An own goal

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Unless there is a sudden and unexpected outbreak of patriotism and seriousness, today’s the day Boris Johnson will assume the title of Prime Minister of the UK.

There have been some pretty terrible rulers of the country, but you have to go back to King John, Edward II, Henry VI or Charles I to find anyone as unqualified as Boris Johnson.  That is, unless, like Boris you think that the whole business of running a country is a huge joke, and you want as Prime Minister an entertainer.

Personally, I think we need more comedians, but none with a finger on the detonator of a nuclear bomb, even if it might not actually work if he pressed the red button.

Since I have feet in rwo camps I can assure the British supporters of Johnson that informed Americans (who have their own local problem) cannot believe either Brexit or Johnson, laugh hysterically and think the Brits have lost it completely.  The only one delighted is Putin.  In soccer this whole sorry episode is known as an “own goal”.

Watch while a variety of countries (Iran is kicking it off) get their revenge for past colonialism and weight thrown around the world – this government will be out of its depth.

Continue reading ‘An own goal’ »

The allure of handwriting

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“We are collectively more than ever obsessed with individual identity, our personal brand, putting our stamp on the world. But we bow to the plain text of the smartphone, bland and unblotted. A WhatsApp message will never have the personality of a sibling’s spider-scribble. Digital communication can never match the intimacy of a handwritten letter. If you want to tell someone I love you, I miss you, I’m sorry, I’m thinking of you, do it by hand, sealed in an envelope. Embarrassed teenagers confessing to a crush now do it by Snapchat. A few seconds and the message vanishes. Blushes are spared, but so much else is lost.”. (Laura Freeman, The Daily Telegraph)

It’s tempting to thank a friend for dinner or for a present by sending an email, but somehow it seems just too easy and it doesn’t have the weight or sincerity of a written letter or note.  But if you are the host or the donor you can sometimes get no thank-you at all, and an email is better than nothing.

Years ago I had four of the drawings I did in Italy printed professionally onto small notelets.  I still use those notelets and hand-write a message to the generous host or the kind present-giver.  It’s old-fashioned, but what is wrong with old-fashioned?  And if I ever run out of those notelets I will continue to write old-fashioned thank-you’s and send them by letter mail, a hint to younger generation – courtesy is kindness.  I like to think that Epicurus would have approved.

P.S: There is now a website, called TouchNote, where you can produce your own thank-you notes, presented as postcards, complete with attractive 4 colour picture of choice, theirs or yours, on the front, and a smart, personal message.  Another innovation to be struggled with, but they look most attractive.  We have received one from Carmen, a kind reader and friend of this blog.  Thank you!

Epicureanism then and now

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Brian Dougall, in The Hobo Test, his 2013 critique of Epicureanism, published in Philosophy Now, began by explaining what Epicurus meant  by pleasure and then went on to explain what Epicurus meant by a “good. life” . He wrote that easily- accessible pleasures in the era of Epicurus included water, fruit, a comfortable hammock, a simple hut, and some friends.  Examples of difficult-to-attain pleasures were foreign wines, exotic cheeses, large feather beds, columned mansions and political allies.  Difficult to acquire meant “more pain  than pleasure” .  Epicurus counted himself blessed because Mother Nature had given the Greeks a pleasant climate, a bountiful land (and, implicitly, not too many people to compete with).

Dougall says that if Epicurus were alive today he wouldn ‘t recognise the world.  There are 8 billion people competing for the world’s scarce resources.  Humanity firmly controls access to nature with laws and law enforcement, backed by police and lawyers.  People seeking to live in a hammock on on the sidewalk are fined or moved on.  The land, once accessible, is now all privately owned,.  The water in the nearby stream is polluted.  In short, try living a simple life and you are miserable, potentially a beggar or a hobo, with the social stigma that goes with it. Dougall even takes Epicurus to task for suggesting that a group of good friends. are necessary, virtually calling him a ”selfish .pleasure-hoarder”.

