s medicine prices are among the lowest in the world, thanks to the NHS’s buying powe and the tough value-for-money tests imposed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. This is a major bone of contention. US prices are 2.5 times higher than ours, and Donald Trump thinks that Americans are “subsidising” low prices abroad, which is “unfair” and “ridiculous”. The US pharmaceutical industry wants to charge the NHS more, not just because the UK is a big market: NHS prices are used as benchmarks for 14 other nations.

Dr Andrew Hill of Liverpool University calculates that, in the worst-case scenario, the NHS drugs bill would rise from £13bn to £45bn – a massive extra expense. The Tory manifesto promises that neither the NHS nor drug prices will be “on the table”, but leaked documents noting preliminary talks show that the subject is certainly on the agenda: “competitive pricing” and extending patents for American drugs were both mentioned. US negotiators have driven hard bargains on drugs in recent deals with South Korea, Canada and Mexico. Britain would be a weaker partner in any deal and might find it hard to resist some concessions. (The Week, 14 December 2019)

My comment: The US pharmaceutical industry has done an amazing job of denigrating so-called “socialized medicine” and making Americans frightened of it.
I myself am very familiar (too familiar!) with both systems, and I can honestly say that I have had sometimes marginal service from private medicine (pushing unnecessary extra procedures to make more money), whereas the National Health Service has been caring and terrific, even if you have to wait to be seen by some specialists. Don’t believe for a moment the misinformation about “socialized medicine” – it’s self-interested propaganda from people with an eye, not on the health of patients, but on the bottom line.