Well some of this is quite true.  It is no longer possible live simply exactly as Epicurus suggested.  But noone these days advocates the sort of self-sufficiency that Dougall excoriates. Indeed, the idea of the 1980s commune is thoroughly discredited, and no one aspires to be a hobo or espouse flower power. I think he betrays his background by concentrating on material things only.  Very Californian!

(Brian Dougall. has an MA from San Jose University and. BA in History from the the University of. California, Davis. He wrote a critique of Epicureanism in 2003)

There are other, non- material. aspects of Epicureanism that do resonate today:

  • equality of treatment and opportunity suggested by the actions of early Epicureans
  • courtesy to all, rich and poor, child and mother
  • politeness and consideration
  • tolerance
  • rejection of superstition, organised religion, man-made gods and “eternal suffering”.
  • compassion for immigrants, the oppressed and the sick
  • refusal to be fearful of death.
  • the power of friendship for the sake of friendship.
  • the importance of education that broadens the mind.
  • the ability to enter discussions with those who disagree with you, and put your points quietly. with a smile and without the current anger and foul language.
  • impatience with politics maybe, but a belief that government should be for all the people, regardless of income and status and that oligarchy – or rule by rich cliques – should never prevail.
  • an interest in sciences and the physical universe (Epicurus was an atomist, and, along with Democritus, one of the ancient fathers of modern physics)

Yes, you might have noticed that some of the above simply describe a “lady” or a “gentleman”.  Some say that these are outdated concepts.  If so, so much the worse for them and our modern world

(References include “The Epicurean Option”, by Professor Dane R. Gordon, professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY)

Dragging the Queen into the Brexit farce?

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Senior members of the United Kingdom’s ruling Conservative party are so concerned about the country leaving the European Union without a deal that they are planning to go over the head of the new Prime Minister and appeal directly to the Queen.

Fears are growing among politicians that if and when Boris Johnson becomes PM next week, he could take the UK out of the European Union without any sort of deal later this year, resulting in a drop of 5% in the UK stock market, a 10% drop in the pound  and a fall of 2% in GDP by the end of 2020. One group of senior Conservatives are planning to go straight to the monarch.
Queen Elizabeth has built her reputation by remaining studiously impartial, and won’t want any part of the move. But the politicians could theoretically force her to enter the controversy by using an arcane and rarely used parliamentary procedure called the “humble address.”. This is effectively a direct call from parliament to the palace, bypassing Downing Street. This rebel group plans to use it to ask the Queen to exercise her right as head of state to travel to the next EU summit and ask for a Brexit delay.
But that would put the Queen in an awkward position; her likely response would be to bounce it straight back to the government, according to leading constitutional experts. Professor Vernon Bogdanor of King’s College London told CNN: “The safest rule for the Queen is always to take the advice of her ministers. That keeps her safe from criticism.”
Meanwhile Robert Hazell, professor of government and constitution at University College London, says the strategy is a complete non-starter.  “MPs might use a motion for a humble address to indicate their strong opposition to No Deal, or strong opposition to Parliament being prorogued; but the idea of the Queen attending the EU summit is absurd,” Hazell told CNN.  “Summit meetings are for heads of government, not heads of state: Denmark will be represented by their PM, not their Queen, and ditto all the other monarchies in the EU (of which there are six, in addition to the UK),” he added.
This latest twist in the UK’s Brexit saga shows how concerned some politicians are about Johnson’s premiership, even within his own party. On Thursday lawmakers voted to make it more difficult for the new leader to suspend parliament and impose a no-deal Brexit.  (reported last night by CNN)
My comment: involving the Queen, even if she concurred, is a total no-no, a further disastrous mis-step, quite possibly resulting in calls for the abolition of the monarchy by Brexit extremists.  You simply do not do this!  (although I ‘m guessing that the Queen must be as appalled as other thoughtful people at the prospect of Boris Johnson and mess being created). Curiously, talking to (necessarily very few) younger people, they don’t seem very engaged or concerned.  It is they that will have to live with this and take the consequences.  A further little sign of how turned off even educated people are.

Our understanding of the cosmos is wrong?

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The following is an excerpt from the New Scientist:

“The Hubble constant may not be that constant after all.

Something is wrong with the expansion of the universe. Nearby galaxies seem to be moving away from one another too fast, we don’t know why, and every new set of data just seems to make the problem worse.

We have two basic ways to measure the expansion of the universe, which is described by the Hubble constant. The two methods have always returned clashing results, and many astronomers and cosmologists hoped that one of them was simply wrong. Now, a third independent method has solidified their disagreement.

One of the ways we measure the Hubble constant is by using the cosmic microwave background   (CMB), the remains of the first light to stream across the cosmos after the big bang. Patterns in that light can tell us how fast the universe was expanding then, and researchers then use models of how it has evolved to tell us how fast it ought to be expanding now.

The other main way is using what astronomers call the “distance ladder”, in which we measure the distance to stars called Chid variables, link those distances to nearby supernovae, and use those supernovae to determine how fast relatively nearby galaxies are moving away from us. The distance ladder method has consistently resulted in an expansion rate more than 9 per cent higher than the CMB method, causing much consternation among astronomers.

Disagreements

“If you have two measurements that don’t agree, there is always a chance that one of them or both of them are wrong,” says team member Simon Birrer at the University of California Los Angeles. “But if you bring in a third independent measurement that comes close to one of the previous ones, then people start believing that this tension is really there.”

Now, an international team of astronomers has made that third measurement of the Hubble constant using gravitational lensing, a phenomenon where light from a distant object is bent by the gravity of a closer galaxy on its way to our telescopes. When the light arrives, it often forms several smeared images of the farther object, like looking at a light through the bottom of a water glass.

The light that forms each image travels a different path around the closer galaxy, so, as the distant object changes in brightness, there is a time delay between when that change shows up in each image. That time delay is based on the distance the light has traveled, so we can use it to measure the distance to the original object. When that is combined with the rate at which it’s moving away from us, we end up with a measurement of the Hubble constant.

Birrer and his colleagues went through this process for three quasars, some of the brightest objects in the universe which reside at the centres of some galaxies. Their measurements matched the results from the distance ladder method.” (Leah Crane, New Scientist 11 July 2019)

If you don’t fully understand all this, then you are in good company!  But, that aside, I think it is wonderful and reassuring that human beings are still devoting their lives to untangling the secrets of the universe, and that so far the know-nothings and moneymen have yet to stop them.  The human race has a long way to go, if it survives.  Good luck to the scientists!

Amazon, exploiters

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One survey of Amazon facilities showed that74% of Amazon workers skip going to the bathroom to avoid having their pay cut, and over 80% said they would never apply for another Amazon job again.

I once worked for an American company doing contract document copying .  The hours of work were 6 a.m to 6 p.m , with half an hour for lunch.  You had to get permission from the supervisor to go to the toilet and were docked pay if you were away from the machine for more than five minutes.  This was as close to slave labour as I ever got, but it had a good side – when I eventually ran my own company the workers were treated as human beings.

Yes, I admit to using Amazon.  I sent a book to a member of my family and it reached her almost exactly 24 hours later.  Regrettably, you can’t beat that (even if the speed, in this instance, was unnecessary).  But I am increasingly regarding using Amazon as a moral issue.

Obesity

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Excess weight causes about 1,900 more cases of bowel cancer than smoking in the UK each year. There are also 1,400 more cases of kidney cancer caused by excess weight than by smoking each year, 460 more ovarian cancers and 180 more cases of liver cancer. Meanwhile, the overall smoking rate has declined to 14.7%, down from 19% in 2011. But across the UK, obese people outnumber smokers by two to one.  26% of adults were classified as obese in 2016, while 40% of men and 30% of women were overweight.

Those with the highest levels of obesity are risking serious illnesses and premature death at a rate 50% higher than those with a healthy weight, according to a recent study of 2.8 million people. This includes 12 times the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, 22 times the risk of sleep apnoea and nearly four times the risk of heart failure. Even the least obese, with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 to 35, have twice the risk of high blood pressure, nearly twice the risk of heart failure and nearly six times the risk of sleep apnoea. (Cancer Research UK and Alison Rouke, The Guardian, 28 April 2019)

Sorry about all these statistics, but they matter, because this issue is not taken seriously.

I am aware that this  is a contentious issue (on this blog, aside from anywhere else).  Some people think it is a private matter – if people knowingly over-eat and get fat, that is their affair.  Other people have a genetic propensity to obesity they cannot help.

Nonetheless,  obesity is costing the British National Health huge sums, not just in terms of treatment, but in ancillary things like special handling equipment, ambulances, reinforced hospital beds etc.  Those who eat well and exercise are paying towards the treatment of the obese.  The  huge and mounting cost is giving the Tory government an additional excuse for subcontracting  healthcare in England, mostly to for-profit American companies.

Ambassador Darroch’s unresolved resignation

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The shoddy, shabby treatment of the. British Ambassador to Washington raises the immediate question: who leaked his very accurate assessment of Trump?

My favourite explanation is  that the Foreign Office computer system was hacked by an insider with a view of getting Darroch replaced  – by Nigel Farrage.

Who would want this and why?  Principally, Boris Johnson (an act-alike Trump) who has warned May not to make a new appointment until he is installed as PM.  Farage and his extremist Brexiteers are a serious threat to the Tories.  They got more votes than the Tories in the recent local elections, and when Boris (assuming he is in fact, gulp!, Prime Minister) has to call a general election, the Tories could be wiped out.  The Washington job gets Farage out of the way, panders to the latter’s cocky self- importance, and would have the delighted acceptance of Trump.  Moreover, almost any trade deal with the US would be unpopular with the British people, and Farage, heading the British trade negotiations, could be blamed for proposals to sell off the National Health, put British meat producers out of business and flood the market with what Brits regard as second rate, if not unhealthy, food.

The Tories do little in the way of governing for all the people, but no one can complain about them lacking ruthlessness.  To undermine the job of an experienced ambassador, paid to tell the truth as he sees it, is a new low, and illustrates why Epicurus despised power- seeking politicians and advised us to avoid our involvement in party politics.

 

Three expert comments on fighting the climate crisis: who is right?

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1. Report by The Guardian

A study released last week suggests that planting one trillion trees would be one of the most effective – and cheapest – ways to tackle the climate crisis. As ever, the question is whether mankind can organise itself enough to actually start planting. In view of the surge in Amazonian deforestation under Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil it looks as if time is not on our side.  (The Guardian)

2.  Letter to The Guardian

The Trouble with forests

Tree planting may have “mind-blowing” potential to tackle the climate crisis. However, the climate crisis is only one symptom of our continued destruction of the planet. The climate crisis has barely got going, but we are already in the midst of an extinction crisis that could soon rival that of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs became extinct. Today, we are losing species at a mass extinction rate, and at this point it’s nothing to do with climate.

Planting billions of trees will accelerate the extinction crisis, because closed-canopy forest is not the natural state on most continents. During the ice ages, and the intervening interglacials that dissected them, areas that we regard as natural forest today weren’t closed canopy, but instead were savannah or steppe, habitats that also absorb and store a great deal of carbon.

Covering these areas with closed-canopy forest will reduce biodiversity and condemn many species to extinction – species that still survive in the remaining fragments of these habitats, or in the farmland that we have replaced them with. Planting billions of trees may be one way of solving the problem, but will create more. Perhaps we can just produce less carbon in the first place. We have the technology, and we know how to make it work. (Martin Dohrn, Bristol)

3. Letter to The Guardian

Your article reinforces the idea that the only way to get a tree or forest is to plant it. Creating woods in serried ranks of trees in plastic tubes that are often left long after they should be removed (is not the way to go). Planting saplings grown abroad is almost certainly how ash dieback came to Britain.

Any piece of land, anywhere in the world below the treeline, left alone without any human interference or expense, will undergo a natural growth via scrub to a fully mature forest of properly native trees. As it does so, it will be taking lots of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Whether the new forest is planted or natural, when it is mature it no longer has any good effect on CO2 levels: the rotting dead leaves and fallen trees release exactly the same amount of CO2 as the trees take in by photosynthesis.   To make a mature forest a contributor to CO2 reduction you need to cut down the mature trees and use the wood for building (or burn it to replace fossil fuels). Then let the felled forest regrow.( Dr David Corke, director, Organic Countryside CIC).

So the message seems to be “cut down what we already have and let nature take its course?”  But this takes time. Do we have it?

 

 

Not so nice

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With a personal fortune worth just shy of $20 billion, Susanne Klatten ranks as Germany’s richest woman. She and her billionaire younger brother Stefan own a huge stake in BMW and a host of other enterprises.

But Klatten these days is feeling annoyed. She doesn’t feel her family is getting the appropriate respect. As the 57-year-old last month told a business journal: “Many believe that we are permanently sitting around on a yacht in the Mediterranean.” Having to be “a guardian of wealth,” Klatten continued, “has personal sides that aren’t so nice.”

Also not so nice: How Klatten’s family became fabulously rich in the first place. The family patriarch, Günther Quandt, ingratiated himself to Adolf Hitler early on and became one of Nazi Germany’s biggest armament tycoons, rising in 1939 to the status of “war economy führer.” Quandt’s battery plant would even have its own concentration camp, supplying slave labor. The Quandt family never publicly acknowledged any of this sordid history until after a  2007 documentary on the Quandts ran on German television. Not nice at all.  (Inequality.org)

Inequality.org write regular short mini biographies of the very rich.  This typifies the “poor little rich girl” attitude of some.  When interviewed she complains about lack of respect.  For what, exactly?  The respect would be emerge were she to be seen to be making amends to the world for Günther Quandt‘s complicity in the grim crimes of Nazism, at the very least giving generously to the poor and to charity generally.  Most of us would put up with aspects of wealth that “aren’t so nice” for such a nest- egg.  But one of the things that is general and fairly predictable is that so many of the super-rich actually feel sorry for themselves, or pretend thus to feel.

As a follower of the thoughts of Epicurus I would like to think I would continue to live comfortably, yes, but give away the majority of such a huge fortune that neither I nor any of my descendants could possibly spend.  But then – would I? Easy to be holier than her, but in possession of $20 billion……….?

Geography teachers do deal with population

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From Tony Dale, Oxford, UK, in reply to a letter in New Scientist dated May 25

Contrary to what Graham Lawton seems to suggest, population isn’t a fringe or a taboo issue, at least not in schools in England. Geography deals with it in depth. It is discussed as “population change” rather than “population growth”. Students examine various models for predicting future population change and factors which may influence it.

Students are left in no doubt that high fertility rates in some regions, and rises in others with already substantial populations, will account for a growth in world population to around 10 billion by the mid-century. They are also made aware that improvements in reproductive health and women’s education may well slow down and even reverse that growth by the end of the century. When population does appear on the global policy agenda, there will be many geography students who will ask: what took you so long?

(My take). Ten billion! And already changing climatic conditions are destabilising the Sahel region of Africa and are responsible for an increase in migration north.  This migration can only grow in intensity and is a huge threat to Europe.  We blame corruption and drug gangs for the similar migration north in the Americas, and there is little discussion about the effects of climate change in Central America – but it must be having a disrupting effect, an effect the corrupt leaderships of the countries involved are wholly unable to address.

People seem to think that the climate crisis is just a matter of a few more hurricanes and super-hot summers. The political and economic implications of a heating planet are huge – and instead of proposing a family planning blitz and cutting harmful emissions we shrug our shoulders and invoke personal freedom. Meanwhile we elect clowns because they tell us the crisis is bogus – and it suits us globally to believe them.

We need more Epicurean pragmatists, not effete politicians looking over their shoulders at their religious constituency. Established religion has no useful role in this crisis , except as an emotional palliative.

Is organic food really better for you?

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If you know where to look in academic journals, it turns out there is indeed lots of good evidence to suggest that some organically grown crops can be higher in certain vitamins and minerals. The tricky thing is, there are also lots of studies that suggest the exact opposite is the case. The more you delve into the literature, the more confused and conflicted the answer to what seems like a simple question appears to be. There is very good reason for this.

Imagine you are a scientist trying to solve this conundrum. You might, for example, buy a range of fruit and vegetables, grown both organically and conventionally, then test these crops for nutrient content and compare the results. After all, this kind of like-for-like comparison most realistically reflects the choices available to consumers, right? But here is the problem: this isn’t a like-for-like comparison at all. The crop varieties grown by organic farmers are often not the same as those grown by conventional ones. As genetics tends to be the principal factor that determines the chemical make-up of a crop, the unique DNA of one variety can result in a very different nutrient profile to another, even if they are grown under the exact same conditions. One head of lettuce might look and taste nearly identical to another variety grown next to it,  but their level of nutrients , like vitamin A can vary 20-fold.

The organic and conventional crops on your supermarket shelves will probably differ in other important ways, too. They are often grown in very different climates, even continents, with distinct soil chemistry, irrigation levels, ambient temperatures and sunlight exposure, all of which have been shown to dramatically affect the nutrient composition of crops. Studies have demonstrated that this can vary in the same plant – with two apples from the same tree having different levels of nutrient – even on two sides of the same fruit.

All this is before we get on to how the storage, transport and display of crops can affect their nutrient levels. For instance, we know that simply being exposed to the fluorescent lights of supermarkets can result in a crop of spinach being similar to a crop stored in darkness. This is because even once harvested, the fresh fruit and vegetables are still alive and so constantly react to their environment,  like plants in a field. This creates a hugely complex set of variables that it is almost impossible to control for.

There are many reasons why you might wish to go organic. But given the complicated and often contradictory nature of the evidence so far, it is impossible to claim that organically grown fruit and vegetables are automatically a nutritionally superior choice without cherry-picking studies (or parts of studies) that support this narrative, while ignoring evidence to the contrary. (by James Wong, botanist and science writer, in the New Scientist, 6 July 2019)

Scientists fired from Environmental Protection Agency

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Trump has told all agencies to cut at least a third of their advisory committees by September, thus  weakening the science-based regulations process that the administration has pushed back against since Trump took office. 462 committees are potentially on the chopping block, excluding agencies that are mandated by law.  The exclusion of scientists from health matters is particularly troublesome – the civil servants are generally good and conscientious people, but they don’t necessarily have the needed technical medical expertise.

The inclusion of scientists in land management issues, for instance, is a way to bring in local voices, as well as industry leaders, to discuss how best to manage public lands.  It is also a transparent way get scientific input.  But the Administration has spent two years neglecting and undermining the advisory network, and are now trying to use that neglect as a justification for removing these very advisory boards for “not being useful.”

The Trump administration in recent years has shuffled career scientists out of their positions, put limits on which science experts are qualified to sit on advisory boards and created a special White House panel that’s designed in part to counter the science linking climate change to national security threats.

Where does this extreme dislike (fear?) of science and scientists come from?  Some of it must be suspicion of the mysterious and unknown.  The Republicans are now the party of the proudly and fundamentally ignorant; generally coming out of school with no science at all, wary of scientists who use technical (elitist?) words, and lacking  the vocabulary to learn about or discuss science even if they wanted to.  This is the inevitable outcome when education has withered, as funding has been cut, and good, broad  education has become something that only the rich can afford.

Without science and the scientific method we would still be digging turnips, riding horses, and strapping swords to our belts when we go out.

Comedians as presidents

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“Jesters and satirists have always been valued for speaking truth to power. But now they’re winning office themselves. When comedian Beppe Grillo joked his way into Italian politics a decade ago, he seemed a one-off. Turns out, he was a “harbinger of things to come”. Since then, Tiririca – an actual clown – has become a congressman in Brazil (“It can’t get any worse”, was his campaign slogan); the comic actor Jimmy Morales is president of Guatemala; and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who played a president in a TV comedy, has just become Ukraine’s president. What’s going on?

“The rise of the comedian-politician is partly due to the fall – in the online era – of the barriers to entering politics: instead of holding rallies and pressing the flesh, Zelensky was able to broadcast his message with stand-up routines and the social media. But it’s also a symptom of voter disillusion with mainstream politicians: seeing an outsider mock the political elite is one sure benefit they can get from politics. Electorates “that look to their politicians for entertainment are living through humourless times”. (Jenny Lee,  Financial Times,  25 May 2019)

She left out, maybe because it is glaringly obvious, Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the UK, both of them popular with a certain segment of the electorate who seek superficial entertainment from the serious business of actually running a country.  Not only are these joker-politicians iconoclasts, supposedly “strong” and “telling it how it is”, but they know how to use the media and play to the gallery, with the collusion of the printed and broadcast Press (Trump-hostile CNN advertises Trump on a minute-by-minute basis).  Not for any of these people the gritty business of reading long, involved briefs and using experts for advice. They use instinct and the lowest common denominator, with a sharp eye on the polls and trending ephemera on social media.  Nothing is serious, at least until they start trade and real wars.

One is reminded of the latter days of the Roman empire, when the mob required bread and circuses and emperors came and went, occasionally three in one year, never mind the barbarians at the frontier.  At this distance we can see that the Roman empire was dysfunctional and was in decline.  Well, the modern jokers are signaling  to us all – it’s deja vue all over again.  If this new crop of “leaders” don’t produce utter chaos, the climate crisis will, in any case.

 

The allure of handwriting

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“We are more than ever obsessed with individual identity, our personal brand, putting our stamp on the world. But we bow to the plain text of the smartphone, bland and unblotted. A WhatsApp message will never have the personality of a sibling’s spider-scribble. Digital communication can never match the intimacy of a handwritten letter. If you want to tell someone I love you, I miss you, I’m sorry, I’m thinking of you, do it by hand, sealed in an envelope. Embarrassed teenagers confessing to a crush now do it by Snapchat. A few seconds and the message vanishes. Blushes are spared, but so much else is lost.”.    (Laura Freeman in The Daily Telegraph)

I can never forget the endless battles as a child between my parents and myself about thank-you letters, in particular: Grumble , grumble, grumble….why can’t I just phone them?  I can’t think what to say……we are not going out until you have thanked Aunt Agatha…….those were the days of courtesy and received manners, and woe betide you if you didn’t write promptly.  Nowadays, one can adopt the principle that those who send you emails get emails in return; and those people, diminishing in number, who typically still hand-write their thanks get hand-written letters. I think the latter are so nice, and seem somehow more heartfelt and genuine than a dashed-off email. They actually  take little more time, and, as for actual content, well, this is an opportunity to charm and be a bit creative.  For that you need more than simply the ability to do joined up handwriting.

Are parents still patiently insisting that their children say “please” and “thank-you” and write thank- you letters?  Are they teaching consideration and courtesy? Some definitely are, and it is much appreciated.  It is also Epicurean.